coherence and internal consistency in interpreting religious text, Early Buddhist Meditation The Four Jhānas as the Actualization of Insight by Keren Arbel

I came from a math and science background, so these principles seemed very obvious to me.

Most of my life I've applied these principles automatically, in any kind of critical thinking regarding any subject. 

But seeing all the confusion and controversy on jhānas in Theravāda made me realize this is not common sense, not obvious to most people, and it probably doesn't get formally taught in our education system. 

It should. I don't see how critical thinking can even work if people don't do this reflexively.

This is a very short excerpt from Keren's book on Jhāna.

She started her Phd thesis (this book) originally believing the LBT (late buddhist teaching)  traditional orthodox Theravada ideas on Jhāna, such as what's taught in Visuddhimagga. 

But as her study of the EBT (early buddhist teaching) texts progressed, and applying the principles of looking for coherence and internal consistency as a requirement, she came to a much different understanding than LBT on how jhānas work. 

-frankk

 

Early Buddhist Meditation
The Four Jhānas as the Actualization of Insight
by Keren Arbel

The history and philosophy of a distant past and ancient texts is a narrative in which the scholar moulds meaning into the different elements he or she finds. Many times, it discloses more about the scholar’s perspective, views and intellectual and emotional tendencies than about ‘real’ past events and ideas. This is an ‘obstacle’ that we cannot totally escape. The past will always be tinged by our current perceptions and our historical and cultural situated-ness. Only an acute awareness of the differences between the way people thought in the past and the way we think and perceive reality in the present can partially bypass the tendency to project current conceptual ways of thinking onto the subject matter. Acute sensitivity to the original setting, the author(s) and the audience of the studied texts is necessary in the endeavour for a meaningful interpretation. However, it cannot be perfected due to the obvious reason that we cannot be completely detached from our own personal biases and historical conditions. That is, there is no neutral vantage point from which we can reveal the ‘real’ meaning of a text; there is no way to arrive at an objective reading of a text or at the ‘original meaning’.

Thus, I find Gadamer’s hermeneutic methodology a valuable perspective for the present study. Gadamer suggests approaching a text with the presumption that the text forms a unity, an internally consistent whole, and this regulative ideal of unity can assist in assessing the adequacy of one’s interpretation of its various parts. This method starts with a specific presumption and is approached with the criterion of unity, but can be revised after rereading:

The text must be approached as an internally consistent whole because it is this assumption of self-consistency that provides a standard for keeping or discarding individual interpretations of the text’s parts. 

Conversely, if one denies that a given text is internally coherent from the start, one has no way of knowing whether its inconsistency is the fault of the text or one’s understanding of it.

In this study I have approached the Pāli Nikāyas from this hermeneutic perspective. Gadamer has also maintained that the presumption of unity is not sufficient to resolve the problem of misunderstanding; in other words, one can still distort the meaning of a text. I hope this study will be sensitive enough not to fall into this pitfall. I am taking Gadamer’s suggestion to be open to the otherness and distinctiveness of the text and to the challenges the text presents to one’s own views. For Gadamer, an illuminating interpretation depends on openness to the possible truth of the study object. This assumes that the text says something new that is truer and more complete than what I previously believed about it and the subject matter. Bearing this in mind is a way to avoid confirming the original views and assumptions of the interpreter.

When I started to write on the topic of Buddhist meditation theory in my master’s dissertation, I approached this object of study from the assumption that the Pāli Nikāyas present two different types of meditative procedures: samatha and vipassanā. I had also accepted the traditional view that the four jhānas and the four formless attainments are similar in nature and belong to the same meditation process. This conjecture was based on many publications on this issue both from the Buddhist tradition and from Western scholars. In my master’s dissertation I accepted this common premise but suggested that these two meditative procedures should be understood as interrelated systems of meditations. However, as I progressed in the present study, I have challenged my own original interpretation. Putting aside categories of thinking and interpretations that were embedded in the way I read these texts before has opened the way for a fresher and illuminating reading. It exposed a different interpretation and meaning that found internal coherence where I did not see it before, clarity that I could not have imagined. Thus, because my starting point is quite different than my ending point, I feel confident that I did not simply project what I was looking for onto these texts.

While I think it is not possible to claim without any reservations that the whole Pāli Nikāyas proffer an entirely a consistent picture, I suggest that when one reads the early texts closely, one can observe an unanticipated overall consistency with regard to the role of the jhānas in the path to liberation.