Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

As mentioned in the previous chapter, 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. If you can stay with your undistracted attention on the pleasant sensation, then pīti will arise. The pīti, being the physical release of pleasant, exhilarating energy, could be anywhere from mild to quite intense. It can be finger-in-the-electrical-socket intense; it can be so intense that it’s not even pleasurable. And hopefully the pīti is accompanied by sukha, which is an emotional state of joy, happiness. Both pīti and sukha are required in order for the experience to be classified as the first jhāna. And most likely, the experience brings a big grin to your face. 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.