Jhana Meditation For Fun and Profit, Part 1: Getting Ready
Don't let the weird and somewhat cringe-y culture surrounding meditation turn you off!
Back when I was a bored suburban seventeen year old, I did what a lot of bored suburban seventeen year olds do and got really into Buddhism. Usually, that particular obsession only lasts until your parents get over the shock and the smell of incense in your bedroom starts to give you headaches - but for some reason, I committed to the bit a little more than most and ended up spending a year or so moving between various monasteries and retreat centers while I prepared to become a monk. During that period, I spent most of my time doing odd jobs, trying (and failing) to learn a bunch of ancient languages, and otherwise meditating enough to give myself life-long back pain issues. I didn’t end up ordaining (in case you were wondering if this blog was secretly run by an always-online monastic in the woods somewhere) but I’ve maintained a meditation practice fairly consistently since that time.
Whenever one of my more secular liberal acquaintances finds out about my habit, they tend to scoff a little. And I understand why! There are a lot of good reasons to roll your eyes at meditation. For one, a lot of people who make it a big part of their personality are totally insufferable - we’ve all run into the Meditation Guy, who drones on about chakras until you want to strangle him with his own dreadlocks. The larger meditation ecosystem is overflowing with grifters and weirdos too, and sifting through all the pseudo-scientific nonsense to find anything resembling rigorous theory can be exhausting. Plus, when you’re busy with work and family and all that, making space in your schedule to just sit there doing nothing might seem like an obvious waste of time. So I understand why people might be skeptical. But there is one very good reason to not roll your eyes at meditation, which is that it’s actually a really great practice that can seriously improve your life. So for that reason, I thought I’d try my hand at giving a (hopefully) non-insufferable explanation of my favorite sort of meditation - jhana meditation - and how you can start doing it yourself right away.
(Before I start, I want to clarify that what follows will be a sort of lowest common denominator pitch - it’s meant to give a foundation for anyone interested in meditation at all, including those who couldn’t care less about the more traditionally spiritual or religious dimensions of the practice. If, on the other hand, you find yourself drawn to those things, this whole thing might seem a little lifeless. But that’s okay! Everything presented here can be easily integrated into a more explicitly Buddhist framework if you so desire. I don’t want those metaphysical assumptions to be a hindrance for anyone, so I’m going to leave them out, but how you interpret and understand your own practice is always up to you.)
What is Jhana Meditation?
In Theravada Buddhism, jhana refers to several distinct conscious states of intense concentration and awareness that are accessible through meditation. You don’t hear much about these states in modern American Buddhism, where a different sort of meditation - sometimes called “mindfulness meditation” or vipassana - is much more popular. But in the oldest Buddhist scriptures we have available today, you see jhana emphasized over and over again as the primary mechanism by which devoted practitioners reach enlightenment. Pretty much any time the Buddha gives any sort of spiritual advice at all, he ends with encouraging his followers to pursue jhana, and huge portions of the Pali suttas1 are dedicated to categorizing all the different jhanas and explaining how best to reach them. There’s also good historical reason to think jhana meditation stretches back to the earliest eras of Buddhist thought, and predates many other ritual and devotional practices that are more prominent today.
I should note here that a fairly prominent split exists in the Buddhist world when it comes to exactly what qualifies as jhana. Some teachers and scholars will say that many jhanas are relatively easy to access, while others insist that even the first jhana requires a radical shift in your conscious state. I tend to think the suttas themselves frame things somewhere in the middle, but it doesn’t really matter - unless you’re diligently practicing in a monastic setting, the purpose of jhana meditation shouldn’t necessarily be to achieve any particular jhana state anyway. Of course, if you do happen to achieve them, all the better! But for most people who are considering jhana meditation recreationally, you should really just focus on cultivating and enjoying the pleasant sensations that accompany deep concentration and stillness, regardless of whether you actually enter “real” jhana states or not.
When I start talking about these pleasant sensations, it’s easy to assume that what I’m referring to is a sort of second-level relaxation or calmness, like you might feel when you watch a pretty sunset or read your favorite book. But the sensations cultivated during jhana meditation aren’t like that - they feel good in a direct, immediate sense, the same way sensual pleasures like a warm bath or an orgasm do.2 The Buddhist scriptures call these sensations piti and sukha. If I had to describe piti, I would say it’s a little like if your foot falling asleep was extremely pleasant; you feel a radiating, tingling feeling throughout your body that’s often accompanied by goosebumps, light tremors, and a sense of expansion and contraction as you breathe. Sukha, which comes afterwards, is even harder to describe, but I would compare it to a feeling of absolute weightlessness and stillness. These two sensations are enjoyable, exciting, and refreshing, and they should be the central aim of jhana meditation for the average person who wants to develop their practice.
For some people, this sounds like exactly what they’re looking for, but it can be a little disenchanting for others. I mean, here you are, thinking meditation is some exotic spiritual practice that ends with you excising your deepest demons or becoming one with the universe or something sexy like that - now I’m telling you the whole point is just to bliss out for a bit? Isn’t that more selfishness than self-improvement? I’m always torn on how to respond here. On one hand, it’s true that meditation can help you improve yourself in all sorts of different ways (we’ll get back to this later when we drill down into the specifics of the practice) so framing it as nothing more than a way to feel good does sell things a little short. And plenty of people who get deep into the jhanas will report experiences that really do seem otherworldly. But at the same time, I want to stick up for the idea that a reliable source of well-being and joy is more than enough on its own terms, and we shouldn’t rush to turn it into just another therapeutic tool or load it up with self-conscious spiritual depth. Most of us spend an hour a day doing worthless little tasks that bring us nothing good at all anyway; why not spend that time “just” enjoying your own mind instead?
Getting Ready for Jhana Meditation
Hopefully, that little pitch above piqued your interest and you’ll considering giving it a shot. If so, you can hop on Google right now and find plenty of guides that will lay out the basics of a meditation practice.3 Leigh Brasington, for example, has some good instructions here that specifically deal with reaching the jhanas. Rather than trying to produce my own systematic guide - something I am certainly not qualified to do! - I thought it would be more helpful to just run through a typical meditation session and describe what’s worked for me. As I go, I’ll try to give a few insights that might help someone who’s just starting out on their own; I’ve spent most of my time as a meditator working by myself, and I know it can be frustrating to feel like you don’t have any answers to the million little questions that will inevitably pop up. But the most important thing to remember in all this is that the basic practice of cultivating concentration and stillness by focusing on you breath is really all you need! Everything else is just a tool to make that easier, and nothing I’m going to say here should be considered valuable for its own sake. If something works for you, then keep doing it. If something isn’t working, let it go. As long as you’re consistently and sustainably developing your ability to concentrate, you’re moving in the right direction.
The first thing to tackle when starting a meditation practice is how exactly you’re going to sit. For most of my practice, I’ve used a small folding bench to meditate in a kneeling position. I like this method because it helps me feel stable and solid, and because it takes the strain off my back while still requiring me to engage my core in a way that keeps me from totally zoning out. However, a recent back injury has made longer sessions in this position difficult, so now I use a meditation cushion with my legs crossed in a half lotus. When my pain is especially bad, I’ll just sit in a chair with a cushion behind my lower back. Ultimately, you should just try whatever position allows you to stay comfortably upright for a while; don’t let spiritual pride make you think that sitting on the floor with your legs crossed is somehow more enlightened than just using your kitchen chair. The important thing is that you can stay stable without developing any serious discomfort and allow your body to relax.4
When it comes to timing, I would recommend starting out with ten or fifteen minute sessions until you feel like you’re not ready to stop when your timer goes off. One great way to ruin a meditation practice is to jump right into miserable hour-long sessions you aren’t ready for! It’s better to hear the bell (or beep or whatever) go off and think, “Darn, I wish I had a few more minutes.” Of course, if you’re only meditating for a short amount of time, it’s very unlikely that you’ll ever experience piti or sukha - but those shorter periods are a good training ground for developing skills that will allow you to slowly expand your sessions until you hit thirty minutes to an hour, which I think is a good place to land for a daily practice. I would also suggest getting an app on your phone that lets you set flexible timers and has a nice, gentle sound for letting you know the time is up. It can be surprisingly jarring to hear your phone’s default alarm sound once you start really getting focused.
(So concludes Part 1 of this series - check back later for Part 2!)
The Pali suttas are the oldest existing Buddhist scriptures. Think of them a little like chapters or verses in the Christian Bible - they’re mainly collections of stories, speeches, teachings, rules, and so on. The only difference is that the Pali suttas are absolutely massive, with a full unabbreviated copy coming in at easily a thousand pages or more. They’re also written in the relatively obscure dead language Pali, which is where the name comes from.
Don’t be weird about this - it’s just the most obvious direct comparison!
You’ll also find plenty of bad guides, or just guides that have nothing to do with the type of meditation I’m describing. Feel free to look at those too, but be aware that not all meditation is the same, and some habits you’ll pick up with so-called “insight meditation” might be unhelpful if you’re pursuing jhana instead.
For a more detailed overview of all the various postures and positions you can try out as a meditator, this guide can be really helpful.
Great article!