What Ven. Anālayo gets wrong about samādhi, part II

Alright, I will assume you mean my view about the relationship between jhāna and stream-entry. Here it is, quoted from the other thread on this topic:

When it comes to jhāna and streamentry, jhāna is a natural preliminary step. Streamentry means full insight into the nature of the five aspects of personality, the khandhas. With jhāna, however, one can still hold on to a slither of the five khandhas. Because the Buddhist path of the EBTs is a gradual letting go and insight into the five khandhas, it is natural to achieve jhāna before streamentry. Trying to achieve streamentry before jhāna is like taking a giant leap instead of small steps. To put it simply, jhāna is easier than streamentry. The sensible approach is to take all the intermediary steps instead of going straight to the deeper attainments. (The original post is here.)

Ven. Anālayo says:

So if, as Venerable Brahmāli would argue, all once-returners are jhāna -attainers (and have not lost that ability by the time of their death), they would all be reborn in the Brāhma realm.

First of all, as you can see above, I have not actually said this. Second, the sutta at AN 4.123 shows that attaining jhāna once or a few times is not enough for rebirth in the brahma world. You have to be proficient at it, especially at the time of death.

But even the stronger claim that jhāna is required for stream-entry is not contradicted by any of the suttas quoted by Ven. Anālayo. Whether this claim is true or not, I am not sure, but I certainly don’t discount it. There is strong evidence pointing in that direction, for instance:

When there is sammāsamādhi, one who has fulfilled sammāsamādhi has fulfilled the vital condition for true knowledge and vision. (AN 10.3)

Yes, this sutta says that the faculty of samādhi, the samādhindriya, is stronger for the arahant than for the stream-enterer. In line with the discussion above, I take this to mean that the arahant gains samādhi more easily. This includes generally having deeper samādhi than the stream-enterer.

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