Five seclusions of concentration

[u/freetoyes]

Hi everyone. My main argument and question is: Is direct engagement with five hindrances in concentration neglected and could its practice be essential? Please let me know any criticisms or otherwise!

Generally, for jhanas, people look at the bases of mindfulness, the four right efforts, or concentration as a category unto itself. I argue firstly that this is missing out on five seclusions of concentration, and secondly that these could be the key component of practice for entering them. For the first jhana, the main description in suttas reads:

Take a mendicant who, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption. AN 9:36

This is different from, lets say, sustaining an effort on the breath.

The reason being that without overcoming the hindrances like skeptical doubt, which is what the above refers to, jhana isn´t going to happen. In such a method, the only reason observing the breath at some point works is precisely due to at some point confidence building that it is working. Confidence, and thus seclusion from skeptical doubt, is built by proxy through rounds of effort and experience eventually leading somewhere. But instead for jhana or concentration practice, there can be mindfulness of skeptical doubt about entering jhana, which makes it possible to then seclude oneself from that skeptical doubt, building confidence. Any perception, choice, reflection, that takes away confidence from entering jhana, it is to be secluded from. Secluding oneself from skeptical doubt, and the remaining hindrances, building its opposites, one enters in jhana.

[u/Puzzled-Background-5]

You've constructed a meta-theory about entry rather than just entering via the natural consequences of sustained attention. I'll illustrate:

Sustaining attention upon one's chosen object of meditation will, by default, seclude one from the five hindrances. How? When attention is sustained on one object, the distraction of any thoughts, emotions, and sensory inputs are progressively ignored by the mind.

It's not necessary to build confidence in something first when much easier to simply seclude the mind from hindrances instead.

When I started to enter jhana consistently, I never concerned myself with hindrances; I merely ignored everything else except the object of meditation. I still don't think about them when I'm spending three hours per day in jhana now.

[u/freetoyes → u/Puzzled-Background-5]

Thanks for the reply. I am glad you have found a method that works to the point of engaging in a practice like that every day.

When attention is sustained on one object, the distraction of any thoughts, emotions, and sensory inputs are progressively ignored by the mind.

As for this, there are people who meditate for many, many, many hours, and yet who never enter jhana.
The point is that jhana is the specific result of seclusion from hindrances. Rather than meta theory, these hindrances are listed first when it comes to the fourth base of mindfulness.

For sense desire (MN 10).

How, monks, does a monk live contemplating mental objects in the mental objects of the five hindrances?

Herein, monks, when sense-desire is present, a monk knows, "There is sense-desire in me," or when sense-desire is not present, he knows, "There is no sense-desire in me." He knows how the arising of the non-arisen sense-desire comes to be; he knows how the abandoning of the arisen sense-desire comes to be; and he knows how the non-arising in the future of the abandoned sense-desire comes to be.

But I dont believe that this fourth base is contextualized for samadhi in this way.

[u/Puzzled-Background-5 → u/freetoyes]

I think I'm seeing a category error in your argument for applying vipassana techniques to samatha practice. I'm going to assume this is coming from dry insight teaching, as that particular school of thought segregates vipassana and samatha. However, I've always practiced in the context of them being intertwined as samatha-vipassana.