Very misleading translation of DN 33 on Suttacentral

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23

Yeah, sorry I take back about contemporaries

No mention of jhāna. Only assumption. Not an unfair assumption as such, but this is my point - the whole case for pre-Buddhist jhāna appears to be based on assumption, with not even a single solid reference to any individual practicing jhāna before the Buddha renounced Jainism, with the one exception of the Buddha’s own childhood jhāna experience. If the Buddha knew that it was practiced, then I find this total omission extremely strange, to say the least. And even more strange that the Buddha had to teach himself how to attain the first jhāna, and each successive jhāna, step by step, with difficulty! I see no reason to assume that the Buddha’s community believed that jhāna was being practiced before the time of the Buddha. If anyone does have any evidence, I would really like to see it!

24

Thanks for this detailed argument, you make some great points.

Sometimes SN 2.7 (included in AN 9.42) is quoted to give this idea, but it is a mistake. This was discussed in an earlier thread:

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25

Ah thank you @sujato. So that leaves us, at my count, with no claim that he was the first to discover it; and also no evidence of anyone doing it before him. I am also unaware of any evidence from any non-Buddhist sources for any pre-Buddhist jhāna practice.

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To be honest, I think the whole question is misframed. It’s not a compassionate way of putting it. Rather than saying, “do pre-Buddhist contemplatives fit into this Buddhist framework”, we should ask, “What kinds of contemplative practices were pre-Buddhist contemplatives doing? What did those practices mean to them? How did they influence Buddhist practices, and how were they influenced in turn?” And that, I think, is a more interesting conversation.

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27

Right, yes nice question! And I cannot see that we can say with any certainty that they were practicing jhāna, since we do not seem to have any evidence to support such an idea.

From what I can see, it seems that a major influence on the Buddha was the culture of rejection of sensual pleasure. That makes up one third of the aspects of the Middle Path. Another is his Jain practice, according to the stories we have received through the suttas anyway. Those two make up the extremes to be avoided. And the third, the path itself, namely jhāna practice, seems to have come initially from his memory of his own accidental childhood experience of jhāna - so far as I am aware, the Buddha gives that memory as his sole influence as considering taking up jhāna practice, for which after that memory recall, he has to train with effort, finding his own way to re-attain that state and work up through the next 3 jhānas step by step, overcoming the obstacles with no guidance.

And he adopted that jhāna path in part specifically because it fit his inherited preconception that sensual pleasure was to be avoided; whereas the pleasureful jhāna experience is a pleasure not of the senses.

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I think this would be the “non-compassionate” approach of claiming that their meditative attainments were not exactly how the Buddha described jhana, so it has nothing to do with jhana.

However, the Buddha himself speaks of meditative achievements of his teachers in MN26. In DN1 he talks about how some develop wrong views due their meditative attainments.

For example:

“In the first case, bhikkhus, some recluse or a brahmin, by means of ardour, endeavour, application, diligence, and right reflection, attains to such a degree of mental concentration that with his mind thus concentrated, [purified, clarified, unblemished, devoid of corruptions], he recollects his numerous past lives: that is, (he recollects) one birth, two, three, four, or five births; ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty births; a hundred, a thousand, or a hundred thousand births; many hundreds of births, many thousands of births, many hundreds of thousands of births. (He recalls:) ‘Then I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance; such was my food, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my span of life. Passing away thence, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance; such was my food, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my span of life. Passing away thence, I re-arose here.’ Thus he recollects his numerous past lives in their modes and their details.

“He speaks thus: ‘The self and the world are eternal, barren, steadfast as a mountain peak, standing firm like a pillar. And though these beings roam and wander (through the round of existence), pass away and re-arise, yet the self and the world remain the same just like eternity itself. What is the reason? Because I, by means of ardour, endeavour, application, diligence, and right reflection, attain to such a degree of mental concentration that with my mind thus concentrated, I recollect my numerous past lives in their modes and their details. For this reason I know this: the self and the world are eternal, barren, steadfast as a mountain peak, standing firm like a pillar. And though these beings roam and wander (through the round of existence), pass away and re-arise, yet the self and the world remain the same just like eternity itself.’

Their attainments seemed to have much the same effect as the jhanas described in MN36:

“When my concentrated mind was thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to knowledge of the recollection of past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, that is, one birth, two births…

Their problem seems to be that they did not have the correct wisdom/insight, not that they could not develop concentration.

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29

Actually, his teachers were, as mikenz66 correctly noticed:

Considering the culture in which Buddha arrived to teach Dhamma, all these things were not entirely new for many of his listeners. His essential breakthrough, in comparison with his contemporaries, was to realize the Anatta and Paticcasammupada. Please correct me if I am wrong.

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Well captured under the Four Noble Truths, in my opinion.

I believe there was a ascetic called Asitha who in king Suddhodhana’s (Prince siddharta’s father) court prophesied the coming of a Buddha, but died and eventually went to the immaterial realms because of his training in immaterial absorptions. This would mean meditation was practiced and for people who have renounced living with minimal distractions, it is likely, and not unlikely, that jhana would have appeared. What the Buddha brought that was unique to the world is wisdom-insight or panna aspect of the practice- the five aggregates, three marks, four noble truths, DO etc.

with metta

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We have no evidence of pre-Buddhists attaining states which were “exactly how the Buddha described jhana”, as you put it. But more to the point, we do not have any evidence of any pre-Buddhists even practicing or teaching about anything even called jhāna!

Immaterial states, not jhāna. DO you have anything to suggest otherwise?

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So far I see only speculation as a basis for this view, however common it might be. I see no evidence. If you have any evidence, please present some!

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Hi Senryu,

Of course. I agree because that is what I said.

However, we do have evidence from the suttas that I quoted that they were doing similar practices, with much the same results (removal of hindrances, and so on).

Perhaps you could explain what you think the differences were? That might be a more interesting question.

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@mikenz66 sorry can I clarify, you mentioned about his teachers, one of whom we know practiced immaterial attainments. Is that what you are referring to? Are you pointing out fruits of their immaterial attainments? Or are you saying there is any evidence that they were practicing jhāna, or had attainments that are specifically from jhāna, not immaterial attainments?

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Both what he says about his teachers and also what he says about the attainments of others in a number of suttas, including DN1, as I quoted above:

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@mikenz66 if you don’t mind could you please explicitely state exactly what attainment you believe they attained which can only be attained through jhāna practice, not immaterial attainments? Thank you.

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I’m not sure what you are asking. I have quoted a sutta that talks about something that sounds very similar to jhana because it talks about the suppression of hindrances, etc. In the particular case that I have quoted it leads to the recall of past lives.

If you want to put the case for something else, such as that they had only immaterial attainments, skipping past the usual four jhanas, by all means present the arguments.

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Supernormal abilities are specifically gained tthrough immaterial attainment practice. That’s why arahants differed in having those abilities or not, depending not on whether thye practiced jhāna (they all practiced jhāna), but whether they practice the immaterial attainments. See Anālayo referencing this topic:

In SN 12.70 at SN II 123,26 and in a discourse quotation in the Mahāsāṅghika Vinaya, T 1425 at T XXII 363a14, the arahants deny that they attained supernormal powers or the immaterial attainments and then explain that they are liberated by wisdom.

I don’t know if seeing past lives classes as one of these powers or not, but either way, it makes total sense to me that immaterial practice could give such a fruit as this, since it is so explicitely connected with latent untapped powers.

But if this is not classed formally as one of those powers, do you have any references to show that that attainment is specifically produced by practicing jhāna, and clarity over whether it is never referenced as a fruit of immaterial attainments? If so, that would be significant. I would love to hear about it.

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Sorry I only skimmed this when I originally read it as I was more focused on hearing your points in your own words. But now I have read your source, and it is not what you said. That quote you gave is not about the Buddha’s teachers. It is about “some recluses and brahmins”, and I have suggested above that they may well be simply hypothetical ‘some recluses and brahmins’ rather than actual people. But if we are to take it literally, it does not even imply that they are from any time in the past, but rather that they may be contemporaries. But whether we consider them hypothetical or not, let’s consider whether your quote means jhāna practice is involved. I assume you may consider it is due to the part that says:

some recluse or a brahmin, by means of ardour, endeavour, application, diligence, and right reflection, attains to such a degree of mental concentration that with his mind thus concentrated, [purified, clarified, unblemished, devoid of corruptions], he recollects his numerous past lives

I would like to know what this author means by his use of square brackets - whether that was in the original in abbreviated form, or whether the translator added on an assumption. Does anyone know?

Well here is Walshe’s version of what I assume is the same passage in DN 1 - no square brackets in this one:

'Here, monks, a certain ascetic or Brahmin has by means of effort, exertion, application, earnestness and right attention attained to such a state of mental concentration that he thereby recalls past existences

Let’s see DN 28 (Walshe translating), where we have this we have this:

Here, some ascetic or Brahmin, by means of ardour, endeavour, application, vigilance and due attention, reaches such a level of concentration that he considers just this body upwards from the soles of the feet and downwards from the crown of the head, enclosed by the skin and full of manifold impurities: " In this body there are head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, pleura, spleen, lungs, mesentery, bowels, stomach, excrement, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, tallow, saliva, snot, synovie fluid, urine." (as Sutta 22, verse 5) That is the first attainment of vision. Again, having done this and gone further, [105] he contemplates the bones covered with skin, flesh and blood. This is the second attainment.

I don’t know if the Pāli is the same and he was just in a different mood (and I don’t have time to check), but even if the Pāli is different, the meaning is apparently almost identical. But I do not see any direct evidence that this was connected to jhāna practice. It seems more like mindfulness of the body parts practice.

So I ask, are you sure that your source is referring to jhāna practice? If so, what is your reasoning?

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Just looking into this some more… wish I could check the parallel to MN 4 - does anyone have a digital version of Anālayo, ‘Ekottarika-āgama Studies’ that I could borrow?

Anyway, MN 4 implies a possible connectoin between the recollection of past lives, and the 4th jhāna. But I am not sure this is enough to discount the possibility of this being possible to obtain from someone who has only practiced immaterial states (if we assume that it is possible to attain them wihtout attaining jhāna first).

But the original point which I believe we were discussing, was jhāna attainment before the Buddha, and this is presented as contemporary with him, or hypothetical, not being specified as pre-Buddhist.

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Sorry. Perhaps I should have started a new paragraph when I said " In DN1 he talks about how some develop wrong views due their meditative attainments" because, clearly, it is not about his teachers.

Well, OK, perhaps we need to go and find some of the other passages that talk about concentration practice of other contemplatives. There are a few, including a converstation between Jains and, I believe, Sariputta, but I don’t have time to look for them right now.

If the other contemplatives were not adept at concentration practices, why did so many of them become arahants so quickly after hearing a little wisdom? Wheras non-contemplatives became stream enterers, and then had to work on concentration.

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@Senryu are you trying to state something here with your insistence on saying only the Buddha practiced jhana?