Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

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confusedlayman
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Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by confusedlayman »

Anyone attained hard jhana in this forum more than once intentionally?
I may be slow learner but im at least learning...
maniture_85
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by maniture_85 »

confusedlayman wrote: Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:47 am Anyone attained hard jhana in this forum more than once intentionally?
What do you mean by hard jhana?
If you talk about one of the four formless jhanas, yes, as far as i know.
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by JamesTheGiant »

Not me!
Of about 20 monks I know closely, only 3 of them attained that level of jhana regularly.
Of Laypeople, I don't know any who can do hard jhana as described in the visuddhimagga/Ajahn Brahm.
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by confusedlayman »

Thanks. I think the three mo ks who you know also includes brahm or excluding him so totally 4? I think hard jhana may be what buddha taught and used for higherknowledge including arhantship...

Monks who teach hard jhana and speaks of it are really blessed...
I may be slow learner but im at least learning...
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by auto »

https://bswa.org/bswp/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ajahn-brahm_the-basic-method-of-meditation.pdf wrote:Furthermore, you should
know that while in any Jhana it is impossible to experience
the body (e.g. physical pain), hear a sound from outside or
produce any thought, not even `good' thoughts. There is just
a clear singleness of perception, an experience of nondualistic bliss which continues unchanging for a very long
time. This is not a trance, but a state of heightened
awareness. This is said so that you may know for yourself
whether what you take to be a Jhana is real or imaginary.
wrote:Deep meditation only occurs
when you really let go, and this means REALLY LET GO
to the point that the process becomes inaccessible to the
`doer'.
Ajahn Brahm mentions his teacher is Ajahn Chah. User bodom one day posted a quote from Ajahn Chah,
wrote:We look for peace in peaceful places, where there won’t be sights, or sounds, or odours, or flavours, thinking that living quietly like this is the way to find contentment, that herein lies peace.

But actually, if we live very quietly in places where nothing arises, can wisdom arise? Would we be aware of anything? Think about it. If our eyes didn’t see sights, what would that be like? If the nose didn’t experience smells, what would that be like? If the tongue didn’t experience flavours, what would that be like? If the body didn’t experience feelings at all, what would that be like? To be like that would be like being a blind and deaf man, one whose nose and tongue had fallen off and who was completely numb with paralysis. Would there be anything there? And yet people tend to think that if they went somewhere where nothing happened they would find peace. Well, I’ve thought like that myself, I once thought that way.

When I was a young monk just starting to practise, I’d sit in meditation and sounds would disturb me. I’d think to myself, ‘What can I do to make my mind peaceful?’ So I took some beeswax and stuffed my ears with it so that I couldn’t hear anything. All that remained was a humming sound. I thought that would be peaceful, but no, all that thinking and confusion didn’t arise at the ears after all. It arose in the mind. That is the place to search for peace.
addition to above if you search what ajahn Chah says about samadhi,
https://ajahnchah.org/book/Clarity_Insight1.php wrote:In appanā samādhi the mind calms down and is stilled to a level where it is at its most subtle and skilful. Even if you experience sense impingement from the outside, such as sounds and physical sensations, it remains external and is unable to disturb the mind.
--
I think people get caught on Ajahn Brahms word choices and features give a point.
I believe Ajahn Brahm wanted to say is this,
https://ajahnchah.org/book/Clarity_Insight1.php wrote:You might hear a sound, but it won't distract your concentration. There is the hearing of the sound, but the experience is as if you don't hear anything.
Yeah, if to read by yourself things are different than rumors. Pretty sure people will continue as usual thinking brahm teaches senses off jhana by its deaf meaning..
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Alex123
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by Alex123 »

In AB's book and in some of his talks, he mentioned some lay follower who got into jhana by a "fluke". Apparently a married man got into jhana. His wife noticed that her husband appeared dead, and part of his body was cold. She called an ambulance and only in the hospital, an Indian doctor (who heard about the phenomenon) was able to recognize that person hasn't died (no EKG signal, no signs of life except only part of the body which was warm) and bring him back. Apparently this lay meditator who was in Jhana could not perceive all the above events, yet was aware of bliss inside.

Does anyone know who this person was?
Thanks.
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Sam Vara
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by Sam Vara »

auto wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 3:57 pm
https://bswa.org/bswp/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ajahn-brahm_the-basic-method-of-meditation.pdf wrote:Furthermore, you should
know that while in any Jhana it is impossible to experience
the body (e.g. physical pain), hear a sound from outside or
produce any thought, not even `good' thoughts. There is just
a clear singleness of perception, an experience of nondualistic bliss which continues unchanging for a very long
time. This is not a trance, but a state of heightened
awareness. This is said so that you may know for yourself
whether what you take to be a Jhana is real or imaginary.
wrote:Deep meditation only occurs
when you really let go, and this means REALLY LET GO
to the point that the process becomes inaccessible to the
`doer'.
Ajahn Brahm mentions his teacher is Ajahn Chah. User bodom one day posted a quote from Ajahn Chah,
wrote:We look for peace in peaceful places, where there won’t be sights, or sounds, or odours, or flavours, thinking that living quietly like this is the way to find contentment, that herein lies peace.

But actually, if we live very quietly in places where nothing arises, can wisdom arise? Would we be aware of anything? Think about it. If our eyes didn’t see sights, what would that be like? If the nose didn’t experience smells, what would that be like? If the tongue didn’t experience flavours, what would that be like? If the body didn’t experience feelings at all, what would that be like? To be like that would be like being a blind and deaf man, one whose nose and tongue had fallen off and who was completely numb with paralysis. Would there be anything there? And yet people tend to think that if they went somewhere where nothing happened they would find peace. Well, I’ve thought like that myself, I once thought that way.

When I was a young monk just starting to practise, I’d sit in meditation and sounds would disturb me. I’d think to myself, ‘What can I do to make my mind peaceful?’ So I took some beeswax and stuffed my ears with it so that I couldn’t hear anything. All that remained was a humming sound. I thought that would be peaceful, but no, all that thinking and confusion didn’t arise at the ears after all. It arose in the mind. That is the place to search for peace.
addition to above if you search what ajahn Chah says about samadhi,
https://ajahnchah.org/book/Clarity_Insight1.php wrote:In appanā samādhi the mind calms down and is stilled to a level where it is at its most subtle and skilful. Even if you experience sense impingement from the outside, such as sounds and physical sensations, it remains external and is unable to disturb the mind.
--
I think people get caught on Ajahn Brahms word choices and features give a point.
I believe Ajahn Brahm wanted to say is this,
https://ajahnchah.org/book/Clarity_Insight1.php wrote:You might hear a sound, but it won't distract your concentration. There is the hearing of the sound, but the experience is as if you don't hear anything.
Yeah, if to read by yourself things are different than rumors. Pretty sure people will continue as usual thinking brahm teaches senses off jhana by its deaf meaning..
It might be worth mentioning that Ajahn Brahm didn't start his meditation practice with Ajahn Chah and his tradition. The first form of meditation he studied was the jhana meditation of Nai Boonman, now practised by the UK -based Samatha Trust.
Several years later, a Cambridge student of theoretical physics named Peter Betts also found his way to Boonman’s class and attended a life-changing nine-day retreat with him in 1971. Three years later, he moved to Thailand to become a monk. Now, 48 years later, Betts is known as Ajahn Brahmavamso Mahathera—Ajahn Brahm for short.

“He impressed me because his method was simple and it worked for me,” Ajahn Brahm told Tricycle. Today, Ajahn Brahm teaches all around the world and is the abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery and the spiritual director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia.
https://tricycle.org/magazine/nai-boonman/
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by frank k »

edit: note to samvara, I thought I was correcting some misunderstanding of yours, but I believe the misunderstanding is coming from someone else on the thread you quoted.

But what you did say is Brahm is teaching a samadhi he learned from samatha trust. It would help if people stop calling redefined jhānas based on Vism (or extremely similar to it) by the Buddha's sutta definition of
"jhāna", which clearly is different.

Sam Vara wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 10:01 pm ...
I think people get caught on Ajahn Brahms word choices and features give a point.
I believe Ajahn Brahm wanted to say is this,
https://ajahnchah.org/book/Clarity_Insight1.php wrote:You might hear a sound, but it won't distract your concentration. There is the hearing of the sound, but the experience is as if you don't hear anything.
Yeah, if to read by yourself things are different than rumors. Pretty sure people will continue as usual thinking brahm teaches senses off jhana by its deaf meaning..
...
[/quote]

Ajahn Brahm is most definitely teaching something different than what the suttas says and his teacher Ajahn Chah says.
He unequivocally says you can not hear sounds in his "jhana", nor can you feel any mosquito bites. The 5 senses are divorced from the mind.

What ajhan Chah teaches, as you quoted, is in line with the suttas, that one's upekkha (equanimous observation) in the 4 jhanas is regarding the reaction and observations from the 6 sense doors, as opposed to upekkha in the formless attianments (MN 137) which has upekkha based on singleness instead of 4 jhānas nanatta (diversity) upekkha.

Further, brahm says there is no will/intention in his "jhanas", you're in a frozen stupor locked up until the time you've predetermined to emerge, just like Vism. That of course contradicts MN 111, which has cetana, attention in all 7 perception attainments.

One wonders what sati and sampajano and upekkha are doing in ajahn Brahm's jabrama jhana. They're some broken blind and deaf version of sati and sampajano.
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by Sam Vara »

frank k wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:10 am edit: note to samvara, I thought I was correcting some misunderstanding of yours, but I believe the misunderstanding is coming from someone else on the thread you quoted.
Thanks. :anjali:
But what you did say is Brahm is teaching a samadhi he learned from samatha trust.
Not even that, really. Just that it might pay to look at the different types of meditation he has studied (samatha, and that taught by Ajahn Chah) in order to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of what he teaches.
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by auto »

frank k wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:10 am Ajahn Brahm is most definitely teaching something different than what the suttas says and his teacher Ajahn Chah says.
maybe check video where he talks how the senses go off. Its hard to tell if he uses allegory or actually means senses are off.

brahm wrote:just like when you've got the fans of the air-con going, after a while you can't hear it anymore because it is constant, because it doesn't change.. because it is still.
If namarupa doesn't change, its corresponding consciousness turns off.
So what do we do with the body? First of all we sit still, we don't move.. so because we don't move, the legs disappear, the arms disappear the head disappears,.. you know what's left moving <inhales in and out> Your breath.
..That's why the breath happens whether you seek for it or not, but everything else finishes the breath is the thing which is moving. So the job in meditation is to watch the breath and calm it down.. until you get to the stage where the in-breath and the out-breath are just about the same you can't make any distinction, because you can't make any distinction between the in and out breath its so even.. and nothing is changing and the breath disappears. As its supposed to.. because nothing is happening. So the namarupa corresponding to physical sense consciousness stops.
So the consciousness stops. The two are dependent on each other.
If sense consciousness got nothing to be conscious of then the consciousness stops. You've turned off the five sense consciousnesses.
in abhidhamma terms, the sense consciousness ceases after it has transmitted the sense impression to the next consciousness.. which determines whether the object is good or bad and then there is javana impulsive consciousness enjoying the taste of the sense object. The javana is appana citta, in case of jhana.
---
Five sense object can arrive to the mind door, where then patibhaga nimitta cuts off the life-continuum, if jhana is realized. The 5 sense-consciousness doesn't arise at all, instead hadaya(heart mind) vatthu arises.
Guess what, you still can see, because you have the sense organ object, just the sense organ consciousness is absent.

What brahm talks about could be this,
If the object is slight intensity then the citta what tries to observe the object is not precisely known and consequently no javana moment happen..
I think he conflates couple things.
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by auto »

frank k wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:10 am What ajhan Chah teaches, as you quoted, is in line with the suttas, that one's upekkha (equanimous observation) in the 4 jhanas is regarding the reaction and observations from the 6 sense doors, as opposed to upekkha in the formless attianments (MN 137) which has upekkha based on singleness instead of 4 jhānas nanatta (diversity) upekkha.
In case of jhana, there is mind door where the 5+1 sense object arrives and mind stream arises. The 5 sense adverting consciousness, what would lead consciousness stream towards 5 sense door, is the manovinnana. Manovinnana is there the 5 sense adverting consciousness.
So, you can see, but its not the kamajavana citta what is tasted. Its how i currently understand it. I think it simply boils down to whether you are aware or not when enjoying.
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Re: Anyone attained vism/brahm style hard jhana?

Post by auto »

frank k wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:10 am Further, brahm says there is no will/intention in his "jhanas", you're in a frozen stupor locked up until the time you've predetermined to emerge, just like Vism. That of course contradicts MN 111, which has cetana, attention in all 7 perception attainments.

One wonders what sati and sampajano and upekkha are doing in ajahn Brahm's jabrama jhana. They're some broken blind and deaf version of sati and sampajano.
there isn't intension, means you can use the intent to the extent it is still manovinnana operating, you can't do any action what would cut this lineage and causing the return to worldly living.
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