Hi Andy,
Sorry to hear about your struggles with absorption.
Andy W:
Last week I completed a ten day silent retreat with
Leigh Brasington at Gaia House in Devon, UK. I have recently come back to practice after a long time away and although I'd been practising some two hours a day in the run up to the retreat I wasn't expecting an awful lot.
That said, I did practice pretty hard to get towards the first jhana. I didn't get there, despite Leigh's excellent guidance, but I did reach a level of access concentration that I hadn't experienced before.
The way Leigh teaches the jhanas is that he gets you to stay with the primary object (in my case, breath at the nostrils) until you can sense a pleasant physical sensation somewhere in the body.
Then you switch your focus to enjoying that sensation until it expands and tips you into the first jhana.It was using Leigh's advice and descriptions of absorption that I first got my start at jhana practice, so I am well familiar with his method of teaching. Some people take to it like a duck to water, while others struggle to get an idea about what he's talking about. Somewhere along the line, you have to use your intuition in order to figure this absorption thing out. It's such a subjective experience that it can be difficult to describe to others if they cannot relate in some way to your initial descriptions. Then, too, as time goes on in the practice, one may experience this arising in a slightly different manner from the way they first experienced it. This latter is usually the result of a more mature practice in entering absorption, of having a mind that instantly obeys one's commands and knows just where to go without wasting time or effort.
Andy W:
I very soon experienced an electric fizziness in my hands. . . . More pleasant surges of the feeling at the point where the thumb meets the wrist were annoyingly rare.
Leigh told us that the pleasant sensation is the piti (glee or rapture) half of the piti-sukkha (happiness or joy) combo of the first jhana. If we weren't feeling any enjoyment in the sensation, then he suggested introducing - quickly and without stories - a happy thought.
I've not heard of anyone attempting to focus on any kind of sensation in the extremities of the body in order to develop absorption. Although this is not to say that this could not be done; it's just foreign to me. I've never used that conceptual template as an assist in my practice.
The kinds of sensations I relate to with regard to the development of absorption have to do with pleasant mental sensations in the region of the head and forehead in the center of the brow. It's a sensation that arises naturally within me (as well as many others), and is one that I've recognized since I was a child, so I am well familiar with it and have used it extensively in my meditation practice.
If you know what that sensation is, you can induce it (that is, bring it on intentionally) on your own just by imagining it happening or remembering how it felt the last time you experienced it. Being able to recalling the
feeling of the experience helps to bring it on effortlessly. You just have to learn, first, how to
relax into it. Once you feel it arise, then you begin to get an idea about what Leigh is talking about. But you have to relax and let it arise on its own in the beginning, without trying to induce it any way.
However, once you become familiar with the sensation, you know how it feels and how it arises, and what triggers to think about in order to induce it to arise, then induction (mentally inducing it)
will work. It's just that in the beginning you kind of have to relax into it and allow it to arise on its own so that you begin to become familiar with it.
Andy W:
I thought that maybe the lack of sukkha was because the piti was coming too early in my sits, before I'd got proper access concentration. So I sat for one 40 minute sit ignoring all the fizziness in my hands and focusing ruthlessly on the breath. It was closer to what Daniel describes as the 'rabid dog' mode of concentration in MCTB rather than the relaxed summer breeze, but I managed to go the whole sit missing only six breaths. Leigh said this was some pretty serious access and couldn't really recommend much more I could do.
Naturally this unpleasantness made it very hard to enjoy the practice and feel the pleasantness of it all, . . .
I left the retreat on Sunday and after three days in the unreal world the pressure in the nose has dwindled to a sort of slug curled up on my nose. But ideally I'd like it to go away so I can enjoy samatha practice again.
I'd really welcome any suggestions about what to do about the blocked piti, both now and on retreats in the future. Also, if anyone has any advice about how to enter the first jhana without that pleasant sensation, I'd like to hear that too.
I've never heard of nor am I really familiar with the concept of "blocked piti" so I may be of no help to you there. (Sounds to me like a fabricated perception. . . meaning that I'm not really certain that there is such a condition.)
But on the subject of being able to enter jhana,
that I am familiar with, although it can sometimes be difficult to teach to others. From your description above, I'd suggest that you stop trying to
identify piti and sukha as they are occurring, and just remain focused on the
pleasantness of the breath. It is the
pleasant sensation of the breath (either in its whole bodily sensation or just in the limited sensation experienced at the tip of the nostrils) that is the doorway to successfully using Leigh's descriptions. That pleasantness will bring on the sensation (which will naturally have piti/sikha as part of it) that takes the mind into a blissful feeling and sensation.
The access concentration that you spoke of above was
samadhi, a very strong
samadhi at that, much more than is needed in order to access jhana. For the mind to become absorbed in an object like the breath, it first must become concentrated on the object. This is called
samadhi. The difference between
samadhi and jhana is that in
samadhi one is concentrated
on the object, whereas in jhana, the mind becomes absorbed
in the object, which intensifies the blissful sensation of the state. The adjective "access" is only descriptive of the amount of concentration necessary in order to enter
into absorption. Yet, even having developed that correct amount of "access concentration" one still must be able to
relax into the
pleasantness of the breath in order to enter or allow the jhana absorption to arise.
So, I would recommend first just allowing yourself to relax as you are entering meditation, and to continue to relax while focusing
lightly on the breath. As in the old Brill Cream advertisement, "a little dab will do ya." A little dab of focusing (lightly) on the breath while endeavoring to experience its pleasantness. See where that takes you, then report back here.