Disagree with this. Most practitioners I meet seem at least confused about the contents outlined in early discourses and at worst actively reproducing non Buddhist takes labeled as Buddhist. Most communities are lead by a well intentioned but seemingly confused in their practice teacher, an awake but pedagogically incoherent teacher, or a scammer. Asserting that the religious trappings that accrued around Buddhist teachings that the Buddha never showed much interest in or actively repudiated are somehow necessary feels like apologia to the mysterian trappings that are sadly more common than not.
Please compare this take to teachers you think are on the ball. From where I'm standing, teachers who are on the ball do not think that religious trappings are necessary. Please ask llm to surface suttas in which the Buddha gives advice to householders about how to practice. Draw your own conclusions.
The truest thing I think that falls within what this post talks about is that trying to strip sila out will make jhana not work. Your mind surfacing 'distractions' when you try to do jhana is a feature, not a bug. The things surfaced are entangled with patterns that need working with in order to unify the mind.
Lastly and importantly: there are no phenomenologically precise accounts of meditation practice in the pali canon. This is a widely known issue that has many discussions around it. That, in combination with the known translation ambiguities of the pali language render a description of the pali canon as technically precise in any pragmatic sense incoherent. It took me roughly two thousand hours of practice before I could triangulate some of my own experiences with the descriptions well enough to figure out *part* of what is going on.
Please compare this take to teachers you think are on the ball. From where I'm standing, teachers who are on the ball do not think that religious trappings are necessary. Please ask llm to surface suttas in which the Buddha gives advice to householders about how to practice. Draw your own conclusions.
The truest thing I think that falls within what this post talks about is that trying to strip sila out will make jhana not work. Your mind surfacing 'distractions' when you try to do jhana is a feature, not a bug. The things surfaced are entangled with patterns that need working with in order to unify the mind.
Lastly and importantly: there are no phenomenologically precise accounts of meditation practice in the pali canon. This is a widely known issue that has many discussions around it. That, in combination with the known translation ambiguities of the pali language render a description of the pali canon as technically precise in any pragmatic sense incoherent. It took me roughly two thousand hours of practice before I could triangulate some of my own experiences with the descriptions well enough to figure out *part* of what is going on.
The annapannasati sutta comes the closest to giving clear instructions and is famous for that reason. Disagreements about individual word meanings and translations have lead different schools to take on meaningfully different practices.
Most dharma talks involve rambling anecdotes or, worse, interpretations of teachings as metaphysical claims, and close to zero discussion of precise phenomenology. TMI was a flawed work, but gained huge popularity because it bothered to talk about specific physical sensations at all.
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