I am thinking more about the way the Yogācāra tradition frames non-conceptuality. If I understand it correctly, one could have a vikalpa state even when no discursive thinking is involved.
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Replying to @aviv_eyal @bodhidave3 and
I think you'd probably have saṃjñā but I would assume that but the 3rd jhāna you should be coming pretty close to nirvikalpa
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Replying to @NeuroYogacara @aviv_eyal and
1/ I'm not well enough versed in Yogācāra to speak to this question precisely, but what's clear to me is (form) jhāna states are generated events that characteristically entail a synesthesia (being able to "see" the breath as a patibhaga-nimitta/"counterpart sign," for instance).
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @aviv_eyal and
2/ And when you've got that "sign" going consistently (1st jhāna) a biofeedback process is made possible, whereby without much discursive mentation, you can get it to "take over" your phenomenal field (2d jhāna)— the sense of an observing subject vs. an observed object falls out.
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @aviv_eyal and
3/ And a number of non-cogitated processes kick in. On the one hand you get spontaneous generation of pronounced pleasure (*piti*). And, eventually & "naturally"—i.e., without much [cognitive] deliberation—that's sensed to be "too much," "too sweet," as it were, and falls away.
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @aviv_eyal and
4/ What's left is a deep sense of quietly sweet contentment (*sukha*), which is the 3d jhāna. And at some point, even "quietly sweet" is as it were too much, too agitated, and it falls away. And that process, like before, is kind of "deliberate" but not so much "deliberated."
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @aviv_eyal and
5/ Then you're left w/ a kind of "equanimity" (*upekkhā*)— little to no sense of agitation, a rather satisfying "neither pleasant nor unpleasant." But it's still a generated state. No discursive thinking there. I'm tempted to say tho there's an "instinct" for what's happening.
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @aviv_eyal and
6/ These are markedly altered modes of functioning. And as alterations, many of the terms used to describe them have a metaphoric application. For instance, "vitakka" and "vicara" are in play early on; those terms are often translated "applied" and "sustained thought"... but...
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @aviv_eyal and
7/ ...in the context of the jhāna absorption process, they're not forms of "thinking" in the conventional sense, certainly not in discursive words—they're forms of attention. Vitakka here is a kind of mental orienting (to the "sign"), and vicara is a sustained connection with it.
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Replying to @bodhidave3 @aviv_eyal and
8/8 So, again, my acquaintance with Yogācāric nomenclature is limited; the above description is largely out of Visuddhimagga's terms. But I offer it as a general indication for how, if we talk about "thought" or "conceptualization" here, it will need to be as it were asterisked.
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In the Yogācāra framework, activity of the sixth consciousness (manovijñāna) continues through the four form jhānas and the four formless āyatanas. See Vasubandhu's Triṃśikā: "manovijñānasaṁbhūtiḥ sarvadāsaṁjñikādṛte / samāpattidvayānmiddhānmūrchanādapyacittakāt." 1/
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Replying to @NoaidiX @bodhidave3 and
Xuanzang translates it 意識常現起 除生無想天 / 及無心二定 睡眠與悶絶, which Cook then renders: 2/
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Replying to @NoaidiX @bodhidave3 and
"Mental consciousness [the sixth consciousness] perpetually appears, Except in those born among the unconscious celestials And in the two mindless samādhis, And in those who are [in states of] sloth and stupefaction." 3/
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