Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

there may possibly arise additional signs to indicate you have arrived at access concentration. You may discover that the breath becomes very subtle; instead of a normal breath, you notice you are breathing very shallowly.

If the breath gets very, very subtle, or if it disappears entirely, instead of taking a deep breath, shift your attention away from the breath to a pleasant sensation. This is the key thing. You notice the breath until you arrive at and sustain access concentration, and then you let go of the breath and shift your attention to a pleasant sensation, preferably a pleasant physical sensation.

Whether you shift to the pleasant sensation because your breath has gotten too subtle or because you’ve been at access concentration “long enough,” you will need a good bit of concentration to continuously notice a pleasant sensation. A mildly pleasant physical sensation somewhere in your body is not nearly as exciting as the breath coming in and the breath going out. You’re experiencing this mildly pleasant sensation that’s just sitting there; you need to be well concentrated to stay with it.

Smile when you meditate, because once you reach access concentration, you only have to shift your attention one inch to find a pleasant sensation.

If you can smile when you meditate, it works very well for generating a pleasant sensation to focus upon once you’ve established access concentration; but actually, smiling seems to only work for about a quarter of the students I’ve worked with.

The traditional posture is one hand holding the other, with the thumbs lightly touching. This is a quite excellent posture because it has a side effect of moving the shoulders back and lining up your spine nicely.

At first, what’s most likely to occur is that either your mind wanders away from the subtle pleasant sensation or the pleasant sensation itself goes away. If your mind wanders away, as soon as you notice this, return immediately to the pleasant sensation. But if this wandering away is happening repeatedly, it’s a sign of insufficient concentration; therefore, return to the mindfulness of breathing or whatever other access method you were using, regenerate access concentration, and stay longer in access concentration before once again turning your attention to the pleasant sensation.

It’s also very important to let go of the breath when you make the shift to the pleasant sensation.

the pleasant sensation will begin to grow in intensity; it will become stronger.

it will suddenly take off and take you into what is obviously an altered state of consciousness.

In this altered state of consciousness, you will be overcome with rapture . . . euphoria . . . ecstasy . . . delight. These are all English words that are used to translate the Pali word pīti. Perhaps the best English word for pīti is “glee.”

if you can remain undistractedly focused on this experience of pīti and sukha, that is the first jhāna.

to summarize the method for entering the first jhāna: You sit in a nice comfortable upright position and generate access concentration by placing and eventually maintaining your attention on a single meditation object. When access concentration is firmly established, then you shift your attention from the breath (or whatever your meditation object is) to a pleasant sensation, preferably a pleasant physical sensation. You put your attention on that sensation, and maintain your attention on that sensation, and do nothing else.

You must become totally immersed in the pleasantness of the pleasant sensation.

the pleasantness of the pleasant sensation—the quality of the sensation that enables you to determine that it is pleasant,

neither. It’s not the location of the pleasant sensation nor its inten...

All you can do is set up the conditions for the jhāna to arise, by cultivating a calm and quiet mind focused on pleasantness. And then just let go—be that calm, quiet mind focused on pleasantness and enjoy the pleasantness—and the jhāna will appear.

What you are attempting to do is set up a positive feedback loop.

you are attempting to generate a positive feedback loop of pleasure. You hold your attention on a pleasant sensation. That feels nice, adding a bit more pleasure to your overall experience.

Don’t try to do the jhānas. You can’t. All you can do is generate the conditions out of which the jhānas can arise.

The most common problem encountered is, rather obviously, insufficient concentration.

“jumping too soon.” Someone manages to follow a few breaths in a row and immediately switches to some pleasant sensation. The concentration generated by “a few breaths in a row” is far too little to sustain attention on the pleasant sensation.

Similarly, someone switches to a pleasant sensation as soon as one appears. They have not established access concentration and soon become distracted and are unable to maintain focus on the pleasant sensation or the pleasant sensation disappears.

Similarly, someone does actually generate access concentration but almost immediately switches to a pleasant sensation, maybe just as soon as genuine access concentration is recognized. But because the access concentration is not strong enough, the student becomes distracted or the pleasant sensation disappears.

The opposite problem arises a good bit less frequently, but it does occur. Someone generates quite good access concentration but keeps thinking that it’s not good enough and never lets go of the acces...

Much more likely is that someone generates quite good access concentration, switches to the pleasant s...

All of the above problems are minor in the sense that they are fairly easily dealt with by tuning the student’s patience—not too little, not too much, middle way.

dysthymia has a number of typical characteristics: low drive, low self-esteem, and a low capacity for pleasure in everyday life.

neurologically, pīti and sukha seem to be accompanied by increased activity in the nucleus accumbens of the brain—the reward center.

Another problem that can block the arising of any jhāna is the inability to let go of attention on the breath.

Another possible solution to the above problem of not being able to let go of the breath is to find the breath itself to be pleasant. This involves a subtle shift from the physical sensations of the breath to the pleasantness of the breath.

Another problem that some students face is fear of loss of control. It simply is not possible to enter the first jhāna and be in control during the whole experience. You have to let go and let the pīti take over.

result in someone’s unresolved psychological issues surfacing.

However, it is much better to have these issues surface where they can be dealt with, rather than have them lurking underground doing who knows what at a subconscious or unconscious level.

the fact that these issues are now in the open and can be dealt with is a very valuable opportunity,

The most common one is not allowing the access concentration to grow strong enough before shifting to a pleasant sensation—and

Quite secluded from sense pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, one enters and dwells in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by thinking and examining and filled with the rapture and happiness born of seclusion. One drenches, steeps, saturates, and suffuses one’s body with this rapture and happiness born of seclusion, so that there is no part of one’s entire body which is not suffused by this rapture and happiness. (DN 2.77)

“When one sees that the five hindrances have been abandoned within oneself, gladness arises.”

the move from access concentration to the first jhāna is to shift your attention to a pleasant sensation and stay with that as your object of attention, ignoring any background thinking.

The first jhāna is enough of an altered state that if you think some experience perhaps might be the first jhāna, it probably isn’t—there’s an unmistakable quality to the arising of pīti and sukha that lets you know for certain that something quite different is happening.

Once you’ve gotten to the point where you can stabilize it, see if you can decrease the level of intensity of the pīti and then bring it back up.

The fifth kind of pīti is what I usually refer to as full-blown pīti. The correct translation is “all-pervasive pīti.” This is the pīti that is everywhere. It’s present, it’s sustained, and you experience it throughout your body.

or it can be very intense so that you are actually vibrating to the point where it is visible to others.

It can manifest as heat and get very, very warm.

Most often, it manifests as an upward rush of energy, often ce...

practice tummo,2 which is the Tibetan practice of generating heat,

It should also be mentioned that when pīti first arrives, you may not have any control over the strength of it. It may come on ridiculously strong, or it may come on weak.

or five days and then pop the top, it goes all over. The good news is that the next time pīti comes on, it won’t have built up so much pressure, and it will not likely be that strong.

If the first time you experience pīti is in the evening before going to bed, you will probably have trouble getting to sleep. It will wire you up. That’s OK. You’re learning, and missing a little bit of sleep is worth figuring out how to work with these valuable mental states.

someone enters the first jhāna, their breath becomes very rough—there are short, sharp gasps that are very unlike the subtle breaths while in access concentration. This is totally normal! Once the pīti and sukha start rising, don’t worry in the least what your breathing does—it