is seeing lights indicative of entering a certain jhana?

alexander a mixon, modified 6 Years ago at 9/22/17 12:12 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 9/22/17 12:12 PM

is seeing lights indicative of entering a certain jhana?

Post: 1 Join Date: 9/21/17 Recent Posts
somtimes when i meditate I see cloudy lights behind my eyes that are somtimes grey/white and at their most intense can be blue and yellow. they swirl around eachother and dissapear. often they will take sort of a v shape and rise upwards and fade away over and over and over.
this often seems to happen only in a certain stage of my practice. and it comes and goes. somtimes it will last for a few seconds, and somtimes a few minutes before fading away completely and it may or may not come back during my session.

i have only had a regular meditation practice (every day) for the past year but in the past i have meditated inconsistently and done yoga as well.

i have only recently become familiar with the jhana concept from readin daniel ingrams book and culadasas book. before recently i was only really familiar with vajrayana buddhism.

is seeing this light indicative of entering a certain jhana? if not, is there any mention in buddhist teachings on this sort of thing?
shargrol, modified 6 Years ago at 9/22/17 6:55 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 9/22/17 6:54 PM

RE: is seeing lights indicative of entering a certain jhana?

Posts: 2344 Join Date: 2/8/16 Recent Posts
In general, lights can come up whenever there is good concentration -- sometimes they are called "concentration lights". 

And in general, some traditions use the light image as an object of meditation. If you google "nimitta" you will probably find some additional info on this. 
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 6 Years ago at 9/23/17 2:12 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 9/23/17 2:12 AM

RE: is seeing lights indicative of entering a certain jhana?

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
Lights can show up at lots of places, and which jhana they are associated with can be guessed at by what the lights are doing and what other factors are present or not present.

For fun with lights, check out www.firekasina.org and the audio reports, might start at the beginning. 

Enjoy!

Daniel
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Alesh Vyhnal, modified 6 Years ago at 9/27/17 10:28 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 9/27/17 10:28 AM

RE: is seeing lights indicative of entering a certain jhana?

Posts: 130 Join Date: 2/14/13 Recent Posts
According to L. Brasington diffuse white light is a sign of access concentration. In his approach to enter the first jhana one should not concentrate on this "nimitta" but wait for a pleasant sensation somewhere in the body to appear. Please look here for more information about his approach to nimitta (for me it is definitely a "puff of smoke" emoticon ):


http://rc.leighb.com/more/Nimitta.htm

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