The Varieties of Jhanic Experience

A Brief Comparative Phenomenology and Retreat Report

A remarkable, reliable means and all-round aid to the purification of mind and consequent clear seeing is the practice of jhana, what the Buddha defined as samma samadhi, right concentration. As you may know, within contemporary Theravadin Dhamma there are numerous interpretations of what constitutes genuine jhana. The purpose of my writing, here, is not even to attempt to resolve such disputes. However, I’ve had the good fortune to learn from and discuss with representatives of all the major approaches I’m aware of, and I can gladly state from experience that they’re all beneficial, while acknowledging also a wide spectrum of depth. For an excellent and much fuller overview than I will provide here, I highly recommend Richard Shankman’s book The Experience of Samadhi.¹

Up to now my primary teacher in this domain has been Leigh Brasington in the lineage flowing through Ayya Khema, who remarkably learned them at first independently of any living teacher, straight from the suttas and with some help from the Visuddhimagga, later confirming her understanding and practice with Ven. Matara Sri Ñānarāma who charged her with spreading and maintaining the practice. Leigh, in turn, has authorized and encouraged me to teach them. In this domain, though not receiving any personal instruction, I’ve also benefitted from the perspectives of the late great Rob Burbea and Thanisarro Bhikku, who was one of Rob’s teachers. Most recently, I had the privilege of practicing the approach taught by the venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw on retreat for two weeks with Mugen Roshi (Stephen Snyder).

At a first pass, you could separate the camps roughly into those teachers for whom the first four jhanas are embodied states, arguably hewing more closely to the earliest descriptions and spare instructions in the suttas, and those for whom from the attainment of stable first jhana onwards all ordinary perception of the senses is completely absent, adhering to the instructions and descriptions found in the Visuddhimagga. The latter are certainly deeper states, but are correspondingly much more difficult to attain for most people, though as I hope to convey, here, well worth the effort!

When I first began practicing intensively, though at that time not having access to a living master of the approach to guide me, practicing and studying in a relatively more relaxed monastery, I attempted exclusive and as close to 24/7 attention as possible on the breath as it passes the “anapana” region, just off the skin between the nostrils and upper lip.² At the time I was intent on ordination, and studying up on meditation theory, becoming aware of the range that was possible, I figured since I had the time and opportunity I’d better establish as strong a basis in samatha as possible to begin.

I can retrospectively confirm that I did touch first jhana as understood in Pa-Auk’s lineage several times for a few seconds each in those first months of zealous fervor. Not having opportune retreat conditions, however, I was unable, and eventually gave up attempting, to frequently reach and stabilize that depth of absorption and worked with as deep access concentration as I could muster, beginning vipassana. How wonderful to pick up the thread some 9 years later!

Let’s turn to the states themselves. I’ll be giving a spare outline only, in terms of instructions. As with any practice, if you actually want to attain these states and work with them in practice skillfully in your path to awakening, find a teacher. Everyone’s free to do as they will, but know I’ve wasted years not heeding the advice in the last sentence. I don’t recommend it.

As I’ve only gotten my foot in the door with the states described in the Visuddhimagga, I’ll discuss and compare only the first jhana as reached and approached through Leigh’s lineage and Pa-Auk’s approach as I learned it recently on retreat with Mugen Roshi.

“I thought: ‘I recall once, when my father the Sakyan was working, and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree, then—quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful qualities—I entered & remained in the first jhāna: rapture & pleasure born of seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. Could that be the path to awakening?’ Then there was the consciousness following on that memory: ‘That is the path to awakening.’ I thought: ‘So why am I afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful qualities?’ I thought: ‘I am no longer afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful qualities…

- Mahā Saccaka Sutta (MN 36)

To reach first jhana, one must first abandon the five hindrances. Anapanasati, brahmavihara, any stable object will do.

“Abandoning covetousness with regard to the world, he dwells with an awareness devoid of covetousness. He cleanses his mind of covetousness. Abandoning ill will & anger, he dwells with an awareness devoid of ill will, sympathetic with the welfare of all living beings. He cleanses his mind of ill will & anger. Abandoning sloth & drowsiness, he dwells with an awareness devoid of sloth & drowsiness, mindful, alert, percipient of light. He cleanses his mind of sloth & drowsiness. Abandoning restlessness & anxiety, he dwells undisturbed, his mind inwardly stilled. He cleanses his mind of restlessness & anxiety. Abandoning uncertainty, he dwells having crossed over uncertainty, with no perplexity with regard to skillful qualities. He cleanses his mind of uncertainty.

…when these five hindrances are not abandoned in himself, the monk regards it as a debt, a sickness, a prison, slavery, a road through desolate country. But when these five hindrances are abandoned in himself, he regards it as unindebtedness, good health, release from prison, freedom, a place of security. When he sees that they have been abandoned within him, gladness is born. In one who is gladdened, rapture is born. Enraptured at heart, his body grows calm. His body calm, he is sensitive to pleasure. Feeling pleasure, his mind becomes concentrated.

- Sāmaññaphala Sutta (DN 2)

With the five hindrances mostly settled, one enters the territory of what came to be known in the commentarial tradition as ‘access concentration’, upacara samadhi, which, depending on which depth of jhana you’re going for will need to be merely serviceable, or honed to near-perfection. The access concentration required for 1st jhana in Pa-Auk’s lineage is, in terms of its stability and intensity, more concentrated than most people’s experience of jhana as Leigh teaches it will be. For both approaches, however, access concentration can be said to begin at around 15 minutes of stable attention with the object without serious interruption. Little wobbles will continue until the onset of jhana except at the deepest end of the spectrum.

So, you’re starting to get stable with the object, grosser manifestations of the hindrances have ceased. You may even be beginning to experience the onset of piti and sukha, the rapture and pleasure of first jhana. For most people getting to this point is the most frustrating part of practice. From hereon, as long as concentration remains and deepens from this point, samatha will likely be inherently enjoyable much of the time. Great! From here, to get into 1st jhana as Leigh teaches it, you either shift attention to any physical or emotional pleasant sensation (of which there will usually be plenty in settled access concentration), which simply by staying with it will morph into piti, riding that into full-blown jhana, or the jhana factor of piti itself if it’s already present. Continue until jhana arises.

Quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful qualities, he enters and remains in the first jhāna: rapture & pleasure born of seclusion, accompanied by directed thought and evaluation. He permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills this very body with the rapture & pleasure born of seclusion. Just as if a dexterous bathman or bathman’s apprentice would pour bath powder into a brass basin and knead it together, sprinkling it again and again with water, so that his ball of bath powder—saturated, moisture-laden, permeated within and without—would nevertheless not drip; even so, the monk permeates…this very body with the rapture & pleasure born of seclusion. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture & pleasure born of seclusion. This is a fruit of the contemplative life, visible here & now, more excellent than the previous ones and more sublime.

- ibid.

This is a very literal description of a strong, stable 1st jhana in Leigh’s teaching. Your body will be totally suffused with buzzing bliss and a warm, sweet happiness which is not uncommonly more intense than any other experience of your life (with the possible exception of prior drug or spontaneous ecstatic experiences), while the mind is stably absorbed in the experience. There may be a little thinking in the periphery, still, but attention is much more stable than before.

Excellent! This and further jhanas provide a wonderful platform for insight and awakening.

1st jhana, and the access concentration that precedes it, in the Visuddhimagga is radically different.

Though there are many objects which may be used, my own practice leading to this depth of concentration thus far has been mostly with the breath, and it is the most typical, so I’ll stick to that progression.

You arrive at the onset of access concentration the same. Attention is resting stably and increasingly effortlessly on the breath in the anapana region, beginnings of the jhana factors are discerned. Vitakka and vicara, translated above by Thanissaro Bhikku as ‘directed thought and evaluation’, which is mostly how those words are used in the rest of the suttas, are understood in later tradition to be initial and sustained attention to the meditation object. You bring attention to the breath. Vitakka. It stays, for longer and longer duration, with less and less wobble. Vicara. The piti and sukha are the same, but one never shifts attention to them, but rather allows them to develop in the background to a peak of quite absurd intensity.

The last factor, though not mentioned in the sutta above, but integral to all the jhanas in the Visuddhimagga, ekagatta, is a sort of unwavering locking in of attention, to the point that eventually one couldn’t take the attention off if one wanted to. It feels as though there is a gravity well, or magnetism to the object, that eventually becomes an inescapable singularity.

As all of these factors are developing what’s called the nimitta (‘sign’) will begin to show. It can manifest quite differently for different people, and the details make no difference to the practice. When the nimitta and the breath merge, and full absorption occurs with that as object, you have arrived at 1st jhana. All the way, all you do is stay with the object. Nothing else. That’s it. Don’t get fancy and fussy with it.

I write the following mainly for my friends who are interested in the phenomenology for its own sake. For people whose interest is in their own practice, I’d advise just reading Mugen Roshi and Tina Rasmussen’s manual on jhana. Though I haven’t read it, I trust Shaila Catherine’s book is also great. Then, get yourself on retreat for a sufficiently extended duration to experience it all for yourself, if you wish.

Also worth saying: the use of any temporary state such as these is the purification of mind one undergoes through the training to attain them, and their subsequent utility in ease of awakening for your own and others’ benefit, and the freedom which is beyond compare to any transitory fluctuation of fabricated phenomena, no matter how nice.

I’ll now describe my own progression in as much detail as is relevant and I can remember.

Usually whenever I begin to concentrate on any object, with my eyes closed anyhow, I’ll get what Mugen Roshi called “the room”. I gather he has names for some of the typical nimittas, and the Visuddhimagga and other sources list some of the common variants. It’s as though a dimmer switch is gradually being turned up on my whole visual field, subtly at first, until by gradations I arrive at a pure, luminous, intensely energized white. There were also many hallucinatory experiences along the way which, if attended to, diverted from the development of the practice.

These days whenever I crank concentration I’ll inevitably encounter entities at some point, scads of memories, thoughts, emotions, unresolved tendencies will surface and burn off, all sorts of somatic energetic nonsense, and a diverse, merry menagerie of other visionary phenomena which needn’t be mentioned will unfold in tandem with the foregoing. It feels, during and in the wake of it, that releasing all these intermediary phenomena is burning off some sort of impedance in the nervous system, and as I progress during a round of intensive practice (days-weeks of continuous practice), less of this stuff appears, usually, and eventually none. I also inevitably get what’s colloquially called the ‘nada’ sound, a high-pitched ringing which, like the visual nimitta, gets louder and more encompassing as the concentration deepens.

The sensation of breath, for me, is transformed into the faintest energetic impulse, unconnected to any experienced body-map. My body took a little bit to get used to not feeling any sensation of breathing, and there were some physical manifestations of anxiety, something I had experienced arising and dropping off when first learning the formless jhanas (as Leigh teaches them) years back. Interesting that it should come back in a new context.

Eventually, the nimitta, which for me will partially cohere into a quasi-tactile synesthetic circular bulge of brightness and intensity in the center of the ludicrously bright-white, subtly vibrating visual field, will merge indistinguishably and synesthetically with the refined breath-energy sensation. Partway through the retreat I began to have this bright-patch faintly accompany me eyes open, as well. Not everyone experiences this. Pretty weird, and also funny. I would go into interview and Mugen Roshi’s face would be partially blotted out.

With the merged nimitta present in deep access concentration, the phenomenal field is almost entirely coherent, the jhanic factors of piti and sukha are vibrating at a ludicrous peak of disembodied, blissful intensity, the nada sound occludes hearing practically anything, and nearly all mental activity has ceased. A little attentional wobble, a little burble of pre-thought, but barely. The factor mentioned earlier, ekagatta, predominates, and at deepest access concentration on the cusp of jhana, and in the state itself, there’s no voluntary exit.

When everything is just right, on its own, full absorption occurs.

Any wisp of mental activity mistaken by most folks for a self: vaporized. Any remnant of bodily fabrication: immolated. Awareness of clock-time, which was already quite attenuated: swallowed. It is a non-dual state, which here means that the usual subject-object structure of ordinary experience will be utterly dismantled; if this isn’t your baseline, and especially if it hasn’t happened before, I imagine this is quite shocking upon exiting and reflecting. The whole bandwidth of awareness is nondually synchronized with the nimitta in total absorption at an unmistakable, very high frequency. Once you’ve been in and out a few times, you can begin to discern the vibration of 1st jhana in the pre-jhana nimitta, which the rest of the phenomenal field subsequently syncs with.

Truly bonkers. In terms of raw phenomenal intensity and extreme, high-energy high-valence temporary states go, I can only compare it roughly to very high doses of 5-MeO-DMT, but 1st jhana is all-round better, much more stable, blissful, etc. By the end of the retreat I was getting to 1st jhana every sit, and I got to the point of sustaining it for 45 minutes, once. If you have regular access you start working with extending time-resolves. In traditional training you ought to get to the point of sustaining it reliably for 3 hours, again and again, before moving on. Seems some significant rewiring needs to happen to make this plausible. Wild.

Rather non-traditionally, the structure of the retreat was loose, so that we were free to sleep and rise with our own rhythms, and this worked very well, as early in the retreat I naturally slept much more than normal, and towards the end could only get 3-4 hours a night, be sometimes experiencing the transition through the phases of falling, dreaming, and dreamless sleep fully lucid, and would wake up intermittently finding myself on the cusp of jhana. Much, and then not much, to process, I suppose! Doing almost literally nothing but attending one-pointedly in progressively deepening samadhi for 14-20 hours per day for 12 days will do that.

I’m intent to return for a retreat of significant duration to continue at some point down the line. It’s too early to tell what the effects of this, all things considered brief, immersion are, but good.

Very good.

The afterglow has been quite silly. As I write this, about 6 days after the end of the retreat, I still feel high as a kite. Perfectly sober and hyper-lucid, but you know what I mean. If I stop moving my body and close my eyes, the jhana factors are instantly kicked back up, the nimitta is strongly present, and I can feel the pull leading gradually back in. But, I’ve only been able to sleep properly the last two nights, so I’ve been cooling it with the concentration and not doing much extended sitting, for now.

May you swiftly awaken to unborn, undying peace, releasing all confused, dualistic attraction and aversion, recognizing directly the empty nature of your mind, the twofold emptiness, and by this and your activity accomplish the twofold benefit of self and others.

That’s all, folks. Take care.

1. Leigh’s online appendices to his book on the jhanas, Right Concentration, are well worth a read, too:

https://www.leighb.com/rc/more/Visuddhimagga_Jhanas.htm

https://www.leighb.com/rc/more/Nimitta.htm

2. For jhana at the time, though I was reading many different manuals and texts, I was following the instructions in Bhante Gunaratana’s “Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English”.