Exactly! Just read the sutta. “experiencing the body” “withdrawn from sensuality” No need for esoteric arguments 
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This can be interpreted in two different ways.
The commentaries take this to mean sensuality as in the senses, so they say you can’t hear anything in jhana, it’s very deep, can’t walk in jhanas, etc…
However in EBT sensuality means something different, it means thoughts of sensual desire
There are five varieties of sensuous pleasure.
pañcime bhikkhave kāmaguṇā
Visible objects known via the visual sense… tangible objects known via the tactile sense, all of which are likeable, loveable, pleasing, agreeable, connected with sensuous pleasure, and charming
cakkhuviññeyyā rūpā… kāyaviññeyyā phoṭṭhabbā iṭṭhā kantāmanāpā piyarūpā kāmupasaṃhitā rajaniyā.
These however are not sensuous yearnings.
Apica kho bhikkhave nete kāmā
In the [terminology of the] Noble One’s training system they are called the varieties of sensuous pleasure.
kāmaguṇā nāmete ariyassa vinaye vuccanti
The sensuous yearning of a man is his thoughts bound up with attachment.
Saṅkapparāgo purisassa kāmo
The world’s attractive things are not sensuous yearning
Nete kāmā yāni citrāni loke
The sensuous yearning of a man is his thoughts bound up with attachment.
Saṅkapparāgo purisassa kāmo
The world’s attractive things remain as they are
Tiṭṭhanti citrāni tatheva loke
The wise eliminate their hankering for them
Athettha dhīrā vinayanti chandan ti.
— A.3.411
This is why in EBT one can walk in jhanas as iti111 shows and several other suttas because the definition for sensuality is different.
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My experience with foulness is also
Powerful. I think it’s the most powerful
Yes, I always wonder why people think you can’t use senses in jhana while you actually can which makes me think most people write about Dhamma is just theories not based on personal experience at all
Based upon your working translation, it might be worthwhile to reevaluate what vitakka and vicara mean in the context of MN 119.
It’s hard to nail down personal experience, even in the Buddha’s time people misinterpreted their own experiences. It’s why suttas like the Gotami sutta are very important to keep people on track and not veer off into non-dhamma.
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Do you have some ideas about this? I don’t really see how MN 119 helps any more than any other sutta with the jhana formulas in them. The reality is that different Buddhist traditions interpreted them differently. It’s subjective. A person can fall back on literalism, of course, as people often do, but a translator knows this is laziness.
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I bring up MN 119 because it is the first one I can pull from my memory.
With regard to the jhanas, I would recommend the that vitakka and vicara be contact(the seen, the heard) and thought. The two go together.
As things stand, the fourth jhana does not appear to be a formless state. The second jhana is where you would expect that transition to be made. The loss of pleasure of immersion and pain would not cause a transition to formlessness.
Formlessness without pleasure or pain is a necessary attainment for enlightenment in the earliest suttas.
Consider Snp 4.2:
Rid of desire for both ends,
having completely understood contact, free of greed,
doing nothing for which they’d blame themselves,
the wise don’t cling to the seen and the heard.Having completely understood perception and crossed the flood,
the sage, not clinging to possessions,
with dart plucked out, living diligently,
does not long for this world or the next.
At some point, contact(the seen and heard) cease. Likewise, the perception of pleasures and pains that accompany them. Sense perception ends.
From the Ud 1.10
“Where water and earth,
fire and air find no footing:
there no star does shine,
nor does the sun shed its light;
there the moon glows not,
yet no darkness is found.And when a sage, a brahmin, finds understanding
through their own sagacity,
then from forms and formless,
from pleasure and pain they are released.”
The above is pretty obvious.
From AN 6.61
“Mendicants, you’ve all spoken well in a way. However, this is what I was referring to in ‘The Way to the Beyond’, in ‘The Questions of Metteyya’ when I said:
‘The sage has known both ends,
and is not stuck in the middle.
He is a great man, I declare,
he has escaped the seamstress here.’Listen and pay close attention, I will speak.”
“Yes, sir,” they replied. The Buddha said this:
“Contact, mendicants, is one end. The origin of contact is the second end. The cessation of contact is the middle. And craving is the seamstress, for craving weaves one to being reborn in one state of existence or another. That’s how a mendicant directly knows what should be directly known and completely understands what should be completely understood. Knowing and understanding thus they make an end of suffering in this very life.”
Clearly the end of contact (the seen and the heard) is the hurdle here.
If the second jhana is not contact, the meditator is left in a seemingly arbitrary state. What is the point of it? He does not achieve the objective. If vitakka is contact, he does.
This is more-or-less what I mean by perception and contemplation. It’s also based on the Chinese translation in the Agamas, not directly of vitakka and vicara. I don’t translate Pali or Sanskrit, but Chinese texts. But my impression from looking at various commentaries, vitakka was very broad in the context of jhana, meaning the arising of any mental stimulus that then could be the object of further thinking or contemplation. There’s the famous metaphor of the bell: Vitakka is the initial sound of the bell, and vicara is the sound gradually fading after the strike.
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Thank you for your feedback.
The commentaries use the metafor of a bee. A bee sees a flower and dives towards the flower. This represents vitakka, which, technically, would be the mental factor that mounts or directs the mind unto the object.
Vicara is like the bee buzzing above the flower and examing it, looking at it from all sides and keeping it in focus. Vicara is, technically, seen as the continued attention of the mind for the object.
Vicara must inhibit doubt. Vitakka sloth and torpor.
(Source: comprehensive manual of abhidhamma by Bhikkhu Bodhi, general editor)
This makes sense for me because when one cannot really focus and ones mind is jumpy or just to bored or lazy, there might be a renewed vitakka all the time, a renewed initial focus, but it is again and again lost. There is no vicara. The mind does not succeed to stay focussed on the object. Then jhana will not happen.