Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

As a practical matter, to enter the fourth jhāna, let go of the pleasure of the third jhāna, and hopefully when you do so, there will be a sense of things starting to physically drop down. Go with this sense of dropping down, and continue to let it drop. In the third jhāna, you may find you have a faint smile, a Buddha-like smile. If so, all you have to do is relax the muscles of your face. Both the smile and the sense of pleasure disappear; then usually a sense of things starting to drop down follows. Just stay focused on that sense of dropping, which can continue for quite some time. Eventually the mind settles into a place of quiet stillness. The words in the sutta description are “neither pleasant nor painful” and “equanimity,” but it may not be clear what it means to focus on this. A feeling of quiet stillness is the best way to describe the experience of the fourth jhāna, and that sense of quiet stillness now becomes the focus.