"The formless attainments are not included in the earliest teachings..."

[josephzizys]

@Meggers

The SN’s remarkable consistency in both content and organization across the various canons available to us has also been noted by several scholars, including @sujato.

I think this is an piece of evidence that weighs in favour of my position rather than against it.

I have decided I will not respond to further comments on this thread, but will wait until I have posted a new thread to continue discussing these topics.

Metta.

[hwwbtr]

I think the Mahanidana Sutta is the source of this? Are there any other suttas talking about the physical and limited self? The formless and limited, the formless and infinite self? What is the source of the nothingness realm?

[knotty36]

Have a look at DN 15, among many others.

The point, however, is always the transcendence of such views.

[Dhammanando]

@josephzizys

@Dhammanando

You have written a lot of words in defence of your thesis, but I’m mystified as to why.

You have no idea! @Dhammanando I have a LOT of written material that I have not yet troubled this forum with

Just to clarify … my puzzlement was not that you had written so much in defence of your thesis, but that you had done so when replying to me, i.e., to someone who hadn’t actually criticized the thesis at all, but only one of the arguments offered in support of it.

@josephzizys

to quote myself:

The Pali phrase

diṭṭhadhammikañca vajjaṃ samparāyikañca vajjaṃ

(The fault apparent in the present life, and the fault to do with lives to come.)

Occurs once in the entire Sutta/Vinaya Pitakas. (at AN2.1)

Whereas the phrase

paṭhamaṃ jhānaṃ

(the first jhana)

Occurs 268 times. ( for e.g at DN2)

It can reasonably said from this fact that for the Buddhists of the Pali Canon the first jhana was a more important concept than the faults apparent in this life and the next.

on the view of my critics it may well be that the concept of the fault to do with the lives to come is a much more important idea than that of the first jhana, and and the 268 to 1 ratio is “a meaningless number”.

Hmm. While I don’t disagree with your conclusion, the argument by which you get to it is abysmally weak.

The unstated premise seems to be: “Teachings on present-life and future-life faults are only to be found in suttas containing the terms diṭṭhadhammika vajja and samparāyika vajja.”

The linguistic naivety in this assumption is jaw-dropping! I wonder, did your Buddhist Studies teachers ever instruct you to argue in such a manner?

Now this is what you should have done:

1. Determine the scope of the referents of the terms diṭṭhadhammika vajja and samparāyika vajja.

2. Determine which other terms (if any) also denote these referents.

3. Now, and only now, are you ready to embark on your word-counting quest, only this time you will have perhaps twenty or thirty Pali words that need to be checked out, not just two.

4. Don’t make the blunder you did with the Vinaya Pitaka by neglecting to actually read the texts in which the search terms are found, so as to make a context-sensitive determination as to whether their occurrence is actually relevant to the topic of “present and future life faults”.

[Lajji]

The method in this sasana is to develop and master each attainment sequentially ( as in simile of the mountain cow). Making it easier to discern the entry in to the higher attainment and also having a foundation in previous mental development. For example in order to attain an absorption overcoming vitakka and vicara one should be able to discern very clearly the same.

But it is quite possible that a few fortunate beings that are naturally endowed with an extremely sharp faculty of discernment, may be able to access higher attainments directly. Either with help of instructions or their own experimentation. This would probably require extremely intensive practice and very difficult to protect oneself from not loosing the ability to enter said absorption once achieved/discerned. Intensive practice could have been furthest thing from the Fortunate One’s mind exhausted by severe and intense austerities.

[Upasaka_Dhammasara]

Even in later hindu text they talk of more needing to be done after the 4th state. But it seems they only use 4th. And the rest is just explained. Read Siva Sutras.Its from Kashmir. Later tantra text.

[ahmad.hazairin]

@knotty36
@sujato

We cannot let go of the background of Buddha Gotama who lived in India where the ascetic culture had been firmly established thousands of years before Buddha Gotama appeared. It is precisely impossible for a Buddha to appear in an area where there is no ascetic culture, because then no one would understand the wheel of dhamma that the Buddha taught. So ascetic culture is the ideal state from which a Buddha arises.

We also cannot separate Buddhist teachings in a sacred way that this is Buddhist teaching and this is not. This method of separation is a weakness of the method, not an advantage of the method.

What had grown up in the ascetic tradition in India before Buddha appeared was the ideal initial condition in that there were many human beings whose minds had been tempered with asceticism, whose knowledge already had the initial knowledge of karma, rebirth, realms of existence and even the idea of nibbana. (in their own concept).

The Buddha appeared bearing insight. Shows the path of liberation, realizes nibbana. The first thing to penetrate is the Four Noble Truths. As for the way concentration was developed, the Buddha used existing meditation techniques but with some modifications so that the correct view (sammaditthi) of body, mind, and external reality becomes as it is, leading to the path of liberation.

So the sort of what is immaterial jhana meditation, brahmavihara…etc. it’s buddhism or brahmanism, it’s a naive method. The Buddha used both material jhana and immaterial jhana as tools. How to enter jhana, what to pay attention to when entering jhana, it could be different with the origin technic in other ascetic sect. Because the jhanas that used to be just a place for sublime mental abidings were modified so that they became a tool for seeing “dukkha” in all the jhanas of mind.

Especially for non-material jhanas, in origin it is a place of residence of mind that is super peaceful and subtle, more peaceful than the mind of material jhanas. But the Buddha taught to see mental phenomena in the immaterial jhanas, seen as “dukkha”.

The immaterial jhanas are tools for directly seeing the workings of perception. So it is immediately apparent that whatever mental phenomena are conditioned, empty, constructed by perception. Even when the immaterial jhanas have been transcended, one can enter nirodhasamapati so that the subtlest sensations (vedana) and perceptions (sañña) cease to arise, and then one can immediately understand the conditionality of contact (phasa), vedana, sañña and their subsequent mental phenomena.

The Buddha used material jhanas and immaterial jhanas as paths of freedom, not perfunctory. Because in reality the realm of life is divided into three major realms: the sensory realm, the material jhana realm and the immaterial jhana realm. It is because of this attachment to birth/arising (bhavatanha) in one of these realms that beings are still manifesting, still being reborn. So attachment to the three worlds must be destroyed by direct experience. Therefore attachment to the material jhana realms and the immaterial jhana realms are two subtle fetters (uddhambhāgiyāni saṃyojanāni) which still shackles an anagami.

[Raftafarian]

@knotty36, Did you finish your dissertation on this topic? If so, I would love to read it.

[knotty36]

Sorry for the delayed response. School has me busy, and I barely come around anymore.

Thank you for your interest, bur, again, sorry! Alas, I have not. In fact, Corona so derailed my studies, that I’ve had to switch schools and will be starting all over again from scratch (kinda).

So, I expect to have that for you in 3-4 years.