Whilst I’m jhana-posting, a common refrain you hear these days is that nimitta jhanas have no basis in the original Buddhist suttas. The claim is that nimitta jhanas were made up out of whole cloth by the later commentarial tradition. But it’s not true. There is a basis in the suttas for the development of the nimitta jhanas. In the Upakkilesa Sutta (MN 128) the Buddha teaches a technique of developing a visual nimitta, expanding its intensity via removal of the defilements and then using it as a basis for progressing through the jhanas. Sure, he doesn’t label each jhana stage with the word “jhana” here but he uses the usual stock phrases for describing each of the jhanas, which is a common format in the suttas for communicating phenomena that have already been labelled elsewhere. It’s true that some of the commentarial presentations of nimitta jhana progression add new details to what’s present in the suttas. But so too do almost all widely taught “soft jhana” techniques, which usually add further specific and themes to what is explicitly present in their source material, where it’s underspecified. For my part, I think in the vast majority of cases, neither “hard jhana” nor “soft jhana” proponents have an exclusive claim to being faithful to one of the range of techniques described in the suttas. The techniques presented in the suttas are too varied to make such a claim. Putting the suttas to one side to focus on practical matters, it seems pretty clear to me that the modal output of “soft jhanas” and “hard jhanas” is a different type of state. I believe that both of these states can have value depending on a practitioners goal and there’s no need for one to fight for universal supremacy over the other. I do think keeping the distinction clear is helpful for ensuring that neither modality becomes obscured for those who can benefit from it.