That will be a looooooong read, thank you very much!
@Dhammananado
Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have read all the links that you gave me!
Yes is it true, the starting practice doesn't have this problem and my practice is all about mantaining Sila and removing, softening and understanding how the hindrances can be abandoned by the skillfull use of Sati and Wisdom. But this process has already do a lot for me and a lot of self-suffering and unsatisfactoriness is gone, what I need I think to progress is to give the mind the spiritual Sukha of Jhana that can counter the need for strong sensual pleasures and incline the mind to renunciation and equanimity. This is clearly stated in the texts, not even the Buddha renounced sensual pleasures before the Jhanas. I need to let the mind sees that it can be perfecly satisfied without resorting to sensual pleasures to let her evaluate more and more the possibility and the beauty of renunciation to the worldy dharmas and the attachment to the self. It's not that "I" want pleasure, but I think that the mind will greatly benefit from it because when I get it I became more compassionate, more alert, more prone to help other people and able to do Dhamma-work. There's an element of self still there of course, but it truly softened a lot in this 5 years of practice.
The mode of practice that the Petakopadesa and Frankk seems to suggest (to deliberately think, mantain and nourish kusala thoughs of renunciation, non-aversion and non-cruelty/violence after the momentary abandonment of the hindrances) really attracts me more and seems more doable than the Ajahn Bhram "bliss out" (hope not to be disrespectful) mode of the Jhanas in which you concentrate on a single point. But my faith is in the Buddha, and I don't want to practice a thing that is far from his teaching. It seems to me that this "thinking" type of Jhana is also a practice that is more infused by wisdom, since you can't fool yourself, when you get pleasure from renunciation it means that you see impermanence and you understand that the "spiritual curry" (like in the parable of the Cook in the Samyutta) is really the best and more reliable. Lot of work to be done, lot of reading is needed, maybe I will change my opinion in the next weeks and I'll became a big Sujato follower
Thank you!
@DooDoot
Hi DooDoot,
I think that you refer to MN43 and I'm sure that you're aware of the arguments of Leight Brasington (to be clear: I don't think that Light Jhanas are in the suttas or something even remotely teached by the Buddha) and Keren Arbel (which I think simply restates and expand the arguments of Martin Stuart-Fox and Govid Chandra Pande) about MN43. The full argument has to be found in their respective books, but here is a summary:
http://www.leighb.com/jhana_4factors.htm
I think that you can read full argument here thanks to Google Books, don't know if it works:
https://books.google.it/books?id=UjolDw ... na&f=false
https://books.google.it/books?id=GHMDCw ... na&f=false
I actually tend to buy those argument, but my guess is that it can only be a % thing, like in the NT philological studies. Maybe MN43 is the true word of the Buddha, maybe is a later addition. A serious and rigorous philological work is needed, but I feel it would be from very hard to impossible to settle the question. First, because even irreproachable studies must face the weight of tradition, the study of NT of John P. Meier about the "brothers of Jesus" is 100% correct by any standard of logic and demonstrates that Jesus had brothers, but the tradition and the dogma still says that the texts says that Jesus doesn't have brothers. The weight of tradition is also the weight of masters that we respect and love. To dismiss the masters it means also to be alone in the forest, with only the text in your help and with doubt still lingering as an hindrance. So It is a move that must be pondered wisely. I truly understand the people who are not keen to to discuss matters about practice like this one or that take a very strong position about those matters, because having doubts about the practice leads to the failure of that practice.
Also, the other problem is the acceptance of the validity of a certain text and the % of historicity, autenthicity, proximity to the Buddha's time and risk of corruption that one gaves to one text or the other. The Nikayas has the advantage that they are written in the language of the Buddha, so they didn't had a risky process of translation like the agamas. Still, the agamas can shed some light on the Nikayas because if they both say the same thing, we have two sources lined up and we can gladly say that this passage can get some more historical weight or historical proximity to the Buddha or at least to a point in which the two traditions not yet diverged. If the passages says a different thing, a cumulative, yet almost always imperfect, argument can be made to understand which one is probably the authentic one.
If one takes Nikayas as the only authority the result will be different than one that takes into account the agamas parallels. If you take MN19 as a proof that in first Jhana there's no thinking (a reading that sometimes is contested, for example here: http://blog.buddha-vacana.org/why-vitak ... -in-jhana/) you have your points, but when you see that in the parallel of MN19 you find that it is the second Jhana, arguments like the ones of Frankk can be made. Maybe the agamas are wrong, Maybe the agamas are right and the Nikayas are wrong. So you have to make a global argument that takes into account historicity and philology and the whole teaching as is presented in the Pali Canon and the whole teaching that can be construed by the comparison between Nikayas and Agamas to find the crucial, more authentic foundations of the Dhamma, not a thing that I can do by myself. I just want to understand how to practice effectively and how far can I go as a lay follower
and all my research goes into the abandonment of the hindrances, Satipatthana and the four Jhanas. I don't know how arupas can help me in the quest to end suffering/stress/unsatisfaction and I think everyone agrees that you can get enlightened without them. I think that the Nikayas speaks about cessation of perception and feeling btw and I think it is a big difference.
