[mealiusarses]

Thought it would be interesting to post it here...

The Buddha makes it quite clear that 'meditation' is not the way to enlightenment. Consider this passage from MN 52:

"There is the case, householder, where a monk, withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful qualities, enters & remains in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. He reflects on this and discerns, 'This first jhana is fabricated & intended. Now whatever is fabricated & intended is inconstant & subject to cessation.' Staying right there, he reaches the ending of the mental fermentations. Or, if not, then — through this very Dhamma-passion, this Dhamma-delight, and from the total wasting away of the first five Fetters1 — he is due to be reborn [in the Pure Abodes], there to be totally unbound, never again to return from that world."

Link: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipit....052.than.html

What this passage is really saying, is that the monk understands that jhana practice just constructs a fabricated mental state. But nibbana is the unconstructed, the not-fabricated. How can you get to the unconstructed by making further constructions? You can't! So this monk gives up on the jhanas. He looks for another way, and finds it. He finds the noble eightfold path. This leads to the ending of the mental fermentations (asava's), which is enlightenment.

So the Buddha makes it perfectly clear that the jhana's have nothing to do with the real path to enlightenment. They are in fact 'wrong concentration' a factor of the 'wrong eightfold path'. This is the path which puthujjana monks are on ( ie. the majority of monks). Only noble disciples (ariya savaka's) are on the noble eightfold path.[/quote]

What do you think my learned friends?