From a thread on suttacentral, someone asked which sutta contains simile of warrior and minister A. Brahm used.
Another user located it in SN 35.245, from Brahm's book.
The simile actually comes from commentary to that sutta, not from the sutta itself.
I highlight some of Brahm's erroneous analysis below.
From Ajahn Brahm’s Mindfulness Bliss and Beyond
To emphasize that jhāna is essential for deep insight,
the Buddha taught the simile of the two messengers.
The main elements of the simile are found in the Kiṃsuka
Sutta (SN 35.245) and told in detail in the commentary.
Here, I will paraphrase the simile.
An emperor was preparing his son in the skills of governing.
To give the young
prince direct experience, he appointed him viceroy over a small state just within
the borders of the empire.
He granted his son all the powers of a king and sent
him off to learn how to rule.
Some months later, a delegation of leading citizens from that state came to
complain to the emperor that the prince was failing to fulfill his duties.
The prince was partying every day, which was understandable, perhaps, since it was the
young man’s first time away from home.
The emperor summoned his wisest minister and asked him to go to that state
and instruct his son on the responsibilities of a ruler.
But the wise minister foresaw
that the arrogant young prince would not listen to him if he went alone.
So he asked that the most powerful of the generals in the imperial army accompany him
on the mission.
The emperor concurred, and thus the two messengers—the wise
minister and the powerful general—went together to instruct the young prince.
When they eventually arrived at the prince’s palace, they could hear the
merriment of a party in full swing inside the living quarters, but they were
prevented from entering by the prince’s five friends.
When the wise minister
announced who they were and who had sent them, the prince’s five companions
simply laughed in ridicule and told them to go back from where they had
come.
“This is our prince’s territory,” they asserted, “and he will do as he likes
here!”
The wise minister was unable to talk any sense into the prince’s five friends, so
the powerful general took out his sword and approached the five friends.
In a moment, the prince’s five companions completely disappeared from sight.
Then the pair entered unhindered into the palace, stopped the party, and
stood before the prince.
Once again, the wise minister announced who they
were and where they were from.
The prince, like his five friends, told the pair to get lost,
since this was his principality and he would do as he liked.
He stubbornly refused
to listen to his father’s wisest counselor.
So the powerful general took out his
sword once again, grabbed the prince by his hair, and held the sharp edge of the
sword against the throat of the prince.
“Listen, prince, to your father’s minister!”
ordered the general.
“I’m listening!
I’m listening!”
squeaked the prince, feeling the blade against his skin.
Thus it was, with the powerful general holding the prince absolutely still, with
the prince giving his fullest attention, and with the emperor’s wise minister
instructing the young man, that the prince understood all about the duties and
rewards of a ruler.
From that time on, he was a changed man.
He ruled his state wisely, and in due course the whole empire, to the happiness of all.
In this simile, the emperor was the Buddha and the prince one of his disciples.
The wise minister stands for insight and the powerful general stands for jhāna.
It is jhāna, not insight that dispels the five hindrances, represented by the prince’s five
friends.
And it is the upacāra samādhi following jhāna that holds the mind still
long enough for insight to occur and instruct the mind in Dhamma.
Frankk correcting Brahm's errors
The general represents samatha, not jhāna.
Jhāna contains both samatha and vipassana.
In third and fourth jhāna formulas,
sampajāno (discernment/wisdom faculty) and
upekkha (equanimous observation upa+ ikkhati) are both taking on role of vipassana insight.
They are active processes embededd in the jhāna formula,
active WHILE one is in jhāna, in EBT (early buddhist teachings).
See AN 9.36, MN 111, MN 125, many other suttas.
What Vism. and Brahm erroneously attribute to "access concentration",
does not exist in EBT.
Jhāna does both samatha and vipassana.
It is vipassana that understands what 5 hindrances are,
samatha is the brawn, the muscle, the sharpness of the sword of wisdom that can do lethal damage.
Not surprisingly, Brahm translates both 'samatha' and 'jhāna' with the same word, "stillness."
Ajahn Brahm's "jhāna", is like a dumb jock, a brainless warrior who can't distinguish an enemy from a friend.
You wouldn't trust that kind of warrior to buy the right kind of peanut butter from a grocery store run,
let alone know the difference between 5 defilements, sensual lust, and need to eat food and the joy accompanies that.
In the Buddha's world, Brahm's "jhāna" would be wrong samādhi, wrong jhāna, wrong view.
Even Ajahn Chah, Brahm's teacher disagrees, with his wrong view of jhāna.
The Buddha's real jhāna, is a warrior sage who possesses both samatha and vipassana in equal measure.
Two short articles (illustrated) to clearly show the difference between Buddha's jhāna and Ajahn Brahm's disembodied frozen stupor
* sword of samādhi: Buddha's jhāna vs. Vism. and Ajahn Brahm "jhāna"
* Ajahn Brahm body scan meditation, he calls it "the Delight of relaxation", the Buddha calls it "four jhānas"
B. Bodhi's footnote to translation of SN 35.245 contains commentary explanation of simile
207 Spk:
Why is this introduced?
If that bhikkhu understood (the meaning being conveyed by the kiṃsuka simile), then it is introduced to teach him the Dhamma.
If he did not understand, this simile of the city is introduced to explain and clarify the meaning.
Again, Spk gives a much more elaborate version of the simile and its application.
In brief:
The lord of the city is a prince, son of a virtuous world monarch, who had been appointed by his father to administer one of the outlying provinces.
Under the influence of bad friends the prince had become dissolute and passed his time drinking liquor and enjoying music and dance.
The king sent the two messengers to admonish the prince to abandon his heedless ways and resume his duties.
One messenger is a brave warrior (representing the samatha meditation subject), the other a wise minister (representing the vipassanā meditation subject).
The brave warrior grabs hold of the wayward prince by the head and threatens to decapitate him if he doesn’t change his ways:
this is like the time the mind has been grabbed and made motionless by the concentration arisen through the first jhāna.
The fleeing of the prince’s dissolute friends is like the disappearance of the five hindrances when the first jhāna has arisen.
When the prince agrees to follow the king’s command, this is like the time the meditator has emerged from jhāna.
When the minister delivers the king’s command, this is like the time when the meditator, with his mind made pliable through concentration, develops insight meditation.
When the two messengers raise up the white canopy over the prince after he has been coronated, this is like the time the white canopy of liberation is raised over the meditator after he has attained arahantship by means of serenity and insight.
In the EBT,
samatha and vipassana are not mutually exclusive,
independent factors.
"Mindfulness", Sammā Sati (right remembrance and application of Dhamma)
contains directives to bring samādhi and samatha to fourth jhāna quality.
And 3rd and 4th jhāna formulas explicitly embed Sammā Sati's four satipaṭṭhāna formula
withn jhāna to operate samatha and vipassana concurrently.
AN 8.63
- 8.5min: 4sp🐘, 4bv☮️, 4j🌕 all are part of "3 ways of samadhi"
(samādhi in 3 ways), and you can do any combination of those in all four
postures.
Also see AN 3.63 for explicit tie between 4j and walking. AN 8.63 is like an expanded version of SN 47.3 + SN 47.4.
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