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why are sutta instructions on meditation so brief?

 

Re: Brevity of Sutta meditation instructions

Post by frank k » 

The way into jhana, is just relax deeply and remove unnecessary verbal thinking.
That's it. Just those two things.

that's why sutta instructions on meditation are brief sometimes, because the description of the activity itself is really brief, and is a matter of skill and time put into practice, not from lack of verbal description.
More can be said on what, why, how to relax deeply and whether you're doing it correctly, and there are suttas that do that.
MN 19 and MN 20 for example give more details on curtailing unnecessary thought.
The jhana similes describe what happens physically after you've put enough time and correctly relax.
It's all there, laid out very concisely and clearly in the suttas, just not organized in a way that people can easily piece it together (scattered across all 5 nikayas).
The problem is there's plenty of counterfeit dhamma, corrupted dhamma, corrupted interpretations of suttas that confuse the audience so they don't know what to believe, who to trust.

But if you have the good fortune and discernment to follow meditators who actually know what they're doing, you'll find the suttas [with correct translation and interpretation] explain the process just fine.

Alex123 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 13, 2023 9:44 amHello all,

Hard question:
Are meditation instructions in the suttas so short because:

a) Most of the material didn't make it into the suttas?
In this case, Why would such crucial piece of information be left out, while a lot of less practical material (such as Aganna sutta like materials, birth stories, miraculous stories & events, stories about Nagas, petas, devas, etc, etc) were left in? If there was "limited memory of reciters" to store every detail, why not store the most important ones and leave out less practically important?

or

b) The brevity of sutta meditation instruction is deliberate.

Perhaps it is meant that one has to use one's own ingenuity and wisdom to "flesh out" the specifics for oneself and develop accordingly. Perhaps there were many valid interpretations, and one had to find out the one which suited oneself.

Any comments, or thoughts? Any other interpretations?


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