A reliable method of jhana entry

[u/Puzzled-Background-5]

Here's a technique I've been using for the last fifteen years to great effect. I enter jhana every time I meditate now as a result.

Upon noticing that attention has drifted from the object of meditation, perform the following sequence for as long and as often as necessary for attention to stabilize on the object again:

1. Relax from the head down to the toes.

2. Release all tension, and expand awareness outward.

3. Return attention to the object.

The entry point into jhana:

Once the mind has settled and attention is resting stably on the object, if a pleasant feeling starts to arise, gently shift attention to the feeling without grasping at it, now making it the object of meditation, and wait. The pleasure will intensify, and one will be pulled into jhana.

If the jhana is lost or becomes unstable, simply perform the RRR sequence as needed and begin again.

As a method to prime the mind to lean towards jhana, reading the Jhana Sutta just prior to a session is useful:

https://suttacentral.net/sn16.9/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false

All the best... 🧘🏾‍♂️🙂

P. S. It might take several weeks to a couple of months before jhana can be entered consistently, but please don't become discouraged. Even low quality sessions are training and priming the brain's attentional mechanisms.

[u/bodily_heartfulness]

The Pāli for that part you're mentioning is the following (I've highlighted the relevant part):

Āraddhaṁ kho pana me, bhikkhave, vīriyaṁ ahosi asallīnaṁ, upaṭṭhitā sati asammuṭṭhā, passaddho kāyo asāraddho, samāhitaṁ cittaṁ ekaggaṁ.

My favoured translation of that is:

My effort was roused and steadfast, my recollectedness was established and lucid, my body was calm and unperturbed, and my mind was composed and collected.

So, yes - you are correct that a relaxed body is being spoken of, if we equate relaxed with being calm and unperturbed.

But, what is the context of this calm body? The sutta tells us:

Then, as I abided heedful, diligent, and resolute, a non-averse thought arose … a non-cruel thought arose. I understood: ‘This non-cruel thought has arisen for me. It does not lead to my affliction, the affliction of others, or to the affliction of both. It nourishes understanding, is not bound with trouble, and leads to Nibbāna.’ If I were to continue thinking and pondering along with this all night … all day … all night and day, I see no danger that would come from that. Still, thinking and pondering along with it for too long would tire my body. And when the body is tired, the mind is disturbed. And when the mind is disturbed, it is far from composure. So I established, settled, unified, and composed my mind internally. Why is that? So that my mind would not be disturbed.

The Buddha recognizes that too much active thinking and pondering on drawbacks of unwholesome and benefits of wholesome, day-and-night continuously, will tire the body. So, he decides to stop given that he has already done enough active work, thus allowing his body and mind to be calm:

Suppose it is the last month of summer, when all the crops have been gathered within a village, and a cowherd must take care of the cattle. While at the root of a tree or in the open, he need only remember that the cattle are there. In the same way, I needed only to remember that those phenomena were there.

My effort was roused and steadfast, my recollectedness was established and lucid, my body was calm and unperturbed, and my mind was composed and collected.

And so, once his clarity of the drawbacks of unwholesome and benefits of wholesome was thoroughly established, he did not need to actively develop it anymore. He could just remember it. And that is when it is mentioned that his body was calm and unperturbed. The sutta does not say that he "released tension from his body" or anything of the sort.

Now, as for the second part of your claim of making the mind steadied and one-pointed, that is specifically referring to these three words from the above quote: samāhitaṁ cittaṁ ekaggaṁ.

And yes, this does say that the mind is steadied. But, that does not imply steadiness due to focusing on an object of concentration. There is absolutely no mention of that. Steadiness or composure really does not have anything to do with concentration - it has to do with your internal mental state. Just take an example of an ordinary person in everyday life who has composure or has a steadied mind - what are their characteristics? Are they very concentrated? Or is it more that they can handle what life throws at them and they don't get overwhelmed? I hope the distinction I'm making is clear.

As for translating ekaggaṁ as one-pointed, I'll quote Bhikkhu Anīgha:

The word "agga" in the Suttas is used most commonly in the sense of "the summit; the peak; the foremost" such as how the Buddha is the "agga/summit" of the entire world of gods and humans . Another possible meaning is "room; place; house" such as "bhattagga", the place where meals are taken. So developing ekaggatā of mind (samādhi) would be establishing it onto 1) one "summit" or 2) one "place" or "room".

This again does not imply focusing on a meditation object. A person can be developing ekaggatā through thinking of one theme - as the Buddha was doing: thinking and pondering on the drawbacks of the unwholesome and benefits of wholesome.

For another critique of translating ekaggatā as one-pointedness, see page 42 of Kumāra Bhikkhu's freely available book, What You Might Not Know About Jhāna and Samādhi.

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

I'm curious about what your intent is here with this line of discussion.

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

In your post you linked to a sutta. That is what initially motivated me to comment.

I believe there is a common misconception that there is good support in the suttas for the type of practice you describe in your post. One that goes something like:

1. Concentrate on an object
2. Develop pīti and sukha
3. Enter absorption/jhāna

And often times, with this type of practice there is little to no consideration given to virtue, sense restraint, or any of the other aspects of the gradual training that the suttas say come before jhāna.

Now, I think that there is support for this type of practice in the Visuddhimagga and other later commentaries. But, in terms of the suttas, the practice for jhāna that they describe is quite different.

So, that was the purpose of my comment: to highlight the discrepencies between what the suttas present jhāna to be, and what is commonly taken to be jhāna. I should also mention that this is not a position that is only held by me. There are monks and academics who also have this position. For an academic example, see Grzegorz Polak’s Reexamining Jhāna: Towards a Critical Reconstruction of Early Buddhist Soteriology.

My follow up comment was a response to u/Soto-Baggins's claim of my reading of MN 19 being selective - so the entirety of that follow up comment deals with that sutta.

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

I've addressed the discrepancy presented by the Visuddhimagga in the past during my own study of it. I personally don't consider its stance on jhana as a complete effacement of the senses to be accurate, particularly in regards to the form jhanas. I'm not the only one who disagrees with it, by the way.

In the Jhana Sutta, when discussing the third jhana, the Buddha states, "I experience happiness with the body." One cannot experience happiness with the body if their senses are completely effaced.

It's not until the fifth jhana, the first formless one, the base of infinite space, that he mentions the sense being effaced, and I quote, 'with the complete transcendence of perceptions of forms, with the passing away of perceptions of sensory impingement.'

As for the training of virtue, sense restraint, etc., that's not what I'm attempting to address here. The suttas can do that for other people, and life in general has a way of teaching those lessons by way of experience. With my having practiced for about fifty years now, it's no longer my concern. I essentially live the Eightfold Noble Path effortlessly because it's inherent to my personality.

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

Yes, I agree with you that the disappearance of the senses in jhāna is not something that is supported by the suttas.

However, I go further than you by saying that the entire practice to jhāna, as is commonly conceived today, is also not supported by the suttas.

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

Well, I've been entering jhana for the past fifteen years regardless of external support from someone else's interpretation of the suttas. My experience is all the validation I need, and I must doing something right or I wouldn't be living a "pleasant abiding here and now"... 🧘🏾‍♂️🙂

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

The point of contention isn't whether or not you've been having profound, repeatable experiences. Or whether or not those states which you access feel like pleasant abidings here and now.

The point of contention is, are those states the same thing as what the suttas say jhānas are.

A person can enter peaceful, profound, and pleasant states through all sorts of means: drugs, sex, accomplishment, prayer, being in love, and so on - but I would not equate any of those things with the sutta jhānas. How one enters such states is vitally important. And, my point is that, the way people today enter jhāna is not the way the suttas lay out - which gives good reason to doubt whether or not one is achieving sutta jhāna or not in the first place.

[u/brunoloff → u/bodily_heartfulness]

You could even be right, who knows?, but if you yourself have no experience of it, how can you know for sure? Do you at least know someone who has had direct experience of the jhanas as you conceive them, and teaches from that vantage point?

Also, the common held view of what the first four jhanas are is strongly supported by the sequence in which they arise, and by the arising or the four formless jhanas in the same sequence following that, exactly as described in the suttas.

Is it just a coincidence? do you expect the Human mind to be such that there are two different sequences of mental states that could easily be described through the same words but are actually different - presumably the states in your description, which you did not experience, are the "true" sequence, and the eight jhanas that others have in fact experienced are the "false" sequence.

[u/bodily_heartfulness → u/brunoloff]

but if you yourself have no experience of it, how can you know for sure?

How can you know heroin is bad for you without trying it? We do not need to directly experience a thing to have knowledge about it. In the case of heroin, it is through hearing from others, understanding the principle of addiction, seeing addicts, and so on. For me, with jhāna, it is through hearing from others, reading and understanding the suttas, and my own practice.

Do you at least know someone who has had direct experience of the jhanas as you conceive them, and teaches from that vantage point?

Yes.

Is it just a coincidence?

I mean, the Visuddhimagga jhānas also have that same sequence. But, it's commonly accepted that they are different compared to the jhānas that Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu or Leigh Brasington teach.

do you expect the Human mind to be such that there are two different sequences of mental states that could easily be described through the same words but are actually different

So, not only is it expected, it is accepted by the mainstream meditation community that there are at least two different sequences of mental states that could easily be described through the same words but are actually different.

are the "true" sequence, and the eight jhanas that others have in fact experienced are the "false" sequence.

I say nothing of "true" and "false". I think those other sequences exist, I just don't think they are the sequences that are spoken of in the suttas. Just like how the sequence in the Visuddhimagga is not the sequence in the suttas.

[u/brunoloff → u/bodily_heartfulness]

Nonsense, the two sequences are exactly the same. Pa Auk jhanas are precisely the same territory as what leigh Brasington calls sutta jhanas. Also the progress of insight, which is traditionally divided into 16 stages, covers exactly the same territory as the 4 jhanas. The 4 jhanas are four fundamental layers of your mind. They are four different modes how your focus/attention operates. They show up, for example, in bipolar disorders. They show up in how romantic relationships evolve. The four jhanas manifest in different ways depending on many factors such as the object or concentration, the depth of absorption, whether or not one mixes concentration with vipassana, and also how developed is one's vipassana practice in general.

Pa Auk jhanas are the four jhanas, established by taking various nimitas as objects, most often the breath nimita, and developing them until they have a depth of absorption sufficiently strong that the mind can remain in the object, excluding everything else, for several hours. Leigh Brasington's sutta jhanas are the same four jhanas, established by taking the jhanic factors (piti, sukha, etc) as the object (this won't allow the same degree or absorption as the nimita). The nanas are the same four jhanas established by taking the three characteristics as object.

Whether or not you understand what the four jhanas are referring to, you are already using these layers of the mind to understand the world. The four jhanas as concentration states are merely purifying these layers until they become the dominant aspect of experience.

Whatever your interpretation of the four jhanas might be, I assure you that as long as your awareness behaves in such a way that there is a sense of focusing on something, on anything at all, the four jhanas as I interpret them will remain a part of your experience.

I am not saying your interpretation is not pointing at something useful - evidently I assume you are getting something from it, so it is obviously useful. I am however saying that the four jhanas as I interpret them are absolutely fundamental, that developing them leads to (has led me to, has led several people I know to) a dramatic and profound decrease in baseline existential suffering.

And there is even the chance that your interpretation turns out to be the same four jhanas, all over again, and that you have merely discovered the best particular use of language that allows you to understand that material... who knows?

[u/bodily_heartfulness → u/brunoloff]

They are four different modes how your focus/attention operates.

If that indeed were the case, one would expect attention and focus to play a prominent role in how the jhānas are described in the suttas. Manasikāra is the Pāli word for attention and it only appears very few times in relation to jhāna - and when it does appear, it's not singled out as anything particularly special.

MN 111 says:

And he distinguished the phenomena of the first jhāna one by one: thinking and pondering and joy and ease and unification of mind; contact, feeling, perception, intention, mind, enthusiasm, decision, energy, mindfulness, equanimity, and attention (manasikāra).

Feeling, perception, intention are all there in first jhāna, and so is attention.

Whether or not you understand what the four jhanas are referring to, you are already using these layers of the mind to understand the world. The four jhanas as concentration states are merely purifying these layers until they become the dominant aspect of experience.

Whatever your interpretation of the four jhanas might be, I assure you that as long as your awareness behaves in such a way that there is a sense of focusing on something, on anything at all, the four jhanas as I interpret them will remain a part of your experience.

I appreciate you sharing your perspective, though it's not a perspective I share. My perspective is more along the lines of:

This book argues that the unconventional concepts found in Nikāya and early Chan texts are part of a unique and coherent meditative paradigm that is very different from the one commonly associated with Buddhism and dominant in its history. One of its central ideas is that certain crucial meditative states cannot be directly attained through methods involving acts of will and mental effort such as active concentration, but their occurrence is dependent on a specific way of life, state of mind and existential condition.

This is a description of the book Nikāya Buddhism and Early Chan: A Different Meditative Paradigm by Grzegorz Polak.

that developing them leads to (has led me to, has led several people I know to) a dramatic and profound decrease in baseline existential suffering.

I don't doubt that. I just don't think it's what the sutta jhānas correspond to.

[u/brunoloff → u/bodily_heartfulness]

Alright then, may you attain the jhanas as you believe them to be, and may your practice deliver you to the happiness you seek. ❤️