Editing Noble Eightfold Path (section)

====Dhyana====
Bronkhorst notes that neither the Four Noble Truths nor the Noble Eightfold Path discourse provide details of right ''samadhi''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Johannes Bronkhorst |title=Buddhist Teaching in India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mhuabeq5-cAC |year=2009|publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-86171-566-4 |pages=10–17 }}</ref> Several ''Suttas'', such as the following in ''Saccavibhanga Sutta'', equate it with ''dhyana'':<ref name=BSac /><ref name=bucknellkangp12 />

{{blockquote|And what is right concentration?

[i] Here, the monk, detached from sense-desires, detached from unwholesome states, enters and remains in the first ''jhana'' (level of concentration, Sanskrit: ''dhyāna''), in which there is applied and sustained thinking, together with joy and pleasure born of detachment;<br />
[ii] And through the subsiding of applied and sustained thinking, with the gaining of inner stillness and oneness of mind, he enters and remains in the second ''jhana'', which is without applied and sustained thinking, and in which there are joy and pleasure born of concentration;<br />
[iii] And through the fading of joy, he remains equanimous, mindful and aware, and he experiences in his body the pleasure of which the Noble Ones say: "equanimous, mindful and dwelling in pleasure", and thus he enters and remains in the third ''jhana'';<br />
[iv] And through the giving up of pleasure and pain, and through the previous disappearance of happiness and sadness, he enters and remains in the fourth ''jhana'', which is without pleasure and pain, and in which there is pure equanimity and mindfulness.<br />
This is called right concentration.<ref name=bucknellkangp12 /><ref name="Bronkhorst2009p16">{{cite book|author=Johannes Bronkhorst |title=Buddhist Teaching in India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mhuabeq5-cAC |year=2009|publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-86171-566-4 |pages=16–17 }}</ref>}}

Bronkhorst has questioned the historicity and chronology of the description of the four ''jhanas''. Bronkhorst states that this path may be similar to what the Buddha taught, but the details and the form of the description of the ''jhanas'' in particular, and possibly other factors, is likely the work of later scholasticism.<ref name=bronkhorst2009p17>{{cite book|author=Johannes Bronkhorst |title=Buddhist Teaching in India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mhuabeq5-cAC |year=2009|publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-86171-566-4 |pages=17–19 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Oliver Freiberger |title=Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=2cbCr7M4SJ8C |year=2006| publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-971901-3|pages=249–51}}</ref> Bronkhorst notes that description of the third ''jhana'' cannot have been formulated by the Buddha, since it includes the phrase "Noble Ones say", quoting earlier Buddhists, indicating it was formulated by later Buddhists.<ref name=bronkhorst2009p17 /> It is likely that later Buddhist scholars incorporated this, then attributed the details and the path, particularly the insights at the time of liberation, to have been discovered by the Buddha.<ref name=bronkhorst2009p17 />