Yes, I know that's Ajahn Brahm's line. Absorption is no doubt effective for some things. But that view of other approaches seems to me to misrepresent the practices that I am most familiar with.reflection wrote:Both. The first is to strengthen the mind, make it fearless, so it can penetrate the dhamma more easily.mikenz66 wrote: So is it the development of the jhana factors, or the absorption itself that is important?
But the second may be even more important. If the mind never has seen itself, how can you contemplate it? When you don't even know what it is, it's almost a waste of time to do this. There may be some extraordinarily gifted people who can, but I think most of the people can't. As I've said before, how do you want to know how an engine works without having opened the car bonnet? When the mind is inside of itself, it gets data about the aggregates that is unmissable. Because in absorption there is no decision making, you can really contemplate the no-self of volitions, for example. After the absorption, of course.
To continue your metaphor, you don't have to stop an engine to look under the bonnet. In the practice I do we're not talking about sitting around "contemplating". We're talking about (after a couple of days of silent retreat) a very quiet mind, strong samadhi, and fast, precise, cognition of objects arising and ceasing. Watching the engine idling, in fact...
I do get pleasant states where nothing seems to be happening (no decisions possible, though I don't think it is real absorption jhana). My assessment of that is the same as in the Sutta I quoted above: This is peaceful, but impermanent... Just another nice state to not get attached to...
Mike