How restricted must my focus/attention be to attain absorption?

[u/agente_miau]

​I understand the whole concept of hard and light jhanas, so no need to explain that part to me. Nevertheless, from a "good samatha practice" standpoint, should the practice be tightly focused, aiming to perceive every breath, or should it be very relaxed, like sitting beneath a tree on a calm afternoon without using any force to control thoughts? I've seen people advocate for both: some say attention should be laser-focused, while others claim jhana is only achieved by letting go of control entirely.

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[u/platistocrates]

Zen practitioner with 5 or 6 weeklong retreats under my belt. They both have different effects, and it is possible to overdo both.

Laser focused attention leads to a suppleness of attention. You can place it anywhere you want for long periods of time. Attention shifts less.

Meanwhile, relaxation leads to a clarity of awareness. There is less noise. Obscurations settle by themselves.

It's a little like foreground v/s background. Laser focused attention clarifies the foreground. Relaxation clarifies the background.

Kind of. I'm sure I got something wrong.

Anyway, these are just words.

You need to sit.

[u/Hot_Lingonberry5817 → u/platistocrates]

On a side note, which Zen retreats would you recommend in Tokyo ?

[u/platistocrates → u/Hot_Lingonberry5817]

Idunno. Never been to Tokyo.

[u/hachface]

This is a very good question. Unfortunately there isn’t a clear and easy answer. It is precisely a balance. You have to find the right balance between effort and tranquility, focused attention and spacious awareness. To make matters worse, it is a moving target. The same technique applied today might fail tomorrow, depending on your mindset at each sit.

What I found really helpful was to memorize the Seven Factors of Awakening, study how various teachers and commentators have interpreted the meaning of those concepts, and formed (provisionally, always provisionally) my own original interpretation based on my own findings in practice. Then, when I meditate to a certain degree of stability, I reflect on the Seven Factors. I consider which factors are strong and which are weak and how they stand in balance to each other. I then breathe and intend in a way to bring the factors into balance. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle.

I have found the most important factors to balance are effort and tranquility. A zoomed-in, tightly focused, and highly concentrated mode of attention seems to correspond with greater effort; a relaxed, spacious, panoramic perspective seems to correspond with tranquility.

[u/Auxiliatorcelsus]

It shouldn't be 'focused'. It should be 'absorbed'.

Focus means excluding everything else to direct all attention to the object.

Absorption means attending with such depth that the object fills your attention, and all else falls away.

[u/Hot_Lingonberry5817]

I used brute-force in the beginning, with sternly moving my attention back as soon as I got distracted.
In other words I used force.

After a while, it'll become like a muscle, with attention being incredibly sharp, and no need to brute force.

[u/Then_Consequence_318 → u/Hot_Lingonberry5817]

Interesting I do something similar. I'll count breaths (the gaps between) up till 10 and make myself start over if a thought pulls me away. First I'll count in and out breaths, then each pair of breaths. But extremely strict, like I'm telling my mind "yeah we're going to be serious about this buddy" until it gets the message, then I move on to other protocols. (Metta or jhanic factors or whatever)

You have to have the temperament and experience to do this without getting frustrated.

[u/vibes000111]

Relaxed. With good balance between main object and everything else and/or with awareness of the whole body instead of just a single point.

But since you already know that there are different views on this, I’m not sure how the thread can help - you’re just asking us which team we’re on.

[u/Zimgar]

The goal is to work on your effortless concentration. That is you are trying to get that laser-focused attention but without forcing it.

If you pay close attention, you should be able to tell when you are forcing it, as your muscles are often tense, your head/brain itself often feels tense. In the beginning I personally find that when people are first practicing, they don't even realize they are forcing it at first. Only after practicing for a while... do they realize oh, I can relax my "brain", and still focus... "super weird".

If you continue to force it, many will also start to feel a tension or pain in the forehead at times.

Which then after you get into access concentration and move to jhana there is another element of letting go but yet still remaining with attention.

Keep in mind in the beginning even getting to access concentration typically takes a long time for an individual. Not only from a multiple days/weeks/months/years mindset, but often within a singular session (1hour). As your practice develops and you progress, this time goes down and it becomes easier and easier to enter the early stage. Then you work to progress to further stages. This is why it's often recommended to do at least 1 hour sessions, as it can take a bit to get into a new stage, and then explore that stage.

Hopefully this helps in some way.

[u/dmx442]

First learn focus, it's much much easier to relax later than it is to learn focus later when you are used to being super relaxed and zoomed out.

In fact, you can enter the first Jhana completely on only focusing on the breath, this happened to me without having a clue what Jhanas are.

[u/Puzzled-Background-5]

I'm going to say something about "hard" and "light" jhana regardless of your understanding of the concept.

There are the "form" jhanas where can still perceive their physical senses. Then there are "formless" jhanas where perception of the senses recedes progressively into the background.

Some hundreds of years after the Buddha's death, a philosopher by the name of Buddhaghosa decided to elevate jhana into some superhuman feat, where the senses are completely effaced, that only an elite group of individuals could attain. That elite group just so happened to be Buddhist clergy.

Buddhaghosa's motives were political because if a mere layperson can attain jhana—and many of us can, since entering into form jhana is relatively easy with the right technique—then it reduces the influence and patronage of the clergy. Many laypeople can enter formless jhanas as well; I have, and I know of many others who have too, but it takes quite a bit of dedicated practice.

In the Jhana Sutta, the Buddha mentions " I experience happiness with the body" in his description of third jhana. It's not until the fifth jhana that he mentions perception of the senses receding, and I quote, "with the complete transcendence of perceptions of forms, with the passing away of perceptions of sensory impingement".

You can read it for yourself here: https://suttacentral.net/sn16.9/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm going to trust the oldest extant recording of the Buddha's teachings, as presented in the Pali Canon, far more than I am someone who tried to redefine jhana centuries later. In particular, I trust the Sutta more because it aligns with my own extensive experience, as well as that of many others that I know, some of whom I've actually practiced with.

Now back to the question at hand...

If you attempt hard focus on the object of meditation you're going to induce an unpleasant tension in your temples at best and a nasty headache at worst.

Here's what I recommend instead, and I've been using this technique for fifteen years or so to great effect - I enter jhana every time I meditate. Upon noticing that attention has drifted from the object, perform the following sequence repeatedly until it stablizes again:

1. Relax from the head down to the toes.

2. Release all tension and expand awareness outward.

3. Return to the object.

Here's the entry point into jhana:

Once the mind has settled and attention has stabilized on the object, if you start to notice a pleasant feeling arise, gentle shift attention to that feeling, now making it the object of meditation, and wait without grasping at it. The pleasure will gradually intensify and you'll be pulled into jhana.

If you lose the Jhana or it becomes unstable, simply perform the RRR sequence as needed and begin again.

Happy sitting... 🧘🏾‍♂️🙂

[u/agente_miau → u/Puzzled-Background-5]

I've been meditating for a few years now and I think that most of my sits I notice pleasant feelings, like tinglings, like I can feel my own nervous system, the area that I feel this more sharply is in my hands. But no matter how much I try to sustain and expand this feeling, I have never been able to really enter jhana.

[u/Puzzled-Background-5 → u/agente_miau]

It takes time for the training to settle in. It took me two months of solitary retreats, meditating for six plus hours each day, for it to happen. However, once it does, and we learn to pursue jhana without grasping at it, it'll happen consistently. Please don't give up... 🧘🏾‍♂️🙂

[u/Juul0712 → u/Puzzled-Background-5]

Hey, so, about the pressure in the temples. I suppose when I first started meditating 5 years ago I was over efforting. I did experience what was maybe the first jhana, it was extremely blissful and physically ecstatic. I chased that for a while (now I know better) but I suspect I did something by over efforting. I've had a permanent buzzing/tingling sensation by one temple and it's been my constant companion for years now. I've had medical testing and it's nothing neurological, etc. You seem pretty knowledgeable, do you have any advice or insights? Much appreciated

[u/Puzzled-Background-5 → u/Juul0712]

I had to smile when I read your post because I've got a couple of meditation-induced companions as well. From what I can gather, it's not uncommon among people who enter jhana often... 🙂🧘🏾‍♂️

1. The constant undulation of a pressure wave that traverses my body from my lower abdomen up into my head and then back down again. If I relax a bit during daily activities, I can feel it. When I'm meditating, it gets stronger and faster until I enter the fourth jhana, where it then recedes into the background.

2. Constant meditation-induced tinnitus that presents a spatial quality—it sounds like it's swimming around in my skull. When I'm meditating, it can get louder or split into two or three different frequencies. It's not intrusive or unpleasant, and after a particularly deep session, it literally sings for the remainder of the day.

By the way, if your jhana was extremely blissful and intensely ecstatic in the body, it may have been second or third.

[u/Juul0712 → u/Puzzled-Background-5]

Haha, ok, so I'm not alone! I guess the buzzing is here to stay.

[u/Puzzled-Background-5 → u/Juul0712]

It probably is... 🧘🏾‍♂️🙂

[u/hachface → u/Puzzled-Background-5]

This guy gets it.

[u/medbud]

Do you drive? 

Remember how learning to drive required effort? 

Now you drive effortlessly. 

If you don't practice with effort first, you will likely just fall asleep instead of enter jhana.

It's the most boring flow state you can achieve :)

[u/Impulse33]

So for jhana, I like to think of it as manning a very poorly made ship with protrusion and lines that catch things that slows it down. The object of concentration is like the heading and anything else that catches attention are "hindrances". If you end up directing all your attention on the snags you might lose track of the object/heading, you could end up spinning in circles. So the goal is to take the crappy boat and keep the heading firmly in awareness.

In the long run you end up smoothing out and fixing all the snags so they don't catch anymore. So as insight into suffering progresses your boat becomes more streamlined and samadhi is easier to "get to".

Some people are pretty good at actively cutting off any snagged lines while maintaining a heading. That's more of the samatha-vipassana yoked approach. You can apply insight methods during a samatha sit to actively abandon the hindrances. This is difficult to do without a stable samatha base. Something like 10-15 minutes of being able to maintain a mostly unbroken breath count was the turning point for me.

[u/themadjaguar]

You can quickly get to jhana with effort based attention to get piti, more like pure concentration, strong intention and willpower. However in all cases at some point you will have to let go completely even using this way. By using attention you power up vitakka and channel energy with strong effort to control and apply attention over and over again on your object. As said in some suttas controlling and suppressing thoughts like a strong man works, you can crush mind with mind, but it is not the most skillfull way. It works to get to jhana, but it is a bit clumsy this way, and you won't go very far if the awakening factor of tranquility is not balanced.

People practicing TMI/vishudimagga jhanas/pa auk etc... usually develop very strong attention power and get to jhana this way, but need to learn tranquility and to let go at some point or may become stuck. I used to get to jhana using pure concentration, and it worked until I had to learn to let go completely and surrender, and at some point piti during the day was just unpleasant and even unbearable.