RE: What the fuck does jhāna mean? - Discussion
Well, as people like John Yates point out and can be veryfied through practice, the method of accessing jhana depends on the depth of concentration. Meaning, just as he laid out in TMI, the Brasington jhanas beget more concentration over time, eventually leading to where nimitta access jhana becomes possible. Wich, btw, is a big continuum itself. Nimitta jhana and the strict Pa Auk nimitta jhana, there is still a wide land between them.
Anyway, to the point that I think Chris made, that not all available literature is in fact worthwile literature, that is something to think about a little, as it shines an interesting light on the very idea of authenticity, expert aproval and reliability, etc.
To what degree does the available literature actually map the territory of a given field?
You basically need to Münchhausen yourself into an experienced practitioner by relying on what seems reasonable practice advice to your judgement at the time, progress in skill level, etc. You really only have pragmatism to go by, slowly getting a lay of part of the land, becoming less of a clueless noob over time. And so on.
Through that method, you pretty much have to become somewhat of a very experienced sherpa yourself, that coincididentally also likes to stay hip to the current state of the science and litersture to come to a roughly relieable guestimation as to how much good literature on the mountain and the art of mountaineering is actually around, what percentage of all available literature is actually good, what parts of mountain or mountaneering are maybe grossly under or overrepresented (I have this feeling you'll find more literature on mindfulness and stress reduction then on 3rd path criteria and nirodha samapatti, for example), etc.
And if you're even remotely capabable of reason, you'll see that there are other expert sherpas around that disagree with you and other experts on major points of this whole thing.
So if you want to understand some aspect of a field like Jhana more deeply, I think there is still no way around reading up on the major positions in the field (like Brasington, Culadasa, Gunaratana, Ingram, Sayadaw, Snyder, Brahm, Wallace, Pa Auk etc.) and develop your own practice AND compare to other practitioners to actually get a rough idea of the field and how the literature maps it. And by that time, you hopefully have come round to reluctance regarding feeling certain of anything in said field.
“Pretty much anybody that I look up to and turn to in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, sociology, politics, climate, biology, the closer they are to experts, the less certain they are of anything. In general, just as an epistemological stance, based on the humility of deep exposure to the complexities, nuances and contradictions.“
- Jamie Wheal
LLMs can sound good, but the only way to know wether they are compiling anything worthwile seems to be to know the territorry well beforehand - wich is to not need such an AI review in the first place...
Anyway, to the point that I think Chris made, that not all available literature is in fact worthwile literature, that is something to think about a little, as it shines an interesting light on the very idea of authenticity, expert aproval and reliability, etc.
To what degree does the available literature actually map the territory of a given field?
You basically need to Münchhausen yourself into an experienced practitioner by relying on what seems reasonable practice advice to your judgement at the time, progress in skill level, etc. You really only have pragmatism to go by, slowly getting a lay of part of the land, becoming less of a clueless noob over time. And so on.
Through that method, you pretty much have to become somewhat of a very experienced sherpa yourself, that coincididentally also likes to stay hip to the current state of the science and litersture to come to a roughly relieable guestimation as to how much good literature on the mountain and the art of mountaineering is actually around, what percentage of all available literature is actually good, what parts of mountain or mountaneering are maybe grossly under or overrepresented (I have this feeling you'll find more literature on mindfulness and stress reduction then on 3rd path criteria and nirodha samapatti, for example), etc.
And if you're even remotely capabable of reason, you'll see that there are other expert sherpas around that disagree with you and other experts on major points of this whole thing.
So if you want to understand some aspect of a field like Jhana more deeply, I think there is still no way around reading up on the major positions in the field (like Brasington, Culadasa, Gunaratana, Ingram, Sayadaw, Snyder, Brahm, Wallace, Pa Auk etc.) and develop your own practice AND compare to other practitioners to actually get a rough idea of the field and how the literature maps it. And by that time, you hopefully have come round to reluctance regarding feeling certain of anything in said field.
“Pretty much anybody that I look up to and turn to in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, sociology, politics, climate, biology, the closer they are to experts, the less certain they are of anything. In general, just as an epistemological stance, based on the humility of deep exposure to the complexities, nuances and contradictions.“
- Jamie Wheal
LLMs can sound good, but the only way to know wether they are compiling anything worthwile seems to be to know the territorry well beforehand - wich is to not need such an AI review in the first place...
A lot of people who "are awake" don't report having had the "jhana" experiences per se, as well.
Also, just staying within the confines of buddhist texts, this one is fun:
Also, just staying within the confines of buddhist texts, this one is fun:
Well, definitions of concentration, here we go again. Some would say going through the nanas and attaining conformity knowledge means going through a sequence of jhanic states.
I recently heard a bit by Stephen Snyder where he talked about fruition. He said something like fruitions shorter than 30 minutes are not strong enough to really do anything to produce awakening... Wich will be interesting news for most people here, I think.
Beth Upton is on record saying that anything other than Pa Auk jhana just isn't jhana and shouldn't be called jhana because Pa Auk absorption is categorically different.
B. Alan Wallace is on record uttering the remarkable headscratcher that the "gold standard" for concentration (Visuddhimagga) is not negotiable.
Daniel Ingram has written about different degrees of formless realms, or rather that the true formless realms with body totally gone are categorically different because of that, but that he held both categorical and by degree views at different times, depending on how hard jhana his latest formless states have been.
I think the far end district of deep concentration is so "gone", so reduced in sensation spectrum, that it appears as a categorical change, even though you got there through deepening concentration.
As the most important classic "use" of jhana as a distinct practice is to boost vipassana, I have always settled for good enough jhana so far. Hyunsoo Yeung's book gives a detailed account of what stages of concentration emerge one after another when working the Pa Auk curriculum, and I have experienced some of them, like breath and light merging, but never had what that tradition would call a stable nimitta. It seems entirely possible to get there with high dose practice, but since there is progress on the path, it never seemed necessary to push the concentration pedal to the metal. I just need to sharpen the tool, not spend days on attaining the gold standard in tool sharpness. I have "formless states" rolling through that match the KF and student video series descriptions, that some people would only consider j4.5, j4.6, etc. and not true, body totally gone, formless states.
Then again, if I remember correctly, the formless states are often described as aspects of j4 anyway.
And round and round we go.
Wich brings up the interesting question: Say you are one of the persons predisposed to be able to cultivate Pa Auk jhanas. Will that make you progress faster, smoother or in any way better to 4th path, to "get it done" as the phrase goes? With all the interesting stuff I have read about hard jhana, I have never come across that direct claim.
Someone notify the EPRC, we need another longterm study. One group does dry insight, one does good enough (Brasington) jhana and insight, the third goes for Pa Auk depth before insight. Who crosses the finish line first, and how do we sort out the predisposing factors to compare?
I recently heard a bit by Stephen Snyder where he talked about fruition. He said something like fruitions shorter than 30 minutes are not strong enough to really do anything to produce awakening... Wich will be interesting news for most people here, I think.
Beth Upton is on record saying that anything other than Pa Auk jhana just isn't jhana and shouldn't be called jhana because Pa Auk absorption is categorically different.
B. Alan Wallace is on record uttering the remarkable headscratcher that the "gold standard" for concentration (Visuddhimagga) is not negotiable.
Daniel Ingram has written about different degrees of formless realms, or rather that the true formless realms with body totally gone are categorically different because of that, but that he held both categorical and by degree views at different times, depending on how hard jhana his latest formless states have been.
I think the far end district of deep concentration is so "gone", so reduced in sensation spectrum, that it appears as a categorical change, even though you got there through deepening concentration.
As the most important classic "use" of jhana as a distinct practice is to boost vipassana, I have always settled for good enough jhana so far. Hyunsoo Yeung's book gives a detailed account of what stages of concentration emerge one after another when working the Pa Auk curriculum, and I have experienced some of them, like breath and light merging, but never had what that tradition would call a stable nimitta. It seems entirely possible to get there with high dose practice, but since there is progress on the path, it never seemed necessary to push the concentration pedal to the metal. I just need to sharpen the tool, not spend days on attaining the gold standard in tool sharpness. I have "formless states" rolling through that match the KF and student video series descriptions, that some people would only consider j4.5, j4.6, etc. and not true, body totally gone, formless states.
Then again, if I remember correctly, the formless states are often described as aspects of j4 anyway.
And round and round we go.
Wich brings up the interesting question: Say you are one of the persons predisposed to be able to cultivate Pa Auk jhanas. Will that make you progress faster, smoother or in any way better to 4th path, to "get it done" as the phrase goes? With all the interesting stuff I have read about hard jhana, I have never come across that direct claim.
Someone notify the EPRC, we need another longterm study. One group does dry insight, one does good enough (Brasington) jhana and insight, the third goes for Pa Auk depth before insight. Who crosses the finish line first, and how do we sort out the predisposing factors to compare?
Well, of course in the context of "jhana" we're pretty much "entrenched" in the conceptual sandbox of (mostly) theravada. That really seems something of a given, I think. As such, talking definitions within that sandbox is fun, up to a point. And it is kind of a given that those discussions happen within that sandbox. If that sounds ridiculous, it is meant to.
As I was trying to point out, within that theravada sandbox of engineering methodologies of "awakening" and engineering of related states, there are all sorts of definitions, all referring back to actual experiences that, of course, are mostly viewed through lenses of the engineering methodology sandbox that brought them about.
Lenses constrain perspective. Again, sort of a given. Do the results that can be engineered though application of those frameworks mean that they can only occur within those frameworks? Of course not. Do the frameworks in many ways predispose outcome? Very likely. Again, sort of a given. One might say that that is the fricken point of them. Because a practice methology uses proto scientific observation but it is is not a science.
Gymnastics has a proto scientific methodolgy that helps foster the desired results of gymnastics training. That doesn't mean that phsyical adaptation only happens within gymnastics or that gymnastics covers all possible cases of observed physiological adaptations or that gymastics is a science of adaptation. It just means that, as a framework of bringing about the desired results of gymnastic training, pragamatic refinement of engineering tech in a proto scientific way has increased the success of gymnastics as a working modality to teach gymnastics to people. The contraints of gymnastics help foster success in gymnastics. Wich, again, is not the end all and be all of what might be observed in the realm of mechanotransduction. Nor does it claim to be.
(Something that someone maybe should explain to Evan Thompson. Very slowly, with a lot of patience. )
Four path model is a useful framework within one successful engineering sandbox, bringing with it it's own lens constraint. As such, also relatively disposable. Ye ole raft analogy.
Put it that way: I found that sandbox, tried tinkering with the engineering tech, got normal variations of predicted results. Cool. Hey, first path, review, vibratory signatures of nanas, woo-hoo. Very useful but just a disposeable provisional stage of an ongoing N=1. Because do jhana and nanas matter or is it about experience understanding itself better? Hm...
At some point, I had what seemed 15 distinct jhanic states rolling through. Ok. Match with KF jhanic arc plus pure abodes. Anecdotal data point. And that is about as far as it goes. Because, does it ultimately matter?
No. It's interesting in a "map onto territory" entertainment value kinda way, but can I honestly say whether I crafted those jahnic states by predisposing the system in some way or wether they "just" emerged as something a normal distribution kinda practitioner will likely encounter as underlying physiology just reacts to training stimuli? No.
But do I need to? Also no. Because as fun as those states are, and as entertaining map lingo games are, these states help in some process the "system" seems to be engaged in, namely, to understand something fundamental about all experiences. So the one taste of pure abode 3, putting on my socks, feeling triggered to type some DhO tirade and scratching my thigh seems to be the point of the current quest. Again, sort of a given. I'm fine with being a reasonably good gymnast entrenched in the constrains of gymnastic training, because it seems to bring about the desired adaptations.
As I am enganged in this first person proto scientific experiment, it doesn't strictly need to be pee reviewed hard science. It just needs to work.
Does the vehicle of travel color the journey? Yes, of course. But I always thought model agnosticism was kinda the subtext of this game. Not that everybody has an easy time with that. Do I have my leanings and suspicions regarding certain aspects of "awakening" that are coloured by the lens constrains of my sandbox? Yes, of course. Three doors seem to hint at something fundamental in it's dated and obscure way of description.
There is no model indepentend description of reality, as even Stephen Hawking finally managed to write.
But I can be aware of that and work with the constrains of model based proto scientific pragmatism in my homegrown meditation lab, or I can be a super dogma hobby horse jockey. Interestingly enough, through a pragmatic lens, that hobby horse jockeydom might work very well for certain people in the engineering awakening sense.
But here is the kicker: It doesn't make them very good communicators in a more rationally minded social (or scientific) context - of talking models, frameworks, sandboxes and their constraints and how maps might relate to territory. Taxonomy is a filing system that is most useful if used as a guide for inquiry and learning, and not as a yardstick to measure nature by.
One more time: That is really sort of a given, I think.
As I was trying to point out, within that theravada sandbox of engineering methodologies of "awakening" and engineering of related states, there are all sorts of definitions, all referring back to actual experiences that, of course, are mostly viewed through lenses of the engineering methodology sandbox that brought them about.
Lenses constrain perspective. Again, sort of a given. Do the results that can be engineered though application of those frameworks mean that they can only occur within those frameworks? Of course not. Do the frameworks in many ways predispose outcome? Very likely. Again, sort of a given. One might say that that is the fricken point of them. Because a practice methology uses proto scientific observation but it is is not a science.
Gymnastics has a proto scientific methodolgy that helps foster the desired results of gymnastics training. That doesn't mean that phsyical adaptation only happens within gymnastics or that gymnastics covers all possible cases of observed physiological adaptations or that gymastics is a science of adaptation. It just means that, as a framework of bringing about the desired results of gymnastic training, pragamatic refinement of engineering tech in a proto scientific way has increased the success of gymnastics as a working modality to teach gymnastics to people. The contraints of gymnastics help foster success in gymnastics. Wich, again, is not the end all and be all of what might be observed in the realm of mechanotransduction. Nor does it claim to be.
(Something that someone maybe should explain to Evan Thompson. Very slowly, with a lot of patience.
)Four path model is a useful framework within one successful engineering sandbox, bringing with it it's own lens constraint. As such, also relatively disposable. Ye ole raft analogy.
Put it that way: I found that sandbox, tried tinkering with the engineering tech, got normal variations of predicted results. Cool. Hey, first path, review, vibratory signatures of nanas, woo-hoo. Very useful but just a disposeable provisional stage of an ongoing N=1. Because do jhana and nanas matter or is it about experience understanding itself better? Hm...
At some point, I had what seemed 15 distinct jhanic states rolling through. Ok. Match with KF jhanic arc plus pure abodes. Anecdotal data point. And that is about as far as it goes. Because, does it ultimately matter?
No. It's interesting in a "map onto territory" entertainment value kinda way, but can I honestly say whether I crafted those jahnic states by predisposing the system in some way or wether they "just" emerged as something a normal distribution kinda practitioner will likely encounter as underlying physiology just reacts to training stimuli? No.
But do I need to? Also no. Because as fun as those states are, and as entertaining map lingo games are, these states help in some process the "system" seems to be engaged in, namely, to understand something fundamental about all experiences. So the one taste of pure abode 3, putting on my socks, feeling triggered to type some DhO tirade and scratching my thigh seems to be the point of the current quest. Again, sort of a given. I'm fine with being a reasonably good gymnast entrenched in the constrains of gymnastic training, because it seems to bring about the desired adaptations.
As I am enganged in this first person proto scientific experiment, it doesn't strictly need to be pee reviewed hard science. It just needs to work.
Does the vehicle of travel color the journey? Yes, of course. But I always thought model agnosticism was kinda the subtext of this game. Not that everybody has an easy time with that. Do I have my leanings and suspicions regarding certain aspects of "awakening" that are coloured by the lens constrains of my sandbox? Yes, of course. Three doors seem to hint at something fundamental in it's dated and obscure way of description.
There is no model indepentend description of reality, as even Stephen Hawking finally managed to write.
But I can be aware of that and work with the constrains of model based proto scientific pragmatism in my homegrown meditation lab, or I can be a super dogma hobby horse jockey. Interestingly enough, through a pragmatic lens, that hobby horse jockeydom might work very well for certain people in the engineering awakening sense.
But here is the kicker: It doesn't make them very good communicators in a more rationally minded social (or scientific) context - of talking models, frameworks, sandboxes and their constraints and how maps might relate to territory. Taxonomy is a filing system that is most useful if used as a guide for inquiry and learning, and not as a yardstick to measure nature by.
One more time: That is really sort of a given, I think.
All of this to say: Olvier, it's a rare occurance, but sometimes, people can venture into conceptual sandboxes with open eyes, talk "within" them, and yet not be entrenched in them. And diagnosing it as such might, funnily enough, be a case of being quite entrenched in a meta perspective that (momentarily) can't imagine that that is even possible. Wich is an excellent example of how lenses constrain perspective.
This is absolutely not meant in a negative way, and I hope it comes across. I appreciate your thoughtful posts very, very much.
This is absolutely not meant in a negative way, and I hope it comes across. I appreciate your thoughtful posts very, very much.
I find it very interesting, yes. I call it the energetic–explosive and the the psycho–existential variants 
Regarding the awakening research, I actually can't say too much about it and might have overshared already as it's not published yet... I think I can say though that the overall question is more "is there an overall pattern in the developmental trajectory of people who self-report having gone to the end of the path, whatever their tradition calls that" rather than "what did they do to get there".
I would personally agree that some fundamental things happen that lead to insight, and that these — just like "ability to move one's leg" is not specific to, say, Sun dancing, running a Marathon, or doing Tibetan dance, but is necessary for all these activities, — are just things human minds can do, in an internal gesture version, like: "relax, pay attention to what happens", but then this repertoire of basic internal abilities can then get woven into something highly elaborate and specific like "jhana practice in the Pa Auk style" or "Praying the Rosary while doing mythically resonant visualizations", etc., that does lead to different specific results. One might ask what are the necessary and sufficient actions for awakening, I guess, and I sometimes have thought that this is what "the dharma" or "the law of god" means: i.e. something like the 37 wings to awakening would be the phenomenological "essence" of the path of practice, or in a more succinct way, the unity of emptiness and compassion, or "sh'ma israel, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad", or what. But anyways, it's always more messy than that. As ideal frames though these are invaluable. But in terms of "ultimate insight" kind of things, it's also that reality is what it is and it's hard to think people would not notice from time to time!
Regarding the awakening research, I actually can't say too much about it and might have overshared already as it's not published yet... I think I can say though that the overall question is more "is there an overall pattern in the developmental trajectory of people who self-report having gone to the end of the path, whatever their tradition calls that" rather than "what did they do to get there".
I would personally agree that some fundamental things happen that lead to insight, and that these — just like "ability to move one's leg" is not specific to, say, Sun dancing, running a Marathon, or doing Tibetan dance, but is necessary for all these activities, — are just things human minds can do, in an internal gesture version, like: "relax, pay attention to what happens", but then this repertoire of basic internal abilities can then get woven into something highly elaborate and specific like "jhana practice in the Pa Auk style" or "Praying the Rosary while doing mythically resonant visualizations", etc., that does lead to different specific results. One might ask what are the necessary and sufficient actions for awakening, I guess, and I sometimes have thought that this is what "the dharma" or "the law of god" means: i.e. something like the 37 wings to awakening would be the phenomenological "essence" of the path of practice, or in a more succinct way, the unity of emptiness and compassion, or "sh'ma israel, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad", or what. But anyways, it's always more messy than that. As ideal frames though these are invaluable. But in terms of "ultimate insight" kind of things, it's also that reality is what it is and it's hard to think people would not notice from time to time!
Now that you mention it, Ithink I did see a "Psyops" transfer on my bank statement last month, not sure what that means...
"I am 1/32 Irish. Make of that what you wish."
Really?! In that case slainte! ... several times and one for the road!
Really?! In that case slainte! ... several times and one for the road!
"Doing lent right now so not for me despite the strong influence of my 1/4 scottish blood..."
Oh you cheeky little .........
Oh you cheeky little .........
Some musings on the idea that the dichotomy of serenity and insight is a later commentary development and one wich is potentially misleading for beginners.
I think that dichotomy can have many reasons of origin, but one just seems to be that it showed up in practice for many minds and it often just not BEING one and the same thing to the untrained mind - initially.
First up, I see people sitting in quite disparate camps making their cases from the suttas. The jhana first people do, the Mahasi people do (One By One As THey Occured), the jhana is really not one side of a two side thing people do... Ok. But:
The phrase "with a mind thus concentrated" shows up in suttas quite a bit, and I think that there are good reasons for that. Those cats seemingly APPLIED the fourth jhana afterglow to all sorts of things. Siddhis, insight, etc. With a mind thus concentrated already implies a dichotomy. Concentration here, to be applied there. The maleability of the fourth jhana as a basis for insight work. Why would that be in the suttas, if jhana already WAS meditation in the way of an UR mediation not as yet bifurated into serenity and insight? I think it is because it often initally is NOT that UR state, I think it shows up for many beginners in that engineering tech contstraint sandbox as initially more or less clearly bifurcated. For all practioniers? I don't think so. But for many, seemingly.
From what little I have heard sutta scholars say, it also seems that the Buddha dude had many ways to get people to wake up. And that even back in his day, there were people more apt to be concentrators, people more apt to dry insight, etc. So, be careful biasing your look at the suttas to finding just one way of going about things. Because you're gonna find it.
Given all that was developed in this thread above, how elaborate engineering tech might interact with physiology, etc., sandbox lens constraints, etc. and with a mind thus concentrated, here is an anecdote from my practice:
I had my first jhana experience after about ten days of guiding attention back to the breath. Deeming what had happened in terms of attention resting on the breath in a noticeably more undistracted way after that time as "maybe good enough access concentration to do the Brasington first jhana entry", I tried moving my attention on pleasureably body sensations, let it rest there and waited. Since I didn't as yet know how to fuck it up by wanting jhana to happen, piti arose, suddenly ramped up A LOT, and I was in a heavily altered state, bright white light before closed eyelids, massive piti surging through the body, everything seeming to strobe, for several minutes. A not uncommon frenetic first time jhana experience. I had done several psychedelics and MDMA in my early twenties ( I was 45 when that first jhana thing happened), and I don't recall anything that heavily altered, frenetic, extatic, "body buzz combined with attention nailed to white strobing light" in all those experiences. Not even in my textbook "all the bells and whistles" A&P I had when I was 22.
Well, nothing all that unusual so far.
When I got up from that first jhana experience, feeling super wired, I went out onto the balcony and realized that I could, for the first time, directly apprehend that experience, or a significant chunk of experience, was pixelated, fluxing, etc. Hey, there are sensations that make up perception. And here it gets very interesting.
Because that in and of itself did NOT equate to insight.
The impression was that, metaphorically speaking, here I was witnessing a fast, intricate computer game THAT MY ATTENTION WASN'T FAST ENOUGH TO PLAY YET. The jhana state thing had got me into an afterglow state wherein sensations where no longer below the perceptual threshold, and that afterglow would fade. Every time. And just being aware of the fluxing pixels, at least for me, did not in and of itself move me through the nanas.
My attention had to learn how to shoot all those aliens in real time (to borrow that MCTB metaphor).
THAT was what got me textbook nana experiences. And as I read through the progress of insight only on a need to know basis, most of those showed up before I read about them. I could not as yet be both clear and inclusive about the whole sensory field.
So I stood there and thought "Oh, getting concentrated momentarily lowers perceptual threshold for a time after the sits, and that I can use to start noticing. The flux seems fast beyond being able to track it, but Ingram says I can just start with pinpointing one sensations per second clearly and go from there."
Wich is what I did. I did my sits, tried to get as concentrated as I could, got up, went for a walk or a tram ride, and, while in that "sensation flux shows itself more than ususal due to having sat in concentration", just picked one of those many fluxing sensations, one after another, one per second. After about three days I had a very distinct Mind and Body experience, after two weeks or so I noticed weird bodily tensions and preoccupation with posture assymetry... So, textbook nana stuff. I then waited for an A&P of equal caliber to what I had experienced in my 20s and totally missed it, all that body tension assymetry stuff went away in one of my sits, that seemd to have been the whole special effect side of A&P of that cycle, but again, just textbook nana stuff.
And just for the record, when I got jhana 3 and 4 about six month later, that got me into EQ territory, but I still needed to cultivate sensory clarity in that wider vista, still working on being simultaneously clear and inclusive about the sensory field. Took further 7 months of home practice until SE happened.
The point being: there definitely seemed to be a disparity of "attention" and "awareness", or of the skill level of what seemed to be observer and what it could observe, how quick on the uptake it was - and that gap seemed like it got smaller through training and that it NEEDED to be trained. Fast fluxing field showed up, but there seemed to be a clumsy observer on this side that needed to practice getting hip to all of that - all of that over there.
These days, yeah, the one taste of all exprience, jhanas arising in the room in the same way that intention and itch and weather etc, arises.
But as, for example, described in MTCB, that that is something that becomes more apparent as practice progresses, and is (mostly) NOT a beginner thing. I think it has do to with having to push perceptual threshold, having basline changes to attentional real estate, etc. The further practice progresses, the less cleanly cut the distinction becomes. Strong concentration has a vibratory quality that is hard to tune out, investigation goes through phase sequences of jhanic factors. Or however you wanna call it. But in the beginning many people seem to have something like what I describe occur, that thing where attention needs to be trained to be quick enough on the uptake to sync to sensation frame rate.
As for the idea that many pracitioners get confused about jhana and vipassana... Well, most people can't read and are unware of that fact. I think this really should be factored into musings about mediation teachings. Look into the forums. Most questions are plainly answered in the big hit books of the trade, but have simply been overlooked, forgotten, not read often and careful enough. Infering from texts is a skill that needs to be actively developed, and even many scientist are not really all that good at watching where their biases take them, how low quality thery inferences are and how much detail they habitually overlook.
As for vipassana being the fruit of the practice and not something you do... Ahem. Yeah. I'm saying this in a friendly, wink wink kinda tone: It's almost like the illusory observer trains in a practice, pushes perceptual threshold, to ultimately see that what it seemed to be "observing" was just the framerate of manifestation, and what seemed to be "me" is just more fluxing sensate manifestation, that agency is an illusion, etc. An illusory duality transcends that duality. I might have said that before, but that is really kind of a given, no?
That the way sensations seem to manifest is both the joke AND the punchline, both the practice AND the result of practice has been stated SO often.
Do we really need to go over that again?
I think that dichotomy can have many reasons of origin, but one just seems to be that it showed up in practice for many minds and it often just not BEING one and the same thing to the untrained mind - initially.
First up, I see people sitting in quite disparate camps making their cases from the suttas. The jhana first people do, the Mahasi people do (One By One As THey Occured), the jhana is really not one side of a two side thing people do... Ok. But:
The phrase "with a mind thus concentrated" shows up in suttas quite a bit, and I think that there are good reasons for that. Those cats seemingly APPLIED the fourth jhana afterglow to all sorts of things. Siddhis, insight, etc. With a mind thus concentrated already implies a dichotomy. Concentration here, to be applied there. The maleability of the fourth jhana as a basis for insight work. Why would that be in the suttas, if jhana already WAS meditation in the way of an UR mediation not as yet bifurated into serenity and insight? I think it is because it often initally is NOT that UR state, I think it shows up for many beginners in that engineering tech contstraint sandbox as initially more or less clearly bifurcated. For all practioniers? I don't think so. But for many, seemingly.
From what little I have heard sutta scholars say, it also seems that the Buddha dude had many ways to get people to wake up. And that even back in his day, there were people more apt to be concentrators, people more apt to dry insight, etc. So, be careful biasing your look at the suttas to finding just one way of going about things. Because you're gonna find it.
Given all that was developed in this thread above, how elaborate engineering tech might interact with physiology, etc., sandbox lens constraints, etc. and with a mind thus concentrated, here is an anecdote from my practice:
I had my first jhana experience after about ten days of guiding attention back to the breath. Deeming what had happened in terms of attention resting on the breath in a noticeably more undistracted way after that time as "maybe good enough access concentration to do the Brasington first jhana entry", I tried moving my attention on pleasureably body sensations, let it rest there and waited. Since I didn't as yet know how to fuck it up by wanting jhana to happen, piti arose, suddenly ramped up A LOT, and I was in a heavily altered state, bright white light before closed eyelids, massive piti surging through the body, everything seeming to strobe, for several minutes. A not uncommon frenetic first time jhana experience. I had done several psychedelics and MDMA in my early twenties ( I was 45 when that first jhana thing happened), and I don't recall anything that heavily altered, frenetic, extatic, "body buzz combined with attention nailed to white strobing light" in all those experiences. Not even in my textbook "all the bells and whistles" A&P I had when I was 22.
Well, nothing all that unusual so far.
When I got up from that first jhana experience, feeling super wired, I went out onto the balcony and realized that I could, for the first time, directly apprehend that experience, or a significant chunk of experience, was pixelated, fluxing, etc. Hey, there are sensations that make up perception. And here it gets very interesting.
Because that in and of itself did NOT equate to insight.
The impression was that, metaphorically speaking, here I was witnessing a fast, intricate computer game THAT MY ATTENTION WASN'T FAST ENOUGH TO PLAY YET. The jhana state thing had got me into an afterglow state wherein sensations where no longer below the perceptual threshold, and that afterglow would fade. Every time. And just being aware of the fluxing pixels, at least for me, did not in and of itself move me through the nanas.
My attention had to learn how to shoot all those aliens in real time (to borrow that MCTB metaphor).
THAT was what got me textbook nana experiences. And as I read through the progress of insight only on a need to know basis, most of those showed up before I read about them. I could not as yet be both clear and inclusive about the whole sensory field.
So I stood there and thought "Oh, getting concentrated momentarily lowers perceptual threshold for a time after the sits, and that I can use to start noticing. The flux seems fast beyond being able to track it, but Ingram says I can just start with pinpointing one sensations per second clearly and go from there."
Wich is what I did. I did my sits, tried to get as concentrated as I could, got up, went for a walk or a tram ride, and, while in that "sensation flux shows itself more than ususal due to having sat in concentration", just picked one of those many fluxing sensations, one after another, one per second. After about three days I had a very distinct Mind and Body experience, after two weeks or so I noticed weird bodily tensions and preoccupation with posture assymetry... So, textbook nana stuff. I then waited for an A&P of equal caliber to what I had experienced in my 20s and totally missed it, all that body tension assymetry stuff went away in one of my sits, that seemd to have been the whole special effect side of A&P of that cycle, but again, just textbook nana stuff.
And just for the record, when I got jhana 3 and 4 about six month later, that got me into EQ territory, but I still needed to cultivate sensory clarity in that wider vista, still working on being simultaneously clear and inclusive about the sensory field. Took further 7 months of home practice until SE happened.
The point being: there definitely seemed to be a disparity of "attention" and "awareness", or of the skill level of what seemed to be observer and what it could observe, how quick on the uptake it was - and that gap seemed like it got smaller through training and that it NEEDED to be trained. Fast fluxing field showed up, but there seemed to be a clumsy observer on this side that needed to practice getting hip to all of that - all of that over there.
These days, yeah, the one taste of all exprience, jhanas arising in the room in the same way that intention and itch and weather etc, arises.
But as, for example, described in MTCB, that that is something that becomes more apparent as practice progresses, and is (mostly) NOT a beginner thing. I think it has do to with having to push perceptual threshold, having basline changes to attentional real estate, etc. The further practice progresses, the less cleanly cut the distinction becomes. Strong concentration has a vibratory quality that is hard to tune out, investigation goes through phase sequences of jhanic factors. Or however you wanna call it. But in the beginning many people seem to have something like what I describe occur, that thing where attention needs to be trained to be quick enough on the uptake to sync to sensation frame rate.
As for the idea that many pracitioners get confused about jhana and vipassana... Well, most people can't read and are unware of that fact. I think this really should be factored into musings about mediation teachings. Look into the forums. Most questions are plainly answered in the big hit books of the trade, but have simply been overlooked, forgotten, not read often and careful enough. Infering from texts is a skill that needs to be actively developed, and even many scientist are not really all that good at watching where their biases take them, how low quality thery inferences are and how much detail they habitually overlook.
As for vipassana being the fruit of the practice and not something you do... Ahem. Yeah. I'm saying this in a friendly, wink wink kinda tone: It's almost like the illusory observer trains in a practice, pushes perceptual threshold, to ultimately see that what it seemed to be "observing" was just the framerate of manifestation, and what seemed to be "me" is just more fluxing sensate manifestation, that agency is an illusion, etc. An illusory duality transcends that duality. I might have said that before, but that is really kind of a given, no?
That the way sensations seem to manifest is both the joke AND the punchline, both the practice AND the result of practice has been stated SO often.
Do we really need to go over that again?