Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

One of the most important things to bring on the spiritual path is an open mind.

The jhānas are eight altered states of consciousness, brought on via concentration and each yielding more concentration than the previous.

Without this moral discipline as a foundation, none of the subsequent steps will be truly effective, and progress on the spiritual path ceases. For example, ethical behavior serves as a foundation for generating concentration by creating a life where there are not so many things you might feel remorse or worry about.

Pay attention to what’s actually going on in the present moment, in the place where you are currently located.

We are the progeny of countless generations of ancestors who had to not become totally fixated on what they were doing. Those who did become fixated didn’t notice a predator, got eaten, and didn’t reproduce. What we are trying to do goes against millions of years of evolution. Having a wandering mind is just how we are constructed. So it’s no big deal when your mind wanders off; you should actually consider it a victory that you noticed it wandered, rather than a defeat that it did its natural thing of wandering.

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.

The door to jhana 1

then you let go of the breath and shift your attention to a pleasant sensation, preferably a pleasant physical sensation.

You’re experiencing this mildly pleasant sensation that’s just sitting there; you need to be well concentrated to stay with it.

Nonetheless, if you put a fake smile on your face when you start meditating, and keep putting it back on if it falls off, by the time you arrive at access concentration, the smile will feel genuine.

Of course, this is easier said than done—you’ve struggled for a long time to stay locked onto the breath, and now that you’ve finally managed to do so, the first thing you are told is to stop doing that. But that’s the way it is—if you want to experience jhānas, it’s going to be necessary to totally give yourself to fully enjoying the pleasantness of the pleasant sensation.

So you’ve found the pleasant sensation and fully shifted your attention to that pleasant sensation. You now observe the pleasantness of the pleasant sensation and do nothing else. If you can do that, the pleasant sensation will begin to grow in intensity; it will become stronger.

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

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

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

The first jhāna is not a calm, peaceful state. Its energy is pretty intense,

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.

As a practical matter, to move from the first jhāna to the second jhāna, you should take a nice deep breath and let it out slowly and totally,

To one in the second jhāna, thinking and examining are a thorn.

When the fourth jhāna is done well, it is an incredibly restful state. We spend our days thinking and doing and our nights either dreaming or oblivious. Finally now you are in a state where you are fully conscious and almost nothing is happening.

We can define an insight as an “understood experience.”

Insight practices are practices—both on and off the cushion—that aim to give us experiences of the true nature of the world in a context such that we can understand them.

The method for waking up on the spiritual path is to let go, and in order to let go, you need to become convinced there is nothing worth hanging on to—in fact there is nothing you can hang on to.

But now in order to enter the fifth jhāna, you need to pass beyond any awareness of your body. The objects of these immaterial jhānas are quite subtle, and in order to access them, you need to be very concentrated.

That concentration has to be so strong that you’re not paying any attention to your physical body; you are just experiencing the mental state of the jhāna.

If you can do so, eventually, a vast, empty space will appear before you. Don’t look for the space; if you do that, you are not focused on the expansion and thereby prevent the infinite space from appearing.

The object of attention is this experience of boundless space.

The trick for moving to the sixth jhāna is to shift your attention from the space to your consciousness of the space. Become aware of your awareness;

It’s a trick of turning your attention back on itself. Since you can’t be conscious of a limitless space with a limited consciousness, when you turn your attention back to your consciousness, lo and behold, it’s as big as the limitless space, and you are now aware of having a limitless consciousness.

Now the observer and the observed are the same, although again you might not notice this when you are first learning the sixth jhāna.

Wrong, it’s just an experience. You have put your brain/nervous system into an altered state, such that what you are experiencing is perceived by you as you having an infinite consciousness—that’s all.

“one becomes one who is conscious of this true but subtle perception of the Sphere of No-Thingness.”

These four immaterial jhānas will deepen your concentration so that you have a mind that is even more concentrated, purer, brighter, more malleable, wieldier, steadier, and more imperturbable.

10 percent of the students I’ve worked with report having experienced one (and sometimes more) jhānas as a child.a

The jhānas were not invented; they were discovered.

The Buddha was one of the most practical people who ever lived.

they have the capacity to recharge your meditation practice; they provide a very wholesome source of pleasure—something the Buddha felt was necessary on the spiritual path; and they can enhance your insight meditation practice strongly enough so that you gain life-changing insights.

You must initially apply your attention to the meditation object, and in order to generate access concentration, you must sustain your attention on the meditation object. Then to move toward the first jhāna, you must initially find a pleasant sensation and apply your attention to it, and then you sustain your attention on that pleasant sensation until the pīti and sukha arise. Once the pīti and sukha arise, you once again apply and sustain your attention, this time on the pīti-sukha experience.

two of the clearest indications that the Buddha did not teach reincarnation. Your consciousness/mind is a dependent phenomenon, dependent on your impermanent body.

In the teachings of dependent origination, consciousness is said to be dependently arisen. In some suttas it is said to originate dependent on mind and body (nāma-rūpa);2 in others it arises dependent on fabrications (sankhara).3 This is not a contradiction; it’s simply that consciousness arises dependent on more than one thing—just like many things in the world.

From that discussion, it seems quite possible that the correct translation of nevasaññānāsaññāyatana should be “the realm of neither consciousness nor unconsciousness.” Unfortunately, getting the name of this state correct still does not provide any more possible way to describe it. The mind is energized (this is not “sinking mind”!) and very clear, but it is not possible to describe the object of concentration other than to say “the mind is in a state that you can’t describe.”

It is said that nonreturners and arahatsa can enter this state for up to a week.

The award-winning documentary Short Cut to Nirvana—a documentary about the Indian Kumbh Mela spiritual festival4—

Saṅgārava says, “Only the one who performs this wonder experiences it and it occurs only to him.” This is totally congruent with these supernormal powers being a lucid dream.

We have a very strong tendency to ignore many of the subtle qualities of reality and just accept that what we perceive is the way things really are. But having gained mastery of lucid dreaming, you would certainly become more aware that just because you perceive something, it doesn’t make it reality.

Dreams, the Original Virtual Reality”

Wisdom, when imbued with concentration, brings great fruit and profit.

Once the insights start rolling in, the student will have found something far more interesting and rewarding than just getting high. Problem solved.

Five Things to Do at the Beginning of Meditation It is very helpful after you get seated in your comfortable, upright posture to generate some gratitude—gratitude toward your teachers

gratitude for all the millions of people who have had a hand in preserving the Buddha’s dhamma for two and half thousand years, gratitude to the Buddha for finding and showing the way, gratitude for anything else that you are currently grateful for.

This begins to settle your mind into a positive state, which will be helpful for entering the jhānas.