The jhana metaphor

Oh thanks @Vaddha !! A response with a source! How refreshing! Like a cool bath! :slight_smile:

I wanted to mention to you about how you said that the physical body of four elements with consciousness attached is not part of the patipada at DA20, but it sort of is! At least partially, its moved forward into the mind made body and clear gem threaded with string part, and its replicated that way in the vinayavathu parralel i link to above.

So both a darmaguptaka source and a mulasarvastivada source have this picture of transfering the mind from the physical body to the mind made body.

Theres a few other fascinating differences too. The placement of patimoka refrences is different in all three, and the suffering vs asava trope is different in all three.

Anyway, thanks again for the Bodhi refrence, ill check it out.

Metta.

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Reading back my comment:

I can see how that may have been implied from what I said. To clarify though, I believe I was only referencing the Pāli texts. In the Pāli, that aspect of the gradual training stands out as seeming quite limited. It’s referenced much, much less frequently, despite appearing in a standard teaching (gradual training) that elsewhere occurs verbatim without it.

The parallel passage is interesting. I recall reading it at some point. What I find interesting about how it combines the two passages is that it reads as though it is about a separate topic entirely. Maybe the DA 20 version is more original.

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More support for the bathing metaphor from T22:

譬如有人入水洗浴,清潔無垢,度在岸邊,心亦歡喜。比丘如是,寂然獨處,安靜喜悅,觀視一切,身本所起,覩無有身,普觀無根,心用寂然,喜悅安隱,第一一心。

Also, to find the parallel in San Mu Kd click the link and search for;

buddho bhagavān rājagṛhe varṣā upagato jīvakasya

In this thread I see the problem of approaching the Dhamma as a piece of literature, divorced from practice.

All these things can be experienced for oneself… no need for speculation and papancha. Or semantic consistency.

Ask some meditation masters who regularly experience the Jhanas and they can help to interpret the similes… they are all descriptions of an actual experience. Just like when 10 people eat a peach, they will all describe it a little differently BUT if you have eaten a peach, you will recognise other descriptions of it even if you yourself have perceived or described it in a different way.

This is one of the wonderful things about the Dhamma… the descriptions are from many, many angles, so as to speak to a wide variety of people.

I say again, that divorcing the texts from experience is not the way forward. Never, ever, place logical deduction based on textual language in the primary position. The language is just a pointing urging you to go through a process to experience and see for oneself.

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This is literally and intentionally what I am doing. I am studying this corpus as literature. That is why I am here. I keep telling people, over and over again, that if I need spiritual advice, or meditation advise, I can get it from actual monastics who I can talk to face to face, who I have personal and direct confidence in, who I respect, in real actual off the internet life. No matter how many times I say it, no matter how calmly or angrily, no mater how simply or in how much detail, strangers on the internet who do not know me from a bar of soap, who know literally nothing about my practice, who do not appear to have the capacity to understand what I have said above about finding unsolicited spiritual advice to be narcissistic and delusional, keep relentlessly appearing on my threads to give me this unsolicited, unwelcome, rude, narcissistic, condescending bromides about how they understand Buddhism better than me and how they think I should behave or practice.

This is direct, literal evidence of the failure of these posters to understand the basic tenants of Buddhism: right speech is speech that is timely, welcome, that unifies, and dispels doubts.

Your speech to me is unwelcome!

So you are literally showing me that you don’t understand enough about the very basics of polite conduct to be someone from whom I would take spiritual advice.

Please, I am begging you, stop giving me unsolicited religous advice about my practice.

From the FAQ:

I am not interested in your spiritual advice.
I do not welcome it.
I find it offensive.
I find it to be evidence of narcissism and delusion, especially when it is given after I have explicitly asked for it not to be done.

You are violating the rules of the forum doing this and causing me distress.

Please. Just. Stop. It.

Again, I am studying these texts. This forum is built with the intention of facilitating the study of these texts.

I know for a fact that there are people who have been hounded from this board and now no longer post, because a reactionary anti-intellectual culture has been allowed to fester and the mods simply ignore the rules about spiritual advice.

If this is going to be a place where everyone can post their thoughts about Buddhism and feel safe and respected then rule 3.2 of the FAQ needs to be respected.

It is inappropriate to tell a person, without their having asked, that you think they need to practice their religion differently.

Can you see that?

Metta.

Well that certainly pushed some buttons for you

I find it interesting that you assumed that I was addressing you personally. I very specifically did not post a reply to ‘you’ but to the topic in general. There is no personal spiritual advice in what I wrote. It is about an approach to the Dhamma, which the Buddha advocates.

You do not have a monopoly here. Threads are for all members to make comment on, as long as it is in line with the topic, and as long as it is not abusive in tone, full of personal insults or otherwise against the forum guidelines.

I hope your day gets better :sunflower:

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It’s also specifically a Buddhist forum. It’s perfectly fine to tell people you don’t want any advice at all. However at the end of the day, if you are posting on a Buddhist forum there are going to be people who post Buddhist advice. I try to just avoid advice I don’t want to follow.

Keep in mind that for religious followers of Buddhist texts, the academic pursuits of them can be just as offensive as people giving you religious advice. We all just need to take what we need and leave the rest behind. I really don’t think that you are going to be able to control the way people reply to you.

However if you think people are breaking forum rules, then the proper response (in my understanding) is to flag the posts, not to reply to them. If the mods feel that they are breaking the tos, then they will get removed.

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:slight_smile: At the risk of derailing the thread with the meta-level discussion more, I think there’s benefit for relligious followers to contemplate textual analysis of literature, as well as scholars to consider the [monastic] meditative approach. Without one or the other, practice risks either falling into blind dogmatism (something we’re warned against in Kalama Sutta), but also ignoring the experiential insight.

However, just because people have an experience that is what they think the text says, doesn’t always mean anything as well. I could say “Now you’re going to feel like a snail with wings swimming in a lake of mercury” and you can experience it directly. Mind is amazing like that. So we’re very good at recreating experiences based on what we think Jhānās are like.

Case in point, ask 5 different monastics about Jhānās and you’ll get five different textual interpretations and funnily enough, five different anectodal experiences (usually carefully worded so as not to refer to the experiences in the first person) that are miles apart from each other. Whose experience is more real and in line with dhamma?

And lastly, these forums are specifically not for personal practice but explicitly for textual analysis, so much that discussing personal practice is against the rules. Which I also find a shame at times, but that is besides the point.

__

Coming back to the @josephzizys’ explanation, I see an intriguing and a clear bath analogy.

Even in this exposition, I think the bath analogy fits perfectly.

Now obviously, first and fourth jhānā metaphors both refer to a bathing practice. There’s second and third descriptions which are a little interesting, but still in line with the overall theme. I find it wholly convincing that first we’re grounded a little in reality, with bath powder being prepared; then we’re not experiencing being washed, but we’re experiencing the lake being filled. Then, another otherworldy experience; we emerge no longer a person, but as a lily flower, completely renewed. Finally, with fourth jhānā, we come back down to reality, the purification process complete, beyond sukkha or dukkha. No longer we’re experiencing either being a lake or a lily flower, but we come back to conventional “reality”.

Makar Sankranti, Kartika Purnima are just some examples of modern day ritual bathing practices where there’s bath powder of some sort (like tumeric or other spices) are used in rivers.

Thanks a lot for this interesting thread Joseph. :slight_smile:

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yes, yes it does. it is reactionary and anti-intellectual and against the forum rules. It happens to me in practically every thread I start these days. It has had a chilling effect on the forum and caused people to leave.

please.

I have never claimed I do, I only ask that my request not to be given unsolicited religious advice is respected.

Wanting that is not wanting a “monopoly”, it’s just wanting people to respect the rules of the forum, the relevant section of which I posted.

Sure, they are, but they are not supposed to. at all. it is against the FAQ guideline I posted above.

It is also, as I have now pointed out on multiple threads, in multiple posts, something I personally find distressing, unwelcome and offensive.

Fine, but this forum is for studying these texts and giving personal spiritual advice is against the rules here. I don’t post all my stuff onto any “we are here to practice our religion” forums, I post to the one and only “we are here to study the EBT” forum.

I have in the first instance tried to ask directly for what I think is appropriate. So far not one single poster has said “oh! I didn’t realize you felt that way, so sorry, I’ll keep it academic when talking to you from now on if I talk to you, cheers” They have all simply ignored my statements, doubled down on their guru-posturing, and continued to spam my threads, I suppose to warn others about the dangers of actually reading the sources of their religion and the necessity of listening to them instead.

Humbug I say.

I don’t really like invoking moderation as I personally find it really annoying when I can’t read comments on the forum, even when those comments are off topic or whatever.

Anyway, I think I will try and take your advice and just ignore these people from now on.

I don’t mind meta-level discussion, and in fact I find the tendency of the mods to force discussion “on-topic” tends to err on the side of proscriptive, which again is why I have tried to address people directly when they give their religious advice.

In terms of the monastic approach to jhana my issue is exactly as you describe, different monastics have different interpretations, and those interpretations ultimately all rest on textual traditions which rehearse these controversies over thousands of years.

I practice meditation, I practice Buddhism, I try to live my life by ethical standards that are compatible with Buddhism.

I also run a store, feed a family, etc etc.

I also, because I find it fascinating, study the early forms of Buddhist literature.

This study shares a heritage or geology with my religious and meditative practice, but it is not for it, it is simply something that I have developed an interest in.

The questions I have are textual questions, not practice questions.

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The tradition that embraced the jhana similes the most - at least in the extant texts - is the Dharmaguptaka. The Sariputra Abhidharma integrates them into its commentary on the four jhanas. The central concept that the similes are illustrating are the recurring words abhisandeti parisandeti paripūreti parippharati. Thus, all the similes except the fourth involve imagery of a liquid like water soaking or permeating something.

In the Sariputra Abhidharma, another simile is used to explain the concept: It’s like water moving through an irrigation system to soak farm land gradually until its completely soaked. This explains the four verbs as expressing stages of soaking until its complete.

The oddity is the fourth simile because it stops using that series of verbs, but it still sticks to the theme of being completely covered by saying the person is covered up from head to toe.

So, no, I don’t think this is a metaphor about bathing and becoming cleansed, but rather a way of describing the feeling of being completely filled with joy and happiness. The metaphor changes abruptly with the fourth simile because in the fourth jhana joy and happiness have stopped and there is just pure mindful samadhi.

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I hear that, but that’s their job. If you feel something breaks the tos, just flag it. Or I guess ignore is the second best thing. But without flagging it just keeps on happening. There is a reason moderators exist. It’s their job to moderate, not ours. (fortunately!)

Yes, but people study texts in all different sorts of ways. And the modern text critical approach is just one of them. As is studying them from a religious perspective. Or from a commentarial perspective. So it could be that what studying the texts means to you is something completely different than it does to someone else.

But I 100% agree that comments along the lines of “you just need to practice” are stupid. I hope my comments haven’t come across like that.

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Yeah sure, this is a fair point, and I try not to jusge the approaches of others, but when it’s directed as criticism at me, I find it can wear a bit thin.

No you don’t @Snowbird , and honestly if it was just the occasional well meaning practitioner I could probably let it slide, but every now and then it just feels like every second comment is to that effect, from multiple posters, and I just get sick of it.

Anyway, you can’t control the actions of others, so I will do my best to get better at handling the slings and arrows :slight_smile: It’s still my favorite place on the internet.

Metta to all and apologies to @Viveka for my being snappy, I should do better.

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  1. That is often the best thing to do.
  2. Also, if you feel someone is being over the top in any way, or being overly personal, raise a flag.
  3. Since a possible majority of Forum users approach the texts from a religious perspective and you don’t, it’d probably be helpful to put a reminder of your orientation into all your opening posts. (Just a suggestion.)
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“Life is a picnic if you can accept the ants” - from an old Odd Bodkins comic book.

I have much appreciated following along with your recent adventures. Don’t know much about word frequency or styles of ancient poetry but I have started looking at the suttas more from a practice point of view. That is, does a teaching sound like something an illiterate cow herder could take to the root of a tree or does it sound like something out of a modern ‘publish or perish’ research environment.

Looking at it in this way, it does seem there are layers to the EBT’s. And I think trying to peel them back could result in a much cleaner more direct and practical teaching. Thanks for hanging in there!

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I think the mud is karma. Karma being passions, prejudices, and dogmatic beliefs that cloud and shape our experiences.

The bath is undivided attention on the flux of experience and it is remembered allowing it to emerge clean.

Did they have ponds of yellow lotuses at that time and place which were submerged in water?

I wish you well and successful, no matter whatever path you choose.

I’m also glad that you intend to try and be more tolerant of divergence of opinion.

May you be happy and at ease.
:blush::pray:t2::sunflower:

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I have often wondered about the lotus image for the third jhana and put up a post about it here: How do you interpret the lotus analogy for the third jhana? Some of the comments by members of the Discuss and Discover community may be helpful for you.

Here’s an alternative set of similes that exists in a Chinese translation of the Fruits of the Ascetic Sutra (Taisho 22). It’s different than what we find in Pali and other Chinese sources that match it fairly closely (though not precisely).

The main problem with T22 is that the Chinese translation is difficult to read compared to those that use a more standard vocabulary for Indian texts, which is why I haven’t translated it yet. It isn’t obvious to me which school of early Buddhism it belonged to, either, but it’s version of the gradual path is another alternative one.

This is my best attempt at translating its dhyāna similes.

First dhyāna:

譬如有人入水洗浴,清潔無垢,度在岸邊,心亦歡喜。
Like someone who goes into a river to bathe. Clean and without dirt, they cross to the shoreline, and their mind rejoices.

This is entirely different, referring to a person bathing rather than soap being prepared for a bath. 水 might not be intended to mean a river, but it often does mean that in Chinese translations, so I read it that way here.

Second dhyāna:

譬如(有)青蓮芙蓉蘅華生於污泥,長養水中,雖在水中,其根葉華實,在水無著,亦無所汙。
Like a blue lotus, a red lotus, or a purple flower that grows in mud and is nourished in the water. Although it’s in water, that water does not cling to its roots, leaves, flowers, and fruit, and they aren’t defiled by anything.

This and the next simile have been reversed in order compared to DN 2 and DA 20. And this reversal seems intentional, given how much time is spent on the next simile about the mountain spring.

Here, the terms for the three types of water flowers aren’t clear. 青蓮 would be a blue lotus. 芙蓉 usually refers to the hibiscus flower, but was used in some texts to refer to the red lotus. 蘅華 seems to mean a purple flower since 蘅 was the name of a herb in China with purple blossoms. The second flower’s color is the least certain since the hibiscus comes in a variety of colors that change with its age.

Third dhyāna:

譬如有山,完具無缺,廣普無邊,東方風來而不能動,南西北風,亦復如是。所以者何?其下根堅,不可動故。中有流水清涼(具)美,無能污者,用依山故,流滿具足,周普遍流,無所不至,用水清淨之故。
Like a mountain that’s complete and without defect. It’s so broad that it has no edges around it. When an east wind blows, the mountain isn’t moved by it. A south, west, or north wind is likewise. Why is that? Because it’s root is solid, it cannot be budged. Inside it, there is water that’s clear, cool, delicious, and which nothing can defile. Because it begins on that mountain, the water fills up, becomes full, spreads out, and flows everywhere. There’s nowhere it doesn’t reach because that’s the function of water that’s pure.

This is the only simile that has language like abhisandeti parisandeti paripūreti parippharati, but the verbs may be different and seem to imply that the water that flows out of the mountain waters the landscape around it, which is like the irrigation simile in the Sariputra Abhidharma. The elaborateness of this third simile seems to speak to the importance of the third dhyāna.

Fourth dhyāna:

譬如有人月七八日,著新衣服,首面悅懌,觀視其無有裸形,欲著上好妙衣之故也。
Like someone puts on fresh robes after a month and seven or eight days, and their expression is cheerful. Looking them over, no skin is exposed because they want to wear that excellent and marvelous clothing.

I’m not sure what is meant by 月七八日. I’ve read it here to mean a month and seven or eight days. But it might mean the seventh or eighth day of the month. When I searched for 七八日, I found some vinaya passages in which the Buddha says to do things for seven or eights to purify items or actions. E.g., when cutting down a tree, he tells the monks to give the spirits that might be living there seven or eight days notice to move out and perform oblation rituals to them.

My best guess is that it means a person changed into fresh clothes periodically. Not sure what it would mean otherwise, unless there was some sort of periodic ritual that involved putting on clean clothes.

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Amazing! Thanks @cdpatton fascinating!!!