Saturday, January 25, 2020

vitakka and vicara are essential words/concepts in basic human communication

As Arka noticed in his own independent research,


Arka has left a new comment on your post "How Vism. differentiates between the rupa in their...":

Thanks a lot frankk. I was looking at sutta 41.8 from the Samyutta Nikaya, where Nigantha Nataputta asks Citta the householder, that whether there is a concentration without thought and examination, and that stopping thoughts and examination is like catching wind in a net, and also in MN 44 it is said vitakka-vicara is verbal fabrication. This leads to only one conclusion that it is indeed thoughts and examination, I don't know how can people try to misconstrue this.


They misconstrue it because they have an agenda to redefine Jhana into something that resembles Vism. redefinition.

SN 41.8 is a great example. Nigantha is the founder of the Jain religion, yet Sujato's translation of V&V as "placing the mind" would mean that he has to understand Sujato's corrupted understanding of vitkaka for that to work in that context. Completely insane and illogical. For it to work, Sujato and Ajahn Brahm would need to go back in the time machine and inform Nigantha that the Buddha has a special meaning for vitakka in first jhana:

Ajahn Brahm and the time machine: DN 21 B. Sujato's erroneous translation of vitakka & vicara explained.



As you pointed out with MN 44, vitakka and vicara are essential concepts in human language and communication, and there it's linking it with that common usage AND the samadhi context of 4 jhanas, so that's incontrovertible that V&V means 'that activity you do in order to comprehend the listening of spoken language': thinking and pondering/evaluation. 


More responses to comments:

@Frank Here I found a guy you probably know named Sylvester who uses grammatical pali loopholes to misconstrue the jhanas to fit Ajahn brahm's description . Here is what I found in a blog where he comments :
This does suggest that each attainment in the series is attained by entering and surmounting the preceding one.

Which leads to the next question - can one will one's way from one jhāna to the next? I think Ajahn Brahm is squarely with the suttas on this issue, when he says that in a jhāna, it is not possible to intend or will. See for example what DN 9 says - one cannot think (ceteti) nor intend (abhisaṅkharoti) within the jhānas. If you think or intend, a gross perception (oḷārikā saññā) replaces the jhāna -
Cetayamānassa me pāpiyo, acetayamānassa me seyyo. Ahañceva kho pana ceteyyaṃ, abhisaṅkhareyyaṃ, imā ca me saññā nirujjheyyuṃ, aññā ca oḷārikā saññā uppajjeyyuṃ.

'Thinking is bad for me. Not thinking is better for me. If I were to think and will, these perceptions of mine would cease, and a grosser perception would appear.
It is clear from that sutta that this gross perception refers to kāmasaññā, ie the perception of the kāmā (the 5 sense data of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch).
These seem to suggest that one first needs to leave a jhāna, go back to square one and start sliding in from there, as square one is the only place where you can think.
But in DN9 this part of it, refers to the cessation of perception and feeling , and somehow he deduces it has to be kāmasaññā . I actually feel bad for them as once they have an experience of that light, they cling to it and when people try to say to them that it is not the case, they are in a state of denial and try to manipulate things.

frankk:
Hi Arka,
I don't know all the reasons why they cling to their deluded misunderstandings about jhana, but there's no reason to conflate perception of light with jhanas. AN 6.29 clearly separates out the perception of light as a practice that leads to knowledge in vision. Perceiving bright light is no big deal, if one meditates regularly, maintains celibacy, your battery will get charged in a few months, to a few years depending on health and age. And you don't have to go into a frozen state of wrong samadhi to perceive light. You can perceive light and do other things while in the four jhanas, or 4 iddhi pada.  You can even perceive light walking around with your eyes open. You'll know it's different because it's a little bit brighter in the center, and it gets tinted red when you're outside and the sun is shining bright.





Re: B. Brahmali incorrect translation and interpretation of jhāna and samādhi in Vinaya scripture

Post by frank k » Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:11 am
What the first jhana formula says, is that the state of being in first jhana has vitakka and vicara present. It means one CAN exercise V&V. It doesn't say one MUST continuously exercise it without interruption. And even if it is uninterrupted continuous, as it seems to say in MN 19:
As MN 19 uses in the simile of the cowherd being in first jhana, he constantly remembers (sati)
tassa rukkha-mūla-gatassa vā
While resting under the shade of a tree or
abbhokāsa-gatassa vā
out in the open,
🐘 sati-karaṇīyam-eva hoti — ‘etā VAR gāvo’ti.
🐘 he simply keeps himself remembering ‘those cows.’
evamevaṃ kho, bhikkhave,
In the same way,
🐘 sati-karaṇīyam-eva ahosi — ‘ete dhammā’ti.
🐘 I simply kept myself remembering ‘those Dhammas.’
The Dhamma-vitakka the Buddha is referring to here, how it differs from the excessive vitakka that tired his body (that prevent first jhana), is that it doesn't block kaya-passadhi (pacification awakening factor). This is something that's easily tested out. Go into first jhana. Try different types of vitakka. If your piti sukha stops, then there's excessive vitakka. And it's not an either/or situation. There's a spectrum of how strong the piti-sukha depending on how intense and frequent the vitakka is. So there some grey area where you may wonder if it's first jhana or not.

Your second point about moments of second (or higher) jhana creeping into first jhana whenever Vitakka as absent, that's exactly right. In fact, that's really the great way to describe first jhana quickly and easily. I.e. First jhana is just second jhana that's interrupted regularly by vitakka and vicara. One hasn't learned to just cease vitakka to enter the higher jhanas at will on demand, so the kusala Dhamma-vitakka one uses in first jhana are the training wheels to help you get there.

What is incontrovertible, that even canonical Abhidhamma agrees with, is that first jhana contains kusala samma sankappo and the 3 kusala Dhamma vitakka that result from that: That is:
1. nekkhamma-sankappo (renunciation thought formations) and nekkhama-vitakka (renunciation thoughts)
2. abyapada (non-ill will, metta)
3. avihimsa (non harm, karuna)

How else are you going to do metta and karuna while in first jhana?
in second jhana, the vitakka and sankappa Dhamma-thoughts drop out, but what remains are sañña residue of those thoughts. One is still continuously recollecting (sati) and paying attention (manasi karoti) to perceptions (sañña) of metta and karuna.



Volo wrote: 
Sun Jan 26, 2020 5:24 am
I'm trying to use less internet at the moment, and don't want to post too much, but would like to comment on this one:
MN 19 wrote:But with excessive thinking and pondering I might tire my body, and when the body is tired, the mind becomes strained,
Actually it doesn't say "excessive". In Pali it's aticiraṃ, which means "too long" (ati = "overly", ciraṃ = "long"). Horner and Ven Sujato translated correctly as "too long". If vitakka here would be the same as vitakka in jhāna, that would mean that entering the first jhāna for long time would tire the body.
frank k wrote: 
Thu Jan 23, 2020 7:38 am
MN 19 says too MUCH thinking tires the body.
All jhāna factors are present in jhāna all the time. It's not that sometimes you have vitakka and vicāra in the first jhāna and sometimes not. If it would be the case, that would mean that while being in the first jhāna you occasionally fall into the second one. That is because rūpa jhānas are distinguished only by the jhāna factors (Buddha doesn't give any other way to distinguish between them).

So, basically your idea of vitakka in jhāna = thinking would mean that a person has to think about something non-stop all the time while in jhāna.


Re: B. Brahmali incorrect translation and interpretation of jhāna and samādhi in Vinaya scripture

Post by frank k » Wed Jan 29, 2020 4:19 pm
DooDoot wrote: 
Wed Jan 29, 2020 4:56 am
...
"quieting", doesn't really ever give a specific tie in to what's happening with vitakka and vicara. That's just your own arbitrary interpretation. When those 4 keywords are used (including ekodi and samadhi), all we know for sure (MN 122) is that an attempt is being made to do four jhanas, or that one has done one of the four jhanas to get into that state.

MN 117 samma sankappa definition is straight from Abhidhamma Vb, and book 1, word for word. But even operating under the assumption it's EBT, there's no justification to suddenly narrow down the meaning of vitakka to just one of those listed. Especially when we know the vitakka vicara of 1st jhana must be one of these 3:
nekkhamma vitakka (renunciation)
abyapada vitakka (good will)
avihimsa (harmlessness)

Reducing the meaning of vitakka to just "placing the mind" would kill off the generality of meaning.

in MN 119 four jhana similes, the vitakka and vicara are represented by the bathman's hands actively kneading the soap pile. That represents the kusala dhamma thoughts one is using to maintain the first jhana.

AN 3.101 never actually says which jhana it's referring to. So like B. Sujato, you like to seize on ambiguity and read your own preference into it. But the fact that the 6 higher knowledges are easily accessible at that point, we know it is not just fourth jhana, but an imperturbable fourth jhana.

And you still haven't commented on MN 78. You're in denial, and desperately grasping at straws to support an unsupportable position. The EBT position is consistent, coherent, and if you read through every single vitakka reference, everything matches and works. For your position to work, you have to cherry pick a few ambiguous passages, uses some specious dubious reasoning, and purposely ignore all of the passages where it contradicts your thesis and breaks the system, the whole Dhamma, and makes it incoherent. So after these 10 messages you post, why do you keep ignoring MN 78 and MN 125 and MN 19 parallel?

2 comments:

  1. @Frank Here I found a guy you probably know named Sylvester who uses grammatical pali loopholes to misconstrue the jhanas to fit Ajahn brahm's description . Here is what I found in a blog where he comments :
    This does suggest that each attainment in the series is attained by entering and surmounting the preceding one.

    Which leads to the next question - can one will one's way from one jhāna to the next? I think Ajahn Brahm is squarely with the suttas on this issue, when he says that in a jhāna, it is not possible to intend or will. See for example what DN 9 says - one cannot think (ceteti) nor intend (abhisaṅkharoti) within the jhānas. If you think or intend, a gross perception (oḷārikā saññā) replaces the jhāna -
    Cetayamānassa me pāpiyo, acetayamānassa me seyyo. Ahañceva kho pana ceteyyaṃ, abhisaṅkhareyyaṃ, imā ca me saññā nirujjheyyuṃ, aññā ca oḷārikā saññā uppajjeyyuṃ.

    'Thinking is bad for me. Not thinking is better for me. If I were to think and will, these perceptions of mine would cease, and a grosser perception would appear.
    It is clear from that sutta that this gross perception refers to kāmasaññā, ie the perception of the kāmā (the 5 sense data of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch).
    These seem to suggest that one first needs to leave a jhāna, go back to square one and start sliding in from there, as square one is the only place where you can think.
    But in DN9 this part of it, refers to the cessation of perception and feeling , and somehow he deduces it has to be kāmasaññā . I actually feel bad for them as once they have an experience of that light, they cling to it and when people try to say to them that it is not the case, they are in a state of denial and try to manipulate things.

    ReplyDelete