Re: Your comments if any

Dear Nina,

Thanks for your insightful response. However, please note that the questions and
statements raised here are from the original sender, whose email I have forwarded to
our website. Actually I have no issue here, but I really appreciate your response, as
it gives some very useful references not easily found elsewhere.

Let me clarify that my purpose in preparing the "Living Word of the Buddha" series is
not so much for doctrinal explication (which is beneficial no doubt) but more from a
practical and beginner's approach to introduce the Pali Suttas and encourage them to
explore Buddhist spirituality. My main consultant is Ajahn Brahm though I also value
opinions from other learned and experienced ordained or lay (like yourself).

Personally, I have also found it sufficient to keep the study of the Suttas at the
canonical Sutta level without much resort to the Commentaries but which can be
helpful in times of difficulties.

Sukhi.

P.

nina van gorkom wrote:

> op 12-01-2003 11:54 schreef Piya Tan op libris@...:
>
> Dear Piya Tan, I just have some remarks, concerning the discussion I find
> very interesting.
>
> > 5. page 11, footnote 45: "Vineyya, this means that the five hindrances have
> > to be abandoned prior to practising satipaÂÂhana."
>
> >Piya Tan: As stated, this is not correct. Satipatthana practice clearly starts
> out as
> > a method of training for beginners. The hindrances are traditionally (and
> > logically, and necessarily abandoned prior to the entrance to the first
> > jhana, and jhana practice is not encountered in the satipatthana until one
> > encounters the fourth of the satipatthanas (and it is there, also, that one
> > first encounters the hindrances). Something like this might be said: The
> > hindrances must be abandoned before the Satipatthanas can be brought to
> > perfection.
> > What is said is that one sits down putting away the coveting and dejection
> > (here displeasure) for the world. What is being spoken of in the
> > Satipatthana (indeed in the whole of the Dhamma) is a process. One sits down
> > with the intent of... The instruction is: "How does one so live in a body,
> > etc...that one abandons. Clearly a method is being described, not an
> > accomplished state.
> > Finally, putting away the hindrances prior to practicing the satipatthana is
> > impossible, it is precisely practicing the satipatthana that is the method
> > for putting away the hindrances. This is why it comes before Samma Samadhi.
> > "The full development of Samma Satipatthana brings, as a matter of course,
> > the development of Samma Samadhi."
> ________________________________________
> Nina: There are two kinds of abandoning: we read in the Commentary to the
> Satipatthanasutta:
> vineyya loke abhijjhaadomanassanti vutta.m. Tattha vineyyaati
> tada'ngavinayena vaa vikkhambanavinayena vaa vinayitvaa.
>
> vikkhambanavinaya is the abandoning in subduing by way of jhaana, and
> tada'ngavinaya is the abandoning by way of the development of vipassana,
> abandoning by the opposites.
> I see it in this way, that the anapanasati sutta is directed towards highly
> gifted monks, who could attain jhana, use jhana as base for vipassana and
> then attain arahatship.
> As you rightly say, in the development of vipassana the tadanga pahaana is
> a whole process.
> As to your words, <The hindrances are traditionally (and
> > logically, and necessarily abandoned prior to the entrance to the first
> > jhana, and jhana practice is not encountered in the satipatthana until one
> > encounters the fourth of the satipatthanas (and it is there, also, that one
> > first encounters the hindrances). Something like this might be said: The
> > hindrances must be abandoned before the Satipatthanas can be brought to
> > perfection.>
> Nina: It is true that the hindrances are subdued and then suppressed by the
> jhana factors. It is just your last sentence I may have not understood
> rightly:<The
> > hindrances must be abandoned before the Satipatthanas can be brought to
> > perfection.> and also: "The full development of Samma Satipatthana brings, as
> a matter of course,
> the development of Samma Samadhi."
>
> As I see it, the Satipatthanas include all phenomena which can be objects of
> awareness and right understanding. Also the hindrances. If we are not aware
> of akusala we shall continue to take them for self. Do you see any
> indication in the teachings that there is a specific order of development? I
> see the order of the four satipatthanas more as desana naya. I feel that
> there is no need to wait for the dhammanupassanaa satipatthaana, since it
> all depends on what object appears to sati and pa~n~naa at a given moment.
> As to sammasamadhi, this is a factor of the eightfold Path that goes
> together with the other factors, it is IMO not developed separately. What
> degree of calm, it may be of the degree of jhana or not, depends on the
> person who develops the Path. We all have different inclinations, different
> accumulations.
>
> I quote from a post on anapana sati sutta I wrote some time ago for dsg
> yahoo:
> In the word commentary to the above quoted sutta the Visuddhimagga (VIII,
> 223-226) mentions with regard to the first tetrad (group of four clauses,
> marked I-IV) of the sutta the different stages of insight-knowledge which
> are developed after emerging from jhåna. We read Vis. VIII, 223-226:
> < On emerging from the attainment he sees that the in-breaths and
> out-breaths have the physical body and the mind as their origin; and that
> just as, when a blacksmith¹s bellows are being blown, the wind moves owing
> to the bag and to the man¹s appropriate effort, so too, in-breaths and
> out-breaths are due to the body and the mind.
>
> Next he defines the in-breaths and out-breaths and the body as materiality,
> and the consciousness and the states associated with the consciousness as
> the immaterial...
> Having defined nama-rupa in this way, he seeks its condition...>
>
> The Visuddhimagga then mentions all the different stages of insight
> (Visuddhimagga VIII, 223 -225). We then read:
> <After he has thus reached the four noble paths in due succession and has
> become established in the fruition of arahatship, he at last attains to the
> nineteen kinds of ³Reviewing Knowledge², and he becomes fit to receive the
> highest gifts from the world with its deities.>
> The first tetrad refers to contemplation of body, and the other three
> tetrads refer respectively to the contemplation of feelings in feelings,
> citta in citta, dhammas in dhammas. The Visuddhimagga explains that the
> first three tetrads deal with calm and insight and the fourth deals with
> insight alone.
>
> I quote from the Commentary, I read in Thai:
> <In the Papancasudani, the Co to the Anapanasati sutta, there is more
> explanation on rupas which should be objects of awareness after the
> meditator has emerged from jhana.
> As we read at the end of the first tetrad, <I say, monks, that of bodies,
> this is one, that is to say breathing-in and breathing-out...>The Commentary
> explains, this is a certain body, kåya~n~natara: <We speak of a certain body
> among the four bodies beginning with the Earth body (N: the four Great
> Elements of Earth or solidity, Water or cohesion, Fire or temperature and
> Wind or motion). We say that breath is a body. Further, the twentyfive
> classes of rupa, namely, the sense-base of visible object (ruupaayatana)....
> nutriment, are called the physical body, ruupakaaya (N:different from the
> mental body). Of these, breathing is ³a certain body² because it is included
> in tangible object base (pho.t.tabbaayatana). ³That is why²: because he
> contemplates the body of wind (vaayokaaya, motion or pressure) among the
> four bodies (N: the four Great Elements), or he sees breath as one body
> among the twentyfive rupas which are the physical body, ruupakaaya.
> Therefore he contemplates and sees the body in the body, is the meaning.>
> N: Breath is rupa, and it can be understood as such when it appears through
> the bodysense, at the nosetip or upperlip. It can appear as solidity or
> motion or temperature. It can be known as only rupa, not my breath, as
> non-self. >
> Nina.
>
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