How to do the jhanas

Oh spirituality. The only thing that I spent years of life trying to understand and ended up realizing that there's nothing to understand. It sounds corny and cliche but there's no other way I can put it.

I have/had meditated for almost 5 years of my life for almost 2 hours a day(unless I am traveling/or sick etc), so I think I am experienced enough to help beginner meditators. Also being from a Sanskrit-derived-language speaking country, I can read Pali and Sanskrit texts without translation.(Being from a SA country doesn't mean anyone can do that obviously. My family was more religious than others I guess). I am not beating my own drums but I have to put in some credibility to be taken seriously on the Internet. I really have no other credibility to put forward than this so please take my advice with a grain of salt because I am not an enlightened man like the religious scripts depict.

If you are a beginner, forget Jhanas and these tricks. They are just there to confuse you more. The wanting of stages of Jhanas are actually a hindrance. Buddha has warned about it. But his warning has been treated like a footnote. But in modern context, the warning should be the introduction. Because people can rarely deal with any discomfort these days. They've read the Jhanas, they want it now. I am almost 45% sure we will see a AI for Jhanas in the next 50 years.

Anyways, here's my advice for beginners:

When you start meditation, sooner or later, maybe even after a day or two, you'll eventually feel a state of peace. It is bound to happen, you will just have to take words of countless meditation literature and gurus and see for yourself. And the peace will be short-lived. Then, you will want to extend this peace. You've read about the Jhanas, the bliss, the peace, the oneness, and all. But it's not working for you right? Because you have been fooled again.

Previously, you were chasing for drugs/media/TikTok/girls/whatever or some other forms of pleasure/happiness and now you are chasing for the bliss, the peace, whatever the texts say or you've been told. It's the same thing. You are still chasing, you are still desiring. The object of desire is "Jhanas" now but it's still a desire and in desiring there is going to be mental conflict and hopelessness and feeling of losing because obviously you desire only the things you don't have.

The best advice I would give to a beginner meditator, is to be interested. Become interested in the process of meditation, forget the happiness, the results. Oh spoiler alert, you will actually feel like you are being more sadder after you started meditating. You will feel like you are noticing more problems, more issues with the society/beings etc. You aren't becoming sadder or the world is not sadder, you are noticing the sadness that was always there. Let it ride, enjoy the process. Don't treat meditation like a chore like I did. Be really interested. You have to be interested because it's a lifetime work. Your brain is neuroplastic so it's been addicted to patterns and habits from your birth to now. Don't expect to change them in a single meditation session. It's okay to meditate for 5 minutes a day and 2 hours the next day or miss it for weeks. Do it when you feel like it and when you are genuinely interested and curious, you'll just come back to it more and more without needing to force yourself to discipline and hate the word "meditation" in the process. Unless you are genuinely interested you will never surrender to meditation and unless you let go, you will never allow "Jhanas" to appear, because remember everything appears in emptiness.

"Prior to attempting the jhanas, I’d guess that I had maybe 30 hours of lifetime meditation experience, scattered over a decade or more: in other words, not much. But with just over 20 hours of practice, I progressed through all nine jhanic states."

Okay, after that passage I stopped reading, as the author clearly doesn't know what they are talking about. The truth is, people devote their entirely lives living as monastics and still not reach Jhanas (although there are many other benefits, and the life of a monk/nun does take you closer to getting there). In fact, many respectable monks teach that Jhanas are pretty much the end of the Path. From there it is just a small step left to final Liberation.

Yes, I am aware of "Jhana lite", as taught by some lay teachers. But those are certainly not the real thing. Real Jhanas are incredibly profound and powerful states that are worth exploring and understanding, devoting a life to, even. But please get your information from a reputable sources (eg. Ajahn Brahm certainly knows what he's talking about). Not a random person on the internet with "just over 20 hours of practice".

I find that multiple sessions is the way to go. not necessarily longer. Like, dedicate 3 days to chill stuff (walking, cleaning...) and meditation. Meditate, say, 6 times a day for 20-30 minutes. That'll do it. Fasting helps too.

Another one to read would be the Uppakilesa Sutta (MN128) which the buddha is giving specific meditation advice to someone who is experiencing lights but not yet cultivated first jhana. It's an awesome sutta as it also connects that depth of practice with communal harmony and how that sort of inner emotional "good-with-oneself" connects with deep meditation and it's also a clear example of the buddha talking about first hand experience in a phenomenological way that we see common today.

I think there's always been monks meditating following the vinaya strictly in forests. They may not have a marketing department.

However that sort of question " isn’t it the case that Theravadan meditation practice went practically extinct" is a very theravada move as the "way (vada) of the elders (thera)" it always asks "is this modern buddhism really what the buddha taught" and that characteristic emphasis at the center distinguishes it from the mahayana