Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

JUNE 4, 1988: It’s forty minutes into the forty-five-minute sitting before lunch—and my back is killing me. I slide forward on the little cushion I’m using as a zafu and my sit bones slip onto the mat, but my tailbone remains on the cushion. The result is instantaneous. My hips are thrust forward, correctly aligning my vertebrae and thus relaxing all the muscle tension in my back, and a huge flood of joyous energy fills my whole being. Immediately two thoughts arise: “I’m gonna always sit like this!” and “This must be what that Dutch woman was talking about when she asked that question ‘What do I do with all this joy I’m getting?’” I was at Ajahn Buddhadasa’s Wat Suan Mokkha in southern Thailand, and they told me there that what I was experiencing was called pīti. I didn’t really understand what was happening—I just knew I liked it and that my motivation for sitting in meditation had changed from doing it because I knew it was good for me, to meditating because I wanted to.