Hi all,
First time poster. Skip to the end if you don't want the backstory.
About five years ago, I spent a year in a Zen Buddhist monastery, but I haven't really been meditating with any frequency since then. Even while there, I was mostly wallowing in psycho-drama ("content"). I kind of hated meditation, to be honest. I just thought it was beneficial. But I did at times attain some degree of concentration.
Well, this past week, I made the right google search, and ended up discovering the concepts of access concentration and the jhanas. The following description of access concentration sounded so attainable that I thought I'd try it: (http://downtoearthdharmablog.blogspot.com/2011/10/access-concentration-pragmatic-approach.html)
Usually my meditation is painful. I feel I am making no progress, and have never had much impetus to continue: I've had no insights to speak of (other than, perhaps: everyone is neurotic and 99% of thoughts are worthless). But the thought of access concentration being a slightly different state got me excited, and bamn, on the first try, I felt a qualitative difference in my meditation experience.
Actually, it was different enough that it didn't feel like a struggle. I was still being effortful, but I no longer felt pummeled by my thoughts. Intrigued, I asked, "what's next?" and stumbled here. I thought I'd make the first jhana my goal. That was about two days ago. Since then, I've done about six hours of meditation, maybe a little more. It usually went like this:
1) Attain access concentration by focusing on the breath.
2) Notice pleasant bodily sensations.
3) Attend to pleasant sensations.
4) Sensations rise and then fall away
5) Return to breath, repeat.
Until tonight, I'd just stop eventually. There would be no cascade of pleasantness or obviously altered state. Sometimes the pleasure would get fairly intense, but not overwhelming.
Tonight, though, in a little 25 minute sit, it totally cascaded. Here's how it felt:
1) My eyes were closed, and I was focusing on my breath
2) I attended to the pleasant sensations, and they rose and fell as usual
3) I tried relaxing a little more, feeling subtle pleasure in my whole body as I breathed
4) And then, it began to multiply: I felt expansive and, I don't know, static-y with "pleasure", though it was a kind of rough, hard-to-handle pleasure.
5) My eyes started quivering uncontrollably and my head felt like it was tilting back, though I can't be sure.
6) I saw a very bright light in my mind, but it didn't last long; kind of a burst.
7) It all got a little overwhelming, and I wanted the eye-quivering to stop, so I consciously tried to relax.
8) This helped, but the pleasure quickly subsided and left only this huge expansive "dark" feeling.
9) Then I didn't quite know what to do, so I opened my eyes, calmed down, and wrote this

What that the first jhana? If so: What should I do next? I assume the more I do it, the more stable it gets? Is it appropriate to enter jhana every time I meditate?
I feel like I've made more progress in two days than I made in a year of intensive practice at the monastery. What the hell :-P