Hello, Venerable! I hope you are well. I understand you are in Sri Lanka now. My best wishes to you!
My point is as follows: if you can experience the senses in jhāna, then what do you make of blissful samādhi experiences where the senses are gone? How do the suttas refer to such experiences? It seems to me that blissful samādhi where the senses are gone can only refer to jhāna. There is no other vocabulary for these states. And it is precisely because they are such elevated states that the jhānas are so highly praised in the suttas.
My recollection of talking with Bhante Ariyadhammika is that he regards the first Jhāna to be defined by the 5 Jhāna factors, no hindrances etc. So he would regard whether 5 senses shut down or not is irrelevant, both are Jhānas.
I replied then that could be the 3 levels of Brahma realms for the lower Jhānas could be the different interpretations of Jhānas, with the highest level of each to be the absorption kind.
Well, sort of half joking, on further thought it’s hard to imagine 3rd lite Jhāna to be higher level than 1st absorption Jhāna.
I am confident that many others already would made it clear about it from this topic and perhaps others.
Yes, to put it crudely.
But atheists who are not enlightened are not freed from ignorance, conceit, self view, thus they undergo rebirth. and their view of nothing after death is wrong view of no rebirth. As opposed to the right view of Arahants ended rebirth, have no more existence in the future.
What atheists fear, we aim for. Thus it’s not really something useful to tell total beginners as their self view makes them fear nibbāna, thinking that it’s annihilation.
Whereas there’s no self to be annihilated, there’s just suffering arising and suffering ceasing.
I see. I think Buddhists have a tendency to place too much emphasis on the jhāna factors, which hardly occur as a set in the suttas. It is quite clear from the suttas (e.g. AN 10.1) that both pīti and sukha arise before jhāna. Jhāna is a particularly profound and intense kind of pīti and sukha (vivekjapītisukha), developed through the process of meditation. And so just counting jhāna factors is not going to be enough to decide whether a state is a jhāna or not.
But then there would be no bliss. Bliss is a hallmark of the first three jhānas.
Do the texts say that bliss is not present in the arūpas?
I’m obviously aware that these āyatanas are often listed after the fourth jhāna but the arūpas’ existence a) prior to the Bodhisattva’s formal Jhāna practice, b) not as jhānas but as “āyatanas,” and c) separated from the jhānas in certain contexts makes me suspect that the arūpas aren’t the straightforward continuation of the jhānas that they are sometimes portrayed as by the later tradition.
Is your declaration that the arūpas cannot have bliss merely based on their frequent listing after the fourth jhāna, or is there other EBT evidence besides that?
They are consistently portrayed as further developments from the fourth jhāna, e.g .at MN 59, which is perhaps particularly interesting. MN 59 states that each higher attainment is a greater degree of happiness compared to the previous one. In other words, the fourth jhāna is a greater happiness than third jhāna despite the fact that there is no experience of happy feeling in the fourth jhāna. This means that upekhā or adukkhamasukha is superior to sukha. Since this is so, it would be rather strange if the happy feelings were reintroduced to attainments that are considered even more refined, that is, the immaterial attainments.
It is not just the frequency of listing, but the fact that they are often said to be more refined. To my mind, the story in MN 26 is not enough to counter this.
Also anupubbanirodhā, ‘progressive cessation’, as in AN9.31, suggests pīti and sukha cease in the jhanas and don’t come back again in the formless states.
Another thing is that the three jhānas are called ‘perturbable’ whereas the fourth jhāna is called ‘imperturbable’ (see MN 66). The pīti/sukha are said to be what is ‘perturbable’ there, as opposed to pure equanimity. More often, just the formless states are called ‘imperturbable’ (c.f. AN 3.116, AN 4.190, etc.) and this seems to refer to upekkhā specifically — as the phrase is a standard for the fourth jhāna. Three types of sankhārā are ‘puñña, apuñña, and āneñja (imperturbable).’ These correspond to the resulting contact/sensations one experiences dependent on the activity. Meritorious intentions generate contacts to be experienced as pleasant (sukhavedanīya), demeritorious ones create contact to be experienced as painful (dukkhavedanīya), and ‘imperturbable’ ones correspond to rebirth in the realms of pure upekkhā.
You see examples of this same principle in many places. MN 140 for example describes how purified equanimity (of the fourth jhāna) can extend itself to the four arūpa-samāpattis.
If the Dhamma is only meant to make an end to all lifeforms, some called humans, some called animals, some called deva’s, etc., with nothing remaining, i feel that is a Dhamma to be feared. Not because a self gets lost, but this Dhamma just wants to end all lifeforms for good with nothing remaining. For me this feels like this Dhamma hates life. It says: it is better that no beings exist then beings exist. I feel that is an evil and harmful view.
I choose: Dhamma aims at making you alive. Give you a sense of wonder and the mystery of life. It want to liberate us from the prison of being death while alive.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the atheist conceives of final-extinguishment in the same way as the ‘nothing-after-parinibbana-buddhist’ but there is disagreement on the path leading to extinguishment.
In other words the ordinary atheist sees the 3rd noble truth in the same way as the “nothing-after-parinibbana-buddhist” but the latter assumes the view of a conditional extinguishment whereas the former of an unconditional extinguishment.
It is a very good question, Venerable Brahmali, and it is often, in my opinion, not satisfactorily answered by those say Jhāna can occur with the senses still intact. There are a few possible answers given:
These states are just irrelevant and not mentioned in the Suttas
These states are in fact “dangerous” (I find this one a little implausible)
These states correspond to the 8 liberations/8 domains of mastery
These states are sort of an alternate route to the formless realms, where perception of the body is dropped earlier than it would be through the jhana route (similar to #3 above). Or, they are sort of a mix between the formless and formJhānas.
Jhāna has two different dimensions: a “Jhāna factor” dimension, and a “concentration dimension”. So these states are just highly concentrated types of Jhāna, but other states where the senses are still present, albeit in the background, can still qualify as Jhāna.
These states are in fact Jhāna, and everything else is a lesser attainment.
“But what is the purpose and benefit of concentration?” “Samādhi pana, bhante, kimatthiyo kimānisaṁso”ti?
“Truly knowing and seeing …” “Samādhi kho, ānanda, yathābhūtañāṇadassanattho yathābhūtañāṇadassanānisaṁso”ti.
“But what is the purpose and benefit of truly knowing and seeing?” “Yathābhūtañāṇadassanaṁ pana, bhante, kimatthiyaṁ kimānisaṁsan”ti?
“Disillusionment and dispassion …” “Yathābhūtañāṇadassanaṁ kho, ānanda, nibbidāvirāgatthaṁ nibbidāvirāgānisaṁsan”ti.
“But what is the purpose and benefit of disillusionment and dispassion?” “Nibbidāvirāgo pana, bhante, kimatthiyo kimānisaṁso”ti?
“Knowledge and vision of freedom is the purpose and benefit of disillusionment and dispassion. “Nibbidāvirāgo kho, ānanda, vimuttiñāṇadassanattho vimuttiñāṇadassanānisaṁso.
could easily be read as a description of the 1st-4th Jhānas followed by knowledge & vision/ truly knowing and seeing, with the final reference to concentration meaning the 4 Jhāna. This would tie in nicely with the fact that the 4th Jhāna is often described as the culmination of concentration, and from that standpoint one can end the defilments, attain the supernormal knowledges, etc.
“Monks, with the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the prior disappearance of elation and depression, a monk attains and remains in the fourth Jhāna, which is neither painful nor pleasant and has purity of mindfulness and equanimity. He sits suffusing this very body with a completely pure and clean mind; there is nowhere in his entire body that is not suffused with his completely pure and clean mind. Monks, it is like a man who sits with his entire body covered with a white cloth, including his head; there is nowhere on his body that is not covered by the white cloth. Monks, in the same way, a monk sits suffusing this very body with a completely pure and clean mind; there is nowhere in his entire body that is not suffused with his completely pure and clean mind.
“When the mind is concentrated in this way – completely pure, completely clean, flawless, without defilement, malleable, workable, stable, and imperturbable…
The first is that it’s not a blank of nothingness. Instead, it’s a type of consciousness. But unlike ordinary consciousness, it’s not known through the six senses, and it doesn’t engage in fabricating any experience at all—unlike, for example, the non-dual consciousness found in formless levels of concentration.
If he holds that there is only one & same extraordinary consciousness coming into play for different people or if each person realizes a unique extraordinary consciousness.
Either way i think he got some terminology mixed up and maybe read too much into the similes but idk if he got the principal meaning wrong.
He mixes up sutta references and weaves in paraphrases of various texts, it is confusing and messy. I think that he ought to use exact references and quotations instead.
When the word samādhi is used on its own, it normally refers to sammāsamādhi, simply because this is the samādhi of the path. So I would say that samādhi here is a reference to the four jhānas. Also, to me the point of this sutta is to show that samādhi only arises at this point, not earlier.
Understandable, this is craving for existence, an useful thing as to counter the suicidal idea for those whose faith in rebirth is not very strong.
For those who reflects a lot on SN 15.1-20 suttas, one hopefully eventually see that there’s nothing in samsara is worth clinging onto, nothing in samsara worth existing for. There’s no point in letting rebirth continue in any form, in any existence. We are all immortals who switches bodies, have periodic amnesia, and most of the bodies in samsara are of very suffering states. Whatever happiness we can imagine (other than nibbāna) we have experienced them countless times, whatever suffering we can imagine, that too we have suffered countless times. It’s enough to produce revulsion to samsara.
Only one can liberate oneself, for all other beings, they have to liberate their own self.
As mentioned before on rebirth, killing the whole universe with some sci fi doomsday device is not going to cut it, new universes spawn, higher realms like brahma realms are unaffected etc. So the Buddhist goal is not the same as a typical evil supervillain plot. One has to integrate the background knowledge of rebirth deeply to see the point of view of the dhamma.
I would imagine his use of the word “consciousness” implies a faculty of knowledge which is in touch with the “unborn”; “unmade”; “unfabricated”; “unconditioned”.
It would saturate one’s being and environment. There wouldn’t be any bounds to it. In that sense, one could view it internally as “this consciousness” or externally as “consciousness of that”. It would all be much the same either way.
