Day 3 'The First 4 Jhanas" Progressing on the Path to Nibbana -Excellent

So today I want to talk about the first four jhanas and understand how the mind experiences each of these jhanas. And I want to give you the caveat that it's not necessary for you to know these things in terms of "where am I on the map?" It's just a way of understanding that these are the different signposts on the way to experiencing awakening.

What is the utility of jhana? Why do we experience jhana? Essentially, it is to reduce our attachments to sensual pleasures. So the Buddha has said that the sensual pleasures are as they are, right? The pretty little things of this world are as they are. But it is our intentions that are rooted in craving that cause the issue.

Which is what? Suffering. So, it's not the sensual pleasures that we are trying to eradicate. That's like eradicating feeling. But we're eradicating, and that basically means the identification with one or more of the sense bases as me, mine or myself, which results in, when the sensual pleasure arises as an experience born from contact with the sense base (the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body or the mind), the mind will say, "Oh, this is something that I want more of, want to control," or say, "I don't like this," and push away.

And that reaction is what's known as an underlying tendency, which then gives rise, or can give rise, to full-blown craving, where the mind has now fully attached a sense of self to the experience and reacted from that, and said, "Now, that reaction leads to many different things." We'll get into that soon enough. But I'm trying to give you some context of what we're doing with jhanas. There is a whole sort of importance given to jhanas, especially now in Silicon Valley.

They're on a journey. And look, by no means am I trying to be facetious here, but I am saying one thing. It's all on record now. What I'm trying to get to is that these intentions of saying that jhanas are the end-all, be-all is misguided. It's misguided. Because the jhanas are intended for more than just to feel good, more than to feel pleasure.

What's going on here now, and the reason I'm talking about this is because everything becomes gamified. Once Silicon Valley gets its hands on something, like mindfulness, right? I don't like to use the word mindfulness even now at this point. What we're talking about when we say mindfulness is remembering to observe how the mind's attention moves from one thing to the other.

Now mindfulness has become mindfully walking, mindfully eating, mindfully showering, mindfully, fill in the blank. So the same thing is happening with jhanas. The jhanas are being gamified, seen as an antidepressant. And that's not what jhanas are here for. The jhanas are supramundane experiences. Supramundane, what does that mean? Supramundane. They are transcendental experiences beyond the world, beyond the sense bases.

There's nothing mystical about it. There's nothing religious about it. It is an experience that any mind that has the right conditions, namely sila, can have, and I don't see that happening when we gamify jhanas. When we make jhanas into a product. And the issue, the challenge here is, oh, sila, so you're being a moralistic person. Yes, I am being a moralistic person.

Since when was it uncool to be moral? The ethics. You need the mind that is free of any regrets in order to experience jhana. In order for you to experience these transcendental states, which are super mundane, you need a mind that is unagitated. A mind that is free of any kind of shame, any kind of guilt. You need a mind that understands the importance of keeping precepts. So when you guys do precepts in the morning, right now you take eight precepts, and that's for the purposes of the retreat.

When you get off retreat, you'll be taking five precepts. That is a lifelong practice. It's not a ritual. It's a reminder that this is how I want to show up in the world. It's a very noble thing to do: to show up as a person who does not harm or kill, who does not cheat others, who does not lie, who doesn't take what is not freely given.

Who doesn't make a fool of themselves under the influence of intoxicants and is negligent, and that leads to a mind that is agitated and then breaks other precepts in the process. So, understand the importance of what we are doing here on retreat when you're taking the refuges and you're taking the precepts. It's not a ritual. It's priming the mind for effective meditation.

There are many other traditions out there. There are many other schools that talk about attaining amazing levels of Samadhi, amazing levels of this particular state of mind and so on and so forth. And they have experiences from those states. But it doesn't lead to wisdom, to the awakening of intuition. And if it does, as a psychic faculty, we have a great example of someone like that, Devadatta, who had all these different psychic faculties. He was the cousin of the Buddha, for those who don't know this, and he entered into the monastic life, and he decided to display his psychic faculties,

in order to sway others to believe in him and create his own order. But he was also somebody who tried to kill the Buddha on a number of occasions. So we're not here for psychic faculties. We're not here to look into past lives. We're not here to do all these other things. We're here to free the mind.

At least I am. I don't know about you guys, but ultimately the aim should be, when you start to see the benefits of this practice, seeing that repeating the same kinds of patterns over and over leads to the same kinds of effects, same kinds of situations, same kinds of relationships, that lead to suffering. So jhanas help us to see this.

The jhanas are not just these states of mind that make you feel good and you have great tranquility and equanimity and so on. Those are just concentrated states of mind. What we're talking about is tranquil aware jhanas. It's in the acronym of TWIM: tranquil wisdom, insight, meditation. So the mind is collected. The mind is not concentrated. There is a difference.

So what is the difference? Concentration is the suppression of the mind. It is forcing the mind to enter into a specific state by becoming so concentrated on a specific object of meditation to the exclusivity of everything, including what is happening in mind itself, that is just on its object, laser focus. And after a while, you get wonderful joy, you have great bliss, you feel like you have experienced something super mundane, and it lasts maybe an hour, or two hours, or maybe even ten hours, maybe the whole day.

And then something happens that bothers you, and you're out of that. And then you realize that, oh, that was just a state of experience. I didn't really learn anything about the mind. So we need both. We need Samatha and Vipassana. That's the tranquility, the collectedness, and the Vipassana, which is the wisdom and insight. So the collectedness is a mind that stays with its object.

And whenever it gets distracted, it understands it is distracted. This is mindfulness. The four foundations of mindfulness, when they talk about mindfulness of mind, what the Buddha is talking about is: he knows when the mind is distracted. He knows when the mind is undistracted. He knows when the mind is not collected.

This is mindfulness. So you know when the mind is distracted. When you know the mind is distracted, you are teaching yourself. The mind is teaching itself. But if you are concentrated and you suppress everything, nothing is happening except for these beautiful experiences of joy. But as soon as you start to learn, oh, this is the trigger that comes up. These are the formations that come up. Formations here we'll talk about later. But these are the things that come up to create these thoughts.

And it's not something you have to look for. It's something as you start to deepen your practice by using the 6R's to let go of any hindrances that may come up. this. You just have to observe in the 6R's. Just go along for the ride. The jhanas are different signposts on that ride. So this is meditation. This is the practice. What are the components of right meditation, of right collectedness?

And the answer is two things. Right effort and right mindfulness. What is right effort? The 6R's. What is right mindfulness? Being aware whenever the mind is distracted or undistracted, and processing what is missing in the mind. There is too much joy, or there is too much tranquility, therefore there's too much sloth and torpor. There's too much concentration, therefore there is a waning of the mind. There's too much joy, therefore there is too much exhilaration. There's too much agitation, restlessness, and you teach yourself this as you observe how things are happening in the mind.

So, remember that you're not here to just experience great states of bliss and joy. You're also here to develop wisdom. And wisdom is developed through observing. You're not here to try to perform. You're not here to get things in a certain order, to make sure things are right: what happens when this happens, what happens when that happens.

When I do this, this is how the mind reacts. When I do that, this is how the mind reacts. Also, when I'm in the dining hall and I see you guys, you guys look so freaking depressed. Are you not happy being here? What happened to your playfulness? What happened to your childlike essence? This isn't a Vipassana course, you guys. You're here to have some fun.

The more you do this, the easier it is for you to experience the loving kindness for yourself and for others. The more you can tap into that playfulness, into the smile, into the laughter, the easier it is for your mindfulness to be established. Find the humor in things. Find the joy in the experiences that you're having. The more you do this, the more gratitude you have, the more appreciation you have.

The more you start to notice how your mind becomes purified. How your mind becomes more aware of your surroundings. So in order for you to go into jhanas, you need the sila, you need the mindfulness, you need the right effort. These things are all interspersed within the eightfold path, which leads to the final aspect of right samadhi, or right collectedness. So what is the first jhana? What happens in the first jhana? There are five factors for the first jhana: vitakka, vichara, piti, sukha, and cittekaggata. Cittekaggata is taking up an object and staying with that object. Vitakka is usually translated as thinking. Vichara is usually translated as examining thought.

But in practical terms, what that means is you intentionalize bringing up an object. And then you make a point of inclining the mind to stay with that object. Now, bringing up doesn't mean you force yourself to have loving kindness. You force yourself to have equanimity. You sit down, you relax, and then you center your mind. You establish mindfulness before you, and you see what is present in the mind.

And you allow loving kindness to emerge through the right causes and conditions. Is saying in your mind, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be free of suffering, may I be filled with loving kindness. Maybe it's using gratitude, maybe it's using a wholesome image or wholesome memory, whatever it might be. And then once you have that feeling, once the feeling is there, a lot of people are asking, what is that feeling? It's a feeling of being happy. It's a feeling of having some level of joy.

It's a feeling of being, ah, this is nice. Just stay with that. Let the mind bask in it, rest in it. That's it. Now you have vitakka and vicara. You've brought up the object, and now you're staying with the object. As a result of which, you will have something else. And that happens when two factors are present.

When you start the meditation, there are two things you're doing. It says in the suttas, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states. What does it mean, quite secluded from sensual pleasures? It means you've closed your eyes. Is closed off to you. And you bring your attention into the mind, into the mind and heart. Quite secluded from sensual pleasures. You may hear things.

If a fly lands on your arm, you may feel that. You may feel the itch on your nose. All these things might be present. But that's okay. But you're secluded from paying attention to those things. Is gathered into itself. Secluded from unwholesome states means what? No hindrances are present. You are free from hindrances. This is done through the equipment of right effort. When there is a hindrance present, you use the six Rs, you come back to your object. So now you have the vitakka and vicara: the bringing up of an object, staying with that object.

Because your mind is free of the hindrances, it feels relief. When you relax, you feel relief. Your mind is naturally collected. So when you return, you have samadhi, the enlightenment factor of samadhi. As a result of that relief, you experience what's known as piti and sukha. Piti is likened to ananda, which is bliss, which is joy. And sukha is comfort in the body. There is ekagata, chitta ekagata, unification of the mind. The problem with this word, ekagata, is that generally people call it one-pointed, or it has generally been translated as one-pointed, which means that I become laser-focused. But as soon as I become laser-focused on the object, what else is happening?

So ekagata, unification of the mind, means that the mind is gravitated around the object. The attention of the mind is like a satellite that orbits the object of meditation. As long as you are aware there is the object, that's all you need to know. Remember I said yesterday there might be background thoughts. It's okay. But then as soon as the satellite starts to go out of orbit, what do you do? You need to send something that will bring you back into orbit. That is the six Rs.

The satellite, the attention is gone somewhere else. Oh, I recognize something's going on. You've got to do something. You've got to redirect it back into orbit. Release, relax, re-smile, return back to the orbit. Stay with the object. How do you know if you're concentrated? It's when you're distracted and you get pissed off. But when you're collected and you're distracted, you're like, oh, oh, I'm distracted. Let me relax and come back.

Because when you're trying too hard, that's when aversion can arise. And so the unification of mind is a mind in which the attention is non-dispersed. The attention is collected around the object. So you may be here for a bit. And then what you will notice is that you don't need to bring up the statement of may I be happy, may I be well, may I be free of suffering, may I be filled with loving kindness. You don't need to bring up gratitude. You don't need to bring up the wholesome image over and over again.

You've already started the car. You don't need to keep the ignition going like that. Now you can drop that and stay with the object completely. And so you have what is known as self-confidence. You have a certain level of self-confidence. Like, oh, things are going well. I feel like this is going well. And so you have a greater degree, or you can have a greater degree of joy.

And a greater degree of sukha. So what is gone, what ceases, is the vitakka and vicara. And you may be here for a bit. You may see that the mind is experiencing a greater degree of mindfulness. You're able to see when it gets distracted. As soon as you get distracted, your mind is able to come back, and you still are with the feeling. Contentment and tranquility.

So what fades is the joy. You know, in a lot of meditative traditions, all everybody is seeking is this bliss, this otherworldly bliss. All the different traditions talk about bliss as the highest level and all of these things. Bliss is just the beginning. Even for those of you who know this person, Ramana Maharishi also said the same thing.

Bliss is just the beginning. And also bliss is unsustainable. The joy and bliss that we experience is like a candle flame that keeps flickering. But once your mind becomes more and more still, it starts to experience this steadiness, which is the sukha. The sukha here is the comfort in the mind, the tranquility in the body. And there's a little bit of happiness in there.

There's a pleasantness to it. It's a very pleasant abiding. And so you're starting to get into the third jhana. And at this point, you start to lose any kind of sense of boundary with the body. You may feel either the body is becoming heavier, or you may feel the body is becoming lighter, or you may feel you're only feeling your hands, the rest of the body is kind of like the boundaries are starting to become less apparent.

And so where the body ends and the outside world begins, starts to become less and less apparent. So you have the sukha, you have the tranquility, you have some equanimity, and you have the body starting to feel like it's floating or starting to lose its boundaries. This is the third jhana. For a while you'll be experiencing this, and you get into a space where even the sukha goes away.

And you transcend the notions of pain and pleasure, joy and sadness. In other words, the mind becomes neutral. It has equanimity. And specifically what it says is, in the fourth jhana, he has purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. And sometimes what people will report is, it feels like I can't feel the loving-kindness anymore, but my mind is so relaxed and so calm and collected, and I feel like I'm not distracted.

And that's because they may equate the loving-kindness with the feeling of piti or sukha. That's why I feel like it's gone. But actually what's going on is you're getting greater degrees of equanimity. And this purity of mindfulness due to equanimity, it basically means this. To get into a jhana, you have to be free of hindrances, and to some degree the enlightenment factors need to be present. The enlightenment factors are seven in number, and they are your tools. Like we've talked about, the six Rs: when you use the six Rs, they help balance these enlightenment factors. The enlightenment factors are mindfulness, investigation of states, energy, joy and equanimity. Mindfulness leads to investigation of states. Investigation of states leads to energy.

Energy leads to joy. Joy leads to tranquility. Tranquility leads to collectedness. And collectedness leads to equanimity. But what's interesting is as you start to go deeper into jhanas, you are cycling through the enlightenment factors. So as the mindfulness informs the investigation of states, the investigation of states informs or conditions the energy. The energy conditions the joy. The joy conditions the tranquility. The tranquility conditions the collectedness. Collectedness conditions the equanimity. And equanimity in the next arising conditions mindfulness.

And so that's why your mindfulness becomes sharper and more stabilized as you get into these different states of the jhanas. So the jhanas are levels of cessation. They're levels of understanding. They are levels of seeing how reality works. They're showing you how your mind moves. And as you utilize mindfulness, you are teaching yourself where the different hindrances are, what are the attachments that are connected to it, and allows you to let go of them. And as you let go of them, you start to see for yourself the relief that is experienced from that.

This is the whole process of the meditation that we are doing here. It is teaching ourselves by just watching and observing, and utilizing the six Rs to make sure that the mind remains within the confines of being with its object. The object is an anchor to keep the mind steady. See what's happening. So when we talk about the enlightenment factors, what are we talking about? What is the mindfulness here?

The mindfulness here is the ability to discern or see how mind's attention moves from one object to the other. This is what mindfulness is. This investigation of states, the problem with the word investigation means that people will kind of try to figure out what's going on. But it just means discerning. Is my mind on the object or not? Is my mind wholesome or not?

Is my mind undistracted or not? That's it. That's what discernment is. The discernment between what is wholesome and unwholesome. That which is wholesome is expansive in quality. That which is wholesome is tranquilizing in quality. That which is unwholesome is rigid, constricting, and tension-producing in quality. Constrict, you have discernment of that, and you can bring some relaxation so that the mind becomes more spacious.

This is how you utilize discernment. And the utilization of discernment is the six Rs, and therefore you're using right effort, which is the balancing of energy, as a result of which you will experience tranquility or joy in one order or the other. It doesn't matter. You'll have joy because of the smile. You'll have tranquility because of the relaxation.

And as you do this, you notice your mind returns back to its object and it is collected. From that collectedness, there is equanimity. What is equanimity? Equanimity is to be able to see things as they are without getting affected one way or the other. This is what we were talking about yesterday. There's an unwholesome state of mind. Fine.

6R's then. There's a wholesome state of mind. Great. Don't get excited about it. And this is developed over time. This is developed naturally as you utilize the 6R's, where when you enter the fourth jhana, you have very strong equanimity. Your mind is unwavering. And at this point, the contact with the body is extremely diminished. This is why there is this misunderstanding that when you are in the fourth jhana, you stop breathing.

That's not true. In the fourth jhana, it says that the bodily formations cease, which means you start to lose contact with the body. In the third jhana, as I said, boundaries between the body and the outside world start to become less apparent. And in the fourth jhana, they're gone. They disappear. But something lands on the skin, you may feel that faintly.

Bodily formations. The reason why some people think that means you stop breathing is because one of the processes of the body is inhalation and exhalation. If that were the case, then nobody so far has experienced the fourth jhana. And to experience the fourth jhana means to die. How are you going to survive without breathing?

So in the second jhana, it says there's a cessation of verbal formations, which means the cessation of thinking. Because in the first jhana, you're consciously thinking of your object and then you let go of the intention to bring up the object and you're just staying. So thoughts are there as experiences. That is, the passive kinds of thoughts.

But the thought of intentionalizing something goes away. And the mind just remains with the object. And so that is the cessation of that. As we get into the arupa jhanas, you'll also see the cessation of mental formations. We'll get there tomorrow. I don't want to crowd your mind with too many things. These are the four jhanas, or sometimes known as rupa jhanas. So to summarize, in the first jhana, you get there by letting go of the hindrances, getting your mind secluded from sensual pleasures, as a result of which your mind feels relief.

From that relief, there is joy and sukkha, because your mind stays with one particular object, because it brings that up, and chooses to stay with that. In the second jhana, the intentionalizing goes away, and what remains is the joy and happiness. Joy fades away and what remains is contentment and tranquility. As that fades away, there is just equanimity, purity of mindfulness due to equanimity in the fourth jhana. And you lose contact with the body.

Now, is it possible to experience the cessation of suffering from any of these jhanas? Yes, it is. It is possible for the mind to experience nibbana from any of these jhanas. Indeed, there are examples of this in the suttas where a person has gone through the first four jhanas and experienced nibbana. And they are called a certain type of person, a person like a panna vimutti, one who has been freed, or liberated through wisdom.

But generally speaking, the mind needs, because of the world that we live in, which is inundated with so much sensory traffic that is artificially produced through television screens, computer screens, phone, social media, internet, news outlets, radio, whatever it is, we are so inundated with that, that we need time for the mind to really calm down. We need time for the mind to really get collected, for it to really experience equanimity, and then for it to really go into very deep experiences like the arupa jhanas, which we'll get into tomorrow, and feeling, which allows for the mind to touch nibbana and experience the cessation of suffering.

To see with wisdom how this mind creates its own suffering and it creates its own reality. The jhanas allow you to do this. They make you feel good, that's just a side benefit. The true utility is to become detached from the sense basis and to develop wisdom. 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.