Dear Mike,
I have no idea why you equate setting up causes and conditions with "control"
I don’t. No control whatsoever, even this “setting up causes and conditions” is conditioned. The thing is: it is conditioned by right understanding or wrong understanding?
Why one selects “doing meditation” ? What are the conditions for sati in that process?
Let’s see what the Buddha says:
(7) And what is the food for mindfulness and full awareness?
Wise attention (yoniso manasikāra),84 should be the answer.
Wise attention, too, bhikshus, is with food, I say, not without food.
(8) And what is the food for wise attention?
Faith (saddhā)85 should be the answer.
Faith, too, bhikshus, is with food, I say, not without food.
(9) And what is the food for faith?
Listening to the true Dharma (saddhamma-s,savana)86 should be the answer.
Listening to the true Dharma, too, bhikshus, is with food, I say, not without food.
(10) And what is the food for listening to the true Dharma?
Associating with true individuals (sappurisa,saṁseva)87 should be the answer
Avija sutta 10.61
If one is clear that intention is not and doesn’t bring about sati, why select meditation as an activity? What's in there?
Clearly there are a lot of steps in the argument (from the suttas/abhidhamma, to the late commentary interpretation of the abhidhamma, to the interpretation of Khun Sujin) that others are practising the wrong way. So it's far from clear to the rest of us how to judge the accuracy of these arguments.
If you could point to a sutta/abhidhamma/commentary passage that spells out this problem, that would be very helpful.
It would need too many quotes and citations. Let’s see if we can get there using basic, fully recognized concepts:
- There’s no person, only rupa, citta and cetasikas. Agree?
- So when we talk about practice (or anything), actually we are talking about the working of rupa, citta and cetasikas. Agree?
- Rupa can not practice, it doesn’t know anything, it is incapable of panna. Agree?
- Only citta and cetasikas can be actually said to be the “practice” then. Agree?
- Can the citta which is seeing, hearing, smelling... is said to be the practice? Clearly, no, they can only does their respective function of seeing, hearing....
- There are many kinds of citta: akusala cittas, kusala cittas unaccompanied by panna, kusala cittas accompanied by panna. Agree?
- There’s only one citta arising at one moment with its object. Agree?
- At moments of akusala cittas, or kusala cittas unaccompanied by panna. Can it said to be the moment of practice? Clearly the answer is no. Agree.
- So what do we get here: Only moments of kusala cittas accompanied by panna can be said to be the practice, and more precisely, only sati-panna cetasikas them-selves constitute the practice, together with other path factors. And here, we should come back to the question: what are the conditions for them to arise?
I don’t see any of the above steps out of the content of the Sutta-Abhidhamma. If you don’t agree with any of the points above, please let me know.
There is, of course, samatha bhavana, which has its own conditions too. But we can spare that for now, unless you want to open a new thread for it.
Brgrds,