Samādhi is both a gathering and a fire

As is well known, the Pali term jhāyati, better known in noun form as jhāna, draws upon two distinct roots, which take the same form in Pali. The two roots are to “burn, glow, illuminate” and to “consider, ponder, ruminate”.

It seems that the term samādhi, which is usually synonymous with jhāna in the EBTs, also draws on dual roots. This seems so obvious that I am surprised that I am surprised; probably someone has written about this; heck, I’ve probably done it myself!

The PTS dict acknowledges two main senses for the verb form samādahati, to gather or assemble, and to kindle a fire. The first sense is clearly the primary one in the context of meditation. However the second sense is well attested in Bhikkhu Pacittiya 56, which lays down an offence for a monk who lights a fire. Unfortunately, the rule analysis does not define samādahati.

In the past I have thought—and taught—that here it meant to “assemble” or put together the materials for the fire. However, this is incorrect, so I apologize to those I have misled. :pray: The rule states that it is an offence to samādahati a fire, and this must be “kindling” the flame, rather than merely assembling the materials.

While this dual sense is correctly acknowledged in the dictionary and translations, the dictionary gives only one etymology, to ādahati1, which itself derives from dahati1. Here the root is similar in meaning to the derived form, meaning to “put” or “place”.

However there is also a term dahati2, to burn. This must be the sense that is prominent in the “kindling” of fire. Thus samādahati should be acknowledged to have two roots, or perhaps to be two distinct words. However in samādhi the two senses would seem to be combined, in agreement with the very widespread use of imagery of light and radiance in the context of deep meditation.

The text that triggered this inquiry was SN 7.9. There, the Buddha is criticizing a brahmin for thinking that purity comes from lighting the sacred flame.

Mā brāhmaṇa dāru samādahāno
When you’re kindling the firewood, brahmin,
Suddhiṃ amaññi bahiddhā hi etaṃ;
don’t imagine this is purity, for it’s just an external.

This is of course part of the standard Buddhist critique of meaningless rituals. The ritual persists today; brahmanical priests still perform the agnihotra.

image

Sorry, my bad, that’s Buddhist monks in Thailand performing the agnihotra.

Moving on! In the next verse, the Buddha says:

Hitvā ahaṃ brāhmaṇa dārudāhaṃ
I’ve given up kindling firewood, brahmin,
Ajjhattamevujjalayāmi jotiṃ
now I just light the inner flame.

Here dāhaṁ must belong to dahati2, and since this echoes the previous verse, samādahati there must draw on the same root. The next lines emphasize this even more:

Niccagginī niccasamāhitatto,
Always blazing, always converged (=“akindle”),
Arahaṃ ahaṃ brahmacariyaṃ carāmi.
I am a perfected one living the spiritual life.

Wow, so being on fire is directly paralleled with being in samādhi!

As so often in verse, the exact sense is a little ambiguous. In some cases, the past participle samāhita is said to have the sense of “comprised of” rather than samādhi in the sense of deep meditation, although I can’t find strong support for this. (See AN 8.59, SN 2.6) It is possible, I guess, that the term here means something like “always steady in oneself”. If it does refer to actual samādhi, it must be somewhat of a poetic expression, because the Buddha was obviously not literally in samādhi all the time.

Still, regardless of the exact interpretation, the connection between samādahati and fire is clear and strong. This is a rather interesting counterpoint to the whole nibbāna as the going out of the flame thing. And another interesting question: I wonder whether samādhi in the Hindu tradition retains the “fire” sense at all?


Incidentally, in the same sutta we have a clear allusion to one of my favorite Upanishadic dialogues, Brihadaranyaka 4.3.

In SN 7.9, after the previously-discussed verses, the Buddha goes on to develop a set of correlations between a brahmin’s ritual equipment and various ethical qualities. Such point-by-point analogies are highly characteristic of the Upanishads, as they endeavor to evolve a higher spiritual sense of the Vedic rituals. By itself, however, this is not really remarkable enough to conclude there’s an Upanishadic parallel. However, we find the Buddha saying:

Attā sudanto purisassa joti
The well-tamed self is the light of a man.

This is a very close analogue with the Brihadaranyaka, where King Janaka asks:

yājñavalkya, kiṁ-jyotir ayam puruṣa iti
Yājñavalkya, what is the light of a man?

Given that the terms for “light” and “man” here both have multiple possible synonyms, their concurrence here is unlikely to be an accident. The text enters into a playful dialogue between the king and the sage, until finally Yājñavalkya is made to divulge that the self (ātman) is a man’s true light. As to what that self is:

yo’yaṁ vijñānamayaḥ prāṇeṣu, hṛdy antarjyotiḥ puruṣaḥ
It is that man made of consciousness among the vital energies/senses, the inner light of the heart.

As always, while the language is clearly related, the Buddha avoids the metaphysical implications, preferring a practical and ethical teaching.

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Awesome! I was doing some etymological digging on my own into sati/jhāna/samādhi to try to contribute to the wiki. This post goes much deeper and opens whole new dimensions of meaning though.

In my digging, I noticed that jhāna and samādhi might share a similar PIE root:
‌‌dhē- To set, put.

Would the relationship there between jhāna and samādhi, be “placing” and “placed together” respectively?

What about the 5 spiritual faculties? I got the impression that those faculties become more and more prominent along the path.

Also, samādhi definitely seems to have a range of meaning. From the very broad to the very specific. If we “stick” with the fire metaphor, and jhāna is the blazing of a fire, then a broad samādhi might mean kindling or tending to a fire even in an almost embered state (so that it could be brought to blaze again).

Another old fire word is tapas, but I don’t think that has any positive connotation in the suttas.

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Really? Can you give me a reference for that?

It seems unlikely, but let me check the etymology first.

Well yes, but again, we can’t be too literal about these things. Samadhi is a state of meditation.

Not in the EBTs. In significant doctrinal contexts it almost always refers to jhana. The “almost” includes a small number of references to esoteric meditations that are even more advanced (signless samadhi and so on), as well as a small number of poetic or ambiguous contexts. It was only in later years that it came to be applied to very weak states of concentration.

Indeed, good point. Tapas is actually used about 50/50 in a bad (i.e. self-mortification) and a good (i.e. relentless effort) sense.

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Great topic Bhante. By coincidence, I am attempting at translating AN 3.101 these days, and of course the work of the goldsmith comes to mind as the ‘fiery’, more refined stage of the process - the preliminary, ‘watery’ stage being carried on by the dirt-washer panning or washing gold.
image

Tamenaṃ suvaṇṇakāro vā suvaṇṇa­kā­ran­tevāsī vā jātarūpaṃ mūsāyaṃ pakkhipitvā dhamati sandhamati niddhamati.

The root dham seems to convey both a sense of ‘blowing’ ‘fanning’ and ‘kindling’ ‘melting’ - with reference to the actions performed by the goldsmith (= bhikkhu intent on the adhicitta/jhana) so that the gold placed in the crucible (collected, gathered) is finally

free from dross, pliant, malleable, & luminous. It is not brittle, and is ready to be worked.

So while the verbal roots are different, it would seem the same point is being made here, linking fire-heat-luminosity and samadhi. (sorry for the diacritics, still have troubles with Palipad).

Kindling the inner fire …
image

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Interesting details! especially as the specific terms jhana and samadhi seem to get prominence only around the Buddha’s time. And as usual I don’t believe he just made terms up, but that they were immediately understood by his contemporaries.
On the other hand it’s really not surprising for terms to gravitate towards a fire-connotation. wheel/cart/horse and fire are probably among the most natural clouds of meanings around the proto-language of the aryans (yoga, yuj etc. for another cart-harness metaphor that spiraled into spirituality).
So another question and problem to resolve I guess is - even with a direct root connected to fire - how close that meaning is to the surface of the word. If a contemporary of the Buddha heard it, would ‘fire’ resonate strongly, mildly, or hardly?

The following is from “An Etymological Dictionary of the Proto-Indo-European Language” 2007, from the database of Pokorny’s “Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch”. In that work at least I couldn’t find “dhē- To set, put”, only the well-known “dher- , dherǝ-” of dharati…

[quote] dhegʷh- -
English meaning: to burn, *day
Material: O.Ind. dáhati , Av. dažaiti “burns” (= Lith. degú , O.C.S. žegǫ , Alb. djek ), participle O.Ind. dagdhá-ḥ (= Lith. dègtas ), Kaus. dủhá yati; dủha-ḥ “blaze, heat”, nidủghá -ḥ “heat, summer”, Pers. dủɣ “burn brand” (in addition LateGk. δάγαλος, -ις “ red-brown horse “?); Av. daxša- m. “blaze”; [/quote]

As a word of caution for the casual curious searcher, there are many ‘dhe’ words that have nothing to do with fire, so I guess one has to be a linguist to separate the right roots…

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I might be making leaps of the imagination, so thanks for challenging me on this.

(Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988)) entry on samādhi: “putting together”
from the awesome SanskritDictionary.com

Also, Venerable Ānalayo shared your earlier thinking on the subject:

The noun samadhi is related to the verb samadahati, “to put together” or “to collect”, such as when one collects wood to kindle a fire. Samadhi thus stands for “collecting” oneself, in the sense of composure or unification of the mind.’
-Ānālayo in “Samādhi and Jhāna”

So, I was just inferring from these definitions;
and the SC etymology goes: fr. saṃ + ā + dhā

that the ‘sam/saṃ’ part is together, which seems pretty obviously from PIE root sem-

‌‌sem- One; also adverbially “as one,” together with.

the ‘a/ā’ is towards
PIE root ad-

ad- To, near, at.
(Latin ad-, to or toward)

and the ‘dhī/dhā’ is from dhē

‌‌dhē- To set, put

This is all from the The American Heritage Dictionary Indo-European Roots Appendix.

Jhāna/dhyāna I’m a lot less clear on, went down some rabbit holes on this one: dhī, dhā… What does “mfn.” mean?

as in — mfn. putting, placing

Can’t really tell… but maybe dhyāna is closer to PIE dher- as in dhāraṇā?

Ok, I accept that as true. However, even within the jhāna context it has a range of usage, right? For instance; sammā samādhi = the 4 jhānas, but the second jhāna has the pīti-sukha born of samādhi?

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very cool article bhante!
what you say makes a lot of sense.

but i have a question about this part:

my impression is that samadhi in the context of meditation/concentration is not just jhana. in the satipatthana samyutta (and anuruddha samyutta, closely related), we have several discourses where satipatthana, jhana, seem to overlap or be synonymous, as well as incorporating right effort. for example, the SN satipattana sutta about the skillful cook who gains promotions and bonuses from the king, which uses keywords like ekaggatta and samadhi (happening while doing satipatthana) without referring to jhana. so if jhana is synonymous with samadhi, then isn’t it jhana synonymous with 4 satipatthana as well? in one of the chinese agama satipatthana sutta parallels, they do include the 4 jhanas and their 4 similes as part of kaya-anupassana. are they in the same strata as EBT?

there are the suttas where anuruddha is asked how he become mighty and powerful, and he says it’s because of satipatthana, no jhana and no samadhi mentioned. and then there are suttas where anuruddha and other arahants based on 4 satipatthana attain arahantship, no mention of jhana and samadhi. now i can’t imagine how one could attain arahantship without jhana, so when you consider all of those suttas together in bojjhanga SN, satipatthana SN, etc, the only way this can be coherent is if samadhi encompasses all of these: samma sati (4 satipatthana), samma vayamo , samma samadhi, 4 iddhipada. in other words they overlap with one another, and we can not make clear separation between them.

so in MN 44(or 43), culavedalla sutta
samadhi-khandha is defined as including right concentration, right effort, right mindfulness.
samadhi-nimittas are defined as the 4 satipatthana
samma samadhi is defined as ekaggata citta

ok, so MN 44 and other pali suttas are not considered EBT, but shouldn’t we still take them into consideration when they make sense and corroborate what a simple straightforward reading of EBT passages suggest?

and even if we accept the hypothesis that samadhi in EBT is always synonymous with jhana, that still is a very broad statement. in AN 1, there’s are 3 suttas where metta practice is pretty much equated to jhana, they’re located right around the famous pabhassara citta sutta, whatever number that is. and then later in AN 1 (300’s or 400’s i think), there’s a whole vagga where it includes first those other samadhi-khandas, 4 satipattha, 4 vayamo, 4 iddhipada and most of the other 37 bodhipakkhiya as being jhana practice.

there are 2 suttas i can think of where “wrong jhana” is discussed (as i recall “samadhi” is not used, just jhana), those being a type of jhana that are based on any one of the 5 hindrances.

and of course the numerous suttas frequently using the passage with “jhayati”. “the is our message to you, find a foot of a tree, practice jhana (jhayati).”

that frequent admonishment to jhayati is directed to disciples of various skill levels, it’s hard for me to imagine how jhana, if it can be a wrong jhana based on 5 hindrances, could only mean a type of samadhi where one loses all awareness of the anatomical body, can’t hear, can’t think. how would a wrong-jhana like tantra work then? and if novices newly ordained are being told to go to a foot of a tree and jhayati, it would make more sense in the 4 satipattha sense of being the nimittas of samadhi.

sorry if my tone appears confrontational, the intent is not to argue or be rude. i’m just a plain speaking earnest disciple in search of truth, and i’m open to changing my mind if i can see evidence that’s convincing.

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SN47.8 The Cook

Interesting, I’ve never read that one. I’ll wait for what Bhante says.

you might be referring to this one? AN11.9 - the verb is jhāyati and in the Ṭhānissaro translation on SC the quote goes “he absorbs himself with it, besorbs, resorbs, & supersorbs”

No worries, @frankk. I won’t address all of these here, because I dealt with them in detail in A Swift Pair of Messengers.

Dhī is the root for jhāna, or one of them. Dhā is the root for dhāraṇa and dhamma. From what you’ve shown, these all seem to be distinct from the root(s) for samādhi. Remember, though, that all PIE roots are conjectural.

Umm, I guess? I mean, that’s pretty much a nuance, not really a distinct meaning.

“Masculine/feminine/neuter”. Basically it means that the word derives its form from the word in the sentence that it relates too. Most of the time this applies to adjectives, so if the noun is masculine, the adjective is also masculine, and so on. In older dictionaries these were labelled as adjective, but the category is in practice somewhat broader than that so a more general terminology was adopted (or so I infer, I have never seen a discussion of this.)

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i’m also very interested to hear what Bhante says. i read the entire “swift pair of messengers” within the last 3 years, and i just did a digital search on the book for SN 47, did not see that sutta with the cook (SN 47.8) referenced in the book.

here’s one relevant passage and i’ll highlight some key words

Sa kho so, bhikkhave, paṇḍito byatto kusalo sūdo lābhī ceva hoti
acchādanassa, lābhī vetanassa, lābhī abhihārānaṃ. Taṃ kissa hetu? Tathā
hi so, bhikkhave, paṇḍito byatto kusalo sūdo sakassa bhattu nimittaṃ
uggaṇhāti. Evameva kho, bhikkhave, idhekacco paṇḍito byatto kusalo
bhikkhu kāye kāyānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke
abhij­jhā­do­manas­saṃ. Tassa kāye kāyānupassino viharato **cittaṃ **
> samādhiyati, upakkilesā pahīyanti. So taṃ nimittaṃ uggaṇhāti. Vedanāsu
vedanānupassī viharati … pe … citte cittānupassī viharati … pe …
dhammesu dhammānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, **vineyya loke **
> abhij­jhā­do­manas­saṃ. Tassa dhammesu dham­mānupas­sino viharato cittaṃ
> samādhiyati, upakkilesā pahīyanti. So taṃ nimittaṃ uggaṇhāti.
Sa
kho so, bhikkhave, paṇḍito byatto kusalo bhikkhu lābhī ceva hoti
diṭṭheva dhamme sukhavihārānaṃ, lābhī hoti sati­sam­pajañ­ñassa. Taṃ
kissa hetu? Tathā hi so, bhikkhave, paṇḍito byatto kusalo bhikkhu
sakassa cittassa nimittaṃ uggaṇhātī”ti.

b.bodhi translation of part of it:

While he dwells contemplating phenomena in
phenomena, his mind becomes concentrated, his corruptions are
abandoned, he picks up that sign.
“That
wise, competent, skilful bhikkhu gains pleasant dwellings in this very
life, and he gains mindfulness and clear comprehension. For what reason?
Because, bhikkhus, that wise, competent, skilful bhikkhu picks up the
sign of his own mind.”

note that dhamma-sukha-vihara (pleasant dwellings) in other suttas is synonymous for either the first 3 jhanas (udayi sutta AN 6.29), and in AN 4.something samadhi bhavana sutta it is defined as 4 jhanas.

so here you have learning the nimitta of samadhi in the simile directly referring to the 4 satipatthana. and you have “samadhi” happen within the 4 satipattha as it’s being practiced, and then the cook getting rewarded by the king is explained as one getting “pleasant abiding” (of samadhi), i.e. jhana. the 5 hindrances are a subset of the upak-kilesas. and not explicitly stated in this sutta but other suttas it’s explicit that right effrot is the one administering the beat down on those upak-kilesas.

now whether this sutta is EBT or not, there are a lot more suttas where the same sort of thing is going on where you can’t cleanly separate jhana from 4 satipatthana from right effort.

here’s somethings that’s definitely EBT.
in the standard definition of 3rd jhana:

piitiya ca viraga / piti fades out
upekkako ca viharati / equanimous he abides
sato sampajanno / mindful and clearly comprehending
sukhan ca kayena patisamvedeti / pleasure with the body he experiences
yam tam ariya acikkanti / that those noble-ones declare
upekkhako satima sukha viharaya ti / equanimious mindful, pleasantly he abides
tatiyam jhana upasampajja viharti / 3rd jhana he enters and dwells in.

note there’s the “sukha vihara” pleasant abiding. and note that “sato and sampajano” is active, one is not in a frozen state where no contemplation of phenomena can take place. in one of the first 3 suttas in satipatthana SN 46 , “sati” of “sati and sampajjana” is recursively defined as 4 satipatthana. “sampajanno” is defined as awareness of various body postures and movements. But later on in that samyutta, and also in samadhi bhavana sutta AN 4.something, “sati and sampajnna” is defined as contemplating the 5 aggregates in terms of their cause, rise, fall.

so the 4 satipatthana, right effort, jhana, pleasant abiding, supressing of 5 hindrances, it’s all happening within jhana, within satipatthana all simultaneously. now i’m still pretty raw pali student but i can guarantee if there were grammatical reasons in pali why 4 satipatthana and jhana aren’t simultaneously happening, there would be many experts who would have pointed this out already since the jhana controversies have been going on for a long time.

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My bad, I just checked, and while I did refer to it in the appendix to Swift Pair (A.16), this was just in passing, and it is A History of Mindfulness 12.9 that I was thinking of. Still, even there I don’t really go into it in detail.

yes, that’s the one.
both for the skillful horse and unskillful horse, the type of right or wrong jhana they’re doing is not the kind of jhana and samadhi that bhante is talking about.

It’s English, Jim, but not as we know it. Here’s my translation:

Harboring sensual desire within, they meditate and concentrate and contemplate and ruminate.

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?? curious why not?

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I’ll let Frankk speak for himself, but generally speaking, in a loose sense I take the EBTs as the 4 nikayas, 6 early books of the Khuddaka, the Vinaya (except the Parivara), and corresponding texts in Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan. This is the corpus that, on the whole, stems from the earliest period.

However, not all the texts within this corpus are equally early, and there are a number of texts that are widely agreed upon as belonging to later strata within this. In some cases, such texts are clearly composed at a later date, as with, say, the Lakkhana Sutta (DN 30). Others are comprised mainly of early material, but edited together at a later date. DN 33 and DN 34 are the most obvious examples of this; I would include MN 10/DN 22 Satipatthana.

MN 43 and MN 44 are often cited as examples of this sort, although I am not sure that the case here is so compelling. Perhaps they were early texts that underwent expansion.

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Harboring sensual desire within, they meditate and concentrate and contemplate and ruminate.

Whew! I always found that “besorbs, resorbs, & supersorbs” a bit difficult to absorb. I remember when I first read BB’s translation I had to look up those words in an English dicitonary.

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Did you find them?

“be-sorb, re-sorb, …” is Ven. Thanissaro’s translation. my guess is he’s trying to be consistent with his translation of jhana as “absorption.”

the key point, why i quoted that passage, is to show that jhayati is used in ways that does not equate with how Ajahn Brahm defines jhana. this is all in response to Bhante Sujato’s quote (responding to matt):

matt said: samādhi definitely seems to have a range of meaning. From the very broad to the very specific

bhante’s response:
Not in the EBTs. In significant doctrinal contexts it almost always
refers to jhana. The “almost” includes a small number of references to
esoteric meditations that are even more advanced (signless samadhi and
so on), as well as a small number of poetic or ambiguous contexts. It
was only in later years that it came to be applied to very weak states
of concentration.

regarding the last part of Bhante Sujato’s quote, according to the Buddha 1st jhana is a weak state of concentration, in AN 3.102 about the goldsmith simile, here’s b.bodhi’s translation of relevant section

“So too, bhikkhus, when a bhikkhu is devoted to the higher mind, (1)
there are in him gross defilements: bodily, verbal, and mental
misconduct. An earnest, capable bhikkhu abandons, dispels, terminates,
and obliterates them. When this has been done, (2) there remain in him
middling defilements: sensual thoughts, thoughts of ill will, and
thoughts of harming. An earnest, capable
bhikkhu abandons, dispels, terminates, and obliterates them. When this
has been done, (3) there remain in him subtle defilements: thoughts
about his relations,556 thoughts about his country, and thoughts about his reputation.557
An earnest, capable bhikkhu abandons, dispels, terminates, and
obliterates them. When this has been done, then there remain thoughts
connected with the Dhamma.558 That concentration is not peaceful and sublime, not gained by full tranquilization,559 not attained to unification, but is reined in and checked by forcefully suppressing [the defilements].560

here’s the pali for that

“evamevaṃ kho, bhikkhave, santi adhicittamanuyuttassa bhikkhuno oḷārikā upakkilesā kāyaduccaritaṃ vacīduccaritaṃ manoduccaritaṃ, tamenaṃ sacetaso bhikkhu dabbajātiko pajahati vinodeti byantīkaroti anabhāvaṃ gameti. tasmiṃ pahīne tasmiṃ byantīkate santi adhicittamanuyuttassa bhikkhuno majjhimasahagatā upakkilesā kāmavitakko byāpādavitakko vihiṃsāvitakko, tamenaṃ sacetaso bhikkhu dabbajātiko pajahati vinodeti byantīkaroti anabhāvaṃ gameti. tasmiṃ pahīne tasmiṃ byantīkate santi adhicittamanuyuttassa bhikkhuno sukhumasahagatā upakkilesā ñātivitakko janapadavitakko anavaññattipaṭisaṃyutto vitakko, tamenaṃ sacetaso bhikkhu dabbajātiko pajahati vinodeti byantīkaroti anabhāvaṃ gameti. tasmiṃ pahīne tasmiṃ byantīkate athāparaṃ dhammavitakkāvasissati VAR. so hoti samādhi na ceva santo na ca paṇīto nappaṭippassaddhaladdho na ekodibhāvādhigato sasaṅkhāraniggayhavāritagato VAR hoti. so, bhikkhave, samayo yaṃ taṃ cittaṃ ajjhattaṃyeva santiṭṭhati sannisīdati ekodi hoti VAR samādhiyati. so hoti samādhi santo paṇīto paṭippassaddhiladdho ekodibhāvādhigato na sasaṅkhāraniggayhavāritagato. yassa yassa ca abhiññā sacchikaraṇīyassa dhammassa cittaṃ abhininnāmeti abhiññā sacchikiriyāya tatra tatreva sakkhibhabbataṃ pāpuṇāti sati satiāyatane.

that samadhi is not peaceful and sublime, but it’s still called a samadhi, and vitakka and vicara mean ordinary sense of thinking, and it exists in that weak samadhi, but it’s thinking that’s not connected with 5 hindrances. now first jhana is not explicitly called out, but look at the next keyword that pops up.

note the “ekodi-bhavan” from the samadhi that IS peaceful and sublime. the standard definition of 2nd jhana contains the same “ekodi-bhavan” .
so by the sandwich theorem, the "weak concentration, (samadhi term explicitly used) can only be referring to first jhana.

the guarding of the sense doors at the beginning of the passage is right effort part 1, and it’s still active in the “weak concentration” of first jhana that contain thinking related to the dhamma.

i’m guessing Bhante Sujato classifies this sutta as non EBT?

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i don’t know whether culavedalla sutta is EBT, it’s just a guess based on the the catechism format. my main point is that it seems like every juicy sutta passage i quote relevant to the jhana/samadhi controversies always gets cast aside as being non-EBT therefore not valid evidence.

maybe next year i’ll find the time to put together everything i’ve got on the jhana samadhi controversy into an ebook.

it’s always a struggle to find time.
ko jañña maraṃ suve / who knows, death, tomorrow?

It’s actually in AN 3.101