Were the 4 jhanas a unique discovery of the Buddha?

[silence]

@sujato

the suttas, and all the Buddhist traditions, assume that jhanas were practiced long before the Buddha

Polak in his book says that there are only 2 suttas that ascribe jhanas to non-Buddhists: DN 1 and AN 4.123. He then goes on to argue that both are late fabrications tainted by the beliefs of their composers. Was he wrong about this? Are there other suttas ascribing jhana practice to non-Buddhists?

He also explains why the Buddhist tradition may have long been wrong in assuming that the jhanas predated the Buddha. The Buddhists traditions are shown to be wrong on many fundamental topics (he shows for example the discrepancy between highly revered Theravada teachers telling people not to practice jhana and the suttas telling us to practice them a great many times), and personally I wouldn’t accept any conclusion based solely on their questionable authority, all the more that whoever has sought to make that view a certainty surely wasn’t around before the Buddha and was merely giving their personal opinion.

@sujato

a fact that the Brahmanical tradition is in agreement with.

Again this is an argument of authority, coming from even more questionable authorities.

What evidence can all these people produce to show that this is anything more than their personal opinion?

@sujato

Since basically the entire Indic/Buddhist tradition for 2500 years has been in agreement that pre-Buddhist yogis were practicing meditations that were pretty much comparable to what the Buddha called jhana

If this is true then how to explain MN 100 and SN 41.8? (see my earlier post). And what about SN 2.7?

@sujato

you’d need strong arguments against it, but alas such do not exist.

I agree, there are only a few indications, but arguments in favor of it are merely arguments of authority, or we have first to reject the textual analysis on DN 1 and AN 4.123.

@sujato

Why would we expect that other metaphysical systems would use the same language just because it is significant to us?

Polak shows that we find strong evidence of Buddhist influence in some rare texts in the Upanishads, since maybe 4 or 5 typical Buddhist terms are used together in the same short passage to describe meditation, but it is apparent that their meaning has been changed to fit long standing Hindu practice.

So overall I do not find it easy to state that the question has such a clear cut answer. Personally I would consider that I need to do due diligence to the question (and this discussion is an effort into that direction) before voicing any definitive one-sided opinion on it. I will probably never actually get to that and that’s fine, but most of us need to work towards better acceptance of the cognitive discomfort that uncertainty brings.