Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

After “passing entirely beyond bodily sensations,” the description continues, “By the disappearance of all sense of resistance and by non-attraction to the perception of diversity.” The best way to understand this is to examine an explanation of how to enter the fifth jhāna. When you’re in the fourth jhāna, you may find yourself slumped over. Your energy is a bit low, and you should probably bring it up a bit by sitting more upright. Then what you need to do is find something that you can expand without limit. What Ayya Khema taught was to get in touch with the boundaries of your being and expand them so you fill the whole room. Once that feels stable, then expand them to fill the whole building. Once that is feeling fairly stable, then expand them to fill the neighborhood. Then expand farther and farther and farther, all the way to the horizon and beyond; just keep on with the expansion. Once you get to the horizon, let go of the perception of diversity, and then there are no more things you are expanding past. You’re not expanding past the moon and then Mars and then Jupiter. Forget all that; just simply focus on the sense of limitless expansion.