Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

The cultivation of calm or tranquility and the development of concentration
Saengnapha
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by Saengnapha »

budo wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 3:47 pm
Saengnapha wrote: Wed May 23, 2018 7:58 am
budo wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 9:16 pm From my personal experience, the best jhana's I've had were ones with absolutely zero external sounds and my field of vision was pure white, on the way to this my sound became "localized" as in I could no longer hear outside the windows but only what's in the room, especially things like the floor and walls creeking, and then it leads to zero sound. This had the highest amount of piti and sukha. Any other forms I had that had sound in them were very mild in comparison.

Leigh Brasington also has suttas he translated on his site with the Buddha saying that sound is a thorn to first jhana, which I agree with. The louder the sounds around me (music, motorcycles, people screaming, etc..) the less chance of me being able to enter the full white vision no-sound jhana.

I just don't think one can generate strong concentration without seclusion from the senses, just like it says in the suttas. In fact I have such strong aversion to sound now that I'm planning on moving to a small town in the middle of no where with no houses around me, I just can't bare to be around loud people, motorcycles, scooters, music, etc..

Whenever I have a full blown jhana experience I also lose all desire to eat anything as well, just all desire for sensuality is temporarily suspended.
What benefit do you feel this brings you?
The same benefits the suttas claim

- pleasure and bliss born of seclusion
- insights and clearer mind
- equanimity
- peace and quiet
- divine eye sometimes
- divine ear sometimes
- can sit in meditation for several hours
- no 5 hindrances (ill will, sensual desire, doubt, restlessness, sloth)
From my perspective, you are creating a duality by contrasting jhana with your ordinary state. You list benefits, but the benefits are only in relation to their opposites. Anyone can tell you that jhanas are impermanent and whatever is there before jhana happens, happens again when jhana is left. It is an attempt to find some permanent state that you can identify with. This is a mistake that most meditators make and rarely pass through. The seeking for permanence is nothing more than clinging, having attachment to an experience. 'Seeing' this is 'Insight'. Insight has nothing to do with jhanas or any particular experience. It is a direct knowing that nothing is permanent and there is no person at the center of experience. It is a letting go of all images and states.
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mikenz66
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by mikenz66 »

Saengnapha wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 2:16 am From my perspective, you are creating a duality by contrasting jhana with your ordinary state. You list benefits, but the benefits are only in relation to their opposites. Anyone can tell you that jhanas are impermanent and whatever is there before jhana happens, happens again when jhana is left. It is an attempt to find some permanent state that you can identify with. This is a mistake that most meditators make and rarely pass through. The seeking for permanence is nothing more than clinging, having attachment to an experience. 'Seeing' this is 'Insight'. Insight has nothing to do with jhanas or any particular experience. It is a direct knowing that nothing is permanent and there is no person at the center of experience. It is a letting go of all images and states.
Yet, according to numerous suttas, samadhi is an important factor for awakening. Of course, many of those suttas also say, agreeing with you, that jhana is an impermanent state that does have to be let go of eventually. But that doesnt make it worthless.

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Mike
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by Saengnapha »

mikenz66 wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 2:41 am
Saengnapha wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 2:16 am From my perspective, you are creating a duality by contrasting jhana with your ordinary state. You list benefits, but the benefits are only in relation to their opposites. Anyone can tell you that jhanas are impermanent and whatever is there before jhana happens, happens again when jhana is left. It is an attempt to find some permanent state that you can identify with. This is a mistake that most meditators make and rarely pass through. The seeking for permanence is nothing more than clinging, having attachment to an experience. 'Seeing' this is 'Insight'. Insight has nothing to do with jhanas or any particular experience. It is a direct knowing that nothing is permanent and there is no person at the center of experience. It is a letting go of all images and states.
Yet, according to numerous suttas, samadhi is an important factor for awakening. Of course, many of those suttas also say, agreeing with you, that jhana is an impermanent state that does have to be let go of eventually. But that doesnt make it worthless.

💖
Mike
Samadhi is not dependent on jhana. Also samadhi is not something you can hold on to, either. Insight cuts through all of this and is why it is stressed. There is no permanent state of anything and the grasping/attached mind gets caught in the net of experience hoping that it can find something to save the illusory seeker. I think it is very hard for any meditator to let go of their images because the prime reason to meditate for most is 'escape'. The desire to identify with something is the search for permanence. Insight brings you to the 3 Marks, impermanence, unsatisfying, no person.
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mikenz66
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by mikenz66 »

Well, obviously jhana is not insight, no-one is claiming that. However, it is said to be sammāsamādhi (right concentration/immersion), part of the eight-fold path.
And what is right immersion?
Katamo ca, bhikkhave, sammāsamādhi?

It’s when a mendicant, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected.

Idha, bhikkhave, bhikkhu vivicceva kāmehi vivicca akusalehi dhammehi savitakkaṃ savicāraṃ vivekajaṃ pītisukhaṃ paṭhamaṃ jhānaṃ upasampajja viharati.
...
https://suttacentral.net/sn45.8/en/sujato#10
:heart:
Mike
budo
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by budo »

Saengnapha wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 2:16 am
budo wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 3:47 pm
Saengnapha wrote: Wed May 23, 2018 7:58 am
What benefit do you feel this brings you?
The same benefits the suttas claim

- pleasure and bliss born of seclusion
- insights and clearer mind
- equanimity
- peace and quiet
- divine eye sometimes
- divine ear sometimes
- can sit in meditation for several hours
- no 5 hindrances (ill will, sensual desire, doubt, restlessness, sloth)
From my perspective, you are creating a duality by contrasting jhana with your ordinary state. You list benefits, but the benefits are only in relation to their opposites. Anyone can tell you that jhanas are impermanent and whatever is there before jhana happens, happens again when jhana is left. It is an attempt to find some permanent state that you can identify with. This is a mistake that most meditators make and rarely pass through. The seeking for permanence is nothing more than clinging, having attachment to an experience. 'Seeing' this is 'Insight'. Insight has nothing to do with jhanas or any particular experience. It is a direct knowing that nothing is permanent and there is no person at the center of experience. It is a letting go of all images and states.
Thanks for your opinion but I didn't ask for it, thus your opinion is wrong speech. You asked for my benefits, so I responded, but I did not ask for your opinion. In other words you asked the question not with the honest intention of wanting to know the benefits, but because you wanted to espouse your belief in some kind of Socratic method that was unasked for.

Seeing as how you are interested in sharing your opinion, let me make it clear to you that your argument can simply be debunked.

In the handful of leaves sutta the Buddha says he only teaches what leads to dispassion, detachment, and liberation, and there are many things that the Buddha could teach but he chooses not to. There are plenty of suttas where the Buddha teaches the jhanas, even in Mahasatipathana sutta he teaches the 4 jhanas as right concentration.

Also, as for my comparison of ordinary states vs jhanic state, the buddha says the same thing

"Now there is the case where a monk — quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful qualities — enters & remains in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. If, as he remains there, he is beset with attention to perceptions dealing with sensuality, that is an affliction for him. Just as pain arises as an affliction in a healthy person for his affliction, even so the attention to perceptions dealing with sensuality that beset the monk is an affliction for him. Now, the Blessed One has said that whatever is an affliction is stress. So by this line of reasoning it may be known how Unbinding is pleasant." - AN 9.34

Therefore sensuality is an affliction to someone who is in Jhana, and this is an example of insight into how the 5 aggregates of reality, specifically the 5 external senses are unpleasant. In other words, you cannot get to the higher jhanas if you lack insight, the jhanas are developed with insight hand in hand. This is why the Buddha wanted to teach Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, the jhana masters, first and foremost because they would be the fastest to understand the Buddha's new realization.

"There's no jhana for one with no discernment, no discernment, for one with no jhana. But one with both jhana & discernment: he's on the verge of Unbinding." - Dhp 372

In DN9 the Buddha shows how in eighth Jhana, willing is found to be stressful, and so one decides to let go of willing thus leading to cessation, then the Buddha says this "This, Potthapada, is how there is the alert step-by step attainment of the ultimate cessation of perception. Now what do you think, Potthapada — have you ever before heard of such an alert step-by step attainment of the ultimate cessation of perception?"

Lastly, Buddhism is not Taoism, we do not seek to remove duality, and so the discussion of duality is not relevant.
Last edited by budo on Fri May 25, 2018 10:01 am, edited 2 times in total.
User1249x
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by User1249x »

How i understand it is that if it is 5 factored then one cant hear but in the four factored one can hear.
Jhana is beneficial af without it there would be no destroying the fetter of sensuality.
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by User1249x »

Saengnapha wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 2:16 am From my perspective, you are creating a duality by contrasting jhana with your ordinary state. You list benefits, but the benefits are only in relation to their opposites. Anyone can tell you that jhanas are impermanent and whatever is there before jhana happens, happens again when jhana is left. It is an attempt to find some permanent state that you can identify with. This is a mistake that most meditators make and rarely pass through. The seeking for permanence is nothing more than clinging, having attachment to an experience. 'Seeing' this is 'Insight'. Insight has nothing to do with jhanas or any particular experience. It is a direct knowing that nothing is permanent and there is no person at the center of experience. It is a letting go of all images and states.
7. “There is a path, Ānanda, a way to the abandoning of the five lower fetters; that anyone, without relying on that path, on that way, shall know or see or abandon the five lower fetters—this is not possible.
...
9. “And what, Ānanda, is the path, the way to the abandoning of the five lower fetters? Here, with seclusion from the acquisitions, 654 with the abandoning of unwholesome states, with the complete tranquillization of bodily inertia, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a bhikkhu enters upon and abides in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought, with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion.

“Whatever exists therein of material form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness, he sees those states as impermanent, as suffering, as a disease, as a tumour, as a barb, as a calamity, as an affliction, as alien, as disintegrating, as void, as not self.655 He turns his mind away from those states [436] and directs it towards the deathless element thus: ‘This is the peaceful, this is the sublime, that is, the stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of all attachments, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, Nibbāna.’656 If he is steady in that, he attains the destruction of the taints. But if he does not attain the destruction of the taints because of that desire for the Dhamma, that delight in the Dhamma,657 then with the destruction of the five lower fetters he becomes one due to reappear spontaneously [in the Pure Abodes) and there attain final Nibbāna without ever returning from that world. This is the path, the way to the abandoning of the five lower fetters.
"Even though a disciple of the noble ones has clearly seen as it actually is with right discernment that sensuality is of much stress, much despair, & greater drawbacks, still — if he has not attained a rapture & pleasure apart from sensuality, apart from unskillful mental qualities, or something more peaceful than that[4] — he can be tempted by sensuality. But when he has clearly seen as it actually is with right discernment that sensuality is of much stress, much despair, & greater drawbacks, and he has attained a rapture & pleasure apart from sensuality, apart from unskillful mental qualities, or something more peaceful than that, he cannot be tempted by sensuality.

"I myself, before my Awakening, when I was still an unawakened bodhisatta, saw as it actually was with right discernment that sensuality is of much stress, much despair, & greater drawbacks, but as long as I had not attained a rapture & pleasure apart from sensuality, apart from unskillful mental qualities, or something more peaceful than that, I did not claim that I could not be tempted by sensuality. But when I saw as it actually was with right discernment that sensuality is of much stress, much despair, & greater drawbacks, and I had attained a rapture & pleasure apart from sensuality, apart from unskillful mental qualities, or something more peaceful than that, that was when I claimed that I could not be tempted by sensuality.
Saengnapha
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by Saengnapha »

The only thing I can say to you is to enter jhanas and see if you really find anything permanent. You will notice that there is still a subject/object dichotomy. No real change happens to this structure because Insight is missing. If the 3 Marks are not present, then you are just honing your intellect, trying to 'attain' something. This is what the vast majority of seekers are doing. I think the whole Theravada approach has been muddled over the centuries. Endless interpretations, citations, endless grasping. The idea of the person is a huge stumbling block.
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mikenz66
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by mikenz66 »

Hi Saengnapha

That's exactly what the suttas say. Jhana is not insight and is only one of the fabrucated tools of the path. And the concept of self is one if the the key problems to be overcome.

However, it seems you put little weight on these texts, so your view of the path is, understandably, different and there seems to be little lest to discuss.

Mike
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by budo »

Have you yourself mastered the 8 jhanas and the 9th jhana of cessation? If not then why is your opinion relevant if it is not formulated from the original Buddhist text, and if not, then based on direct experience.

Until then I will continue to follow Buddhism, and not Taoism / advainta duality nonsense, Saengnapha-ism, Mahasi-ism or anything that doesn't delineate from the suttas or the Buddha.

Once you have direct experience with the eight jhanas feel free to write an in depth review, until then someone who talks without experience is a keyboard jockey,

If its not based on Buddhist texts or direct experience then feel free to start your own religion of Saengnaphism, no different than the countless online gurus espousing their doctrines.
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by Saengnapha »

budo wrote: Sat May 26, 2018 7:36 am Have you yourself mastered the 8 jhanas and the 9th jhana of cessation? If not then why is your opinion relevant if it is not formulated from the original Buddhist text, and if not, then based on direct experience.

Until then I will continue to follow Buddhism, and not Taoism / advainta duality nonsense, Saengnapha-ism, Mahasi-ism or anything that doesn't delineate from the suttas or the Buddha.

Once you have direct experience with the eight jhanas feel free to write an in depth review, until then someone who talks without experience is a keyboard jockey,

If its not based on Buddhist texts or direct experience then feel free to start your own religion of Saengnaphism, no different than the countless online gurus espousing their doctrines.
Jhanas are not something I aspire to, although I have experienced several. My opinions are not relevant to anyone if they don't see what I'm talking about. Feel free to pursue whatever you want. My investigation is why pursue anything? What is motivating one to pursue a goal? Is this not a form of grasping? Why do we believe what we read? or what others tell us?
budo
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by budo »

Saengnapha wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 3:42 pm
budo wrote: Sat May 26, 2018 7:36 am Have you yourself mastered the 8 jhanas and the 9th jhana of cessation? If not then why is your opinion relevant if it is not formulated from the original Buddhist text, and if not, then based on direct experience.

Until then I will continue to follow Buddhism, and not Taoism / advainta duality nonsense, Saengnapha-ism, Mahasi-ism or anything that doesn't delineate from the suttas or the Buddha.

Once you have direct experience with the eight jhanas feel free to write an in depth review, until then someone who talks without experience is a keyboard jockey,

If its not based on Buddhist texts or direct experience then feel free to start your own religion of Saengnaphism, no different than the countless online gurus espousing their doctrines.
Jhanas are not something I aspire to, although I have experienced several. My opinions are not relevant to anyone if they don't see what I'm talking about. Feel free to pursue whatever you want. My investigation is why pursue anything? What is motivating one to pursue a goal? Is this not a form of grasping? Why do we believe what we read? or what others tell us?
If there is nothing to pursue then why are you on this forum? what are you clinging to and pursuing by trying to change my mind?

Your words do not align with your actions and this incongruency raises considerable doubt about your motivations.
Saengnapha
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by Saengnapha »

budo wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 4:45 pm
Saengnapha wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 3:42 pm
budo wrote: Sat May 26, 2018 7:36 am Have you yourself mastered the 8 jhanas and the 9th jhana of cessation? If not then why is your opinion relevant if it is not formulated from the original Buddhist text, and if not, then based on direct experience.

Until then I will continue to follow Buddhism, and not Taoism / advainta duality nonsense, Saengnapha-ism, Mahasi-ism or anything that doesn't delineate from the suttas or the Buddha.

Once you have direct experience with the eight jhanas feel free to write an in depth review, until then someone who talks without experience is a keyboard jockey,

If its not based on Buddhist texts or direct experience then feel free to start your own religion of Saengnaphism, no different than the countless online gurus espousing their doctrines.
Jhanas are not something I aspire to, although I have experienced several. My opinions are not relevant to anyone if they don't see what I'm talking about. Feel free to pursue whatever you want. My investigation is why pursue anything? What is motivating one to pursue a goal? Is this not a form of grasping? Why do we believe what we read? or what others tell us?
If there is nothing to pursue then why are you on this forum? what are you clinging to and pursuing by trying to change my mind?

Your words do not align with your actions and this incongruency raises considerable doubt about your motivations.
Perhaps you are not quite understanding what I'm responding to. If you say 'I want to attain liberation', I will ask why? I'm not trying to change your mind, I'm asking you what your motivation is. Should we all be silent? Never challenge any statement?
budo
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Re: Arguments in favor of being able to hear in the first jhana

Post by budo »

Saengnapha wrote: Mon May 28, 2018 3:33 am
budo wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 4:45 pm
Saengnapha wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 3:42 pm
Jhanas are not something I aspire to, although I have experienced several. My opinions are not relevant to anyone if they don't see what I'm talking about. Feel free to pursue whatever you want. My investigation is why pursue anything? What is motivating one to pursue a goal? Is this not a form of grasping? Why do we believe what we read? or what others tell us?
If there is nothing to pursue then why are you on this forum? what are you clinging to and pursuing by trying to change my mind?

Your words do not align with your actions and this incongruency raises considerable doubt about your motivations.
Perhaps you are not quite understanding what I'm responding to. If you say 'I want to attain liberation', I will ask why? I'm not trying to change your mind, I'm asking you what your motivation is.
You seem to be expending a lot of effort for someone who preaches 'there is nothing to pursue'. The only time I'll take your doctrine seriously is when you follow it yourself.
Should we all be silent? Never challenge any statement?
I'm not silent, I've been challenging all the ramblings you've been writing from the instant I knew you're a troll. I'm following your doctrine, if only you would too.

For the sake of not wasting bandwidth and cluttering forums I've blocked you, please don't bother responding to my posts in the future, our interactions have come to an end.
Last edited by budo on Mon May 28, 2018 7:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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