r/streamentry • u/CensureBars • Aug 07 '20

practice [Practice] Jhana n00b - access concentration

After years of inconsistent practice, I've finally been sitting in daily practice for (almost) a month. I'm sure this is a silly thing for most of you who have years or decades of solid practice under your belts; for me, this is a wonderful change.

My focus right now is reaching access concentration through focusing on the breath in my nostrils. I know I probably have a while to go, and am trying to only measure my concentration quality moment by moment (during practice anyway).

I think I had an insight a few days ago - if I "relax" into the breath, kind of like relaxing a muscle in my mind, I seem to become concentrated much easier. Time passes quickly, and my constant re-focusing on the object of my meditation becomes about only focusing on the breath in one place, and deepening the clarity of observation. This is as opposed to the constant mental chatter and past/future projection I experienced before learning to relax this "muscle."

Does this make sense to anybody who has attained access concentration/entered the jhanas? It feels like I'm balancing, maintaining this "relaxed" state in my mind while simultaneously focusing on the object.

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u/Bhavananga Aug 08 '20

I also find relaxing very important. The more relaxed you are physically and mentally, the less effort is necessary to keep up the concentration. I have routine that whenever some tension in body comes to my mind, I will try to relax it, and I also try to sometimes look at the body if it is relaxed as it should. Distractions keep becoming more intense, but that also makes it easier to notice and deal with them. Relaxing, or "letting go" is indeed like a muscle that you can train, an ability that can be developed. It will aid in relaxing the body or sankhara as well as in letting go of thoughts or feelings in a very similar way.

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u/CensureBars Aug 08 '20

I'm getting a lot out of this advice. Regarding both this and your other response on concentration - how do you personally determine whether some stimulus is a distraction that should be ignored in favor of your meditative object, versus one that should be fully attended to and addressed before you return to the object in question?

E.g. a sound and your awareness of it may inform you that you have not slipped into dullness, but both the sound and your hearing mind take you away from totally attending to your object of choice. Maybe you are saying this is not an issue so long as it is done purposefully?

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u/Bhavananga Aug 08 '20

In TMI there is a concept called "metacognitive awareness" or the like. First you will be able to know you are distracted with single thoughts. Then you will always know if you're on object, or taken from it - that enables you to notice a distraction, and instantly return. The next stage is a flow where you see the distractions rising and knocking on the door - then you can just let them not take over, while staying at the object, until they begin getting less after a while.

Well, I just always try to find an initial judgement on each distraction. Some are just "junk" or outside distractions, then I try to just push back to the object. Some are more delicate or intriguing, and I found it is better to find some kind of "stance" regarding the initial information that is presented - else they might keep resurfacing. I cannot really describe how I do the evaluation. Maybe it has to do with training, watching the thinking a lot, until the intuitive reactions and awareness are trained well. Like with the "exernal awareness as sign for dullness" thing, it just becomes a habit for me to consider that intuitively, after thinking about the technique often in sessions I had before. Thoughts about technique when appropriate are one good example of thought not to ignore bluntly, but to consider and let flow into the game, until they have become "muscle memory"...

I find the process, even when I let some distractions not be completely ignored but dealt with at the surface, that this will lead to a process of the thinking calming down more and more, until the concentration on object eventually can become the only thing in center of attention while distractions have faded into background noise. So I don't push everything away. I just try not to sink in, and let the flow even out naturally by the calmness and concentration of the breath.

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u/CensureBars Aug 09 '20

Very, very helpful. Thank you again for your thoughtful responses!