re: Steve (1/2/15 9:58 AM)
"Lee Brasington … book on the jhanas. Brasington is rare in that he seems to know what is talking about in regards to the jhanas and is a good ( in English ) communicator."
Darrell(7/16/15 6:40 PM as a reply to Steve.)
"Books of this nature (Shaila Catherine comes to mind) lead me to think that perhaps Jhana is possible for the isolated practioner.
Is this wrong?"Do you mean without 1st person guidance by a teacher?
Complicated issue, what with the range of interpretations of what
jhana is, can be or should be.
Traditional
jhana-s ("hard"
jhana with full absorption), as taught by PaAuk Sayadaw (Burmese lineage, as in Shaila's books, and another little book by Synder & Rasmussen*), or as outlined in a book by Ajahn Brahm** (Thai lineage), or in dharmaseed talks by Ayya Khema –maybe possible but probably not easy to learn on one's own, IME. There are many more sources -- books, youtube talks, etc. -- for this kind of material.
Richard Shankman's book (
'The Experience of Samadhi') covers the sources and various interpretational issues, but is not that much an instructional manual. (The interviews in his book with six 'experts' with a rangeof views are very interesting.) Since then he teaches concentrationon retreats around the SF Bay Area. When his book came out (2008), I attended a day-long talk by him (with book-signing), and my impression was he was teaching a softer form of
jhana.
January 2014 I attended a retreat (at IRC, Scotts Valley, CA) with Leigh Brasington (and Gil Fronsdal) teaching his also 'softer'
jhana-s together with some of his historical analysis justifying this form, including s/w daring claims ("…the commentaries (ie Visudhimagga) got it wrong!"). And he's now retired from his former software career and travels ('gone forth' as he put it) teaching
jhana on retreats.
I would think this form of jhana would be easier to get into by "the isolated practitioner"(without one-on-one teaching).
Leigh also talked about having attended one of those long retreats in Massachussets taught by PaAuk Sayadaw, and he mentioned getting to much deeper states of concentration than in his own method. Leigh seems to have some respect for that 'hard' method, though he seems to doubt that the Buddha taught it.
Conversation with him was great (in retreat interviews back then); he and I both have a strong
pariyatti (study of texts) bent. When I asked, he gave as sources for his interpretation a) Ayya Khema, and b) Rod Bucknell. Puzzling in that everything I've found (eg darmaseed talks) by Ayya Khema on
jhana-s seems to me straight, orthodox theravadan 'hard', absorptive
jhana. Rod Bucknell's theory (and his chief source Martin Stuart-Fox) I've studied (both sources available on the internet), and find the intrepretations problematic. (Sometime, maybe now sooner, I plan to lay-out an analysis of those sources here on DhO in my practice thread ("Views, meta-views…")
So I'm curious what he comes up with in the forthcoming book.
* '
Practicing the Jhanas' by Stephen Synder and Tina Rasmussen
**
'The Jhanas' By Ajahn Brahmavamso
http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books/Ajahn_Brahm_The_Jhanas.pdf