Vitakka vicāra (Jhana-factors)

[Sylvester]

@frankk

your example with saccaka is setting up a straw man.

I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t think I misapprehend you or misrepresent you, in light of these -

@frankk

the 4 jhana similes for example (AN 5.28), how could it possibly not be referring to the anatomical body?

@frankk

i’ve experienced what ajahn brahm described as a full body orgasm that’s so intense it’s almost traumatic, for 3 hours continuously. Now my perception of the anatomical body can become distorted or unusual, for example feeling like no boundaries of my body sometimes, not having a sense of location, which way is up, which way is down, but I definitely feel the vibration pleasant buzz that one associates with tactile sensations of an anatomical body. And if I “look” for my body I can usually find the anatomical body. “There’s my head, there’s my finger, here’s up, here’s the ground, etc.” I don’t have to be in a cross leg sitting posture either. I can have full body intense orgasm for hours in a standing posture, lying posture, even walking slowly.

@frankk

For example, in the MN 36 thread going on right now talking about the buddha recalling his experience as boy watching his father pick apples, and then he enters first jhana. He realizes that his bliss is blameless, no reason to fear it, unlike bliss based on 5 cords of sensual pleasure. The skill to work on for first jhana, according to a straightforward ockhams razor reading of the EBT, is to see the danger in unskillful types of pleasure, replace those types of thoughts with skillful ones, and with sufficient kāya passadhi and citta-passaddhi, one has fufilled passaddhi-bojjhanga and can be in first jhana where pleasure in anatomical body can be felt.

I could go on and on, but the reason why I said -

@Sylvester

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. etc etc

was simply your very own reliance on MN 36 for parsing kāya passadhi as if this referred to the tranquilisation of the corporeal/anatomical body. The Buddha rejects that, and makes clear that kāyabhāvanā is sense restraint.