Saw this post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Sikh/comments/jz9git/how_does_intercession_work_in_sikhi/

So I am curious if Buddhism has intercessory prayers and Sainthood petitions like some Christians do?

I discovered this recent writing by Ven. Ṭhānissaro that attempts to disprove some of the points I made in my essay about the jhānas (not sure if deliberately), and so I decided to address the main remarks made there because it serves as an opportunity to better articulate and expand upon the essence of what I originally wrote. It’s not necessary to be familiar with the original essay to comprehend the following.

The longstanding habit of translating jhāna as “absorption” has been called into question, largely because the verb jhāyati is often translated in a more generic way as “meditate.” From this, it’s been argued that, because the verb has a generic meaning, the noun should, too.

But even if we ignore the argument’s weak logic, we can note that its starting point—the persistent habit of translating jhāyati as “meditate”—is itself questionable. There’s nothing in the suttas to indicate that jhāyati, used in a positive sense in the context of meditation, means anything other than specifically, “do jhāna.”

A number of instances indicate that it does have a generic meaning. In the account of MN 36 of the bodhisatta's period of austerities, it's said that he thought to himself at one point: “yannūnāhaṃ appāṇakaṃ jhānaṃ jhāyeyyaṃ”. This expression uses both the noun jhāna and the verb jhāyati in a context that most certainly does not refer to the standard four jhānas, since at that time he had not yet acknowledged those states as the way to enlightenment. “Appāṇaka jhāna” cannot refer to the fourth jhāna, also evidenced by how he had clearly not reached the genuine cessation of breathing, but was rather holding his breath as a form of austerity. Similarly, in DN 19, the brahmin Mahāgovinda thinks: “yannūnāhaṃ karuṇaṃ jhānaṃ jhāyeyyaṃ”, and we know from the Suttas that even though the four brahmavihāras are a form of samādhi that can fulfill the same purpose as the four jhānas, they’re not the same.

In AN 11.9, jhāyati is used in a generic sense throughout, and there it certainly does not refer to the jhānas only, since the formless dimensions are mentioned (which are not jhānas; they’re misclassified as such by the Commentaries, not the Suttas). Similarly, MN 108 states that the Buddha “did not praise all jhāna”, which there is no reason to interpret as meaning that he does not approve of some “types” of the four jhānas (a concept that, as we shall see, is unfounded). It means he does not approve of all types of meditation, for the lack of a better word.

Second, even though the suttas do devote a lot of space to the practice of using thought to abandon unskillful qualities and to develop skillful qualities, that doesn’t mean that such a practice should be called jhāna. The actual fact of the matter, as we will see, is that the suttas describe this practice as a step prior to jhāna (DN 2; AN 10:99), and not as jhāna itself.

There is some truth to this. We see in MN 19 that the Buddha had to go a step further than mere wholesome thinking in order to enter the first jhāna, and we see the exact same situation implied in AN 3.121. There is a point where only wholesome thoughts are left, but the mind is not yet fully appeased. However, “composing the mind internally” does not mean becoming absorbed or immersed, but the complete opposite. Demonstrating this is the main purpose of this writing.

Fourth, and most graphically, the fact that doing jhāna would involve, not thinking, but actual absorption in physical and mental sensations, is shown in the similes we’ve quoted above: The meditator is said to pervade the body with feelings of pleasure to the point where, in the third jhāna, nothing in the body is unpervaded, and then moving on to a state in which the body is filled with a pure bright awareness. It’s hard to interpret this simply as a process of thinking, and not to see it as a state of full-body absorption in bodily and mental sensations.

Pervading the body with the pleasure of jhāna is indeed not a matter of ordinary thinking, but it’s a stretch to assume that it therefore must be the result of immersion in physical sensations. It’s neither.

Firstly, any sensation at all (which should not be confused with feeling or vedanā), no matter how internal it is, has to fall within the external sense field of tactile phenomena (i.e., the fifth string of sensuality). This is evidenced by how the Buddha chose to describe the 6 internal sense bases as “void, empty, and hollow”, comparing them to an empty village that gets attacked by bandits (the six external sense bases). If the 5th internal sense base could be outlined by certain sensations, it would have a specific substance defining it, and thus it wouldn’t be “void”.

The designation “whole body” in the jhāna similes of the bathman, etc., should not be interpreted as primarily spatial, in which case the instruction to pervade the whole body will be misunderstood as some sort of body scan exercise, as it often is. The body is a phenomenological totality that can only be approached as a unity, so even if one suffuses every single pore and internal point where sensations of touch are felt with pleasant energies, that’s still not the whole body. The sum of its parts does not equal the whole. That totality is also what one becomes increasingly separated from in the jhāna progression, which is why one gets to relate to it more and more equanimously, culminating in the fourth jhāna where the mind has separated itself from the most foundational aspect of the body, which is breathing. The totality of the body is not in itself spatial; it is that because of which the world, including space, is there to begin with.

Now, in the case of the first jhāna which is the most pivotal, we need only look at the standard description of the practice that precedes it to see what pītisukha is supposed to result from: the relief of no longer being liable to the mental burden of the five hindrances. The mind disentangles and becomes separated from the pull of unwholesome states once they’ve been sufficiently seen as troublesome and unwanted, and it’s even said that the joy arises when one considers their absence—a mental, reflective affair—and not that the pleasure arises at the bodily level first. And, as the same description says further on, which occurs over fifty times in the Nikāyas, it’s when the mind is already joyous that the body calms down. Not the other way around.

One who has not clearly seen with right understanding the unsatisfactoriness and peril of sensuality is said to be incapable of entering the first jhāna (AN 6.73), as this is the tool for giving rise to pītisukha. If the origin of pītisukha were bodily, we would expect the Buddha to say that one can’t attain the first jhāna if one doesn’t know how to work with bodily sensations, and there is nothing in the texts to indicate this. Pervading the body with rapture and pleasure comes after the attainment of jhāna, not before.

We should also note that being “not of the flesh” (nirāmisa) is one of the five characteristics of sammāsamādhi (AN 5.27). There certainly is physical rapture in the jhānas, but, again, it is a symptom of the mind having successfully transcended the hindrances. Bodily pleasure is a palpable proxy for a mind properly detached from unwholesome states; it’s not beneficial in and of itself, and it’s unjustified to assume that because certain pleasant physical sensations in a meditative state don’t arise based on outside objects or people, they automatically cannot fall within the five cords of sensual pleasure, and that delight in them is thus not unskillful. Unskillfulness depends solely on one’s attitude, and not on the characteristics of a given experience.

The pleasure of jhāna arises and intensifies because one is cultivating a dispassionate and disinterested attitude in regard to the entire domain of the body. The suffering and burden of craving that was there before has been lifted (hence the Buddha’s comparison with relief from debt, illness, etc.), and this relief has an acute and substantial physical counterpart. If gaining more pleasure becomes the main goal, the dispassion that was the source the relief is no longer the priority, and you’ve fallen back to the five hindrances, or never surmounted them.

The simile of the bathman kneading the bath powder to the perfect moisture points to the fact that if you begin to internally relish the pleasure of the first jhāna, it’s too wet. If the pleasure is not there, it’s too dry, and it shows that mentally you’re not sustaining the perspective that keeps the mind detached from the hindrances. The middle point is where the mind is indifferent to the pleasure, and yet it’s doing everything right for it to manifest, i.e., regarding desire for any bodily experience as the taking on a burdensome debt.

Consider also how in AN 6.63, sensuality is defined as passionate intention (saṅkapparāga) for the likeable and agreeable objects of the five senses: the pleasant bodily sensations (“touches cognizable by the body”) that do factually arise in jhāna are not magically exempted from this, and if the mind is thirsting after those, it’s not withdrawn from sensuality. Conversely, to reiterate, it also means that the presence of agreeable bodily sensations in jhāna does not intrinsically make it sensual, because if it is true jhāna, the mind will not be passionately inclining towards them.

This is why it wasn’t immediately obvious to the Buddha that the pleasure of jhāna should not be feared. He would’ve been apprehensive of the physical pleasure in and of itself, overlooking the fact that the attitude of the mind towards it is different from that of any other pleasure (i.e., thirsting for more). Those who enter the first jhāna are already said to be “hungerless, extinguished, crossed over, and gone beyond in that respect” (nicchāta nibbutā tiṇṇā pāraṅgatā tadaṅgena, AN 9.33. See also AN 9.47 and other repetitions in that chapter that compare all of the jhānas to Nibbāna). The notion that there can be hungering after the pleasure of the first jhāna—where all such unskillful resolves have already ceased without remainder as per MN 78—and that it can even become tiresome eventually, blatantly contradicts the Suttas.

What’s more, the suttas frequently describe the fourth jhāna as the basis for developing such psychic powers as the ability to read minds and to recollect past lifetimes. This would be impossible if the fourth jhāna were simply a thinking process of abandoning unskillful qualities and developing skillful ones. But it would be entirely possible that these psychic powers could develop from a still, full-body awareness.

It’s much less reasonable to expect absorption to result in psychic powers. Zooming out of experience, which is what sammāsamādhi is about, rather than zooming further and further into it, is what allows the mind to wield power over what it’s now fully detached from, and to no longer be limited by concerns of the present to the point where it can remember previous lives. It also guarantees that those aren't hallucinations, which easily result from absorption.

So given that the one-pointed oblivious definition of jhāna requires that the Buddha was either devious or incompetent in his teachings—using “body” to mean not-body, and “thinking” to mean not-thinking—we have to reject that definition of what jhāna entails.

This is correct. But the distinction between absorption in one fine point and in whole-body pleasure is not at all fundamental. There is no reason to assume the latter is any more conducive to the right kind of knowledge and vision than the former, and, as we’ve already seen, the latter can easily fall within the scope of sensuality, while the former drifts more into the domain of delusion.

In other words, we have to assume that vitakka and vicāra have the same meaning both in the first jhāna and in the stage prior to it. This means that the difference between the first jhāna and the stage prior to it is not a matter of thinking and not thinking. As we’ll see, it’s more a matter of what you’re thinking about and why.

In the second stage, the first jhāna, you engage in enough vitakka and vicāra focused on the theme of your concentration to maximize the pleasure and rapture you can gain from staying with that theme and to spread that pleasure and rapture throughout the body.

The implication here seems to be that even though vitakka and vicāra are the same, in jhāna they are limited to a specific topic, and this is not the case. It is said in AN 4.77 that the “range of one in jhāna” (jhāyissa jhānavisayo) is one of the four inconceivables. This refers to the fact that even in the first jhāna there are no constraints as to the specifics of where the mind moves (in this case through vitakkavicāra). The mind has achieved the first stage of limitlessness. There is no fixed answer to the question “What is someone in the first jhāna thinking about?”, and yet the mind is undoubtedly unified and undistracted within what used to distract it.

We even see from the Buddha’s own account that changing postures during jhāna practice poses no difficulty. AN 4.12 explains why this is the case, showing also that the body can be calm and undisturbed even during movement. As already explained, this is because this physical calm is a byproduct of the right mental attitude that’s been cultivated long enough. It’s stated as well that one who cannot bear all of the five senses, not just the tactile faculty, would not be able to enter upon right samādhi (AN 5.113). If we look carefully, we find that most approaches to meditation revolve around cocooning the mind away from the five senses well beyond what the Suttas say is necessary, which is physical seclusion with virtue established beforehand. It’s only the degree of the cocooning, what’s happening within it, and the narrative behind it that can vary. Whether you enclose the mind in a tiny vial or in a larger gallon-sized jug, you are still limiting it, and this is the opposite of what the Buddha encourages:

“Sandha, meditate like a thoroughbred, not like a wild colt.

And how does a wild colt meditate? A wild colt, tied up by the feeding trough, meditates: ‘Fodder, fodder!’ Why is that? Because it doesn’t occur to the wild colt tied up by the feeding trough: ‘What task will the horse trainer have me do today? How should I respond?’ Tied up by the feeding trough it meditates: ‘Fodder, fodder!’

In the same way, take a certain untrained person who has gone to the forest, the root of a tree, or an empty hut... They meditate relying on earth, water, fire, and air. They meditate relying on the extent of infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, or neither-perception-nor-non-perception. They meditate relying on this world or the other world. They meditate relying on what is seen, heard, thought, cognized, attained, sought, or explored by the mental faculty. That’s how an untrained person meditates.

And how does a thoroughbred meditate? A fine thoroughbred, tied up by the feeding trough, doesn’t meditate: ‘Fodder, fodder!’ Why is that? Because it occurs to the fine thoroughbred tied up by the feeding trough: ‘What task will the horse trainer have me do today? How should I respond?’ >Tied up by the feeding trough they don’t meditate: ‘Fodder, fodder!’ For that fine thoroughbred regards the use of the goad as a debt, a bond, a loss, a misfortune.

In the same way, take a certain fine thoroughbred person who has gone to the forest, the root of a tree, or an empty hut …They don’t meditate relying on earth, water, fire, and air. They don’t meditate relying on the extent of infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, or neither-perception-nor-non-perception. They don’t meditate relying on this world or the other world. They don’t meditate relying on what is seen, heard, thought, cognized, attained, sought, or explored by the mental faculty. Yet they do meditate.

When a fine thoroughbred meditates like this, the gods together with Indra, Brahmā, and the Progenitor worship them from afar:

‘Homage to you, O thoroughbred! Homage to you, supreme among men! We don’t understand what your meditation relies on.’” —AN 11.9

Bhikkhus, being judicious and recollected, develop limitless samādhi. —AN 5.27

When he sees a sight with the eye, if it’s agreeable he doesn’t harbor passion for it, if it’s disagreeable he’s not averse to it. He lives with recollection of the body established and with a limitless mind. And he understands as it is the liberation by mind and liberation by understanding where those bad, detrimental qualities cease without remainder. —MN 38

To shed more light on this matter, let’s take a closer look at MN 19. There’s one subtle and often overlooked qualification that occurs there regarding the type of thinking the Buddha used to discern the danger in unwholesome states, and which he concluded would bar his mind from fully calming down:

“Still, thinking and pondering along with it (anuvitakkayato anuvicārayato) for too long would tire my body. And when the body is tired, the mind is bothered. And when the mind is bothered, it’s far from composure. So I established, settled, unified, and composed my mind internally. Why is that? So that my mind would not be bothered.”

The anu- prefix, added to both vitakka and vicāra, means “along with”. What this indicates is that even though those thoughts were skillful, they were still a form of the mind going “with the grain”—the five hindrances were still subtly in control. That striving was not something he could’ve skipped, however, but now that it has served its purpose, he goes on to “compose his mind internally”. It’s easy to assume that this means he simply shrunk the scope of vitakkavicāra and went on to limit it to something more specific such as the breath or thoughts of a particular subject. But this is not what the Sutta itself goes on to describe:

“Suppose it’s the last month of summer, when all the crops have been gathered within a village, and a cowherd must take care of the cattle. While at the root of a tree or in the open, he need only remember that the cattle are there. In the same way, I needed only to remember that those phenomena were there. My effort was roused up and steadfast, my recollection was established and lucid, my body was calm and unperturbed, and my mind was composed and collected. Quite disjoined from sensuality, disjoined from detrimental phenomena, with thinking and with pondering, with joy and comfort born of separation, I abided having entered upon the first jhāna.”

Note the comparison with the cattle being left to roam around and the cowherd no longer needing to constantly control them like before. The Buddha chose his similes carefully. This alludes to how, once coarse unskillful states have been reined in through active effort of contemplation, vitakkavicāra can now be left to roam freely as long as one is able to maintain recollection (sati) over those phenomena. This is how vitakkavicāra in the first jhāna is not constricted within any singular subject even though the mind is definitely unified. When mindfulness becomes imperturbable, the content of thoughts no longer matters, since it was not their content that induced the hindrances, but rather the lack of separation (viveka) from that content, and that separation is precisely what mindfulness creates—a vantage point, as it were. This is spelled out more explicitly in Madhyama Āgama 102, the Chinese parallel to MN 19, where the following description comes in place of the first jhāna:

Let me rather keep my mind in check within, continuously dwelling in inner tranquility, unified, having attained concentration, so that my mind will not be troubled. Thereafter I kept my mind in check within, continuously dwelling in inner tranquility, unified, having attained concentration, and my mind was no longer troubled. [If] a thought without sensual desire (ill will ... cruelty ...) arose in me, I further [allowed] thoughts to arise that were inclined toward the Dharma and in accordance with the Dharma. Why was that? [Because] I did not see that countless evil and unwholesome states would arise because of [such thoughts]. It is as in the last month of autumn, when the entire harvest has been collected, a cowherd boy sets the cows free in the uncultivated fields and is mindful of them, thinking, “My cows are there in the herd.” Why is that? Because the cowherd boy does not see that he would be scolded, beaten, or imprisoned for any trespassing. For this reason he is mindful of them thus, “My cows are there in the herd.”

The general nature of all thinking—the recognition that a thought is always a dhamma regardless of its content—is the place of unification of mind (cittekaggatā). To bring up AN 5.27 again, this is the other essential quality of proper samādhi that is not fulfilled by absorption: nothing needs to be held back, excluded, or controlled, and instead everything has been unified within the same overarching theme.

Furthermore, absorption of any kind by definition cannot qualify as “composing the mind internally”, since anything that one can absorb oneself in will be a sight, sound, smell, taste, tactile object, or mental image, and these are all external (the six external sense fields). And if we carefully consider what sati is even in ordinary situations, we will see that in a sense it is already not bound to any specific sense object, and samādhi is of course nothing but a solid and imperturbable mindfulness:

Imagine you’re driving and are about to enter a highway that has speed limit, and you want to be mindful not to exceed it. How do you go about this? Where is the quality of minfulness there? Is it in intently paying attention to every muscle in your leg lengthening and contracting as you operate the pedals, implying that if you stop doing that, you will exceed the speed limit? Or is it a broader awareness at the back of your mind that would remain even when you’re focused on something else, such as talking with the passenger or listening to the radio? Sure enough, you may from time to time focus your attention on the speed meter and adjust your pressure on the gas pedal or hit the brakes, but all of this would be a result of being mindful not to exceed the speed limit. And you can’t pin this mindfulness down to some specific sense object because, even when your focus is taken by something else, it’s still there. And it will remain there, at the back of your mind without needing to actively refresh it, for as long as you don’t get overly captivated by any particular thing, mental or physical, within the field of experience. If we also consider the nature of what a memory (another translation for sati) is, we’ll see that it’s something that contexualizes something else that we directly perceive with our senses.

Similarly, when the Buddha says that upon composing his mind internally he needed only to be mindful that those phenomena were there, it means that he simply needed to not allow his attention to become narrowed by anything in particular, like the cowherd doesn’t need to chase after any individual cow anymore and can instead leisurely sit at the root of a tree, keeping sight of the whole herd from afar without forgetting about it altogether. Not by coincidence, this is also the principle of sense restraint, which is said to give rise to joy (SN 35.94, SN 35.97).

The reason why even though he had purified his mind from coarse unskillful thoughts it was still not at peace is that disturbance is due to “taking up” (upadhi), and particular unwholesome thoughts are only a secondary byproduct of this. So, even if you stop all deliberate defiled acts of body, speech, and thought and volitionally think only skillful thoughts, the taking up of some aspects of your experience will still be there, and this can only be remedied by a sufficient degree of mindfulness (in the proper sense explained here: a background recognition that expands the mind beyond particularities). Thus it is said that the first jhāna is born out of being detached (viveka) from upadhi or taking up.

As seen from AN 9.34, the pleasure of each jhāna is determined by the extent of affliction that it respectively transcends. The relief is determined by the old burden, which previously used to be “everything”. From the previous point of view, it can be said that nothing is felt because the mind now abides disconnected, looking down from above at what used to be everything, and that is pleasant. It’s not a new pleasure generated from scratch that steals the show from what was there before, and in this Sutta this is said to be the principle behind the pleasure of Nibbāna. In the same way as not feeling the burden of the five aggregates and not being confined by them while the five aggregates are there is the pleasure of Nibbāna for an Arahant, no longer feeling the burden of lust for the five cords of sensual pleasure and not being confined by them while they’re still perceived is the pleasure of the first jhāna (ditto for the others) and this is why even this can be sufficient to attain Arahantship if there is sufficient wisdom. Mindfulness in the proper sense is what enables all of this.

‘Sensual pleasures in the present and in the future, sensual perceptions in the present and in the future; both of these are Māra’s domain, Māra’s realm, and Māra’s territory. They conduce to bad, unskillful qualities such as longing, ill will, and impulsivity. And they create an obstacle for a noble disciple training here. Why don’t I abide with an abundant, expanded mind, having surmounted the world and stabilized the mind? Then I will have no more bad, unskillful qualities such as longing, ill will, and impulsivity. And by giving them up my mind will be boundless, limitless, and well developed.’ —MN 106

(...)

From that, it’s been further argued that because the suttas devote more space to the practice of using thought to abandon unskillful qualities and to develop skillful qualities than it does to absorptive practices like mindfulness of breathing, that kind of thought most deserves to be called right concentration.

There are no “absorptive practices” in the Suttas, and Ānāpānasati is no exception. This becomes clear enough if we, having put aside all the baggage of modern interpretations, carefully consider what sati is to begin with as above, and why the Buddha might have chosen that term instead of something more in line with the idea of absorption.

The breath serves as particularly suitable anchor that prevents absorption, since it perpetually and inevitably underlies every moment of our experience. No matter how captivated you become in an object of your attention, whether physical or mental, all you need to restore the overview of the totality of your present experience is remember that you’re breathing—that sits “at the bottom” of everything else. At the basic level, this enables the mind to regain perspective over the ongoing movements of vitakkavicāra; it doesn’t replace them. It allows for discernment of paṭiccasamuppāda or simultaneous inter-dependence too, which is said to be the cornerstone of the Dhamma: it becomes clear that you can only have even the most personal and dear of thoughts and perceptions because you continue to breathe, which is in itself not a guarantee.

If, however, you turn the breath into a preoccupation of its own to focus on, the entire purpose of it is lost. You are no longer mindful in the right sense, and your mind is now constricted again, by something else. The point is to achieve balance, where neither the breath nor particular thoughts and sense objects are allowed to take the mind’s full focus, and this is what keeps it expanded. This aligns with the general principle of mindfulness of the body, which is said to be like a strong post that keeps any of the six senses from dragging all of the others into their respective domains, while also making the mind limitless. Similarly, the final result of ānāpānasati is that the six senses “sit down” and no longer pull towards or away from disagreeable objects which are still there, and not that some or all of the senses fall asleep. Mindfulness of breathing is therefore something that one can maintain one’s whole waking life if one is diligent, as instructed in SN 47.20. If it has been fully developed, it would effortlessly remain up until one’s last breath. If the breath were meant to be an object of focus, this would be unrealistic, and would seriously hamper one’s ability to function.

There are several other tangible examples in the Suttas that illustrate the general nature of sati, and how no absorption or concentration involved or associated with it. Among them are AN 6.19 and AN 6.26, and both of these tie in with AN 11.9 quoted above, where right meditation is said to be the opposite direction of intent observation and mechanical repetition. AN 6.26 even contains the same phrase found at the beginning of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, and it is clear that none of those recollections are things that one can fixate one’s attention on in the way the satipaṭṭhānas are typically practiced. In SN 3.13, it's not hard to see that for the king practicing mindfulness meant keeping a broader perspective while eating.

The sensible, unbiased conclusion is not that the Buddha taught a different type of mindfulness that is so different from the general standard that it deserves a different name altogether, but that absorptive practices are simply a misinterpretation enabled by the ambiguity of the texts, a failure even by respected scholars to take the entire canon into account and try to extract a single, internally coherent message from it—which ought to be possible according to the Buddha himself—and perhaps most strongly by people’s natural tendency to lose perspective of what matters whenever something happens to feel good.

Moreover, increased powers of observation and focus, which is what absorptive practices develop, is not what allows for full understanding of the five aggregates. In fact, whenever you become absorbed in anything, you forget the form, feeling, perceptions, intentions, and consciousness that are the basis of that experience you are now immersed in, and that unseen basis is where the sense of self finds footing, not in what you observe in front of you. For example, if you allow yourself to become fixated on what you’re seeing, that automatically feeds into the tacit assumption that you are your eyes, i.e. form. If, on the other hand, you don’t focus too much on anything specific while sights are there, it becomes possible to consider how your eyes are also objects in the world, and that there is nothing ultimately preventing those eyes from deteriorating to the point where you’d lose your eyesight. The same applies of course for all the other sense bases.

This is how impermanence and the grave error of taking things as “mine” becomes revealed at the fundamental level. This will not happen through any perceptions, no matter how detailed, extraordinary, or refined, that are gleaned through direct observation (which, knowingly or not, only further maintains the tacit assumption of a separate “observer” behind the observation). And, in line with the above points, it is this same sense of being the center of experience that generates the burden of the five hindrances, so it’s wrong to think that observation is inadequate only in the context of vipassanā and not samatha.

We can thus begin to see how exactly the jhānas support understanding and intrinsically slant the mind towards Nibbāna and letting go in a much more profound way than soothing it through almost arbitrary means: the more one abides in the mere first jhāna, the more one is familiarizing the mind from a way of regarding things in which it is no longer the agent behind the senses. No matter the strength of one’s willpower to renounce sensual pleasures, until one is able to gain that separation from the senses and becomes used to it to the point where it becomes much more pleasant than wallowing in sensual preoccupations, one is liable to succumb to the pull of the five cords of sensuality. This is the true meaning of this famous statement.

Finally, a few remarks on the so called “Jhāna Wars” that are prevalent these days:

One of the major culprits of this debate is that people assume that almost any pleasant meditative experience can be called jhāna, and this is taking things the wrong way round. Jhāna is the most refined aspect of the Middle Way, to the point that all the previous seven factors of the path are said to be its requisites (MN 117). Any given meditative state is either in line with that Middle Way, in which case it deserves to be called jhāna, or not, in which case it’s wrong samādhi. One of the most representative explanations of this middle way is found in MN 134 (and is said there to be fundamental to the spiritual life): one does not nurture longing for any item of the five aggregates that hasn’t yet arisen, nor does one become complacent with those that are present. As SN 1.1 puts it: you don’t push forward, but you don’t stand still either.

If you’re trying to get the pleasure of jhāna to arise and the current discomfort to cease (e.g., by focusing on something more pleasant like the breath), justifying that as a “wholesome craving”, you are longing for the future. If, on the other hand, you throw your hands up with the view that there is nothing to attain, don’t strive to free the mind from hindrances, and let your mind go wherever it wants in choiceless awareness, you allow yourself to be dragged along by presently arisen phenomena. This means that there is by definition only one “real” set of jhānas forming the 8th factor of the Noble Path, and only one way to achieve them: neither pushing forward, nor standing still, completely and to the full extent. This is why every true jhāna is always categorically wholesome.

What every approach to jhāna that gets compared in the ongoing debate does is arbitrarily justify some forms of pushing forward and some forms of standing still, meaning that craving is still there even if only subtly. The attained pleasure is not born of the temporary cessation of craving and appropriation, making it a temporary liberation of mind, and a way of “touching the deathless element with the body”, but simply a way of successfully gratifying one’s craving with something comparatively less detrimental than external pleasures. It is also not in line with the first factor of the path, right view, which recognizes that what you feel (vedanā, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral) at any given time is not the problem, but rather the simultaneously present craving to change what you feel in one way or the other.

How, then, do you then go by the middle? Mindfulness: you establish your mind in a broader context that will prevent you from being carried away by what is present, but, at the same time, since it exists in a different plane than thoughts and perceptions of the five senses, does not require replacing or interfering with them. Establishing and protecting that context requires effort, so it’s not a matter of total letting go to the point of negligence, but it’s not a strained effort either because any kind of strain only comes when you try to control the specifics of your present experience instead of your context towards it.

The right, balanced practice is not something you get to subjectively decide; it is predetermined by the nature and workings of experience itself. This is why the Buddha said the Dhamma is an ancient path that he discovered; he didn’t create or devise his own idiosyncratic Middle Way, and neither can anybody else.

The fact that the practice of jhāna is fundamentally about aligning oneself with the unchanging principle of the middle path and of right mindfulness, and not about the pleasure that secondarily results from it, can be seen from the otherwise inexplicable statements in this chapter of the Aṅguttara Nikāya. There it’s said that any form of contextualizing one’s experience taught by the Buddha, many having nothing directly to do with jhāna, would make one “not devoid of jhāna” if practiced even for a fingersnap, and the pleasure of jhāna will obviously not come in a fingersnap for anyone initially. The statement only holds if any of these practices is done properly, i.e., with the right mindfulness that contextualizes things instead of pushing them away and replacing them.

From what’s been said so far, it can also become clear why in the Buddha’s outline of the training (MN 107), jhāna comes up only at a late stage, and the first task is always virtue to develop virtue. He even said that for one who lacks virtue, the vital condition for samādhi is destroyed (AN 5.24).

Proper virtue is the most rudimentary application of the Middle Way. It’s not only about keeping the training rules externally unbroken, but also, paradoxically at first glance, about not clinging to them (MN 48). In other words, the attitude with which one keeps the precepts also needs to be rightly tuned: consistently saying “no” to all forms of misconduct without thereby saying “yes” to one’s saying no. You will inevitably have to cling to your virtue at first to make it spotless. But the goal is to be able to keep it perfectly without clinging to it. Otherwise, as the Suttas explicitly say, it won’t be the kind of virtue that can evolve into samādhi.

Lastly, it must be emphasized that the actual Sutta jhānas are not "lite jhānas". They are much more profound and transcendental, but in a different sense, than the most intensely fixed states of absorption regarded as jhāna today. Their profundity is owing to the subtlety, nuance, and quasi-paradoxical nature of the Middle Way: how, in the midst of ample movement, the mind can be still. In the midst of mundanity, the mind is established in the supramundane, and this is why they inevitably carry over to one’s normal life even if one doesn’t want them to.

I saw on Wikipedia article that even some academics question when the four noble truths were developed and added to the canon. I also wonder to what degree dependent origination as being 12 nidanas is a later revision

The list by bhante sujato on how early Buddhism differs from Theravada is pretty interesting. I'm sure some parts of the first 4 nikayas are older or newer than others. Have any academics tried to make a rough timeline of when texts were likely composed?

Perhaps just to make some things easier to comment on, I might propose these terminologies to discuss different parts of EBT based on the following differences in their views.

1. Deep or Lite Jhāna.
2. Something or nothing after parinibbāna.

EBT Something Lite
EBT Nothing Lite
EBT Something Deep
EBT Nothing Deep.

EBT Nothing Deep is aligned with classical Theravada except where they don’t recognize dry insight path is possible.

There are various teachers for each sect of EBT there. And it’s easy to see that other than EBT Nothing Deep who just wish to refer the sutta as the ultimate authority, the other 3 types of EBT use this opportunity to break away from commentaries to champion their respective views as detailed above. EBT Nothing Lite still aligns with the dry insight practice of classical Theravada, but EBT Something are totally stuck with wrong views of Nibbāna.

I am under the impression that early Buddhism, early Buddhist literature, early Buddhist texts (EBT), etc. make up a very small subset of the entire corpus of what is known today as “Buddhist literature” collectively.

How can one identify the full scope of this subset of early Buddhist literature in order to examine it more closely and deeply for oneself?

How can I examine something if I don’t even know what exactly it even is?

Can someone kindly help me identify what are all of the early Buddhist texts and literature that this community keeps referring to as “early Buddhism”?

There is a flair in the Buddhism subreddit called “Early Buddhism.”

Is it a sect just like Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, etc.?

Or even like Secular, Engaged, etc.?

Why or why not?

To what degree are various forms of “contemporary” Buddhism(s) contrary to and in accordance with “early” Buddhism?

In what way does a 'Buddhism of the Early Buddhist Texts' exist yet?

See: in what way does a 'Buddhism of the Early Buddhist Texts' exist yet?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ832y7n1bc

It is already:

a TOPIC held in mind in analysing Buddhist texts. See "how Theravada differs from Early Buddhism'

an APPROACH TO PRACTICE. See 'a swift pair of messengers'.

A CHANGE IN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR. See 'Bhikkhuni Vinaya Studies',

But is this 'distinction in outlook REFLECTED IN SOCIAL INSTITUTION,

like a Sangha or Self Identified Group of thinkers, like the DADA movement or the Green Party and Movement?

I am maybe waiting for bus that will never come.

Hi fellow EB enthusiasts & meditators! This is my first post here. I've read and reflected on the rules and even asked permission first to post this comment.

Have any of you experience with other Buddhist forums, especially, Dhamma Wheel? I was pretty active over there a few years back, but I gave it up. I don't want to bash those folks and I don't think revealing our usernames over there is necessary. I just like to reminisce a little bit. And I guess if we can criticize them constructively I'll participate, civil and respectful.

I believe my first exposure to EB from when I was reading to Thanissaros' Wings to Awakening which I believe was also the first Dharma book I ever read. Anyway, in the references I encountered Jayatilleke's *EB Theories of Knowledge," which kind of made me salivate as I'm also a huge reader and epistemology of science. But it also seemed a little obscure. It could still find a lot of stuff on the internet back then but I don't think that particular book was available like it is now.

But in search for it I was led to Gombrich's books and Sue Hamilton's *Identity & Experience", and then a little later I think John Peacock retreat I found online. And of course I was and contrasting Bikkhu Bodhi's and Thanissaros' go to translations, and hunting down scholarly articles and books on EB like the David's work, Johansson's *The Dynamic Psychology of EB," and Dube's *Crosscurrents in EB," and Sue's *EB: A New Approach," and Williams' & Tribes' Buddhist Thought. Then I discovered Analayo's work, and of course Ajanh Brahm's and Sujato's contributions and translations. I even started to learn Pali. But somewhere in the middle of Kalupahana's Causality I just all of a sudden felt tired of it all.

So I took a break for a few years but kept meditating and reading the suuttas, especially the Samyutta, until I heard about Gil Fronsdal's book *The Buddha before Buddhism." He's always been one of my favorite teachers and is translation of the Dhammapada was another book I read after I left Zen to the Theravada trip, and it might have been my official introduction to the suttas.

And in the whole process I kind of forgot about Jayilleteke's EBTK.

Then about a month and a half ago I was scrolling through YouTube and up pops Sujato's (most recent?) course on EB meditation (almost done), which lef me do his lectures on EBTK and searching for it online and finding it! So now I'm working through those two things in tandem.

And somewhere around Sujato's lecture 8 of EBM course, he did a little side note on Thich That Hanh's engaged Buddhism and how it's roots were in EB! I was like what the fuck? Along with Suzuki's* *Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind," TNH was my introduction to Buddhism and practice.

So I thought I'd start my questions about TNH and EB here. Do y'all know what Sujato's talking about? In a way I kind of feel like it brings me full circle, cuz for a while there I adopted Thanissaros' critique of TNH et al doctrines and practices, which of course kind overlaps with what's his face's *McMindfulness," Glenn Wallis' anti-Buddhism trip and Evan Thompson's *Why I Ain't No Buddhist."

Thank for your time.

Is it similar to Theravada customs? Sorry for comparing EBT to Theravada. I want to begin my journey.

Thanks. Metta 🙏

Should I stick to contemporary Theravada temples? Are they the closest to the teachings of Gotama?

Thanks.

Selected Verses from The Atthakavagga - Gautama Buddha

Below, I will present to you selected verses from The Atthakavagga, the book of eights, among the first historical written teachings of Gautama Buddha.

Suddhatthaka Sutta

“No true Sage speaks of purity in terms of something other. Or in terms of virtue, religious observances, or what is seen, heard or thought out. Merit and evil do not adhere to someone who has left behind what’s grasped, who doesn’t make up anything here…

True sages who’ve crossed the boundaries, wouldn’t grasp anything they can know or see in the world. Neither passionate for passion nor obsessed by dispassion. There is nothing here to grasp as superior”

Paramatthaka Sutta

“Letting go of what is taken up, the person free of grasping doesn’t depend on knowledge, or take sides when factions disagree, or fall back on any kind of view. One not inclined to either side, to becoming or nonbecoming, to here or the next world, there exists nothing to get entrenched in when considering the doctrines others grasp. Here, one does not conceive the slightest concept in regard to what is seen, heard or thought. How, in this world, could one categorize the sage who does not take hold of views. One does not construct, prefer or take up any doctrine. A true sage not led by precepts or religious practices, who has gone beyond, does not fall back on belief, is one who is thus.”

Jara Sutta

“Independent everywhere, sages make nothing cherished or not cherished. Despair and selfishness don’t stick to them as water doesn’t stick to a leaf. As a drop doesn’t stick to a leaf or water to a lotus petal, so what is seen, heard or thought doesn’t stick to a sage. By being without passion and dispassion, those who are cleansed don’t ruminate about what is seen, heard or thought out, nor do they wish for purity through anything else.”

Magandiya Sutta

“Whatever one should live detached from, the mighty one neither grasps nor disputes. Just as a lotus grows in water unsullied by water and mud, so a sage without greed, who advocates peace, is unsullied by sensuality and the world. Those who know don’t become proud in regard to views or what is thought out. They are not influenced by action or by learning; they don’t end up entrenched. Someone freed from concepts has no ties, someone freed by wisdom has no delusions. Those who grasp at concepts and views clash as they walk through the world.”

Kalahavivada Sutta

“Appearances disappear when not conceiving concepts, not conceiving false concepts, not nonconceiving, and not conceiving disappearance. This is because conceiving is the basis of conceptual differentiation.”

Tuvataka Sutta

“Let them completely destroy the root of conceptual differentiation. That is, the idea ‘I am the thinker’… They shouldn’t get entrenched in any teachings they know, whether their own or that of others. Good people say that being entrenched is not release. They would not, because of this, think themselves better, worse, or equal to others. Experiencing many things, they don’t take a stand in thoughts of themselves.”

Fascinating paper arguing that the translation of "dukkha" is wrong - at least with respect to early Buddhism - and that the Greek philosopher Pyrrho translated dukkha correctly into Greek about 100 years after the Buddha's death.

Dukkha is not "suffering"; it is instability, unreliability, and precariousness.

https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/91/3/655/7606269?

I'm listening to Nibbana Sermons by Bhikkhu Analayo. He mentions that Nama can't include consciousness as that would make consciousness self-conditioned.

Could someone explain why that is? It can be included under Nama and still be conditioned by the other aggregates can it not?

Thank you for reading!

I'm mainly in Theravada but I'm interested in Early Buddhism. Where should I start? What suttas or books do you recommend?

And also, is modern Theravada the closest to early Buddhism?

Any guidance on best translations where to buy?

New here. I wonder which monasteries and organizations are representing themselves as established in Early Buddhism, by holding this view of difference of Theravada and early buddhism?

Did Gotama ever told people to worship his images or relics?

Thank you. Metta 🙏

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What are the primary academic criteria used to distinguish Early Buddhism from later developments, especially figures like Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu? How do texts, doctrines, and historical accounts play a role in this differentiation? Additionally, who is generally considered the last significant figure or teacher in the Early Buddhist period?

litmus test Buddhist interpretations

In several threads I have heard it said "so and so drifted away from the Buddha". For example, "this Sutra or this statement or these people have drifted away from the Buddha", ostensibly some lesser or greater distance.

I believe the simple sense of this is there is a group that has a consensus about several of the basic themes of Buddhism like dependent origination, name and form and other conceptual "litmus tests" which can be used to measure the distance of people's statements about Buddhism from the Buddha.

It would really help to have three or four of these litmus test Buddhist Concepts spelled out so I could use them myself or at least understand how they are used.

A book on meditation based on early Buddhism:

What You Might Not Know about Jhāna & Samādhi

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Hello!

I’m wondering what your personal favourite work/book on Early Buddhism is.

Mine is The Buddhist Path to Awakening by R.M.L. Gethin.

Thanks!