Kalimpong 2023 Buddha Pāda Day 4 Jhanas

The last two days we've been talking about the factors that lead to the experience of jhana. First we talked about letting go of hindrances and. This is very crucial in actually experiencing the jhanas. So if you look at the Eightfold Path, yesterday I talked about how each of the preceding factors of the Eightfold Path is needed for samma samadhi to happen, for right collectedness to happen.

And right collectedness is essentially a mind that is unified, samadhi, a balanced mind. It's from that balanced mind that you can experience jhana. So in order for you to actually have samadhi, you need to have right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, and right mindfulness. The abbreviation of this is essentially threefold: sila, samadhi, and panna.

So what is sila? Sila is the foundation of everything. Sila actually means the foundation for the practice. So since I'm talking about sila, it's important for you guys to understand that taking the precepts every morning actually helps your mind be clear, calm, collected, and uplifted. So I encourage all of you to make sure that you do take the precepts in the morning. Some people are dropping out of that, and that's your choice. But if you really want good progress in this practice, you should be making an effort to come here and intend to take the precepts, and then more importantly, to keep the precepts.

Remember, the day before yesterday, I talked about the correlation between the precepts and the hindrances. And when you break any of these precepts, it leads to, at some point or another, the arising of these hindrances. So, keeping the precepts causes the mind to be clear. It causes the mind to say, okay, I feel good. I feel uplifted. I am ready for practice.

Now, does that mean by keeping the precepts or taking the precepts and then keeping the precepts that hindrances won't arise? No. They will arise. The hindrances will always arise until you finish the path. But because you've dedicated your mind, your intention to keeping the precepts, sharper. When you have a clear mind and your mindfulness is sharp, it's much easier for you to be able to detect whenever a hindrance arises.

You'll see this for yourself. Try it out. Experiment. On the days when you do take the precepts, you'll notice that your sits are better. On the days that you don't take your precepts, it's a little bit slower, a little more challenging to detect the hindrances and to be in samadhi. So what is this samadhi that we're talking about? I explained that samadhi essentially means an even mind, a balanced mind, a mind that is unified. I gave you the analogy of the planet and the satellite orbiting the planet.

Now we will go into the depths of samadhi by understanding the stages of samadhi, the levels of samadhi. So what are these levels called? They're called jhanas. J-H-A-N-A. Jhanas. That is the Pali word. The Sanskrit word is Dhyanas. Dhyana. D-H-Y-A-N-A, Dhyana. In conversational Hindi, when we say Dhyana, we mean to pay attention, to focus, to concentrate. But if you go to the real understanding of the word Dhyana, it's actually to take an object and to stay around it.

So it's essentially, again, orbiting that object. It's letting your attention become unified. So dhyana or jhanas are actually levels of understanding. As we'll see, each jhana allows us to understand reality in a certain way, dimensions of experience. I like to call jhanas levels of cessation because as you progress through each jhana, different things start to cease in the mind. There is a series of suttas called the finger snap suttas. The finger snap. How fast is a finger snap? Not even a moment.

In that finger snap sutta, it says, one who cultivates even a finger snap's length of loving kindness is not devoid of jhana. This is why we are practicing loving kindness. This is why we're practicing the brahmaviharas, because it's that easy for the mind to experience jhana through the object of meditation that is loving-kindness. So when you are cultivating loving-kindness, if you are able to bring up that feeling of loving-kindness, you will start to see that your mind becomes jhanic. Your mind experiences some kind of jhana or jhanic factors.

So what does it mean when the mind is devoid, right? Or is not devoid, I should say, of jhana. It means that the mind is ripe to experience jhana. Because when you have a finger snap's length of jhana, of loving kindness, your mind is free of hindrances in that moment. Being free of hindrances, right to experience naturally, in a progressive manner, the enlightenment factors.

So what are the factors of the first jhana? The first jhana has a few factors. Five main factors, let's say. The first factor is that it says that the mind is quite secluded from sensual pleasures. So what does it mean, quite secluded from sensual pleasures? When the Buddha talks about right view, he talks about two kinds of right view. He talks about the mundane right view and the supramundane right view.

In the case of the mundane right view, he talks about how that view cultivates the understanding of kamma and consequence, of rebirth from moment to moment, of spontaneous generation, of dedication and gratitude to one's mother and father, and to one's teachers. And then also, that there is this world and the other. And this statement, this world and the other, can be understood in different contexts.

But here, there's one way to understand it. This world is the world that we experience here, this matrix that we are all part of. And this matrix is experienced through the six sense spaces, primarily through the five senses: the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the body. But there is the other world. There is the mundane and the supramundane.

The other world could mean an afterlife. The other world could mean different dimensions where other beings are present. But there's another way to understand it. There is the other world that is beyond the matrix of the five physical sense bases. And that is the mind. So when we talk about quite secluded from sensual pleasures, what does that mean? We've let go of attaching and identifying with the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the body. And we have dedicated our efforts and our attention in the mind.

And how do we do that? By bringing up an object of meditation. In this case, by bringing up loving kindness, sensory input from the eyes. As your attention starts to go towards the metta, towards the loving kindness, your attention stops looking outward. Yes, you might hear the wind, you might hear birds chirping, you might hear dogs barking, you might smell the forest in the air, you might feel the breeze on your skin, and all of that. But your mind doesn't go there.

Your mind remains dedicated to staying with the object. And so this means quite secluded from sensual pleasures. Secluded from unwholesome states. That's the second factor. What is the seclusion from unwholesome states? What are the unwholesome states of mind? Hindrances. Any kind of sensual desire. Any kind of aversion. Any kind of restlessness. Any kind of sloth and torpor. Any kind of doubt. Anytime your attention is not on any of these hindrances, your mind is secluded from them.

As a result of which you experience relief. That's why it's important to understand that when we go into jhana, it is not as a result of constructing something. It's a result of deconstructing, of letting go, of abandoning. When you let go of the five hindrances, when you recognize and relax, in that moment you find relief. As a result of that relief, you come to the third factor,

which is joy, piti. Now, a lot of people expect that this joy will be overwhelming, that this joy might feel like vibrations in the body, might feel like heat and warmth in the body, might feel ecstatic. That can happen, but it might not happen. Being uplifted, there is a sense of joy. There's a sense of happiness. There's a sense of gladness. So tied to the warmth of feeling the loving kindness, there is an experience of joy.

A certain energy that arises. But that joy is a result of relief. This is very important to understand. That joy is a result of letting go, of bringing up joy, not a result of wanting joy, not a result of constructing joy. And tied to that joy is what's known as sukha. Sukha means comfort. The body is at ease. The body is tranquil.

The body is experiencing total comfort. So this sukha is a result of relaxing, tranquility tied to having let go and relaxed the hindrance. And when you have this, it's understood as piti and sukha, joy and happiness, joy and comfort, born of seclusion. That statement, that phrase, is very vital here. Born of seclusion. That in itself is pointing out what I just said: relief. So nowhere in these factors are you supposed to bring them up. These factors arise naturally. They arise on their own, dependent on the correct causes and conditions. What are the causes and conditions here? A mind that is attentive, a mind that is mindful, a mind that is equipped with right effort.

A mind that is allowing things to be as they are and letting go. And then the fifth factor of the first jhana. What is that? The fifth factor is unification of mind. Ekaggata, or ekagrata in Sanskrit. Ekaggata has generally been translated as one-pointedness. And one-pointedness denotes the idea that the mind is super focused, laser pinpointed on its object of meditation.

But if you look at the statement actually in the Pali, it doesn't just say ekaggata, the unification of mind. The mind is composed. There's a mental composure. Bhante Poonaji, who was a close friend of Bhante Vimalaramsi, when Bhante Vimalaramsi was in Malaysia, he met with Bhante Poonaji. And they exchanged ideas. One who suggested to Bhante Vimalaramsi, why don't you go back to the suttas and start teaching from there? And that's how Bhante's journey started. He went into a cave and he made friends with the cobra in the cave, shared that cave with him, and started reading the Majjhima Nikaya and started to understand the importance of this tranquilizing step. But Bhante Poonaji had a wonderful word for samadhi and unification of mind. He called it mental composure.

So rather than saying it's one-pointedness, it's a mind that is composed. A mind that is serene. A mind that is relaxed. A mind that is resting on its object of meditation. It's not doing anything. It's just there. Everything is fine over there. These are the five main factors of the first jhana. Then there's also the thinking and examining thought in the first jhana. The thinking and examining thought, that is vitakka and vicara. So when we talk about the order, the sequence of the different factors, it talks about quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states of mind, he enters upon the first jhana, which is accompanied by thinking and examining thought, and joy and happiness born of seclusion.

So what is the thinking and examining thought here? Here it is the bringing up of an intention. Vitakka. And the vichara is the sustaining of that intention. So what are you bringing up here? Here, what is present are verbal formations. Verbal sankharas. These verbal sankharas come in the form of words like may I be happy, may I be well, may I be free of suffering. May I be filled with loving kindness.

And imaging a wholesome memory. A wholesome image. Thoughts of gratitude. This is the vitakka. This is the thinking. This is the application of thought. The bringing up. The intentionalizing of loving kindness. And once the loving kindness is felt, then there is an intention to stay with it. That is the vichara. There's an intention to sustain that experience of loving kindness.

But then when we get into the second jhana, what ceases is the vitakka and vichara. Because once you feel the loving kindness, then what you're doing is you're letting go of the need for the verbalizations of may I be happy, may I be well. You're letting go of the imaging of some kind of wholesome state. You're letting go of gratitude. You're letting go of the wholesome memories. And you're just staying with the feeling of loving kindness.

You're allowing the mind to be localized here in the warm sensation. That is the glowing experience of loving kindness. Or if not that, you're allowing the mind to experience a more emotional experience of loving kindness. The idea that I want to be happy. I deserve to be happy. Oftentimes I ask people, do you think you deserve to be happy? And unfortunately, most people say, No.

Yeah. It's a sad state of affairs. It's tragic, actually. Because if you can't feel happiness, and if you can't feel that you deserve to be happy, then what is life all about? What's the point? Right? So, what? Deserving is craving. No, no, no. Not at all. When the Buddha talks about, you know, when he says we are the happy ones, it means that the arahants are those who experience ultimate happiness.

There's no such thing as craving for happiness. It's a wholesome inclination for happiness. What happens is the craving arises when you mistake the outside world as a source of happiness. And there the craving arises. But there is the happiness that is not dependent upon sensual pleasures. The happiness of just being. So deserving happiness means I am happy. I should be happy. Why shouldn't I be happy?

And if you don't feel that way, that's when I'll give you forgiveness practice. Because there's too much gunk in terms of debris in the subconscious, where different kinds of things you've done in your life, you judge yourself for that. Different kinds of resentment you have towards other people. And all of that is like the adventitious defilements that aren't allowing you to experience that happiness.

And that cause you to say and think, I don't think I deserve to be happy. Once you let go of that, then you realize happiness is your birthright. This is the truth of existence. Happiness is your birthright. That is your true nature. You've only forgotten it. So once you experience that and realize I deserve to be happy, then naturally loving kindness for yourself will happen.

And if you're still not able to do that, then I'll give you another exercise, which Bhante used to give to his students. Write down five things that you admire about yourself. And do it every day. It should be five different things every day. At the end of the retreat you'll have 50 different things that you like about yourself. So, loving kindness towards yourself. That loving kindness towards yourself is what sustains the practice. Now you've let go of the wholesome imaging. You've let go of the verbalizing. Because the idea here is once you have what you need for the practice, that's loving kindness, then you don't need anything else to keep starting it over and over again.

It's like putting the key in the ignition and starting the car over and over again. Why? You've already started the car once. Now it's time to keep going. So here, in the second jhana, the verbalizing ceases, which means the verbal formations, the verbal sankharas, start to cease. And what you are left with is self-confidence. What is the self-confidence?

That this practice is going well. That I'm actually experiencing what I was told about. I'm seeing it for myself. Now I'm understanding. And things are starting to go on autopilot. There's very little effort I need to do to keep the loving kindness going. It's just flowing out of me. Flowing through me. And flowing to my spiritual friend. Or that I'm able to radiate it in the six directions. So there's a level of confidence in the practice and a confidence in our own efforts.

And so the confidence is there, the unification of mind is there, and there's the joy and happiness. Again, the piti and the sukha. But now, it's not joy and happiness born of seclusion. It's joy and happiness born of concentration, born of collectedness, which means now you're able to stay with the feeling of loving kindness for longer periods of time rather than having to struggle and say, I feel hindrances coming up every few seconds. Now the hindrances start to go away and the mind is able to stay with the feeling of loving kindness for more than a few seconds, right, even up to a minute or two or three or four. Become well established in the feeling of loving kindness.

And so that's why the piti and the sukkah that arise, the joy and comfort, the joy and happiness that arise, are born of collectedness. Because the mind is established. The mind is stable. levels of cessation. So what ceases in the first jhana? No. Hindrances. In the first jhana, what ceases is because you're secluded from unwholesome states of mind. The cessation of hindrances keeps the mind ripe for the first jhana. And so in the first level, the hindrances cease. ceases.

So any kind of imaging, any kind of verbalizing goes away. You let go of that now and you're just staying with the feeling of loving kindness. As you go deeper in this practice, what you will notice is your mind now tends towards the third jhana. Now all this while, it doesn't mean that if you are in samadhi, if you are in jhana, that the outside world is not there. Because if that's the case, then you become way too concentrated. You become absorbed, as they would say. But you are doing a tranquil aware jhana, which means that the mind is open and aware. It's allowing things to be as they are. And so that is equanimity.

That equanimity is present throughout. It might not be as apparent or as strong as it might be in the fourth jhana, but it's still there. Because even if the sounds of birds are there, even if the sounds of somebody coughing are there, even if there are sounds of people walking to and fro, or you feel an ant crawling up on your skin, even if you feel all of that, your mind remains unbothered by it. It's like those sensations pass right through you. You're aware of them, you don't get distracted by them. Your attention is not there a hundred percent, because you're still feeling the loving kindness. So in the first jhana that happens, in the second jhana that happens, in the third jhana what happens is you start to experience the loving kindness become maybe softer, gentler, more diffused. At this point it starts to feel like loving kindness is pervading the body.

And that experience can be that the body feels heavy. The body feels grounded, rooted to the seat. Or it could feel like the body is becoming lighter, that the body is becoming like a balloon. It's just floating. And even the loving kindness starts to feel a little bit more experienced. Now, the joy of the second jhana, the piti of the second jhana, starts to disappear.

And what you are left with is tranquility and equanimity and sukha, comfort. And so the third jhana is understood as it's said in the suttas. It's what the noble ones declare: he has a pleasant body. Why do they say that? Why do they say that in the third jhana it's understood that the noble ones say he has a pleasant body? Because it's one of the most sustainable experiences, the third jhana. The joy is something people seem to always want to grasp towards. When it fades away, they feel like something is going wrong. They feel like the loving kindness is gone. But no, the joy is fading away, which means now the sukha, the happiness, the comfort, the tranquility is deepening.

And now there is even greater amounts of stability in the practice. The mind is unwavering. It stays here. In the first and second jhana, it might waver just a little bit. But in the third, it starts to be well established. No movement. And it's starting to be more comfortable. Things are just happening on their own. Even if thoughts come up.

Now this is what you have to understand. Does it mean that if thoughts come up that the verbal formations are present? No. Because verbal formations means that there is an intention to think and to express in speech. The thoughts that come up, if they're distant or they're right here and they just go on by, are part of mental formations.

In other words, the thoughts are just the objects of the mind. They are feeling, they are experiences of the mind. Let them be there. It's okay. Don't treat them like distractions. Only when your attention goes to one line of thought, and you're no longer on your object of meditation, then you recognize. Bring it back. Relax. Re-smile. Come back.

So in the third jhana, really what's important is that there is this stability of mind. There's a sense of expansion, a bit more spaciousness in the body. And then that takes you into the fourth jhana. So in the first jhana, what ceases are the hindrances. In the second jhana, what ceases are the verbalizing. In the third jhana, what ceases is the piti, the joy. Now in the fourth jhana, what happens is the sukha ceases. You're not happy in it. It doesn't mean that you're not comfortable in it. It just means that all dualities of pain and pleasure go away. So the main factor of the fourth jhana is purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. What does that mean? Purity of mindfulness.

due to equanimity. We talked about how mindfulness leads to investigation. Investigation leads to energy. Energy leads to joy. Joy leads to tranquility. Tranquility leads to collectedness. Collectedness leads to equanimity. So this is the linear fashion in which the enlightenment factors lead to one another. But there is a way in which they are cyclical as well. The equanimity then further strengthens the next arising of mindfulness, and then the next arising of investigation, and so on and so forth. So as you're cycling through these enlightenment factors, you're starting to experience deeper levels of samadhi, and eventually you start to get into the first jhana, and then into the second, and into the third, and then in the fourth, at which point you have pristine mindfulness, which means you have total clarity of perception of what's going on.

Now, at this point, the feeling of loving kindness might feel more diffused. It almost feels like the loving kindness isn't even there. And all there is is just this calmness of mind. It just feels very clear and balanced. And sometimes what people experience is, the feeling of loving kindness feels like it's gone up to the head. All that's happening actually is that the contact with the body starts to become more and more diminished.

You start to lose some sensation in the body. Not all, because you might still experience a faint sensation of a bug crawling on your arm. Or the faint sensation of a breeze on your skin. Awareness of the body or sensations in the body, but they become very silent, very quiet, more diminished. So while this is happening, the mindfulness that's there, which means the mind is so clear that whatever is happening, if there's a thought, it's just aware the thought is there. If there's a sensation, it's just aware that the sensation is there, but it remains unaffected one way or the other. If it's a pleasant experience, okay, it's interesting, pleasant experience. It doesn't feel like it wants to grasp onto it.

If it's a painful experience, let's say there's a little pain in the knees or a little pain somewhere around the arms or whatever it is, it notices it, but it doesn't get affected by it and says, I don't like this pain. I don't want this pain. I want this pain to stop. It just says, okay, there's pain. So it's just pure perception, clarity of perception.

And so in this fourth jhana, what will happen is, now that the mind experiences this upliftment of loving kindness into the head, and it feels like it's less vibratory, and there's more balance of mind, at that point, I will say, okay, I will be changing your meditation, things like breaking down the barriers and then radiating to the six directions.

But we'll stop here now because tomorrow we'll explore what happens in the arupa states. So jhanas, when we talk about the jhanas, there's only four jhanas. There's only the first, second, third, and fourth jhana. When we talk about jhana five, six, seven, eight, they're actually sometimes known as arupa jhanas. Actually, what they are are ayatanas. Ayatanas mean space or dimension.

And they are all within the compartment of the fourth jhana. They are from the launch pad of the fourth jhana you experience these other experiences. But I will break those down for you tomorrow. Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free and the fear struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu