Dear Ven. Kumara,

you wrote:

Thanks for clarifying, Dieter.

D: and thank you for still following the issue

Ven.: "5 senses are absorbed in imagination" seems to me a strange phrasing. Do you mean "5 senses are cut off because the mind is absorbed in imagination"?
In any case, it sounds like you mean the mind is no longer with the 5 senses. Right? If so, what you provided below still falls short of substantiating that view.

D: how to put it ? the experience of day-dreaming when the impulses of the 5 senses media are monotonous , like assembly line work , facing a dull environment , are moments we call absent minded , a day-by-day experience. The mind is busy with events of the past planning
a possible future. Usually the mind wanders from association to association (like described by the simile of the monkey (SN12,61)
The difference to Jhana -as far as I understand- is represented when the mind is directed ,discursive thinking like stated of the first Jhana
and from there further progress can be made, in a way the Buddha recalled from his youth , sitting under the Rose Apple tree or -more advanced - Ven Sariputta fanning the Buddha.

Ven:Anyway, please have a look at this sutta: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an09/an09.036.than.html

After the standard description of the 1st jhana, we see e regards whatever phenomena there that are connected with form, feeling, perception,
fabrications, & consciousness, as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a disintegration,
an emptiness, not-self. He turns his mind away from those phenomena, and having done so, inclines his mind to the property of
deathlessness: 'This is peace, this is exquisite - the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of
craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.'
The same is repeated for the 2nd to 4th jhana. Notice all the 5 khandhas are included?
In the same sutta, for the first 3 aruppas, we see the same wordings too, except that "form (rupa)" is absent. It clearly implies that for
all the 4 jhanas, form is indeed among the phenomena that the practitioner is able to pay attention to. It is only in the aruppas (as the
name itself indicates) that form is not perceived.
An orthodox Theravadin would try to explain that the regarding of phenomena that are connected with form and others is done only after emerging
from jhana, not while in it. If so, why can't the same be done for the aruppas?
This is not the only sutta that provides such evidence, but it's an easier one to understand.

D: I will come back to above incl. the links you provided before, please excuse my slowness.

with Metta Dieter




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