8. General Notes
Delight in an ever more refined form of bliss is the fuel of progress
The ninefold sequence of meditative attainments is a step-by-step refinement from a more or less restless mind to temporary cessation of all mind experience. What is being delighted in also refines along the way. For the mindfulness of breathing, it’s the pre-jhanic pleasantness. For the jhanas, it’s the jhana factors, mainly the rapture and pleasure. For the formless attainments, it’s the serenity of absorption—a refuge from sensory impact. And for the cessation of perception and feeling, it’s the sense of abandoning, release, detachment—that is the most sublime delight of all.
The common feature of all the stages is having a good time in your meditation. Don’t hesitate to enjoy it. The more enjoyable it is, the smoother the progress. The ever more refined form of bliss is the progress.
Normalization and the contrast effect
For all nine meditative attainments, subjective normalization of how it “feels” works, both in and outside of the meditation (for the cessation, only outside). The more you experience the contrast in terms of the meditation’s depth, the more intense the experience appears.
The most gratifying are usually the phases of progressing deeper in meditation. When you settle in a particular state and maintain it, after a while, it may not seem as impressive as when you were progressing towards it. You get used to it. It becomes the new normal. The benefits of the meditation remain, no doubt. The nine states are always very rewarding. The phases of progressing deeper just usually have an extra kick to them.
The contrast effect works downward as well. If you settle in a certain state, it normalizes, and only when the samadhi weakens, for example, due to meditating less (such as when you’re writing a meditation manual), will you be reminded how relatively deep and fulfilling that earlier state was.
As I understand it, the contrast effect is also at least partially responsible for how intense the first emergence from the cessation is. It’s directly experiencing the contrast between the mind before and after the first breakthrough into nirodha samapatti. The following cessations may be longer, yet emerging from them is not as intense because the contrast between the before and the after is not as profound. It’s no longer the breaking of a barrier. This is the hypothesis for why the first emergence is so unique in its intensity.
Overestimation
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”[1]
Richard Feynman
Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Self-deceit is not your friend. Generally, overestimation—believing you have attained something while you have not—is a common pitfall in meditation. It’s pretty easy to overestimate oneself due to the subjectivity of interpreting meditative experiences. It can be very tempting. All you need to do is to conclude that whatever you experienced is whatever you had been striving for, and that’s it—there are your “results.” The convenience of concluding one has attained something and the lack of objective checks for it is a tricky combination. Overestimating is a risk deserving careful attention.
It wouldn’t make sense to talk about overestimation without establishing what we consider to be jhana. The potential overestimation depends on how you interpret the attainment. I explained earlier in the manual which interpretation of the jhanas and the other attainments this manual works with. Adopting a different interpretation of the meditative states could change the conclusion about overestimation.
Here are a few thoughts and tips on how to avoid overestimation:
Exceptional states in meditation do not imply jhana
Overestimation is related to the difficulty of describing and imagining how the jhanas are. The path of samadhi is a progressively more refined form of bliss. From mindfulness to cessation, it gets better and better. The result is that every time you reach the new highest point in your meditation, it’s the “best meditation ever,” and it may not be easy to imagine how it would get much better than that.
“The best meditation ever” is very relative though. It’s easy to think like that about the pre-jhana states, and you would also think like that after emerging from nirodha samapatti. And it’s usually hard to imagine how it would get much better because it’s simply impossible to accurately imagine how far the mind can go before it actually gets there.
The point is that “the best state ever” in meditation does not yet imply it’s jhana. It may or may not be. There are undoubtedly non-jhana altered states of consciousness that can feel awesome.
Critically evaluate three aspects of the practice
So, how do you recognize jhana? Besides discussing it with a more samadhi-experienced meditator, the best you can do to check for any meditative attainment is to critically evaluate three things:
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During the meditation, are all the qualities that are supposed to be present in the mind for the given state really there?
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During the meditation, is the mind really free from what is supposed to be absent in the given state?
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Outside of the meditation, are you experiencing the benefits of the jhanas?
For example, there is no first jhana without evident (physical) rapture, no second jhana with internal verbal activity present, and no formless attainments with sensory perception. And if the mind still gets easily restless, drowsy, lustful, irritated, or the like outside of the meditation, whatever you’re experiencing, it’s probably not jhana.
All three aspects of the practice should be critically evaluated. Concluding that you’ve made it to the given state should follow only after answering “yes” three times to the questions above.
Don’t tailor your jhana interpretation to your own meditation
Being so eager to attain, the mind can tend to seek for any experience that may qualify as a success. That itself is natural and not necessarily a big issue. The problem starts when evaluating whether the meditative experience matches the attainment description becomes too flexible, driven by the desire for accomplishment.
It can go so far that the mind starts adjusting the meaning of the attainment description to fit one’s own experience. It can lead to quite creative interpretations of the attainments. Don’t fall for it. Don’t try to tailor what the jhanas mean to your own experience. It’s OK to overestimate. Everyone makes mistakes. But if we want to be serious about the practice, we should be honest with ourselves, and the evaluation should be as fact-based, rational, and unbiased as possible.
Being honest means going with the interpretation one thinks has the highest chance of being the true meaning of jhana after at least some basic research into the topic, not going with the interpretation that works “best” because it’s closest to one’s own meditation experience. I recommend doing at least basic research into the historical development of Buddhism and the corresponding traditions, scriptures, and practices.
Being aware that the mind can tend to seek anything confirming the attainment and accept alternative interpretations of the jhanas in order to achieve “success” can help prevent overestimation.
Don’t blindly believe others
Another source of overestimation can be believing a teacher who, for whatever reason, calls something “jhana” that is not jhana. There is only one way to prevent that: Don’t blindly believe anyone—do your own research, use your own brain. Teachers can be easily wrong, no matter their renown.
Underestimation
Underestimation is also a thing. However, due to the relatively high standard of how the nine states are interpreted in this manual, it shouldn’t be much of a problem. Only if you see the four jhanas as full absorptions and enter what this manual calls jhana would you not see it that way, and thus underestimate from the perspective of this manual’s standards. Besides that, I can hardly imagine someone going through any of the nine states described here and concluding that it’s not enough to qualify for the attainment.
Drawing conclusions
If your meditation feels great and special but doesn’t pass the critical evaluation test to qualify for jhana, that should not at all be a discouragement. Quite the contrary. It’s a good sign. It might be signaling talent for samadhi and good practice. It can be an encouragement to prolong the retreat and progress further in samadhi, hopefully, all the way to jhana, which will feel even better. Remember that the range of meditative bliss is vast and difficult to imagine until it’s actually experienced.
If your meditation does pass the critical evaluation and has all the features of jhana, it’s legitimate to conclude it’s jhana. The assessment shouldn’t be biased in either direction. Try to be careful not to overestimate, but you don’t need to be intentionally overskeptical either. After all, what matters most is the effects of the meditation, not the label you put on it.
Remain open to adjusting past conclusions
Generally, all you can do to avoid overestimation is try to make a well-informed rational judgment about whether what is happening in your meditation constitutes jhana and be open to adjusting your past conclusions if you realize they’ve been inaccurate. Being mistaken is not as much of a problem as the potential unwillingness to see it, admit it, and fix it. The jhanas are great, and the honesty of admitting not getting there is great too. Self-honesty and truth-seeking is the best long-term strategy.
Key Takeaways
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“The common feature of all the [meditative] stages is having a good time in your meditation. Don’t hesitate to enjoy it. The more enjoyable it is, the smoother the progress. The ever more refined form of bliss is the progress.”
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“Self-deceit is not your friend. Generally, overestimation—believing you have attained something while you have not—is a common pitfall in meditation. . . . The convenience of concluding one has attained something and the lack of objective checks for it is a tricky combination. Overestimating is a risk deserving careful attention.”
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“Being mistaken [i.e., drawing inaccurate conclusions about your meditation] is not as much of a problem as the potential unwillingness to see it, admit it, and fix it. . . . Self-honesty and truth-seeking is the best long-term strategy.”
[1] Richard Feynman, “Cargo Cult Science,” commencement address at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, June 14, 1974.