Được dạy bởi Sư Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu Dịch Việt: Việt Hùng
Lời người dịch: Trong các bài Hỏi & Đáp như vậy, tôi sẽ chủ yếu dịch thoát ý, chứ không chặt chữ. Một mặt đây là việc tôi làm để có thể nghiền ngẫm phần trả lời của Sư Yuttadhammo. Một mặt, tôi chia sẻ lại đây, và hy vọng nó hữu ích cho các thiền sinh Vipassana tham khảo.
Bài pháp ngắn này được đăng tải trên Youtube vào ngày 13/08/2010. Phần English transcript ở cuối bài. Link Youtube của bài nói ở đây: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF4K0bnxrLA
Mặc dù đã cố gắng tốt nhất trong khả năng của mình, tôi chắc chắn không thể ghi xuống được một cách chính xác 100% tất cả các từ ngữ, đặc biệt là các từ Pali mà Sư đề cập trong bài pháp. Tôi sẽ tiếp tục cập nhật bản ghi, bất cứ khi nào tôi thấy được những điểm còn thiếu sót.
Con xin thành kính đảnh lễ tạ ơn Sư Yuttadhammo về bài pháp thoại ngắn quí báu này. Con nguyện cho Sư được mọi thuận lợi và sức khoẻ trong hành trình tâm linh của Sư.
Các bạn có thể tìm hiểu thêm thông tin của Sư Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu và các lời dạy của Sư tại trang web: https://www.sirimangalo.org/.
English Transcript (quickly jotting down)
Question: My next question comes from House the Dao. Dear Yuttadhammo, how much value do you put on the practice of jhana? Didn’t the Buddha advocate jhana practice at least up to a point? And does it not have a use in deepening vipassana practice? All the best.
The word jhana, it’s highly debate and word, not the meaning, but the use of it or its place in Buddhism. I think a lot of the problem comes from the fact that we misunderstand or we apply too much meaning to the word. The word jhana means meditation or focusing or absorption. It means fixing the mind on an object. And really, in all meditation, that’s what we do. And this is why the Buddha said there is no wisdom without jhana. There is no jhana, no with wisdom. But putting these two together, then you come to realize, you come to true understanding and freedom from suffering. So there’s no need to concern or worry about, you know, do we have to incorporate this? Do we have to incorporate that? The problem comes when we want to practice certain types of meditation that are not based on reality. And this is where a lot of the ancient texts will diverge. They split meditation up into two types. One type of meditation is is samatha meditation, which focuses on jhana or a type of jhana, type of meditation, where you focus on a single object. And that object is not a real object. It’s something you create in your mind. You think about something. So it arises in the mind. It’s a construct. It’s not there in the first place. You think of the Buddha or you think of a color. A very simple one would be to imagine a white circle here inside your third eye or a red or blue circle or something. You’re creating something. It’s not real. And as a result, it’s not going to bring wisdom and understanding about about reality. But it will bring great states of calm. That’s why that meditation is called samatha. This meditation can be useful as a precursor to vipassana. Why? Because it calms the mind down. It focuses the mind. It can also lead you to become attached to it. It can be a hindrance towards vipassana in some cases. So you have to be careful. You use it to focus the mind. And you can also use it to gain very special and magical states of mind and even magical powers, so they say. But you can’t use it directly to become free from suffering.
To become free from suffering, you have to use a different type of jhana. It’s actually called vipassanā jhana. And so the use of jhana in vipassana is correct. It means meditating in vipassana or meditating to see clearly. So when you start to practice vipassana, you’re going to focus on an object. And that is the jhana. Your mind is focused, is clearly aware of only that object. When we say to ourselves, rising and we know that the rising, when we say falling, we know the falling. Slowly, our mind gives up the hindrances and gives up liking, disliking, drowsiness, distraction, doubt. And it’s fixed and focus. So you can say it enters jhana, it enters the vipassana jhana. And this is the other type of meditation.
Samatha is tranquility meditation, focusing on a concept. Vipassana meditation is meditation focused on ultimate reality, means mundane reality. Anything that arises in the present moment, whether it be in the body, our feelings, our thoughts, our emotions and so on. So a lot of the argument and debate out there about jhana is, I think, really superfluous. We practice to understand the ultimate reality, and I think that’s pretty clear in the Buddha’s teaching. And that’s what we’re all about. So I would suggest to stick to trying to understand ultimate reality and not worry about things about terms and concepts. Ok. So thanks for the question of that.
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