Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

by Leigh Brasington

We sometimes hear about “samatha and vipassanā” (e.g., as types of meditation) and about “samādhi and pañña” (e.g., as parts of sīla, samādhi, and pañña). We can define these words as follows: samatha—calm samādhi—indistractability, concentration vipassanā—insight, an understood experience pañña—wisdom

The primary access method that Sayadaw teaches is mindfulness of breathing—ānāpānasati. The initial instructions for ānāpānasati from Sayadaw were to learn to follow the breath for half an hour without getting distracted.

Really the question “How much concentration is required for jhāna?” is not the best question to ask. The real question is “How much concentration can I generate as a prelude to my insight practice given the constraints of my life?” It’s much better to generate a so-called lite version of the jhānas than to throw up your hands and not enhance your concentration at all because of not being able to experience some deeper idealized version. The methods described in this book do teach a way to enhanced concentration that is accessible and highly beneficial when applied to “seeing things as they really are.”

It is very helpful after you get seated in your comfortable, upright posture to generate some gratitude—gratitude toward your teachers who have taught you the dhamma, gratitude for the life circumstance that enables you to undertake this period of meditation practice, gratitude for all the millions of people who have had a hand in preserving the Buddha’s dhamma for two and half thousand years, gratitude to the Buddha for finding and showing the way, gratitude for anything else that you are currently grateful for.

A second preliminary is to get in touch with your motivation. Why are you doing this practice? Whatever it is, getting it clear in your mind hopefully will inspire you.

At the beginning of every meditation period, you should always do some mettā (loving-kindness) practice—always for yourself, and additionally for others, if you wish.

The last of the five things to do at the start of a meditation period is only useful if you are using mindfulness of breathing as your access method; otherwise, just skip it. There is a gatha (saying) from Thich Nhat Hanh: “Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile.”1 This is exactly what you need to do to generate access concentration using mindfulness of breathing. Don’t take the saying too literally—just breathe in and out and smile and get calm.

The five things to do at the end of a meditation period begin with recapitulation—what did you do, and how did you get there?

The second thing to do at the end of a sitting is reflect on impermanence—all those high, but mundane, concentration states are now gone; they too are impermanent.

The third reflection is insight: Did you get any insights? What were they? Insights are understood experiences. Some insights are personal; the deepest ones are about the impermanent, ultimately unsatisfying, empty nature of the universe.

The meditation practice you do has effects beyond just you personally. Recognizing this is quite helpful and a good way to remember it is to dedicate the merit from this sitting for the liberation of all beings. You can just think something like, “May the merit from this meditation period be for the liberation of all beings everywhere.”

Therefore, just before you get up from your seat, resolve to be mindful as you arise and go about your activities.

The first aid is counting. Traditionally you count one on the in-breath, one on the out-breath; two on the in-breath, two on the out-breath; up to ten.

The second possible aid is helpful if you are very visual. You can visualize an ocean wave coming in on the in-breath and then going out on the out-breath. Another wave coming in on the next in-breath, going out on the out-breath. Some people find this works to quiet the distractions for them.

A third aid is to use a word or a pair of words.

The fourth possibility is to look at the details of the breath.

The fifth aid is the one from the suttas where mindfulness of breathing is discussed.3 That aid is to notice the long breaths and the short breaths. Pay attention to each in-breath and notice if the current one is longer than average or shorter than average. Do the same for each out-breath. You can also pay attention to see if every long in-breath is always followed by a long out-breath—and the same for short in- and out-breaths.

S. N. Goenka made this technique well known in the West, although his teacher U Ba Khin deserves a great deal of credit as well. There are a number of ways to do a body scan, but the most effective way for generating access concentration seems to be to sweep your attention systematically over every square inch of the surface of your body, noticing whatever sensation you can along the way. Don’t worry if you encounter places where there are no sensations—zero is a valid number.

If you want to learn how to do this method, it is very helpful to have someone guide you through the scan at least once and maybe even several times. There are MP3s of Ayya Khema doing a guided body scan, which she refers to as “part-by-part,” at

Students of Ajahn Sumedho and the other monastics from Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in England may be familiar with working with the “nada sound,” or “sound of silence.” Ajahn Sumedho talks at length about this technique in his books The Way It Is and Sound of Silence. Ajahn Amaro, one of Ajahn Sumedho’s students, writes

Although the word mantra is almost never mentioned in vipassanā or Theravadan Buddhism,c mantras are a highly effective way of getting deeply concentrated.

What is without a doubt is that “wisdom, when imbued with concentration, brings great fruit and profit.”4 The jhānas will certainly turbocharge your insight practice whether that practice is done in the jhānas or after the jhānas or both.

He began meditating in 1985 and eventually became the senior North American student of Venerable Ayya Khema. She authorized him to teach, and he began leading residential retreats in 1997. He has taught jhānas and insight practices in over one hundred residential retreats.