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How to do the jhanas

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Re: How to do the jhanas

#71

Post by aftoprokrustes »

albert_e wrote: post #65

Is "jhana" a separate word or just a alternate spelling (if I may, an incorrect one) for "dhyana" which means mental focus / meditation? (I am referring to the Sanskrit word which is also the root for many indian language words that mean the same -- dhyaan in Hindi, or dhyaanam in Telugu)

They are the same, but in a different language. Jhana is Pāli, Dhyana is Sanskrit. Pāli ist the language of the oldest collection of discourses of the Buddha, on which Theravada buddhism is based. Sanskrit appeared later and is often used in Mahayana traditions.

As far as I know both Pāli and Sanskrit are artificially created languages, by merging various Indian dialects of the time, for the purpose of communicating spiritual/religious teachings across ethnic boundaries.

Re: How to do the jhanas

#72

Post by lewispollard »

roenxi wrote: post #47
dnissley wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they aren't obviously to the benefit of anyone except the practitioner Most of the people I know who've gotten into jhana really do talk a big game about how it's affected their behavior in the world in ways that obviously benefit others. Being more compassionate, kind, patient, accepting, forgiving, etc. Personally I don't think I've gotten to jhana, but if nothing else the traits I've cultivated through meditatio…

Possibly it is a good time to reflect on the following puzzler: There are people you know who have achieved a jhana but don't talk about it. What are they saying?

Actions speak louder than words.

Re: How to do the jhanas

#73

Post by lewispollard »

_nalply wrote: post #60

Please take care. There's the "dark night of the soul". Everybody is different. I and my wife experienced something similar to this phenomenon but my wife decades (!) earlier than me and she was completely alone. She had meditation therapy because of her cerebral palsy and when she fell into the night dark nobody understood her. I learnt a lot from her experience. Today I explain it like this: If you realize that eve…

There is usually a marked difference between "insight" practice (that give realisation about the fundamental nature of experiences) and "concentration" practice (i.e. jhanas). Just practicing jhanas is not all that conducive to mental upset - you purify your behaviour, focus the mind, suppress the hindrances, and experience intense states of wholesome qualities that take over your consciousness for a while. There's nothing negative or dark about that. But Buddhist practice goes beyond jhana practice by using the power of that focused mind and suppressed hindrances to analyse experience through the lens of the Buddhist teachings i.e. right view. The issue comes about if the analysis comes from an incomplete or wrong view, leading to nihilism. It's best to stick to "pure" jhana practice and not meddle with insight practice if possible, if one doesn't have access to reliable teacher than can correct misconceptions in view that lead to negative outcomes.

The other thing is that "pure" jhana practice, when done correctly, kind of sets up the mind with a kind of wholesome "blank slate" from which to do the analysis that leads to insight. Some traditions, especially those that have been imported as "secular mindfulness" to the west, tend to emphasise just doing that analysis of experience without too much jhana practice involved. If you don't already have a very wholesome mental state (i.e. the kind of mental state that comes about from living in a monastery and limiting the actions and speech being undertaken) then there can be a whole lot of mess to sort through and opportunities for unwholesome states of mind to latch on and become the basis for your worldview. It's not a coincidence that a lot of the narrative and commentary about mindfulness and the "dark night of the soul" (i.e. dukkha nanas) comes from those traditions, but isn't mentioned in other traditions that emphasise practice differently.

Re: How to do the jhanas

#74

Post by instagib »

ergonaught wrote: post #33

> But with just over 20 hours of practice, I progressed through all nine jhanic states. This is simply not true. It would be silly to deny that the author had some particular experience(s), but author absolutely did not have the described (quoted) experience. This "words have whatever meaning I decide they have" world goes absolutely nowhere productive or useful. I'd love it if you all would stop doing it.

They could have not stated hours of psychedelic drug usage to add on to that. Drugs were mentioned several times while mentioning the fda decided against mdma therapy.

I find it odd both meditation retreats they left early and very early. Possibly it was a bad sensation. Then they decided against continuing to practice regularly.

The words part sounds more like a drug induced trip.

Re: How to do the jhanas

#75

Post by lewispollard »

__rito__ wrote: post #61
3l3ktr4 wrote: post #2

I've been meditating pretty consistently for the last year 20 min meditations or more every day and though I've put way more than the time the OP put in trying to achieve jhanas I couldn't even reach the first one. I wonder what I'm missing!

It took me much more time (~3 years) than the author here. I meditated following a book. And the what is described here as J7/J8 happened while meditating. But, J9 happened where I didn't expect it. My dad learned yoga from a guru, and he taught me some Pranayama to ease my breathing, as I have chronic cold often. That works, but I experienced J9 (here) while doing those Pranayama rather than Sati meditation. I didn'…

> The author sheds no light in their state of learning or lifestyle. If I had to venture a guess, I would think that they play significant role..

I think that's an excellent point, though the author sets up the article in a scientific way, describing the practice as mechanical - a lot of the ability to access these states comes from coming into it with a wholesome and cleaned up mind, which comes about through doing wholesome actions, saying wholesome things (and not lying), and generally the practice of "sense restraint" - not allowing unwholesome influences into your life. Otherwise, you sit down and your mind is a well of negative thoughts and feelings that completely cloud your ability to access jhana.

Of course, if you're the sort of person that behaves, speaks and thinks that way in general, you may not realise that that's one of the main things that allow you to access the jhanas.

Re: How to do the jhanas

#76

Post by lewispollard »

sincerely wrote: post #13
3l3ktr4 wrote: post #2

I've been meditating pretty consistently for the last year 20 min meditations or more every day and though I've put way more than the time the OP put in trying to achieve jhanas I couldn't even reach the first one. I wonder what I'm missing!

I'm in a similar boat. I wish it were possible to externally verify in some way. I'm a bit skeptical of how easily a lot of newcomers to meditation claim to have reached them.

Although I agree that a lot of people may be overblowing their experience, either by mistake, through ignorance, or else for clout/internet points, think about it this way: when the Buddha was alive, the jhanas were standard practice, and had been for as long as yogis could remember. The Buddhist teaching almost assumes a familiarity with the jhanas and doesn't really explicitly teach how to access them. The entire teaching is based on the Buddha learning the jhanas from various teachers of the time, mastering them, and eventually finding them unsatisfactory. Yogis who came to the Buddha seemed to already have an understanding and background with jhanas, which the Buddha then taught them to use to realise what he himself had realised. What this tells us is that jhanas aren't some kind of lofty, difficult to achieve thing that only a select few ever achieve; instead, it seems to suggest that it's something that's available to anyone with enough dedication and is something that transcends traditions or religions, and has been known about for millenia.

Re: How to do the jhanas

#77

Post by lewispollard »

albert_e wrote: post #65

Is "jhana" a separate word or just a alternate spelling (if I may, an incorrect one) for "dhyana" which means mental focus / meditation? (I am referring to the Sanskrit word which is also the root for many indian language words that mean the same -- dhyaan in Hindi, or dhyaanam in Telugu)

As mentioned, they're the same. Although "dhyana" can be translated as "meditation", it should be pointed out that at least in the yoga tradition, it refers to a specific, deeply focused state of one pointedness, like jhana, rather than being the act of performing a meditation technique itself - which is referred to as "dharana", I believe. So practicing "dharana" leads to "dhyana", in much the same way as particular techniques of concentration lead to "jhana".

Re: How to do the jhanas

#78

Post by tgdude »

dnissley wrote: post #38
roenxi wrote: post #11

One of the interesting insights into society at large is that one of the big divisions of knowledge is into the pots of "benefits others that you know this" and "other". There is a lot of social effort put into spreading political memes (as the easiest example) because that will influence society in a way that is favourable to the meme-er. Ditto a lot of commercially useful skills are spread because it is in everyone…

> they aren't obviously to the benefit of anyone except the practitioner Most of the people I know who've gotten into jhana really do talk a big game about how it's affected their behavior in the world in ways that obviously benefit others. Being more compassionate, kind, patient, accepting, forgiving, etc. Personally I don't think I've gotten to jhana, but if nothing else the traits I've cultivated through meditatio…

It certainly changed mine.

The thing that I came to understand after experiencing what I did (I won't call it jhana because I haven't yet found a teacher to ask and I don't want to misspeak) is that our behavior is fundamentally connected to our internal state and emotional needs. These can be as deeply rooted as traumatic experiences or even mild preferences we have. The experience that I had almost feels like an internal sense of nourishment for these needs.

It starts as joy and happiness and settles into this sense of stable and calm contentment that isn't dependent on anything in the "external". You realize and deeply understand that you don't "need" anything to be content. Thoughts just fade in and out and eventually disappear.

After spending some time there I also realized how much effort the mind spends protecting the "model of the world" it's built up over time and how much stress it gets put under when something challenges it. It's hard to describe this in terms of the senses but you can almost "see" the struggle because it contrasts so much to this other state of pure calm and contentment that you can now access.

And because you can now access it (through staying on the path) it becomes a sort of refuge and eventually feels like source of strength.

And through having that I started asking myself why not just choose to be compassionate and kind? Why let the mind stress itself out over truly meaningless things when we now know how to calm it down and be content? Why protect the model of the world we've built up when it is so obviously limiting the depth of life that we can access and share?

Not that any of this is easy, and its definitely a journey but it's one worth going down.

Re: How to do the jhanas

#79

Post by lewispollard »

aftoprokrustes wrote: post #71
albert_e wrote: post #65

Is "jhana" a separate word or just a alternate spelling (if I may, an incorrect one) for "dhyana" which means mental focus / meditation? (I am referring to the Sanskrit word which is also the root for many indian language words that mean the same -- dhyaan in Hindi, or dhyaanam in Telugu)

They are the same, but in a different language. Jhana is Pāli, Dhyana is Sanskrit. Pāli ist the language of the oldest collection of discourses of the Buddha, on which Theravada buddhism is based. Sanskrit appeared later and is often used in Mahayana traditions. As far as I know both Pāli and Sanskrit are artificially created languages, by merging various Indian dialects of the time, for the purpose of communicating…

> Sanskrit appeared later and is often used in Mahayana traditions.

While Sanskrit was used in later Buddhist traditions, the term "dhyana" in Sanskrit predates the Buddha, as it was used in the Vedas, and a lot of Pali does seem to derive from Sanskrit (or at least, other local languages that were influenced by Sanskrit).

Now, "modern" Sanskrit and "vedic" Sanskrit can be considered two things (like English and Old English), but many of the terms used are the same, hence its influence on Pali that compare to modern Sanskrit terms.

Re: How to do the jhanas

#80

Post by lewispollard »

__rito__ wrote: post #64
alecst wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. I heard a story about Ayya Khema that she basically just stayed up all night for a while just committed to learning the jhanas. One of the problems with all the stuff is that it's very hard for us to know what other people have experienced. So who knows. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. Let's not be so closed-minded about it. People are different.

I have never come across a Buddhist source saying that some people are inherently more advantaged than others. But I did come across some interviews of great Tantric gurus, and they all say that some people are more in inherent advantage over others in terms of spiritual progress.

> I have never come across a Buddhist source saying that some people are inherently more advantaged than others.

That's essentially the entirety of the Buddha's teachings on karma. I haven't the time to look for sources right now, but I'm pretty sure the close disciples of the Buddha - who all had distinct and extraordinary abilities, either feats of memory or meditation - were explained to have those abilities due to intense work in past lives. Indeed, the Buddha himself didn't chance upon his enlightenment - he made a vow to do it thousands or millions of lifetimes prior, and worked towards it life by life until he was able to achieve it.

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