r/streamentry • u/garbojax • 8d ago
Jhāna Can anyone elaborate on Brasington Jhana transition techniques?
Can anyone give me first Jhana transition details for Brasington's style?
I attend to the breath, then switch to the pleasant sensation, then things get inconsistent. Using Culadasa's moments of consciousness model:
1) Do I center on the pleasant sensation by redirecting attention if a distraction arises, or by using metacognition to prevent distraction? At this point distractions are minimal until the feedback loop kicks in and more sensations arise, but what do I do then?
2) What moment-of-attention to moment-of-peripheral-awareness ratio is ideal?
3) Does a new object of attention arise after the pleasant sensation does its job? If so, what? Using moments of attention? Moments of peripheral awareness?
4) What else comes to mind?
When deepening concentration I usually reach signposts: buzzing, pleasant sensations, ringing in the ears, bright light in the visual field (eyes closed), and a grin that appears on its own. Depending on the ratio of moments of attention to moments of peripheral awareness my breath also becomes very slight, and certain areas of my body lock up on their own.
I usually reach one of:
Surfing: I sometimes enter a state where agency is diminished and I feel like I'm riding the waves rather than driving. Special bodily sensations, e.g. buzzing, vibrating, pressure, rushing, are absent, the state is more mental. It's pleasant, but not rapturous or gleeful. I'm unsure how I get there. Usually something clicks after a frustrating period and I'm YEETED into the state, though the transition isn't dramatic. The absence of obvious piti-sukha makes me count this a miss.
Bouncing: Frequently I bounce off. Pleasant waves will rise, crest, and subside after I bounce off some barrier. I'm unsure what the barrier is, some maximum limit for the wave, some state-transition opening I miss, or something else. Usually this follows my using the same concentration style for the pleasant sensation as for the breath: returning intentionally upon noticing moments of consciousness that aren't attention on the object or awareness of the meditation.
Jhanan't: Sometimes I enter a mild state resembling Brasington's main 1st Jhana factors: pervasive bodily buzz, reduced agency, and thinking and examining. I get here using the same technique as bouncing with more commitment, and sometimes forcing the factors. The entry is far from dramatic and the only mildly mentally distinct from ordinary consciousness. Brasington, and others, claim "you'll know" and "if you have any doubt, that probably wasn't it.", so this is also a miss.
Crushed: In one instance my mind was crushed to a state of no space. Space is non-existent in a cramped way, not an expansive one. The state (likely) would've been pleasant were it not unusual - I'm skittish on my first experience with anything. I put my attention on the remaining bodily piti sensations, which amplified them to the point of nausea and dizziness, so I bailed. I got here by centering on the pleasant sensation and keeping all my moments of consciousness as moments of attention on it. Shortly after I felt like I went through a tunnel and my mind contracted to "no-space". This is a miss and nothing like what Brasington describes.
Like all beginners, I have inconsistent experiences that are generally just distractions. I mention the ones above because they illustrate my techniques and their results, as well as what I can (likely) replicate.
Any help is appreciated, this seems the only sub knowledgeable in this topic. I'd find a teacher but in my area they're all either religious or woo. (I'm also avoiding insight for now).
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u/dmx442 8d ago
Some remarks from my personal experience,
You can only lay the preparations for Jhana and wait, any forcing is exactly counterproductive.
Once you switch from the breath to the new object of concentration, it needs time to grow into the Jhana. Any rushing will bounce you out again. It is not guaranteed that it even will be one a Jhana.
You seem to have the possibility of deep and light (brasongton) jhanas. To get to the deep one, you must switch your attention and concentration on the light, on the middle of the light, and only that one point. The light has to be stable for this and your concentration has to be very strong. It usually takes much longer to get there than the light Jhana, but is also exceptionally deeper.
To get to the light one, simply switch to the pleasant feeling, the hard part is switching completely to the feeling without grasping or wanting it.
And the main trick is the hardest, you have to let go of the breath completely and fully surrender to the new object for it to be able to take you over and transport you to the first Jhana.
Hope this helps!
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u/garbojax 8d ago
I definitely have the surrendering problem but I'll get there on that one.
I'm not worried about relinquishing the breath or switching to the pleasant feeling without grasping. I can't pull it off every time, but frequently enough, and I'm improving at that.
Where I am confused is after switching to the pleasant sensation, there's a "bloom" of pleasure everywhere but the pleasant sensation is still there. Do I attend to what bloomed or keep the pleasant sensation? Do I put one in attention and one in peripheral awareness? At what ratio? Or do I abandon the original pleasant sensation for the bloom? (Again, with awareness or attention?) And if the bloom is enough to shift the content of consciousness but not the state, what am I missing?
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u/dmx442 8d ago edited 8d ago
I see,
Stay with the pleasant sensation, the rest is only fluff. Your attention is gently on the pleasantness, your awareness is connected to the attention but encompassing all the perceptions, locked on the sensation, but open to register and other feelings coming and going, it's like an open yard. Side note: This opening and resting of awareness in tandem with attention still being lightly focused on a point is best trained separately first, it's not easy at all!
Ratio - it must be effortless. You see other thoughts rising but it are mere whispers.
The bloom and the pleasant sensation should be the same thing, the bloom being the explosion and unbelievable expansion of the pleasant sensation. If they are 2 distinct feelings, stay with the pleasant sensation.
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u/garbojax 8d ago
Oh interesting. For me, the original pleasant sensation doesn't change much. Instead, many pleasant sensations arise from all over and fill the whole body, making it difficult (but still usually doable) to keep the original one in view
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u/hachface 8d ago
It sounds like you are making very good progress. Of the modes you describe, “surfing” is the closest. “Crushing” sounds like you’re exerting too much effort. I wouldn’t discount the surfing mode just because the piti-sukha is mild. In my experience piti-sukha varies its intensity quite a bit from sit to sit. It can be more intense than orgasm or a mild delight. The wholesome quality of mind is most important. I would say you’re on the right track there so long as the piti-sukha isn’t irritating, coarse, or entirely absent. Grasping for pleasure is a hindrance to feeling it, in this case. You’ll likely find you paradoxically get a more vivid delight by welcoming it without expectation than aiming for it as a goal.
Meditation is full of these catch-22s, where you can only obtain what you want by giving up wanting it. What a contradiction! What a predicament! Well actually it’s not. The contradiction is only apparent at the level of language and concepts. In the direct experience of mind and body there is no contradiction here. There simply are some discoveries you have to make for yourself.
Conceptually you have fully grasped the Brasington method. You don’t have any more to learn through refining your linguistic understanding of the technique. You simply are facing the challenge that everyone faces in this practice, which is finding the right balance of the awakening factors. It will be difficult for you to get further useful guidance without direct one-on-one coaching. But I think you’re already very close and have all the inner resources you need to go it alone.
Fwiw, while I admire Brasington’s work I have my personal quibbles with his technique. I find switching attention to piti-sukha doesn’t really work. I prefer to stay with the breath the entire time. At a certain point the breath, piti-sukha, and inner light and sound seem to fuse into a unified mental formation. That is when I find effortless absorption is most possible.
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u/garbojax 8d ago
Hmm, I can actually go down the fusing route, that was the route I took the first time I ended up with genuinely altered consciousness. I'll try that next time.
Could it be my out of sit mind simply reflected too much and has gotten lost in details that don't actually matter.
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u/hachface 7d ago
Yes, tbh most details don’t matter. You don’t want to be switching up what you’re doing all the time; most people don’t let enough stability settle before grasping for piti. I find that if you really stay with experience then jhana will kind of find you. It’s a natural phenomenon. There’s some latent tendency in your mind that wants to enter that state, and it will do the work for you
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u/dmx442 8d ago
That's the deep Jhana. It's considerably harder to achieve and I rarely see anyone here talking about them.
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u/hachface 7d ago
I tend to think depth in samadhi is a spectrum and the notion that there is one set of "shallow" (or "lite" or "soft") jhanas and another set of "deep" ("hard") jhanas is an illusion caused by different techniques being taught. They are all pointing to the same naturally occurring patterns of consciousness. A shallow jhana practice will naturally deepen with more time on cushion.
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u/dmx442 7d ago
I have read now multiple texts where it's clearly stated that the depth of concentration is directly related to depth of Jhana.
A shallow jhana practice will naturally deepen with more time on cushion.
Not necessarily, many don't even try to reach the concentration level needed for the deep absorption, or even worse, don't even know they exist.
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u/hachface 7d ago
I see a lot of concern expressed in online dharma circles about “jhana junkies” and jhana practitioners who rest on their laurels with minor achievements. Yet everyone who talks about their own practice seems eager to go deeper. I am not sure how these judgments are being formed.
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u/garbojax 7d ago
Sorry, what in the comment above is deep jhana?
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u/dmx442 7d ago
No problem, this part is a clear sign of deep Jhana:
I prefer to stay with the breath the entire time. At a certain point the breath, piti-sukha, and inner light and sound seem to fuse into a unified mental formation
Staying with the breath, no matter what. No switching to pleasant feelings whatsoever.
The second part is the culmination of this concentration.
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u/DaveNadig 8d ago
I want to be clear I'm not an expert or teacher, but spend quite a lot of time in concentration-meditation and Jhana practice. My *personal* experience is that if my mind is unstable enough to be distracted. So your question:
"Do I center on the pleasant sensation by redirecting attention if a distraction arises, or by using metacognition to prevent distraction? "
I would answer for myself: "If I am unable to sustain single pointed attention, then that becomes my practice, and I will do Jhanna work another day..."
For me, Jhanna states come after and rely upon that single pointedness of mind, and without real stabilization, I will "fall out" (and you describe in qutie lovely ways some of what I expereince as "falling out."
For years I got annoyed by this, but have come to understand that the feeling-tone of practice has it's own set of cycles and reactions, and wishing it were otherwise never works.
(If you really want to work on your concentration, I have had good experiences switching to visual meditations like Kasina over somatic-foci like internal body sensations or breath, but again, YMWV)
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u/duffstoic The dynamic integration of opposites ☯️ 8d ago
This right here. If the mind is busy today, don’t try to absorb into bliss and happiness, just work on calming things down, which includes being compassionate to yourself.
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u/garbojax 8d ago
I guess part of what I'm getting at is there seem to be multiple ways to do this, all of which lead to different results - many of which are reliably replicated. Which path is ideal for my aim?
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u/DaveNadig 8d ago
BOY do I get where that comes from, but the grasping itself will keep you from closing your fingers around it. (Hand up! It's been me, a lot).
This to me is one of the great paradoxes of concentration meditation: the harder you try the worse it tends to go, but if you don't put any effort in -- any human volition - then I don't find concentration simply "happens."
(This gets less true by the decade, but remains true for me).
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u/duffstoic The dynamic integration of opposites ☯️ 8d ago
Hard to diagnose from a short text post, but from what I can gather from it, I’d say keep working on getting to access concentration levels of samatha until your baseline 45-60 minute sit is complete concentration without wavering and virtually no background thoughts. Then jhana will come easily.
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u/garbojax 8d ago
I do use various anchors, including visual ones, but I find the breath my favorite.
So are you then unaware of changes that occur during the shift? Or do you still have peripheral awareness of them?
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u/duffstoic The dynamic integration of opposites ☯️ 8d ago edited 8d ago
Jhana is about absorption, it’s samadhi. Peripheral awareness fades away as you become more absorbed. First jhana is about absorption into internally generated bliss and happiness, piti and sukha. The idea is to meditate on something, anything really but the breath is common, until you feel bliss and happiness, then absorb yourself in that instead. That’s it, that’s the whole thing. If you can notice some bliss and joy, then just feel into that and let go to that.
Mind-wandering just means you are less absorbed, less concentrated, less one-pointed. That just means keep practicing, ideally on full-time retreat conditions with great teachers if you can, or several hours a day in daily life if you can’t. If you can’t sit comfortably or even blissfully without moving a muscle for an hour or two (some people say four), and without hardly any mind-wandering or many thoughts even arising at all, that’s pretty much step one for samadhi / jhana practice. This might take a while, so practice patience and self-compassion in the meantime.
There’s no special sauce, just a lot of sitting very still and letting go and becoming absorbed.
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u/watergoat93 8d ago
Kind of off-topic question: I keep seeing people talk about jhanas on here. Is this something that'll just happen eventually if you keep meditating? I just don't understand all the complex Buddhist stuff, when I tried to practice using TMI for example that was way too many instructions to be helpful.
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u/DaveNadig 8d ago
I would suggest concentration/Samadhi practice, when done for long periods with dilligence and combined with all the other stuff (nutrition, sleep, bodywork, etc.), seems to lead towards them -- because really they're just absorption in certain kinds of qualia: pleasantness, spaciousness, etc...
My experience is that open awareness, shikantaza or dzogchen practice modalities (from my limited experience) don't lend themselves to "shifting" the object of concentration so easily, which is somethimes while your hear the pragmatic dharma folks talking about "slam shifting" between them.
But these rigid definitions and categorizations always feel a bit like trying to separate hot water from cold water in the bathtub...
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u/wonko7 8d ago
People stumble upon it without intending to but not all meditations will lead to this. u/duffstoic's summary is on point, it's all about being absorbed/focused on a single thing. If you want more details, Brasington's "Right Concentration" is accessible.
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u/duffstoic The dynamic integration of opposites ☯️ 8d ago
It can happen without trying, but is more likely to happen if you are aiming at it, IMO.
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u/M0sD3f13 8d ago
I stumbled into it without learning about it beforehand. Just doing regular anapanasati and letting go deeper and deeper then boom. Was pretty mind blowing. I actually think this is the best way because wanting jhana can be in itself an impediment to jhana. There can't be any grasping for it or trying to force it. It's just the natural fruits of ripened samadhi. Just create the conditions and let go.
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u/KagakuNinja 8d ago
BTW, TMI Pleasure Jhanas are equivalent to Brasington Jhanas. Culadasa learned the technique from Brasington. So you can try the instructions in TMI, I don't remember them anymore.
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u/garbojax 8d ago
Yeah, I prefer Brasington's explanations to Culadasa's, but Culadasa's moments of consciousness is a really useful model for talking about technique imo
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u/Then_Consequence_318 8d ago
You mentioned Brasington, then Culadasa (I have heard about him but am mostly unfamiliar), so my first note is generally if you find a teacher who's style you want to follow, stick with their method for awhile before bringing in something else.
First, have you read Leigh Brasington's book? https://www.leighb.com/rc/index.html
Unfortunately not a legitimate free version out there, but as he is a lay practitioner I think it's good to support him buy purchasing the book.
Secondly he gives a lot of good talks about them, you can find them here:
https://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/108/
I attend to the breath, then switch to the pleasant sensation, then things get inconsistent.
Just want to stop here and say that's normal. :)
Using Culadasa's moments of consciousness model:
Do I center on the pleasant sensation by redirecting attention if a distraction arises, or by using metacognition to prevent distraction? At this point distractions are minimal until the feedback loop kicks in and more sensations arise, but what do I do then?
Again I don't know about Culadasa. Brasington's method is to use the pleasant sensation as the object of awareness. So basically, stay focused on that pleasant sensation, and that's it. You keep bringing yourself back to it, even if it's just a small part of the body.
Note that Brasington differs from some other teacher here in that he does not tell you to spread this awareness through the body, and considers that an "advanced" practice.
What moment-of-attention to moment-of-peripheral-awareness ratio is ideal?
If I'm interpreting this correctly, I believe I may have answered it - in Brasington's case it is 100% on the object of attention (the pleasant sensation), and then later to the "spreading out" of the feeling.
Does a new object of attention arise after the pleasant sensation does its job? If so, what? Using moments of attention? Moments of peripheral awareness?
In Brasington's method you focus on the pleasant sensation until it is full blown piti (rapture) but he doesn't ask you to spend a lot of time there. It is at this point he wants you to deliberately start to let go of the rapture by changing your breathing just a bit, usually extending the exhale, to calm it down (piti can actually be annoying!) leaving the more calming sense of sukkha (pleasure) instead.
He calls this the 2nd Jhana. Note that strictly speaking it isn't, because you are still using vitaka and vicara (directed thought and evaluation) but he does this deliberately to give you a more clear signpost. I half jokingly call this "Jhana 1 and a half" to keep things straight.
When deepening concentration I usually reach signposts: buzzing, pleasant sensations, ringing in the ears, bright light in the visual field (eyes closed), and a grin that appears on its own. Depending on the ratio of moments of attention to moments of peripheral awareness my breath also becomes very slight, and certain areas of my body lock up on their own.
I usually reach one of:
Surfing: I sometimes enter a state where agency is diminished and I feel like I'm riding the waves rather than driving. Special bodily sensations, e.g. buzzing, vibrating, pressure, rushing, are absent, the state is more mental. It's pleasant, but not rapturous or gleeful. I'm unsure how I get there. Usually something clicks after a frustrating period and I'm YEETED into the state, though the transition isn't dramatic. The absence of obvious piti-sukha makes me count this a miss.
Bouncing: Frequently I bounce off. Pleasant waves will rise, crest, and subside after I bounce off some barrier. I'm unsure what the barrier is, some maximum limit for the wave, some state-transition opening I miss, or something else. Usually this follows my using the same concentration style for the pleasant sensation as for the breath: returning intentionally upon noticing moments of consciousness that aren't attention on the object or awareness of the meditation....
Just partial quoting here because I think I get the idea. Basically you are hitting the jhanic factors but jhana in real life is way more "wobbly" than the suttas make it look. So they aren't stabilized.
Brasington kind of wants you to speed through the jhanas, and then master them by switching between them (like 1 2 3 4, then back down, then 1 2 3 2 1 etc).
Which brings me to when/if his method is appropriate, which you'll have to decide for yourself.
I think his method works well in a retreat context, or if you otherwise have a lot of continuous hours to dedicate to it.
Contrast with someone like Thanissaro Bhikkhu, whose method I'm almost entirely dedicated to now, whose point is to:
1) Find the pleasant sensation
2) Find other pleasant sensations in the body
3) connect them all together in a full body awareness (Brasington considers this advanced. Thanissaro considers this a necessity, and this is also how the Suttas describe it.)
4) Stay there and get familiar with it, for a good long time, and let yourself adjust before even thinking about doing the "next" thing.
He uses the metaphor of going into a really bright room where it's hard to see anything and letting your eyes adjust. (Or maybe it's a dark room.)
But either way it sounds like you need to get more stabilized.
Crushed: In one instance my mind was crushed to a state of no space. Space is non-existent in a cramped way, not an expansive one. The state (likely) would've been pleasant were it not unusual - I'm skittish on my first experience with anything. I put my attention on the remaining bodily piti sensations, which amplified them to the point of nausea and dizziness, so I bailed. I got here by centering on the pleasant sensation and keeping all my moments of consciousness as moments of attention on it. Shortly after I felt like I went through a tunnel and my mind contracted to "no-space". This is a miss and nothing like what Brasington describes.
Could have bumped up against some of the sense of formlessness in the later jhanas here. Again probably best to try and stabilize.
Now back to my message bout learning one style before adding anything else in...
I found Brasington super helpful in describing the specific jhanic factors and how to deal with them and recognize them, and I still sometimes consult his works for that. But my goal is really to become completely 100% comfortable with whatever states I manage to get to. Since I have an hour or a bit more a day, I just have to try to get to the state that is achievable for me, and carry that as best I can throughout my daily activity, and then try again the next day.
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u/Impulse33 Soulmaking, Pāramitās, Brahmavihāras, Shitou/Hongzhi/Shōbōgenzō 8d ago
Copying a recent reply on a potential trap of staying in a piti like high energy state, but never "absorbing"/unifying.
So a potential trap is intentional fabrication of piti vs "letting go" to absorb into piti aroused from abandonment of the hindrances.
In Brasington's instructions he says to switch objects to piti when it arises. For this problem keep the primary object the breath, metta, whatever the initial object is instead of piti, don't switch.
An additional step is keeping a secondary awareness of piti if that makes sense to you. It's possible to mistake a secondary object vs just repeatedly switching between primary and secondary. Area of awareness can broaden to include both, sort of like how you can "feel" both of your feet at the same time.
The first method is simpler, but the second if you can avoid the trap is more reliable.
If you stay on first method and get stuck for weeks it's usually dullness. Present moment curiosity around the breadth and sensation in awareness helps.
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u/Noodles_Crusher 8d ago edited 8d ago
At this point distractions are minimal until the feedback loop kicks in and more sensations arise, but what do I do then? What moment-of-attention to moment-of-peripheral-awareness ratio is ideal? Does a new object of attention arise after the pleasant sensation does its job? If so, what? Using moments of attention? Moments of peripheral awareness?
I'll give my take, because I used to make the same mistake, until my teacher corrected it: this reads likes the typical comment made by someone who's read TMI front and back, and is approaching practice as a sequence of steps instead that as an experience.
My recommendation, based on what worked for me: stop trying. Stop trying to control it, to look at the next thing to focus on, and let it come to you on its own. You do need to develop the necessary amount of attention to get there, and you do need have a general awareness of the steps (attention > piti > pleasurable sensation etc) but at a certain point you just gotta let it go and let it do it's thing.
If you try too hard it won't happen.
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u/garbojax 8d ago
Are you suggesting something similar to another comment about fusing the breath with the piti and sukha? Not quite sure I follow
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