What Jhāna or "Consuming" meditation is like

Two further texts

Steps 5 and 6 tell us what we'll experience as we continue with our Anapana practice. As we saw in "What are pīti and sukha?" we'll experience an enhanced body-sensitivity and an overall sense of well-being. But neither step tells us how we can come into those two experiences. So on this page I'd like to introduce two other texts from the early Buddhist period, both of which I suspect belong to an early stage in the composition of the discourses. These texts do address how we enter each of these experiences.

The "Four Stages of Jhāna" Text

The first text is a short unit which describes each of the four stages of Jhāna practice. This unit appears many times as a stand-alone, self-contained unit which composers have placed in many different discourses. For example, of the 152 suttas of the Majjhima Nikāya (The Collection of Middle-length Discourses), twenty six of them include this text. If it has been used to help compose these discourses, it must have predated them.

The first two stages

You can read the whole of this short unit, the "Four Stages of Jhāna" text elsewhere on this website by following the link. For now we're interested in its first two stages. They read like this:

Truly separating oneself from sensory pleasures and from harmful qualities of mind, one attains and practises the first stage of jhāna, that is, an enhanced body-sensitivity and well-being (pīti-sukha), born of seclusion and accompanied by intention and attention.

From the cessation of intention and attention, one attains and practises the second stage of jhāna, that is, an enhanced body-sensitivity and well-being (pīti-sukha), born of samādhi (an inner tranquility of mind, a state of integration), without intention or attention.

The first thing to notice here is that the two words which are separated into two different steps of the Anapana practice, pīti and sukha are combined into a single experience here. That's because the well-being always accompanies the enhanced body-sensitivity.

Although the two experiences are combined, what this text shows is that they can be experienced in two different ways. Each stage states what the experience is "born of", and whether or not it's accompanied by "intention and attention". When we practise Step 5 of Anapana we may not be aware that the well-being is developing along with the enhanced body-sensitivity, but it becomes much more obvious when we reach Step 6.

How we enter the first stage of jhāna

The first stage is said to be "born of seclusion". This doesn't simply mean we take ourselves away to a private place, away from other people. What it really means is spelt out in the first part of this long sentence, "Truly separating oneself from sensory pleasures and from harmful qualities of mind". Does that sound a bit intimidating? How do we do that?

Well, that's the point of Steps 1 to 4 of Anapana. In the first phase of Anapana we develop our mindfulness, which leads us to a broadly-focussed and dispassionate awareness. Once we've developed the first phase of Anapana, we're ready to move on to the second phase. Our mindfulness is what separates us from both "sensory pleasures" and "harmful qualities of mind". Then developing the enhanced body-sensitivity of Step 5 is what this new text calls "attaining the first stage of jhāna".

Then notice that this "first stage" is "accompanied by intention and attention". Whatever that may mean, it's clear that some mental effort is going to go into Step 5 (or into the "first stage of jhāna"). Hold onto that thought and we'll come back to it shortly.

How we enter the second stage of jhāna

The second stage is said to be "born of samādhi". I haven't translated that word because the text itself immediately goes on to show what it means by samādhi. It means "an inner tranquility of mind", or "a state of integration". Perhaps that tranquility of mind sounds inviting after the mental effort that goes into the first stage. And notice that this second long sentence begins with "the cessation of intention and attention". It's exactly that which brings us into the second stage.

The "Four Illustrations of Jhāna" Text

The text we've just read tries to describe what the stages of jhāna are. It does so in long, wordy sentences, and when you read them it's quite difficult to sort out what each one is really saying. Who writes long, difficult sentences like that? I suspect they come from people with a rather "academic" turn of mind. I do wonder whether they were people who practised meditation themselves, or whether they were compiling an account of what Jhāna meditation is from what they had been told.

Whether that's true or not, I feel there is no doubt that the people responsible for this second text, The "Four Illustrations of Jhāna" Text, really did know what they were talking about. The four images in this new text are sometimes found appended to the four sentences in the previous text. For example, of the twenty-six discourse of the Majjhima Nikāya which include the "Four Stages of Jhāna" Text, three add these illustrations to supplement that text.

I've found that today these four illustrations are more or less ignored. I've read books about the modern Theravada version of Jhāna, and books and articles by academic authors about early Buddhist Jhāna, yet none have used these illustrations to help explain the four stages of Jhāna. What is important about these illustrations is that they give us a feel for what Jhāna practice is like, and that helps us know whether we're on the right lines in our own practice.

The first two illustrations

So here are the first two of these illustrations, which, when they occur in the Buddhist discourses, are always appended to the first two stages of Jhāna we read above. The first stage of Jhāna is said to be like this:

It is like a skilful bath attendant or his apprentice, having heaped bathing powder in a bronze bowl and sprinkled it with water, he kneads it into a bathing ball filled, flooded, drenched and saturated by liquid within and without, yet not dripping.

And then the second stage of Jhāna is said to be like this:

It is like a deep pool of water having no inflow from the east, the west, the north, or the south, and on which the gods bestow no rain in the season. Now since that pool contains cool water which has sprung up, such a pool would be filled, flooded, drenched and saturated with cool water, so that no part of that pool would not be pervaded with cool water.

The theme that runs through all four of the illustrations seems to involve bathing in a deep pool of cold water. Remember that these illustrations come from the Ganges plain of North India, where the opportunity to cool off in cold water was much valued.

What the first stage of Jhāna is like

In the quote just above, the first stage is said to be like the work of a skilful bath attendant. Starting with a heap of "bathing powder", a sandy mixture which was also used by builders to plaster a wall, water is added and kneaded in to create a ball, completely wetted throughout, but without a drop of excess water. The ball must keep its shape and not fall apart, yet all the powder in it must be thoroughly wetted. The use of four words, all of which mean something like "completely wet" emphasises the totality of the experience. This ball would be used by a bather to scrape off dirt and sweat from their body. Creating that ball must have been a demanding and skilful task, one for a trained and skilled person.

What the second stage of Jhāna is like

The second stage is pictured in a very different way, by a pool of water. This is a quiet and peaceful image in contrast to the busyness of the first image. It's an unusual pool though, entirely fed by an underground spring, unmixed with any surface water, or even with rain. Clearly it's an artificial image, created for the sake of what it illustrates. Not only is the second stage of the practice quiet and peaceful, it comes entirely from within. It springs up in a self-sustaining manner without any further efforts on our part. There is no more kneading of the ball. The contrast seems to be between a first stage "with intention and attention" and a second stage "without intention or attention".

What does this all mean? How do we practise Steps 5 and 6 of Anapana? Or, since it comes to the same thing, how do we practise the first two stages of Jhāna? If you move to the next page in this series on Step 5, "Getting more than I bargained for" I'll describe how I discoved quite by accident one way of developing the enhanced body-sensitivity and well-being of these two steps.