Hi everyone. This seems like a very helpful and unique place.

I've been practicing breath concentration for some time. Until not too long ago, I had only felt some calm, some post-meditation clarity and ease, and, during retreat, some relieving states of painless silence and vastness. But I've been practicing pretty diligently; I have lots of free time and am naturally solitary.

A number of weeks ago I spent some time without internet at home and with a new nice zafu, and I read something about entering jhana — which I hadn't really thought of as actually real or relevant, sort of mystical, unattainable, or at least extremely difficult, something for monks in ancient Asia. But I recognized something about the description of piti and it seemed like access concentration could describe something I had stumbled upon a few times.

And as maybe you've guessed, just the simple advice to focus on the pleasure and let it do its thing, was really opening. Meditation became exciting! A bit like having swum around on the surface of a lake for a long time and finally getting the courage and skill to dive under and look around.

These states felt very, very fulfilling. I am "into Zen," and after sitting in 1st and 2nd jhana, I would be very happy to feel the ease in my body, drink tea, do some bowing: I felt very peaceful, and I really loved the feeling behind words like "just this!" Like I had turned off an annoying fan I didn't realize could be turned off; like I had never been really calm or present before, and now the world was "just as it is," beautiful and complete and simple — you know how it goes!

Now for a couple of weeks it's usually been very easy to get into some jhana, at least up to what I think is the 2nd. If I try a little, I can get a nice taste of it on the bus or in a meeting.

Almost immediately after sitting down and setting up my posture, I feel an exciting yet familiar feeling of refreshing delight. I give it attention and let it blossom, but keep focusing on my breath in the hara. Sometimes there's lethargy or sleepiness and then I kind of waver with attention and wander off, but usually I can keep it up until it becomes easy, obvious, and very vividly pleasant. There's some kind of blurriness or noisiness or gauziness — maybe you will understand if I say I like to wear like a knitted sweater when I sit, because there's some kind of affinity between that texture and the mental feelings.

I keep giving attention to the flowing pleasure, and sometimes I like it so much that I try to keep it flowing, but typically I feel like I begin to be attracted to a perceived background of deep silence. It's like inside of me or behind all the sensations there's a hollow space that stands out because there's so much pleasure stuff going on on the "surface." So I kind of anchor my attention on this void that's underneath the pleasure, and then within a few minutes, the intense flowing pleasure fades out — it feels a bit like it sinks and concentrates somewhere down in my belly.

Some glossy, shimmering pleasure surface remains. By now I have a very vivid experience of being a nice black nothingness in roughly the shape of my body, but with a cool fluctuating prismatically colored surface. Sometimes I feel like a glass statue with some water running around on the surface. There's some solidity to the shape, I feel like I'm clenching my body but I think in actuality my muscles are pretty relaxed.

So I think this is how the 3rd jhana appears for me. I think I've been into 4th jhana, but I'm not entirely sure, and I don't really remember how it was. The first time I thought I got the 4th, it felt like I had gone through a cycle of wonderful altered states, and then after more and more intensification, my eyes naturally focused back out on the wall and it was like having gone deeper and deeper into the ocean and then surprisingly emerged, but also somehow still being submerged... My ass always starts really hurting after ~30 minutes, but in this state, pain wasn't bothersome. But it felt very natural to bow, say thanks, and get up, like I had "finished."

The thing that's most surprising for me is how quickly this pleasure became ... well, unsatisfying. In these meditations now, there are some aspects that feel a bit iffy for me.

One is that I just don't really care about this pleasure. I feel a bit spoiled feeling like that, thinking it, and writing it. It comes up, feels cool, and sometimes I feel "oh yes, good, it still works," but it doesn't make me overwhelmingly happy, and sometimes I feel almost tired with it. I think there's some negative energy, I sometimes think of it as a blockage. I've experimented with trying to "relax mental formations" of resistance to pleasure, and I think it's been working as a way to go deeper.

The other is that I always feel pretty much like "I am still in there." The jhana doesn't take over completely. I am sitting there experiencing jhana. Thoughts come up, sometimes little distracting wandering things, but usually it's more like ... I dunno, like the ego just wants to make itself known again, like "hello, nice to have some jhana going, dum-de-dum." And in subtle thoughts that engage with the meditation, like "ok, time to concentrate more" or "this feels such and such" or "cool, 3rd jhana kicked in." Not usually so wordy, but there's a definite and pretty continuous sense of self.

Another is that I feel like the fulfillment I used to feel from meditation was maybe mostly sentimental, and an excited reaction to the feeling of being somewhat calm for, like, the first time. Reading about jhanas and stuff on sites like this is very unsentimental, and that might also be a factor in making me less interested in the beauty of Zen. I do still appreciate that, it feels like one of few valid refuges in a confusing and blatantly crazy world. But it's not so easy as experience bliss, be calm, bow to altar, drink tea, and be super peaceful and happy with just this. I mean, it's pretty obvious from a Buddhist perspective that mind states are not ultimately satisfactory, but it's still a bit unsettling.

I don't know anyone I can talk about this stuff with, so I write this so that I can have some recognition from people who know what I'm talking about, and maybe some advice on something I should work on or something. Actually I will be going to a Zen retreat next month and look forward to the dokusan opportunities. Maybe I will start working on a core koan. The sensei there is not formally my teacher yet, so I'm not really tethered, but I like and have a lot of respect for this sangha, so I'm not sure whether I should start doing some insight practice on my own before talking to the senseis.

Truly grateful for any response. Sorry for writing such a long post!

this stuff is very insightful, and it corresponds with a lot of people's experiences here. any temporary jhanic state is bound to have some elements of dissatisfaction. i'd suggest you read Daniel Ingram's book and read some of the posts on this forum to see how other people have grappled with the dissatisfaction, and things they have attained that go beyond any short-lived pleasurable jhanic experience, things that reduce or even eliminate dissatisfaction

his book is available here in wiki form:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB?p_r_p_185834411_title=MCTB

Hey M B,

Welcome to the DhO.

Love your descriptions, they're very well written and it's easy to get a sense of where you're at based on this. Your practice sounds quite good already, it also sounds like you've got your stuff together and aren't buying into any of the cool states you're experiencing which all suggests that you're in the right place to get some serious insight. I'll highlight a few points and see if I can say anything useful to your practice:


1st jhana, without a doubt. The focus on the pleasant feelings is what gets you into jhana, the lethargy is common for a lot of people but you're going about this the right way anyhow.


Sounds like 2nd jhana, but the way you mention clenching you body (would it be accurate to describe this as a "sense of effort"?) and the "black nothingness" suggests 'hard' 1st jhana. To get into 2nd jhana more firmly, shift the focus to the mental sensations of pleasure and keep it there in the same way you focused on the bodily bliss in 1st.


I'd say you're edging into 3rd jhana in this description, the eye focus is more peripheral and there's more of a cool, fresh feeling to it. 4th is panoramic, the eye focus, for me, is almost as is my eyes are looking everywhere at once, there's a sense of them having moved back in my head to take in more of the perceptual field.


Outstanding. As Josh has pointed out, this is a great insight and if you can see this dissatisfaction in jhana then you're doing insight practice already.


Try to see the Three Characteristics in all phenomena, seeing that everything in manifest existence is essentially unsatisfying is an important insight. See them as transient and impersonal, see how nothing stays the same and it's all constantly changing, see how it's only a misreading of this phenomena which creates the illusion that there was ever a self there in the first place. This is insight practice and this is what leads to enlightenment.


Do what you think is the right thing for you, this is about being pragmatic and doing what works. This site is loaded with good information and practical advice, ask questions, keep a practice thread going and practice well.

By the sounds of things, you're doing fine and it's just a matter of seeing the Three Characteristics in all phenomena, you're already intuitively aware of suffering so look at impermanence too, or no-self, it's all there to see and to see it in the right way, to perceive clearly, is to be enlightened.

Good luck!

Thank you josh and Tommy!

I'm with you that it's good not to grasp at pleasant jhanic experience as being fulfilling or very important. However, I think there might be some kind of aversion or distancing that to me doesn't feel really insightful so much as kind of disappointed or slightly dysphoric! For a while now I haven't really been much into pleasure at all, probably correlated with generally not being in a very elated mood. But it goes up and down. When I first "discovered" jhana, the weather was great, my life was feeling on-track, and then I easily found jhanic pleasure very wonderful indeed.

But that stuff doesn't seem too important. It's not a big problem. If this temporary not-so-very-happy general mood helped me acquire a healthy distance to jhana and some preliminary dukkha insight, that's good.

Tommy, your reply helped me realize that my jhanas were kind of diffuse. I think I had been going on auto-pilot a bit, not really going deep with my concentration — I'd made it a bit stressful, trying to get to the next level quickly, not really settling in each stage. Now that I made more "effort" in keeping my concentration on its proper objects, I got deeper, and didn't feel a lot of overt dissatisfaction, and the ego presence was less. Simpler, more focused, more intense, more beautiful...

Your advice to deepen the 2nd jhana by really placing my attention with the sukkha worked very well, I think. In my most recent sit, I was able to distinguish piti and sukkha much more clearly, and I was able to let the 2nd jhana's pleasure become pretty powerful: it's like a deeper current, a bit like a wobbly dubstep bass line, sometimes almost orgasmic.

3rd jhana meshed quite well with the descriptions too, and when entering the 4th, I found the wide, looking-everywhere-at-once feeling you mentioned, and used that as a kind of guide. After stabilizing in that, I felt that the breath in the hara came out quite clearly again, but as a very obvious part of my experience without needing particular focus. I noticed that some arising thoughts were like wispy clouds on a blue sky, but some arising thoughts seemed to lead towards contraction, but when that happened, it was pretty easy to actualize the wide openness again. The 4th jhana reminded me of descriptions of shikantaza. It was like focusing on something very large and wide, which is pretty peculiar, now that I think about it!

The descriptions of shikantaza sometimes say to kind of give attention to all sensory feelings. I can imagine two subtly different approaches: kind of stretching out one's focus to see, hear, & feel — or kind of focusing on vastness itself. The latter sounds like the way to go for approaching 5th jhana. The former might be more useful for starting insight practice?

When my 30 minute timer rang, I gently turned it off to sit a bit more in 4th jhana, but I noticed a lot of piti and sukkha bubbling up again, so I figured I would just as well make dinner.

It feels very good to have found the value of real concentration again, because it let me go deeper and see the jhana states more clearly. I want to work some more on stabilizing my concentration, and I think the 5th and 6th jhanas seem very interesting — over the past few sittings, I've felt some hunches as to what the 5th may be, but I think I need to let it emerge more naturally instead of really trying to bring up ideas about space, or just sit more in 4th jhana and maybe it will become obvious.

I'll see what happens with my concentration over the next few sittings and make some decision w/r/t beginning to focus on the Three Characteristics.

Ha! Brilliant description.