I'm new but have made enough noise in the last few weeks for several of you to know I'm a skeptical contrarian. But if Ingram's book is right, then yesterday morning, evening, and again this morning I experienced 1st (samantha) Jhana, no question about it. I described it in detail
here and
here.I'm still quite early on in my reading of MCTB, but someone suggested some stuff further in may be relevant, so I peeked ahead and Ingram's description of 1st Jhana describes what I'm experiencing exactly. Italicized quotes are Ingram in MCTB:
"As concentration improves, it is as though the mind “sees” the first jhana and grabs on to it."
Yep. I likened it to getting up onto the surface of the water while skiing. It's not something you're forced to do, you just get offered the chance to do it and then you grab that chance.
"It has the five primary factors of applied and sustained effort or attention, rapture, happiness and concentration. Thus, it is great fun, feels good, ..."Yep. It was tight focus, fast and exhilarating, again like water-skiing, and I actually had to stop myself from grinning several times (I'm in a quiet zendo -- I don't want to scare the folks).
"...but takes consistent effort to sustain."
Well yes, but it wasn't *hard* work. More like the effort one needs to keep one of those
gyrotwister balls moving once you get it up and spinning. More a timing thing than hard graft.
The attention is focused narrowly, as though one were looking at a small area of this page.
Yep. Right in front of my eyes. On the first day I felt a pressure in my forehead, but it turns out it was because for some reason I was going cross-eyed while my eyes were closed. This morning (third time), I checked to make sure that the whole thing wasn't simply a weird side effect of doing exactly that. So I made sure my eyes were relaxed and not crossed, and the effect persisted.
This state can be quite a relief from the pain and discomfort of sitting meditation and can temporarily quiet the mind somewhat.
Absolutely. Of all aspects of the effect -- focus, pleasure, a feeling like I was steering a bobsled along a ridge that I knew I could stay on but needed to pay attention to do it -- this aspect, the *difference* between my usual experience of sitting and the new effect, is the most pronounced. This wasn't a mild thing, or something I was wondering "Hmm. *Am* I experiencing something here? *Was* that different?" It was more of a "Holy crap, where the hell is this coming from, and where's it going to go next!?" It was a night and day difference compared with my "normal" sitting, each of the three times. Quite astounding really.
OK, but now I have to point out that I started sitting only three weeks ago, and my inner skeptismo is getting restless.
How long would it normally take, from a standing start, to experience 1st Jhana? Is three weeks reasonable?
Or, what else could be masquerading as 1st Jhana?