While doing a google search for a different topic, I came across this conversation I had with Sujato in 2016 on jhāna.
https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/samadhi-is-both-a-gathering-and-a-fire/3552/16
I save a PDF copy of that thread for posterity here in case the link above fails:
https://archive.org/details/sc-forum-samadhi-is-both-a-gathering-and-a-fire
since the SC forum has a history of banning users who are (politely and within forum guidelines) critical of Sujato's interpretations.
Around message #20, he claims AN 3.100 is a 'one off', an unusual situation. Sujato claims the Buddha was remarkably consistent in equating samādhi and jhāna almost everywhere else. Sujato doesn't cite passages and show how those passages support Sujato's idea of "jhāna". Basically he just uses the argument by (his own) authority fallacy. Usually, he's good about providing evidence when asked, but in cases where his position is unsupportable, and the issue is important to him, he goes silent.
When I bring up a number of other suttas, MN 78, AN 4.41, MN 111, MN 125, that contradict Sujato's "jhāna", he doesn't even try to respond, but you know he must have read them because he responds to other people who joined in the thread later.
People have different interpretations of jhāna. That's fine.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion.
But if you're going to present yourself as an authority on the suttas, publish an entire collection of translations, you have a moral and spiritual obligation to be transparent and justify your interpretations publicly, supported by evidence.
To not even attempt to publicly address the obvious contradictions between MN 78, AN 4.41, MN 111, MN 125, and Sujato's translation and interpretation of jhāna, is a tacit admission of wrong doing.
For the other SC forum members who silently witness these wrong doings, and are fully cognizant that they are wrong, you are complicit in these offenses, enablers of Sujato propagating corrupted teachings on jhāna.
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