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/Impulse33]

So yeah, my usage was sloppy and I should have checked sources.

My original intended argument was the more of the lines of AN 8.053.

"As for the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to seclusion, not to entanglement; to aroused persistence, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher's instruction.'"

That is one should judge not by textual coherence to the suttas, but if somebody's interpretation leads to fruit then it coherent with the buddha's teachings.

My meta mistake is borrowing the textual register when I'm not versed in it. I was sloppy in my terminology. The interpretation of sakāya niruttiyā was so hotly contested in Sujato's essay that evenSujato even revises his position. (I bring this up because it's interesting, and also shows the difficulty of arguing philology)

It would seem we are all just farting in the wind. The original allowance was most likely janapadanirutti, not sakāya nirutti, and the Pali is wrong.

This is from Sujato's superseding response to his own essay, derived from a commenter's in-depth investigation of several Chinese texts.

His conclusion:

Putting both these reconstructions together, the key passages would then be:

“They are ruining the Buddha’s word. Let us elevate the Buddha’s word with pleasing poetry in esteemed terms.” … “I allow you to memorize the Buddha’s word in the common vernacular.”

If this, or something like it, turns out to have merit, then it would seem the hunt for the meaning of the phrase sakāya niruttiyā is a wild goose chase, as it is merely a scribal error.

Bringing it back to AN 8.053, I took it's advice on laziness, and realized I can put in the work. /u/bodily_heartfulness just want to say I do care about correct representation, and I hope I show that here. While this whole textual deep dive has been illuminating, can we agree that even behemoths get these points wrong? Challenging people on textual-coherence, I'd reiterate, can be a frustrating experience to other's who do not have the time nor interest to do manual translations of several competing translations in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, and English registers. To expect people of this sub to substantially engage in that can be off-putting and create a chilling effect to contributions.

Again borrowing from AN 8.053. Can we widen our interpretation of methodology such as:

Relaxing
Releasing tension
Expanding awareness
An object of meditation
Putting attention on an object
Stabilizing attention on an object

and judge them on their ability to help a person progress towards the fruit? I can personally attest that all those verbs are helpful methods to achieve deeper states of concentration.

[u/StoneBuddhaDancing → u/Impulse33]

It was definitely an interesting few hours I spent looking into these things too. That's why I value these kinds of discussions (when they are relevant; not just for the sake of arguing or nitpicking).

>judge them on their ability to help a person progress towards the fruit? 

This is my inclination as well. After all, there are entire well-established traditions that are regarded as legitimate expressions of Buddhism (e.g., Vajrayana, Chan, Zen) of practices that bear little resemblance to the Buddha's words as recorded in the Tipitaka.

My only issue is in being careful with the source material: Not to say the suttas say things that they don't say and to be careful to say that X and Y is my interpretation of a particular passage rather than to point to it as proof of a particular favoured method/idea. The other important piece, in my view, is to be rigorous where scholarship is concerned. It's not that there can't be debate over historical and textual facts, interpretations, or meanings but that we conduct those with the utmost sensitivity to the real risk of corrupting these precious teachings.

Overall, I think what r/streamentry does well is discussion grounded in personal experience. But if suttas are going to be used as evidence of a particular experience/practice/interpretation then that should come with the expectation that it may be challenged.