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Meditation practice: First Samatha Jhana
Note: Various traditions use various names for the different stages of meditation. I'm basically going by the classification scheme in Daniel Ingram's Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book. It divides the stages of meditation to the eight concentration (Samatha) Jhanas and the sixteen insight ñanas.
I think I finally hit the first (Samatha) Jhana. I hadn't been doing meditation exercises in a while, because I had gotten sick and had very little energy to try out anything. But this morning I'd finally recovered and thought I'd give it a try after a long while.
In fact, I believe that taking a break probably helped me. Paradoxically, I had been too motivated before. Previously I'd set out to meditate with this solemn determination to get something happening, and when I failed to get access concentration I'd grow frustrated. This time around I didn't have that solemn determination, just a feeling of "hey, let's try this and see what happens".
I was already in a good mood when I started. As is my habit, I'd taken a caffeine pill to help me wake up, which frequently gets me energetic and in a good mood right from the morning. Getting up, I had taken a few moments to reflect on the things that I was happy and grateful about in my life. I put a pizza in the oven and decided to try meditating while waiting for it to get warm.
I sat down, took a moderately comfortable position, and closed my eyes. As I was already feeling good, for a moment I tried to concentrate on that feeling from the start, but it was a bit elusive. Then I experimented a bit, trying out various things I could concentrate on and seeking the one that felt the best. My breathing, the general feel of my body, the wind outside, the sounds my oven made as it warmed up. For a while, I concentrated on all four simultaneously. But this seemed too much like noting practice and insight meditation territory, when I wanted to get concentration meditation mastered first. So I narrowed it down to just my breathing, as has been my usual practice.
Hitting access concentration was really easy. This may have had something to do with the fact that I'd just woken up and didn't have many thoughts in my mind yet. Basically I just concentrated on my breathing and observed it, not trying to exert conscious control on it but just letting it become faster or slower as felt appropriate. As I was still feeling energetic, my breathing got rather fast at one point, almost to the point of hyperventilation. I was still suffering from a cough left by my cold, so I couldn't take very long deep breaths, instead preferring quick shallow ones. This made it both easier to avoid coughing and, I think, easier to avoid exerting conscious control and easier to just observe. Whenever a thought came to my mind, I tagged it with a simple label and then let go. "Cough" was the most common label.
Soon enough, I felt a dampening of the senses. This interview mentioned the metaphor of being inside a car with the car windows suddenly rolled up, which described my feeling pretty well. I noticed that my feet were growing a bit uncomfortable from having been in the same position for so long, but the feeling didn't really bother me. It was a muted feeling, and the sounds from outside were muted as well. My awareness had shifted inwards.
Now having access concentration, it was the time to move to the first jhana. Leigh Brasington's article adviced to seek out a pleasant feeling and shift my concentration to that. I happened to be wearing clothes which I really liked, to the point of them making me feel physically good, so I shifted my attention to that feeling. I started thinking about how I liked those clothes and how I was living at my own and could wear and do whatever I liked. This made me both naturally shift my position into one that felt more comfortable, and it made me smile. Really, really smile in a way I'm not sure I've done before. I could feel a strong sensation of pleasure and happiness in the region around my mouth, radiating to the rest of my body. The thought came to me that I love myself, I love being me and I love being alive. Repeating those thoughts in my mind helped me maintain my good feeling.
Most of the good feeling was still in my upper body. Spontaneously, I visualized and felt my happiness and good feeling pushing out from my shoulders, sprouting out as an angel's wings which then moved to embrace and enfold the rest of my body. I imagined the feeling of resting my head against them and caressing my right wing with my hands, though I did not actually move my hands or head. I maintained this for a while, and although it felt good, I was also growing a bit impatient for my pizza to get ready as maintaining it required constant effort and I was getting a bit tired.
After a while, the oven clicked as a sign of my food being ready, so I stopped to get my breakfast and write this description. So far, I'm still feeling great and even more energetic than before the exercise.
I note with some curiosity that this experience is somewhat different from the descriptions of it I read in Ingram's book and Brasington's article. Those seemed like one was supposed to just concentrate on a specific feeling, not actively think any verbal thoughts or play with visualizations. On the other hand, those were things that came relatively naturally, and other parts of the way the first jhana is described - a feeling of sustained happiness, relief from the discomfort of sitting still, the gradual annoyance of needing to expend effort, the experience being addictive - all fit. I already want to do it again.
I think I finally hit the first (Samatha) Jhana. I hadn't been doing meditation exercises in a while, because I had gotten sick and had very little energy to try out anything. But this morning I'd finally recovered and thought I'd give it a try after a long while.
In fact, I believe that taking a break probably helped me. Paradoxically, I had been too motivated before. Previously I'd set out to meditate with this solemn determination to get something happening, and when I failed to get access concentration I'd grow frustrated. This time around I didn't have that solemn determination, just a feeling of "hey, let's try this and see what happens".
I was already in a good mood when I started. As is my habit, I'd taken a caffeine pill to help me wake up, which frequently gets me energetic and in a good mood right from the morning. Getting up, I had taken a few moments to reflect on the things that I was happy and grateful about in my life. I put a pizza in the oven and decided to try meditating while waiting for it to get warm.
I sat down, took a moderately comfortable position, and closed my eyes. As I was already feeling good, for a moment I tried to concentrate on that feeling from the start, but it was a bit elusive. Then I experimented a bit, trying out various things I could concentrate on and seeking the one that felt the best. My breathing, the general feel of my body, the wind outside, the sounds my oven made as it warmed up. For a while, I concentrated on all four simultaneously. But this seemed too much like noting practice and insight meditation territory, when I wanted to get concentration meditation mastered first. So I narrowed it down to just my breathing, as has been my usual practice.
Hitting access concentration was really easy. This may have had something to do with the fact that I'd just woken up and didn't have many thoughts in my mind yet. Basically I just concentrated on my breathing and observed it, not trying to exert conscious control on it but just letting it become faster or slower as felt appropriate. As I was still feeling energetic, my breathing got rather fast at one point, almost to the point of hyperventilation. I was still suffering from a cough left by my cold, so I couldn't take very long deep breaths, instead preferring quick shallow ones. This made it both easier to avoid coughing and, I think, easier to avoid exerting conscious control and easier to just observe. Whenever a thought came to my mind, I tagged it with a simple label and then let go. "Cough" was the most common label.
Soon enough, I felt a dampening of the senses. This interview mentioned the metaphor of being inside a car with the car windows suddenly rolled up, which described my feeling pretty well. I noticed that my feet were growing a bit uncomfortable from having been in the same position for so long, but the feeling didn't really bother me. It was a muted feeling, and the sounds from outside were muted as well. My awareness had shifted inwards.
Now having access concentration, it was the time to move to the first jhana. Leigh Brasington's article adviced to seek out a pleasant feeling and shift my concentration to that. I happened to be wearing clothes which I really liked, to the point of them making me feel physically good, so I shifted my attention to that feeling. I started thinking about how I liked those clothes and how I was living at my own and could wear and do whatever I liked. This made me both naturally shift my position into one that felt more comfortable, and it made me smile. Really, really smile in a way I'm not sure I've done before. I could feel a strong sensation of pleasure and happiness in the region around my mouth, radiating to the rest of my body. The thought came to me that I love myself, I love being me and I love being alive. Repeating those thoughts in my mind helped me maintain my good feeling.
Most of the good feeling was still in my upper body. Spontaneously, I visualized and felt my happiness and good feeling pushing out from my shoulders, sprouting out as an angel's wings which then moved to embrace and enfold the rest of my body. I imagined the feeling of resting my head against them and caressing my right wing with my hands, though I did not actually move my hands or head. I maintained this for a while, and although it felt good, I was also growing a bit impatient for my pizza to get ready as maintaining it required constant effort and I was getting a bit tired.
After a while, the oven clicked as a sign of my food being ready, so I stopped to get my breakfast and write this description. So far, I'm still feeling great and even more energetic than before the exercise.
I note with some curiosity that this experience is somewhat different from the descriptions of it I read in Ingram's book and Brasington's article. Those seemed like one was supposed to just concentrate on a specific feeling, not actively think any verbal thoughts or play with visualizations. On the other hand, those were things that came relatively naturally, and other parts of the way the first jhana is described - a feeling of sustained happiness, relief from the discomfort of sitting still, the gradual annoyance of needing to expend effort, the experience being addictive - all fit. I already want to do it again.