Where did Easwaran get his Dhyanas?

Jhanas, called by Easwaran by their sanskrit name dhyanas, are centrally important to Buddhism. They are, arguably (of course), the original invention of the Buddha that makes Enlightenment possible. So my question is: Where did Easwaran get his conception of the jhanas?

There are a million and one doctrinal disputes about everything in Buddhism, but there are things that are generally accepted that Easwaran ignored. While 'jhana' is the Buddha's preferred word to use for what we call 'meditation' the jhanas are a series of refined states possible in meditation, the four jhanas are not the four levels of mediation. I've also never seen his description of what it is like to experience those states anywhere else.

I suppose I would just be happy if he told us what his canonical source he referenced, teacher he learned from, or else why he synthesized his understanding of the Dhamma in this way.

Dhammapada Translations

An excellent site for Buddhist materials in general is Access to Insight. Here are two translations of the Dhammapada that are freely available on that site:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/index.html

Another Biased Post

In my last post I bemoaned a perceived movement in charistianity from it's 'authentic' roots, the mission that it origionaly set out on. In this post I want to complain about the changes in christianity after Jesus.

My own personal beliefs very strongly side with the Jesus Crossan extracts from his studies. Egalitarianism, fighting an occupation, and compassion to the marginalized sounds fantastic. The Christianity after Jesus, starting with Paul, just seems so irrelevant to me compared Jesus' original ideas. Pauline Christianity seems even distasteful when Crossan seems to describe the Pauline movement as a movement more about the leadership of Christianity more than anything rather more important like radical egalitarianism.

Commensality to Payment

I find the discussion of the evolution from commensality to payment to be a uniquely interesting insight. I'm a bit of a materialist, I think it is reasonable to assume that the way that people act is tied to how they live, and in the case of Jesus' followers this change would seem to represent not only a change in organization, but an associated change in belief. It almost seems like some sort of unfortunate loss of authenticity.