DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Anatta Analysis derail: Roles of reason and jhana practice in enlightenment

**POMAH_K** · 08-30-2011, 10:01 PM

As far as I can tell, most of the posts I accidentally deleted were mine. They were pretty long and included a lot of stuff that I really don't want to try to reproduce in full. I'll try to condense my main points.

1) I don't claim to know that reason alone is sufficient; only that there is sufficient reason to leave the possibility open.

2) As Kaarine pointed out, there are many, many depictions of people becoming arahants in the suttas by hearing and understanding the dhamma, with no jhana practice mentioned. To speculate that they must have had prior training is just that; speculation, and insufficient justification to base a categorical and dogmatic knowledge claim upon.

3) Thanissaro Bhikkhu practically states outright that it is possible to attain arahantship after having experience only with the first jhana, in which calmed, focused, directed rational thought is a central feature. (At the end of the Translator's Note. Thanissaro Bhikkhu is a relevant authority, and I think it is reasonable to at least consider the possibility that he is right, and therefore suspend judgement on the sufficiency of rational thought until more complete information comes in. When something decisive and irrefutable comes along, it will be reasonable to claim it as knowledge. Until then, it's just opinion and/or speculation.

4) We may have some different definitions of what "reason" involves and entails that might be fueling much of this disagreement. When I say "reasoning", I don't restrict that to internal dialog or syllogism-building. When I say "reason", I'm talking about the conscious processing of experience, which is significantly different. For example, years ago I trained myself to shut off the internal dialog for extended periods of time. At first it was just during sitting, but eventually I was able to do it when I was walking around and going about routine activities. There was no dialog, but there was reasoning (and heightened awareness, but that's a different story). So, when I say reasoning may be sufficient, I'm not talking about just academic studies, as Deshy seems to think. I think that we could clear up a lot of our disagreement and mutual misunderstanding if we cleared up this discrepancy in definitions of "reason".

There may have been more, but that's all I can come up with atm. Hope the Cliff's Notes version is enough.

08-30-2011, 10:01 PM	#35
POMAH_K Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 467 Senior Member	As far as I can tell, most of the posts I accidentally deleted were mine. They were pretty long and included a lot of stuff that I really don't want to try to reproduce in full. I'll try to condense my main points. 1) I don't claim to know that reason alone is sufficient; only that there is sufficient reason to leave the possibility open. 2) As Kaarine pointed out, there are many, many depictions of people becoming arahants in the suttas by hearing and understanding the dhamma, with no jhana practice mentioned. To speculate that they must have had prior training is just that; speculation, and insufficient justification to base a categorical and dogmatic knowledge claim upon. 3) Thanissaro Bhikkhu practically states outright that it is possible to attain arahantship after having experience only with the first jhana, in which calmed, focused, directed rational thought is a central feature. (At the end of the Translator's Note. Thanissaro Bhikkhu is a relevant authority, and I think it is reasonable to at least consider the possibility that he is right, and therefore suspend judgement on the sufficiency of rational thought until more complete information comes in. When something decisive and irrefutable comes along, it will be reasonable to claim it as knowledge. Until then, it's just opinion and/or speculation. 4) We may have some different definitions of what "reason" involves and entails that might be fueling much of this disagreement. When I say "reasoning", I don't restrict that to internal dialog or syllogism-building. When I say "reason", I'm talking about the conscious processing of experience, which is significantly different. For example, years ago I trained myself to shut off the internal dialog for extended periods of time. At first it was just during sitting, but eventually I was able to do it when I was walking around and going about routine activities. There was no dialog, but there was reasoning (and heightened awareness, but that's a different story). So, when I say reasoning may be sufficient, I'm not talking about just academic studies, as Deshy seems to think. I think that we could clear up a lot of our disagreement and mutual misunderstanding if we cleared up this discrepancy in definitions of "reason". There may have been more, but that's all I can come up with atm. Hope the Cliff's Notes version is enough.
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