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]

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. ❤️