Just Sound?

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Pondera
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Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2011 10:02 pm

Just Sound?

Post by Pondera »

Noticed the following thing while listening to dhamma. Plug here for Suttacentral Voice. AMAZING way to listen to dhamma if you have spare time, a vehicle, Bluetooth and a phone.

Anyhow. To the meat and beans. Here’s the following. From AN 10.72.8
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.
From DN 33.
Nine progressive cessations. For someone who has attained the first absorption, sensual perceptions have ceased.
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.

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”?

🧐
Like the three marks of conditioned existence, this world in itself is filthy, hostile, and crowded
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