However with the eighth jhāna, you might have time for one brief sentence—not containing the words I, me, or mine—before it completely disappears. It’s a very subtle state and disappears quite quickly if you lose your attention on it. This makes it far more fragile than any of the previous jhānas. If you do successfully learn to enter the realm of neither perception nor nonperception and then become distracted and find no trace of the jhāna to return to when you recognize the distraction, it will then be necessary to go back to the seventh or perhaps even to the fifth and work your way back to
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