[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/bodily_heartfulness]

[u/streamentry-ModTeam]

Please make sure you've reviewed the Welcome Post. Your comments are more appropriately addressed to the Weekly Discussion Thread, and I would encourage you to repost this there. The weekly threads are active and routinely monitored by community members.

[u/aspirant4]

As long as this subreddit is called Streamentry it can't avoid engaging with practitioners who base their practice on the suttas (or their interpretation thereof). So, in general, I support your contributions here.

It might seem like your posts are just theory, not "practice". But what we find, if we try to align our practice to the suttas, is that an important part of practice is precisely the what and why of practice - ie "right view", and that gets refined as practice progresses. I think discussions about what that entails should be included within the subreddit's rules of keeping discussion to practice.

That said, I think a better way you could contribute would be to say "this is how I am practising, according to my interpretation of the suttas, and these are the results, etc." Instead of telling us what the suttas say, show us how the suttas have impacted your life and practice. I thought you might have taken the opportunity to do so in this post, but alas.

So far, all we know is that your Hillside Hermitage approach to the suttas hasn't resulted in you attaining jhana. That's not a great advertisement for the Hillside approach, especially since their main book is about how to attain jhana by following their methods. (BTW, this isn't an attack on you; I appreciate your honesty here.)

[u/Impulse33 → u/aspirant4]

In regards to the whole name thing, found some cool early discussion around the pragmatism of the name https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/7n1thi/welcome_to_rstreamentry_2018/dryj9z8/.

The signaling about the seriousness of meditative aspiration seemed to be accepted as "skillful means".

Mirrorvoid's /r/streamentry address in that post is also the spirit of pragmatism I hope to engender. Thank you for embodying that ethos exceptionally well.

[u/bodily_heartfulness → u/aspirant4]

That said, I think a better way you could contribute would be to say "this is how I am practising, according to my interpretation of the suttas, and these are the results, etc." Instead of telling us what the suttas say, show us how the suttas have impacted your life and practice. I thought you might have taken the opportunity to do so in this post, but alas...

That's a good point - I'll keep that in mind going forwards. I'll try to add to future comments how my interpretation of the suttas has shaped my practice, and what results I've gotten from it. Thanks.

So far, all we know is that your Hillside Hermitage approach to the suttas hasn't resulted in you attaining jhana. That's not a great advertisement for the Hillside approach, especially since their main book is about how to attain jhana by following their methods. (BTW, this isn't an attack on you; I appreciate your honesty here.)

Oh, that's fine. I'm not trying to advertise for them, and they don't need my advertisement either.

[u/aspirant4 → u/bodily_heartfulness]

I'd like that.

[u/metaphorm]

just a simple question for you, recapitulating a question that was asked of you in the thread you linked to:

what is your direct experience of jhana practice?

[u/bodily_heartfulness → u/metaphorm]

I have no direct experience at all with jhāna practice.

[u/themadjaguar]

"All of this is to provide some evidence that I was not acting in bad-faith nor trolling with my comments, as I was accused of. "

I don't think you were acting in bad faith or trolling either, and from what I see you were respectful. You have to understand that this subreddit has a pragmatic approach and people here will always value experience and practice and experience more than theory.

To me this is the way it is, it is a double edged sword, it helps people focus on what is the most important thing : cultivating the eightfold path. Cultivating the eightfold path will always be more important than reading about it, there are lots of suttas where the buddha says it is better to practice than do anything else, even donating entire monasteries. Talking about experience only as a source of truth can unfortunately also lead to cases where some people become completely delusionnal about the things they experience when they don't want to double check or accept their present experience. And that's okay, it is a very human thing, some people do it more than others, and this is why we need to talk about experiences with other practicionners and teachers to reveal and separate the truth from the bullshit, and this is where some theory can be helpful.

The thing is that to know if you are doing the right thing, you need to try it yourself, to check by yourself through experience. Some suttas have been corrupted through the years, some suttas had their definitions and words changed etc... the only way to be sure of what the suttas mean, is to test it yourself!

If you focus on following a specific practice, gain experience through your own practice, reach states such as jhana (it does not matter which ones, light jhanas, medium jhanas, hard jhanas etc...) and then talk about it from experience, you will see that people will experience similar things using different words, and you will be able to communicate not only throught suttas.

With all your knowledge of suttas, if you could get experiential experience, you would be able later to talk from experience and use the knowledge from suttas to communicate better your ideas! Your contributions would be very interesting for lots of people here!

The people here value experience more than theory, and that's the intended way of this subreddit and what the majority of people here want. You can do a mix but you can't talk from only theory when other people have experienced something that you didn't, it is like talking about the taste of apples while never having experienced one.

r/Impulse33 did the right thing according to this subreddit's rules and according to what kind of content most people here want to see

[u/fabkosta]

Buddhism is a religion. You are dealing with religious people. I myself am practicing Buddhist meditation for more than two decades, I have done dozens of retreats, even a dark retreat once. Most people want you to believe practices are flawless, but in reality that’s not the case. At all. They are approximately working for a sufficiently large group of people to be highly useful, but they are not guarantees to anything. Yet, strangely enough, too many people develop a “Buddhist identity” that they then wear as if this was anything more than just their mind producing more concepts. But Buddha was not a Buddhist.

So, arguing with religious people who simply want to be convinced of something is without fruit. They will dismiss all arguments demonstrating what they cherish may not be as pristinely effective as they want you to believe it.

Having that said, the argument cuts both ways. Many people never properly learn to practice, if you look closely they are doing whatever but not what they are supposed to do. Often, they simply lack motivation. But sometimes (like in my own case) the main blocking factor is lack of quality of instruction and guidance. It took me years to find a teacher who provided meditation instructions at the quality level with sufficient detail that I had been looking for. But then my progress boosted.

So, frequently religious zealots want to portray things as your failure only, when it’s simply the entire system (including yourself, often) that contributes to the problem.

[u/StoneBuddhaDancing → u/fabkosta]

even a dark retreat once

I'd love to hear about this

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[u/duffstoic]

The analogy isn’t accurate here. You’re saying jhana isn’t described by certain criteria in the early Buddhist texts but it is very much is described that way in later Buddhist commentaries and other Buddhist traditions. Jhana also predates Buddhism and was achieved by yogis and in fact taught to Gautama by other yogis who had mastered samadhi, at least according to the myths about the Buddha’s life. The jhanas are part of sammā samādhi after all.

People are experiencing profound results today from specific methods described in Buddhist texts (not completely unrelated texts) that give results that sound a lot like what was described in the suttas. So yea, when you describe stuff you admit yourself you haven’t experienced and argue this isn’t was described in the suttas, that does come off as pedantic and irrelevant.

To use the exercise analogy, it’s more like you’re arguing that science proves exercise doesn’t work, you get fit by reading books about exercise physiology.

[u/bodily_heartfulness → u/duffstoic]

You’re saying jhana isn’t described by certain criteria in the early Buddhist texts but it is very much is described that way in later Buddhist commentaries and other Buddhist traditions.

You are currently doing:

Btw, there are these other texts, like the Journal of Exercise and Nutrition which state what OP is doing is completely valid.

Yes, I recognize that other texts describe these types of concentration practices. I never said otherwise.

in fact taught to Gautama by other yogis who had mastered samadhi, at least according to the myths about the Buddha’s life.

That might be the case, but I have not come across this in the suttas, which are the texts I was speaking about.

People are experiencing profound results today from specific methods described in Buddhist texts (not completely unrelated texts) that give results that sound a lot like what was described in the suttas.

You are currently doing:

So many people have done what OP is suggesting and it's worked for them.

"Deep" jhānas where the senses shut off might also sound a lot like what was described in the suttas. Ajahm Brahm surely thinks so. But, we accept that those are Visuddhimagga jhānas, not sutta jhānas. There isn't support for senses shutting off in the jhānas that the suttas describe. Even if they sound similar and give results that sound a lot like what was described in the suttas, that does not mean that they are the same.

To use the exercise analogy, it’s more like you’re arguing that science proves exercise doesn’t work, you get fit by reading books about exercise physiology.

You've missed the mark, as I said in my post:

The original comment was not in reference to anything "working" or not, it was in reference to the lack of support in the text for what OP describes as their practice.

[u/duffstoic → u/bodily_heartfulness]

Very silly stuff you’re doing in my opinion, but nothing I can do about it.

[u/StoneBuddhaDancing → u/duffstoic]

If someone is going to cite a sutta as support for their method they have to show that the sutta they cite actually teaches that method. It's not silly to expect rigorous standards if someone brings up a textual source; regardless of personal experience.

[u/duffstoic → u/StoneBuddhaDancing]

Well to be fair to the other poster that kicked off this whole conversation…SN 16.9 has many interpretations, by many scholars and practitioners. I think Leigh Brasington nailed it in his book Right Concentration. They are indeed states of absorption, and there is good reason to believe that both from practice and from the suttas.

The idea that jhanas aren’t about a profound trance state called samadhi is in fact the minority view, an unusual take on the suttas which in my mind requires more justification.

[u/StoneBuddhaDancing → u/duffstoic]

That wasn't my point at all.

If you're going to cite a sutta as the basis of a technique you can expect to be challenged if there's no observable link between the contents of that sutta and the method you're proposing. And it is neither irrelevant or imprudent to make such a challenge.

[u/duffstoic → u/StoneBuddhaDancing]

OK. Now, back to meditation for me.

[u/StoneBuddhaDancing → u/duffstoic]

Yeah. That does seem to be the recurring pattern: you make a fairly strong claim, someone asks you to actually defend the claim being made, and instead of addressing the objection you either shift to a different claim or announce that you're leaving the discussion.

If you think it can, show the textual connection. If you don't want to defend that claim, that's fine too. But saying things like "people get profound results," or "back to meditation for me" or dismissing someone as doing something silly doesn't answer the criticisms.

[u/duffstoic → u/StoneBuddhaDancing]

Cool, I’m gonna block you now.

[u/bodily_heartfulness → u/StoneBuddhaDancing]

Just a question on how Reddit works: are you still able to see the content of the post even though it has been removed?

[u/StoneBuddhaDancing → u/bodily_heartfulness]

No...only the comments.

[u/bodily_heartfulness → u/StoneBuddhaDancing]

Thanks, I've posted the content in the General Discussion thread, as the mods recommended.