It’s interesting because of the Buddha’s reflection of his experience as a child under the rose apple tree. He reflects on this meditative condition and not those he practiced after leaving the household life. Basically, he didn’t find any fault in that pleasure but the others were somehow lacking (?). 
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The Buddha used this term as usual to harness an already held image in the mind of the public, and he was from the warrior class. This indicates endurance and perseverance are held in high regard as applied to the middle stage of the practice (MN 70).
"The word [ārya](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arya_(Buddhism&action=edit&redlink=1) (Pāli: ariya), in the sense of “noble” or “exalted”, is very frequently used in Buddhist texts to designate a spiritual warrior or hero, which use this term much more often than Hindu or Jain texts. Buddha’s Dharma and Vinaya are the ariyassa dhammavinayo. The Four Noble Truths are called the catvāry āryasatyāni (Sanskrit) or cattāri ariyasaccāni (Pali). The Noble Eightfold Path is called the āryamārga (Sanskrit, also āryāṣṭāṅgikamārga) or ariyamagga (Pāli).
“In Buddhist texts, the ārya pudgala (Pali: ariyapuggala, “noble person”) are those who have the Buddhist śīla (Pāli sīla, meaning “virtue”) and who have reached a certain level of spiritual advancement on the Buddhist path, mainly one of the four levels of awakening”—Wikipedia
Am I the only one that has found that passage…jarring? It just seems to come out of nowhere. I mean, the Buddha led a life of total hedonism before encountering the Four Messengers, then spent years intensely practicing a variety of meditations with different teachers, then one day just remembered, “Oh, hey, once when I was a kid I entered the 1st jhana. Funny, I forgot all about that. Maybe I should try that.” Maybe some commentary tries to make that fit into the larger narrative of the Buddha’s life, but it really stands out. So, I guess that might indicate that it comes from a much earlier narrative, and was sandwiched into a later one, or is a later addition.
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That’s a good point. Meditation teachers sometimes point out that a Jhana experience is a game-changer in life, a formative experience. The inconsistency you point out just shows how much myths have amended the Buddha’s biography. Apart from text-critical work we often have no other means but plausibility…
How plausible is it that someone can live in complete hedonism without ever seeing someone sick, or mysteriously disappearing (i.e. dead)? What did they tell the prince - “your grandpa went for cigarettes and never returned”? No that must be myth to large extent.
But also the rose-tree episode (again, the sutta doesn’t say that he was a boy, merely that his father was off working). It’s more plausible that he learned some basic dhamma from meditators and then applied it, rather then spontaneously going into Samadhi. Even though that seems to be possible as well, when we look at the story of Ramana Maharshi.
When there is myth-building even around Churchill or Ozzy Osbourne it makes sense that even early on (inconsistent) myths developed around the Buddha.
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Lol, good point.
Tan Ajahns Piak and Dun, disciples of Luang Por Cha, each have stories about past life practice manifesting unexpectedly in this life. There’s a well-known story of Tan Ajahn Piak who, when still a layman and visiting a monastery, sat down in his kuti and fell into a samadhi all night. It was so deep he didn’t even know about the terrible thunderstorm that happened during the night. Tan Ajahn Dun has also talked about how when he was a university student he had asubha visions. There are a few stories, but in one he was riding a bus, thought about something (possibly a girl a school he thought was cute or career plans), and everyone one on the bus suddenly turned into corpses and exploded. He experienced a deep sense of dispassion and gave up any idea of pursuing the girl or interest in a worldly career. If the story about the Buddha falling into the 1st jhana was framed in that way, I’d find it more believable.
Anyway, this is pretty off-topic. So I’ll leave it here.
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You’re not alone. Here’s an essay on the topic I brought up a while back:
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Also how jhana is talked about by Ajahn Brahm. How much of a transformative episode it is in ones life. Interestingly, I also recall a story by AB about someone who was a heroine addict. They experienced what Ajahn Brahm took to be a jhana from the persons account. Anyways, even after the experience of this uttari manusa dhamma, they went back to using again. Although it’s an extreme case, I can see how one might move on in life without holding onto this.
There’s so much myth/legend to tease out (shoutout to Ajahn Sujato’s work on the matter).
Another interesting matter I’ll point out (sorry, it’ll be vaguely so because I don’t have the exact references) is the bodhisatta’s relinquishment of hindrances when he was still a householder. Passages that seem to coroborate the idea that the Buddha was a non-returner.
Of course, these are all things that I’m parroting from people like Bhante Sujato, Ajahn Brahm, and Ajahn Brahmali. Snippets from this or that talk of which I’ve managed to remember a fraction.
Edit: I apologize, I realize this is off topic from the OP.
This is an interesting essay. I have found in my research that Jain meditation system has a first-jhana-like (and a half of second-jhana-like) attainment in this book:
There we see sukla dhyana has 4 types, the first two are:
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Prithakatva vitarka savichari, wich is similiar to first jhana in Buddhist meditative attainment (concentration with vitarka/vitakka and vichari/vicara)
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Ekatva vitarka nirvichari, which is similiar to a half to second jhana in Buddhist based on suttas or exactly second jhana in Abhidhamma system (concentration with vitarka/vitakka but without vichari/vicara)
I think this explains why Nigantha Nattaputta in SN 41.8 cannot accept there is a concentration without vitakka and without vicara.
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Problem is that it all goes back to one source only, the Tattvārtha Sūtra 9.40ff. It’s not like in the suttas where we have hundreds of references to Jhana, Samadhi, anussati, etc. It’s just one passage in the whole of ancient Jain literature. Which is not nothing, and a very interesting trace, but we cannot build too much certainty on that.
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Do we know where that sutra falls timewise?
Bronkhorst in his paper “On the chronology of the Tattvārtha Sūtra and some early commentaries” comes to the conclusion that it is “Composed in all probability some time between 150 and 350 A.D.” (p. 27).
As usual, this estimate does not refer to the ideas in the text but refers to the text as a whole. Also in his paper he bases his conclusion on the affiliation of the text with a certain Jain sect - which is an educated guess of his, but otherwise not clearly established. Still, he worked on the question, and that’s his conclusion.
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Thank you so much for this provocative (in a good sense) essay. I understand that it is a preliminary investigation. Here is my initial impression that I hope to refine over time.
I think you need to investigate more clearly the historical distinction between vitakka and vicāra. Perhaps this work has already been done, in which case it should be referenced. Otherwise, it seems to me, that the default position, already taken in the PED, is that the words were almost synonymous in the Buddha’s time. If that is the case, the terms have evolved significantly between the time of the earliest Buddhist texts and that of the Jain Tattvārtha Sūtra you have referenced. Similarly, the Orthodox Tradition, with respect to these terms would have (I believe certainly has) evolved since that time. Without that, you will have a hard time justifying a common ground between the various traditions at the time of the earliest texts.
My gut feeling is that the Jain position branched from the hypothetical common ground well before the Orthodox Theravadin one, but significantly after the time of earliest Buddhist texts.
With best wishes,
David.
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The problem is how! Vitakka / vitarka is not a pre-Buddhist term, not even tarka as far as I see. The closest is Arthasastra 7.7.31 (probably from the 1 c.C.E.) where vitarka is ‘consideration’, ‘serious thinking’. Occurrences in the Mahabharata are difficult to date.
Apart from that we have the one instance in the old Jain texts and the Buddhist texts. I don’t see how the position of the PED position can be substantiated with the source situation as it is. To trust the commentaries on that? That would be anachronistic.
I’m inclined to agree, but let’s not forget that also the Buddhist texts have changed, developed and being added to, possibly until about the 2nd c.BCE - this makes the question of probable origin and who-influenced-who so difficult to assess properly.
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According to Bronkhorst, in the Jain Uttarajjhayaṇa Sutta, the meditator stops physical and mental activity, and then the breathing process. This results in dhyāna which destroys residual karma and leads to liberation. However, there is no guarantee that any similar Jain beliefs were held around the time of the Buddha. This text may have been influenced by Buddhism, or may possibly represent some beliefs held by both Buddhists and non-Buddhists at one point (?).
According to the EBT’s, though, breathing ceases in the Fourth Dhyāna. SN 41.6 describes the progressive deepening of meditation going through the dhyānas as the subsiding of verbal, bodily, and mental formations. After all three types of formations have been stopped, the meditator still has vitality, warmth, and basic faculties present (i.e. it is not the same as death).
Vitarka and vicāra are together classified by SN 41.6 as verbal formations, while bodily formations are the in-breath and out-breath. So vitarka and vicāra are at least coarse mental activity, as opposed to mental formations, which are fine mental activities still present even after breathing is suspended / stopped.
Breathing is physical. It’s tied up with the body, that’s why breathing is a physical process. First you place the mind and keep it connected, then you break into speech. That’s why placing the mind and keeping it connected are verbal processes. Perception and feeling are mental. They’re tied up with the mind, that’s why perception and feeling are mental processes.
Another good reference point is SN 36.11, which seems to place vitarka and vicāra as more rarefied than mental “speech”, so a bit of a different description from what we see in SN 41.6, which groups vitarka and vicāra with verbal formations.
For someone who has attained the first absorption, speech has ceased. For someone who has attained the second absorption, the placing of the mind and keeping it connected have ceased. For someone who has attained the third absorption, rapture has ceased. For someone who has attained the fourth absorption, breathing has ceased.
Thanks very much, @Gabriel . Strange! I had thought that the treatment of vitakka and vicāra implied that the words would have been commonly understood at the time of the early Buddhist texts. Otherwise, the terms ought to have been analyzed more completely from the start. Is it possible that the terms were of recent development at the time of the earliest texts, but commonly used by religious teachers of the time? But if that were the case, wouldn’t the terms not also appear in early Brahmanical texts?
It seems that we have no evidence of how the terms evolved between their first use ca. the time of the earliest Buddhist texts and the time of the Pali commentaries.
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Unfortunately this is quite isolated, only copied into MN 44, as an attempt to define what is a more common threefold distinction of kaya-, vaci, and cittasankhara. One can take these rare definitions as authentic references of the oldest times. For me they are closer to be commentarial.
They probably were!
Most probably, yes. Teachers rather than to invent words would have used existing words and give them their own spin.
Not necessarily. At the time of the Buddha there were not that many Brahmins living there. There was a more recent Brahmin immigration into Kosala-Magadha, but only about 100 or 150 years prior to the Buddha. Probably many Brahmins still lived in Brahmin villages, quite separate from the locals. The language that was shared among west and east Indians at that time comes from many more centuries ago, which means that east India had some centuries to develop (or assimilate) vocabulary that was not part of standard Brahmin language - and thus would not be found in the Brahmin literature of that time (i.e. early Upanisads, Srautasutras, early Grhyasutras).
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In an essay of his called “The Formative Period of Jainism”, Bronkhorst notes how the earliest Jain texts, the Ācārāṅga Sūtra, the Sūtrakṛtāṅga Sūtra, and the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra are all at least from the 2nd century BCE. The main reason for this is because they reference and adopt the doctrine of momentariness which developed later in Abhidharma. They also apparently show Pudgalavada influence according to him. Go figure.
Of course, he also notes how there is very early material in there as well, probably from the time of Mahavira or thereabouts.
Whatever the case, we have to keep this in mind when reading these earliest of Jain texts for pre-Buddhist material.
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Not only that, in terms of practice it seems the oldest ones focus on immobility, of which we find different variations in the Buddhist texts too. Think of ānejja (the imperturbable), which is associated with the third jhana upwards.
Especially in MN 125 we see similarities, where the metaphor is used of taming and conditioning a royal elephant to endure pain in motionlessness. Is this, together with the stopping of the breath, a hint that Jain meditators also had access to the third and fourth Jhana? Maybe, but here it becomes really difficult to compare because the Buddhist definition is technical and the Jain one more prosaic. Also we come to a point where Buddhist teachers might say “It’s impossible that they reached the third Jhana because this is possible only with the correct Dhamma”
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In a paper by Ohira i came across the probably oldest mention of Jhana in Jain literature, i.e. in Acaranga Sutra 1.8.4.14 (Jacobi translation)
And Mahavira meditated (persevering) in some posture, without the smallest motion; he meditated in mental concentration on (the things) above, below, beside, free from desires.
avi jhāi se mahā-vīre | āsaṇatthe akukkue jhāṇaṃ, /
uḍḍhaṃ ahe ya tiriyaṃ ca | loe jhāyai samāhim apaḍinne
I’m glad more people look into the limited ancient Jain literature. It can free us from, or put in question, a generalized Buddhist exceptionalism.
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The jains are fascinating to study. They are also our brothers, Jainism is like the older sibling of Buddhism. Still hanging on in there in a few places in India…
Hang in there Jainism…
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