Hello IanAnd,
IanAnd wrote:What I'm endeavoring to say is that you are giving this subject too much importance in the general outlook of your practice. It is not necessary to be able to pinpoint every little nuance of what is happening as it is happening when you are in the middle stages of your overall practice. Later on in the overall course of your practice, as the mind becomes more and more stable, you may be more able to recognize these nuances more clearly. But it's really not that important in the intermediate stage.
I think I understand what you say, "focus your practice on reaching those states rather than dissecting them"

It is a good advice, too. But I have this fear of being too fast, the fear that my understanding is not able to keep track with my experiences and slowing down, analysing each step intellectually seems to help. Thus, when I practice concentration meditation I try to keep mindfulness and analysing as stable as possible. But now the questions arise of the terminology. To translate Vyāpāda "ill will" as inconsiderateness is rather different than to translate it as a synonym of dosa. The absence of dosa is easily discerned when going into jhana because piti is such a pleasant feeling that dosa - attraction to (greed for) this pleasant feeling - can be seen. On the other hand I don't see how absence of inconsiderateness could enter the equation because jhana is something one does for oneself. One could say that while I practice jhana I am inconsiderate to all other persons because I do NOT do something good to them, or think about them in the first place.
Freawaru wrote:Into German "ill will" translates as something like animosity, enmity, hatred, antagonism, wanting something evil, and so on. Is this the correct translation of ill will? Because I cannot discern it.
Yes. What you have stated is the correct understanding of ill will.
Well, when I am in jhana I want it to stay thus one could say that there is enmity to the non-jhanic states. Also, practitioners are hardly pleased when they are disturbed and jhana broken (either by situations, other persons, or own thoughts) thus a certain enmity can still be detected. At the moment I don't see how the actual experience of jhana does agree with these definitions.
And then there are these
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... 6.html#illThis sounds as if ill-will does not hinder awarenesss/knowing (sampajanna):
When ill-will is present in him, the monk knows, "There is ill-will in me," or when ill-will is absent he knows, "There is no ill-will in me." He knows how the arising of non-arisen ill-will comes to be; he knows how the rejection of the arisen ill-will comes to be; and he knows how the non-arising in the future of the rejected ill-will comes to be.
On the other hand this one seem to say that ill-will blocks sampajanna because the analogy to mirror or reflection:
If there is a pot of water heated on the fire, the water seething and boiling, a man with a normal faculty of sight, looking into it, could not properly recognize and see the image of his own face. In the same way, when one's mind is possessed by ill-will, overpowered by ill-will, one cannot properly see the escape from the ill-will which has arisen; then one does not properly understand and see one's own welfare, nor that of another, nor that of both; and also texts memorized a long time ago do not come into one's mind, not to speak of those not memorized.
And then we have this:
Thus one should consider: "Being angry with another person, what can you do to him? Can you destroy his virtue and his other good qualities? Have you not come to your present state by your own actions, and will also go hence according to your own actions? Anger towards another is just as if someone wishing to hit another person takes hold of glowing coals, or a heated iron-rod, or of excrement. And, in the same way, if the other person is angry with you, what can he do to you? Can he destroy your virtue and your other good qualities? He too has come to his present state by his own actions and will go hence according to his own actions. Like an unaccepted gift or like a handful of dirt thrown against the wind, his anger will fall back on his own head."
and it confuses me even more because indeed one person can harm the virtue and other good qualities of another person. Another person could damage my brain by drugs or physical damage or torture or brain cancer from chemicals or radiation and this would harm my virtue and good qualities severely indeed.
The sources seem to use different definitions of vyapada.