socoguy78 wrote:Dhamma Greetings ignobleone,
From what you are typing about I am assuming you do not have direct experience with any jhanas at all?
This thread is questioning
real jhana, but your question sounds you actually think you have a direct experience with it? It's just like Christians when they're being asked to prove their God, they'd answer like this: "because we cannot exist without God", which means they need to prove their own reason, which could be recursive.
By research... Are you researching what other's have typed about? Or are you researching by practicing meditation?
None of them. But I do read what others have to say, especially things that I never heard, then compare with what the suttas say.
Concentration meditation/one pointed meditation you are pushing away any type of distraction at all, a better word choice would be hindrence. You put your minds attention on what ever your meditation object is and when somthing is trying to take your attention off the object of meditation you concentrate more on your object of meditation. There is no relaxation with this type of meditation that is widely practiced today. With this type of meditation you do not let go of any mental defilements; you just push them away long enough for a pleasent sitting and after the sitting all the defilements in your mind come back at some point. I used to do this type of meditation maybe 8ish years and longer ago. I am not a scholar in buddhism, I am a practitioner. This is a good book to look at: Majjhima Nikaya, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (Teachings of the Buddha), transalated by Bhikkhu Nanamoli, and Bhikkhu Bodhi. The book is a wealth of information for your research. I am not going to research your answers but I will point you in the right direction. By chance I stumbled upon the original teachings and it has been a gem in helping suport my practice. I now practice aware jhanas where you can hear sound in a jhana... you can even carry a jhana from sitting meditation into daily activities. And the Jhana is exactly how the buddha describes it in the original texts. Kind of a huge eye opener. The best thing is wisdoms eye does open as you see the 4 noble truths and dependent origination while practicing what the buddha "stumbled" upon and I'm using stumbled loosely. The only aware Jhana I know of that you can't percieve anything from your 6 sense doors is the relm of neither preception nor non perception. In this arupa jhana you stop perceiving completely. Without perception one does not percieve, one does not name, one does not cognize, one does not crave, nor cling... and it goes down the rest of the list of dependent origination.
Thanks for suggesting Majjhima Nikaya. More specific sutta will be helpful though. Are you sure you are in the right direction? If you're
in the right direction, you should be able to provide me with sutta reference for each of the bold statements. Can you help me with that? Because what I've found is not so. It'll be helpful for my research if you can prove I'm wrong.