Well, I've listened to it a few times, and I agree its not a really clear answer.mogg wrote:OK, thanks Reductor. If thats what he was saying then I must have misunderstood his intent. What you said conforms to my own limited understanding of jhana and insight. I tend to shy away from the commentaries so that could account for the misunderstanding.Reductor wrote: Well and good, Mogg.
The venerable is talking about the use of 'jhana' as a word, and talks about how 'jhana' is used in the suttas verses how the commentary uses the word 'jhana'.
In the commentary, he is saying, the distinction between samatha and vippasana leads to the conclusion that samataha goes to 'jhana' while vippasana goes to 'insight'. He says that the 'jhana' being discussed in the commentary is a fixed focus on a mental construct, which leads to a kind of a very pronounced calm that could be attached to.
He then says that focus on a mental construct like that could be helpful, but that the experience from such a focus is not the experience being referred to in the suttas when the word 'jhana' is used. He's saying that in the suttas the word 'jhana' referes to the mind which is being directed toward clear seeing once it has shed the hinderances. That is, in the suttas vippasana and 'jhana' are seen as occuring in the same meditation practice. They are not duel, but two facets of proper practice.
This conception of 'jhana' as going with vippasana still allows jhana to be a very pleasant experience, and integral to the path.
Venerable then concludes that you shouldn't get to preoccupied with concepts like 'jhana' but just practice meditation properly and let these aspects develop in due course.
Anyway, either I don't understand your complaint, or you don't understand Yuttadhammo (or I don't understand Yuttadhammo ).
The thrust of what he's saying, and I hope to be more accurate than I was above, is that commentary makes the distinction of 'samatha (jhana)' and 'vippasana (insight)'. He goes on to say that 'jhana' can occur with 'vippasana' and is properly called 'vippasana jhana', which allows that jhana and vippasana go together as proper mediation (which echos back to the suttas, in my mind - and yours, too, I would gather).
He does not say the commentary is wrong. And he's continues to qualify this integrated 'jhana' with the term 'vippasana', as if it is not proper to call is 'jhana' without qualification. But this might well be a tactful way to sidestep the traditionalists while practising closer to the original meaning of 'jhana' (a theory that is not mine, but that I've read from well versed Buddhist on this very forum -- I will not name him in case I've gotten it wrong).
Anyway, I do agree with Venerable that 'jhana' (whether qualified or not) is properly integrated in healthy practice, although the word itself mostly causes a lot of confusion because of the difference between the suttas and commentary.
Oh, well. If I've made any factual mistakes about what Yuttadhammo is saying, I trust someone will point them out to me.