| | Any self-reinforcing perception (i.e. one the mind is willing to settle into for an extended time) can lead into a jhana.
In Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond, Ajahn Brahm talks about entering jhana through concentration practice on the ugliness of a corpse and the inevitability of death. After the mind becomes peaceful and concentrated enough, it stops perceiving "just" a corpse; it starts perceiving it as "beautiful corpse." (Interestingly, those are his words; it's great how well they match up with your word choice.) The image of the corpse itself doesn't change; rather, access concentration allows a meditator to "zoom in" on any particular aspect of experience. If you notice even the tiniest shred of beauty, gladness, or appreciation in your mind for any reason, the power of attention can magnify that positive feeling until it's strong enough to act as the basis for jhana.
If you're interested in how AB explains shamatha, here's his formula for the stages leading into extreme jhana. It shows how the object choice isn't essential for jhana, because you can actually discard the object before you get to jhana.
1: Sustained attention on the present moment This means that you eliminate all thoughts of the past or future. 2: Silent awareness of the present moment Now you calm the mind further, eliminating verbal thought altogether. 3: Silent present moment awareness of the object Now you focus on the chosen object. Anything else is a distraction. 4: Full sustained attention on the object Now your focus becomes steady, uninterrupted, and powerful. Distractions can no longer interfere with a continuous, sharp, and clear awareness of the object. 5. Full sustained attention on the beautiful object Here's the good ole "gladdening the mind" step so important to entering standard jhana. Up to this point, you could have been focusing on something unpleasant, like sadness, or a corpse. Now you start feeling a great sense of peace and happiness, which coexists with your perception of the object. The happiness isn't a distraction unless your mind is involuntarily pulled away from the object; i.e. if you crave/cling to the gladness. All you're supposed to do is just notice it. (That caveat has thwarted many a jhana-learner, including myself. It's a major stumbling block for people of certain temperaments.) If you focus closely on sadness and start experiencing it as beautiful, you're close to jhana, or perhaps already in soft jhana. 6. Experiencing the beautiful Nimitta Nimitta means "sign." In this context it means pitisukha, which is the sign pointing you in the direction of first jhana. If you were perceiving "beautiful sadness" at the last stage, at this stage you shift attention to focus on the "beautiful." Or as Leigh Brasington puts it, "Steady your mind on a pleasurable sensation, and once your attention is stable, ignore the sensation itself and focus only on the pleasantness." Of course, for soft jhana, you don't have to discard the old object, or completely eliminate distraction. All you really need is enough stability to keep noticing the pitisukha long enough to enter... 7. The First Jhana!
Voila. Sustained attention to beauty and sadness leads to a mindstate dominated by powerful beauty and sadness. It's not a classical jhana from the texts, but as far as I'm concerned, it was definitely some jhanic phenomenon. You could classify it as a specific jhana based on the size and shape of your "attentional spotlight." (The 1st is laserlike, 3rd is diffuse and brighter around the edges... you know the drill.) |