Dear Mike,
You said:
2. Whether some other activity recommended by my (hopefully) wise spiritual friends and teachers (and, it seems, by the Buddha, according to our reading of the Suttas, Abhidhamma, and Commentary) are done with correct understanding.
If there is truly understanding of the conditions for the arising of sati-panna, why the idea of other (selected) activity?
Listening (or reading) carefully the teaching on realities and wise consideration can give rise to firm theoretical understanding of them, which is one condition for sati to arise (as according to the Athasalini quoted in one of my previous posts). But no one can predict when and where sati which is directly aware of a reality will arise, and it does only when there's no expectation at all, with right understanding firmly established. So why some particular activities should be recommended?
Let me throw in some other ideas/questions
Thanks for your questions! I am a fairly new student of AS, compared to many others who have been with her for 10, 20,...40 years. I will try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge, and others might correct if I am wrong
1. I don't believe I have interacted with a Khun Sujin student who has not spent quite a while doing "conventional" meditation. Do such people exist? Perhaps the doing the meditation and realising that if often involves a great deal of clinging and wanting to control (which is certainly my experience, and, in my view is much of the point...) is a necessary precursor to KS's ideas making some sense. I certainly wouldn't be able to make any sense of it without such experiences.
I don't know all of her students, it is hard to say...But Khun Sujin studied the Abhidhamma with Achaan Naeb around the age of 25, and somehow developed her own understanding of the Dhamma by her self. I never hear her mentionning any period of "doing meditation" previously. It must be then due to her great accumulations from the past....
As far as we, "yogis", are concerned, I think the problem is we started to practice without proper theoretical knowledge and understanding, just keep going with our own ideas about things, and our own (erroneous) interepretations.
2. I've also not met a KS "follower" who has not met her. Perhaps her teaching skill in person transcends the rather mechanical arguments that I tend to hear from her students.
Sure, AS doesn't teach simply by reasoning, she always relates to the present reality. IMHO, it is much more than skill, it is her deep understanding...
3. As far as possible wrong view in the KS approach is concerned, I think that a valid question to ask would be whether this rejection of conventional meditation is a manifestation of the hindrance of doubt about the practices.
It would be a proper question to ask: what conventional meditation exactly means? Actually, AS doesn't reject any particular activity. She just asks why? It is clear that people in the suttas were sitting in jhanna. But do we have the same accumulations than the Boddha and his disciples at that time? What did the Buddha teach to his lay, house-holders followers, and what did he teach to the bikkhus who were already in the forest and who had the accumulations to be so? The word "samatha" also has different meanings. A reading into the suttas will be very different if the understanding of realities is thorough like AS's. For example, the word "patipati" is usually translated as practice and commonly understood as someone doing something. But let's see how AS explains about this:
First of all I respectfully ask you to please determine whether you wish to study, listen and consider the dhamma to increase understanding of the dhamma or to practice with the self doing the practice. For without correctly understanding the dhamma, there is still the self to the fullest, then there is the desire to practice, without first conscientiously studying even the Pali term, pati-pati. Pati means specifically, and pati means to reach or to see. In reality pati-pati or to practice is to have sati arising to be aware when any reality arises and appears. The sati would be aware of the characteristics of the reality appearing respectively. The moment of seeing is not the instant of hearing, nor the instant of thinking; but a nama-dhamma reality that arises and falls away extremely rapidly. Therefore to be able to know the true characteristics of realities as not at all ourselves, since they are distinct kinds of realities that arise because of conditions and fall away swiftly as opposed to the selves who want to realize the arisings and falling aways. For there has to be panna, right understanding, samma-ditthi that has been developed unto the level that is able to know the truth about realities level by respective level.
So, according to this: patipati = moment of the arising of direct awareness of reality, by conditions.
Certainly, this has nothing to do with doubt, but rather a different understanding of the teaching, in conformity with the Buddha's teaching on D.O and anattaness.
For full discussions:
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