Are There Two Methods of Meditation
Being Taught in the Suttas?

I have become more or less completely convinced that there are in fact two different methods of meditation being taught in the suttas. This I first realized and posted about here:

../../dhammatalk/dhammatalk_forum/whats.new.2024.htm#O.09.18.24

As I see it, there is no reason that the Buddha should have explained that there is a difference because his method is always to teach the method for attaining a goal, not always to point out the position of the method in the heierarchy of attainments in the system.

In the case of attaining his goal it is jhāna, (as found throughout the suttas, and especially in sections describing minding (sati) and serinity (samādhi)) in the case of attaining magic powers it is the method seen in the Vissudhimagga, and the Manual of a Mystic, in the places where magic powers are discussed, in the places where the kasinas are discussed, and in the sutta quoted above and in several other places including the sutta so often cited as proof that Nibbāna can be got without jhāna but which I believe is actually speaking about Nibbāna being got without also attaining magic powers. (../../backmatter/indexes/sutta/sn/02_nv/idx_12_nidanasamyutta.htm#p70). (In this latter sutta the Buddha teaches a seeker his method for attaining Nibbāna and then asks him if he has magic powers. He replies that he has understood the method for attaining Nibbāna but has no magic powers. (The implication commonly understood is that he has actually become an Arahant) To me this is saying that there is differentiation.)

As well as having caused confusion in honest practitioners from what is possibly just an honest mistake by Buddhaghosa (that is because of his yoga training, mistaking his usual practice for that being taught by the Buddha for attaining the goal of letting the world go (i.e. jhāna); a mistake being made by almost all people today studying Buddhism, but especially Ajhan Brahm, and the Pa Awk people who are aware that there is a difference between what is taught in the suttas and what is taught in the Vissudhimagga) by mixing up the two methods.

What I believe Bhikkhu Sujato and those that follow him are doing is to try to make the two into one. What they have actually done by that effort is to admit that they are intentionally distorting what is being taught in the suttas.

Again I caution readers concerned with their escape from kamma, rebirth, and pain not to read his translations (at least until you have read the rest sufficiently to recognize the issues here) as they have in their intirety bias towards worldly involvement.