Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

To be skilled in this state, again you should be able to maintain it for at least 10 to 15 minutes like you did for jhānas two and three. 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. Upon emerging from a deep fourth jhāna, you might feel refreshed as though you’d just taken a short nap—but you will be quite certain that you were not asleep. This is a valuable place in and of itself to spend time, given the hectic nature of twenty-first-century civilization. Once again we have a simile: Suppose a man were to be sitting covered from the head down by a white cloth so there would be no part of his entire body not suffused by the white cloth. In the same way, one sits suffusing one’s body with the pure, bright mind so that there is no part of one’s entire body that is not suffused by a pure, bright mind. (DN 2.84)