jhana pre buddhist, hinduism today and so on.
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 5:09 am
so in buddhism we practice jhana with a clear intention in mind to regard them as nothing more than tools to see into reality.
however in hinduism i believe this is not the case. i have never found much consistency in hindu meditation teachings and have usually found them to be vague. this is because it is frequently a guru to student kind of thing as opposed to a systematized book learned practice. however assuming jhana is a universal state that arises for everyone when conditions are right it would be logical to assume that this is what yogis in hinduism experience as well but that they equate it with god instead of attempting to see it as mundane.
i imagine if i had fallen into hinduism instead of buddhism and a guru taught me to access the first jhana and said that that blissful state was accessing the mind of god i would heartily agree with him/her after reaching it as it feels more wonderful than anything else on earth.
i read an article about pre buddhist jhana but it doesn't specify whether or not this practice continued into hinduism or if it did, how it was/is regarded. at least not that i saw, i skimmed some and did a couple of ctrl+f word searches for words like "hinduism", "vedas" and so on. it talks about a group called "Parama-diṭṭhadhamma-nibbānavāda" or perhaps this is a person? i'm not clear on that and a web search was fruitless. does anyone know more of the details on this or have any opinions?
however in hinduism i believe this is not the case. i have never found much consistency in hindu meditation teachings and have usually found them to be vague. this is because it is frequently a guru to student kind of thing as opposed to a systematized book learned practice. however assuming jhana is a universal state that arises for everyone when conditions are right it would be logical to assume that this is what yogis in hinduism experience as well but that they equate it with god instead of attempting to see it as mundane.
i imagine if i had fallen into hinduism instead of buddhism and a guru taught me to access the first jhana and said that that blissful state was accessing the mind of god i would heartily agree with him/her after reaching it as it feels more wonderful than anything else on earth.
i read an article about pre buddhist jhana but it doesn't specify whether or not this practice continued into hinduism or if it did, how it was/is regarded. at least not that i saw, i skimmed some and did a couple of ctrl+f word searches for words like "hinduism", "vedas" and so on. it talks about a group called "Parama-diṭṭhadhamma-nibbānavāda" or perhaps this is a person? i'm not clear on that and a web search was fruitless. does anyone know more of the details on this or have any opinions?