pop - immediately out into another headspace. Very spacious, calm, and with sudden full-body awareness. Faded very quickly, not sure what to make of it.
I noticed this when I first started a while back but it seems to have gone away now. I'm wondering if it's a new baseline that develops - have you encountered this after so much practice? Does it always appear for you or can you just fall into jhana pretty quick now?
Lastly, the degree of relaxation seems to have a pretty enormous effect on the ease of entering jhana. Simply inclining myself toward jhana would result almost immediately in absorption.
This has been my biggest discovery with jhana. There seem to be two ways to do it. You can muscle your way there with a lot of effort and get breif periods of it, or you can relax your way there, and coast on through. You can go all the way to the end by simply relaxing. Don't look for anything to do, simply let go completely. This also makes the whole thing feel much more like a wave. I don't get any kind of popping, they just kind of fade into each other like a rainbow (with a bit of rest at certain points, so they're definitely separate "levels").
I know what you mean about randomly falling into the second during the day. You can actually carry the third around with you if you're relaxed during the day, and sometimes it erupts into random raptures. Very nice way to live, I'll tell you. ^^
I recall reading somewhere that the method you enter absorption with will affect the absorption itself. So, for example, someone focusing on the pleasant sensations that present during access concentration and riding those sensations into jhana will have a more rapturous experience. Since I rode in whilst investigating perception, it seems logical that the range and quality of attention itself within the jhanas seemed to be the most dominant aspect. At first, 3rd jhana was incredibly strange. It was like the middle of my attention had just dropped out, or inverted in some odd way.
You should read this chapter:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB%205.%20Dissolution,%20Entrance%20to%20the%20Dark%20Night?p_r_p_185834411_title=MCTB%205.%20Dissolution,%20Entrance%20to%20the%20Dark%20NightWhereas one might have felt that one’s attention had finally attained the one-pointed focus that is so highly valued in most ideals of meditation during the Arising and Passing Away, during the Dark Night one will have to deal with the fact that one’s attention is actually quite wide and its contents unstable. Further, the center of one’s attention becomes the very least clear area of experience, and the periphery becomes predominant. This is normal and even expected by those who know this territory. However, most meditators are not expecting this at all and so get blindsided and wage a futile battle to make their attention do something that, in this part of the path, it simply won’t do.
Daniel talks about how the jhanas and the progress of insight are connected in another chapter too. I've had this kind of experience, so I can confirm your theory - at least in my case. When I first started practicing jhana after hitting an A&P experience around new years, I was getting a lot of varied effects, and I think that tends to come from less focused attention. The jhanas can be done accompanied by any number of mind-states or feelings, which will make them feel like completely different mind-states. If you dissociate from the jhana factors, it will make the jhanas appear AS the nanas - seems like.
Toward the end of the sit, with awareness resting on awareness, there was a peculiar sense of depersonalization. Like I wasn't breathing, but rather watching myself breath. The same odd, unsettling feel when you see yourself projected on a dozen different TV sets in an electronics store.
I've gotten this as well too. Did you feel like you were sitting in your head somewhere?
Concentration is improving (deeper stillness, less effort, more enjoyment) but jhanas are still a hit-or-miss affair, and I certainly haven't been anywhere past 2nd.
I made a post at the end of that thread that could be helpful if you want to move on to deeper jhanas. TLDR, I basically said to
relax, haha. Don't concentrate, instead, think of it as absorption. Use the same kind of attentiveness you would use to watch TV, and simply watch the jhana factors. Something that helped me was to realize that jhana is letting go. It isn't produced by letting go, and letting go doesn't help jhana factors arise. Rather, the factors themselves ARE the letting go. Relaxation = jhana. You enter jhana with full body awareness - which is essentially letting go of outside distractions. The tingling rapture of the 1st/2nd jhana is always there at a low level. Then you let go of that and emotional comfort arises (it's easy to skip this one if you cling to the raptures, so let them go gracefully, and you'll get a reward that's even better). You let go of that and equanimity is all that's left. It's like the comfort of knowing you don't even need comfort, or the relaxation of all wanting. From there, there's a more difficult shift, so it can take a bit more time, but you'll notice you go a bit numb. This numbness is the letting go of the body. Essentially you become so relaxed that you forget you have a body. If you have trouble it helps to watch the blackness behind your eyes - but don't TRY to do anything! Then everything expands and dissolves outward. But remember, you're simply watching whatever happens with relaxation. Try to simply enjoy whatever good feeling is happening in the present moment, that will move you on much faster than if you try to help in any way.
Secondly, I routinely do concentration practice in bed prior to falling asleep and it's not uncommon to enter samadhi during this. Recently I entered a brief state -- maybe 5 seconds tops -- that seemed to be completely centre-less. Absolutely no sense of objective boundary between inner/outer. A really vast quality to the experience as well, despite its brevity. No idea what to make of this.
5th jhana - boundless space? The reason they are called arupa or non material is the information telling you have a body is shut down. Cool huh?
Have fun,
~D
That's what I'd say too! Nice work. The fact that you can do jhana better when falling asleep means relaxation is probably going to work for you the same way it does for me.
Wild. The MCTB description sure does seems to match, though I do recall some body awareness. Far too brief to really pin it down, though.
You will always be able to find body awareness if you LOOK for it. Same with thinking. If you go "oh, I don't notice my breath anymore," you'll suddenly find it. This is something I got bit stuck on, haha. I'd go "Oh did my body really disappear? I'd better check to see if it's really gone." Then I'd check in to body sensation and see my body was still there and be like, "Oh, sad, I must not be in the 5th yet." Remember, you're just sitting in a chair and retreating into your head. Jhana is like really advanced daydreaming. Don't look for anything outside of the jhana factors to prove you don't see them anymore. Just watch the jhana factors themselves, this is the concentration part of it. I've been hitting pretty strong jhanas lately after a period of struggling, and all I had to do was remove the effort and allow the relaxed attention to do its thing - same as getting sucked into a good movie. There's really no exception to the rule - it's taken me all the way to the 7th for a few weeks now (I'm starting to hit the 8th, but I need to get past the excitement bump ^^)! It's easy to get kicked out of the arupa jhanas if you try too hard with them.
Anyway, I hope this is somewhat helpful!
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