> So these first 3 similes are really cool, but then we
> get to the 4th jhana: ... just as if a man were
> sitting wrapped from head to foot with a white cloth
> so that there would be no part of his body to which
> the white cloth did not extend.
>
> =========================
>
> Does anyone else find that simile kind of
> disappointing? From the simile, all I can picture for
> the 4th jhana is a cartoon mummy, not a lofty
> meditative state where your body feels
> ethereal/nonexistent.
>
> Does the original pali or commentaries elaborate on
> the mummy cloth simile? I just don't get it.
>

Hi Frank,

I don't know about the commentaries, but Hellmuth Hecker, one of Germany's
oldest Buddhists and supposedly somebody with experience in this field,
explains the white cloth as being the manomaya-kaaya which completely covers the
physical body. He explains that all this suffusing and permating in the Jhanas
is for the purpose of "meditating" sense-desire out of the body, so that one
looses all ability to ever look for happyness by way of the flesh-body.

Lars

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