SuttaCentral
Could you remind me from which passages you conclude that kaya = salayatana?
I think they don’t need to be different. Kayasankhara seems to me like an umbrella term for all bodily activities, including the breath, the many actions that it can make, and perhaps importantly in the case of meditation, physical responses to mental activities (including hormonal, i.e. what may still “move inside” when the body is immobile).
I think it’s No.249, although I did not explicitly say that kāya in kāyo passambhati means the 6 sense bases. It is an inference to be drawn out - given that the sample of suttas I’ve given show that there is nothing in that formula that is not connected with samatha, and sense restraint is an important component of samatha. That must be the whole point about indriyabhāvanā?
You’re not a fan of Ven Nanavira, are you? I think enough has been said by others to dispel the notion that both triads are the same. If they were the same, it would mean that breathing has kammic potency and can lead to rebirth as per the forward order of Dependant Origination. Ditto for speech and perception and feeling. What about the arahants who breathe etc?
This is another of those prime examples of terms serving double duty. In the MN 44 triad, as BB notes, the 3 saṅkhāras are typically used as a schema to contrast the “contents” of the different attainments. On the other hand, the saṅkhāras in SN 12.25 are volitions (sañcetanā) which then become the hetu (cause) for experience. Unsurprisingly, the experiences caused by sañcetanā is said to be feelings, which are part of MN 44’s cittasaṅkhāra. Won’t expressing it in this manner -
MN 44’s cittasaṅkhāra are dependant on the SN 12.25 saṅkhāras
be consistent with the 2nd Noble Truth?
You may be interested in this phrase “passaddhakāyasaṅkhāro” from AN 10.19.
Not particularly, although I think he does have some points.
I would contend that breathing has kammic potency but in the case of arahants, with results limited to their last human life, as everything else they do. I don’t even see how it could be otherwise.
That is indeed interesting. “passaddhakāyasaṅkhāro” refers to the fourth jhana, which is said (MN 44, SN 41.6) to be where kāyasaṅkhāras understood as breath cease. In that case, it would consolidate the idea that “kāyo passambhati” refers to the body as related to the breath. Hence kāya in the 1st and 4th jhana similes would also refer to the body and/or the breath, which would be completely consistent with an analysis of their tenor vs vehicle, both referring in that case to something physical, or even explicitly (4th jhana) to the physical body.
You guys are really world-transcending 
It’s hilarious that this thread goes on and on, but is there still a connection to ‘Vitakka-vicára’?
IMHO it would be helpful to outsource parts of the discussion, after all there are many interested readers who follow the discussions and take the titles as a clue to decide if to plug-in or not.
Just a suggestion & glad for our discussions!
I think the conversation started bifurcating around post 34 (see below). In short and certainly in an oversimplifying manner, there were the contenders of Vsm-style where vitakka doesn’t mean thought and you can’t hear sound or feel the body against those who think that vitakka still means thought and you can hear sounds and feel the body in jhana. So the debate has been redefined a few times, since the “battlefront” translates to other areas, like: does kaya refer to the physical body in DN 2’s jhana similes? etc.
Cool image by the way.
Fair enough 
I’d like to eventually get around to rewinding the tape here and incorporating a narrative of sorts into the wiki here.
I also do intend to deliver on the report on “abhisandeti, parisandeti, paripūreti, parippharati” so that we might eliminate the possibility of “imameva kāyaṃ” as adverbial, take kāyaṃ as reflexive but pronominal and anaphorical, and therefore take kāyaṃ as referring back to “kāyo passambhati” and further take “kāyo passambhati” as a process that culminates with the cessation of breath in the fourth jhāna.
However, not to be dismissive of your fine suggestion, I’d like to perhaps put forth a potential dissenting argument in response to @silence’s last one:
[MN 64]
Idhānanda, bhikkhu upadhivivekā akusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ pahānā sabbaso kāyaduṭṭhullānaṃ paṭippassaddhiyā vivicceva kāmehi vivicca akusalehi dhammehi savitakkaṃ savicāraṃ vivekajaṃ pītisukhaṃ paṭhamaṃ jhānaṃ upasampajja viharati.
So @silence, how would you reconcile the fact that here we have it that first jhāna seems to require the “complete tranquilization of bodily inertia” (sabbaso kāyaduṭṭhullānaṃ paṭippassaddhi)?
How should we understand the three phrases in the three suttas, namely “oḷārikā kāyasaṅkhārā paṭippassambhanti” (DN 18), “passaddhakāyasaṅkhāro” (AN 10.19) and “sabbaso kāyaduṭṭhullānaṃ paṭippassaddhi” (MN 64)?
How would you infer that kāyo passambhati refers to passaddhakāyasaṅkhāro? Could you explain how you derive a connection between the (1) kāya in kāyo passambhati with (2) kāyasaṅkhāra as breath, and the connection between (2) with (3) the kāya in the 4 jhana formulae?
I know (1) and (3) are connected thru the anaphora, but (2) and (3) don’t seem amenable to any connection. If you say that the kāya in the 4 jhana formulae refers to breath, that conflicts with the presence of a kāya in the 4th jhana. There’s no kāyasaṅkhāra/breath in the 4th jhana.
The connection between (1) and (2) also seems tenuous, despite the tranquilisation verb applied to the breath in MN 118. In MN 118, tranquilisation of the breath occurs before rapture. This does not conform to the kāyo passambhati schema, where rapture occurs before and as the cause of kāyo passambhati. The reversals of such a major training sequence militate any correspondence between the kāya in “kāyo passambhati” with MN 118’s kāyasaṅkhāra.
Why wait? I thought the questions were relevant.
Just a quick answer as I must leave. This doesn’t seem to be a regular first jhana. It is labelled as “the way to the abandoning of the five lower fetters” and is immediately followed by Nibbana.
I’ll see the rest later.
aka “hijacking” the thread…
To clarify my last, brief note. In some contexts users are encouraged to “fork-off” divergent topics into new threads; in some cases the moderators will take that on themselves.
It can be irksome for the OP (original post) contributor, when others “hijack” the thread to suit their own interests.
Perhaps someone with mod privileges can relocate some posts, but I think that what is under discussion is linked to the original topic. When you dig deep you unearth a lot of things you couldn’t see from the surface.
You may have a point here. I don’t have time to investigate further, so I’ll just consider you are probably right in saying that 2 is not clearly connected to 1 and 3.
I don’t really know to be honest.
thanks for the summary in post 207.
i don’t understand how that situation is comparable. the 3rd jhana can be understood on its own, or as a set with the first 3 jhanas.
the examples you cite, as i explained in detail in an earlier post, refers to attainments that are higher than 3rd jhana.
in the context of samadhi, 99% of the references to kāya are clearly referring to anatomical body, there’s no reason to dig for complicated grammatical loop holes unless something doesn’t work. since everyone else besides visuddhimagga and ajahn brahm’s camp translates 3rd jhana kāyena as an anatomical body that experiences happiness, including the EBT agama parallels, that tells me, even with little grammar knowledge, that it’s grammatically sound to take kāyena as the instrumental, as in “he experiences sukha with the anatomical body.”
the burden actually is on Ajahn Brahm to support a differing reading. i’ll do my diligence and examine your grammar arguments carefully in any case.
Chan, how do you take it? I take it simply as passadhi-sambojjhanga being fulfilled, which is prerequisite to samadhi-sambojjhanga.
passadhi-sambojjhanga explicitly involves calming of both citta and kāya.
edit: addition: any of the 4 jhanas can be expressed in terms of 7 bojjhanga. as one of the first few suttas in the bojjhanga samyutta 46 says, just as sariputta uses a simile of a king who can wear any outfit he wants, at any time of the day, one can abide in any of the 7 bojjhanga in any order, as long as they want. The nominal order of the 7 factors is just to show a typical causal relationship.
@Gabriel - I would agree. The conversation was plodding along nicely, until post 27/283, when Frank decided to take potshots at those other issues.
It would actually be quite easy to migrate all those posts initiated by Frank and his respondents into some other thread, without disturbing the continuity of what’s left behind on the original issue. The posts ripe for the migration are -
27 -29, 33 -35, and then downhill all the way from 37 to the most recent posts.
But hey, at least from post 136 onwards, it appears that the discussion had coalesced into the issue of kāya in all it grammatical forms. How’s that for discipline?
Perhaps a moderator could migrate the afore-listed posts to new threads.
Erh… this is not borne out by the usage of kāyena phusati, in the context of touching all the jhanas and formless attainments and Cessation, eg AN 9.43 among others.
Could I trouble you to share with us how you arrived at this statistical conclusion? I believe you would have done your research most thoroughly, but if your count includes recurring pericopes, that clouds the statistical significance of usages that are less formulaic.
But the rules are not complicated or hidden. They are in plain sight to see for those who actually believe that grammar is a important component of reading suttas.
If you look at the more recent posts here, I think you will find that it is the minority that rejects kāyena as adverbial, and treating it as adnominal instead.
In my limited experience with reading the Chinese parallels, the sutras are rendered literally, with no attempt whatsoever to render it into idiomatic Chinese.
But which kāya? It must surely be the kāya in “kāyo passambhati”. That whole series from freedom from remorse, joy, rapture, tranquility/serenity, pleasure and concentration is about the fruits of sense restraint culminating in the fading away of the hindrances and the arising of the bojjhaṅga. This goes back to my point about kāyika and cetasika. These relate to kāyapassaddhi and cittapassaddhi so neatly through the six bases and the faculties respectively. In the AN 11.1 series, the purpose is directed at mental things. Interpreting its kāya as a corporeal body entails the consequence that in Buddhist bhāvanā fails if the physical body is not calmed. That seems such a stretch in interpreting cittabhāvanā, which must surely be the point about AN 11.1 and its like.
This interpretation of kāya as physical body in fact harks back to Saccaka’s own understanding of kāyabhāvanā in MN 36. He was looking at kāyabhāvanā in the same way as you are essentially proposing, ie meditation affects the body. This was Saccaka’s view -
But there are some recluses and brahmins who abide pursuing development of mind, but not development of body. They are touched by mental painful feeling. In the past, when one was touched by mental painful feeling, one’s thighs would become rigid, one’s heart would burst, hot blood would gush from one’s mouth, and one would go mad, go out of one’s mind. So then the body was subservient to the mind, the mind wielded mastery over it.
The Buddha had a completely different take on it. He said -
Then the Blessed One told him: “What you have just spoken of as development of body, Aggivessana, is not development of body according to the Dhamma in the Noble One’s Discipline.
…
How, Aggivessana, is one undeveloped in body and undeveloped in mind? Here, Aggivessana, pleasant feeling arises in an untaught ordinary person. Touched by that pleasant feeling, he lusts after pleasure and continues to lust after pleasure. That pleasant feeling of his ceases. With the cessation of the pleasant feeling, painful feeling arises. Touched by that painful feeling, he sorrows, grieves, and laments, he weeps beating his breast and becomes distraught. When that pleasant feeling has arisen in him, it invades his mind and remains because body is not developed. And when that painful feeling has arisen in him, it invades his mind and remains because mind is not developed. Anyone in whom, in this double manner, arisen pleasant feeling invades his mind and remains because body is not developed, and arisen painful feeling invades his mind and remains because mind is not developed, is thus undeveloped in body because mind is not developed, is thus undeveloped in body and undeveloped in mind.
Can you see this is just another format for MN 148’s kāyika and cetasika feelings?
I think the important question is whether passadhi-sambojjhanga being fulfilled for first jhana leaves us with a physical breath to take as kāyaṃ up to the fourth jhana formula.
And so this is why I would want to take kāyaduṭṭhullānaṃ as a proper subset of MN 44’s kāyasaṅkhāra which ceases in fourth jhana, but the suttas are scarce on what kāyaduṭṭhulla is last I checked. However, the word duṭṭhulla seems to have a meaning like “coarse” or “obscene” when in the context of offensive conduct requiring discipline and such.
But even then MN 64’s expanded first jhana formula is the only such instance, so I’d want to take a look at the Chinese parallel, and further check whether the Chinese for kāyaduṭṭhulla is defined elsewhere.
And looking at MA 205, it looks like the Chinese for kāyaduṭṭhulla is somewhere around here given the occurrence of “初禪” (first jhana) in that sentence. I’d guess that it’s just 身惡 (“shēn:body”, “è:unwholesome”)…
Not a problem, really. And I know it’s difficult to contain topics, especially when the dhamma is so interconnected. It’s just a shame that sometimes great discussions and spin-off contributions don’t get appreciated and followed enough because they don’t have their own thread…
Let’s try … @frankk, I think it makes sense to move large parts of the discussion to a new thread with a different title, and since it would involve moving a lot of your input, could you please take it on yourself to contact a moderator with a new title? thanks!
Huh.
This Discourse platform impresses me every day:
I’d be happy to help out in any way as well. One caveat to bear in mind is that comment numbers as shown on the slider on the right hand side don’t always match up with the “internal” comment numbers.
Also, I’d wonder if moving comments to a new thread will automagically change any post number references to that comment so that the link to the comment isn’t dangling…
I think @FrankK’s 27 can be placed in a new Discussion topic eg “Occam’s Jhāna: On hearing sounds and the plurality of kāma” along with the following comments moved over:
I think @dhammarelax1’s 33 might be fodder for a new Discussion topic: “How is perception (saññā) defined in the suttas?”
I think @Sylvester’s 66 might be another good one: “Aggregates simpliciter vs. clinging-aggregates”
And from Frank’s 136 (internal: 140), the discussion turns more fully into “Occam’s Jhāna II: On feeling body”.
I’ll check later whether the remaining 153 comments have other branches.