Anyhow. To the meat and beans. Here’s the following. From AN 10.72.8
From DN 33.Mendicants, there are these ten thorns. What ten? Relishing company is a thorn for someone who loves seclusion. Focusing on the beautiful feature of things is a thorn for someone pursuing the meditation on ugliness. Seeing shows is a thorn to someone restraining the senses. Lingering in the neighborhood of females is a thorn to celibacy. Sound is a thorn to the first absorption. Placing the mind and keeping it connected are a thorn to the second absorption. Rapture is a thorn to the third absorption. Breathing is a thorn to the fourth absorption. Perception and feeling are a thorn to the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling. Greed, hate, and delusion are thorns.
So, I’m already on the side of the “conscious jhana practitioner” and this contraction would be solved if it said “sense perceptions” are a thorn to the first absorption. But it doesn’t.Nine progressive cessations. For someone who has attained the first absorption, sensual perceptions have ceased.
Is it possible that the translation might be “sense desires” as opposed to “sense perceptions”? After all, a prerequisite for entering jhana number one is to be “secluded from sense desires”?