I stayed at two Buddhist monasteries in Sri Lanka for 6 months. This is what I learned. (Jhana, Buddha, concentration/absorption, Vipassana)
I learned A LOT.
Although two of the most important things for ME that I learned is that there seems to be a an old misunderstanding actually dating back thousands of years regarding what The Buddha said about meditation: On entering the so-called "Jhanas".
This is what I came to learn. Others might have heard otherwise etc.
It's that what most people refer to as "Jhana"-meditation (from the Visuddhimagga) - and that The Buddha supposedly taught this method, is a totally different meditation than what The Buddha ACTUALLY talked about. It is said in the scriptures that Buddha himself stated that the old yogic/Hindu meditation with 8 different levels of concentration is never going to get you enlightened. He himself supposedly (I'm not doubting this) reached the 8th level after three months of practice and that his teachers subsequently asked him to teach them. This meditation is what many refer to as "Jhana meditation", but is actually just a concentration or absorption meditation and little else. The confusing thing is that it says in the Visuddhimagga that this is how The Buddha told his disciples to meditate. And this method is now being taught throughout Asian countries to be the "how to guide" on how to do meditation. It becomes even more confusing because The Buddha used this term long before Visuddhimagga was written, but he did not describe what is taught in the Visuddhimagga. Although the name is the same! What THE BUDDHA taught Jhana meditation to be could be described as “Samatha Vipassana”.
An author I don't remember the name of has researched this extensively and these excerpts are from her book. I hope it's okay to paste it here.
On how The Buddha described how to get into the first Jhana (What I now call “Buddha Jhana”):
"This model describes a series of practices that enable the practitioner to possess the qualities that comprise the Buddhist path. These practices are (1) the training in morality (slla-khandha); (2) the practice of guarding and restraining the impressions brought about by sense experience (indriya-samvara); and (3) the practice of full awareness (sampajiina).
At this point of the spiritual path, one can advance to the last stage, namely, resorting to a secluded place, where the instruction is very clear: to 'sit down, folding the legs crosswise, setting the body erect and establishing mindfulness in front'.
When this is achieved, the practitioner abandons the five hindrances and enters into the first jhana."
"...one has to relinquish, or let go of, any unwholesomeness for entering the first jhana."
"...one attains the first jhana rather, by releasing and letting go of the foothold of unwholesome mind. This seems to be achieved by the practice of morality, sense restraint and observation of phenomena."
The five hindrances are as follows:
Sensual desire (kamacchanda)
Ill-will (byapada)
Sloth and torpor (thina-middha)
Restlessness and remorse (uddhacca-kukkucca)
Sceptical doubt (vicikiccha)
Now, someone might correct me on this. But what I understand this "Samatha Vipassana" to be is that it basically means concentration PLUS observation of bodily phenomena. So the concentration part is what the Visuddhimagga teaches (the 8 levels of concentration-Jhana), but it doesn't teach the observation of bodily phenomena part (Vipassana).
The thing is, these are two sides of the same coin. To be able to observe bodily phenomena you need to be able to concentrate on the same thing for a long time. Meanwhile, to merely concentrate on one thing is empty (the Visuddhimagga Jhana). It's just concentration. It is allegedly “devoid of wisdom”. Wisdom apparently comes from combining the two: To maintain concentration on bodily phenomena.
Here I want to say that I learned that people are very different in what suit their personality the best to start with -either concentration or vipassana. For myself it is the Vipassana part, but others might be more inclined towards the concentration part. One should practise the method that works best for him/her. As long as you know that neither of the methods alone can get you all the way. You need to work on both.
I will now write a little bit about what I believe this “Samatha Vipassana” is, how I do it and about my experience with it.
In my own words it is to concentrate your mind on exactly what is happening in the body right now in this moment. Try to feel inside and focus on what you are feeling right now. But not in words or thoughts. Just let yourself feel, exactly how it is. Feel it...
For me personally I quickly start to feel it physically. My restlessness and slight anxiety is manifested different places in my body. So I just look at that part. It might sound dumb but that's all I do. I just look at it and feel it in the moment. For instance, right now it is on the inside of my lower lip. Then I focus my mind to that part of my body. Just let my mind rest on that place. Soon the feeling of that place will change. Maybe it dims, maybe it strengthens. But just stay with it. Continue to observe it and look at it. This can be very hard! Both because the mind and your focus easily wavers over to something else, but maybe most of all because of the pain you feel. The emotional pain of watching something completely brutally honestly REAL happening inside of yourself. I think it even has been stated that this is the only thing that IS real. All of the external world is actually just a mirage and kind of an illusion. The only thing that is real are your so-called “Vedanas” - the feelings, bodily sensations, moods and thought complexes that you experience at any given moment.
Back to the meditation. After a while, what you are looking at inside of yourself will naturally subside for the time being and a short "break" will perhaps follow where there isn't any longer any discomfort in that exact place. What you do then is to just relax and let your focus wander naturally around until it "sees" or "feels" another place in the body that is under some sort of stress or emotional pain/discomfort and start to the the same in this location of the body. I suppose the same holds if you are suddenly feeling good feelings, then you continue to feel it. Do not let your focus change to something else. Concentrate on the new part of the body, and if your mind wanders, just calmly go back to where you were when you remember what you were doing.
What happened to me was magical. Truly magical and to this day a bit of a mystery. After quite a while of doing this I could feel the different parts of my body where I had felt tenseness and emotional stress quietly subsided - by themselves! No need to go to a therapy session or other similar options with counseling. I found that THE FEELINGS ETC. WILL NATURALLY SUBSIDE IF YOU JUST WATCH IT OR CONCENTRATE ON IT FOR A LONG ENOUGH TIME!
This was unbelievable to me at first. I could almost not believe it. Then later, me and a western monk went to an island monastery. And here I had my first experience of TOTAL PEACE and TOTAL SILENCE. I practiced what I described above and then went on to feel a tenseness in my neck, where I ended up sitting in an awkward position with my neck where I stretched a muscle on the side of my neck for over ten minutes! I just continued watching/feeling/observing it. The neck was where my focus naturally went after having focused on other emotional feelings throughout my body before that. Then the tenseness in my neck muscles gradually let go and I ended up in my initial position with my head straight. Then. Suddenly, all by itself there was SILENCE. And I mean pure, no thoughts or feelings, SILENCE.
It was very subtle and feeble. Like there was a sense to it that this could very easily be disturbed. I maintained this for maybe five minutes and it might have been the strongest experience I've ever had with meditation. Just pure silence. True "nothingness". Devoid of any internal chatter or any feelings whatsoever.
I will never forget that experience and I am so fortunate that I now know the how-to on what I must do to experience it. It takes time, effort and discipline though.
I kind of just want to make this a one-time big post, so I will keep writing what I want to talk about next. Which is the concentration meditation I talked about in the beginning that The Buddha said will never by itself lead you to enlightenment:
The Visuddhimagga Jhana's
My interpretation of this whole ordeal is that historically, long before Buddha's time, there has been practiced these concentration meditations. The thing is, you can actually concentrate on ANYTHING, and you will after a while, if you are able to maintain it, feel such a strong feeling of bliss that it’s really quite unimaginable.
I imagine that people have been doing this meditation for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And that they over time came to find out certain objects to concentrate on that you could reach "higher" levels of concentration with.
The main Visuddhimagga way of practicing Jhana/concentration meditation is to focus on the breathing at a particular point (the upper lip area). But there are others later in the text. Some of them are called the "Ten Kasinas". These are ten objects that you can practice to meditate or focus your concentration on and reach these higher levels of concentrations with. Some lets you reach up to "fourth level Jhana", whilst others let you reach all the way up to the eight level. I don't remember which lets you go the furthest, but this has little value knowing unless you are really going to go into it.
The ten kasinas are:
Earth
Water
Air
Fire
Blue, green
Yellow
Red
White
Enclosed space, hole, aperture
Bright light
Something very enlightening I learned was that the first four of these: The earth, water, air and fire “elements” aren’t all “wishy-washy” concepts, but are actually referring to some very real properties:
Earth is meant to describe the property of the universe that we in other words call “mass”, or “physicality”. Try to imagine something very hard. For instance iron, or bedrock. Imagine going into this matter and “see” and “feel” how hard and compressed it is. Feel it’s essence: solidness. Hardness. Soak up that feeling, and STAY IN IT and continue “imagining it”.
That’s how one should meditate on the 1st Kasina (Earth element).
Water is another word for the property of the universe we also call “the binding force”. In a sense gravity. The force that pulls things together. It is a force you can find and feel, one that exists and that you can focus on. Focus on that property of the universe and you will be meditating on the 2nd Kasina (Water element).
Air points to the fluidity of space-time or the universe. Motion. The principle that things move. Wind, liquid water streaming down a river, people moving. Grass growing, planets flying through space. Movement. Concentrate on this eternal principle and immerse yourself in it’s tangibility. That’s how you meditate on the 3rd Kasina (Air)
Fire describes temperature. Hot and cold. The scale of temperature. That things can be warm or cold. Your car engine, ice in your freezer, the sun, water in the ocean. All these have very different temperatures. To meditate on the fourth kasina you should absorb yourself into the spectrum of temperature. The essence of the feeling of “temperature-ness” or of what one specific temperature feels like.
The rest are fairly self-explanatory. Just focus on the color or on the enclosed space or on the white bright light and stay with it. Just as with the elements.
In addition to these 10 however, there are also two more concentration objects: Space, and consciousness.
Space refers to just that: Space. Inside your body there is an incredible amount of space. The body is a macrocosm of cells and elements. It inhabits a lot of space. It takes space. Focus on that first. Then move on to feel the space around you, in your room or on your immediate surroundings. Then move further with your mind. Imagine the space of your town or district. In all directions from you. Up, down, left, right. Back and forward. Really feel all of that space. And expand the feeling that you have of space. The property of space. Move further and further. All the way to galaxies and galaxy-clusters. Expand how much of the space around you that you are feeling. Space is possibly endless, so this is a good way to reach full concentration. I personally like it very much, as you can imagine there being space soo far in every direction. You can feel the lengths of how far space expands. Feel it and let yourself get absorbed into it.
Consciousness is also just what it says. If you concentrate on feeling it, there is sort of a similar feeling to a “presence”. One that is always there. We say that we have it, because it is a part of what our bodies can sense and use and manipulate. If we focus strongly enough. You can feel it seething in the whole universe. The universe is literally infused with this stuff. It is something very concrete that you can feel and hold on to. A property of the universe. Absorb yourself into it.
If you practice any of these intensely, over a long period of time - and regularly - you will eventually start to have experiences. Experiences that in fact seems to be universal to all human (and maybe also sentient) beings. When you guide your focus onto one thing only or onto only one object, and you are able to maintain that focus for a long time things will start happening. Phenomena that you didn’t know existed. You will start to see lights on the inside of your eyelids. Don’t focus on those though. And eventually you will feel immense bliss. The monk that I learned this from said that you should be aware that this is also just momentary in the long run. That this bliss will also fade when you die and get reborn somewhere else. That it will change little or nothing on your “soul’s” path to true liberation or to your karma. He said that some monks become what he termed “Jhana junkies”. Monks that sit for hours on end (8-10 hours or even much longer) and “bliss out” with this meditation. They get lost in the bliss it creates. And the bliss is very strong, so I don’t doubt that you can actually get addicted to it.
This was it for a summary of things that I learned while staying at two different Buddhist monasteries in Sri Lanka for a total of six months. May some of these experiences act as a guide for someone out there.
With metta.
Aleksander W.
Norway
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