@jayarava
With your general-interest post today about sensations and samadhi, I think I've figured out my problem with what you've been saying regarding sensory engagement-- I was misunderstanding what you meant by "sensation" in other discussions because of your (and Orsborn's) conclusions about the topic of anupalambhayogena. Had I just taken it in the usual Skandhas R Us "vedana" way, I would not have managed to confuse myself as much. 😉 I really need an emoticon for slapping-one's-forehead.

As to whether the Prajnaparamita texts really are recommending withdrawal from sensory input, that will take more work on my part to understand. It's a very stupid idea, but that doesn't mean nobody ever had it or tried it out. I gather that Jains and Brahmins do indeed engage in such practices, but it seems the opposite of Buddhist teachings of any school (though I don't know a lot about the Tibetan methods; perhaps they're into such practices).

I am aware of the jhana instructions which spend some time on sensory withdrawal, but never thought of them as a path toward awakening, more like beating the dancing monkey into submission so as to get some insight into what the mind is doing and why.

Samadhi seems the opposite of withdrawal to me, as would the realization of anatta/emptiness, but then my background is mostly Zen, where they use the terms in that sense. There are references in the suttas (actual suttas, the Pali ones, I mean) to that Zennish awakening experience, like in the Theri- and Theragatha recountings of the typical out-of-the-blue occurrence. There's also the Ananda awakening story in which it happens after exhausting himself in striving and then the big zap as his head is on its way to his pillow, but there are several versions of it and thus hard to know what the real version is if there is one.

I used to be disappointed in the lack of text referring to the actual experience of arhantship, but then realized that they wouldn't have been any better at talking about it than the bazillion words in Chan/Zen books are. The whole lesser-or-greater vehicle and bodhisattva ideas in both the Pali sense and the Mahayana sense are very misleading, since the experience and resultant understandings have always been the same. There, I said it. I can see the Tricycle headline now: '"Ain't no difference in the Dhamma teachings,"' claims unknown guy who is neither a scholar nor a teacher." 😎