SN 48.40 Ven. Sunyo's argument in favor of disembodied jhāna, uses argument from silence fallacy

 

Ven. Sunyo says about SN 48.40

(His full comments on SN 48.40 here)

When you say that in SN48.40 “the first 2 Jhānas still has feelings of pleasure from the physical body”, this is not true.
Technically, the discourse just says this bodily pleasure has ceased in the third.
It doesn’t actually say that it still existed in the first two jhanas.
Point being, it has ceased in the first and second as well, but that is not the relevant point being made in the discourse.

what is: argument from silence fallacy?

https://ses.edu/the-argument-from-silence/

...Similar to the fallacy of an appeal to ignorance, the argument from silence is a fallacy of weak induction that treats the absence of evidence as evidence itself. This logical fallacy essentially takes an appeal to authority and flips it around. The appeal to authority says that because an authority A says x,  then x must be true; the argument from silence says that because an authority A didn’t say x, then x must be false. In effect, the silence of the authority regarding some particular claim is taken as evidence against the claim itself.

How does Ven. Sunyo use argument from silence fallacy?

for reference, the full sutta in pali + eng. 

SN 48.40: Uppaṭipāṭikasutta—Bhikkhu Sujato (suttacentral.net)

 

His view of jhāna is that it's a  state of disembodied, mental paralysis, 

rather than the standard interpretation using a consistent dictionary that jhāna is an embodied state where both samatha and viapssana happen, 

and all 5 senses are accessible (you can hear sounds in jhāna, etc.)

So just like Vism., he's quick to utilizie SN 48.40 third jhāna section where it says the physical pleasure ceases, to support his claim that all four jhānas are disembodied states of mental paralysis.

But the problem is, this sutta is only saying the physical pleasure faculty ceases in 3rd jhāna, not the first two jhānas.

Someone pointed this out to him in the discussion, and his response is the quote above, where he says essentially, "just because the Buddha says physical pleasure ceases in 3rd jhāna, it doesn't mean the Buddha didn't say physical pleasure hadn't already ceased in 1st jhāna."

This is argument from silence fallacy -

a fallacy of weak induction that treats the absence of evidence as evidence itself. 

The burden of proof is on Ven. Sunyo to find suttas where it's shown the pleasure faculty ceases in either first or second jhāna,

or show that there's some reason we can't make the reasonable assumption from the start of the sutta where it says those 5 faculties which are ceasing in irregular order, don't mean they hadn't already ceased in a prior jhāna.

Another way to show the weakness of Ven. Sunyo's argument, is to use the same fallacy ourselves and assert  that:

1) Just because the Buddha says cessation of perception of feeling happens in the 9th attainment doesn't mean it hadn't already ceased in 3rd jhāna or second jhāna.

2) Just because pleasure faculty ceases in 3rd jhāna (according to SN 48.40) doesn't mean pleasure faculty can't come back in the formless attainments, because the formula for formless attainments doesn't say anything about sukha not being allowed.

3) Just because the Buddha defines noble silence as second jhāna, doesn't mean first jhāna is not also noble silence.

While Vism. and Ven. Sunyo cite SN 48.40 as proof of jhāna being disembodied,

I doubt Ajahns Brahm, Sujato, Brahmali do as well.

Because if you treat SN 48.40 as a legitimate uncorrupted sutta,

that physical pleasure (sukha indriya) ceases in third jhāna,

then you also have to accept the legitimacy of SN 48.40 saying first and second jhāna are embodied states, which is also an incoherent view that can be proven with other suttas and early canonical works.

I just did so a couple of days ago here.

It's short, I highlighted the pali words where it shows the physical pleasure in the jhāna.

It only takes you 10 seconds to click the link and confirm for yourself.

https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2024/05/kn-pe-71-74-gloss-of-four-jhana-formula.html

Ven. Sunyo has been made aware of KN Pe, yet he has made no comment so far.

Forum discussion

https://www.reddit.com/r/theravada/comments/1d147vt/comment/l5s1249/?context=3

@Spirited_Ad8737 responding to moderator:

In my opinion u/lucid24-frankk is making a solid point here.

And I think the people trying to retroactively project later anachronistic meanings onto the Canon have to twist logic into a pretzel to do so.

It doesn't have to be such a source of conflict. Just keep Visuddhimagga jhana and Sutta jhana separate. Be transparent about whether we're talking about the orthodox Theravada commentarial tradition, the sutta jhanas, or some of the hybrids that have arisen. Good teachers can teach well with different kinds of language. There are great practitioners in all these camps.

But scholars, please listen and consider: don't try to obliterate the real differences by retroactively falsifying the canonical record. A case in point is the later technical sense of vitakka-vicara (applied and sustained attention) which has no place in translations of the canon.

Credentials, since you keep asking about that: quite a bit of university-level Sanskrit and Pali, general linguistics, extensive exposure to philological methods in my work, but no degree, and it was decades ago – very rusty.

Also advanced undergrad logic, and also TA'd the first years' intro to logic at uni level, holding weekly review sessions, grading tests and homework, etc. Again decades ago, rusty, and no degree.