Hi Tennok,
As far as I understand your post, you are making a distinction between two kinds of jhanas, one coming from wisdom ( practice of Dhamma intended by the Buddha ) and resulting in furher wisdom. And the other one, too blisfull, coming from different efforts. A dead end.
Not a dead end, because one could very well develop the path nonethless and I don't think that the method is alien to the Buddhadhamma, being it in some ways similar to the first or the third removal in MN20 in which you simply turn your attention away from the unwholesome. But is more risky and have the drawbacks I've tried to expose in my post.
My response was to the question of the topic, but if you want to talk about A.Bhahm in particular, I consider the best teacher of Deep Absorption and I've read all of his books while being convinced that he teached the only possible Jhana. The other teacher that I've read a lot about Jhana is Shaila Catherine. First parth of Shaila's book about Jhanas is all about letting go and renunciaton, probably two of the most inspiring chapters about it that I've ever read. So I'm well aware that (some) teachers of deep absorption teaches renunciation and I agree that renunciation is a key for absorption for those two teachears at least for sure.
The istructions (of course I'm simplyfing) are that one needs to relax deeply, try to let go of everything, try to let go of desire for the pleasure of Jhana which is the main obstacle (since after all, if you sit for Jhana in a retire, to experience jhana
is the main desire of the mind at that time) and learn to experience and focus to the beautiful breath until concentration grows and you enter in access contration, after a while the sense of letting go is so strong that the doer that "breaths" disappears and sooner or later the nimitta comes and then you switch focus on that. Again, not 100% perfect, but ok.
Now make the experiment, for the sake of argument, to read MA102 (which I prefer since it is well-ordered and more detailed, this is my view, sorry) with the hypotesis that, just like everywhere else, just like in the preceding sutta, Vitakka and Vicara are Thoughts and analisys/examination of a Dhammic theme.
Done? How in the world can be considered the same teaching? There's no concentration on a point or an object, there's no access concentration, there's reasoning about the drawbacks, there's cultivation of the wholesome, there's the operation to divide the thoughts in two kinds, there's an u-turn that is given by the evaluation of the Dhamma, there's not even the breath involved at all.
In one system, we have a training in attention to a point so to suppress external stimuli and a training in letting go. But the good question is
letting go of what?. To enter we let go of:
- Thoughts
no matter if unwholesome or wholesome.
- Experience of the five senses.
- Craving/intention to experience the orgasmic/godlike bliss of Jhana since it is one of the stumbling blocks to experience the godlike bliss.
- Control and sense of the doer, since in my experience the experience of the doer completely disappeared after a while, it is like that the breath it is a thing on its own, but attention too seems a thing on its own.
But all the letting go is
at the service of that orgasmic bliss which is clearly the main goal.
in the second system, you let go of:
- unwholesome thoughts and intentions about sensuality, sensual pleasures, aversions by reasoning about them and seeing, imagining the drawbacks in the long run.
- Control/strong intention about the intentions of the mind only when you are certain that the mind have made the u-turn for the wholesome.
while at the same time you retain and increase:
- wholesome thoughts, reflection and intentions about Dhammic themes like the fewerness of wishes, the problems of conceit, the drawbacks of sensual pleasures, seeing the world as a dart or an affliction, ecc..)
Here instead we have both letting go and retention, a lot of retention, so much retention that thoughts about Dhamma, renunciation, ecc start to became automatic since there's a welcomed u-turn about renunciation, a subversion of your own values about the world and so a true seclusion and pacification is happening. The cows (that are clearly the thoughts) are inside the limits of the wholesome after your hard work and now you are allowed to rest. At the same time the desire to experience bliss is not there at all, because the focus is not at all to experience pleasure, but the pleasure is the u-turn itself because when you discover that there's poison in your orange juice, the happiness is not to drink it and you don't have to produce it by a technique. When we will finally understand that the poison is delight, to non-delight in sensuality will be the happiness there.
So here the pleasure and the goal is not the orgasmic bliss, but it is precisely the happiness of the
renunciation, the happiness of the
calm that renunciation brings, the happiness of a meditator that
starts to awaken to the four noble truths (that you can avoid the poison by simply avoid to drink it and that you are free to not drink it). Which is how the Buddha describes the pleasure of Jhana in MN66. That is why jhana gently inclines you towards Nibbana which is the ending of desire, aversion and delusion. This is why Jhana is like a training with a straw man to finally be able to "do it", incline to the deathless, dispassion:
“Suppose that an archer or archer’s apprentice were to practice on a straw man or mound of clay, so that after a while he would become able to shoot long distances, to fire accurate shots in rapid succession, and to pierce great masses. In the same way, there is the case where a monk… enters & remains in the first jhāna: rapture & pleasure born of seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. He regards whatever phenomena there that are connected with form, feeling, perception, fabrications, & consciousness, as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a disintegration, an emptiness, not-self. He turns his mind away from those phenomena, and having done so, inclines his mind to the property of deathlessness: ‘This is peace, this is exquisite—the pacification of all fabrications; the relinquishing of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; unbinding.’
JHANA SUTTA AN9.36
It's not necessarily true. For example, in the "hard jhana " instructions I'm familar with, the very desire to experience jhana is a main obstacle. Such practice involves dealing with craving, clinging and becoming, 4 Noble Truths and DO. Those instructions also talk about hindrances and kilesas, which must be dealed with, prior to entering jhana. And as such sublimed state can't be kept forever and controled, it also teaches about 3 marks of existence. So I don't see it, as something separated from the Dhamma.
I can see the danger of attachment and lack of further investigation of Dukkha, if one gets stuck ina bliss. But piti and sukha, the divine bliss, is present in the " wisdom jhana", anyway. And so is the danger of attachment to pleasure. It's just a sign of lack of understanding of Dhamma...like monks addicted to tobbaco or betel.
This is the problem that I see as the most important one. The Buddha clearly says that the pleasure of Jhanas
needs not to be feared and nowhere it is said that you don't have to desire a pleasant abiding that is defined as "unblemished". And btw we have many masters and meditators that have tried absorption Jhanas and warns about them since they got stucked in the bliss. They got it wrong? Maybe, or maybe not. Of course, if you ask to A.Brahm it will say that they are wrong.
But the desire to experience pleasure of Jhana is not an obstacle at all in the wisdom-jhanas, you don't even have to let go that desire since
it is actually the desire of letting go of sensuality since you see that is the best for you, not to experience godlike pleasure by lettingo go of control and sense that is a wholly different technique. The obstacle in wisdom-jhanas is that one simply doesn't want to renunciate desire, conceits, aversions and cruelty (which is subtle sometimes, like gossip) because there's still no good analysis of the drawbacks for entering them and there's no cultivation of the wholesome while inside the first jhana so to strenghten the renunciation by seeing that renunciation as pleasurable when you're able to enter it by the u-turn on your mind. For the Buddha whatever the world calls happiness is suffering, and what the world calls suffering (renunciation) is happiness (don't have the sutta number at hand, sorry).
Imagine that after training and analysis you start to savor the bliss of being non-averse when you get in touch with a thought that usually makes you upset. That bliss is the happiness of renunciation, the happiness of calm, the happiness of awakening (MN66). You can't attach to that or, if that can be called attachment, it is an spiritual pleasure that you don't have to fear being attached to, because
it clearly inclines you towards Nibbana and it is similar to Nibbana. what's the problem if you start to feel happiness from pleasant feelings caused by your wisdom of non-aversion? You are doing a work of mind-conditioning that will strenghten the u-turn, that for jhanas is not permanent, that the Buddha asks you to do after careful analysis of allure, drawback and escape. If you develop those jhanas you will never get stuck, because the u-turn will gently incline you towards disenchantment and dispassion the more and more you sincerely do it. You will want more peace, you will want more detachment, you will want less delusion. You will never get stuck if the mind is inclined in that way since the godlike pleasure would never be the goal of your practice, but the reasoning about your well-being will be.
You will probably develop conceit and feelings of superiority by being able to do that and comparing to others on the path that are behind you, but it is a different thing and the Buddha warned about that possibility in a dedicated sutta and of course the delusion about the self is another kind of renunciation since the self is an acquisition. How do you will abandon that acquisition? By experience the lack of control of deep absorption that is simply an altered experience (but that acquisition will come back again, since you haven't reasoned about the drawbacks and made the u-turn, maybe you will convince from that experience that
ultimately there's no self while you go around producing one all the time when not in Jhana, this was my mistake years ago that was hopefully corrected by Thanissaro) or by precisely discovering that not selfing, lack of acquisition (renunciation) is for your welfare in the long term?
Tennok wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 9:45 am
And the last question for you...what is the goal of Dhamma? Is it Sati and Panna, or the end of Dukkha?
The ending of Dukkha seems impossible to me without knowing the teachings and then developing sati-sampajanno which is the direct application of that Dhamma on every occasion when you are in the world. Seems two faces of the same coin for me, but maybe I can't grasp the full meaning of the question.
With metta.
And sorry, But I will not have much time again to respond this week! I'll check if I can give a short answer if you reply, but it is evident that being concise is a thing that I'm not skilled to do
* as for ekagatta meaning, i suggest Khemara Bhikku:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gT1rCJ ... vzcuX/view