SuttaCentral
Since it’s ultimately about the practice it would be a shame not to go into that, but could you please open a new topic with the same text? Don’t hope for too much consensus in details though 
For a solid foundation you can’t go wrong with Ajahn Sujato’s writings, for example ‘A Swift Pair of Messangers’
I see that some of you guys are convinced by new insights from Polak’s work. I see assumptions over assumptions on every page and don’t even know where to start. His discoveries that Ajahn Mun didn’t have a proper teacher, or that mantras are not traditional buddhist meditation objects are by no means secrets for example - for whom does he write that - the beginning meditator? the scholar? a vaguely interested public?
on page 193 we find about applying “impermanence” to one’s meditation experience: “although one thinks that he is contemplating the nature of his experience, he is completely unaware of his real present activity”.
Why to bring in a notion of “real present activity”? that’s a philosophical speculation - as if we have any access to a ‘real activity’ in ‘the full innocent present moment’. It’s quite easy to logically see that one is never in tune with the ‘reality here and now’. As long as there is a mind-impression/sensation there is a cognitive apparatus that filters, selects and categorized. This in fact is a claim that Advaita makes to advance non-dual states of mind. But anyway, it’s pure philosophy, with claims, discourses and assumptions of its own, it doesn’t lead anywhere, and doesn’t help the practitioner.
So everywhere I see a weird mix of kinda-history, kinda-philosophy, kinda-sutta-study. None of it is precise enough to stand on its own and still makes claims to reveal something new. Really it’s just on every page I’ve read so far, so I at least can’t get inspiration or insight out of it. But again, if you have pages with precise deductions from history or pali-suttas, please reference the page and I’m glad to find something new…
Respectfully, Polak has not offered any “new insights” to me; despite my agreement with some his points (and disagreement with others). I personally have not read any ‘yogic techniques’ in the suttas thus do not need Polak to point this out to me. When I first practised meditation, many years ago, I tried to follow the ‘yogic techniques’ below but gave them up after they reached the limits of their usefulness. 
We have some tricks to use on the breath and these tricks come in five stages. These five tricks or skillful means are:
1. following the breath;
2. guarding the breath at a certain point;
3. giving rise to an imaginary image at that guarding point;
_4. manipulating those images in any ways that we want in order to gain power over them; _
5. selecting one of these images and contemplating it in a most concentrated way until the breath becomes truly calm and peaceful.
That’s a good question and indeed I would like to make it to himself.
The idea of this post was to not only bring his book to people’s knowledge here but hopefully see if we can come up with questions that are good enough to bring back to Polak himself.
While I don’t follow or buy most of his points - and frankly dont even bother to scrutinize all of the book’s chapters - I do agree with many of his open questions / considerations listed in the ‘Perspectives’ chapter.
I am definitely keen on challenging, making use of the suttas, the understanding that the Buddha taught people to place all their bets either on A) forcing the mind to a ultra deep (and possibly not achievable at all by most of us) states of absorption for liberating insight to take place or on B) conditioning themselves to be almost robotic and fully passive observers of the experience of existence who can all but hope for insight to one day take place.
A being the approach of those pursuing visudhimagga jhana and B being the approach of the jhana-less vipassana of modern Burmese masters, mostly based on Abhidhamma commentaries.
Could you link that post please?
Not sure how to link a post. Anyway let’s try:
[details=Summary]why isn’t ekagatta in the suttas? admittedly quite rarely but it does appear
or do you mean specifically in the jhana formulas?[/details]
If ekagatta is supposed to be the essential component present in all Jhānas while pītī and sukha progressively disappear as you go from Jhāna one to Jhāna four, then the Buddha would not have forgotten to put it in the standard Jhāna formula. Instead ekagatta was a late introduction after the Buddha passing away, that totally distorted the Jhānas that he had re-discovered as a child and later on made his key component for liberation I.e. The eighth component of the eightfold path.
Possibly ‘ekagatta’ is synonymous with ‘jhana’. Can ‘jhana’ be a mind that is not perfectly stable?
Picture an axle that holds a tyre wheel in place. Sometimes the wheel spins (vitakka & vicara) around the axle; sometimes the wheel does not spin but is full of air (2nd jhana); sometimes the air is removed from the tyre (3rd jhana) & sometimes the tyre is removed (4th jhana). In each case, the features of the wheel are different but the wheel rim (citta) remains fixed in place by the axle (of ‘ekagatta’).
MN 111 lists the respective different & same features of the various jhanas. Those features that are the same for each jhana are not mentioned in the standard jhana formula. Why would they be? Why would the Buddha, for example, mention ‘consciousness’ as a jhana factor, even though it obviously arises in jhana?
There was the case where Sariputta — quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful qualities — entered & remained in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born of seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. Whatever qualities there are in the first jhana — directed thought, evaluation, rapture, pleasure, singleness of mind, contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness, equanimity & attention — he ferreted them out one after another.
Furthermore, with the abandoning of pleasure & stress — as with the earlier disappearance of elation & distress — Sariputta entered & remained in the fourth jhana: purity of equanimity & mindfulness, neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Whatever qualities there are in the fourth jhana — a feeling of equanimity, neither pleasure nor pain; an unconcern due to serenity of awareness; singleness of mind, contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness, equanimity & attention — he ferreted them out one after another.
A good example that shows that in Jhana one, one can think and ponder and is not in an ekagatta situation.
Standard formula Jhana #2: vitakkavicārānaṃ vūpasamā ajjhattaṃ sampasādanaṃ cetaso ekodibhāvaṃ
Of course we can insist "Hey sutta, tell me the word I’m looking for, no I mean the other one: ekaggata!"
ekodibhāvaṃ = eka - udi - bhavam
for me it’s really tomato - tomato, eh, the joke doesn’t work in writing
apologies 
It was kind of obvious to me that the two are synonymous, but as a small backup I found in Bucknell (Reinterpreting Jhana) “The term’s (cetaso ekodibhava) equivalence with cittass’ ekaggata is self-evident” and there is probably more if one looks for scholarly confirmation.
at least as I understand it
eka = one
udi = rising
bhavam = (loosely) state of mind, (literally) becoming
cetaso = genitive of citta = of the mind
so something like “becoming one-rising of the mind” or “the arising of the mind as one”. I hope it’s not too far off the literal meaning, but I think it’s ok
I think we are deviating from the topic again.
As far as I understand Polak is not questioning ekagatta but an importance to cessation which it does not see as legitimate.
Anyone disagrees?
Grzegorz disagrees with ekagatta which he says is the characteristic of yogic (brahmanic) meditation. He also points out that the four brahmanic attainments that the Buddha-to-be learned from his two teachers and that he rejected, were re-introduced into some Suttas and became arupas-Jhānas and then the Buddha Jhānas became lower and rūpa. With all these corruptions the type and soteriologic role of the Buddha Jhānas were lost (at least for most Buddhist traditions). Fortunately not all is lost. Everyone can rediscover them by themselves as the Buddha-to-be did.
What does he say about ekodibhava then?
Do you think he would propose it was planted accross the Suttas as the yogic influence shaped it’s writing down?
Hi LXNDR
In fact, cittekaggatā is not as rare as some would believe. If we resolve the compound into its members and do a proximity search for the members in the suttas, we get -
cittaṃ ekaggaṃ (the mind [was] unified) in MN 4, MN 19
cittassa ekaggatā (unification of the mind) in MN 44, MN 117, MN 125, SN 45.28 (mirroring MN 117), SN 48.9 – 11, SN 48.50
ekaggacittā in SN 47.4 and AN 2.42 in the context of satipaṭṭhāna,
In fact, its occurrence as cittaṃ ekaggaṃ (the mind was unified) in MN 4 and MN 19 within the context of satipaṭṭhāna just before the 1st Jhana would suggest that it is not a quality that shows up only in the Jhanas.
Made a quick check of MN 4’s parallel in EA 31.1, and it also pops up there as 一心 as the precursor to the First Dhyana.
From the looks of it, the ekaggatā with reference to citta is not exclusive to or monopolised by jhana. It is also a quality shared by well-established mindfulness.
The issue is not only ekagatta. It is the whole re-interpretation of Anapanasati with body-of-breath instead of simply the body then body-formations, etc. This corruption of Anapanasati makes you believe that you have to let go of the body including breathing, heart beat, etc. The Buddha made fun of such approach. Unfortunately that’s the one that is now mainstream.
Wishing you all to experience the true Buddha Jhānas.
Well, this is not convincing at all - can’t you admit that (if that is his claim) that he was wrong about ekaggata not being in the jhana formula? What is at stake then is that ‘Grzegorz’ has found the truth and is just somehow not able to show it to non-believers (where are the sutta references, where the historical references, where the ‘yogic’ references?)