[Nibbid83]

Dear Lal,

I see you have edited your response to add a P.S., claiming my previous points are “without substance” while stating you will explain them “in the future.” Dismissing arguments you cannot answer is not a refutation. For the public record, you have completely abandoned four fatal contradictions to your system:

1. MN 10: The Charnel Ground meditations explicitly requiring human anatomy (destroying your premise that all sections of Kāyānupassanā must apply to Brahmas).

2. SN 54.11: The fully awakened Buddha practicing Ānāpānasati for three months (destroying the premise that it merely means subduing hindrances).

3. MN 62: The Buddha explicitly instructing Rāhula in breath meditation to reach final liberation (destroying your claim that it never leads to magga phala).

4. MN 36: The severe physical pain caused by stopping assāsa-passāsa (which you failed to explain if it is merely a non-physical mechanism).

Let us address your new P.S. directly. In an attempt to escape the Abhidhammic category error I pointed out in MN 44, you backpedaled your definition: “I did not state ‘assāsa-passāsa’ here means ‘subduing mental defilements’. Rather, pañca nīvaraṇa suppression happens via assāsa-passāsa.”

Lal, changing your wording from “is” to “via” does not save your premise. If assāsa-passāsa is the mechanism (which you define as “taking in good and rejecting bad”), that mechanism is Right Effort (sammā vāyāma). Right Effort is still a mental factor (cetasika) belonging to the mind (citta). Yet Dhammadinnā explicitly states assāsa-passāsa is bound up with the physical body (kāyappaṭibaddhā). You have not solved the category error; you merely shifted it to another mental factor.

Furthermore, this leads you straight back into the inescapable trap of MN 36. If this ‘mechanism’ is a non-physical mental action, I ask you for the final time: Why did stopping it through his nose and mouth cause the Ascetic Gotama deafening noises and extreme physical agony? You cannot escape this contradiction.

Now, since you said you are trying “one more time,” let me resolve your confusion regarding Pali idioms in MN 118, which actually stems from a very simple misunderstanding of classical Pali grammar.

1. What is the ‘other kāya‘ (Kāyesu kāyaññatarāhaṁ)? Is there another body within the physical body? No, there is no “other hidden body” inside the physical body here. Your confusion stems from misunderstanding the Pali word aññatara.

Let us break down the grammar: Kāyesu kāyaññatarāhaṁ = kāyesu (among the bodies/bodily phenomena, locative plural) + kāya (body/group) + aññataraṃ (a certain one / one of) + ahaṃ (I).

In Pali, aññatara is an indefinite pronoun meaning “a certain one” or “one of a group” (e.g., aññataro bhikkhu means “a certain monk,” not “another monk inside a monk”). Furthermore, the word kāya literally means a “collection” or “group.”

Therefore, the Buddha is saying: “I tell you, monks, that this—in-breathing and out-breathing—is a certain bodily process [collection] among the bodily processes [collections].”

Why does the Buddha say this? Because he is justifying why watching the breath counts as watching the physical body. The physical breath is the Wind Element (vāyo-dhātu), which is a subset of physical matter (rūpa). By observing the physical breath, you are legitimately observing one specific physical process among all the physical processes of the body. There is no mystery here.

2. What is meant by kāye kāyānupassī there? It does not mean looking at a “soul-body” inside a “meat-body.” It is a standard Pali idiom meaning “contemplating the body strictly as a body.”

When the Sutta says kāye kāyānupassī (observing the body in the body), it is an instruction to isolate the object of meditation. You observe the physical body merely as a physical body—not as “me,” not as “mine,” not as “a man,” not as “a woman,” and not confusing it with your feelings (vedanā) or mind states (citta). You look at the body strictly in and of itself.

This is exactly why the next section says vedanāsu vedanānupassī (observing feelings in feelings). Does this mean there is “another hidden feeling inside a feeling”? No. It means observing a feeling strictly as a feeling, without attaching a “self” to it.

A Bird’s-Eye View Summary for the Readers You stated you want to “try one more time” and explain things “in the future.” You are completely free to do so. However, as I am now stepping away from this specific thread, I want to leave earnest readers and practitioners with a clear, bird’s-eye view of the two paradigms presented here:

• Methodology: The classical orthodox approach relies on objective Pali grammar and structural cross-referencing within the Tipitaka (letting the Buddha define his own terms, like in MN 44). The “Pure Dhamma” approach relies on subjective “phonetic unpacking” which, by your own admission earlier in this thread, lacks any objective criterion of falsifiability.

• Context vs. Doctrinal Absolutism: The orthodox approach recognizes that the Buddha was a brilliant teacher who tailored specific meditation subjects (Kammaṭṭhāna) to the physical realities of his students. When teaching human beings, he used objects available to humans, such as the physical breath or the observation of a decaying body in a charnel ground. The “Pure Dhamma” approach, on the other hand, attempts to force a single, abstract definition onto every text, ignoring whom the Buddha was addressing. This leads to logical absurdities: the attempt to prove that bodiless gods (Brahmas) must practice mindfulness of the physical body ends in complete helplessness when faced with MN 36. If the ‘breath’ were merely a mental mechanism, stopping it could not have caused the Buddha extreme physical agony and splitting headaches. It is physical reality, not phonetic speculation, that is the ultimate test of correctly understanding the Dhamma.

• The Depth of Practice: Classical Ānāpānasati (MN 118) is a profound, structured progression that uses the physical breath as an observable anchor to eventually achieve deep Vipassanā (directly seeing the arising and passing away of phenomena). Reducing this specific 16-step meditation to a generic instruction of “rejecting the bad and taking in the good” flattens the rich, step-by-step mechanics the Buddha so carefully laid out.

I leave this thread fully satisfied that the orthodox understanding of the Buddha’s original terminology remains structurally sound, grammatically correct, and logically coherent across the entire Tipitaka, without any need for phonetic redefinitions.

Thank you for the exchange, Lal. May you be well and happy.

With metta,

Nibbid83