Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

The first step of the gradual training is hearing the true dhammac and gaining confidenced that there is a method, a path, that can be followed to gain something more valuable than what the world has to offer.

The next step is building the foundation upon which all that follows stands: sīla, moral discipline, ethical behavior. The major ethical practice is the keeping of the precepts—227 for monks, 311 for nuns, but only 5 for lay people:

It’s also necessary to develop habitual mindfulness. We translate the word sati as “mindfulness,” but we need to keep in mind that it is etymologically related to the Sanskrit smṛti, which means “memory.” So being mindful means to remember. And what are we to remember? Be here, now.

The last of the preliminary practices that occurs in the gradual training is being content with little. We unfortunately live in a culture that says that any less-than-perfect situation can be remedied by obtaining more of something—usually more of whatever the person doing the saying is selling. But the spiritual path is not about acquiring anything—it’s all about letting go.

These four preliminary practices of keeping the precepts, guarding the senses, maintaining mindfulness, and being content with little are “off-the-cushion” practices that you need to make the four cornerstones of your basic way of life.

The setting aside of unwholesome mind states is known as abandoning the hindrances. There are five of these hindrances, usually listed as sense desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt. They could also be listed as wanting, aversion, too little energy, too much energy, and doubt. The overcoming of these five unwholesome states of mind is the same as generating access concentration. The Pali phrase upacāra-samādhi, which we translate as “access concentration,” does not appear in the suttas.a But it certainly is a useful concept when discussing jhāna practice.

The general method for generating access concentration is to put your attention on a suitable meditation object,b and when your attention wanders off, gently bring it back. Keep doing this until the distractions fade away and your attention on the object is unwavering.

In fact it is extremely helpful if you intentionally relax when you notice you’ve become distracted, and then gently reestablish attention on your meditation object. The mind state you are aiming to create could well be called relaxed diligence.

The strategy is to place your attention on the meditation object and then be diligent about recognizing when you have become distracted. Drop the distraction; it might be helpful to label the distraction with a one-word label. Labeling helps you disidentify with the thought stream and provides insight into where your mind habitually goes when it becomes distracted. Just remember that the first label that comes to mind is always correct—spend zero energy trying to find the “perfect” label. Then—very important—relax, and return your attention to your meditation object.

Don’t focus on, or even think about, the destination.

It is probably better if you can observe the physical sensations at the nostrils or on the area between the nose and the upper lip, rather than at the abdomen or elsewhere.

When the thoughts are just slight, when they’re not really pulling you away and you’re fully with the sensations of the breath, knowing each in-breath and each out-breath—this is the sign that you’ve arrived at access concentration.

When you actually do get quite concentrated, the random blobs and laser light shows will disappear. They might be replaced by a diffused white light, which is a sign of good concentration. It always appears for some people, it never appears for others, and many people find it sometimes appears and sometimes does not appear.

If the breath gets very, very subtle, or if it disappears entirely, instead of taking a deep breath, shift your attention away from the breath to a pleasant sensation. This is the key thing. You notice the breath until you arrive at and sustain access concentration, and then you let go of the breath and shift your attention to a pleasant sensation, preferably a pleasant physical sensation. There is not much point in trying to notice the breath that has gotten extremely subtle or has disappeared completely—there’s nothing left to notice.

The first question that may arise when I say, “Shift your attention to a pleasant sensation,” may be “What pleasant sensation?” Well, it turns out that when you get to access concentration, the odds are quite strong that, some place in your physical being, there will be a pleasant sensation.

Smile when you meditate, because once you reach access concentration, you only have to shift your attention one inch to find a pleasant sensation.

Pleasant sensations can occur pretty much anywhere. The most common place that people find pleasant sensations when they’ve established access concentration is in the hands.

If the pleasant sensation goes away, you don’t really have any other choice than to return to your previous access method. The disappearance of the pleasant sensation is a sure sign of insufficient concentration. Again, regenerate access concentration, and stay longer in access concentration before once again turning your attention to the pleasant sensation. It’s also very important to let go of the breath when you make the shift to the pleasant sensation.

In this altered state of consciousness, you will be overcome with rapture . . . euphoria . . . ecstasy . . . delight. These are all English words that are used to translate the Pali word pīti. Perhaps the best English word for pīti is “glee.” Pīti is a primarily physical sensation that sweeps you powerfully into an altered state. But pīti is not solely physical; as the suttas say, “On account of the presence of pīti there is mental exhilaration.”1 In addition to the physical energy and mental exhilaration, the pīti will be accompanied by an emotional sensation of joy and happiness. The Pali word for this joy/happiness is sukha, the opposite of dukkha (pain, suffering). And, if you can remain undistractedly focused on this experience of pīti and sukha, that is the first jhāna.

You are trying to do exactly the same thing, except, rather than a positive feedback loop of noise, you are attempting to generate a positive feedback loop of pleasure. You hold your attention on a pleasant sensation. That feels nice, adding a bit more pleasure to your overall experience. That addition is also pleasurable, adding even more pleasure, and so on, until, instead of getting a horrible noise, you get an explosion of pleasure that goes by the names of pīti and sukha

If this is the problem you are dealing with, the best pleasant mental sensation to work with is the feeling of loving-kindness (mettā). If you cannot find a pleasant physical sensation after having definitely established good access concentration, switch to doing mettā practice for a few minutes. Does this generate a pleasant feeling in the area around the heart? If so, focus on that. If mettā practice generates any pleasant bodily sensation, use that.

Access concentration gets you to the point where, if there are thoughts occurring, they are wispy and in the background and they are not pulling you away into distraction. At that level of concentration, these hindrances will not arise.

The later commentaries assert that there are five factors, but the suttas only mention the four qualities, which are thinking and examining, rapture and happiness.

The pīti, being the physical release of pleasant, exhilarating energy, could be anywhere from mild to quite intense. It can be finger-in-the-electrical-socket intense; it can be so intense that it’s not even pleasurable. And hopefully the pīti is accompanied by sukha, which is an emotional state of joy, happiness. Both pīti and sukha are required in order for the experience to be classified as the first jhāna. And most likely, the experience brings a big grin to your face.

Actually, when you are first learning, just get the pīti-sukha going and sustained; it doesn’t matter where it’s located or that it’s not yet throughout the body.

The method is to just move your attention from the location where the pīti feels the strongest to an area where it does not seem to be occurring, such as down an arm. You are not trying to move the energy; you are only moving your attention. Bring your attention back to the place where the pīti felt strong, and then notice whether the energy spread to the area where you moved your attention. Continue doing this in a gentle, unhurried way until the pīti and sukha fill the whole body.

For each of the first four jhānas, we have a simile. For this first one we find: Suppose a skilled bath attendant or his apprentice were to pour soap flakes into a metal basin, sprinkle them with water and knead them into a ball, so that the ball of soap flakes would be pervaded by moisture, encompassed by moisture, suffused by moisture inside and out and yet would not trickle. In the same way one drenches, steeps, saturates and suffuses one’s body with the rapture and happiness born of seclusion, so that there is no part of one’s body that is not suffused by rapture and happiness. (DN 2.78) We have here a picture of what life was like at the time of the Buddha. You didn’t go to the store and buy a bar of soap. You had your skilled bath attendant or his apprentice get a metal basin and pour soap flakes into it, pour water in, and then mix the soap flakes and the water until he had a ball of soap. This picture matches quite well the frenetic energy of the first jhāna. The first jhāna is not a calm, peaceful state. Its energy is pretty intense, and this simile gives a fairly good idea of the lack of calm and of the frenetic energy that is present in the first jhāna. There’s an effervescent quality to the first jhāna that can also be gleaned from the simile.

The arising of pīti also has the nice side effect (for most people) of generating sukha, and, as we’ll see, the sukha is the principal component of the second and third jhānas, as well as being a necessary part of the first jhāna.

The following is not really a problem but bears mentioning: Very often when someone enters the first jhāna, their breath becomes very rough—there are short, sharp gasps that are very unlike the subtle breaths while in access concentration. This is totally normal! Once the pīti and sukha start rising, don’t worry in the least what your breathing does—it quite likely will change noticeably. Furthermore, your breathing may not settle back down until you move on toward the second jhāna.

The most serious problem that can arise when attempting to learn the jhānas is fortunately quite rare, occurring in approximately three students per one thousand. This is when the pīti gets stuck on and never seems to go away. This can last for weeks, months, even up to a year.

THE THINKING, which was in the background of both access concentration and the first jhāna, subsides when one enters the second jhāna and is replaced by inner tranquilitya and unification of mind.b As a practical matter, to move from the first jhāna to the second jhāna, you should take a nice deep breath and let it out slowly and totally, which will calm down the pīti yet leave the sukha strong enough so that you can focus on it.

To move toward the second jhāna, you want to do a foreground-background reversal. When you take the deep breath and deeply exhale, both the pīti and the sukha calm down in intensity, but the pīti drops much more in intensity and is now low-grade and more in the background. The sukha, although perhaps now a bit less intense than it was before the deep breath, is still strong enough to now be the more prominent of the two. The “inner tranquility” mentioned in the description of the second jhāna reflects the shift from an experience of pīti and sukha to an experience of sukha and pīti.

This unification of mind occurs as the thinking subsides and fades away. You may not experience a level of concentration where the thinking shuts off totally on a retreat of less than a month (or perhaps even longer).

If you find yourself wandering back up toward the first jhāna, in that the pīti is beginning to increase in intensity, take an intentionally deeper breath, and once again bring your attention back to the moderate happiness. In the suttas it says that thinking is a thorn to the second jhāna.1 So to enhance your experience of the second jhāna, let yourself sink into the quiet stillness of the happiness and just be with it.

Again, the suttas provide a simile: Suppose there was a deep lake whose waters welled up from below, it would have no inlet for the water from the East, West, North or South, nor would it be refilled from time to time with showers of rain. And yet a current of cool water welling up from within the lake would drench, steep, saturate and suffuse the whole lake so that there would be no part of that entire lake which is not suffused with the cool water. In the same way, one drenches, steeps, saturates, and suffuses one’s body with the rapture and happiness born of concentration, so that there is no part of one’s entire body which is not suffused by this rapture and happiness. (DN 2.80) Notice that in the second jhāna, the rapture and happiness are said to be born of concentration, rather than seclusion.

The happiness in this state feels much like ordinary happiness. Imagine it’s your birthday and someone gives you a very nice present. You open the present and exclaim, “Wow, this is great! I always wanted one of these,” and you are really happy. The happiness of the second jhāna is this kind of happiness, but it isn’t triggered by anything external; it’s triggered by your concentrated mind. You have a gift within you, and the second jhāna enables you to experience it directly.

The most common problem encountered when learning the second jhāna results from the fact that the sukha is a more subtle object than the pīti of the first jhāna. It takes a more concentrated mind to be able to stay with this more subtle object. It sometimes happens that you generate strong enough access concentration to be able to enter the first jhāna, but when you move on to the second jhāna, you soon fall out of it. The solution is to stay longer in access concentration and let it deepen before moving to the first jhāna.

Very occasionally, after experiencing both the first and second jhānas, some students want to bypass the first jhāna intentionally because the intense pīti brings up painful memories. If this is happening to you, by all means skip the first jhāna. Negative mind states are always counterproductive when trying to generate concentration. Be kind to yourself.

THE KEY THING that happens when you enter the third jhāna is that the pīti—the rapture—fades away. You are in a place where you are just happy. But, you are also in a state of equanimity, mindful and clearly comprehending. The best word to describe this state is contentment.

Again we have a simile: Suppose in a lotus pond there are blue, white or red lotuses that have been born in the water, grow in the water and never rise up above the water, but flourish immersed in the water. From their tips to their roots they would be drenched, steeped, saturated and suffused with water so there would be no part of those lotuses that is not suffused with water. In the same way, one drenches, steeps, saturates and suffuses one’s body with the happiness free from rapture so there is no part of one’s body which is not suffused by this happiness. (DN 2.82) The simile is of lotus blossoms that grow up out of the mud but do not come above the surface of the water. They live their entire lives immersed in the water, completely saturated with water. This is a very still picture. The lotuses are not waving around in the breeze; they are not moving with ripples on the pond—there is no movement at all. This is an accurate description of the third jhāna—you are immersed in a sense of contentment with no sense of movement. Being underwater also points to a sense of isolation, which is now beginning to appear as your mind grows even more concentrated.

Once again in the third jhāna, as with the first and the second, the idea is to become so skilled that the sukha—the contentment, which is what the sukha feels like now—seems all-pervasive. And again, don’t worry about this when you are first learning the third jhāna. Just get stabilized on the feeling of contentment and hang out while focused on it. Then, when you gain skill at that, you’ll find it’s not difficult to move it so that it permeates your whole body.

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.

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)

If your concentration level is not exceptionally strong, the reason the simile mentions a “white cloth” and the description uses the word “bright” may not be clear. However, if you spend far more than the 5 to 10 to 15 minutes in access concentration recommended in the chapter “Entering the Jhānas,” the diffused white light mentioned in the chapter “Access Concentration” will become quite steady and strong. After spending an hour or two or three in access concentration, if you then enter the jhānas and work your way down to the fourth one, you will find that your visual field is filled with a bright whiteness, just as if you were sitting in an open field on a sunny day, covered from head to toe with a white sheet and you had your eyes open. At that level of concentration, the simile makes perfect sense.

Unless you are on a retreat of a month or more and are willing to spend an hour or more in access concentration before entering the first jhāna, it will be difficult to reach that level of concentration.

The quiet, still, neutral state of mind that is the object of the fourth jhāna is considerably more subtle than the objects of the previous jhānas. This makes it more difficult to maintain your attention on it. If you find that you are frequently becoming distracted from the fourth jhāna experience or if the background thinking begins to kick in again, it’s a sure sign that your concentration level is not strong enough. The best remedy, and the only real long-term solution, is that the next time you are in access concentration, stay longer in access concentration before entering the first jhāna.

Because the fourth jhāna is such a quiet place, your breathing may once again draw your attention—this is of course the thorn being spoken of in the quote above. It is really important if you want a high-quality experience of the fourth jhāna that you ignore your breathing.

that it is such a restful place. If your energy level is not high enough to match your now quite deep concentration, you are likely to fall asleep in the fourth jhāna. If this happens, when you wake up, it probably is going to be a better use of your time to immediately switch to doing an insight practice rather than persisting with doing something you don’t have the energy for. It may even be necessary to apply some of the antidotes to sloth and torpor mentioned on the web page “Abandoning the Five Hindrances” at http://rc.leighb.com/more/Abandoning_the_Five_Hindrances.htm.

The purpose of the jhānas is to sharpen your mind, so that when you look to see what’s really happening, you have penetrating insight into it. In the Tibetan tradition, the bodhisattva of wisdom is Mañjuśrī. Mañjuśrī is often depicted with a sword of wisdom in his right hand, which he uses to cut the bonds of ignorance. Jhāna practice is simply sharpening Mañjuśrī’s sword.a

His genius was in discovering the mind-sharpening capabilities of the jhānas and then knowing how to wield that sharp mind to uncover dependent origination, formulate it in terms of the four noble truths, and then teach it to the rest of us. The jhānas are a warm-up exercise for your insight practice.