SN 36.11 The Buddha gives incontrovertible gloss on the physical aspect of passaddhi sambojjhanga (pacification awakening factor)

from Dhammawheel forum thread

Re: Passaddhi; and a more general question

I respond:

https://lucid24.org/sted/7sb/5passaddhi ... ml#flink-8
in SN 36.11

look at how the 6 passaddhi's are used to describe 9 samadhi attainments, but deliberately omitting the formless attainments, in contrast to the 9 nirodhas and 9 vupasamas. This is incontrovertible evidence that kaya-passaddhi refers to pacification of the physical body, the sutta is the Buddha's own commentary on passaddhi.

citta passaddhi has a straightforward meaning, again noticing what physical and mental elements would have to be pacified through those 9 samadhi attainments in SN 36.11

first jhana pacifies unskillfull thoughts with skillful ones.
second jhana sublimates skillful verbal thoughts into subverbal mental activity (most commonly described as paying attention to Dharmic perceptions).
3rd jhana the mental trigger for piti is discarded as being an unnecessary expenditure of energy,
3rd and 4th jhana equanimous observation becomes the norm, so the mind is pacified by not expending energy having emotional reactions (most prominently as opposed to the rapture of second jhana, the thrill of physical bliss of samadhi, or the thrill of being enraptured not dependent of the 5 cords of sensual pleasure abandoned from first jhana).

What's amazing about the suttas is once you really understand the LBT Theravada misinformation that's commonly fed to the public, you realize the Buddha used words in plain language describing things simply, clearly, accurately, like you would expect a great teacher to do.

Sam Vara wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:31 pmIn SN 46.2, we are told that there is food/nutriment for the sambojjhangas. The food for passaddhisambojjhanga is kāyapassaddhi, and cittapassaddhi. So bodily tranquillity and mental tranquillity are good for developing and bringing to fulfilment the quality of tranquillity in general.

Now, I'm pretty confident at taking a guess as to what these two terms mean. Well, more confident in the case of bodily tranquillity, as relaxing the body is almost mandatory as a start of guided meditations. But is there an account somewhere of what they mean exactly? The Buddha doesn't go through the "relaxation" preamble when describing meditation, even if physically relaxing the muscles of the body is what it actually means. (And there may be some who translate kāya differently from the physical body, and I'm happy to accommodate that too, if there are good reasons for it...) And mental tranquillity? What does it mean here?

And the more general question is this. When questions like this are asked on DW, often people pop up with really helpful explanations and clarifications from commentaries. I know very little indeed of the commentaries. Is there a way of finding out what a specific passage like the above means by looking it up in the commentaries? "SN 46.2, exact meaning of kāyapassadhi, etc..." How is it actually done?

If I knew, I could answer my own daft questions without bothering you! 

frank k response later in the thread to another comment

Re: Passaddhi; and a more general question


SA 474 is the parallel to SN 36.11, not 473.
https://lucid24.org/agama/sa/sa0500/sa0474/index.html

It matches up pretty closely with the pali, minus the 6 passaddhi's.
That tells me the EBT Theravada (as opposed to LBT Theravada redefining 'body' in jhana as 'not a body but a mind'), deliberately put the 6 passadhis there to clarify the meaning of 'kaya'.

It's impossible, unless you have very accurate psychic powers and can see what actually happened 2500 years ago, to say exactly what is the Buddha's words. But from how SN 36.11 is preserved, blatantly contracted by LBT Theravada in Vism., tells you there was a time there were heretics trying to redefine kaya/body as 'mind, not body', and that the EBT Theravadins of that time laid down the law and said, "no, the Buddha used a consistent dictionary and kaya means 'body'". I have no problem with redactors adding material to clarify and preserve meaning when heretics are trying to distort and corrupt genuine EBT. The fact that the Agamas don't have the 6 passadhis, just tells you their EBT school didn't have those heretics at that time, until their later Abhidharma schools came along.


What it comes down to, is using the consistent EBT dictionary, there is coherence, all the jhana suttas on body, thought, make sense all the way through. With LBT Theravada's crooked dictionary, such as the one Sujato shares in common on the jhana and samadhi portion, you get incoherence in the suttas. They start to contradict each other and not make any sense. That is why you know you have to reject Sujato, Ajahn Brahm, and Vism's redefinition of jhana. It's like you have 50 suttas, most say 2 + 2 = 4, but then 5 of the most crucial suttas say 2+ 2 = 5. Incoherent, must reject, obvious work of heretics rewriting the scriptures for a gullible public.

Re: Passaddhi; and a more general question

• Edit
• Delete
• Report
• Quote

Post by frank k » Fri Jan 28, 2022 9:10 am

auto wrote: ↑Fri Jan 28, 2022 7:14 am...
I think what frankk does is that he takes his meditation experience and applies it to what Sutta is meaning, at the same time ignoring any possibility that the descriptions what are more detailed are also correct enough to make progress or cause some stuff to arise.

https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2021/05/first-jhana-really-can-be-this-easy-35.html wrote:Now this morning I did my first meditation in a long time, only 10 minutes. As soon as I took a couple of breaths and realized I didn't have to do or be anything for the next couple of minutes, I was struck by this incredible sense of relaxation and restfulness. This sense of relaxation stayed with me during the meditation as I tried to keep it in the awareness that lies behind the focus on the breath.

That is not me describing my meditation. I'm quoting someone from a forum describing THEIR meditation.
The link to the thread that I quote from is right there for you to click on.
And the context for that thread is limited to physical passaddhi, not the full on jhana experience.

I do talk plenty about my meditation experience elsewhere, and have justfied in detail how it matches up with a coherent and consistent jhana lexicon.

I'm not ignoring the possibility, in fact I openly acknowledge there are plenty of samadhi training systems that can develop similar qualities to the Buddha's EBT 4 jhana system. But Vism., LBT Abhidhamma, and Ajahn Brahm are nothing like the Buddha's EBT. They may have their strengths and interesting features, but IMO far more weaknesses and problems, compared to the Buddha. By all means people who like Ajahn Brahm or Vism's meditation training system, go ahead and praise it. But don't deceive yourself and others by claiming the EBT is teaching the same meditation system.