8th Jhana and Pureland - Discussion
Hello everyone,
I don't think I've posted here before, but I've been dabbling with the Jhanas for a few months now. I got access to the 1st Jhana on 2nd session after reading Ian And's excellent treatise on the matter here on the same forum. I also read the mindfulness thread. I've also been reading some of the related suttas like mindfulness of breathings etc.
I've been mostly accessing the "soft" versions of the Jhanas although a couple of times I might have been in a harder one. Sometimes I felt this pull where I wasn't in control anymore which scared me out of it. At some point I was trying to access the "hard" Jhanas starting from the 1st, but didn't have much success with it. I was getting a bit bored with the "soft" Jhanas at the time.
1st time I entered the 8th it was more like a sudden phase shift. It's like a blanket was pulled over my senses starting from the front. As it progress there was something relaxing in my ear and there was slight ringing for a moment.
Today I think I accessed the Pureland Jhanas even though as far as I know I'm not a stream entrer and probably haven't crossed A&P (although I'm not 100% sure about this. There was this one time when I was sleeping a few weeks back where lights started to flash like a strobo effect and I accessed a jhana or there was phase sift of some kind while the flashing continued and there was luminosity, but I got scared and backed out of it.)
Anyways back to PL. Today I probably entered the 8th after which my alarm rang, but I decided to continue. The alarm probably backed me up to 4th Jhana, because once I went back to it then next thing I entered was the 5th. Then I went through 6th and maybe 7th. Who knows maybe the 8th was there too, but couldn't discern that point very well.
In any case what happened next was that I got into this spacious state that was underwritten with feeling very similar to sukkha from 3rd jhana. I continued descent from this point through more refined states and got to point where there was very little going on, but I didn't attain Nirodha samapatti. I was in that most refined state perhaps for 5-10 minutes.
Now I got this afterglow going where I'm a bit spaced out and not thinking very structurally as you can probably notice from the way I'm writing this post. There is also this cool serenity going on in the backgroung.
Where am I going with this post? I don't know
I guess I've been intending to write here for a while, but never got around doing so.
The thing is at one point I was getting bored with the jhanas and wanted progress and try new things. At the time I was aware of "hard" Jhanas and vipassana. I tried the hard jhanas and perhaps even succeeded at a point or two, but once I was getting sucked in so forcefully I was losing my mind or control or whatever way you could express it I got scared on those points and snapped out of it.
I also tried TWIM or something like it. And I descended down some states. It didn't feel like the samatha jhanas because there wasn really that rush of piti or sukkha that you associate with it. It was more clear and calm and my mind came like a still lake of consciousness letting go and calming bodily sensations as I went. At this point I had a question on my mind, what kind of sign posts do the vipassana jhanas have? How do they differ from samatha jhanas? Perhaps I experiencing those.
Then I also tried some noting. Noting all things that came to awareness, but that was only one session or so. My goal was to get down to 4th jhana and then start that, because I thought that would the optimal state to be in before starting it, but perhaps it's beneficial to go to 8th or even PL. Who knows. Due to time constraints though 4th would be good.
Then there was this near A&P experience in my sleep. which I probably backed out of.
Well. I don't really know where to go next. At least with this PL I encountered new territory. To be honest I don't know if I want to attain A&P and go through the nanas at this point. And right now I'm a bit spaced out so making decisicions like that has to wait a bit
Any comments appreciated.
I don't think I've posted here before, but I've been dabbling with the Jhanas for a few months now. I got access to the 1st Jhana on 2nd session after reading Ian And's excellent treatise on the matter here on the same forum. I also read the mindfulness thread. I've also been reading some of the related suttas like mindfulness of breathings etc.
I've been mostly accessing the "soft" versions of the Jhanas although a couple of times I might have been in a harder one. Sometimes I felt this pull where I wasn't in control anymore which scared me out of it. At some point I was trying to access the "hard" Jhanas starting from the 1st, but didn't have much success with it. I was getting a bit bored with the "soft" Jhanas at the time.
1st time I entered the 8th it was more like a sudden phase shift. It's like a blanket was pulled over my senses starting from the front. As it progress there was something relaxing in my ear and there was slight ringing for a moment.
Today I think I accessed the Pureland Jhanas even though as far as I know I'm not a stream entrer and probably haven't crossed A&P (although I'm not 100% sure about this. There was this one time when I was sleeping a few weeks back where lights started to flash like a strobo effect and I accessed a jhana or there was phase sift of some kind while the flashing continued and there was luminosity, but I got scared and backed out of it.)
Anyways back to PL. Today I probably entered the 8th after which my alarm rang, but I decided to continue. The alarm probably backed me up to 4th Jhana, because once I went back to it then next thing I entered was the 5th. Then I went through 6th and maybe 7th. Who knows maybe the 8th was there too, but couldn't discern that point very well.
In any case what happened next was that I got into this spacious state that was underwritten with feeling very similar to sukkha from 3rd jhana. I continued descent from this point through more refined states and got to point where there was very little going on, but I didn't attain Nirodha samapatti. I was in that most refined state perhaps for 5-10 minutes.
Now I got this afterglow going where I'm a bit spaced out and not thinking very structurally as you can probably notice from the way I'm writing this post. There is also this cool serenity going on in the backgroung.
Where am I going with this post? I don't know
I guess I've been intending to write here for a while, but never got around doing so.The thing is at one point I was getting bored with the jhanas and wanted progress and try new things. At the time I was aware of "hard" Jhanas and vipassana. I tried the hard jhanas and perhaps even succeeded at a point or two, but once I was getting sucked in so forcefully I was losing my mind or control or whatever way you could express it I got scared on those points and snapped out of it.
I also tried TWIM or something like it. And I descended down some states. It didn't feel like the samatha jhanas because there wasn really that rush of piti or sukkha that you associate with it. It was more clear and calm and my mind came like a still lake of consciousness letting go and calming bodily sensations as I went. At this point I had a question on my mind, what kind of sign posts do the vipassana jhanas have? How do they differ from samatha jhanas? Perhaps I experiencing those.
Then I also tried some noting. Noting all things that came to awareness, but that was only one session or so. My goal was to get down to 4th jhana and then start that, because I thought that would the optimal state to be in before starting it, but perhaps it's beneficial to go to 8th or even PL. Who knows. Due to time constraints though 4th would be good.
Then there was this near A&P experience in my sleep. which I probably backed out of.
Well. I don't really know where to go next. At least with this PL I encountered new territory. To be honest I don't know if I want to attain A&P and go through the nanas at this point. And right now I'm a bit spaced out so making decisicions like that has to wait a bit
Any comments appreciated.
Thought best to mention I did not start meditation a few months ago, but actually have been practising daily for a couple of years. Mostly basic mindfulness based (shinzen young) things. Usually maybe 15 minutes every morning and then having walks in nature focusing on visual field and in general lot of off the cushion meditation. I didn't really start doing that much on the cushion samatha parctice until I read Ian And's article.
What made me think it's the 8th. Well the descriptions of 1 through 7 seemed to match what I was experiencing and they happened in logical order. Up until the 6th it's actually quite clear what is happening. Then for a while there was "nothing" and after that I seemed to enter a "bubble" as described in my previous post. All the while investigating what is stress and what is not stress which seemed to lead to deeper and deeper states. Yesterday I noticed I was able to stay in the 2nd jhana, make it stable and even intensify it. Before I've been just dropping through 1->2->3->4 etc. without stopping into one for more than 5-10 minutes. Just long enough to get to the next jhana.
What made me think PL vs lower Jhana. I had gone through the lower jhanas a number of times and never experienced something like this. As I mentioned I was probably in the 8th. Came out with the alarm. Went back into concentrating passed through what seemed 5th and 6th and perhaps 7 maybe 8 then stumbling into this by accident. Although I had read the descriptions from the wiki and it seemed to match. It felt something like 5th/6th + 3rd. There was "space" and "sukkha". Best I can describe it.
Of course it's easy to mistake things, but the descriptions seem to match my experiences so well. Obviously I can't be 100% certain it was the 8th, but up until the 7th I can be 95% sure and 6th 99% sure. I've no idea what dissolution is supposed to feel like. I read the description from MCTB, but that seems to describe it as a stage in the cycle of insight rather than a state attained by meditation samatha or vipassana.
Definately I've done no jumping so far. Even though sometimes the transition from 1st to 2nd seems to be very fast and I don't even notice it. I guess 1st is when you experience piti (even intense piti) and then take you mind off the object of meditation (breath) and then you lose it. I guess I have been to that state and sometimes even gotten stuck there unable to get to the 2nd.
Although right now I feel a bit what dissolution is described in MCTB it's easy to do wrong diagnosis either way. Looking at symtoms of diseases from online you'll probably be able to self diagnose a number of things. Right now I'm feeling pretty tired and powerless, but that has happened before even when I wasn't doing any meditation. So I'll refrain on passing that judgement unless I notice other things in line with it.
Edit.
I just had this "Hey, wait a minute!" moment. Couple of years ago in the summer when I took up meditation again it was prompted by an episode of me basicly lying on the floor for couple of days useless unable to do anything. It was then that I decided I had to do something. I found this e-book about conquering your fears with meditation. Which involved meditation on thought images, walks in nature focusing on the visual field among other things.
Around 5 years ago was the first time I took up meditation. I listened to Shinzen Youngs Science of Enlightenment audio CD's which involved guided meditations. When I was doing expanding and contracting with the breath towards the end of the guided meditation I was able to feel this energy doing rapid vibrations in my body. (3C territory?). Nevertheless I gave up on it some point since it didn't seem to yield any lasting benefits.
I seem to have some "cycling" where at some point I'm pretty tired unable to do much and times when I'm really energetic, nothing escapes me and I'm really efficient in everything I do.
Again hard to say about these things if they are path related or physiology related.
What made me think it's the 8th. Well the descriptions of 1 through 7 seemed to match what I was experiencing and they happened in logical order. Up until the 6th it's actually quite clear what is happening. Then for a while there was "nothing" and after that I seemed to enter a "bubble" as described in my previous post. All the while investigating what is stress and what is not stress which seemed to lead to deeper and deeper states. Yesterday I noticed I was able to stay in the 2nd jhana, make it stable and even intensify it. Before I've been just dropping through 1->2->3->4 etc. without stopping into one for more than 5-10 minutes. Just long enough to get to the next jhana.
What made me think PL vs lower Jhana. I had gone through the lower jhanas a number of times and never experienced something like this. As I mentioned I was probably in the 8th. Came out with the alarm. Went back into concentrating passed through what seemed 5th and 6th and perhaps 7 maybe 8 then stumbling into this by accident. Although I had read the descriptions from the wiki and it seemed to match. It felt something like 5th/6th + 3rd. There was "space" and "sukkha". Best I can describe it.
Of course it's easy to mistake things, but the descriptions seem to match my experiences so well. Obviously I can't be 100% certain it was the 8th, but up until the 7th I can be 95% sure and 6th 99% sure.
I've no idea what dissolution is supposed to feel like. I read the description from MCTB, but that seems to describe it as a stage in the cycle of insight rather than a state attained by meditation samatha or vipassana.Definately I've done no jumping so far. Even though sometimes the transition from 1st to 2nd seems to be very fast and I don't even notice it. I guess 1st is when you experience piti (even intense piti) and then take you mind off the object of meditation (breath) and then you lose it. I guess I have been to that state and sometimes even gotten stuck there unable to get to the 2nd.
Although right now I feel a bit what dissolution is described in MCTB it's easy to do wrong diagnosis either way. Looking at symtoms of diseases from online you'll probably be able to self diagnose a number of things.
Right now I'm feeling pretty tired and powerless, but that has happened before even when I wasn't doing any meditation. So I'll refrain on passing that judgement unless I notice other things in line with it.Edit.
I just had this "Hey, wait a minute!" moment. Couple of years ago in the summer when I took up meditation again it was prompted by an episode of me basicly lying on the floor for couple of days useless unable to do anything. It was then that I decided I had to do something. I found this e-book about conquering your fears with meditation. Which involved meditation on thought images, walks in nature focusing on the visual field among other things.
Around 5 years ago was the first time I took up meditation. I listened to Shinzen Youngs Science of Enlightenment audio CD's which involved guided meditations. When I was doing expanding and contracting with the breath towards the end of the guided meditation I was able to feel this energy doing rapid vibrations in my body. (3C territory?). Nevertheless I gave up on it some point since it didn't seem to yield any lasting benefits.
I seem to have some "cycling" where at some point I'm pretty tired unable to do much and times when I'm really energetic, nothing escapes me and I'm really efficient in everything I do.
Again hard to say about these things if they are path related or physiology related.
