| | Hi Crazy Wisdom, Thank you for the suggestion. I actually do relax the adrenals by doing progressive muscle relaxation before samatha practice. Though I doubt that the first jhana is really associated with adrenaline -- I'm just making a comparison. (Actually, if I have a lot of adrenaline going because of, say, anxiety or low blood sugar, I can't do jhana, thus the progressive muscle relaxation.) What the first jhana has in common with an adrenaline rush is the strong, laserlike focus, and the exhilaration. The explanation below might make it more clear.
I'll give the brief overview of my guess at the neuropsychology here, but please feel free to reply or PM me if you want me to go into more details.
First off, you gotta gladden the mind. How do you do that? Well, it's easy once you get away from the hindrances (or as Gotama put it, "when secluded from unwholesome mind states"). Progressive muscle relaxation before meditation and an easy, gentle smile or half-smile during meditation can deal with most of them. For drowsiness or sloth, a 20-30 minute nap usually works better than increasing effort. I suppose that's because most Westerners today who are trying to practice the jhanas are more likely to feel drowsy due to sleep deprivation or directed attention fatigue than old-fashioned laziness. After all, if you were lazy, you'd probably just go watch TV or do drugs in order to feel tranquil and happy.
Anyway, now the hindrances are sufficiently chilled out. The mind already feels more content, and it's easy to turn that into gladness. You do that by applying and sustaining attention to wholesome, pleasant sensations and/or thoughts. You stick with this, staying vigilant with the Right Effort to develop wholesome states (like contentment and delight in simply being alive) and abandon unwholesome ones (such as craving or dissatisfaction). This process, called directed attention, is effortful and voluntary. It works so much better when the mind is first calmed and gladdened! A happy, content mind occurs when the reward system in the brain has a stable, high level of activation, and the anxiety circuitry has low activation.
The reward system and the directed attention systems are tightly linked, and in fact they have some of the exact same parts. Reward (pleasantness) releases dopamine in the basal ganglia. Since the directed attention circuitry relies on a steady supply of dopamine, being in a positive mind state is extremely helpful when you're trying to pay attention to something.
Anxiety, on the other hand, is the enemy of directed attention. It's associated with high activity in the amygdala. Basically, an active amygdala tries to turn off the directed attention circuitry and self-control circuitry so it can make you act according to animal instincts. Obviously, you don't want the directed attention system turned off if you want to practice concentration, and you don't want to activate animal instincts if you're trying to stay away from the hindrances.
Anyway, the gladness grows, and the smile becomes bigger and bigger. The intensity of the rewarding stimulus gets greater and greater, and the rate of dopamine release increases too. Thus, concentration gets even stronger, and effort feels natural and easy. The intense stimulus causes an increase in another neurotransmitter, called norepinephrine. You could call it the "alertness chemical." Like dopamine, it helps you pay attention to things, and it also wakes the mind up. The combination of dopamine and norepinephrine release leads you from gladness into exhilarating joy! Congratulations, you're at the first jhana! You now have 4 factors operating together and reinforcing each other, producing a steady state of mind: applied and sustained attention, joy, and blissful contentment.
BTW, there's another way to release dopamine and norepinephrine. It's commonly used to help people who have a hard time paying attention, especially if they're spacey and have low motivation and activity levels. It's amphetamine, which is a "dopamine and norepinephrine releasing agent," and it's usually the most helpful medication for people with classic purely-inattentive ADHD. So you could say that the first jhana is like natural Adderall, or Vyvanse, or Dexedrine. Anyone here who has taken Vyvanse or instant release Dexedrine can notice the similarities between it and the first jhana, especially if you're focusing on the exhilaration aspect of the first jhana.
Now, you can move to the second jhana if you relax more. Let go of the exhilarating effort, and just chill out with the rewarding joy. Norepinephrine release goes down as you let go of the effort and become more tranquil. Dopamine release can stay the same, but it's likely to increase unless it's already at near-max capacity. Thus, the second jhana is usually more concentrated than the first, and the dominant aspect is joy. Without the laserlike focus provided by norepinephrine release, attention is now a bit broader.
The second jhana feels more like Ritalin than Adderall. Ritalin is a type of drug called a DRI, which means that it keeps a steady supply of dopamine in the synapses. Unlike Adderall, Ritalin does not actually release dopamine, but any dopamine that is already active will stay active longer. Ritalin doesn't increase norepinephrine. It's is usually more helpful for the classic combined hyperactive-inattentive ADHD patient, because it does a better job of reducing hyperactivity while also enhancing concentration. The second jhana is likewise more tranquil than the first jhana, but still plenty concentrated.
That's about as much as I can say for now. I have a lot of ideas about how the third and fourth jhanas could work, but it would be very very easy for me to get them totally wrong. On the other hand, this explanation of the first 2 jhanas is probably more on-track. There's been a lot more study of the neuropsychology of focused attention and reward than of panoramic attention or blissful contentment. |