“Jhana 1”: wrapping my head around bliss-on-demand
For the last two months, I have been practicing the jhanas. What I have seen so far has blown my mind. I am only at the beginning of this journey and I have many questions.
1) The Jhanas: what they are & how accessible they can be
The jhanas are altered states of consciousness; they are meditation states, as described in Buddhist texts. To put it more precisely: “The bliss states, or jhānas, are a series of concentration states. You can learn to enter these states through meditation techniques.”1 I finally decided to take the plunge into this practice following the recent hype around it. See, for instance, Manufacturing Bliss2 by Nadia Asparouhova: “A growing community centered on the Bay Area is rediscovering the jhanas, a meditation technique that practitioners claim could upend how we think about the brain — and transform our lives in the process.” Or for another example, “What if you could have a panic attack, but for joy?”3 by Oshan Jarow: “Mindfulness is one thing. Jhāna meditation is stranger, stronger, and going mainstream.” What a hype train! I wanted to see what this was all about.
In particular, what pushed me to try it, was the claim that some people entered their first mind-blowing bliss-state in very little time. Sometimes, with very little prior experience in meditation. Personally, I have ten years of experience with meditation and some pretty decent skills when it comes to summoning what some (beginners? the uninitiated?) might consider to be pretty special experiences. For instance, non-dual awareness, where the ego simply dissolves into an oceanic feeling, a communion with the world. So far, I have unlocked only the first and the second jhana, out of a sequence of eight in total. But it didn’t take me a long time to get there at all, which lends credence to the reports mentioned above. It took only a few days to get the first jhana!
I didn’t need to sign up to a meditation retreat to achieve this. That is pretty typical for me: whenever there is a warning that a certain advanced meditation state can probably only be achieved if you commit to a spiritual retreat, I find that this piece of advice does not apply to me at all. I don’t know why (my monk-ish lifestyle? my daily obsession with phenomenology? or perhaps this advice is overrated in the first place?). Moreover, who knows how much faster (than a month) I could have unlocked the second jhana if I really wanted to. Because, as it turns out, I did not feel the temptation at all, to rush things and to unlock all the bliss states as fast as I could. It would be pointless! Accessing each one is not the same as mastering each one. You have to get really comfortable with each one, and explore them fully. In any case, I will report on this blog my progress with the other jhanas, and we will see if they come as easily as the first ones.
2) What does Jhana practice feel like to a beginner?
First of all, what really surprised me, is that jhana practice, the way I was taught, really leans into this idea of a springboard practice. In other words, you get to pick a certain way of meditating that propels you into jhana practice. What this means is that you are completely free to start off by meditating the way you are already used to! I really liked that. All your prior experience meditating is a great asset to get started, no matter what the style of meditation you already favour! It made things so much easier for me. I could just rely on my trusty old non-dual mindfulness and I was good to go. It really worked, even though some people might say that metta practice is the closer match for jhana practice. Well, I’m not very good at metta practice, and so I just used what I am good at, and it worked like a charm. (I don’t know what the people who have little experience with meditation do to get started, but they seem to manage too.)
Your springboard practice is the basis. And then what? Tasshin puts it beautifully in their very helpful blog post on how to get started with the jhanas4 :
“The most common techniques used to enter bliss states are following the breath, doing body scans, and doing loving kindness meditation – but any technique can work. The instructions are simple: do a technique you are familiar with, and attend to the relevant focus space. If and when it starts to be enjoyable in the body, and the enjoyment is stable, then you shift your focus space to this pleasure and enjoyment in the body. To put it very simply: do a technique that feels good, and then enjoy it. Really enjoy it.”
The bottom line is this: though it may seem weird as a premise, it is possible to locate some kind of pleasure that is inherent to your body/experience. It’s not a pleasure that is elicited by a sensual trigger like caresses or anything like that. It’s just there already, tacitly. It is possible to focus on it really expertly. And with a mix of tricks and techniques that sometimes feel like you are fanning the flames and sometimes feel like you are merely ceasing to prevent it from happening (weird, right?), you can really get this pleasure to start blowing up like fireworks. The result is a very impressive sustained bliss, which feels like a long non-sexual orgasm, to put it bluntly. Each jhana is different but I haven’t gotten there yet, so I can’t speak about that too much. But at least the first ones are variations on that same theme of pleasure.
Nowadays, I can, within the span of a few seconds, focus on some pleasurable tingling sensations that I find to be always there tacitly in my upper body, and then somehow activate this by focusing on it and just letting it flow like an upward current through my spine all the way to the top of my skull. Once it hits the skull, it is very blissful. Some people say only the most advanced jhanas feel like you are entering a place as opposed to experiencing something in your body. But for me, when the first jhana gets to maximum intensity, it really feels like I am entering a place, and this place, this “enchanted realm” as Burbea calls them, is the jhana.
Here’s two additional descriptions, written by other people, of the bliss of the jhana; I hope they can help you understand what the hell I am on about, since I can really relate to them:
“I managed to find this on-ramp to the first jhāna, and it was profoundly strange. The tingling sensations leaped from my fingers to envelop the entire frame of my awareness, like going from a few stray drops of rain on my hands to being fully submerged underwater, where I began to feel myself almost literally absorbing into a sort of vibratory expanse (this is what I mean by not being able to understand it unless you experience it). That’s about as far as I went. Since the whole ordeal is so bizarre, lapses in concentration keep knocking me off the onramp. Apparently, getting a little too excited and losing the concentration that keeps things moving forward is pretty common in the early days of practicing jhāna.”5
and
“My favorite way of explaining the jhanas is “they may be the opposite of a panic attack.” Most everyone is familiar with an anxiety loop – one anxious thought begets another. By the time you’ve been at it for a few minutes, you start seeing physiological effects: your heart rate and breathing change, maybe your hands get sweaty. It turns out that with a little personal experimenting you can learn to create that same positive feedback loop with a happier emotion… and the results are far better than you imagined. They are extraordinarily pleasurable. More pleasurable than anything I experience outside of meditation for weeks at a time.”6
3) Do you want to join me in this? A few pointers.
In order to learn how to access the jhanas, I listened to this series of videos on YouTube by Rob Burbea7. Those are talks that he gave during a jhana spiritual retreat. I have found them immensely useful, as have other people. (If you don’t, there are other good resources out there8.) It’s a lot of material to get through, these lectures. Personally I skipped any video that had to do with one’s springboard practice, given that I felt already pretty secure in mine, and I listened only to the jhanas videos. Mostly. In reality, I had to go back to the “Developing Piti” one, after skipping it in favour of the “First Jhana” video. It turns out that piti, this delight or pleasure I described earlier, is very fundamental, and so this isn’t a video I could skip.
One interesting thing that Rob Burbea points out, is that when you are starting with the jhanas, you will come up with a lot of different tricks and techniques to get into a jhana, but as you keep practicing you start abandoning those tricks, and forgetting them, as you learn to initiate those jhanas immediately. It’s hard to describe. When I first started I was latching onto every bit of advice I was given on how to initiate the first jhana (the Rob Burbea lectures were almost enough to quench my first for advice, but not quite). Every little trick counted. They were training wheels: in the form of imagery, heuristics, and quasi-thought experiments. I found that being very open minded about synaesthesia helped immensely to put these tricks to work without taking them too literally and too seriously. Now, after two months of practice, (but that was true even after one month of practice), I just activate the first jhana in a way that is much more direct and very different from the little scaffolding I was using at the start. I don’t remember what I was using at the start, though it was fairly recent. In any case, a spirit of playfulness and experimentation is paramount: give yourself permission to create your own homebrew synaesthesic scaffolding. One that is too hard to convey to someone else, or to remember days afterward, but one that is provisionally useful and gets you started.
4) Wait… what the hell? Strange and conflicting narratives
a) Mindfulness, the sequel.
“Die Hard 2: Die Harder” is the way the sequel to Die Hard was promoted. This is what I think of when Oshan Jarow writes “Mindfulness is one thing. Jhāna meditation is stranger, stronger, and going mainstream.”. The narrative attached to the mindfulness renaissance is being re-used, except we are told it’s “better, stronger”, and we are contrasting this practice with mindfulness, in a way that is unfavourable to it. I have learned to feel ambivalent about the hype surrounding mindfulness. For this reason, I feel very ambivalent about doing that hype all over again but for the jhanas. Can't we just enjoy it in a normal way? Do we have to do this again? I can see that we risk making all the same dead-end moves, such as treating the jhanas as panacea, or being weirdly neuro-centric about it, and all the other weird things we wanted to claim about mindfulness.
On the other hand, I get it... What calls for these narratives is a genuine sense of bewilderment: you are discovering these things that are truly extraordinary, and you have to deal with the fact that most people do not know those things exist, even though they are within their grasp. You can summon bliss on demand! And almost no one knows that this is the case! Not even most meditators touched by the mindfulness renaissance! How strange is that? It is very strange indeed, and so the temptation to put that bewilderment into a grand narrative is truly great. But we should probably refrain from doing that.
The Jhanas are just another philosophical exercise, and they're a very cool one, and we can leave it at that, without getting all weird about it.
b) What practice entails what? Confusing crossroads
I had heard about the jhanas before, from an article by David Collins called “Deconstructing Mindfulness”9. It is an article with a very interesting and thought-provoking point, in short: “There’s been a marked increase in studies of mindfulness and meditation in recent years. I’m worried that many of today’s researchers may think they know what they’re doing.” Very concise point, funny and wise. The existence of the jhanas is one of the arguments Collins uses to make the point that the reality of meditation is very weird, and very much uncharted territory, and that the only way forward is to be humble about what we think about it. The description he gave of the jhanas in that text was so intriguing that it marked me greatly, and made me yearn for and explore weirder experiences in meditation. But it perhaps also intimidated me away from the practice for a while. He writes: “Most people I know who experience the jhānas have needed to go on several intensive retreats before they experienced them. In my own case, I’d been meditating rather seriously for several decades before my first jhāna retreat, and it still took four days of doing pretty much nothing but concentrating on my breath, all day every day, before I […] entered the first jhāna. And it took me several more retreats over the next couple of years before I could also experience the jhānas at home, outside of a retreat setting.” That is very much the opposite of my experience!
I have asked David Collins what he thinks of the aforementioned hype, and this is what he had to say (in very much informal conversation): he said that sometimes, the distinction is lost between the “sutta jhānas” and the “Visuddhimagga jhānas” (so the jhanas as described in two different texts). What his article, “Deconstructing Mindfulness”, was pointing to, was actually the Visuddhimagga jhānas. Whereas (I think), if you follow the trail of teachers at the heart of the current hype, you realize, perhaps, that those are very much proponents of the "sutta jhānas". I asked Collins if those two things are two different spiritual practices entirely, or a difference of emphasis. His speculation (again, this was very much an unofficial conversation) is that the sutta jhānas are less intense, whereas the Visuddhimagga ones are much more difficult, and build up on “centuries of Buddhist focus and intensification” of concentration techniques.
So let me tell you: now I am completely confused! Less intense? How can it be less intense than what I felt? I dived into all of this before hearing about, or paying mind to, this distinction between the two texts. I dived right in as soon as I heard that this was accessible. As soon as the hype hit my corner of the internet. And within merely a few days of practicing, I have accessed the first jhana. And it truly blew my mind! I didn’t need a retreat, I just needed YouTube videos. It was a very intense experience of bliss. And one that really corresponds to Collins’ description of the first jhana, that he had to work much harder to attain: “When you have the jhānas occurring distinctly, there’s no mistaking them. If an orgasm is like a momentary cymbal crash, the jhānas are like the sound of a bell, and that sound can go on for an hour. Jhāna absorptions are wonderful. They are restorative. And they offer an humblingly powerful perspective on what our minds are capable of.”10 That really sounds like what I experienced. I lack the words to express how it swept me off my feet.
So… What to think? Are these two practices really different paths with two different jhana sequences? Does the difference between the two practices somehow overlap with the difference between the jhanas at the beginning of the sequence and the more advanced jhanas? It is said that the sutta-inspired teachers “all emphasize focusing on the more attainable first four ‘light jhanas,’ instead of progressing through the more advanced ‘deep jhanas.’”11 . Is that it? But that is said by the same people who relativize the teachings and warnings of the Visuddhimagga, right? Whereas someone like Collins really echoes the idea that even the first jhana is difficult to achieve. Is the first Visuddhimagga jhana qualitatively different from the first sutta jhana? How is that possible? Could it be that the sutta-jhanas are quite mind-blowing, and yet the Visuddhimagga ones are even more mind blowing or extraordinary in a different way? I can scarcely believe it... and yet, as I just said earlier: I have meditated for ten years pretty intensely and I have seen some extraordinary things, and none of those things have prepared me for the jhanas’ distinct brand of extraordinariness! So who knows what is possible at this point?! How many more ways can you blow a mind into pieces?!
One very tentative hypothesis that I have is that I cannot help but bring my non-dual insight practice to even the lighter jhanas, which makes them weirder, deeper and more intense. More similar to the most advanced jhanas. But I won’t know if that’s the case until I practice more.
I will carry all these questions with me as I keep exploring that domain.
b) Old narratives and what they do to you
There are old narratives that hold sway even to this day and add to our confusion. This should serve as a warning not to adopt these stories uncritically or grant them hegemony, in the moment of their arising. One such (old) story is the idea that you should be wary of the jhanas, because they are not true enlightenment, and you risk becoming attached to the happiness they provide, which is a relative kind of happiness, in spite of its spiritual nature. (I mean come on, what a specialized warning!) Another such story is the counter-story that opposes that first one: “um, actually, what happens with the jhanas is that you get sick of the most hedonistic ones. The first ones. They become ‘too much’. Their intense pleasure naturally becomes a bit of a bother, and so the jhanas are perfect to teach you the relativity of that kind of happiness. You move on.” Both those stories have some truth to them, but what happens when we repeat them over and over, as though the conditions that gave rise to those stories were still very much relevant? What if they are not? And what if they just feed hype patterns: defensiveness becomes gatekeeping, gatekeeping becomes cultural amnesia, forgetfulness makes rediscovery necessary… there’s a surge of hype... and then it’s defensiveness all over again, coalescing around the Genius Rediscoverers and what counts as legitimate in that space. Then the cycle repeats.
I have been favouring a more personal story this time around. One that embodies the DIY and experimental spirit of this blog regarding philosophical exercises. It goes like this: I have some kind of hedonism deficit, I recognize that, and so I think the first jhanas are especially great for me. They fit perfectly in a space where something was missing in my spiritual life. And they help me balance out all the practices that I want to do. It’s that simple.
First of all, the jhanas are grandiose, and as I had noted in my blogpost on modern postural yoga, I was itching for that feeling of awe and wonder. Just because! At the time, I wrote “I suppose, what I was in the mood to try out, was having a go at extraordinary wonder for a change. As a philosopher, I always try to cultivate wonder for the seemingly ordinary. I wanted to try something different. I wanted to experience my body as a place of extraordinary marvels and wonders.”. I wanted to be swept off my feet. Those jhanas certainly fit the bill. There’s a reason why people often compare them to taking psychedelic drugs. Sam Harris used to say something along the lines of: with meditation, you control the experience more, but there’s no guarantee something is going to happen before you have the skills for it, whereas with psychedelics, it’s like strapping a rocket on your back; you don’t know where you’ll end up, but you are sure to end up somewhere no matter what. Well, interestingly, with those jhanas, you definitely fly with the rocket, but you also have some degree of control. In a way, it’s the perfect compromise.
Second of all, there are not enough constructive meditative practices in my life. Not enough exercises that focus on building up good feelings. I was already saying it in my blog post on Spinoza's philosophy and loving kindness: “One of my biggest flaws as a meditator is that I tend to focus exclusively on attentional and deconstructive exercises. Thus, I keep shooting down inadequate ideas without ever thinking to put something better in their place. It’s like playing whack-a-mole, playing defense, and never building something better. Spinoza’s philosophy is such a good fit for that unfortunate gap in my spiritual life.” Yet, was it such a good fit for me? The problem that I have with metta meditation (loving kindness) and with Spinoza’s system is that, even though they answer my emotional needs when I eventually get there, I find it a bit tedious to start the whole process. I find that there’s a lot to imagine and a lot to think about before I can get to that experience. (and when I say “a lot” I just mean “enough to cause friction at the start”, and put me off the practice). Whereas with the jhanas that I have experienced, I have been able to kick-start them so fast! This is very reminiscent of one of the touchstones of my spiritual life: direct pointing into the non-dual, selfless, nature of conscious experience. It is possible to lose the ego so fast, in a few seconds, if you only know where to look. That skill brings me a lot of happiness. Possibly because the experience is so impressive, that it imposes itself as a standard, a guide for the rest of my life. Perhaps the jhanas could be a similar standard: bliss on demand, with next to no waiting time, is so impressive that it forces me to rethink what is possible with my life and what is worth paying attention to.
Third of all, there is something about this time of my life that makes this all so exciting. It is so nice to be able to discover all of this in my thirties, after ten years of meditation, and after having already found my spiritual sanctuary within skillful non-dual experiences (a different practice). I was already over the moon happy with all of that! There was no scarcity of spiritual experience at all! I feel more free than at the beginning of my spiritual journey in my twenties, when I started this journey to be happy, and I was afraid I was not going to make it. Now, I worry less about enlightenment, about grand narratives, and about the One Way to Do Things Correctly, which does not exist. What a relief. During this entire exploration, I kept thinking “this is not my first rodeo”. I felt experienced and free. This is not the first time I fall in love with a meditation technique, and it is so great to be able to fall in love again. It makes me feel rejuvenated. Feeling like an eternal beginner, I sometimes think to myself “this is my second first rodeo”.
(PS: On this blog, we explore a new philosophical exercise every month. In the previous episode, we reviewed The Joyful Practice of Stoic Death Writing, and before that, we experimented with Daydreaming Meditation)
(05/09/2024)
Pierrick Simon
my email: lemiroirtranquille@outlook.fr
(do not hesitate to reach out)
Bluesky: @pierricksimon.bsky.social
Twitter: @PhiloTranquille
NOTES:
6https://www.jhourney.io/blog/scott-alexander-nick-cammarata-jhana
8Richard Ludlow has compiled some resources that you might want to check out here: https://x.com/richardludlow/status/1816530767071289362 . You need to log in to see the entire thread. Otherwise, at the end of the aforementioned Tasshin blog post, there is also a list of resources: https://tasshin.com/blog/discovering-bliss-states/
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