Cubibobi and Sybe07: “He also made it clear in one of his books:
Mindfulness, Bliss, And Beyond
On page 127, he made this point very clearly. The first paragraph on that page read:
“In the original Buddhist scriptures there is only one word for
�meditation� and that is jhana. According to the fully enlightened
Ven. Ananda in the Gopaka-Moggallana Sutta (MN 108,27) the only
kind of meditation that the Buddha recommended was jhana..”
I have highlighted what is wrong with the statement.
The Buddha approved Ariya jhana and rejected anariya jhana.
– Ariya jhana can be attained ONLY (but not all) those who have attained magga phala.
– Those who “enjoy” anariya jhana may have the wrong perception that those states are something to do with magga phala. As I have pointed out, jhanic states are the mental states in brahma realms. Those brahmas (unless they have magga phala) can be reborn in the apayas.
I took a look at the Gopakamoggallāna Sutta (MN 108).
– It says, “Na ca kho, brāhmaṇa, so bhagavā sabbaṃ jhānaṃ vaṇṇesi, napi so bhagavā sabbaṃ jhānaṃ na vaṇṇesīti.”
– That means, “The Blessed One, brahmin, did not praise every type of jhana, nor did he condemn every type of jhana”.
Then it is explained what kind of jhana the Buddha approved and praised.
– As I keep saying, we need to be very careful with this kind of translations.