Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

Sometimes, having recently entered the first jhāna for the very first time, one finds that it is much harder to reenter the jhāna. This is usually caused by an increase in wanting—wanting the jhānic experience to reoccur—and the wanting is an instance of the first hindrance, so no jhāna appears.

the remedy is patience. At first, the mental effort required to generate sufficient concentration and the effort required to patiently wait for the jhāna once the attention has been switched to the pleasant sensation are definitely tiring.

Patience and the careful observation of exactly what one has done when the jhāna does appear are the keys to more frequent experiences of jhāna.

If you have ever experienced “pīti stuck on,” it is important that the next time you do enter the first jhāna, you move quickly toward the second jhāna almost as soon as the pīti begins to build. Don’t let the pīti become too strong—take a very deep breath, and let it out completely with total relaxation as you do so; then shift your attention to the sukha, and make that the object of your meditation. Be careful to not let the sukha become too strong! Doing so will pop you back into the first jhāna with its strong pīti. More about this in the next chapter.

current neuroscience research has shown that gratitude practice begins the process of shutting down the so-called default-mode network,

A second preliminary is to get in touch with your motivation. Why are you doing this practice? Whatever it is, getting it clear in your mind hopefully will inspire you.

Then work up some determination—not determination to get anything, just determination to do your very best to use this time as wisely as possible. Get as strong a sense of that as you can; then let it go. It is not useful to begin your practice with a tight mind. But a few moments of working up some determination will have a residual effect that will carry over into your access meditation, when you begin that.

At the beginning of every meditation period, you should always do some mettā (loving-kindness) practice—always for yourself, and additionally for others, if you wish. Mettā practice enhances the positive mind state generated moments earlier by the grat...

you just have to remind yourself that it really is OK to be well and happy, and that it would be nice if others that you know are also well and happy. Don’t feel you have to do this mettā practice for an extended period—30 seconds is fine.

It’s OK to just do mettā for yourself (always required!) and for a few people you really like.

There is a gatha (saying) from Thich Nhat Hanh: “Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile.”1 This is exactly what you need to do to generate access concentration using mindfulness of breathing. Don’t take the saying too literally—just breathe in and out and smile and get calm.

Five Things to Do at the End of Meditation The five things to do at the end of a meditation period begin with recapitulation—what did you do, and how did you get there? This includes remembering what your posture was at the beginning of the period, what it was like to do the five preliminaries mentioned above, what you used for your access method, how you knew you were in access, how long you stayed in access, what was the pleasant sensation that you switched to, what was it like to be with that pleasant sensation, how did the jhāna begin to manifest (if one did), how you responded, and so forth. In fact it can be helpful to remember things that you did before coming to meditate: Had you just eaten? Had you just come back from a walk? Did you read something inspiring? If you have a meditation the likes of which you would like to have again, it is helpful to know the factors that went into generating that experience.

The second thing to do at the end of a sitting is reflect on impermanence—all those high, but mundane, concentration states are now gone; they too are impermanent. The Buddha said, “It is better to live a single day perceiving how things rise and fall than to live a century not perceiving this.”2 The jhānas are impermanent, just like all the other things of saṃsāra.

The third reflection is insight: Did you get any insights? What were they? Insights are understood experiences. Some insights are personal; the deepest ones are about the impermanent, ultimately unsatisfying, empty nature of the universe. If you gained any insight, it is very helpful to keep bringing it to mind. Insights really only have a transformative capacity if you can keep them fresh in your memory. Remembering them, if you gained any, at the end of a sitting is the way to begin to keep them fresh.

The meditation practice you do has effects beyond just you personally. Recognizing this is quite helpful and a good way to remember it is to dedicate the merit from this sitting for the liberation of all beings. You can just think something like, “May the merit from this meditation period be for the liberation of all beings everywhere.” This helps to counteract any selfishness (“What a great meditator I am!”) and puts you in touch with the fact that we all are interrelated and in this together.

just before you get up from your seat, resolve to be mindful as you arise and go about your activities. Continuous mindfulness is very difficult—you need all the help you can get. So make it a habit to remind yourself to be mindful as the last thing at the end of every period of formal meditation.

All the methods of mettā meditation involve wishing that you and others be well and happy.

Forget about deserving happiness, “deserving” is not ever part of mettā practice:

But we could also say the near enemy of mettā is “conditional liking.” So true mettā practice is simply wishing the best for someone just because they are a someone.

When you are using mettā as an access method, begin your mettā practice with at least five minutes of wishing yourself well. Then move on to the other categories of beings. You can pick one individual per category, or you can think of multiple beings in each category. You want to spend at least half an hour practicing mettā to generate access concentration, so don’t rush. The usual categories recommended for mettā practice can be summarized as follows:

The most commonly taught method of mettā meditation is done by silently repeating phrases. It is best to have about four simple phrases. Complicated phrases and more than four of them don’t as easily generate the concentration necessary. I suggest using something like the following: May (I/you/all beings) be happy. May (I/you/all beings) be healthy. May (I/you/all beings) be safe. May (I/you/all beings) be at peace.

The purpose of the phrases is to help you generate the feeling. Once the feeling of mettā becomes strong, it is not necessary to always say the entire phrase. You might then switch to just saying the key words: happy, healthy, safe, peace. And the time between the words might grow longer as the feeling grows stronger. Use the phrases or words just enough to keep the mettā feeling strong.