Polak's Reexamining Jhanas

[silence]

@Gabriel_L

Now, if you were put in front of Polak what would be your brief and succinct recommendations in terms of what he could do to refine or reconsider about his thesis?

I am going to post this here and not on the thread quoted below as it seems even more relevant here

@silence

Polak in his book says that there are only 2 suttas that ascribe jhanas to non-Buddhists: DN 1 and AN 4.123. He then goes on to argue that both are late fabrications tainted by the beliefs of their composers. Was he wrong about this?

While doing an unrelated search, I stumbled upon this passage of MN 142 which seems to imply that non-Buddhists practiced jhanas at the time the sutta was created. It doesn’t actually prove that Polak’s hypothesis is false, as it doesn’t prove that they were already doing so before the Buddha was enlightened, but this is definitely something he should have included in his book.

One gives a gift to an outsider who is free of sensual desire.
Bāhirake kāmesu vītarāge dānaṁ deti

As a matter of fact it speaks to a general weakness of his work (which makes it a bit difficult to read), in that it seems more like a first draft that would need feedback from other experts and subsequent adjustments. Not only regarding things like this, but also as regards the general style of writing, since his chapters sometimes lacks a clear guiding thread and unfortunately tend to look like a collection of ramblings in which the reader loses the overly convoluted logic of the progression in the proliferation of apparent sidetracks the author engages in.