Daniel M. Ingram:
Defining the term "jhana" further might help.
You see, there are jhanas and there are jhanas, and you can do various things with them, and they can vary a lot in their quality.
The stages of insight are clearly jhanic in some way.
Basically everyone who notes well is going to get into some jhanic states of some kind if they do it well.
Maintaining perfectly "jhana-free" practice is not only basically impossible past some point, but also not as much fun.
Even in the Mahasi tradition, they teach and practice jhanas at the higher levels and are totally expecting jhanic effects of various kinds even in "pure noters".
This is such a valuable, interesting, and useful point that I would recommend putting it front and center in your revisions to MCTB. It is high time we got past this confusion of "Should I practice jhana, or should I practice vipassana?" Some really excellent scholarship on the Pali suttas (see Bhante Sujato or Thannisaro Bhikkhu) shows that this distinction between jhana and vipassana is a false one, and the Buddha fully expected his students to bring both tranquility and insight to bear on phenomena in every sit. So it would be great if you could help add to the clarification by softening this distinction in the next version of your book.
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