Why are you blaming your misunderstandings of Thanissaro's teachings on the good Reverend? Where's the personal responsibility and accountability? You've concocted a conspiracy theory about Rev. T's ulterior motives that is actually a reflection of your own failures.Sylvester wrote: 2. From a praxis perspective, I need to know what the texts actually mean, and I wasted many years of my study and practice believing VT's discursive Jhana model. I've seen more than enough of VT's attempts to (a) exploit the English reader's unfamiliarity with Pali grammar to change the connotation of Pali texts (especially in the temporal grammatical constructions), and (b) re-writing Pali texts to suit his Jhana model. It was extremely difficult for me to shake off my previous faith in his translations - there was something very powerful to cling on to, namely identification of my meditations with his "jhanas". It would be far easier for me to rest on my laurels, having fulfilled his Jhana criteria, but a critical reading of the texts simply does not allow me the luxury of such a lie any longer.
Did you overlook his teachings like this?
Or these?Sometimes you read about teachers who turn out to be major disappointments. They do really horrible things to their students, and the students complain that they've been victimized. But in nearly every case, when you read the whole story, you realize that the students should have seen this coming. There were blatant warning signals that they chose to ignore. You have to be responsible in choosing your teachers, choosing your path. Once you've chosen the path that looks likely, you have to be responsible in following it, in learning how to develop your own sensitivity in following it. Because after all, what is the path that the Buddha points out? There's virtue, there's concentration, and there's discernment. These are all qualities in your own mind. We all have them to some extent. Learning how to develop what's in your own mind is what's going to make all the difference. The Buddha's discernment isn't going to give you awakening; his virtue and concentration aren't going to give you awakening. You have to develop your own. Nobody else can develop these things for you. Other people can give you hints; they can help point you in the right direction. But the actual work and the actual seeing is something you have to do for yourself.
So the question is: Are you mature enough to want this path? Are you mature enough to follow it through? Nobody's forcing you. Just realize the dangers of not following this path and make your choice.URL
Or these?If you go to a teacher, saying you've had a certain experience, and the teacher identifies it as a level of jhana or a level of insight, can you be sure? Do you really want to hand those judgments over to somebody else? Or do you want to learn how to judge things on your own, so that you can trust yourself? If you let the other people do the judging, there's always going to be an element of doubt: Do they know what they're saying? At the same time, you're absolving yourself of any responsibility. Discernment becomes their duty and not yours. That's not a good attitude for a meditator to take. You've got to learn to look, to try a few things.URL
So as a teacher, he tried to instill in his students these qualities of self-reliance, ingenuity, and a willingness to take risks and test things for themselves. He did that not only by talking about these qualities, but also by forcing you into situations where you'd have to develop them. Had he always been there to confirm for you that, "Yes, you've reached the third jhana," or, "No, that's only the second jhana," he would have short-circuited the qualities he was trying to instill. He, rather than your own powers of observation, would have been the authority on what was going on in your mind; and you would have been absolved of any responsibility for correctly evaluating what you had experienced. At the same time, he would have been feeding your childish desire to please or impress him, and undermining your ability to deal with the task at hand, which was how to develop your own powers of sensitivity to put an end to suffering and stress. As he once told me, "If I have to explain everything, you'll get used to having things handed to you on a platter. And then what will you do when problems come up in your meditation and you don't have any experience in figuring things out on your own?"
URL
Or these?
Or these?It's like going out in the wilderness. You read the maps, you make your plans, but when you get out in the forest you realize that the forest doesn't look like the map. The map has splotches of solid pale green with red lines and little symbols on it. But when you look around yourself in the forest, you don't see those splotches, symbols, or lines. Now, the lines are relevant: They symbolize the paths through the forest. They give you a sketchy idea of what's out there. But you have to realize that there's a lot more out there than just the pale greens and reds of the map. There are actual trees, actual animals, actual changes in the lay of the land. So you make plans based on the map, but be prepared to throw your plans overboard as you meet up with new and unexpected things. This is an important part of the training: how to deal with the unexpected.URL
Now, to get back to the OP.Some people want to have all kinds of guarantees before they embark on this training, but you can't really guarantee anything. You can guarantee that when you reach the goal it's going to be good, but how much is that guarantee worth for someone who hasn't experienced it yet? Just one more thing to take into consideration. The Buddha, when he embarked on his quest, had no guarantee that all the sacrifice was going to be worth it, that he was going to find the deathless, or even that he was going to survive. But he had reached a point in his life where he realized that if he didn't at least try it, he would feel that his life had been wasted. And so for him it was a huge experiment. There was a lot of risk and a lot of uncertainty. And yet he was willing to take the risk and to face the uncertainty.
For us, it's not quite that drastic. We have people who've gone before. There's the question of whether we can trust them and believe them, but then look at the alternative: a life lived devoted to the pursuit of sensual pleasures, trying to squeeze happiness out of things that are going to die and that we'll have to leave in the end — if not before the end. So at the very least you say, "Well, there's a possibility here. Let's give it a try." Try to have that sense of adventure. Be open to new things and learn how to deal with uncertainties.
Earlier today we were talking about the maps for the jhanas. When you try to apply the map to your actual experience, it's going to be uncertain for a while. You read the description of directed thought and evaluation, rapture and all, and the question is: What do those terms correspond to in your actual experience? You may have some ideas, but they may be wrong. Is that going to stop you from practicing? It shouldn't. It should simply alert you to the fact that you're going to be dealing in uncertainties for a while. When you place labels on your experiences, they have to be post-it notes, signposts to use in the meantime until you get a better sense of the terrain. The surest of the signposts is the one for the fourth jhana — when the in-and-out breath stops and stays stopped for the duration of that state of mind — but that's all the way in the fourth. So how are you going to know the signposts for one, two, and three? Well, you guess for the time being and you attach a few notes here, a few notes there. And have the confidence that when you find something more certain, you're going to be in a position to rearrange the notes if need be.URL
As Ñāṇa put it in this post
This is something which clearly cannot be said of Ven. T.Ñāṇa wrote:But the heart of the matter is the assertion made by Ven. Brahmavamso and his associates that he is teaching the Buddha's sammāsamādhi, and that most everyone else isn't.
So, why are you trying to villainize the good Reverend? Do you really think he deserves the blame you've tried to attribute to him? I'm sorry you feel misled, but the fault is not Rev. T's.
It's yours.