Weekend at Buddhaghosa's: Buddha's Jhāna Vs. VRJ👻🥶 (Vism. Re-definition of Jhāna)

 I've reworked the VRJ article, adding many permalinks.

Here's the table of contents, and an excerpt from the introduction and conclusion

4👑☸ → 👑8☸ → 8🌄 → Buddha's Jhāna Vs. VRJ👻🥶 (Vism. Re-definition of Jhāna)

 VRJ👻🥶 ¹ – EBT Jhāna Vs. Vism. Redefinition
    VRJ👻🥶 ^1.1 – The Buddha’s agenda
    VRJ👻🥶 ^1.2 – THOX agenda
    VRJ👻🥶 ^1.3 – The fallout from the different agendas
        VRJ👻🥶 ^1.3.1 – An uncomfortable truth
        VRJ👻🥶 ^1.3.2 – 'It depends upon what your definition of "is" is.'
VRJ👻🥶 ² – How EBT defines Jhānas
    VRJ👻🥶 ^2.1 – Difference between rūpa and a-rūpa
    VRJ👻🥶 ^2.2 – How sukha is defined in EBT jhānas: physical pleasure
        VRJ👻🥶 ^2.2.1 – If the Buddha wanted sukha to be mental in 3rd jhāna...
        VRJ👻🥶 ^2.2.2 – Pounding in the final nail on the coffin of the Jhāna controversy
VRJ👻🥶 ³ – How THOX & Vism. Redefined Jhāna
    VRJ👻🥶 ^3.1 – Difference between rūpa and a-rūpa
        VRJ👻🥶 ^3.1.1 – Vism chap. 10 arūpa
        VRJ👻🥶 ^3.1.2 – next paragraph is the key
        VRJ👻🥶 ^3.1.3 – But this part seems to agree with EBT that sound can knock you out of first jhāna
    VRJ👻🥶 ^3.2 – Conclusion on difference between THOX rūpa and a-rūpa
    VRJ👻🥶 ^3.3 – THOX Ab Vb 12 redefines kāya as body of mental aggregates
    VRJ👻🥶 ^3.4 – THOX redefines kāya in 16 APS
    VRJ👻🥶 ^3.5 – THOX redefines kāya in tranquility awakening factor as body of mental aggregates
            VRJ👻🥶 ^10.2. Analysis According To Abhidhamma
    VRJ👻🥶 ^3.6 – THOX redefines sukha as all mental factors
    VRJ👻🥶 ^3.7 – THOX tries to explain why anatomical body feels so good in jhāna
VRJ👻🥶 ⁴ – Vimt. in practice is mostly consistent with EBT jhāna
    VRJ👻🥶 ^4.1 – Vimt. matches EBT in rūpa vs. arūpa, space-infinitude-dimension
        VRJ👻🥶 ^4.1.2 – This is saying the mind is divorced from 5 sense faculties
        VRJ👻🥶 ^4.1.3 – here he explicitly says four jhānas, the mind is still sensitive to 5 faculties
VRJ👻🥶 ⁵ – Evolution of Bhante Gunaratana's Interpretation of Jhāna
    VRJ👻🥶 ^5.1 – Bhante G. Bio.
    VRJ👻🥶 ^5.2 – book 1: Critical Analysis of the Jhānas (conforms to Vism. And contradicts EBT)
    VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3 – book 2: Beyond Mindfulnes (changed views on jhāna now conforms to EBT)
            VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3.5 – Highlights from the second book
            VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3.5.1 – brief key points of four jhānas
            VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3.5.2 – jhāna in depth
            VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3.5.3 – First jhāna
            VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3.5.4 –Second jhāna
            VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3.5.5 –Third jhāna
            VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3.5.6 –Fourth jhāna
            VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3.5.7 –COMING OUT OF JHANA TO PRACTICE VIPASSANA
            VRJ👻🥶 ^5.3.5.8 –can you hear sound and feel body pain in jhana?
    VRJ👻🥶 ^5.4 – Conclusion on Bhante G.
VRJ👻🥶 ⁶ – Thanissaro Bhikkhu
VRJ👻🥶 ⁷ – Final conclusion
    VRJ👻🥶 ^7.1 – THOX redefinition of Jhāna, kāya, sukha
    VRJ👻🥶 ^7.2 – THOX has a weekend at Bernie’s
        VRJ👻🥶 ^7.2.1 – Was the Buddha negligent in defining critical key terms like Jhāna, kāya, sukha, rūpa?
            VRJ👻🥶 ^7.2.1.2 – We need prophets 500 years after the Buddha to explain his error
        VRJ👻🥶 ^7.2.2 – The Buddha knew what he was doing
VRJ👻🥶 ¹⁰ – Miscellaneous
VRJ👻🥶 ¹⁰⁰ – commentary
VRJ👻🥶 ⁹⁹⁹ – Bookmarks of interest
    VRJ👻🥶 ^999.9 – TOC permalinks

1 – EBT Jhāna Vs. Vism. Redefinition

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A straightfoward Ockham’s Razor reading of EBT passages on samādhi and jhānais drastically different from how Vism. (Visuddhimagga) redefines it500 to 900 years after the Buddha’s pari-nibbāna.One of the keys to understanding this huge discrepancyis understanding the underlying agenda of the Abhidhamma, Vism.,i.e. the LBT Theravada Orthodoxy (here after abbreviated as THOX).

1.1 – The Buddha’s agenda

was simple and pragmatic.Among a forest of trees, he only taught a handful of leaves HOL 🍂 ,the crucial spiritually relevant points that show the mapto walk the path to the ancient city (of Nirvana).

1.2 – THOX agenda

The THOX agenda is much more ambitious.They not only want to add more complex topology to elaborate on the path to Nirvana,they set out to map all the leaves of all the trees in the forest!In other words, they believe the Abhidhamma one ups the Buddha by comprehensively describing everything in knowable reality.When it comes to Jhāna, THOX finds it necessary to redefine Jhānaso that it works with their ideas of momentariness, supramundane path moments,and complicated metaphysics not found in the EBT .

1.3 – The fallout from the different agendas

Whether THOX is successful in their ambitious agenda,that’s a different debate beyond the scope of this article, but here’s the crux.Essential EBT core principles are encapsulated in a small, coherent body of passages.Though the Suttas are large in word count,they’re mostly themes and variations on the small coherent EBT core.So generally speaking, the EBT core is small, simple, pragamatic, just as we expect from the Buddha’s agenda.What we know about simple versus complex in all aspects of the natural world apply here as well.The more complex something is, the harder it is to maintain coherence , free of contradictions.Even as small as the EBT core is, it still has minor contradictions here and there (Buddha usually resolves in another sutta).With THOX, the scope of the complexity is such that it takes Abhidhamma hundreds of years to try to work out the contradictions and present a coherent system.Did they succeed?That’s beyond my expertise to judge, but restricting the discussion to Jhānas, they failed.Contradictions and in- coherence abound.

1.3.1 – An uncomfortable truth

If your agenda and the Buddha’s don’t match,but you still want to claim your new system is completely compatible with the Buddha’s EBT core,then how do you make it work?Usually when this need arises, there is no other way than to redefine some important key terms.Next, to deflect the obvious questions about the contradictions and incoherence, a combination of equivocation and obfuscation.

1.3.2 – 'It depends upon what your definition of "is" is.'

said by President Bill Clinton during impeachment trial,when asked if he had sexual relations with the intern.Quora explains:So Clinton, who had studied philosophy at Oxford and law at Yale,was trying to get his audience to abandon a common-sense understanding of a wordand make the argument devolve into an endless discussion of a technicality.Standard lawyerese, really.Get the case bogged down and people forget what it was about in the first place.

7 – Final conclusion

The difference between EBT and THOX interpretations of Vitakka & Vicāra, insight capability from within jhāna, will be dealt with here: V&V💭 and 4 Jhānas🌕 ≈ 4 Satipaṭṭhāna🐘.

Jhāna in EBT

* In four jhānas, kāya, rupa refers to the flesh and blood anatomical body. Arupa means rupa (5 sense faculties) is divorced from mind. Vedana, sukha are experienced as sensations in the body.* the body gradually fades into the background, from first through fourth jhāna.* Low to moderate sounds, low to moderate body pain are possible to sense, but are generally also faded in the background.* Loud sounds or strong body pain will most likely knock you out of the jhāna.* The bliss of Piti and sukha are experienced in the body, it can be as strong as an intense full body orgasm that lasts hours.

7.1 – THOX redefinition of Jhāna, kāya, sukha

They redefine kāya as a body of mental factors.Vedana, feeling, in EBT is also intimately connected with the anatomical body, so it was also redefined in a way to disassociate it from the anatomical body.A thorough audit of the pali and english of SN 34, Vedana Samyutta, reveals that in 7 of the 31 suttas, the anatomical body is explicitly said to be the origin or cause of the 3 types of feelings that arise. There is also a 5 fold classication of vedana that separates out the physical and mental components.

7.2 – THOX has a weekend at Bernie’s

THOX’s redefinition of Jhāna is reminiscent of the premise of the comic story “Weekend at Bernies”.The two protaganists, invited to their boss Bernie’s house for the weekend,arrive and find him dead.Needing Bernie to be alive, they clean up Bernies corpse, dress him up,carry him around, move him like a puppet.The joke is that all the people they encounter believe the act.They all talk to the corpse Bernie like he’s still alive.Just like that, THOX killed the body (kāya),killed sukha-vedana,dressed up the dead bodies,gave it a new set of clothes and hair(kāya reborn as body of mental aggregates, sukha reborn as mental only pleasure),and amazingly, everyone buys the story.

7.2.1 – Was the Buddha negligent in defining critical key terms like Jhāna, kāya, sukha, rūpa?

In order for the THOX redefinition of Jhāna to be valid,this must mean the Buddha was negligent and carelessin how he defined Jhāna, kāya, sukha, rūpa, among other terms.

7.2.1.2 – We need prophets 500 years after the Buddha to explain his error

We also need prophets and commentators who arrived 200 to 500 years after the Buddha's death,to explain where the Buddha erred,and correct his mistakes by rewriting his instructions,rewriting the Buddha's dictionary so completely fundamental concepts on which the oral tradition is built, words likeKāya (physical body) now means "body of mental factors devoid of a physical body",and vitakka (linguistic verbal thinking) now means "no thinking at all".

7.2.2 – The Buddha knew what he was doing

The other possibility, is that the Buddha knew what he was doing,was careful and scrupulous in designing the EBT core,and over the 45 years he taught,made any minor corrections needed to ensure the EBT core is coherent ,could last a very long time in this world, worded as is,using the same dictionary as everyone else.(end of article⏹️)