Buddha's first experience of Jhana

[Michael Rodgers]

Dear Ajahn Brahmali

I was listening to your talk on MN26 and the issue of whether Alara Kalama taught "real" Jhana came up. The main conflict seems to be with the rose apple tree story. If that story is true then the "jhanas" taught by the Buddha's teachers cannot be true jhanas.

I really wonder if the rose apple tree story is not the one whoes authenticity should be questioned, at least in the context of the night of the Buddha's enlightenment. I have always doubted the Buddha became enlightened in a single night after one experience of Jhana - particularly as he taught a gradual path not a sudden one. It just doesnt make sense to me that he would go from childhood memory to enlightenment in one night.

It also doesnt make sense to me that the Buddha would use the specific terminology of the immaterial attainments in a talk to Bhikkus if he actually meant something else.

I tend to think that his former teachers who afterall had "little dust in their eyes", actually did practice jhana, may even have been stream enterers, but did not have the final insight required for full enlightenment.

[Ajahn Brahmali]

Dear Michael,

I really wonder if the rose apple tree story is not the one whoes authenticity should be questioned, at least in the context of the night of the Buddha's enlightenment. I have always doubted the Buddha became enlightened in a single night after one experience of Jhana - particularly as he taught a gradual path not a sudden one. It just doesnt make sense to me that he would go from childhood memory to enlightenment in one night.

I agree. It doesn't actually say anywhere in the suttas that the jhāna experience and the Awakening all happened in one night. I suspect that the Buddha probably practiced samādhi over a period of time, going all the way to the fourth jhāna (see MN4 and 36), and then eventually attained Awakening on that basis.

It also doesnt make sense to me that the Buddha would use the specific terminology of the immaterial attainments in a talk to Bhikkus if he actually meant something else.

Perhaps. But there are a number of places where the Buddha speaks of his pre-Awakening search and he uses terminology that he later gave a different meaning. For example, at one point he calls himself an ariya (MN4), at another he says some devas called him an arahant (MN36). Notice too that the Buddha is just quoting his two teachers; he doesn't himself call their attainments by these names. It seems quite plausible to me that the Buddha later borrowed these names because they were well suited to describe the highest attainments of samādhi.

I tend to think that his former teachers who afterall had "little dust in their eyes", actually did practice jhana, may even have been stream enterers, but did not have the final insight required for full enlightenment.

I don't think they could have been stream-enterers. The Buddha says their loss was great because they would have understood the teachings quickly. If they already were stream-enterers, they wouldn't have had much to lose by not hearing the teachings.

With metta.

[Sylvester Lam]

Dear Bhante

I was just wondering if there is something unusual in the textual formulation of the Buddha's sojourns with M/s Alara and Uddaka.

Eg, the text says -

Evaṃ vutte, bhikkhave, āḷāro kālāmo ākiñcaññāyatanaṃ pavedesi.

In reply he declared the base of nothingness

What strikes me as odd is that the quotation does not have the usual iti markers to report Alara's declaration.

I've read somewhere that, in Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, besides reporting direct speech or thought, the iti clitic functions as a subject/object complementiser, ie it reports truth/a true proposition in relation to a verb. Might it be possible that the text omitted the iti clitic in this case, in order not to lead the listener to assume that the Buddha thought that Alara's declaration was a true statement?

With metta

Sylvester

[Michael Rodgers]

Thank you Ajahn.

[Ajahn Brahmali]

Dear Sylvester,

Might it be possible that the text omitted the iti clitic in this case, in order not to lead the listener to assume that the Buddha thought that Alara's declaration was a true statement?

I am not sure. At MN36 the Buddha reports that some devas called him an arahant prior to his awakening. From the Buddha's post-awakening perspective this was obviously not true, yet here the quotation marker ti is actually used.

I recall a senior thera who lives in Sri Lanka warning me that the ti markers are sometimes misplaced in Pali texts. Perhaps we need to be careful not to read to much into their respective presence or absence.

With metta.

[Sylvester Lam]

Dear Bhante

Thank you very much!

With metta

S