Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

You also want to become skilled enough that you can enter this state of infinite consciousness and remain in it for 10 to 15 minutes before moving on to learning/entering the next jhāna. By passing entirely beyond the Sphere of Infinite Consciousness seeing that there is no thing, one reaches and remains in the Sphere of No-Thingness. (DN 33.1.11.7) Maurice Walshe, in his translation of the Dīgha Nikāya, used “nothingness,” rather than “nothingness,” which is a very good idea since it gives a more accurate description of what the jhāna experience is like. It’s necessary in moving from the sixth jhāna toward the seventh to conjure up a sense of nothing. The trick is to become aware of the content of this infinite consciousness. The sense of space is long gone, and you realize the consciousness is not conscious of anything. It is conscious of nothing, no-thing. Put your attention on that sense of no-thing. The nothing, at first, may be a small nothing, sort of a basketball-sized nothing in front of your face. Then as you stay with it, you realize there’s nothing over here and nothing over there and nothing back there or anywhere. Then the nothing seems to be bigger, although it never really gets that infinite feel that you have in the fifth jhāna of the realm of infinite space, or the sixth jhāna of the realm of infinite consciousness. It just sort of goes from a little nothing to a big nothing to an even bigger nothing.