Eran G:
End in Sight:
Second, use 1-3 to build up a lot of concentration and relaxation, and when you get to 4, use the equanimity to let everything go as much as you can. 4 is old news. 5-7 will be old news. There won't be anything to do besides relax and be at peace; no worrying about what's next. Don't try to diagnose which jhana you're in past 4, just be absorbed. My experience is that it stops mattering which jhana above 4 it is because the most interesting quality of them all is the peacefulness / equanimity and not the perceptual stuff. The major difference apart from perceptual stuff is that the peacefulness goes up as as you rise through them.
If you get strong absorption going, that will be good, and the side benefit is you'll probably wander from 4 up to 8 without expecting it.
This brings up a question about building concentration in the jhanas. I've never really seen any description on how to solidify a jhana, just how to move from one to the next. My technique at the moment is to pay relaxed attention to what I consider the focus of that jhana. So in 1st, pay attention to the object, in 2nd attention is still around the object but more open to the body as whole, 3rd attention is on the periphery, 4th attention moves back forward but is more open. I think that by staying with what is the natural focus of the jhana it becomes stronger and more solid but my experience with this is not 100% consistent. There's still some small shifts inside jhanas and sometimes between them even when I don't intend for that to happen. Any advice on solidifying and making jhanas stick for longer and deeper would be great.
This stuff is pretty individual, but my experience was that past 1st path, all the jhanas became a bit slippery (as if my mind would just switch to the one higher after awhile for no reason), and after I got enough experience with them (and especially during later paths) they became hard to remain in via intention only. If I sit right now and try to experience any of them, and my concentration isn't high, I flip to another one every few minutes, nothing I can do about it.
So, the only way that *I've* found it possible to solidify jhanas is to get some kind of harder absorption going. The harder the absorption, the more the mind stays with whichever jhana it is.
How to get absorbed is also individual, but keep in mind that every jhana beyond 1 doesn't have directed thought as a factor. Directed thought is the thing the mind does when you try to pay attention to anything. So that means, if you're trying to control the focus or return attention to the focus, you're probably doing something that ultimately stands in the way of absorption.
I find that in jhana 3, and especially 4, there's some kind of extra tranquility or equanimity or unconcern or lack of caring that occurs, so what I do is, up to jhana 2 I build concentration by following any object in whatever way works, in 3 I try to include the equanimity as part of the object, and when 4 arrives and the moment is right (= enough concentration, enough tranquility) I let go, stop caring, stop trying, etc. without ceasing to notice what my experience is. This is generally enough, and there's a moment in which it's clear that directed thought has left, and I count this as the border between "looking at" a jhana and "being in" a jhana. It's not necessarily a superhard absorption (depends on concentration), but when directed thought ends, attention functions very differently, so the whole thing is quite different.
This doesn't solidify any particular jhana, it solidifies all of them equally.
If I want a harder version of 1-3, I do this, then come back down to the earlier jhanas.
Recently I was playing around with jhana 8, and the transition between "looking at" it and actually being in it is striking because the absorption (even if it's only for a few moments) does seem automatically to be pretty damn thorough. With eyes open, it's even more striking...one moment there are some funky sensations, the next there's a kind of absolute lack of thinking and a failure to process vision normally...then back to funky sensations.
Anyway, hope that helps, and good luck!