Transcription
So we talked about the third jhāna, and what characterizes its primary nimitta is that very exquisite, tender, and lovely peacefulness. That's what's really characterizing it. And we pointed out, at several stages now, and I'm pointing it out again, that that tender and lovely peacefulness, the exquisiteness of it is a very refined place. It's a very refined realm. It's a very refined state. It's a very refined texture. And again, if you're not sure, if it's definitely peaceful -- maybe you've been there before; maybe it feels like this is peaceful, this is equanimous; it might feel very deep -- the refinement is one of the things that tells you you've moved deeper.
Now, 'refinement' means more than just 'calmer.' So certainly, when you move from pīti (which can have a lot of waves in it) to something like that, there's a calming (that's for sure) and a peacefulness. But by 'refinement,' again, I would use more the analogy of the different kinds of cloth. One cloth can be quite coarse -- my jeans here, the cloth is quite coarse there. A refined cloth -- it's got less fibres in it. It's got less material in it. There's less substance to it. So this is trying to articulate or pinpoint what we mean by 'refined.' It's almost gossamer-like in its refinedness at this level. Things are getting really, really refined.
To say it's more refined is more than to say just that it's calmer. It is calmer, but its texture is very, very refined in that sense, like a refined material. And so, there can be states of very deep relaxation. Some of you may even have experimented a little bit with sleep yoga practices, dream and in-between dream states. And they're states that are very peaceful. There's really not much happening. The mind is not moving anywhere. But compared to something like the third jhāna, they don't have that refinement. They're thicker. They're more velvety. So [that] can be helpful, etc., but when we talk about the peacefulness of the third jhāna, we're really talking about a very refined quality, and so that's part of also what helps with the discernment.
But today, I'd like to go on and talk about the fourth jhāna. And again, every time we move in the teachings or progress in the teachings, just a reminder about pacing. So we're going on in the teachings to the fourth jhāna, but what's your pacing? That's the more important question. Where's your playground right now -- the playground of your learning edge, the playground where you're spending most of your time, marinating, exploring the elements of mastery? That's what will really help -- certainly not zipping through at the pace that I'm going through at, which will even get faster in the coming days, because I've got some medical appointments, etc. So really the encouragement to, again, discern and attune your whole being, and your practice, and with us in dialogue, to your sense of your playground, of your learning edge. And that's where you hang out. That's where you have your fun. That's where you work and play and marinate, etc.
Okay, but the fourth jhāna. Let's go back to the Buddha. He's gone through jhānas one, two, three, with both their more technical descriptions, and then each one with their simile, with the lotus ponds, etc. We've been through that. And after the third jhāna, then he says:
And furthermore, with the abandoning of pleasure and pain, as with the earlier disappearance of elation and distress, he enters [he's describing a monk here] and remains in the fourth jhāna, which is purity of equanimity and mindfulness, neither pleasure nor pain. He sits [the monk sits] permeating the body [again, permeating] with a pure, bright awareness, so that there is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by pure, bright awareness.[1]
And then his simile is:
Just as if a person were sitting wrapped from head to foot with a white cloth, so that there would be no part of their body to which the white cloth did not extend, even so, the practitioner sits permeating their body with a pure, bright awareness. There is nothing of their entire body unpervaded by pure bright awareness.
That's his description of the fourth jhāna. Technically, the jhāna factors are just two now -- ekaggatā, which we've had in every one [jhāna], this 'with one thing prominent' -- that's how I'm translating it. One thing is prominent. The mind is gathered around, and in, and with one thing prominent. And that one thing prominent is the primary nimitta, which is -- technically it's upekkhā, and upekkhā, as we've been talking about in the last few days, is equanimity. So technically, at least in the commentaries, etc., the two jhāna factors here are ekaggatā and upekkhā: 'one thing prominent' and equanimity. We talked about equanimity a little bit already. We'll talk about it a little bit more today, and then also perhaps even a little bit more as the retreat goes on. But if I had to find what I think is the most helpful and accurate English word that encompasses the experience here and points us in the right direction, I would say 'stillness.' There is equanimity, and that's important, etc., but I would say 'stillness.' So that's what strikes one almost overwhelmingly. One is almost transfixed in and by an extremely refined, translucent stillness. That's the texture and the experience.
So we talked about refinement with the third jhāna -- it's even more refined, and again, that's a really important discerning factor of "Am I moving in the right direction here, or do I need to shape this a little more, or have I kind of gone off on a little bit of a sidetrack?" So it's really, really refined, and it's so refined -- like this cloth now is translucent. It's so subtle, so refined in its texture that the substance of the space that one's in, it's as if it's translucent. And actually, it's also a very bright space -- not for everyone, not always, but very common at this point to have a white light. And that white light is the stillness. The stillness is the white light. Technically, I would call it a secondary nimitta, like we've talked about before, and this white light can come up earlier. But that white light, this almost breathtaking white light of stillness, usually. It's a secondary nimitta. Sometimes, some people can have it very pitch black, but I think more common is to have the bright white light there as the stillness, mixed with the stillness. Technically, it's a secondary nimitta, but probably, by this point, organically, it's quite mixed, so that it is the stillness. The light is the stillness. The stillness is the light.
This light -- again, I think we touched on it before. I'll say it again: there's a brightness in the mind, and in a way, that brightness is just a kind of sign, signal, manifestation, reflection of the kind of brightness of presence at that point, the aliveness of the mind. That's one way of understanding what's actually happening there: it's a reflection of the energy in the mind of being present, of being conscious.
I don't know -- how did it sound to read the Buddha's description? Does it sound maybe less appealing than the other ones? [inaudible response from yogis] Yeah? It's a little less? More what? Yeah, I will come back to the confusing bit, because I think it's actually a bit confusing. But I think a lot of people might hear it and say, "I don't know, I like the lotus pond business and this upwelling of happiness." [laughter] So again, I want to translate it into experiential terms -- there's something almost stunning here, breathtaking. It feels like this still light, this very, very refined, still light -- it's almost as if one is, again, in another realm, "breathing the air of another world," to quote an old poet.[2] In fact, somewhere or other, a few times in the Pali Canon, the Buddha gives it the synonym, the nickname 'the beautiful.'[3] It's called 'the beautiful.' So hopefully this helps, at least, to give a bit more sense than something that maybe sounds a bit disappointing.
And again, as on other occasions, like all the other jhānas, he refers to it as an 'escape,' nissaraṇaṃ, that we talked about the other day.[4] The Buddha talks that way about the jhānas at times, and this is also a sense we can have in it. Once you're in this space, it really can feel at times like one is in another world. I'm in another world here, and that world is an escape from all the pleasure and pain, and all the shakiness, and all the complexity and difficulty of the world of the senses. [12:00]
So there is this one way the Buddha taught it, and one way of experiencing it is as an escape from this world, in a dualistic kind of relationship or comparison: this is a better place, escape, escape. And we can have that sense, this other realm. And like with the third jhāna, when we talked about it, there's this possibility for the after-effect of that experience to spill, after-effect on perception to spill out onto the world and colour our sense of the world, so that the essential nature of things, the essential nature of this world that we all agree on and feel that we inhabit, is perceived to be essentially stillness. So it's the same process: what was perceived to be essentially peacefulness is now essentially stillness. And so there's the dualistic conception, a dualism with the world, a duality with the world. It's an escape, and it's a much better place to be. There's that kind of thrust, both in teaching and experience. Then there's the thrust of: here's an experience, and it opens my eyes, opens my senses and my felt sense of what this world really is, and what the nature of this world really is. So it's much less dualistic, because then the world becomes, can be seen as being truly, in essence, this luminous transcendent stillness -- much less dualistic.
And as we talked with the third jhāna, there's a third possibility, taking from the Buddha's teaching where he emphasized all the jhānas as 'perception attainments,'[5] on the way to pointing something out about the nature of perception, about the malleability of perception, about the dependent arising and thus the emptiness of all things. So you could see it seemingly dualistically, seemingly non-dualistically, and in a way that transcends both, because it understands the dependent arising of the perception of duality or non-duality, the dependent arising of this or that. So all this is really, really important when we come to not just understanding insight, but also understanding: where are we going with the path? What are we aiming for? What is liberation? And what does our path suggest to us about our relationship with the world? And what kind of relationship and stance and view of the world does an awakened being have, a liberated being? Do they see it as something to escape from, never to be reborn again into this world, and there's a kind of dualistic conception? Or other possibilities. So it might sound like a bit of a technical point at this stage, but a lot ends up hinging on this, about how we want to live, about how we treat the planet, about our sense of awakening -- all of that. We'll come back to that.
In the fourth jhāna, the breath stops. One is no longer actually, as far as one can tell, breathing. So if you stay, if the breath is your primary object, and you're actually staying with that all the way through, this will become very, very clear: the breath gets more and more subtle, and subtler and subtler, until eventually there is no breath. Or you might notice it, so to speak, out of the corner of your eye, if you're doing another practice. How is it that we don't die then? I don't know the answer to this. I mean, I assume we're just breathing very, very subtly, and there's such a stillness in the being at that point that we don't need to move barely any oxygen. But maybe other people who know more about biology have better -- I don't know ... [inaudible response from yogi]
One does continue to breathe, but technically, the suttas say the breath stops, and most teachers would say the breath stops. And I think you would be hard-pushed -- even if breath was your main object -- to actually find a perception of the breath there. So technically speaking, the perception of the breath stops there. My assumption is, you're basically somehow still breathing, but at that point, because of the stillness and whatever is happening, the amount of actual oxygen that's moving and okay to sustain the organism, for sometimes what can be quite long periods, is very small. So I don't actually know what's going on. It's not that important, actually. It's neither here nor there. I just thought I'd mention it.
The citta is really captivated and transfixed by this translucent, very, very refined stillness, this sense of this beautiful, beautiful realm of stillness. And again, it's still a rūpa-jhāna, which means it's still, as the Buddha says, pervading the whole body. This luminous stillness is pervading the whole body. The body has become that. So the citta is captivated and transfixed, and again, like the other jhānas we were talking about, once you've got quite a bit of experience with it, in and out of that jhāna, then you might begin to feel like, "Oh, now I actually have to learn how to develop the steadiness of my focus, to stay steady on this really, really, refined frequency, this really, really refined, luminous texture." So as always, sometimes at first it feels effortless, and then afterwards, you start to realize, "Oh, there's subtle work and play to be done here." And one of them is just (maybe, maybe for some people): can I just learn to stay with this very, very refined stillness? Another thing that can happen experientially at this stage is the felt centre of the citta, the felt centre of awareness, can drop. And it might have dropped already in the second jhāna and third jhāna. So some people experience the centre of the pīti often around their face or throat, and sometimes, some people experience the centre of the happiness around the heart chakra, around there. Sometimes, when you get into the peacefulness, it's sort of lower in the belly. And sometimes, with the stillness, it can feel like it's even lower than the bum. It's down. If I'm sitting on a chair, somehow under here is the centre of my awareness, it can feel like.
This is a completely secondary phenomenon, so don't latch onto that. For some people this is what they notice: "Oh, there's this thing," and then they use that as a kind of indicator, barometer of which jhāna they're in. Not a very good idea, because it's a secondary phenomenon. It's not reliable. We want to be really clear, as always: what's the primary nimitta here? This is what's telling me where I am, if I'm wanting to map it. This is what's discerning between jhānas. So that's actually quite important. I'm mentioning it as a thing you might notice in your experience. If you don't notice it, no problem at all. It really doesn't matter at all. But if you do notice it, careful that you're not then latching onto that as your primary indicator.
So I don't know what Jason was referring to, but I also find the Buddha's descriptions a bit confusing and puzzling. He said something like:
With the abandoning of [now, I said "pleasure and pain"; you could also say "sukha and dukkha"], as with the earlier disappearance of elation and distress [that's this particular English translation; the Pali is somanassa and domanassa; so with the abandoning of all that, but also with the earlier disappearance, so something had been abandoned earlier] the monk enters and remains in the fourth jhāna.
I wouldn't spend too long on this, but I will spend a little bit on it. "The earlier disappearance of elation and distress" -- what could that be? And why is it coming up now anyway? Something has disappeared earlier. It could be the earlier disappearance of pīti and the hindrances: pīti as 'elation' and the hindrances as 'distress.' The hindrances disappeared in the first jhāna; the pīti disappeared in the third jhāna. So it could be related to that. Or -- and probably more accurately with these Pali words, somanassa and domanassa -- it's a bit complicated, but they may more refer to the distress when one actually sees saṃsāra. One sees the fact that one is living in a world of impermanent things, and even pleasant things are impermanent, etc. And there's a kind of distress of the renunciate in that. The elation is when one realizes there's a path and has confidence that one can follow that path. I don't know. I've never heard a meditation teacher dwell much on this, and I'm certainly not going to. It's just, when you go into the scholarly thing, there's a bit of a debate. It's like, "What's he talking about here, and why is he suddenly introducing these terms that he hasn't used before?" I don't think it matters too much.
The other phrase, "with the abandoning of pleasure and pain" -- now, that's slightly odd as well, because you could say "with the subsiding of pleasure and pain," but abandoning is something we do deliberately. And the Pali word is pahāna, which is also the word the Buddha uses when you abandon unskilful ethical behaviour, or you abandon this or that that's unwholesome, unskilful. So I don't actually think it matters, but what it could be pointing to is what we talked about yesterday, when this question came up a couple of times about equanimity. So if I abandon -- means if I deliberately let go of clinging to pleasure or pain -- and 'clinging' can be pushing away as well, in my language, or pulling towards me, or hanging onto pleasure and pain. In other words, if I abandon the push-pull, that's something that I can do deliberately. I deliberately do that. Actually, in this case, in the way I would understand it, I'm not even completely abandoning it, because if you remember what we said yesterday, actually, there's a whole spectrum here of really, really subtler and subtler levels of push-pull, clinging. So if I kind of abandon them a lot but not quite all the way, then what I'm going to end up with, following on from what we said yesterday: when there's less push-pull, then it attenuates the vedanā. The very pleasantness and unpleasantness eventually just attenuate, and they become neither pleasant nor unpleasant. So the dominant vedanā becomes the sort of neutral one, because I've abandoned not so much the pleasure and pain, but I've abandoned any reactivity. Or I've abandoned a lot of the reactivity. It actually gets confusing, and "Why is he introducing this now, etc.?" Because it seems to suggest another way of going into the jhāna, through playing with this push-pull and everything.
So two things about that. Okay, so pleasure and pain decrease, pleasant and unpleasant decrease, and one is left with neither pleasant nor unpleasant. But what one can say about the neither pleasant nor unpleasant that one is left with is that it's very, very, very nice. And if it's not, something's not right. It's not the fourth jhāna we're talking about. It's very nice and very enjoyable. Again, it's an improvement over the third jhāna, and it's felt that way, and it's experienced that way, and it's also somehow a kind of neutral vedanā. So that's one thing to bear in mind.
The second is, and possibly more important: all this talk about "abandoning pleasure and pain," and "earlier disappearance of elation and distress," and what the different possibilities of that might mean -- there's a whole scholarly debate here. People think that one particular sutta has got mistakes in it, and they look for the Chinese parallel, and da-da-da -- it doesn't matter. Basically, I would say, it basically says: "There is equanimity." And that's all we need to worry about, I think. Remember, we were defining 'equanimity' yesterday, when it came up in the Q & A, as not an on/off switch, not a black or white "I have it. It's there, or it's not. I have it, or I don't," but a spectrum. To the degree that there is equanimity, to that degree there is the reduction of the push and pull, there is the reduction of clinging. So equanimity is a spectrum, and another way of saying what that spectrum is is that it's a spectrum of decreasing push-pull, decreasing clinging.
I think that's all we need to really understand here. It's pointing to a state of deep equanimity. And as I said (it came up yesterday), there are different ways and different contexts in which the Buddha talks about equanimity, and it's a really interesting subject. This fourth jhāna is what the Buddha would call "equanimity based on singleness" in contradiction or in complement to what, on other occasions, he talks about "equanimity based on multiplicity."[6] So you've got equanimity based on singleness, equanimity based on multiplicity.
What's this singleness or multiplicity of? Phenomena. So you've got equanimity based on many -- in other words, equanimity in relationship to many phenomena happening, many things occurring in the senses. And this fourth jhāna is not that, because everything has pretty much disappeared, and there is just this translucent, refined, beautiful white stillness, bright white light, stillness. So it's an equanimity based on -- there's nothing else happening. It's just that. The body, all the rest of it -- there's just that. So it's an equanimity based on singleness, versus equanimity based on multiplicity, which we touched on yesterday. An example was when the Buddha talks about the eight worldly conditions -- praise and blame, pleasure and pain, success and failure, and gain and loss -- and then Victor was asking about the word 'equanimity.' Again, here are those conditions or those opposites, and we can have equanimity in relationship to those perceptions. There's the perception of praise and blame: this person is telling me I'm wonderful, this person is telling me I'm an idiot, whatever it is. And the mind can have equanimity in relation to both. So, what that means at that level, it's a very important, but it's a more superficial level of equanimity. What that means is, we talked about, it's equipoise. Equanimity -- I'm guessing from anima, equal feeling towards both. I'm not getting super excited and glad when this person praises me, and then super depressed or angry when this person blames me. There is equipoise, equal feeling, whatever we want to say, towards opposites. So it's not like, "I like this, and I don't like that. I prefer this, or I get excited about this, or elated about this and distressed about that." Do you understand? In relation to multiplicity of phenomena? Clear enough? Yeah?
But again, as I pointed out yesterday in the Q & A, we can have deeper levels of equanimity. So for example, and following on the example I used yesterday, I think: the state of the vastness of awareness. Was that yesterday? We've talked about that though. So when the consciousness opens up, because of the openness of the consciousness, and because of the way one is practising, it's basically like letting everything just belong to the space, that vast space of awareness. And after a time, it might seem like the bird that was just singing -- it's just coming out of that silent awareness. And then the sound just disappears back into it, and one has that, and the body sensations, and the thoughts, and the rest of it. They're all just emanating from what starts to feel like a mystical, divine, forever-lasting space of transcendent, peaceful awareness. And things just arise out of that source -- mystical source, perhaps -- and disappear back into it. And seeing that, and then my job as a meditator at that point is to just let them come, let them go back, let them have it: "It's not mine." Let the space contain and let all these phenomena belong to the awareness.
And I don't know if you can hear -- in what I have just described, there's a relationship. One is practising a relationship of 'let it be -- let it come, let it go, let it be.' Can you hear that? So a really beautiful way of practising, extremely fruitful way of practising. A lot of potential there. Not that difficult -- just something that with setting up the practice right, and just staying with it, and again and again, one is practising that relationship: let it belong to the space, let it come, let it go, let it belong to the space. And then the very mystical beauty of that space starts to help you let go. It's like the space itself is not doing anything, but the sense of it -- it's almost like it can do the work. It can do the work of just being there, holding things, mystically being a source and (I don't know what you'd call it) a resting place of phenomena. And it's almost like the space does the work. Technically speaking, you're engaging a certain way of looking. You're engaging an insight way of looking which is just, 'letting be, letting go, letting go, letting go,' which technically means less clinging, less push and pull. And that just takes the whole thing deeper and deeper over time. And it might be that it starts to deepen, so that the ugly sound and the beautiful sound start to feel like they lose their associated vedanā. Exactly what I was saying before starts to happen: the pleasant, unpleasant starts to fade into more neutral phenomena. That neutrality may be impregnated with this mystical divinity, mystical silence, the mystical nature of awareness. But it's not in the particularity of an individual sound that it's pleasant or unpleasant. They've all got that -- even the ugly sounds.
So it can deepen. The equanimity there can deepen -- again, I think we mentioned it the last few times -- it can deepen to the sense of one taste, which I mentioned in relation to the third jhāna. So everything in this (just following this example of the vastness of awareness), everything can begin at some point to have -- all these phenomena, all these sounds, all the sensations, all the thoughts, whatever comes up feels like its true essence, its true substance is the same, and that substance is, in this case, mystical, divine, lasting-forever awareness. So there's a kind of oneness of substance that emerges there. And the opposite -- where at a more superficial level of equanimity, we were equanimous in relation to two things that were opposite: praise/blame, pleasure/pain, etc. -- because everything is one substance, the opposites kind of lose their meaning, because they're the same thing. They're the same substance. They're no longer opposites any more. It's all, in this case, divine awareness, the awareness of God, whatever you want to call it.
There are many, many other possibilities that function in the same [way]. They unfold in the same way. A similar thing could happen with a kind of mystical love, or a mystical compassion, or all kinds of possibilities. Really, really lovely, very available, just need to set our practice in the right way, and follow it, and follow it. And lovely as it is, it's still not the end of the road, nor is it the deepest end of equanimity, because I think as I also mentioned yesterday, the limit of equanimity that's possible, there are no objects that are any more even arising, because the fading has not just faded the pleasure and the pain, the pleasant and the unpleasant vedanā -- it's actually faded any sense of any object, or any phenomenon, or any sensation as well. So there are, then, in that ultra-deep equanimity, no objects, things, sensations, phenomena in relation to which a person can be equanimous. So there's a strange paradox in the depth of equanimity. The truest equanimity can't really be regarded as an equanimity, because there's nothing there to be equanimous about. Anyway, here we have in the fourth jhāna an instance of equanimity based on singleness, in complement to, in addition to other instances where the Buddha talks about equanimity based on multiplicity.
[35:50] So I think it's mostly true to say, let's say predominantly true to say, at this point in the fourth jhāna, there's a kind of -- if you check there, what's the emotion? I think the most likely answer, the most accurate answer, or the answer that's most prevalent would be: there isn't an emotion. The emotions have been pacified in that state. There's an absence or a pacification of emotion. Let's say a bit about that and come back to maybe qualify that statement. So this is interesting. And again, this subject of emotion, as human beings, as I said, it's one of those subjects that I don't think there's any end for us. There shouldn't be an end for us as human beings of our exploration of emotion, even just in our conception of emotion, let alone what we do with emotions and how we relate to them.
But here, what happens, what can be very common, actually, for human beings -- and we don't get a lot of help in our culture with this -- is that it's quite common for people to be actually afraid of their emotions. If a strong emotion comes up, I'm really not confident that I can tolerate it, or be with it, that I won't end up being a puddle on the floor, or a nervous wreck, or out of control, or whatever it is. And so people relate around that fear in different ways, and it's only because in our culture we rarely get the training to really work well with the heart. And to me, Dharma practice should be, over time, broadening and deepening the capacity of the heart. We can hold a lot of emotion, we can hold intense emotion. And the grief at what's happening in our world -- this is hard to bear, hard to hold. And it may be that for many people, that's one of the reasons why, for instance (I don't know if it's true, but maybe), species loss and climate change (and I think they used to call it 'species extinction'; I think a better word I read is actually 'species extermination,' mass species extermination), that it's just too much grief to bear. And so people avoid it. So if you look at what's most viewed every day in the newspaper, the climate change article rarely makes the top ten, etc. I'm not going to go into that now.
Or a personal grief, or whatever it is, or joy -- sometimes, you know, we talked about that bandwidth of happiness, that for some people, it's like, "Well, okay, that's enough now. Can I move on to the calmer one?" Can we hold that much joy? Can we hold that much energy of pīti? Can we allow it to flow through us? Can we hold that much grief? Is there such a thing as skilful anger or frustration, in ways that can be skilful, that are really big? All this. So, to me, a huge part of the Dharma path is actually broadening and deepening the capacity, the holding capacity of the heart. We get very little training for this in our culture. But in addition, there's the possibility of developing through Dharma practice what we've emphasized from day one: this sensitivity and refinement, so that not just our range of intensity, but also our range of kinds of emotions we're even aware of, or that we notice or can tune into grows. And the beauty of having that extended palette in our inner life, and then from which to relate to others, and our beloveds, and the rest of the world, and ourselves, and art, and the rest of it -- to me, that's also really, really important.
But sometimes, as I said, for a lot of human beings in our culture, to some degree or other, there's a fear of one's emotional life: "I'm okay with this kind of range, but if it gets too much over there or too much over there, I'm really not sure that I'm okay. I'm really not sure I will be okay." But there can also correspondingly be, for some people, a fear of the absence of emotion -- maybe even the same person at a different time. There's an absence of emotion in the fourth jhāna, you could say, and sometimes that can sound, "Well, I'm not sure I like the sound of that," or one has an idea: "That can't be healthy." And sometimes that idea about that state -- and it's just a temporary state -- the idea about it is maybe coming just from ideas that are woven into one's view at the moment, because of what one is working on.
So I remember I started meditating, and I think I very briefly told you, kind of went a little nuts for a couple of years. And part of my 'rehabilitation' was getting into psychotherapy, etc., and getting really interested but really helped with my emotional life, which was either way too extreme, without my understanding it, or just kind of cut off from certain emotions. I got a lot of exploration and opening with the emotions and working with them. But then I feel like, in the view, I could have very easily gone into the opposite view, which is, "If the emotions quieten at any point, there must be a suppression, or that must have unhealthy long-term consequences if you do that kind of thing. Authentic being needs to have emotion, and it's probably difficult emotion, because those are the more authentic ones." So these are the kind of views, and they're actually not uncommon. So there can be, for some people, a fear of emotion, and there can be for other people, or the same person at a different time, a fear of the quietening, a fear of the absence of emotions. Interesting thing to check out.
Having said there's an absence of emotion here, it's actually -- again, like all these things, it's not quite true. It's not so black and white because of a few things. One is, I would say, the fourth jhāna still has happiness in it. It somehow still has happiness, but it's so almost like invisibly woven into the texture, or impalpably almost woven into the texture. It's so subtle. It's implicit in it. It takes actually quite a while to even notice it. And it makes sense, because it was born out of happiness. So if you go through the jhānas, this state was born out of happiness. It was born out of the happiness of the second jhāna, and then the refined happiness of the third jhāna, but it's not at all something you notice at first, really. But I would say it's definitely there. Certainly in the beginning levels of the fourth jhāna, it still has and it still should have what we might call the 'echoes' or the 'embers' of the third jhāna's sukha and peacefulness, and that kind of really warm, gorgeous peacefulness. It's still kind of got the embers there, so that the beginning of the fourth jhāna has the echoes of that left over in the third jhāna. And they're, again, subtle, subtle emotional hues, colours pervading this space, if you like.
It also, I would say (again, contradicting what I said earlier about the absence of emotion), it also, like all the jhānas, has mettā in it. But again, it's hidden. The mettā is hidden at this point. And I've always found it interesting: when the Buddha talks about Right Intention, which is the second factor of the noble eightfold path, Right Intention or Right Thought -- what other translations of that are there? Right Resolve, Right Thought, Right Intention. So what does the Buddha say? What they are -- does anyone know? It's okay if you don't.
Okay, I'll tell you. He says the intention towards renunciation, the intention or resolve towards non-ill-will, and the intention or resolve towards non-cruelty.[7] Now, technically, if you look at all the lists and all this business, ill-will is the far enemy of mettā, and cruelty is the far enemy of compassion. It's the opposite. So you think, "Well, why didn't he just say, instead of non-ill-will and non-cruelty, why didn't he just say mettā and compassion?" And sometimes you'll hear it translated that way. Partly, I think he's saying that to allow the legitimacy and the space for exactly this kind of state, the fourth jhāna, something like that. There's deep equanimity. There's mettā pregnant in it, but it's a state of non-ill-will. It's definitely a state of non-ill-will. It's definitely a state of non-cruelty. So it's a subtle distinction in language that he's making that allows room, in other words, for these things, mettā and compassion, not to be foremost all the time, which allows space and room to explore states where everything goes quiet, apparently, yet I would say there's mettā wrapped in it.
There's another kind of secondary emotion, but I think I'll come back to that when we talk about the formless realms, the formless jhānas, because it also has that one. Anyway, in some senses, it really feels like a pacification or an absence of emotion. In other ways, actually, it's not quite accurate. Again, nothing is really as black and white as it appears. It's not quite accurate to say that. I remember, several of you have shared, sometimes there are certain images that arise, maybe very briefly or very much in the background, that kind of either ignite a certain jhāna or help you access the primary nimitta, or even appear in a jhāna, not as part of a discursive thought, but just as part of something that's very subtly, from the background, supporting the whole thing, propping up the whole thing. So the Buddha's image of being wrapped in a white cloth (I find, actually, for me that was one of those), or wrapped in a -- it could even be a cloth of pure, luminous stillness, or ... yeah, just wrapped in that pure, luminous stillness. But they may be (these images) very, very much in the background, but still doing their work in this very kind of tinctural way that we've talked about.
It's a very, very subtle way. If I go too much into the image, then it becomes more like an imaginal thing. But they can be very, very much in the background. The primary nimitta is still where the attention is, but they're kind of somehow helping to consolidate and get deeper into the whole thing, and the whole thing to get richer, the primary nimitta to get richer -- not richer because there's more images. One I used to have was lying -- it's almost like, maybe because I like the image so much of this pond with the lotuses, I used to get an image of lying at the bottom of that pond, and the sun coming. So imagine this clear water, I don't know, ten, twenty feet deep. And I'm lying on the bottom of the pond and looking upwards at all this light. But there's a complete rest in it. The mind is so not asleep, it's so alive, and it's so rested at the same time in this luminosity. So somehow, it was something that just came. It's just like that lying and looking up and totally open in that way to this light. Yeah, I could breathe underwater, so ... [laughs]
Another one, which completely doesn't make rational sense, was I would kind of feel sometimes, or afterwards I would say to myself, "I just feel completely hung out to dry," which doesn't -- it's like, what the hell does that mean? But the sort of image I would have afterwards was, like, as if I was hanging on a clothesline, like with pegs on my arms, and just hanging there, which doesn't even sound very comfortable. [laughter] So what was that about? It was actually that there was the sort of complete satisfaction that started in the third jhāna. It was like that was just ramped up beyond all limits. There was like, you couldn't have got any more completely wrung out, wrung through and put through the washing machine of this process, and then, just, "I'm done." But anyway, these are very, very much secondary nimittas. They're just little things that could somehow help at times or give indications.
Somewhere or other (I think it's in some commentary or other) it talks about two levels of the fourth jhāna. And I don't know what the two levels they're referring to are, but I could delineate two levels, certainly, in two different ways, or maybe three levels. So again, it doesn't really matter, but what matters is: am I getting to know the territory? Am I getting familiar with the different ranges and sub-states and textures of this whole space? So in a way, this thing about being hung out to dry -- that peacefulness and kind of complete contentment that was there in the beginning of the third jhāna, and the deepening echoes of the warmth and tender peacefulness of the third jhāna, they characterize, you could say, the beginning stages of the fourth jhāna. So that may be one level we could talk about. But as it deepens, even those things begin to fade, and they almost become indiscernible, and there's just left this purity, this pure stillness, pure non-movement, pure absence of solidity, free of solidity, pure presence, pure awareness, pure consciousness. There's a sense of purity there that's very beautiful, and that comes to predominate.
You could also divide it another way in two (again, like we divided the third jhāna): that the stillness is here in the energy body size, but one might also, as it deepens, get a sense of a much larger realm of stillness. But again, as we said with the third jhāna, the primary focus wants to be in the energy body size. I'm not yet going out there. That comes later. I'm not yet exploring the far reaches of this realm of stillness. I want to be primarily here for the fourth jhāna to really consolidate and deepen, and really bathe in its milk. So you could make three or two, or this two or that two -- it doesn't really matter. For me, it doesn't matter. I think the invitation, though, is, again, to discern more, to get to really know spaces inside out, and get really familiar with them.
So how does it progress to the fourth jhāna? How do we do that? Well, mostly through the maturing of the third jhāna. Over time, long-term maturing of the third jhāna will just deliver the fourth jhāna. It should, at some point. Eventually, how do we get to the fourth jhāna? Well, the same way, with all that mastery business. Eventually, it's just by subtle intention, through the familiarity of going to this space, this level, the fourth jhāna -- eventually we just remember that stillness, remember that state, remember that beauty and purity, and it can come back just from the intention.
What can help, if it's ready to mature, if it's maturing and just needs a little help (and sometimes you don't even need to do that little bit of nudging), what can help is noticing within the third jhāna, noticing and tuning to -- well, let's say two things: the stillness and equanimity in the third jhāna. So the third jhāna has peacefulness, but as I said, it also has a lot of stillness in it. It's not completely still, but if I tune to the element, or the feeling, or the sense, or the frequency of stillness in it, again, that's going to stand out, and it may help the whole thing deepen, because what I tune to gets amplified. And in this case, the amplification is a deepening. So tuning to the stillness, noticing, and then tuning to, really tuning to the stillness or equanimity in the third jhāna, and/or noticing and tuning to whatever the most refined frequency is in the third jhāna, because again, as we move from jhāna to jhāna, there should be an increase in refinement. So tuning to what's most refined -- this is a general principle now, not just applies to this -- will help me, take me to the next level, and the stillness of the fourth jhāna will begin to emerge.
I would say, again, that a bit like what we said with the third jhāna, the fourth jhāna will be better, it will feel better, more compelling, more clear, more clearly discriminated, more fulfilling, and all that, when it actually has within it, and you can feel within it some of that profound and beautiful, tender gentleness that goes with the third jhāna. So in other words, the beginnings of the fourth jhāna, when they have that kind of experience, that usually ends up being a much richer fourth jhāna experience, even if later on they kind of refine out. They can get subtler and subtler, and then, as I said, they get purified out.
And so there's this luminous stillness, and you can play with the same things, really: opening, opening the body, and opening the mind to it, opening, abandoning, surrendering, or penetrating -- same modes of attention. Or we can think about dissolving, which I think I mentioned before. But somehow, at this level, it gets really, really potent for me, this word 'dissolving.' What would it be to dissolve my body into this luminous, beautiful stillness, dissolve my body into it? The body becomes that, but the body also just dissolves in it. So there's a movement of intention there. There's a direction there. And again, just as in the third jhāna, sometimes there can be a kind of felt sense of bifurcating or splitting between the mind and the body a little bit, just subtly. Again, at first, body and mind totally integrated. They're just really into it. And then with a lot of fourth jhāna experience, sometimes you can feel like, "Oh, body and mind," and then dissolving my body, and at other times, dissolve my mind. What is it to dissolve the mind into this luminous stillness, to play with that kind of intention?
So at times, those feel like separate intentions, separate processes. Ideally they're one, but it doesn't matter. Again, we're getting out of this thinking of a jhāna as a very neat, defined, black-and-white on/off switch or box, and it's more just the territory here, and "Okay, now I dissolve my body, and then I dissolve my mind." It doesn't matter if they're separate. Jhāna practice is a broader thing, rather than worrying about those edges of "Is this it? Is it not it? Is it right? Is it wrong?" But like always, we want to really penetrate, and really get intimate, really get inside and intimate with this luminous stillness. And remembering the primary nimitta is this purity of refined stillness.
A funny thing can happen. You might have either experienced this, or witnessed other people. Sometimes in the fourth jhāna, what can be quite common is a kind of leaning forward. The physical body actually starts leaning forward. I don't know how common this is, actually leaning forward, and it can be really, really extreme, so that someone sitting cross-legged on the floor actually ends up with their forehead on the floor. And someone might think, "Oh, they're fast asleep," or they see them going like this, and they think [they're fast asleep] ... far from it! So the nodding looks very different and feels very different. You can tell the difference between these things. They both involve a leaning forward. They're really quite different phenomena.
So Ajaan Mahā Boowa was one of the great (he died not that long ago, in fact) twentieth-century Thai Forest meditation masters. And he used to say in relation to this leaning forward: don't alter it at all. Don't mess with it. The process is happening; you let it happen, and if your forehead ends up on the floor, you let it end up on the floor. I had a teacher who said: as soon as you start noticing that happening, stop it, and just make sure you can sit upright. So there are differences of opinions. I have, I admit, over the years, gotten into -- not a bad habit; a habit that I slightly regret. So I do lean forward, and sometimes quite a lot. Looking back, it would have been better had I nipped that habit in the bud and not allowed it to develop, because it can be a little distracting as things go on. But it's certainly not a tragedy. However, I'm saying this now so that if you encounter it, you can perhaps nip it in the bud, and make an intention to sit upright, stop it when it's happening. But even if it does happen, you can sometimes just very gently sit up, keeping the meditation going.
What's happening here? So I don't know. I'm not sure, percentage-wise, how common this is, but it's really not uncommon. Is it that we're conceiving of our attention as something that operates forwards? And so the stillness is in front of us, and we generally conceive of our attention -- I know I can hear something back there, but because the eyes go that way, and the nose is there, and the mouth is there, the sense organs are there, they're in the head, and they're kind of pointing that way -- is it that we just habitually conceive of our attention going forwards? And then we conceive of the stillness primarily in front of us, and that's why we're leaning forwards.
So you can play with a few things here, and I think it's worth trying to nip this in the bud if it starts to come up for you. But you can play with a few things. Almost like imagine the stillness 360 degrees, like the Buddha's analogy -- wrapped around the body, so it's 360 degrees around. It's a scaffolding of stillness, almost, that's right around the body space, that's keeping it upright, because there's as much support, or there's as much presence of the scaffolding in front, as behind, as to the sides. And so playing with that 360 degrees prevents us from a habit of feeling and sensing objects in the mind being somewhat in front of us. And then, in a way, my attention is pulled equally, equanimously in all of the different directions. There's maybe less chance of falling over forwards. Remember when, on the opening evening, when I introduced the counting with the breath, and I said, "Play with it behind"? Getting used to playing with or breathing in from the back, getting used to turning around in physical space 180 degrees the sense of where we're paying attention and which direction the attention moves in can bear significant fruits later on when it comes to something like this.
So it could be something like that. It could also be, at this point -- I don't know; I've never really talked to anyone about this -- it could also be that what starts to happen at this level is a significant degree of unfabricating is happening. So we've talked a little bit about that. Some of you are very familiar with this teaching. But it's related to what I said about equanimity. As we let go of more and more clinging in the moment, there's less and less push and pull, less and less clinging, then we talked about the vedanā, the pleasant/unpleasant are actually fabricated less, fabricated less and less and less and less. So there's more and more unfabricating, less and less fabricating of what? Well, of self, but also, in this case, of perception and sensation. Less and less and less, until at a certain point, the sensations don't even arise. Less and less and less. There's more unfabricating. There's quite a degree of unfabricating at this point, at the point of the fourth jhāna. Unfabricating -- there's quite a degree of deconstructing or non-constructing going on.
So sometimes I wonder: is this falling over just a kind of reflection in the body of the kind of unfabricating that's going on? There's less construction. Because it also happens -- well, I should say it also happens for me sometimes, and again, it's a habit that if I could go back, I would change. But it also can occur when you're deep in insight ways of looking, and they're working primarily with this unfabricating, working with deeply letting go, and a similar sort of thing happens. I don't know. I'm not sure. But it's worth knowing about and working with. It's part of the territory potentially here, and it may be something that comes to bother you if you don't nip it in the bud. Or it may be like -- I don't think it's that much of an issue for me, but for some people, they feel like, "Oh, I really wish," etc.
Probably a more significant thing to look out for, even, is that again, after many experiences going in and out of the fourth jhāna and getting used to it, you remember what I said about a dam bursting when you reach a new level? And it's just like, "Wow!" It's just happening. I don't have to do anything. It's just perfect as it is." Then, after a while, it's like, "Ah. Now some more subtle work and play -- I see the need for that and the potential for that." So one thing that can happen, a kind of problem that emerges after quite a lot of experience going in and out of the fourth jhāna, is that sometimes, one's there, and it's very nice, it's very still, the mind is definitely very mindful, very equanimous, very focused, but it's just a fraction dull. So there's no nodding. There's none of that. The whole thing is much, much more subtle. It's very subtly, very slightly dull at times.
This actually is an important thing to notice, to look out for and notice. It's still a state of equanimity, of mindfulness, of clear awareness, and all the rest of it, of focus, of samādhi. But it, relatively to what it could be, is just a little bit dull, and that's a really important thing to take note of, to note, "Ah, it's just gone into that slight dullness, and can I ramp up, in this moment, the sense of presence?" So just turn up the sense of presence. I'm present to this primary nimitta, to this stillness. There's a presence there, a real aliveness of presence. One of the ways you can do this is, really come into the sense of now, now, now. [snaps fingers] It's now. This thing is now. This stillness is now. And really come sharply into the sense of now, with presence. It's two ways of saying the same thing. And that allows it to become brighter and more alive, etc.
There are many instances -- like I said, the Buddha talks about the jhānas a lot in the Pali Canon, and there are some instances where he sort of does it in a certain formula, and other instances where he does it in another formula, and other instances where there's a third kind of formula or way of explaining. And one of these stock, almost contrived formulas is, he goes through the first four jhānas, and he describes them as we've just described them, and then he says, then the practitioner, then the monk (he's usually talking about a monk), he says: so evaṃ samāhite citte, which means something like, "He [the monk], with a citta, with a mind/heart, with an awareness samāhite thus" -- thus meaning from the jhānas. Usual translation you'll hear is 'concentrated,' but actually it means samādhified.[8] Partly why I'm wanting to dwell on it -- he goes through a whole list describing what the practitioner has got from their practice of the jhānas, the first four jhānas, and then describing what they then do with that, how they put that mind to work. And there are different formulas and different contexts depending on who he's talking to and what he's describing.
But what's often translated, for example, first four jhānas, and then the practitioner, "with a citta, with a mind thus concentrated" -- so I'm just wanting to point out (we've dwelt on this a number of times): what's the difference if we translate samādhi as 'concentration' or we leave it as samādhi? We talked about this, right? So to me, samādhi is the richer word, and I don't get narrow into that view. Because it's very easy to read these texts and take certain conclusions, and I want to actually bother to take the time going through this, and indicate how we can read these passages and the translations of these passages, and just assume it means "with a mind very concentrated and very stuck, very able to stay steady with one thing, and very like a laser beam." So all these words are very easy to hear that way, and I'm going to bother to go through the Pali, and actually see -- well, there are different ways we can open this out. So that's the first one: "with a citta, with a mind thus samādhified, thus harmonized, in agreement." To me, it's got a whole different range and richness of what's involved there, rather than just "concentrated." Then he says: "with a mind thus samādhified," and then he goes on. Other adjectives -- "with the mind thus [not just] samādhified [but] parisuddhe" -- which means 'purified.' What might that mean -- 'purified'? Purified of what?
[inaudible response from yogi] Okay, but that should have come with the first jhāna. [inaudible responses] Yeah, so of vedanā, hindrances. It could mean all kinds of things. I think what I'm pointing to, partly what I want to point to is how easy it is to read these texts, and read them -- like when we listen to Dharma talks -- and listen already programmed or read already programmed to hear a certain narrow range of meaning which is not necessarily there. It could be also 'purified' of relative grossness, yeah? You know, when you refine something. So I just want to open up. So yes, hindrances, subtle hindrances; yes, pleasure and pain; yes, relative grossness. In other words, what is happening? Because this is the point: the Buddha has gone through the first four jhānas, and then he's explaining to someone or other what the point of it is. So again, we go back to this whole question. We started the retreat so much talking about "What's the point of this? Why are we doing this? What are we going to emphasize? What's important here?" Right? Coming back to that. So it could be purified of ... who knows? But it could be purified of grossness, of subtle hindrances, of pleasure/pain.
Then he repeats this, parisuddhe pariyodāte, which actually also means 'pure.' It also means, this word pariyodāte, means 'very clever' or 'excellent' or 'accomplished.' And sometimes it's translated as 'bright,' and in English that word has that "Bright -- oh, she's very bright." So it has a kind of ambiguous range of meaning. And as I said, there is this sense of visual luminosity there, but that's really a kind of brightness of presence. And when we talk about a bright person, it's also that they're bright in presence. It's not just that they're very good at doing Rubik's Cube or whatever. The mind is bright with presence, but also bright with possibility, like when we talk about so-and-so is 'bright.' It's like there's possibility there. So this translation of 'bright' -- it is, as I said, a very pure realm of still light.
The 'purity,' though, is interesting, if we linger on this word, because it's also related to the stillness. In other words, the stillness itself is something pure: purity of push-pull, purity of equanimity. So again, just expanding on the possible meanings. When you say a person has a really 'pure' character, it's like saying they have a lot of integrity, which is also like saying they can't be bribed by something pleasant or blackmailed by the threat of something unpleasant. So 'purity' could refer to something like that. It's about how is the mind in its poise right now, in relation to the threat and the dangling carrot of unpleasant and pleasant? So opening up meanings. It's so easy to hear and read, and just hear and read what we already know, what we've already been told. That's the most common way, unfortunately, for human beings to hear and read -- just to hear and read what we already know. And as I said, it could also be purity of refinement. So if you think about something like gold -- you mine gold, or you (whatever they do) gather it, mine it, and it's got other stuff in it. And so, to purify gold is also to refine gold. So all these things -- it's like the mind is getting down to something of its pure ... nearer, let's say, to its pure and natural nature. So words like 'pure' -- they can mean a lot of different things. And in a way, I think it's pregnant with all those meanings, and it should be, rather than bringing it down, because then he says (still a lot of adjectives describing this mind after the meditation, after the fourth jhāna) anaṅgaṇe, which is something like 'passionless' or 'blameless' or 'unblemished.' And vigatūpakkilese, which means something like 'free, without defilements or obstructions.' Mudubhūte, which means 'malleable,' 'pliant,' 'supple.' Later, there are passages where he does the same description, and he really picks up on that one. And he says, like a goldsmith, when they've got this substance, now they've got their molten gold, then they can shape it however they like: malleable, malleable, malleable.[9] And that may be (or it is, in my view) one of the really centrally important fruits of all this. I stressed it at the beginning of the retreat: malleability. One of the main fruits of jhāna practice is the malleability of perception. So it's here, now. Kammanīye, which means 'workable,' able to be put to work or directed in work in a certain way.[10] Ṭhite, which means 'steady.' And then the last one, āneñjapatte, which means 'attained to imperturbability.'
Very easy, I think, to hear that or read that in that context, and just read it very quickly and think, "Yeah, it means the mind is now absolutely nailed to its object. It doesn't move. It's imperturbable." But does it only point to that? Might it also point, again, to equanimity, which we've been talking about, and the quietening of the push and pull? Push and pull throws the mind out of balance. You're exerting, you're pulled by something, or trying to hang onto something, or pushing something away. It throws the mind out of balance. And so it could be that the imperturbability really refers, or refers as well, or maybe even refers principally, less to a kind of complete ability to fix the mind's attention on something unwaveringly, and more to this capacity not to be swayed. It's steady. It's unshakeable. It's imperturbable. I'm not swayed by my reactivity to any phenomenon -- pleasant, unpleasant, or otherwise, maybe.
But really the point here is, again, just to point -- it's an illustration in a much larger context of how very easily we can hear and read, and just basically hear and read what we already know, and we're learning very little new. Things are not being opened up or challenged. And in this particular case, to open up the view. And it's related to: what are we doing here? Why are we doing this? And therefore, what's important? Of all the different things that are going on when we practise samādhi, and all the different things that we could emphasize -- and again, what we emphasize, how much the big picture view will end up directing us, consciously or unconsciously, wisely or unwisely, in terms of our micro-moment-to-moment choices -- right? I've said that, like, five times already, so I'm just repeating.
And then he says cittaṃ abhininnāmeti, which basically means 'directs or applies the citta, inclines or bends the citta towards,' and then he gives a whole bunch of things that you can then do with the mind or direct your awareness to. And one of them is vipassanā practice or certain kinds of vipassanā practice. I want to point something else out about that sutta. So here he is. He's speaking. He's explaining to someone, this person or that person. It's a kind of contrived educational situation, a contrived formula, in a way. He goes through the first four jhānas, he gives the stock descriptions, and then he gives this whole list of: "And thus the monk with the mind, thus da-da-da-da-da, and thus da-da-da-da, and thus da-da-da-da, does this and this and this." The whole thing is a very stock, contrived formula, but to me it's like, not to get too (and I'll come back to this as we go on) -- not to get misled by that contrived formula. It's actually, see the sutta in context, that it is a contrived formula. It's a kind of educational heuristic technique he's doing. It doesn't then mean that we should then do jhāna one, followed by jhāna two, followed by jhāna three, followed by jhāna four, and then we decide, "Okay, now I'm going to do this." It's very easy to read a sutta like that and just take it, kind of not really understanding it as a heuristic tool, as an educational tool. It's a contrived formula. It doesn't mean that that's how we meditate. But there are some people who would teach that way because it says, "Well, one, two, three, four, and then you do this, and then you do your vipassanā" or whatever. And then there may be other situations where they say, "One, two, three, up to eight, and then you do your vipassanā." Do you understand what I mean by 'contrived'? It's not really a strict instruction for practice.
Okay, a couple of things. So if any of you, or any of your future selves, or anyone listening to this anywhere, any time, if ever you decide that you would like to really -- you find that you would really like to get deep into jhāna practice, and you find yourself in that territory, and you want to devote some time to it, jhānas, and how they work with insight so beautifully and fertilely, once you've got to this stage, it can be really helpful, I think, to almost make the ... I know a monk who teaches: make the fourth jhāna your base. Ajaan Lee, Ajaan Dhammadaro, one of my teacher's teacher's teacher, a famous monk from the mid-twentieth century in Thailand, a Thai Forest monk -- he said: make the fourth jhāna your base. It's like it's a hub, and from there you can go to lots of places. It's this place of very bright, very steady, but kind of not very warm awareness and consciousness. I would like to say make the third and fourth jhāna your base. If you ever get to that level of practice, and you decide you're really into this, make the third and fourth, because the third has such a lovely, warm, healing kind of space. It's such a lovely, warm, healing space. So you can make the third and fourth your base, and then kind of venture out backwards in the jhānas, forwards in the jhānas, to different insight practices. And that becomes kind of home base.
But having said that, as I said, some of you will never want to do that, and you should never feel that you should do that. You don't have to develop jhānas to that degree. You don't have to develop jhānas to any degree. Sometimes people say, "I need the jhānas. I need the jhānas." Or just because I've emphasized something, or they've heard someone, "I need the jhānas to get insight." I don't think it's true. There is a passage where the Buddha says, "Without jhāna there's no liberation. Without jhāna there's no insight. Without insight there's no liberation."[11] But I'm not sure. Or you might have heard me say something. Sometimes what I say is just in a context, and certainly (where are we now?), it's like, more than ten years ago, when I first started talking in here in public talks about jhānas, the context was much more anti-jhāna and much more dismissive and pooh-poohing, and thinking they were a ridiculous waste of time or a dead end or dangerous. So, teaching is in a context. I might really pump up and say just how important they are, but you don't need the jhānas. And sometimes people think, I emphasize the healing qualities, and people think, "Oh, I need the jhānas to heal." You probably don't. They can be very healing, but it's very rare, I think, that somebody actually needs the jhānas to heal, and they couldn't heal in some other way whatever it is that they're wanting to heal.
However, having said that, I would say the way we're emphasizing, the ways we're emphasizing working on this retreat, what you may need to heal, much more than the jhāna itself, is some of what we've been emphasizing in the way of working. So for instance, when we talk about opening, and really opening, and really abandoning, and really surrendering, that may be much more significant in a person's healing than the attainment of this or that jhāna, because that person may have, for lots of different reasons, actually quite a limited ability to really open. Or they think they're really opening, and actually, it's only halfway or whatever. Or to be really wholehearted -- these things, I would say, however it comes, they may be necessary. I think it's probably rare that an actual jhāna (it may be possible) is necessary, and there's nothing else that will give that kind of healing for a certain person. But to be able to open as a human being, I mean really open, open the energy body and open, open -- that may well be quite significant, because it has to do with much more than the attainment of a state in meditation. It has to do with one's relationship with life, and existence, and relationship with others, and all kinds of things, sexuality -- all kinds of things.
Do you remember we talked about the cooking ingredients? So a similar thing: here, if you're in the fourth jhāna, and you want to go to the third jhāna, what do I need to grab from the shelf and add? Yeah, sukha. I just reach for my sukha, and I pour in the sukha, and fourth jhāna plus sukha should deliver you to the third jhāna. So, a handy trick, but again, part of the art of all this, and also just the malleability of perception and the art of playing with perception.
I think I mentioned this already, but it's worth stating again. It's probably over time -- it's probably not just one or two experiences -- but probably over more repeated experiences with the third and fourth jhāna, and the deeper jhānas, like jhānas from three onwards -- their increased refinement, not retroactively so much as when you come back to the pīti and the first jhāna, they will usually have the effect of refining the pīti in the first jhāna -- actually calming it (that's one thing), and then maybe refining it as well. Calming it, definitely, but also refining it. So when you go to these other jhānas, probably repeatedly, and then come back, it's like your sense of what the first jhāna is begins to change. And again, that's part of why the Post-it notes. And that may happen with other jhānas, with the sukha, etc.
So I don't need to repeat this, but just to include it: all the business about mastery goes here as well. So all the things, all the elements of mastery -- you can play with them here. They're just the same: ability to sustain, ability to summon at will, ability to ping-pong, ability to go for walks outside, etc., all the rest of it. Because now you've got more jhānas to play with at this point, there are increased leapfrog ping-pong permutations and possibilities. You can be jumping all over and practise that. And again, once you get to this point, you want to be practising a little bit at the end, just having some fun at the end of sittings, sort of moving around and seeing how rapidly you can move. But mostly you want to be marinating. And really marinating in this, it does something very profound to the consciousness, to the being.
Okay, good. Let's have some quiet together.
[silence]
Okay, thank you, everyone, and time for tea.
E.g. AN 5:28. The simile of the white cloth below can be found in the same sutta. ↩︎
Frederick William Robertson, Life, Letters, Lectures, and Addresses (New York: Harper, 1871), 720. ↩︎
E.g. DN 15. ↩︎
E.g. MN 111. ↩︎
AN 9:36. ↩︎
MN 54. ↩︎
E.g. DN 22, SN 45:8. ↩︎
E.g. DN 2. ↩︎
The simile of the goldsmith can be found at AN 3:102 and AN 3:103. ↩︎
E.g. DN 2. ↩︎
Dhp 372. ↩︎
