Katy as usual you've packed a lot into yoru preppy, thanks! Let me just pick up on this bit thought: "So the deeply sunk and sukkha mind has access eventually to its own pure equanimity."
I'd be interested to hear your description of sukkha, or more, the range of experience that could be considered sukkha? What I experienced i would not call sukkha. The pleasure had left the body, there was just deep calm and stillness --which is not to say that that is not a satisfying experience, quite the opposite of course...
Also, interesting what you say about inducing sukkha in every day experiences. I have had times where a "delicious" feeling has pervaded the body almost constantly through the day and I recently listened to a dharma talk by Rob Burbea that talked of learning to move/walk/eat in jhana, albeit a weaker feeling than that experienced in formal sitting practice. I can imagine being able to do this to an extant.
Hey there,
Okay, so I mean: just sitting. Eventually, sukkha-mind cedes to single-pointed, just equanimity in which even "sukkha" and "dukkha" are not in the suffusively equanimous perception.
This is why, I think, zen schools have these "just sitting" retreats, shikantaza; some people are dealing with very stable, very settled mind and body, but they feel there has not been a break-through, insight. And to me insight in the equanimous mind (4th jhana) is not verbal, it's sort of experiential and later when considering the experience afterwards the person can try to take practical action on the insight, practical incorporation of that insight.
To me the jhanas are a training system just like any other (musical scales, golf putting, knitting): first one just learns to hold a thought. Ideally, one just uses the word "joy" itself or something that triggers the feeling, since that feeling is the 2nd jhana (and may as well pick something that kind of gets the mind ready for what's coming in jhana two). Soon, the mind can just be with "joy" (piti) and it can develop the piti sensation, then the mind spends x-amount of time retaining piti sensation suffusively. At some point that suffusive piti sensation just seems too intense energetically to be comfortable and the body naturally starts showing a relaxing reduction in piti sensation and now the body is settling into sukkha, comfort.
Sukkha I think takes the longest to stabilize ('cause that's my experience, that's all). It is such a low steady place for the mind that I think drowsiness is a very real problem (and excess caffeine would make a very real other problem for many people). So an early morning practice is ideal here, and with some light nearby. And to be well-rested and.....to have laid great foundations in one's daily life for several days in advance so that literally all around you is a pleasantness and alertness, kinda of like when you first were dating Mrs. B, probably, or when you were first a dad and it was easy to wake up alert just to see the new baby.
So sukkha jhana benefits from naturally alert and undisturbed surrounding conditions: sitting during a time of day when there is natural wakefullness and when one has deliberately cultivated pleasant environmental conditions: there is no fight or guilt or desire being played out in the mind for example.
Once sukkha is stabilized-- meaning there is very, very low energy, the body is still, the mind is no longer amped up on the brightness that comes with piti, the mind is settling very, very much into just the bottom of the pond, there... there is for me the point at which equanimity will occur. And that is a different animal, so to speak. I almost feel like 4th jhana and the arupa jhanas should be framed as a group of five. But that's silly.
So practices that bring one into joy, comfort and equanimity in daily life are likely to help this form in the sitting practice and vice versa (not that I've been practicing since November... but I'm settling in again =) This is where an actualist practice can be very helpful. Maybe talk to Claudiu about that.
So I just need to be able to say that in a tweet...