Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body

by Daniel Goleman

“Access” implies being on the brink of total concentration, the full absorption called jhana (akin to samadhi in Sanskrit), where any and all distracting thoughts totally cease. In jhana the mind fills with strong rapture, bliss, and an unbroken one-pointed focus on the meditation target. The Visuddhimagga lists seven more levels of jhana, with progress marked by successively subtle feelings of bliss and rapture, and stronger equanimity, along with an increasingly firm and effortless focus. In the last four levels, even bliss, a relatively gross sensation, falls away, leaving only unshakable focus and equanimity. The highest reach of this ever more refined awareness has such subtlety it is called the jhana of “neither perception nor nonperception.” In the time of Gautama Buddha, full concentrated absorption in samadhi was heralded as the highway to liberation for yogis. Legend has it that the Buddha practiced this approach with a group of wandering ascetics, but he abandoned that avenue and discovered an innovative variety of meditation: looking deeply into the mechanics of consciousness itself.