• The elephant is sati ("mindful"). Always remembers what
☸Dharma he needs to do, never forgets.
• The rider/mahout is the wise gate keeper from
AN 7.67 🏰, the frontier fortress.
• elephant & rider =
S&S🐘💭 = sati & sampajāno = remembering & lucid-discerning
• Together, they are resilient (khamo), can patiently endure any kind of horrifying trauma.
AN 5.139 : “And how is a king’s elephant resilient to ...fearful sights... horrible smells ... terrifying sounds ... physical pain ...? ... having gone into battle, he is pierced by a flight of arrows, two flights, three flights, four flights, five flights of arrows, but he doesn’t falter or faint, he steels himself and engages in the battle...
• That resilience
🌄🐘🛡️🏹 (khamo) is the
defining characteristic of samādhi. Not "stillness". Pacification and serenity are important
nutriments of samādhi, but they are not equivalent to it.
• There are many 'samādhi suttas' in the EBT, but only one sutta titled "sammā samādhi"
AN 5.113. Its central focus is Khamo/resilience, not "stillness".
• Samādhi is not a trance, not a state where you can't think, can not act, and not form an intention.
• Samādhi is dynamic. It can appear quiescent, but it's poised and alert, not in a frozen trance. When you're in samādhi, you may appear very still, but
you ready.
• Ready, on a moment's notice, to fight the āsavās and break through to nirvana.
• Samādhi is the pinnacle 🌄 of lucidity, of mental power.
AN 5.113 : “possesssing five-of-these qualities,
(a) monk [is] capable (of) dwelling in righteous-undistractable-lucidity,
Which five? (a) monk is resilient to forms, sounds, odors, tastes, and tactile-objects,
...
What is Samādhi?
☂️ Samādhi: broad umbrella term, many nuances |
4j🌕 ≈ 4sp🐘
STED Sammā Samādhi from Pāli and Agamas, and sanskrit
⛔Wrong samādhi, wrong Jhāna
jhāna and samādhi similes: a collection of sutta ref's.
🛇👻 The four Jhānas are not formless samādhi attainments
Not formless means you have physical body 🗸🏃♀️ awareness, you can feel leg pain, you can hear sounds.
In 3rd and 4th jhāna, the sense of the body may subjectively be experienced as increasingly subtle, fading out.
But if you can no longer hear sounds, can not kinaesthetically locate where your hands, feet, head are,
have no sense of direction of up and down, then you've crossed over into formless samādhi 👻.
You are no longer in the four jhānas.
• rūpa is not a-rūpa, 4 jhānas operate in rūpa: You think that would be obvious, but it's not a well understood point,
thanks to late Theravada propaganda redefining 4 jhānas as formless (see
VRJ👻🥶 and
BRJ👻🥶 ).
• In the 4 jhānas, the body
kāya is physical 🗸🏃♀️,
and feelings
(vedana)
by default originate and are experienced from the physical 🗸🏃♀️
• If you can feel leg pain and mosquito bites in the 4 jhānas, then ...
•
hearing in jhāna👂🌄 : You can hear sounds in the 4 jhānas. Which samādhis are silent?
• If you can walk and do
the jhānas in all 4 postures, then obviously you must have body awareness and can't be in a formless samādhi.
•
smd5👻 ākāsā-nañcā-(a)yatanaṃ: if you study the terms in the space infinitude dimension formula for patigha sañña and nanatta sañña,
it's clear that it must mean in the four jhānas one is sensitive to the physical anatomical body.
full details here:
Goldcraft 9.1.5.10
4j🌕: 4 jhānas ⊜ equivalent factors
STED 4j🌕 = 4 jhānas 🌕
j1🌘 = paṭhamaṃ jhānaṃ = First Jhāna
j2🌗 = dutiyaṃ jhānaṃ = Second Jhāna
j3🌖 = tatiyaṃ jhānaṃ = Third Jhāna
j4🌕 = catutthaṃ jhānaṃ = Fourth Jhāna
5bal👊️ →
4🌄 = samādhi-bala
5ind🖐️ →
4🌄 = samādhi-indriyam
7sb☀️ →
6🌄 = samādhi-sam-bojjh-aṅga, undistractible-lucidity-awakening-factor
👑8☸ →
8🌄 = sammā-samādhi, right undistractible-lucidity
samādhi in 3 ways = samādhi in 3 ways
3rd jhāna +
ASND 🌕🌟 =
j4🌕 āneñja⚡ imperturbable 4th jhāna =
4ip 🌕⚡ →
6ab ⚡☸
4j🌕: 4 jhānas central repository
Most of the information on
4 jhānas will be collected in
👑8☸ →
8🌄 = sammā-samādhi, right undistractible-lucidity. The equivalent 4j factor pages will focus on how they differ from sammā-samādhi