Already posted this link several times in this thread already, but once more here for good measure.
As I said earlier in this thread, there’s nothing wrong with Ajahn Brahm’s meditation in itself. The problem is he redefines important fundamental terms like “kāya”, V&V, that confuses and creates havoc with the rest of the world, meditators who follow the EBT jhana system where kāya, V&V, have simple straightforward meanings.
And with Ajahn Brahm’s massive international popularity, it definitely becomes a big problem. For example (real example), and I’m sure this happens frequently for teachers who teach a straightforward EBT jhana, one time B. Thanissaro was giving a talk and Q&A, many people in the audience were trying to clarify why B. Thanisssaro was contradicting what Ajahn Brahm said on what and how jhana works. Finally B. Thanissaro said something to the effect of, “there will be no more questions about Ajahn Brahm’s jhana.”
Ajahn Brahm redefining important jhana terms is like redefining “up” as “down”, “body” as “mind”, “forward” as “backward.” It causes massive confusion, not just for beginners and intermediate meditators, but those trying to read and understand the suttas.
Here’s an analogy. Suppose every country in the world has traffic laws where automobiles drive on the right side of the road, except for England where they drive on the left side. And for traffic lights, red light always means stop and green always means “go”. Then Ajahn Brahm comes along and says, “in the Buddha’s time they always drove on the left side of the road, even though the text look like it says drive on the right side.” And he also adds, “all the time except during jhana, red light means go” and “green light means stop.”
That wouldn’t just cause inconvenience for the rest of the world, it causes fatalities and death on a massive scale. If Dhamma becomes corrupted on important fundamental aspects of the path, it’s far worse than death of a single life. Samsara is a long journey.
There are plenty of ways Ajahn Brahm could teach his meditation method to be in accordance with EBT, in a way that doesn’t have to redefine basic terms, and doesn’t seriously screw up the rest of the world.
If you were to get 1000 non buddhist objective, intelligent translators with integrity, and their job was to translate the EBT texts without bias, I’d bet the farm not a single one would translate the EBT texts on jhana related material anything close to how Ajahn Brahm did. Ajahn Brahm got away with it (so far) because Vism. did the same thing, but they had to invoke the authority of late Abhidhamma texts having primacy over EBT. Ajahn Brahm and B. Sujato do not follow late Abhdhamma, they follow EBT, so they need to translate accordingly.