nirodh27 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 1:12 pm
BrokenBones wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 3:52 am
I would say it highlights problems he has with her conclusions rather than the approach she hints at taking (I've only skimmed it). I say hints at because I've not seen written down her actual approach to meditation.
I had the time to read the document, I will share some notes:
Keren Arbel:
“the fourth jhāna should be recognized as the actualization of wisdom,” as it is through its attainment that one “might finally break ignorance completely and awaken the mind”
I would argue that the notion that the jhānas have delusive power is quite problematic. On the contrary, they seem to have the uttermost potential to eradicate delusion completely.
Analayo
Such a proposition is difficult to reconcile with passages in the early discourses that highlight the potentially deluding nature of absorption experiences.
I've read the suggested pages of Analayo and the very few passages that he cites are mainly about the possibility of revert back after the experience of Jhana, with the four famous similes that are also in the agamas and I think I've copied-pasted elsewhere here on Dhammawheel. Jhanas are not definitive and if one goes back to talk, to enjoy company the "jhana effect" can dissolve as well as the wisdom, which means that all the path factors reverts back. Since Keren Arbel doesn't speak about the jhanas being liberation itself, but something that inclines you and that has potential (dictionary: "having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future") to eradicate delusion, I don't think that this critique stands at all. If we take the cook simile everything is in line: it is like a cook that doesn't look at the preferences of his master, that forgets, that is superficial and he loses his wealth (both the jhanas and sati-sampajanno).
Other points of Analayo are that one can attach to jhana or think that is liberation. Ok, it is good to point out, but the fact itself that one can confuse jhanas with liberation can mean that there's already a great deal of realization and wisdom inside them. That jhanas are the actualization of the wisdom of the meditator is another key point that is testimonied by the fact that every jhana requires wisdom and in third and fourth there's sati-sampajanno. Still, there's still a step from jhanas to the destruction of the asavas, only there the break of ignorance is really complete.
The conclusion of Analayo:
Needless to say, this does not imply that absorption does not have much to offer for progress on the path to awakening. The point I am making is only that, to offer this contribution, absorption needs to be combined with insight and in particular to be practiced without giving rise to attachment.
This is well-explained in MA102. First with yoniso manasikara you get insight, then in first jhana you strenghten insight and get new insights from the (new) point of view of renunciation, that seems to me a perfect place to deepen the understanding of the Dhamma (MA102 speaks about thoughts in accordance with the Dhamma). The nature of third and fourth jhana I think is not very clear from the suttas, I'm inclined to think that those are description of states that can be mantained outside formal meditation, but I have no certainty. Still, on a reading that is not the one of one-pointedness at minimum first jhana can be combined with insight with a new vantage point.
This explains why there can be insight during a Dhamma talk, that is Simply the Vitakka&Vicara of another person. To not get attached to the Jhanas is a good idea, and the passages seems to imply that the main reason is that one can still be prey of Dukkha, which of course is true since one can revert back. At the same time we cannot negate that when one arrives to a level of renunciation of the fourth jhana, have a celestial experience of the world and a strong inclination to the Dhamma, so it is unlikely that it will revert back and wisdom is there, is actualized in the behaviour and perception of the meditator.
For the discovery of jhanas, I don't think that we can rely too much on the historical accounts in the suttas (especially discussions with jains that cab be later apologetic addictions) and I think that many practices were called jhanas at a time and were practices very different from one and another (like the mortification practices of the Buddha pre-awakening, those were called jhanas as well).
What is important is the unique usage and progression and the significance given by the Buddha. To use that pleasure in the peculiar ways and goals the Buddha prescribed and highlighted. Since Sati is recollection of the teachings, the jhanas of the Buddha are de facto unique precisely because the right view behind them is unique. That is all that matters for me. The pleasure of renunciation per se cannot be a peculiar discovery of the Buddha (a significant discovery is the attachments to ditthis as a form of suffering, while before everyone was in search of acquiring selves hoping of getting happiness), but it is still used, presented and understood from the peculiar and innovative point of view of the Dhamma.
From this perspective, it is unsurprising to find that the awakening factors also cover the territory of tranquility. It does not follow, however, that their cultivation can be equated with absorption attainment.
The cultivation of the seven factors and the jhanas are clearly linked, but there's value in Analayo's critique, apart from the fact that I don't remember such a strong statement from Arbel, but nonethless:
Whereas three of the seven awakening factors have a calm-ing effect on the mind (tranquility, concentration, and equanim-ity/equipoise),119 another three have the opposite effect, as they rather arouse the mind (investigation-of-dharmas, energy, and joy). The last three have in fact no proper counterpart in the standard description of the four absorptions.
Arbel (2017: 106 and 107) proposes to relate investigation-of-dharmas and energy to the task of establishing seclusion from sensuality and unwholesome states, that is, seclusion from the hindrances. The main problem with this proposal, which is anyway not without additional difficulties, 120 is that progress through the four absorptions requires the previous establishing of such seclusion. If these two awakening factors find no better match than in the context of such preliminary
work, it follows that they lack a proper counterpart in the process of actually attaining the four absorptions.
Still, the conclusion
The above considerations make it rather unconvincing to consider the four absorptions and the seven awakening factors to represent “parallel models of spiritual ascension” or “differ-ent formulations of the same spiritual process.” Despite some overlap, these are different modalities of meditation practice.
is unconvincing in the last part, I don't see "different modalities of practice", as Analayo suggests. The parallel is there, but simply not complete. In fact the Sati > Dhamma-vicaya > Energy is the preliminary work of MA102. The progression is the same, but Jhanas simply starts after the first three steps, before there's yoniso manasikara or, for some, satipatthana. MA102, again, describe the process in detail.
Regarding the main thesis that absorption is a form of lib-
erating insight in its own right, an actual occurrence of this
idea can be found in a Dīgha-nikāya discourse. In this case, all
extant parallels support this presentation. The actual proposition
takes the form of considering each of the four absorptions to
be equivalent to the attainment of Nirvana here and now, and
here this is meant not just in a relative sense.
The Pāli discourse in question is the Brahmajāla-sutta. In
agreement with its parallels, it attributes these four views to
non-Buddhist practitioners.124 Such ideas are deemed to be as
mistaken as a fifth position, discussed in the same context in the
Brahmajāla-sutta and its parallels, according to which the at-
tainment of Nirvana here and now is to be found in the enjoy-
ment of sensual objects. This clear-cut indication confirms the
impression that an otherwise justified attempt by Arbel (2017)
to step out of the rigid division between tranquility and insight,
found in later traditions, has gone overboard and led to an even
more unbalanced position, by way of subsuming everything else
under the supposedly overarching importance of absorption.
Here Analayo simply does a straw-man, since one thing is to say that jhana
"inclines you to Nibbana",
"jhanas are conducive to awakening"
"I have come to understand the attainment of the four jhanas as the outcome of both
calming the mind and developing insight into the nature of experience, and that which
allow the practitioner to further de-condition ignorance and unwholesome mental
tendencies. In other words, they are an integral dimension of the path to awakening".
another is to equate them with Nibbana itself, which Arbel, if I remember correctly, never suggests. I hope to have misread this or missed something big, because I really don't like what Analayo did here.