Upasaka Culadasa

The Jhanas: Retreat (January 2011)

My topic for this weekend is something that is very dear to methe jhana practice
which Ive been very interested in and doing for many years. When I proposed to do it as
a topic for the weekend, there was some concern that only four people would show up
because nobody would be interested in something that is a little more obscure in
meditation than mindfulness practice and vipassana and things like that. Im really glad to
see so much interest. Its really wonderful. Very exciting. Im really looking forward to
this weekend. Its going to be very interesting. I have absolutely no idea whats going to
happen. I dont. I promise, at the very least, youll leave knowing a lot more about what
the jhanas are and how theyre practiced and the role that they play in traditional
Buddhist practice, which is a very important role. What Im really hoping is that many of
you will have some experience of jhanas, if you havent already, over the course of the
weekend and it will interest you enough to want to pursue that further. Whether that
happens or not, well find out on Sunday afternoon.
How many of you have already done some sort of jhana practice at one time or another?
A few, not a lot. How many of you know something about the jhanas? Looks like
probably about three times that many. I assume that all of you are interested in knowing
more, and thats good.
Shelly, do we have very many more people likely to show up?
Shelly: Maybe two or three.
Culadasa: Two or three? OK, well go ahead and assume that were beginning now.
OK, well officially being. Good evening, once again. Welcome. Its very good to have
you here. So, lets begin with a short meditation, just to get us in the right frame of mind.
So if youll please make yourselves comfortable, relaxed, and just close your eyes. Take a
moment to come fully into the present. Become aware of your body. Check in on your
mental state. I find that its a happy state. It is for me. There this contentedness about
being here with all of you in this wonderful place. And on this wonderful planet.
If you can cultivate some joyfulness, and then with that joyfulness, begin to do whatever
practice that you normally do. Do it joyfully.
Meditation occurs here

Thank you. I wanted to get us all in the mood, but also, while its really fresh, just reflect
on what happened over the course of the last 15 or 20 minutes. What you did, and what
you experienced. With this many people, there were quite a few different styles of
meditation going on, but there are certain things that would be consistently true of
everyone here. There was a kind of intentional activity going on in your mind to do with
attention and awareness, right? Anybody for whom thats not true? Its hard to not be
conscious, but the intention part can not be there, you mind can be going on its own. But
when youre meditating, theres intention behind it. There was some component of
directing and sustaining your attention, right? There was also an important component of
an awareness of what was going on. Whatever practice you were doing, you were, Im
sure, keeping track of whether or not you were still doing it or had forgotten and slipped
into a little bit of daydreaming or slipped into dullness or things like that. Theres a metaawareness, a larger awareness, beyond just what your attention was directed towards as to
what your mind was doing and whether or not it was what you intended it to be doing.
This is sort of whats at the root of all of our different meditation practices. As we learn to
do them more successfully, whether or not in that particular style its pointed out to us,
we need to learn to gain some control over the movement of attention, because attention
is initially very slippery and goes all over the place. The other thing that we absolutely
have to do is to develop that awareness that allows us to know when were not doing
what we intend to do and make corrections for it. As we will see, this is the same basic
element that is present all the way through to the practice of what are called the jhanas.
Jhana is a Pali word. The Buddha lived in an area of India and traveled in an area where
many different dialects of magadi (?) were spoken. Pali was the formal dialect. I gather
this is common in many parts of the world where there are a lot of different dialects, that
there will be some formal dialect by which people from different regions can
communicate with each other. So the teachings that have come down to us are in the Pali
language. Pali is derived from Sanskrit. Its one of the Sanskrit family of languages.
Interestingly enough, several hundred years after the passing of the Buddha, these
teachings of the Buddha that have been preserved in the Pali language were translated
into Sanskrit. This resulted in new Sanskrit words coming into existence. This is called
Buddhist Sanskrit. When the Buddhist teachings were translated into Sanskrit, even
though Pali is derived from Sanskrit, there were a lot of words that had come to be used
in a highly specific way in Pali with reference to dharma practice and meditation. When
this was translated back into Sanskrit, it became Sanscritized as Buddhist Sanskrit. It
became sort of a technical language or terminology for dharma and Buddhist practice.
Jhana is one of those words. If we look at the root of it, the root meaning comes from the
word meaning to meditate. A meditator is a jhayin (?). Jhana is meditation. At some
point, early on in the history of Buddhism, pretty much all meditation was referred to as
jhana. One thing we do have to keep in mind is there are many different kinds of
2

meditations that people do now. They share certain basic characteristics, as I pointed out
to you. One distinction that we do need to make about the word jhana and the way it was
used is that it referred to meditation where there was a certain amount of skill developed.
It didnt refer to any old meditation where somebody whod never meditated before sits
down for twenty minutes and theres a lot of mind wandering or dullness or things like
that. So the word jhana meant meditation where there was a certain stability of attention,
a certain degree of mindfulness, freedom from dullnessa certain skill level. Thats how
general the word originally started out to be. In early Buddhism, interestingly enough,
from what we can tell from the sutras, this was the meditation that everybody did. It was
the meditation that the Buddha did that let to his own enlightenment. It was the
meditation that he taught over and over again in the sutras. As a matter of fact, if you look
in the sutras, youll find jhanas come up so often. Every description of the eight-fold
path, when it comes to samasamadhiright concentrationsays, And what is right
concentration? Right concentration is first jhana, second jhana, third jhana, fourth jhana.
I didnt know that when I first learned about the jhanas. As a matter of fact, when I first
learned to meditate, I was first introduced to vipassana practice. Vipassana noting
practice. But I was very fortunate. I had teachers who were very steeped in the oldest
Buddhist practice traditions. I complained to my teacher that I was not too satisfied with
this vipassana method and his response was, Well why dont you learn to do samatha?
Samatha vipassana. I started practicing samatha, I liked it, and the culmination of
samatha is jhana. And so I followed that path for many years and learned to practice
jhanas. The jhanas I learned were very deep. Its a degree of concentration where you
really have no awareness of your body, no awareness of sounds and sensations and things
like that. It is a very profound state of concentration. For many years, I thought thats
what jhana was. I had no idea that it had an older history of having a much broader
meaning. Over the years, I came in contact with other people who were doing other kinds
of jhana practice that they had learned from different people and discovered that there
were actually many kinds of jhana. Also, there was a lot of controversy around all of
these different things called jhana because no matter what kind of jhana somebody did,
they were absolutely convinced that what somebody else did either wasnt really jhana,
because it wasnt deep enough, or else it wasnt really jhana because it was too deep. It
was trancelike and waste of time and blah blah blah.
I became engaged in a number of discussions with people that practice in different
traditions and at one pointI dont want to make it sound like Im the only person that
was looking into this. When meditation came to North America, a lot of very brilliant
people began looking into it, learning it, and learning more about it. Quite a few of them
noticed that there were some inconsistencies in what was being brought to the West that
was called jhana. A lot of things that didnt exactly line up with what you find if you read

the sutras, the original teachings of the Buddha, or at least the closest thing that we have
to the original teachings of the Buddha.
As it turns out, these very deep jhanas, like the kind that I learned, were a later
development. The method of practice that I learned is described in a book called the
Visudimaga (?), the Path of Purification, that was written by Budagosa (?) in about 430
A.D. that was somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 or 1,000 years after the time of the
Buddha. It was a compilation. By that time, there were many different approaches to
doing practice. The Visudimaga(?) was compilation. Budagosa was a scholar; he was not
a meditator. He read other texts and he talked to meditation teachers and compiled this
teaching, which is kind of a basis of modern teravadan tradition. This work describes
jhanas in terms that are very difficult to achieve. Theyre very deep, profound jhanas.
Theyre actually very wonderful jhanas, but they require many many years of intensive
practice to be able to achieve. Many people would not be able to.
As it happens, the tradition I was trained in was also an amalgamation of teravadan and
Tibetan, the kagyu sect of Tibetan. I also became acquainted with the Tibetan
commentarial literature on jhanas. The same thing. The presentation of the jhanas in these
Tibetan commentaries was this really amazing, profound state of concentration
complete withdrawal of the mind from the senses of a sort that very few people can
achieve. As it happened, over the centuries, people stopped practicing jhana throughout
most of the teravadan world and throughout most of the Tibetan Mahayana tradition.
Heres a very interesting thing: Early Buddhism went into China, and the world jhana,
when it became Sanskritized it became yana, and when it went to China it became chan.
The principle Buddhism of China is chan, named after this meditation technique and the
practices within that tradition continued to strongly oriented towards the samatha and the
absorptions that are, as Ill explain to you, probably much more what the original jhana
was. Then from China, it went to Japan and chan became zen. Indeed, in zen, zen is the
meditation practice that leads to these same absorptions that are spoken of in the sutras.
Its not that these methods were lost anywhere, but they became rarely taught and rarely
practiced in the teravadan countries and in Tibetan Buddhism, where they had gained this
sort of mystique as being super-difficult-to-achieve meditative states that only one in a
thousand virtuoso meditators would ever be able to accomplish.
Have any of you heard or read anything about jhanas that gave you that impression, that
they were very difficult to achieve, that it was quite wonderful but for most of us, forget
it?
Back to the personal part of my story hereAs more and more Westerners came in
contact with these Buddhist teachingsand being the kind of people that we are, we
listen to what the teacher says but then we want to go back and read what it says in the
4

books, right? They noticed that the teachers sort of blow off jhanas and they give this
very difficult version and discourage you from ever going after them, but you back and
you read in the sutras and all it is is jhanas, jhanas, jhanas. So you wonder whats going
on there. A discussion began, a very interesting discussion. At some point, they began to
distinguish commentarial jhanas from sutta jhanas as two different kinds and saying, you
know these jhanas in the suttas that he was talking about all the time and that wanted
everybody to practiceand it seemed like everybody was able to practice and everybody
was practicingwhen you examine really carefully, they are not nearly so onerous as
whats in the Visudimaga and whats described in the Tibetan commentaries. This was
illuminating and we began to learn a lot more about the true natures of jhanas and
Buddhist meditation as this was explored and discussed and things were compared.
Unfortunately, these labelsVisudimaga jhana or commentarial jhana and sutta jhana or
sutra jhanastuck a little bit too well and they led inevitably, as you can imagine, to the
debate, Which are the real jhanas? Which are the real jhanas. These are the real jhanas.
No, no, no, these are the real jhanas. These are the ones the Buddha taught, they must be
the real ones. As the discussion went on, it became clear to some of us thatespecially if
you go and read the sutrasyou would find that there are sutras in which jhana is
discussed in precisely those terms that the commentaries did. So those are real jhanas too.
Theyre not some different kind of jhana that was made up a thousand years later or
fifteen hundred years later. Theyre in the sutras too. What it really tells us is that jhana
shouldnt be thought of as quite such a restrictive term as it has come to be thought of, no
matter which side of the fence youre on. We do have two sides of the fence. If you start
looking into jhana practice, there are the people who do so-called sutta jhanas, and these
are easy jhanas and those other jhanas arent real jhanas and they wont get you
enlightened anyway. They were invented a thousand years later and blah blah blah. Then
theres the other side.
But taking a second look what we discover is that the jhanas, as theyre described in the
sutras, can be practiced at many different levels or depths of concentration, different
degrees of concentration. Theyre not out of reach. Theyre available as a practice to any
of us, as available as any other meditation practice is. They do, like any meditation
practice, take time, regular practice, some contact with a good teacher, so on and so forth.
But theyre no more unattainable than any other kind of meditation practice. Of course, as
you become more skilled, you can enter into deeper and deeper versions of the jhanas.
This was really illuminating for me, because I had learned the deep jhanas. I started out
with the idea that these are the real jhanas and I dont know what those rinky-dink things
are that other people are doing. I do the real jhanas. The person who really opened my
eyes to the tremendous value of real jhanas in the sense of jhanas that can be practiced at
many different levels of concentration, was Lee Brazington. Anybody heard of Lee
Brazington? Yeah. He teaches a kind of jhana that he learned from Hiakema. As it turns
5

out, there are a variety of different jhanas being taught in the world right now at different
levels of concentration, which Im going to talk to you about over this weekend and
were going to try to enter into some of those jhanas together.
Just to give you an idea of thosethese are Hiakemas booksWho is Myself and The
Iron Eagle Flies, where she talks about jhanas. I call these the lite jhanas. Ill explain why
later on. Sheila Katherine wrote this book Focused and Fearless. This is a somewhat
deeper from of jhana practice. Then there is Ajon Brahm, Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond.
This is a book that you may have seen. Theres also this little free book that you can write
off for and theyll send to you called The Jhanas. These are a deeper kind of jhana and I
call these light jhanas, because they use the illumination that comes up as a part of piti as
a way of entering the jhanas. The of course, Paa Sayuda and two of his students, Stephen
Snyder and Tina Rasmussen recently published this book on jhanas. These are fairly deep
jhanas but they still use the light as the meditation object for entering the jhana. Then
theres Hanapola Gunaratna. This book The Path of Serenity and Insight was originally a
PhD thesis that he did. He was a monk since he was a young man. He came to the United
States to take over a teravadan center in Washington, DC. He did a degree in Buddhist
Studies on jhanas and on samatha meditation. This is his more recent book, Beyond
Mindfulness in Plain English. What these represent is a spectrum of different approaches
to jhana that are practiced at different levels. And there are others that havent arrived in
book form yet. What I call the ultralite (light?) jhanas, which, as far as I can tell, are
about the lightest jhana that you can enter into thats really a jhana and it really has all the
benefits of jhana practice, where you can actually sustain in that state without either
slipping into dullness or distraction for thirty seconds or a minute. Ill talk to you about
all these different jhanas and explain them in more detail over the weekend.
The idea here is that whatever it is that the word jhana refers to, it has a broader meaning
than just these very strictly defined and difficult to attain deep jhanas. It has a tremendous
utility. It has just an incredible utility. Ill say a little bit about that too.
Heres another thing that some of you may have heard, many of you may have heard,
about samatha and jhanas both: These arent appropriate practices to do. Jhanas lead to
trancelike states and yeah, you feel good but it doesnt go anywhere. People dont get
enlightened from jhana practice, or from samatha in general. If we look at the history of
Buddhist meditation, well see that this is insupportable. One of the things that you may
have heard is you cant practice mindfulness in the jhanas. Anybody ever heard that?
Somehow these two are totally incompatible and if you practice jhanas, there can be no
mindfulness in the jhanas. This usually goes along with the description of jhanas as being
trance-like. That too, it turns out, is not really the case. The history of this meditation
techniqueit existed before the time of the Buddha. After he left home, he went, one
after another, to two teachersAlarakalama and Udakaramaputra. The first one,
Alarakalama, taught him jhanas and under that teacher he mastered up towell talk
6

about the different jhanas later onewhats sometimes called the seventh jhana or the
third formless jhana. Its the jhana of the base of nothingness. When the Buddha-to-be
had mastered that practice, Alarakalama said, Join me and well be teachers together.
You now know everything that I know and youve experienced what Ive experienced.
This is the highest achievement of the spiritual path. The Buddha was not satisfied with
that, so he left Alarakalama and went to Udakaramaputra. Ramaputra means son of
Rama. He studied under Udakaramaputra and mastered whats called the eighth jhana or
the fourth formless jhana, which is the jhana of the base of neither perception nor
nonperception, all of which sounds very mysterious, but Ill explain it to you as we go
along.
This was an even higher level, and as it turned out, he actually surpassed his teacher,
Udakaramaputra, attaining a practice level that Ramaputras teacher, Ramathats why
he was called Ramaputra, because he was the disciple of Ramahe achieved the level of
mastery of Udakaramaputras teacher, Rama. Udakaramaputra said, well, you achieved
everything that Rama did, so you should take over my crowd of students here, and you be
the teacher. The Buddha said, no thank you, this is not what Im looking for.
Let me explain to you what those people were teaching. They were teaching jhanas, very
effectively. This meditation practice had developed in the Brahaminical tradition, and the
philosophy behind it is that Brahmins were desirous of breaking free of the wheel of
cyclic death and reincarnation. They were seeking divine union with Brahma, with the
ultimate. In their understanding, Udakaramaputras and Alarkalamas, was that the way to
achieve this liberation was through a series of meditation practices that basically reversed
the Brahmin cosmology. So that you went from being in a solid body to progressively
finer and finer states of refinement, leading to the states of infinite space, infinite
consciousness, nothingness, neither perception nor nonperception. Essentially what you
were doing in this jhana practice is working your way backwards through the process by
which human beings had been created by Brahma out of the ultimate. When you sat in
meditation, when you entered the jhana of the base of nothingness or the jhana of the
base of neither nor nonperception, you were dwelling in a state that was very close to this
primordial state. It was discussed in terms of having discovered the true self. This is you
true self that you were when you were in this state. They considered residing in that state
to be very important, and the more time you spent in that state, the more likely you were
achieve the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal, the ultimate liberation didnt happen until
after you died. When you died, if youd been practicing in this way, then you would
realize your true nature and become one with Brahma and you would never again be
reborn into the cycle of individuality and suffering.
This was the teaching that the Buddha rejected. He was looking for a liberation,
awakening, an enlightenmentalthough, I think at those points, perhaps those words, he
wouldnt have used those, because he didnt know what form this was taking. He was
7

looking for a liberation in this life, not something that was going to happen after you died
as a result of spending a lot of time in a trancelike state. Because of the view that was
help by the Brahmins, they did these jhanas in a way that was very trancelike. The more
totally, completely absorbed and removed from the world of samsara you were, the better,
the stronger the effect would have and the greater your chances of becoming liberated
when you died. They did these practices in a very trancelike way.
After the Buddhas enlightenment, he took this method and he changed it in a very
profound way. He said, you practice the jhanas with mindfulness, not trancelike, but with
mindfulness. And he said, liberation is achieved in this life, not after you die. These were
two really significant changes.
He learned the method of the jhanas, he did them according to this system of thought.
You have to understand that the Brahmanical religion was very ritual based. Most of that
religion involved the performance of rituals and everything that happened was a result of
how well rituals were performed. The impression that comes down to us is that this is the
way they tended to regard the meditation practices. The liberation that they were seeking,
too, is that it was like a ritual. If you went into these deep states of meditation and you
stayed there often enough, long enoughits like performing the ritual in the right way
then in a sort of magical way, when you died, this liberation and ultimate freedom from
reincarnation would occur.
The Buddha rejected this and left Udakaramaputra. For the next six years he wandered
and it seems, from what he says in other sutras, he must have had contact with a number
of different teachers, studied with them, learned their doctrines and their practices. He
also did a lot of ascetic practices, living on a couple of grains of rice a day and never
sitting or lying down. Things that are really torturous to the body. He those a whole
variety of things for six years and that got him nowhere. Then he reconsidered. When he
reconsidered, he went back to the jhana practices and he did jhana practices but he did
them in his own way. He achieved his own enlightenment as a result of doing jhana
practice. Thats in the sutras. You can all read that. Were you already familiar with that?
Did you know thats how the Buddha became enlightened? Ive got a handout for you
that has a lot of this detail in it. I didnt include that particular description. Its a really
sweet one. He sat down and entered the first jhana, second jhana, third jhana, fourth jhana
and then from the fourth jhana he experienced the insights that led to his awakening.
Thereafter, he taught the jhanas.
Where he teaches the jhanas, its very interesting. Theres one sutra where he has a
conversation with a Brahmin who is obviously familiar with these practices. The Brahmin
accepts him as being an enlightened being and says, So for me to cross the flood, great
teacher, what is the object of meditation that I should use? The Buddha recommended to
him the jhana of the base of nothingness. He said to practice with mindfulness. The
Brahmin did kind of a head-scratch on that one, and said, With mindfulness, but can a
8

yogi stay in the jhana if hes in the jhana with mindfulness? The Buddha assured him
that he could, and not only that, he would achieve liberation.
We see thisand youll see this in a handout that Ill give youall of the descriptions of
the jhanas have the word mindfulness in them. They stress that word, mindfulness. So
mindfulness is a part of the jhana practice. Its what makes the difference. It is what the
Buddha discovered and introduced into the practice that makes the whole difference
practicing the jhanas with mindfulness.
Because you see the other thing that the Buddha discovered is that awakening isnt a
magical event that happens as a result of doing things in just the right way. Which
actually is, even today, a widespread belief, that somehow if you sit and meditate in just
the right way, then sooner or later, like a lightning bolt, it come through the top of your
head, and youre enlightened. But thats precisely what, in the sutras, the Buddha said
doesnt happen. He said that liberation, awakening, enlightenment is a cognitive event.
And thats why you have to practice mindfulness. It is a realization, not some magical
thing that happens to you. It is seeing and understanding things as they really are. The
reason that the jhanas are such a wonderful way to do this is that, when we look at them
more closely, theyre like a serial dissection of the mind. You take the ordinary, everyday
mind, and then you refine it to the state of whats called access concentration, from which
you enter the first jhana. You enter the first jhana and it has certain characteristics that
define it. You go to the second jhana, which is a further refinement, and its like peeling
another layer off the onion. So going through these jhanas is like dissecting the mind, one
layer at a time. Its done with mindfulness, and by doing it with mindfulness, it leads to
insight and the insight leads to awakening. Thats the whole idea behind the jhanas. Any
questions about that?
Student: Because Ive heard different things from different teachers, I think what I heard
was that the jhanaswell, one teacher says that you have to move through the jhanas.
Thats Tanusaru Jef (?) Bikhu. Other teachers, like Adjanamaro (?), say jhana-banana.
You cant really get enlightened through the jhanas because theyre all conditioned states.
The jhanas are conditioned and enlightenment is not conditioned.
Culadasa: What Adjanamaro says is absolutely true, but meaningless. The only
unconditioned state is nirvana. Which is like saying the only way you can get enlightened
is nirvana, and anything else you do isnt going to work, because its a conditioned state.
What he says is true. Ive heard all of these things many many times from many different
teachers, myself. There are a lot of misunderstandings that have been perpetuated in
many different lineages for many many centuries. We tend to hear these things over and
over again.

You mentioned Tanusaru Bikhu, Tan Jef. I recommend this book highly to those of you
who would like to go into this a little more deeply. Its called Wings to Awakening. This
is an aside. The title is a pun on a very important topic. In the meditation community,
theres this idea that weve got samatha and vipassana, we got concentration and we got
mindfulness and never the twain shall meet. The wings to awakening that this title refers
to are samatha and vipassana, samadi and sati. The metaphor is that theyre like the wings
of a bird and the bird cannot fly with one wing. There is a section in here, Section F on
Concentration and Discernment, and Tan Jef translates discernment as sati. Because
mindfulness is really a terrible translation of sati. But were kind of stuck with it. In
trying to correct that, when he wrote this book, everywhere the sutra said sati he made it
discernment. So theres this whole section on concentration and discernment where he
points the role of the jhanas. He says, The role of jhana as a condition for transcendent
discernment is one of the most controversial issues in the teravada tradition. And he
goes on to talk about these different views that have come up. Some believe the only way
that you become enlightened is through the jhanas; there is no other way. Then there are
those that say you only need the jhanas for the third and fourth final stages of
enlightenment. Then there are the people who claim that youll never get enlightened
practices the jhanas. So there is a lot of confusion and a lot misunderstanding out there.
Its wonderful when somebody like Tan Jef, who is one of the most major translators of
the Pali sutras into the English language, has gone to the trouble to get all these different
references and sutras and line them up together. It gives you a chance to see that, indeed,
from the point of view of the Buddhas original teaching, which obviously Adjanamaro is
not familiar with, the jhanas are a path to enlightenment. Whether they are the only path
or not, thats a different question. Thats not actually addressed by the Buddha in the
sutras. They are unquestionably the path that he taught.
Very good question. Im sure others of you who arent saying anything but youve heard
things like this. Its important that we talk about these things. I dont want to be another
teacher that youre hearing one version of things from. Ive spent a lot of time looking
into these things on my own behalf over the years and, over the last couple of weeks, on
your behalf. I want to share with you what Ive learned about these things. About the
historical basis of these things and where some of these unfortunate views have arisen
from. But I can assure you, the jhanas are probably THE most powerful path of
mindfulness that does indeed, without question, lead to awakening very quickly.
Student: Pardon me for seeming a little bit thick, but it sounds as though the coming
weekend will be a methodical step-through of these jhanas as clear, well-defined
technique that you will narrate. Am I wrong?
Culadasa: I wouldnt put it that way. What I want to give you is a more in-depth
understanding of jhanas and to acquaint you with a number of different ways of
practicing jhanas. The ones that I have in mindsee, this is all a big unknown. My own
10

teachers and probably many of my peers would say what Im trying to do is impossible.
What well be focusing on, initially, is seeing if as many of you as possible can have an
experience of what I call the ultralite jhanas. Dont take that as a derogatory term.
Ultralite doesnt mean that theyre almost useless. Theyre very powerful and very very
useful. If you succeed in that, even if its just for a few moments, you will have become
acquainted with a tool that you can use to greatly accelerate the quality of your
meditation practice and allow you much more quickly to access deeper jhanas. In general,
no matter what practice youre doing, to enjoy much greater benefit from it. Then Im
also going to spend some time with you seeing if you can experience the lite jhanas.
These are the ones that I learned from Lee Brazington. Theres the ones that Hiakema
taught. They require a little better concentration initially, but you dont have to have
mastered that state of concentration. You dont have to be able to enter that state of
concentration every time you sit down. You just need be able to enter that state of
concentration for about 10 or 15 minutes and then you can enter this kind of jhana. So
Im going to see, as many as you as possible, if I can guide you to have an experience of
these lite jhanas.
Depending on the time and the mood and everything else, we might take a stab at some of
the deeper jhanas. But certainly youll learn about them, youll understand what they are,
how theyre different from the ones that we do together. What I hope will emerge from
this is a much clearer whole picture of what jhanas are. If I succeed in doing that, youre
going to walk out of here with a much clearer picture of what meditation is.
Student: It soundsI want to very cautious, because I have a lot of over-freighted (?)
language, just too freightedyou sound very much like my altered-state psych teacher
when was describing depths of hypnotic trance and how people are hypnotized all the
time. They just dont know it. Its not a very big deal. You can do the white-line hypnosis
when youre driving and youre not really all checked out like people think in the movies
Im a zombie. It sounds like youre describing these subtle transits in trans-depth, but
you earlier were very careful to say trance isnt what were talking about. So I dont want
to go there, but thats the word I learned in school, so Im stuck with it.
Culadasa: Very good question. Jhanas are not trances. You only hear that they are from
people who have never learned to practice them.
Student: Right, but apparently they have depths in them in the same was trances do.
Culadasa: Well, were limited by language. They do have depth to them, a depth of
concentration. Some subtleties of the way the mind works. Were working with the nature
of the mind itself to lead it to be able to experience different states that are available to all
of us but that without some guidance, we never know what happens when you turn left
behind that tree and see whats over there.
11

You mentioned hypnosis. This is not trancelike, its not hypnosis. But I will say one
thing: In order for me to be able to guide you, when were doing guided meditation, you
have to go with my direction. In some ways thats similar to hypnosis, but Im not going
to be hypnotizing you. Instead, Im going to be inviting you to a place Ive been, over and
over again, many many times. Im inviting you to follow me to this place, OK? So you
have to be willing to go. If youre resistant, or hesitant, then its not going to work as
well.
Student: I told you that trance wasnt going to be a good word, but I stuck with it.
(Laughter)
Culadasa: Yeah. Well, dont worry. That was a very good question. I hope that you got a
satisfactory answer to it.
Student: Yeah.
Student: Im curious if youve see jhanas in the Four Foundations practices, if you see
that they overlap, are they covering the same territory or are they separate practices?
Jhanas in Four Foundations practices.
Culadasa: Oh, the four foundations of mindfulness.
Student: Are they covering the same territory?
Culadasa: Theyre covering the same territory. Yes, they are. Absolutely. One of the
things that you may have heard is often people take the anapanisati sutra, mindfulness of
the breath sutra, and say, Oh, this is about jhanas! And then theyll take the satipatana
sutra, which is commonly called The Four Foundations of Mindfulness, although
foundations is a ridiculous word for applications of mindfulness. Thats what it is, right?
Anybody thats familiar with it, its four ways of applying mindfulness. And say, thats
something completely different. Theyre not. Theyre covering exactly the same territory
in a different way. Thats one of the things that I really hope that youll come out of the
weekend with. If not out of the weekend, then as we continue to work together, youll
come to a clear understanding of exactly what it is that both of these sutras are talking
about.
For those of you who are not familiar, I did do a weekend a couple of years ago on the
Four Applications of Mindfulness. Those four applications are mindfulness of the body as
aggregate, mindfulness of the feelings as feelings, mindfulness of mental states and
mental states and mindfulness of mental objects or phenomena as the phenomena that
they are. This is exactly what you doonce youre developed the skills so that you can
enter and leave the jhanas in sequence and you work your way through first, second,

12

third, fourth, infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness and so forth, you are
actually doing the foundations of mindfulness. They do overlap.
Student: What Ive been wondering about is even if a jhana and mindfulness practices
can be combined, is there any concern about doing both at the same time. Specifically,
you taught me a new practice last week that Im really just barely getting the hang of
thats quite different from jhana. Im wondering about working on two at once like that.
Culadasa: OK. This is NOT two different practices. This is not doing jhanas and
mindfulness at the same time. Jhanas IS a mindfulness practice. It always has been a
mindfulness practice. Youre not doing two different practices. Youre doing one kind of
practice with a larger understanding of what it is that youre doing. Im glad that youve
been working on that practice.
Student: Its hard!
Culadasa: Well, lets go back to the basics. Lets work on the basics again. Ive given you
a general introduction. Lets go back to what are these jhanas again, anyway.
The word jhana originally meant meditation, but the way the Buddha used it in the sutras,
it referred specifically to certain meditation states. Its equally correct to use jhana to
refer to meditation of a certain quality in general or to use it more precisely and
specifically to refer certain meditative states that were very clearly defined by the
Buddha. The word jhana is often translated into English as absorption. And that is an
excellent translation, a very very good way to translate it. Mental absorptions. Mental
absorption means that you are quite fully engaged with whatever it is that youre engaged
with. We all experience mental absorptions, right? Anybody here that doesnt know what
a mental absorption is? A lot of mental absorptions. Are all mental absorptions jhanas?
Well, no. If we look at mental absorptions in general, we find that they can be
distinguished one from another in several different way. To begin with, there are mental
absorptions that are wholesome and there are those that are unwholesome. Wholesome in
the sense that what you become absorbed with is inherently wholesome and wholesome
in the sense that your mental state, that leads to the absorption, is wholesome. And
likewise unwholesome. You can become absorbed with lust, or greed, or hatred or all
kinds of other things like that, right? And those are pretty intense absorptions. I know
youve experienced them at some time or another. Everyone has experienced intense
absorptions of an unwholesome nature.
I made up a little list. This is a handout that youre going to get later. Unwholesome
absorptions are those based in greed, lust, anger, hatred, dullness, addiction, escape, fear,
worry, guilt, cynicism, self-doubt, self-pity or self-loathing. With a more complete list,
has everybody identified at least a couple of absorptions that theyve experienced?
(Laughter) There was a sutta where this was made very clear and I did include that in the
13

handout. What the Buddha called jhanas were only wholesome absorptions. For an
absorption to be wholesome, what the Buddha defined as the five hindrancesand
youve heard me talk about that, but some of you may not be familiar with itmust be
completely absent, even if theyre only temporarily absent. They must not be a part of the
jhana, or of the absorption. For an absorption to be called a jhana, first of all, it has to be
a wholesome sort. What sort of mental absorption did the Buddha praise? Theres the
case where a monk quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful mental
qualities enters and remains in the first jhana, second jhana, third jhana, etc. The object
cant be something thats inherently unwholesome and the mental state cant be
unwholesome.
Thats one way that absorptions differ from each other and we can distinguish what the
Buddha called jhanas. The other thing is, when the Buddha defined them, either a part of
each jhana or else the state from which the jhana was accessed was characterized by joy,
happiness and unification of mind. Another jhana factor is equanimity. For a state of
absorption to be what the Buddha called the jhana, it had to either include or be accessed
from a state where these jhana factors of unification of mind, joy, happiness and/or
equanimity were present. So it is narrowed down a little bit there.
The fact that joy is present is really interesting. Reflect once again on the absorptions that
youve experienced in your lifeon the wholesome absorptions, or at least ones that are
not unwholesomeand the joy and happiness that you experienced when you were
completely absorbed in doing something that you really wanted to do, and that you were
good at, and that you were doing well. Weve all that experience, right?
As a matter of fact, Hailey, positive psychologist, has studied optimal experience and
discovered a state that he called flow, which is a perfect description of what the Buddha
was talking about when he said mental absorptions that are based in unification of mind,
joy, happiness and/or equanimity. - Hailey said these investigations have revealed
that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow
a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to complete absorption in an activity.
Everyone experiences flow from time to time, and will recognize its characteristics.
People typically feel strong, alert, in effortless control, unself-conscious and at the peak
of their abilities. Both the sense of time and emotional problems seem to disappear. And
this is something thats characteristic of jhanas. Not to be mistaken with trancelike states,
but what they have in common with some trancelike states is the normal sense of time is
disturbed, its changed. In deep jhanas, you may have no sense at all of the passage of
time. But in any jhana, youll have an altered sense of the passage of time. I know some
of you have had that in meditation anyway. Youve sat in meditations and they might
have been jhanas and you didnt know what name to put them, or they might not have
been. When you enter into that flow state, it will seem like, Wow, how could the
meditation be over with already? That is one of the characteristics.
14

Emotional problems seem to disappear, and theres an exhilarating feeling of

transcendence. That exhilarating feeling of transcendence is what is called piti in Pali
meditative joy. What the Buddha said, were only talking about the ones where thats
present at least in the state from which you access the jhana. Its not present in all of the
jhanas. In some jhanas, youve actually moved beyond that. Youve peeled the onion to a
depth where youre beyond that. However, you entered the jhana from a state where it
was present.
Were going to continue with some of the things that - Hailey discovered studying
flow in ordinary people in ordinary daily activities. The activities that give rise to the
flow experience are performed as an end in themselves, not for any other purpose. Does
meditation qualify? The goals of the activity are clear, and the feedback is immediate.
What is most important about the feedback is a symbolic message it contains: I have
succeeded in my goal. This creates order in the flow of consciousness. If youre
following your breath, as you continue to follow the breathin breath, out breath, in
breaththats an unending stream of little successes, right? When you forget, you know
it instantly and then you bring in back.
Flow appears at the boundary where the challenge of the task is perfectly balanced with
the persons ability to perform the task. This is where we go wrong in meditation very
oftenwe want to be better than we can be. We want to be able to perform our
meditation practice at a level that we have not trained our mind to the degree to be
capable of, or else, we sat down with a mind that was sufficiently disturbed or dull
already that we cant do that. No matter what the state of the training of your mind is,
your meditation can become a flow experience if you adjust your expectation to match
what youre capable of doing. It appears that the boundary from the challenge of the task
is perfectly balanced. You have to be doing your absolute best, but you have to adjust
your level of expectation so that moment by moment you are rewarded by the success
that youre capable of. Even if you forget and your mind wanders, if the expectation that
you hold is that the instant you realize that, you will be glad you realized, let go of it and
come back to the breath. Youll have succeeded. If you meditate in that way, rather than
reacting with, Oh no, I forgot again. Oh no, oh no, it becomes, :Oh yeah, oh yeah, Im
a winner. And joy begins to arise and happiness begins to arise.
Student: That doesnt sound like exactly what hes saying. It sounds to me like hes
saying you have to adjust the actual task to make it easy enough to succeed.
Culadasa: This is just a brief synopsis. Heres the book, by the way. I recommend it. Its
very good. Theres a new version of it out: Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience.
He describes it in here, he makes it clear. The question comes, why is this person
experiencing flow and this person doing exactly the same thing is not. This is the reason
the internal adjustment is really critical. The expectation that you hold. Surgeons,
15

athletes, assembly-line workers. If you have an expectation that youre not able to
consistently meet, youre not going to experience flow. That internal adjustment is a part
of it.
In the things that Hailey is talking about, flow in the world, the task itself is a very
important part of it. People will discover that they can achieve flow doing a particular
thingplaying the violin. They might not even be very good, but theyve discovered that
they can do that. The same person might not be able to enter flow doing other things. In
terms of what Hailey is looking at, hes looking at the fact there are a lot of different
activities that certain people can experience flow in more readily than other activities. So
the activity is a part of it. The skill level is a part of it, too. For example, if youre
learning to throw darts, when eight out of ten darts dont even hit the target, its going to
be hard to make that into a flow activity, right? But when you get to the point where eight
out of ten are in the circles and the other two dont go off the board, somebody says,
Your dinners ready and you say, Yeah, yeah, Ill be there in a minute, youre in the
flow, youre lovin it and you dont want to quit. Thats the kind of difference.
All of these factors work together. In terms of meditation, if you remember that the
expectations that you created are going to have a big impact on whether its a flow
experience or not, you can learn to make the meditation into a flow experience. Thats the
point here. OK? This little synopsis is not quite as complete as the whole book.
What makes the flow experience enjoyable is the sense of successfully exercising
control, which is not the same as being in control. Once again, you have to read the book
to see what the distinction is that hes making there. If you have a need to be in control,
thats actually more the mindset where anything that happens that youre not able to
control is going to keep you from entering flow. Exercising control is an important part.
During the flow experience, a person becomes so involved in what theyre doing that the
activity becomes spontaneous, almost automatic, and they cease to be aware of
themselves as separate from what theyre doing. When youve had a really good
meditation, isnt that what happens? It starts to flow, it starts to be automatic. Youre right
there, youre on top of it, moment by moment by moment. No matter what kind of
practice youre doing. If youre doing an insight practice, its like youre just hitting on
every littleand it just feels so good. It becomes automatic.
A complete focus on attention is required, allowing only a very select range of
information into awareness, leaving no room in the mind for anything else. All troubling
or irrelevant thoughts are kept in abeyance. Whats important about this is that in your
meditation practice, one of the most important things youre trying to achieve is a
unification of your mind. The reason that you experience life the way you do is because
different parts of your mind are trying to go in different directions at all times. When you
sit down to meditate, you find there are different parts of your mind that are not with that
16

agenda at all. They have other things they want to think about, other things theyd rather
be doing. Unification of mind. Whenever you forget your problems, your concerns, and
you become totally focused on one thing, joy arises, happiness arises. It becomes a very
pleasant, satisfying state. Simply because youre no longer being plagued by all of these
other heady concerns, worries, so on and so forth.
Finally, the flow experience appears to be effortless yet requires the application of
skilled performance. While concentration lasts, everything happens seamless, as if by
magic. Once again, remember hes talking about ordinary, everyday activities that
people experience as optimal experience. Were talking about meditation. Do you see that
what he has discovered in his research is very helpful to us in meditation in
understanding what it is that weve been doing and been trying to do all this time.
The Buddha knew this. Thats why, when the Buddha said what I call jhana is
characterized by these factorsunification of mind, joy, pleasure or happiness and/or
equanimity. In some of the jhanas well see that the joy passes away but there is
equanimity.
So this is the second of all the different kinds of mental absoprtions. Jhanas are
wholesome absorptions that involve the jhana factors of unification of mind, joy,
happiness and pleasure and/or equanimity. Right? You remember that? OK.
A third way, which weve already alluded to, that mental absorptions differ from each
other is somethe ones that Hailey studiedhappen in daily life out there in the
world. The ones that were talking about happen in meditation. Buddha restricted his use
of the word jhana to the ones that happen in meditation. Of course, because thats what
jhana means is meditation.
Ill sum this up for you by saying that when we look at the sutras, any meditative state
that involves an absorption that is wholesome and involves joy, happiness, pleasure and
equanimity is a jhana, according to what the Buddha taught. So you have all probably
experienced states, for short periods of time at one time or another, that would definitely
have been called jhanas.
Theres one more way that mental absorptions can differ from one another and that is the
depth of the absorption. How completely absorbed we are in whatever it is were
absorbed in. We can sort of absorbed, enough to feel joyful and happy and really enjoying
what were doing, but still were aware of other things and still having other thoughts.
There can be greater depths of absorption. I know all of you have been so absorbed in
something at one time or another that somebodys had to call your name three or four
times, and you didnt hear it. Or youve become completely oblivious of things going on
around you. So, you all know there are many different depths of absorption. When I was
talking about depths earlier, this is what I mean by depthhow completely focused you
17

are on whatever it is that youre preoccupied with. Thats the depth. The debate that came
up that I referred to earlier between commentarial jhanas and sutra jhanas is one of depth.
The commentaries and the people that follow that view would say that the only real
jhanas are the ones that are at such a depth that if somebody comes up and claps their
hands next to you, youre not going to hear it. Or if they put a hand on your shoulder,
youre not going to feel it. Adjan Brahm defines jhanas in this way. He tells a story that
supposedly one of his students was in jhana and his wife thought hed had a heart attack,
called an ambulance, he was taken to the emergency room, they put the defibrillator on
him and things like that, then he came out of jhana and said, What am I doing here? It
could be a bit hyperbolic, I dont know. (Laughter) But there are those people who will
say thats the only real jhana. You have to be that deep. And thats the kind of jhana that I
first learned to do. Its the kind of jhana where youre sitting there in jhana, and youre
pretty much oblivious to everything. There is a part of your mind that still knows what
goes on. I can tell you because I was practicing jhana and there was a car crash on the
street in front of where I live, a little narrow street in Vancouver. There was a car crash,
and after I came out of the meditation, someone I was living with said, Did you hear that
car crash? I hadnt, but when they said it, I remembered that yes, that had happened. But
if theyd not mentioned it, I would never have known. There was still an imprint in my
mind. If theyd waited half an hour, I wouldnt have remembered it at all.
Whats happening in these absorptions is the same thing that youve already experienced
and are familiar with. You become so completely preoccupied that a lot of stuff just
doesnt come through. But there are all kinds of different levels. Anyway, I already
covered this aspect earlier: Is jhana dependent upon a particular depth or level of
concentration, preoccupation, absorption? Its not. Not if we examine the sutras carefully.
If you do that, youll see that there are cases where the Buddha is speaking about
somebodys absorption and theyre in the first jhana and he refers to sound as being the
enemy of the jhana. Obviously this is a person who can still hear sounds. If somebody
makes a noise, it will disturb him from the jhana. But there are other descriptions that
make it clear that the person that hes speaking about has entered a much deeper state
where they are much more totally oblivious.
The most exaggerated story that I know of from the sutras themselves has to do with
somebodyUdakaramaputra was once in a jhana so deep that a herd of elephants ran by
and he didnt even notice. So the Buddha responded with, Ive been in jhanas so deep
that lightning struck the building and it burned down around me and I didnt know it.
There are these references in there to different depths.
Thats what the jhana isan absorption, a mental absorption in meditation, that involves
unification of mind, which weve talked about but not all of you have been here for those
discussions about what unification of mind is. Let me just explain that a little bit. Theres
a word Samadhi, which is usually translated into English as concentration. If you want to
18

enter a jhana, you have to have a certain degree of concentration or Samadhi. But if we
look at the real meaning of the word Samadhi, it comes from sam-a-da, which means to
collect or bring together. So Samadhi, which we translate as concentration, is a very
reasonable translation but it gives a little depth of understanding if we realize that the
actual root etymology refers to the collecting together, the bringing together, of the mind.
When you practice Samadhi, at some point you will achieve whats called ekagatha.
Ekagatha is another one of those words that has sadly been misunderstood and
mistranslated. The complete termthe way youll find it most often usedis cittas
ekagatha. Cittas means mind, eka means one, or unity. Gatha means gone. So cittas
ekagatha meansunquestionably it meansa mind that has gone to unity. A unified
mind. Often this word is translated as single-pointedness, which is not what it means in
Pali. But its a very commonly used technique to achieve ekagathaunification of mind
is to practice single-pointed concentration, where you put your mind on one thing
unwaveringly for as long as possible. But there is this confusion. Ekagatha is unification
of mind; its not single-pointedness. Single-pointedness is a way of getting to ekagatha.
Unification of mind, in my own personal experienceI didnt get this from books or
anything like thatand in many of yours too, what youll see is youre meditating, your
concentration is pretty good, you dont lose the meditation object, your attention is pretty
firmly fixed on it, but there are these other thoughts that keep coming in, and background
noises. Every now and then, one of them will stand out, or some sensation in your body
or things like that. If the quality of your practice improves just a little bit, what youll find
is those thoughts fade away and disappear. The tendency of an outside sound or sensation
to be able to intrude like that disappears. Ive experienced that and youve experienced
that, and Ive examined that. This is what mindfulness is. Mindfulness is you examine the
ordinary things that you experience. You just keep looking at them until one day, ah!
Thats what happens. One day I realized that there are parts of my mind that were
thinking about this other stuff and they were doing it the whole time. When they finally
stopped, no more distraction. There were parts of my mind that thought whatever that
sound was, was important or the ache in my ankle was important. When I got to the point
where those parts of my mind werent trying to say, Hey, you need to attend to this other
thing, enough of this, and my mind became unified, meditation became very easy. As a
matter of fact, its a classical stage in the development of samatha. Its called effortless
concentration. Its amazing when it happens. Youre get to the point where you dont even
have to try anymore. Its because all the different parts of your mind are on the same task
at the same time, so there isnt this struggle of no, not that; no, not that either.
Thats unification of mind. And thats what Samadhi is about. Samadhi is collecting
together all of these different parts of your mind and getting them on the same task.
Single-pointed practice is a way of bringing that about. Once its brought about, once
your mind is unified, you dont need to focus on one thing anymore. You dont. Its
19

totally unnecessary. As a matter of fact, there are very powerful meditation methods that
are based not on focusing on one thing but on open awareness. You have to achieve that
level of unification of mind in order to practice those methods effectively. So, thats
ekagatha. Thats what were after, is the unification of mind.
In order to experience the jhanas this weekend, to experience the jhana for thirty seconds,
you only need to have thirty seconds worth of unification of mind. Some thought may
come along and bump you out of it or some sensation or something else. But for that
period of time, youll have a taste of jhana and youll know what it is. Not only a taste of
jhana but a taste of unification of mind that leads to jhana.
Ill tell you something else about unification of mind and the fact that you dont need
single-pointed attention. Lets talk about mindfulness again. Mindfulness involves
attention and awarenesstwo different things. You need to have both of them to be truly
mindful. Whats most important in terms of developing mindfulness is developing that
awareness aspect. What were all really good at is focusing attention. Were so good at it,
that this is where we lose our mindfulness. We get caught up in something and everything
else is lost. So theres attention and awareness. Mindfulness involves both, but the
difference between mindfulness and the way our minds ordinarily work has more to do
with the consciousness thats in that realm of awareness.
In the deep jhanasIm getting ahead of things that I was going to tell you about
tomorrow, but Ill go ahead and tell you tonightin the first jhana, the jhana factors that
are there are directed and sustained attention, joy, pleasure and happiness. In the second
jhana, directed and sustained attention are not present. They have been relinquished. If
you look at the description of these two jhanas in the Pali and in the English translation of
the Pali, it says that the second jhana is characterized by unification of mind without
directed and sustained attention. We use directed and sustained attention, that focused
aspect of consciousness, to enter the first jhana. But if the mind is truly unified, we can
let go of that. We dont a meditation object. The second jhana is just pure awareness. The
second jhana is characterized by unification without vidaka and vichara (?), without
directed and sustained attention but accompanied by joy, pleasure and happiness. You
have the experience of joy, pleasure and happinessyoure aware of joy, pleasure and
happinessbut youre not focused on any one thing. Youre not attending. There is no
directed and sustained attention.
In the deep jhanas, all of the higher levels of jhanasecond, third, fourth and all the
formless jhanasdo not involve attention to an object. What they do involve is
awareness. Thats where the mindfulness comes inthat awareness in these jhanas is the
mindfulness.

20

Student: If mindfulness is there, and at the same time youre so absorbed that you cant
hear a sound outside of you, what kind of mindfulness is that?
Culadasa: That is a very good question. To understand mindfulness, you mustIm sure
youve already done this; I know some of the people you practice withdo a walking
meditation with the instruction to try to be aware of everything in the moment. Have you
done that practice? And its absolutely impossible. With the greatest degree of awareness
that you can cultivate and bring into presence, youre only going to be aware of a
relatively small subset of everything that makes up the present. This is a really important
thing to realize. When the Buddha discussed mindfulness, or discussed sati, which we
translate as mindfulness, he made it really clear that for mindfulness to truly be valuable,
it needs to be combined with sampajana (?), which we translate as clear comprehension.
Sati sampajana. The translation of clear comprehension totally loses the essence of the
meaning, because the way its explained, sampajana is knowing what is happening, why
its happening, what its causes are and what its purpose is, and whether its appropriate or
not. Introspective awareness is what I can this, because if you learn to watch your own
mind, you start out learning to watch your own mind so that youll know if your minds
wandering, youll know, if youre slipping into dullness. You develop a habit of watching
your own mind. That becomes sampajana, because sati sampajana is where you know
whats going on in your mind, you know what its causes and purposes are, and you also
knownot analytically, not by thinking about it and saying thats not really what I want
to be doingyou know in an immediate way, this is not what my mind You know, if
you practice mindfulness regularly, youll experience sati sampajana when youre the
middle of a situation and you think it should go this way but its going that way and then
in a moment, you mind will say, OK. I dont need to resist this. That sampajana. You
know whats happening, you know why its happeningI got attached to this outcome
and you know that isnt appropriate. You know immediately without analyzing it. If I stay
attached to it, Im just going to be unhappy. So then you let go of it. Thats an experience
of sati sampajana in daily life. Sati sampajana is knowing whats going on in your mind,
why its going on and whether its appropriate or not.
This is what you have throughout the jhanas, when youre not paying attention. I dont
know if Ive lost track of the original question. What was the original question?
Student: I was just saying that you talked about being so absorbed in the jhanas that you
didnt hear something that was rightyou heard on the street but it really wasnt part of
you mind. My question had to do with mindfulness, which, to me, mindfulness brings up
the idea that you are aware of everything around you and how youre responding inside.
Culadasa: OK. Its impossible to be aware of everything, and what its most important to
be aware ofthis is what I was getting atwhat the Buddha said is most important to be
aware of is whats going on inside. You cant be aware of everything, so since you cant
21

be aware of everything, be aware of whats most important. Whats most important is

whats going on in your mind. An illustration of the difference between sati that is
directed outward versus sati thats directed [audiofile ends abruptly here]

Session 2

Culadasa: Subjective. OK, so that all of your interpretation has to do with you. How does
what youre paying attention to impact on you? What can you do with it, or what should
you do, or so forth?
The other mode in which you can pay attention to something is very objective, where
theres still the subject/object duality but it polarizes and the knower becomes very
separate from the known. This is still attention. So whenever theres attention, theres
very much this subject/object duality thats a part of it. Whether everything is being
interpreted very subjectively or whether the mind is making the separation and its
becoming very objective, there is no mistaking. You think about it, when you pay
attention to something, youre conscious of something. Whos conscious? I, whoever that
is. Me. There is this knower. I know that thing. So Im either entangling myself with it,
because Im concerned about what its implications are for my future well-being and
happiness, etc., or else Im objectifying it and creating this separation. Theres always
that duality.
Lets turn to the other mode of knowingawareness. The distributed knowing. Most of
the timenot always, but most of the timeeven when youre paying attention to
something, there is simultaneously an awareness of the context, an awareness of your
body, some degree or another of awareness of your mind, mental state, mood, so forth,
awareness of other things, processes, activities going on around you, awareness of where
you are. Right now, theres an awareness of how you came to be here, right? Theres an
awareness of why youre here. Theres a lot of background present in this awareness,
which gives whatever youre paying attention to its context. If you examine that way of
knowing, what youll notice is there is much much less processing taking place. As a
matter of fact, this background creates a context for your present experience and it seems
to be experienced as a whole, as a package, all at once. You know what I mean? Its not
broken down into parts. If you can study it a bit, what youll realize is theres more of an
awareness of how everything relates to everything else. Its the relationships, the
relationships of things to each other and the relationship of things to the whole that is
more prominent in awareness, rather than focusing on any individual thing, as happens
with attention,

22

Normally we will be attending to something, there will be a certain amount of focusing

consciousness on something in a moment, while simultaneously theres this background
contextual awareness, this other way of knowing. This awareness has a function. It alerts
attention to something that is unusual or important or seems to require more attention. So
thinks pop out of awareness and attention goes to them. As soon as attention goes to
something that has popped out, it gets processed in this way I discussed, and evaluated.
This may lead to it immediately being let go of, or it may lead to a continuation of the
focus of attention on it. Then there are times when whatever attention has been focused
on, doesnt seem so important anymore. Its as though attention spontaneously begins to
browse the field of awareness to see if theres something else out there thats more
interesting and useful to pay attention to.
Mindfulness is when both of these functions are working the way they should.
Mindfulness fails us if our attention becomes too focuses and we lose awareness, and
whatever were focused on no longer has context. Not only that, things may come up that
should be attended to, but theyre not. Or there may be things that are more important,
more deserving of attention that dont come to be known so they dont come to be
attended to. When you become overly focused on something, awareness just sort of
shrinks and fades. Whatever you focus on loses context. Of course, if it has a lot of
emotions involved in it, this can become one of those unwholesome kinds of absorptions
that we were talking about last night. Thats exactly what happens when you start
becoming too focused on the pain in your ankle and you lose awareness of the
pleasantness in the rest of your body or the calm that was is your mind before you started
worrying about whether this pain is your ankle is going to become so bad in ten minutes
that you cant stand it. You lose the options, you lose the discrimination, you lose the
discernment that allows you to use attention most effectively, when you become overly
focused. Attention plays an important role. It allows you to know and evaluate and
understand something more intensely. When you get sucked too strongly into focused
attention, you lose awareness, you lose contact, you lose perspective.
This is something that we all experience all the time. Its what happens in meditation
when you become overly focused on one thing and you forget that youre meditating.
Then, your attention will move from that to something else. Then your attention will
move from the second thing to the third thing. But youve lost the context. You forgot
what you were doing. When youre meditating, its awareness of what youre doing that
you lose when you forget. To succeed in meditating, you have to have mindfulness in the
sense that there is both focused attention in balance with awareness.
What you rely on in meditation is this awareness to alert you to when youre not doing
what you intended to do. When somethings happening in your mind. When I say youre
not doing isnt very good terminology because a lot of whats happening in your mind,
theres no intention or doing; theres no self behind it. Its happening. When your mind
23

goes to something else, its something that happened. You didnt do it. The you that is a
doer is pretty much limited to that intention to meditate, and when it comes back into the
present, then, at that point, there becomes the possibility of the doing in the sense of
letting go of the distraction and coming back to the meditation object. So awareness lets
you know what is happening in the mind so that you can do whatever is appropriate.
When we talk about mindfulness, as we were last night, the most important aspect of
mindfulness for us to cultivate is the awareness of what is actually happening in our
mind. Sati sampajanna. The introspective awareness. This is most important in all of the
times in our lives, not just when were meditating. If we become too focused, then well
lose the ability to do what it is that we intended to do, because we lose the awareness and
then we dont know when the situation has changed. I the knower dont realize when
whats happening in my mind is something different than what I originally intended.
Thats the distinction. Its not that I dont know what I am doing, because if I was doing
it, I would probably know it. Its happening, and because I wasnt aware of what was
happening, I have no ability to respond to it appropriately.
Let me hear a little bit from you about this. This make sense to you? Any questions?
Student: Im probably getting way ahead but often Im able to stay in this pleasant state
until something or someone else startles me out of it. Someone stomps by and says, oh
that copier. As you pay more attention about whats going on inside yourself, that
becomes almost an assault. You notice it. And then you get chain-reacted into Oh, that
distracted me. Oh, now Im really distracted. Look at where Im going now. Whatever
you were doing at your desk, thats gone. Thanks. Then of course you can chain that
together as many ways as you want. OK. Weve kind of caught on to returning to the state
of cultivating this is pleasant. The world isnt going to stop assaulting you with oh that
copier or whatever the heck it is today. How do you deal with that? How do you deal
with, Its someone elses fault taking me out of my nice space?
Culadasa: OK. Thank you. That brings up something that I wanted to get to. When the
attention becomes focused, we lose awareness and then very often what happens is
attention moves. Theres a difference between awareness of the context of whats going
on and where attention is going there and there and there and there. All of these
little pieces can create an illusion of awareness, but its not awareness. Attention moving
from one thing to another can fill the mind, and theres no awareness present. What you
need in the situation that you described is to train your mind not to completely lose
awareness. When you see the context, instead of your mind getting caught in that chain
you get assaulted by the world, as you put itif you look at whats happening, attention
is moving but awareness is gone. Where awareness should be are all these isolated pieces
picked up by rapidly moving attention. These fleeting impressions that arent real in the
sense that if you had awareness, youd say, Oh, why am I getting so disturbed by this?
Youd let go of that and go back into that nice place. Isnt that what sometimes happens?
24

Isnt that what you sometimes feel has been the benefit of your mindfulness practice
those occasions when exactly that happens? Awareness does come up and awareness puts
the whole thing in perspective, the context returns. When context returns, then its easy to
say, I dont need to do this. Let me just back to being and Ill deal with the copier. Its
not a big deal. So that illustrates the difference.
We lose awareness when we become too focused. Awareness cant come back if that
intentional activity is just jumping from one thing to another. It will create the illusion
that you still know whats going on. But you dont, really. You dont. The part of your
mind that sees it in the way that allows you to have context has been deprived of the
illumination and consciousness. Its not contributing to your experience. Its just the
illusion. Does that make sense to you?
This is important because this term mindfulness is a very unfortunate translation of sati
and sampajana. In English, if you look at all the ways that the word is used, its major
connotation is paying attention. That is not the essence of mindfulness. Attention is a part
of mindfulness but its not even the part of mindfulness that is our greatest problem. The
part of mindfulness that we need is to not lose awareness. We need to strengthen
awareness. And we need to maintain a balance between attention and awareness. So when
we use the word mindfulness and we think attentionmindfulness means remembering
to pay attention, Ive got to remember to pay attention. One of the things we do when we
practice mindfulnessyou go to a retreat and they say, when you eat, taking the spoonful
of soupthats all focused attention, right? Bringing the soup to my mouth, tasting it,
swallowing it, everything else like thatyoure really not practicing mindfulness when
you do that. Youre practicing focused attention. Youre practicing concentration. And
thats good, because most of us, the problem with our attention is its going all over the
place. If we werent doing that, we would be eating and not even paying attention to it,
wed be thinking about something elseyou know, I wish that person didnt wear that
cologne, all this other kind of stuff would be going through your mind, from one thing to
another. But thats all attentionuncontrolled, unrestrained attention, constantly moving
attention.
Mindfulness isnt constantly moving attention. Mindfulness isnt attention darting about
from one thing to another, trying to hit on everything and then starting the cycle all over.
Thats not mindfulness. Mindfulness is placing attention somewhere, not having all of
your consciousness sucked in to that focus of attention so that youre attending but at the
same time, its within this larger contextual awareness. Having more distributed
consciousness that makes sense of everything. Thats when youre really practicing
mindfulness.
In all of these different ways that we practice meditating, theyre all encouraging the
development of mindfulness in different ways. Also, theres the focusing, the attention
25

element as well. The only way youre able to do any of these practices is to develop
enough awarenessintrospective awareness, in particularto know whats going on in
the moment. Until you do that, your practice is this interrupted series of a few minutes of
noting, thinking or feeling, or whatever. Its very short periods of following the breath
interspersed with these long periods of attention going all over the place, and theres no
awareness. When you get good at it, its because youve developed enough awareness
that you know immediately when whats happening in your mind starts to be different
than what you intended, and you bring it back to doing that, to doing what its supposed
to do.
Student: It seems like it always comes back, for me, to having this really deep internal
peace of understand reality really, because otherwise the attention does dart all over the
place. I think what was coming up for me was thinking I grew up in a really chaotic
environment and so I learned to be constantly aware of everything. I thought, looking
back, when I was a young adult looking back at my childhood, I thought I was aware of a
lot of things at once. I had to be aware of everybodys emotional state, what might fall
apart, what might happen, who might do what, everything at the same time. Now, looking
at it, maybe it was attention darting all over the place, but its one thing to be aware of
everything thats happening around you and be constantly able to have a sense of
everything, or what you think is everything, at once than whats happening in your mind,
the awareness of whats happening. Weve been talking about that its more important to
be mindful of whats happening in your mind than everything around you, and yet you
kind of have to have both. So I always come back to, since we live in such a chaotic
society and world right now, it just always comes back, to me, to finding that peace of
understanding reality. But then you have to meditate to get that. I keep coming back to I
have to meditate more, I have to meditate more. For me, its wanting to reach more than
a split second of that understanding. I feel like I see glimpses of it and I feel it, but I cant
hold onto it. But the glimpse of it is enough for me to want to have it all the time, so that
its with me all the time in the chaos. That, to me, to be able to have that internal peace, to
have the awareness. I really like your metaphor of the light, the focused light and the
spotlight versus the floodlight. To me awareness is not really like fractioning attention but
its kind of like relaxing it. To have that, you have to have that peace, and to have that
peace, you have to understand reality. You cant have that until you relax. Its like a
difficult thing to do in our society thats so chaotic. And youre expected to be so good at
concentrating and focusing on your task. To be good at your job, you have to be so
focused and so, OK, I can do this. But theres all this chaos, all this chaos. Were all
ADD and all the kids have to take Ritalin. Its a hard world to get that peace. So its nice
to be able to retreat, but how do you really meditate every day? I guess Im talking to
myself. (Laughter)

26

Culadasa: There are a couple of important points that you brought up for us. One of them,
earlier on, is that its important to be aware of whats out there but its also important to
be aware of whats in the mind, and vice versa.
To just leap ahead here, at some point, you realize theyre both the same thing. The only
way that you can really be aware of whats out there in an effective way is to be aware of
whats going on in your mind.
Student: With perspective, so that you dont get sucked in.
Culadasa: Yeah. And thats where what Im called awareness is much more fundamental
than attention. Its much more powerful and it has more unconscious roots. There is
unconscious awareness or subconscious awareness, and then there is what Ive been
talking about, which is conscious awareness. Thats the small part of awareness that does
register in our consciousness. Superimposed on all of that is this little spotlight of
attention. The awareness that Ive been talking about is rooted in a lot of subconscious
and unconscious mental processing. To be aware of whats going on in your mind is to be
conscious of a good chunk of awareness. And that has already been pre-sorted. These
deeper, unconscious and subconscious processes have already sorted it out so that the
out there that you experience in here. In other words, whats going on out there that,
if you are aware of in your mind, has already been sorted to include whats most
important.
The other thing that you mentioned is the relaxation. The peace. This is something that
when we talk about awareness versus attention, think about those times when youre
really relaxed and at peace. Nothing is bothering you. Sometimes this happens after
youve finished some major project. There are different causes for it. But you know what
I mean? Youre not really paying attention to anything in particular and it feels like your
mind just kind of opens up and youre just there with everything. Youre sitting on the
porch looking at the mountains or whatever it is, walking through the woods and
breathing the air. Thats in that place of awareness without this focused attention. It is a
very relaxed and peaceful state. The greater degree that you bring awareness into balance
with your focused attention, thats going to be part of the background and context of the
way you deal with things. Subconscious awareness is already prefiltered, so that whats in
conscious awareness is what is most likely to be significant or important to you. Then, if
you can pay attention to whatever in there is most important, without losing awareness,
then its pretty sure that whatever you focus your attention on will be whats most
important. Conscious awareness gives you this larger picture, this context. If youre
focusing on something that isnt important, like being upset about the photocopier,
awareness allows you to be aware of the fact that this is creating an unpleasant mental
state. Its not helping anything. Its not solving any problems. You can let go of that and
shift your attention to something else that may solve the problem, rather than being
27

caught up in the negative aspects of the problem and the bad feelings about the problem
and so on and so forth. You experience more peacefulness.
Bring this back down to meditation. Developing awareness and actually coming into a
state of flow, which will allow you to enter jhanas. Youre meditating and youre
cultivating this introspective awareness of whats going on in your mind and you are
doing the simple task of meditating. Your attention is focused on one thingand this is
really important. If your attention is moving around, its really hard to experience
awareness when attention is moving. When attention is still, then you can experience
awareness. I find a visual example of this is very very good. You can right now focus on
one particular thingfor example, you could focus on my teacup, hold your eyes there,
and allow yourself to become aware of everything else around here. You can hold a large
visual awareness while your eyes are still. Thats very much like when you stabilize
attention, then you can experience that larger contextual awareness as the background to
it. Its much harder to do that when your eyes are moving. Its much easier to miss
something important if your eyes are darting around from one thing to another.
As a matter of fact, have you ever dropped something on the floor and youre looking and
looking and looking, your eyes are darting from one focal point to another and you cant
find it. Then you sort of back up and you just, Oh, there it is! Ever had that experience?
Your mind works exactly the same way. In a way its amazing how similar our visual
system is to our cognitive system. I think its the intuitive awareness of that which
explains why we use the phrase, Oh, I see to mean we understand. Or were watching
the breath. Were not watching the breath. Were observing the breath. Youre knowing
the breath, youre experiencing the breath. There are a lot of great similarities between
what happens visually and what happens in the cognitive systems of the mind. This is a
really good illustration of it. In order to develop awareness is just like developing
peripheral vision. To do it effectively, you need to gain some control over the movement
of the eyes, and likewise you need to gain some control over the movement of attention.
Which doesnt mean that attention cant move, because it can. You need to stop attention
from moving until you can come to this place of being able to sustain this larger
awareness. Especially this introspective awareness of whats happening in the mind itself.
If we at it sequentially, the development of samatha and then practice of the jhanas, thats
what its doing. We start out, we sit down, and the first thing we try to do is to steady our
attention, to stabilize our attention. We really cant do anything else until weve done
that. When we first sit down, what happenswe may not recognize it immediately but
we do after weve meditated a little whileis that we have a meditation object and thats
what we want to pay attention to. Anything else thats present is a potential distraction,
right? The world is divided up into two categoriesmeditation object and distractions.
What will happen is that the attention will shift away from the meditation object to one of
those distractions. When that happens, its called gross distraction. We may not have
28

forgotten the meditation object yet. If we stay on that gross distraction for very long, we
will forget. And once we forget, then the attention is free to move from one thing to
another and we have mind-wandering. The sequence of what happens is we place our
attention on something, gross distraction occurs followed by forgetting followed by
mind-wandering. This is followed by remembering and bringing the attention back.
In the development of samatha, we work through this process from the other direction.
First, we say, Lets try to deal with mind-wandering. The first state is developing a
practice and the second stage is really working to overcome mind-wandering so the
periods of mind-wandering become short. In the third stage, we work on forgetting. You
overcome forgetting. Then in the fourth stage, you never lose awareness of the meditation
object but other things displace it. You have gross distraction. So youre aware of two
things at once. In the fourth stage, you work on overcoming gross distraction. Once you
get through the fourth stage, now you have some attentional stability. Theres still a lot of
other stuff in your mind but it stays in the background and youre aware of it in the
background. But your attention can stay focused on your meditation object. In the process
of doing this, how you got here was by developing awareness, exercising awareness,
practicing awareness, because you have to be aware when your mind is moving away
from the meditation object so that you can bring it back. Until you start becoming aware
of things like that, until youve gotten to the place of being aware of whats happening in
your mind, theres nothing you can do to correct for it. Whenever that awareness is
present, then you can do something. Then you can have that victory, and you bring it
back. As your awareness develops, this becomes easier and easier to do. It becomes a
more and more continuous process.
The other main obstacle that we experience of the mind is slipping into dullness,
especially when we are no longer paying attention to all the stuff that would ordinarily
stimulate the mind. The most fascinating meditation object in the world will become stale
after a little while. Its really hard to retain its fascination after youve spent so many
hundreds of hours looking at it. When you carefully observed your first two hundred
thousand breaths, it holds very few surprises anymore. So theres a tendency to slip into
dullness. So in the fifth stage, you work on overcoming dullness.
When you come to the sixth stage, you have stability of attention and youve trained your
mind not to slip into dullness. Thats the first point at which we can begin practicing
jhanas, at the sixth stage of the ten stages of samatha.
If we look at the jhanas themselves, what are these jhanas anyway? We keep saying it in
plural. They are basically four of them. Often youll see that there are eight, but it turns
out that the latter four are really variations on the fourth. So there are basically four
jhanas. Theyre called the Four Form Jhanas. Theyve been defined in terms of particular
attributes that are called the Jhana Factors.
29

The first jhana is an absorption in which there is directed and sustained attention while
there is awareness of the mental state of joy and feelings of pleasure and happiness. Piti.
Piti is the mental state of joy. Sukha are feelings of pleasurebodily pleasureand
mental happiness. Directed and sustained attention. Vitakka and vicara. So there are these
four jhana factors that are definitive of the first meditative absorption.
Does everybody have a hand-out? Anybody that doesnt? Lets get hand-outs for those
that dont.
Student: I just want to regurgitate, so that I think I got it. In the literature, they use the
word mindfulness. At least the Western interpretations of what [inaudible], so
mindfulness, you said is perhaps more correctly or at least in a more Eastern form a little
better interpreted as awarenessawareness of whats there, as opposed to focused
attention, which, if Im sitting here focusing on my breath or in mindful eating or mindful
walking, thats practicing focusing my attention. Its not on whats there. In fact, overall,
we need both of those.
Culadasa: Thats right. We need both of those. You started out saying that the Eastern
interpretation of mindfulness is that it was awareness. What it isits both of those. Sati
is both of those. Its attention and awareness in balance, working together optimally. The
problem with the translation of mindfulness is that its connotation in Englishif you
looked at some of the bigger dictionaries where they give you lots of examples of how a
word is used, youll see most of the ways that mindfulness is used refer to attention.
Which is what makes it an unfortunate choice, because most of us, growing up speaking
English, were going to immediately gravitate towards that particular implication of the
word mindfulness. Thats unfortunate, because in terms of sati, which is the optimal
balance of the two, thats not the one that were most lacking in. Were most lacking in
keeping that in balance with the awareness.
This is recognized. The word mindfulness was brought in by scholars of the British raj
who went to India and to Southeast Asia and to the colonies and studied these
philosophies and religions. They introduced the word mindfulness. Were kinda stuck
with it. If you look at the scholars of today who work with mindfulness and their
definition, they clearly recognize that awareness is an important part of it. This is not
something that you hear in meditation classes, right? But if you look at John Cabot Zinns
writings directed towards other professionals, you find he speaks of the importance of
awareness. If you look at the Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness and how the term
mindfulness is discussed there, theres no question that they understand the importance of
awareness. That is being understood, but right now, its not being understood at the level
of most meditation classes. Thats important for us to realize.

30

Everybodys got a hand-out now, so you can follow along a little more closely. OK. The
first of the meditative absorptions called jhanas is characterized by directed and sustained
attention accompanied by awareness of the mental state of joy and the feelings of
pleasure and happiness. In other words, this is stabilized attention plus introspective
awareness, right? Well, why didnt they just say so? (Laughter) At the sixth stage, you
have enough stability of attention and enough introspective awarenessbecause you
have to develop the introspective awareness in stages 2 , 3 , 4 and 5, to get to the sixth
stagethat you can enter the first jhana. You can enter A first jhana. A lite form of the
first jhana. Its lite because your mind isnt really unified yet. Rather than spontaneously
arising meditative joy that just kind of floods your body and mind, youve had to
cultivate it in the way Ive been discussing. You have to make yourself notice whats
good and pleasant when youre not meditating and then you sit down to meditate and you
notice how good it feels to sit here and how nice it is when the mind is peaceful and how
good it makes you feel when youre able to just do the practice and breath after breath
after breath I just follow it and stay with it. So you cultivate those things. Then you have
enough to enter a jhana from the first stage. But its fairly lite because the minds not
strongly unified, joy isnt really strongly developed. As a matter of fact, if you enter
this is what I call the ultralite jhanaif you enter jhana with the six-stages access, even
in the first jhana, there will still be thoughts taking place. Thoughts like, Oh, this is what
theyre talking about. You cant think too much, or it will bump you out of the jhana, but
youll have thoughts. They will be there. Maybe not so verbal thoughts, but that kind of
processing takes place. But youll recognize that youve entered into a different mental
state. Whats different about this mental state is that your directed and sustained attention
has caused a really strong coalition of all the different mental processes, so now, there is
this unification of mind. Thats the one jhana factor thats present in all of the jhanas. In
most of the descriptions of the jhanas, its not typically mentioned because its always
there. Unification of mind. You use the directed and sustained attention to bring about a
sufficient degree of unification of mind to experience this mental state. It is a mental state
where the mind is now settled, focused and functioning coherently. Youll recognize this.
Its like, Wow, OK.
And youll recognize that youve had this experience before. Ive had this experience
when doing my favorite hobby and Im just totally into it, everything else disappears, I
dont think about anything else, I dont worry about anything. In other words, the flow
experience that Csikszentmihalyi talks about. So, you recognize it as Ah, this is a state
of mind that my minds always been capable of and every now and then Ive been lucky
enough to enter into when I do certain kinds of things. Whats different about it is that
through meditation youve entered into it by doing nothing other than training your mind.
Its not dependent upon some particular activity. The study I mentioned earlierpeople
are most fully present and most in a flow state when theyre having sex. This means you
can enter an absorption through mental training that isnt dependent on external activity.
31

Its not like sex or other things like this. Its completely internally generated. The
important thing about it is that you can learn to do it at any time. At first, you work your
way up to it, you enter the jhana and you manage to be in this state of flow in meditation
for a short period of time and then you pop out. Then you have to get all the conditions
right again so that you can go back into to. Its different in that youre not dependent on
some set of external circumstances. Its all internally generated, and its just the
beginning of what the possibilities are.
To enter into the first jhana of the ultralite typethats what were going to try to do first
the way this is done is that your directed and sustained attention must have an object
that requires so much of your conscious bandwidth that it lends itself to absorption and to
everything else disappearing from your mind. The way we do that is really simple. If
youve been meditating using the sensations of your breath, when you get to the fifth and
sixth stages, you will be introduced to a practice thats called Experiencing the Whole
Body with The Breath. In the sutras where the Buddha discusses meditation, what youll
find over and over again is the sequence of gone to the forest to the root of a tree to an
empty hut, he sits down, crosses his legs, his back straight, places his mindfulness before
him and mindfully he breathes in, mindfully he breathes out. When he breathes in a long
breath, he knows he breathes in a long breath. When he breathes out a long breath, he
knows he breathes out a long breath. When he breathes in a short breath, he knows it.
When he breathes out a short breath, he knows it. Then come the lines, Experiencing the
whole body, he breathes in. Experiencing the whole body, he breathes out. Thus he trains
himself. This is the practice of experiencing the whole body with the breath. This is
what you can do. If you experience the whole body with the breath, it takes all of your
conscious capacity. Theres no room anymore left for other thoughts and sensations and
worries about this and that. It lends itself to the degree of focus, of directed and sustained
attention, that allows you to enter jhana. So thats what were going to try to do first.
Were going to try to get you calm, relaxed and try to let you find the place of flow with
your meditation object, then expand your meditation object until it becomes so
demanding that it requires you to go into a state of absorption. If you do it properlyif
we manage to get all the pieces togetherthis will be accompanied by a feeling of joy
and happiness, and there may be some interesting bodily sensations that come along with
it. But it will be an experience of the first jhana.
Youre not going to go into a trance. What youre going to have present is attention
focused on the sensation of the body. But youre going to also have introspective
awareness of the mind itself. So youre going to be aware of what of you are doing.
Youre going to have meta-awareness. Youre going to have this meta-awarenessthats
where the thought is going to come from of Oh, well, I guess I did it. This is it. Youre
going to be aware of the sensations in your body and youre going to be aware of the joy
and happiness in your mind. Thats introspective awareness. Youre going to be in a state
32

of mindfulness. Youre going to have a balance of attention and awareness and youll be
able to stay in there for a little way. Then youll pop out.
Student: When you say awareness of the body, of the breath in the body, that youre
expanding the sensations of the breath at the nostril, the sensation of the breath in the
body. So if youre breathing in, you may feel it some very slight subtle change in your leg
or your shoulders or your neck, but its a direct result of the breathing in and the
breathing out. Is that what you mean?
Culadasa: Yes. As a matter of fact, what were going to doand were going to have to
get to work on doing some of these meditation exercises to get thereis what youre
looking for initially, before you get to the jhana stage, is to be able to recognize
sensations that change with the breath other than those that occur at the nose and the
chest and the abdomen. When you breathe in and out, the air moves across the skin here
and creates clearly perceptible sensations. The abdominal wall and skin stretch as the
diaphragm contracts to expand the lungs, which pushes all the contents of the abdomen
down. The wall of the abdomen and the skin stretch and there may be some movement
associated with that stretching, where the skin contacts the clothing. Those movements
are clearly there. There is the movement of the ribcage as it arises and as the muscles
contract up in here, in the upper part of your chest and shouldersall of those produce
sensations. There are clearly discernible movement sensations that anybody and
everybody can observe that happen here and here and here. What youre going to do is
youre going to look for more subtle sensations that occur elsewhere in the body. There
are still movement sensations that as youre mindful awareness becomes sharper, youll
become aware that indeed each time I inhale and exhale, there is some slight movement
in my upper arm and theres some slight movement around the area of my hips. Youll be
aware of that there are sensations that change with the breath. Youll see that with each
inhale and exhale, there are certain subtle sensations that you can detect.
As you work your way further out more distally, the sensations become subtler and, not
only that, they become sensations not related necessarily to physical movement. We
wont worry about what theyre caused by, but youll find youll be able to perceive
them. After youve practiced this for a whileI dont know how quickly youll get there
if you do the practice of experiencing the whole body with the breath, youll get to a
place where you can feel every breath in your big toe. You can feel every breath in the tip
of your ear. Its a subtle sensation, but as you become aware of it and as your mindful
awareness and attentiveness both sharpen up, it will become more and more clear.
The next thing is to put it all together. Actually, just being able to detect these sensations
is a challenge in itself. But eventually you want to put it all together where you can
experience the whole body with the breath, so that as you inhaleand I can feel it right
now, even as Im talking to you, I can feel it right down to my toes, I can feel it in the tips
33

of my fingers. I can experience the whole body with my breath even as Im sitting here
with my eyes open and looking at you. I dont know how soon you can do that, but I hope
its really soon. This is something that fully occupies your mind. Its satisfying and its
exciting. Its very conducive to a flow experience, which becomes the first jhana. Youre
aware of the sensations in your body.
At the same time, your biggest danger in this is if you become so focused on the
sensations of the breath in the body that you lose this awareness that were talking about.
A thought will come, and you wont notice it. And the thought will move in and become
so big that after a while, youre just thinking the thought and no longer experiencing the
body with the breath. You have to stay in that place of while your attention is focused on
these sensations in the body, that you continue to be aware of what is happening. In other
words, there needs to be this ongoing awareness that yes, Im still aware of the sensations
in the body. A thought came and then it went, but you didnt chase after it. A sound came
and it went, but the mind stayed on the sensations of the body. You know that these things
happen. You know it through awareness. You know it not through attention, you know it
not through focusing your attention on these things, but rather through that immediate
sense that this is whats happening, moment to moment. You have to have that. If you
have that, then youll truly be in the jhana. You will be aware of the mental state of
happiness and the feelings.
Student: When youre talking about the whole body in the breath, or experiencing the
breath in the whole body, sometimes in meditation youll have tension releases and things
like that, tingles that are not so much the subtle mechanical movement of the breath but
just from the relaxation response. Sometimes I get a flutter in a muscle back here. Is that
included in
Culadasa: Thats included in that. Those will actually become quite strong and quite
pronounced. As you develop the state of meditative joy called piti, it involves a whole lot
of other things besides joy, including a lot of strange sensations in the body. And theyll
become very strong. As a matter of fact, as a part of this process, as you become aware of
these subtle sensations of the breath in the body, youll become aware of energy currents
and vibratory phenomena and things like that. That is definitely a part of it.
In your approach to this, youre not trying to discriminate is this part of it, or not? Is this
something I should be aware of or is this something I should not be aware of? Dont do
that, at all. If you are aware of it, its there. Thats all. You just be aware of what is there.
Dont judge it, dont attach to it, just let it be and let that awareness grow and increase.
Student: So in this state, are we also to stay aware of whats happening outside of us or
no?

34

Culadasa: Thats a very good question. What youre going to notice is that as you begin
to try to perform an attentional task that requires so much of your consciousness capacity,
youre going to progressively cease to be aware of more and more of anything outside of
that. That is the idea of it as an absorption. External sounds, feelings, things like that, will
penetrate less and less often. You dont have the capacity left over to notice those things.
Instead, all of your awareness is going to have more to do with your mental state. Your
attention is focused on these sensations in the body and your awareness is of your mental
state. Everything elseall of your consciousness is used up, so you have none left over
for these other things.
Student: That is what I find, but I thought that since last night you mentioned about
practicing the jhanas with mindfulness, I was thinking that meant maintaining a greater
awareness, and Im not there. Sometimes I feel I cant do them [inaudible].
Culadasa: No, it doesnt. Let me explain that. Then I know some of you need to stretch
and go to the washroom. Let me just explain something there. What the jhanas are doing
is they are deliberately saying that the whole realm of sensation is the first thing that
were going to let go of. In this ultralite jhana, we dont do that in the first jhana. As a
matter of fact, throughout the ultralite jhanas, there continues to be an awareness of
bodily sensation, but in the ultralite jhana, we are letting go of other kinds of sensations.
The eyes are closed, but even visual imagery ceases to be. The thoughts that take visual
form, theres no room for them. Sounds, things like that. In the deeper jhanas, when you
enter the first jhana, theres a complete withdrawal of the mind from the senses. The idea
is that you deliberately eliminate the whole sensory aspect. The mindfulness component
is entirely introspective awareness. Its entirely mindfulness of the mind.
Also, there was a question last night about satipatthana, the four applications of
mindfulness and how they relate to this. I can tie that together at this point. In these
ultralite jhanas, you have awareness and attention of the body. The attention is on the
body but you also have awareness of the feelings of happiness and pleasure, which is the
second application of mindfulness. You have awareness of the mental state of joy and of
the unification of mind, both of which are a part of the third application of mindfulness.
Cittanupassana, which is mindfulness of mental states. While youre doing this, youre
actually practicing the foundations of mindfulness.
In the higher jhanas, in order to really go deeply into the mind itself and to understand the
nature of the mind itself, the first thing that you discard is sensory awareness. You just let
go of that. In no case in the jhanas does mindfulness imply that youre aware of external
sounds and things like that. As a matter of fact, those are the dangers and threats to your
absorptions. Theyll bump you out of it. If theres a loud enough sound or if somebody
comes and taps you on the shoulder or something like that, you come right out of the
jhana.
35

Student: Could you comment on how to stabilize in the first jhana, as opposed to sliding
off into the other ones?
Culadasa: Sliding into other jhanas?
Student: Yeah. If were going to practice first, how do we stabilize?
Culadasa: Your anchor in the first jhana is directed and sustained attention. The second
jhana and all of the higher jhanas do not have directed and sustained attention. If you
want to stabilize in the first jhana, it requires that you continue to be aware of your
meditation object. You continue to be aware of Here are some subtle distinctions
between these different levels of jhana. There are some jhana practices where you have
some kind of meditation object in all of the jhanas. In the ultralite jhanasthe first ones
were going to doin all four of the form jhanas you still have an awareness of the
sensations of the breath in the body. Theres a meditation object in all of those. The
letting go of directed and sustained attention in the ultralite jhanas takes a different form.
What youre doing is youre letting go of those sorts of thoughts that notice whats
happening. There are thoughts and discursive thinking in the ultralite jhana. If you want
to stabilize yourself in the ultralite jhana and not move to the second jhana, you allow
those sorts of thought-like noticings to keep occurring. If you move into any of the other
higher jhanas, then it is your meditation object thats going to keep you You enter the
light jhanas using the strong energy sensations of piti and the feeling of joy. Moving into
the second jhana, you focus on the joy and happiness and you let go of the energy
sensations. So if you want to stabilize yourself in the first jhana, thats what you have to
focus on and not let go of. Not allow that attention to the energy of piti to be lost.
Because if it is, then you cant stabilize there.
This is a problem that I dont know how appropriate it is to this discussion. When I went
to Leigh Brasington and learned to do these lite jhanas, for the first few days, I could go
to the third jhana and the fourth jhana but I could not go to the first and second, and it
took some careful instruction by him and learning to understand what was unique to these
lite jhanas to be able to enter Because, remember, Id done the deep jhanas. The first
jhana of the deep jhanas is really more like Leigh Brazingtons fourth jhana. My mind
just naturally let go of those things. I dont think most of you are going to have that
problem. The stabilization of jhana that you need to do is to be able to stay in the jhana
state for a longer and longer period. You dont need to worry about slipping up to the
higher jhanas too quickly.
Student: Ive had the experience of having an expansion and contraction and pressure,
feeling like my brain is pressed against my skull, my ear canals opening up and my face
is like putty, pulling and pushing. Then my head will jerk. Sometimes that feels scary. Is
that part of the jhana experience?
36

Culadasa: Thats part of piti and you can use that to enter the Leigh Brasington/Ayya
Khema kind of lite jhanas. Those sensations are part of piti, the sensations and the
movements you described. Theyre an indication of unification of mind. If you look on
here, the jhanas that Ive been talking about are ultralite that access from stage 6 on page
14. The jhanas that Ayya Khema and Leigh Brasington teach, that I call the lite jhanas,
are accessed from stage 7. Stage 7 is where there is no more discursive thought in your
mind. You have very strong, stable concentration and youre able to remain relatively
single-pointedly focused for long periods of time. Piti arises in that stage, and its early
arising is associated with strong physical sensations and movements, like what you were
describing. If youre at that stage, you can use that as your starting point and you can use
seven-stage concentration as access to enter that kind of jhana.
Since this has come up, Im just going to go ahead and briefly say the third major kind of
jhana, the l-i-g-h-t jhanas, are the ones where youve gotten to the eighth or ninth stage of
the practice, piti is strong and a light has appeared. Behind your closed eyes you
experience a really strong light. You can take that as your meditation object and use that
to enter this kind of light jhana, which isnt really that light. Its pretty deep, because your
concentration is pretty strong. Youre using light, illumination behind closed eyes, as your
meditation object to enter into it.
Student: I dont understand how you use that state to move into something else. If youre
in that light jhana, how do you use it to move into something else, or why do we do that?
Culadasa: Good questions. How do you and why do you. First of all, with any of these
jhanas, to move into anything else, you need to get used to them. At first, theyre amazing
and theyre totally captivating. You stabilize in them, you get used to them and then you
can begin be aware of what is there and what isnt there. At first you enter any of these
jhanas and you say that theres no sense of self. Well, there really is a sense of self. You
get to the point where you realize thats still there. Its changed, its in a subtler form,
theres still subject/object duality and so forth. You feel that theres no thought, no
intention, but then you realize there is still subtle kind of thinking taking place in the light
jhanas. When you get used to them, when you come to understand them, then you can
refine them. Its a process of refinement. OK, I understand what this jhanas all about. I
can see now that theres another place I can go with this. Then you can move to the other
kinds of jhanas from there.
The question as to why you would has to do with why you would practice jhanas anyway,
why you would learn to meditate. What youre wanting to do is to gain insight into the
way that things really are. Its a big step to let go of all of this sensory input. Basically,
your life has been dominated by sensation. Its a big step to move into that place of just
the mind itself. Then there are all these further refinements possible, and each refinement
brings with it a deepening understanding and insight. Thats why you would do that.
37

Jhanas are very pleasant and some people would suggest if you do jhana practice its
going to be so pleasant that youll never want to do anything else. Thats not really true.
Youll do them until you get used to them and then youll become very aware that theres
someplace else to go and something else to do from there.
Student: Last night you were talking about how you were doing jhana practice and
outside there was a car crash and you didnt know about it until afterwards. For me, thats
kind of usual for a meditation practice, that Ill get some body sensations and I dont
really notice whats going on outside. Its often unpleasant, or the after-effects are good
but its unpleasant or neutral. It doesnt necessarily fill me with joy or whatever.
Sometimes the body sensations just kinda suck. Whats different about a jhana practice
that creates these positive states?
Culadasa: I didnt quite follow that whole thing. I heard what you said at the end but I
didnt see how it related to what you said at the beginning.
Student: I guess my question is, whats the difference between these jhana practices that
youre describing where, by focusing on the body, you become absorbed in a joyful way,
versus focusing on the body and become simply absorbed with whats happening in the
body, which may or may not be joyful.
Culadasa: Whats the difference between them?
Student: Whats the difference in the practice, I guess, thats creating this joy rather than
just viewing whats in the body in the same way you would view anything else?
Culadasa: Were you wanting to respond to that?
Nancy [I think]: I have an idea of how it is for me. For me, its the identification with it.
For me, its a sense of less identification with the sensations. I dont know if you could
call that ego.
Student: I know what you mean. Its like they become less solid. There arent complexes
around them; there are just the sensations. Is that what youre talking about?
Nancy: Yeah, like not becoming identified with the sensations, I guess. I dont know if
that makes any sense.
Student: I think I understand. It seems like, Culadasa, in what youre talking about, there
are new sensations coming in. Sometimes there is and isnt. In this observation, in this
style, this piti and sukha come in, right?
Culadasa: Specifically what happensthe sequence is that the unification of mind gives
rise to piti, which is a joyful state. Secondary to that joyful state are pleasurable
sensations that are experienced in the body but theyre not derived from something
38

stimulating nerve endings in the body. They are different. Theyre experienced in the
body and theyre pleasurable, but theyre actually the result of the mental state of piti.
What I was talking about is, to help us to get to a certain degree of unification and to give
the piti a little boost, we deliberately notice actual physical sensations in the body that are
pleasant. We notice them preferentially rather than the unpleasant ones. That helps us to
get things going. When piti comes on, the experience you have subjectively is your body
is flooded by pleasant experience. It very often seems to start up here and just sort of go
everywhere in your body, but its not coming from some external phenomenon interacting
with your sensory nerve endings. And its not a question of directing attention to it. Its an
awareness of it.
Just a little description here of the first jhana, on page 9, he permeates and pervades,
suffuses and fills this very body with the joy and pleasure born from withdrawal. Thats
whats being referred to there. The joy and pleasure not born from sense contact. Its joy
and pleasure suffusing the body, filling the body, that is born from withdrawal. Do you
see the distinction there? So thats coming from the joy. Thats how its different than
actually looking at sensationspleasant or unpleasant or neutralthat are derived from
physical contact, stimulation of sensory nerve endings and so forth. Its really coming
from the mind, this experience in the body.
Student: That answered the question. So it seems like the difference between trying to get
into this sort of state and just pure mindfulness of body sensations is, in this practice,
were giving more preference to observing the pleasant sensations than observing them
all equally.
Culadasa: Thats right. OK, its time for you to take a break and stretch and do things like
that. Well come back here for some guided meditation practice.

Session 3

So make yourselves comfortable in preparation for meditating. Let go of all those

thoughts about other things. Just be present. Just come right into this space, right here and
now. Take a deep breath, relax your body. Begin by just being fully aware of where you
are right now. One of the wonderful things about right now is that you have no burdens or
responsibilities related to anything else. The only thing youre responsible for right now
is being here. Nothing to plan, nothing to worry about, nothing else to do. Perhaps theres
a feeling of freedom and some joy just in that thought.

39

With your body comfortable and your eyes closed, allow yourself to be fully aware of
this present moment. This is not a doing; its an allowing. Just allow yourself to be aware
of your body, of your mind, of the room. Be aware of sounds, aware of sensations. Be
aware of the movements of your attention. Be in a relaxed, open state of awareness,
noticing how allowing everything to be there, noticing how your attention will move
from one thing to another. While remaining fully aware of anything and everything that is
present, gently redirect your attention to bodily sensations, any kind of bodily sensations.
Let your attention move where it will, but being aware of anything and everything.
Gently restrict attention to sensations occurring on or within the body.
If you discover tension anywhere in the body, let go of it. Pleasant sensations anywhere
in the body, allow your attention to dwell on them for a moment. Enjoy the relaxed
stillness of the body. If the mind goes to something else, just bring the attention back to
sensations of the body. Youre not responsible for the movements of the attention, only
for redirecting the attention back to the body. Notice how you can become aware of
sounds and still be attending to sensations in the body. Sometimes attention will go to a
sound, but it need not. You can be aware of external sounds while the attention remains
focused. As you observe sensations in the body, obviously the most prominent are going
to be those sensations related to the breath. Gently redirect your attention to sensations
related to the breath. Any sensations related to the breath. Any or all. Continue to be
aware of other bodily sensations, just as youre aware of external sounds, while attention
explores sensations specifically related to the breath.
Perhaps youre aware of a comfortable, relaxed stillness of the body. Direct your
attention to that for a moment. In particular, notice its pleasant qualities. And now go
back to observing sensations of the breath. Anything else that happens, any other thought
that comes, just let it be, let it happen. The only doing is to bring your attention gently
back to sensations of the breath. And remember, at this point, any sensations of the
breath, let attention freely moveabdomen, chest, nose, wherever.
You may become aware of a little tension somewhere in the body. If that happens, direct
your attention to it, let go of it, relax, and bring your attention back to the breath.
Now, gently direct your attention to the sensations of the breath in the vicinity of the
nose. You may continue to be aware of other breath sensations and if so, thats fine. Just
like sounds, just like other bodily sensations, let that awareness continue, but focus your
attention on sensations produced by the movement of the air in and out of your nostrils.
Notice when the inbreath begins and notice when it ends. Likewise with the outbreath
notice when it begins and when it ends. Specifically, notice when the sensations caused
by it arise and when they pass away. Follow the cycle of the breathtry not to miss any
part of it. Follow it as the air enters the nostrils. Those sensations specifically. Notice how
40

there continues to be an awareness of sounds and other bodily sensations even as the
attention is focused on the cycle of the breath at the nose.
Is the body relaxed and comfortable still? If so, that should be a part of your awareness.
What is the state of your mind? Be aware of the state of your mind, even as your attention
continues to follow the sensations of the breath. You may become aware of subtle, rapid
movements of your attention to some of these other things. Thats fine. Be aware of it.
Be aware of the pleasantness in your body as you sit. Be aware of the peacefulness in
your mind as your attention follows the sensations of the breath. Perhaps theres a certain
contented, joyful happiness just sitting here, observing the sensations of your breath
while being aware of the world, your body and the mind.
Enlarge the focus of your attention to include your abdomen. So now youre following
the sensations of the breath at your nose and at your abdomen at the same time. This may
seem very natural to do.
Shift the focus of your attention to the sensations at the abdomen. Let the sensations at
the nose become a part of the background awareness. Notice in particular the sensations
the beginning of the inbreath and the end of the inbreath and the beginning of the
outbreath and the end of the outbreath. Any other thought or sensation that intrude, just
gently let go of it and bring the attention back to the sensations of the breath. Whenever
things like this happen, its not your problem. All you need to do, when you become of it,
bring your attention back. And enjoy the stillness of the body, the calmness of the mind,
the pleasure, joy and happiness of just sitting here, just being here.
If your attention should go to some external, whats important is that youre aware of it.
Youre aware of whats going on in your mind. This allows you redirect your attention.
Expand your awareness once again, so that youre observing the sensations of the breath
both in the abdomen and in the chest. Let your attention explore all these different
sensations.
Continue to be aware of the calm, relaxed stillness of your body, the peacefulness of your
mind as you observe these sensations. Now tighten up the focus of your attention a little
bit so that now youre focused fully on the sensations of the breath in the chest. Let those
abdominal sensations be part of the background awareness. Note the sensations that mark
the beginning and end of the in-and-out breath, the beginning and end of each breath. The
little pause as each breath cycle ends before the next one begins.
Expand your awareness once again, this time to include your shoulders and your upper
arms. Explore the sensations in the chest, shoulders and upper arms. In particular, be
aware of any sensations that happen to change with the breath, and sensations that arise
41

and pass away with each in- and outbreath. Still be aware of the relaxed, pleasant
sensations in the body, the sense of presence, the background awareness of sounds
outside. You can focus your attention on one thing and be aware of these other things at
the same time. Are you aware of the peacefulness in your mind as you do this, the relaxed
happiness, alertness? Allow attention to check in on bodily sensations. Relax anyplace
that theres any tension. Notice where theres any pleasure. Then come back to the
sensations of the breath in the chest, the shoulders and the upper arms.
Tighten up the focus of your attention a little bit again. This time, its the shoulders and
the upper arms that you want to primarily paying attention to. Let the awareness of
sensations of the chest become part of the background, along with the sensations in the
abdomen and the nose. Really carefully examine those sensations of the shoulders and the
upper arms and how they change with the breath. Follow the breath with these sensations.
Notice the sensations that mark the beginning and end of each in-and outbreath. Perhaps
theyre more subtle, but as you observe them, they become clearer.
Now expand your awareness again to include the chestthe chest, the upper arms and
the shoulders. Put a little smile on your face, just a little gentle smile. Follow the breath in
your chest, shoulders and upper arms.
Expand your awareness to include the abdomen. You can do this. You can be aware of all
these sensations, you can pay attention to all of these sensations at once. You can follow
the breath in your entire upper body, your torso, upper arms, shoulders, abdomen, chest.
Feel the satisfaction and the joy begin to arise.
Expand your attention to include the sensations at the nose again. You can follow the
breath with your attention, taking in this much larger area. Even as you do so, be aware of
your body, be aware of the world outside, be aware of your own mind, be relaxed, at ease,
and enjoy it. Thoughts may arise, but if they do, notice, do you really want to be bothered
by them, or do just want to leave them be? Be in the flow of these sensations that youre
observing. With each new inbreath, theres the opportunity to practice following the
sensations of the whole breath cycle, to practice being aware of them in multiple areas at
once. If you miss something, it doesnt matter. Another breath cycle will follow. You can
be really good at this.
Gently bring your focus back to the sensations around the nose as the air enters and
leaves. Let everything else become back of the background awareness and attend to every
subtle nuance of the sensations of the breath coming, the pause, the breath going out, the
next pause, and then the repetition. And put that little smile on your face. If it slipped
away, time to bring it back.

42

Perhaps theres a little discomfort in some part of your body. Notice the other parts of
your body that are still at ease, relaxed, pleasantly still.
(Gong sounds.)

Well, how what that? Anybody have any comments?

Student: My main issue seems to be the build-up of piti. Traditionally, Ive always sort of
slid of into fourth or fifth jhanas instead of dealing with it. So I was trying to work with
it, staying in first jhanas. It did all kinds of interesting things. But I was wondering about
your comments about that topic.
Culadasa: When you say piti, what are you referring to specifically?
Student: Specifically it feels like joy that arises in my body that has nothing to do with
bodily sensations. Its not like my skin feels so nice in the air. Its not that kind. Its just
like whoa, and then My jaw and the back of my neck are fairly tight.
Culadasa: So you let go of those sensations when you feel that tightness?
Student: Let go of the sensations of tightness? Not possible at this time. And if I associate
into some other sense of body sensation, it increases the piti. This is how Im describing
it. I may be wrong, but I go to my feet or my toes or something and it intensifies.
Culadasa: As compared to if you direct your attention at the throat and jaw?
Student: The two places I found that seem to be most beneficial was I started just letting
myself go to dullness. I have no idea what that was, but it felt helpful. The other was I
would open my eyes and would let the interaction between the color of your book and my
internal self just kind of cycle.
Culadasa: When you start having feelings of piti in the body, of any kind, the best thing to
do is to justyou have a meditation object. Like in this meditation, it was these
sensations of the breath that I was guiding to you, is to put all of your attention there and
let those piti sensations be part of the background. Just leave them as part of the
background. If they become so intense that they keep drawing your attention away, then
take them as the meditation object until that intensity fades. Ultimately, its when piti is
incomplete and interrupted that it produces these disturbing sensations.
Student: This is definitely an interruption.
Culadasa: What you need to do is to continue practicing in a single-pointed way until
theres enough unification of mind that piti arises fully. When piti arises fully, all of these
43

disturbing sensations fade away. Theres an energy of piti with self that eventually comes
to be perceived to be disturbing when youre ready to let IT go. But in the first stage of
refinement, it becomes really nice. It becomes enjoyable to have this piti. Piti hasnt fully
arisen as long youre having disturbing sensations, uncomfortable sensations, distracting
sensations as a part of it.
Student: The other thing is I was looking at you and I thought, Im going to try what you
look like youre doing, which is putting your head back. That completely shifted
everything. So Im wondering about your comments about putting your head back.
Culadasa: I dont put my head back. It goes backmy body takes on certain positions
that correspond to what Im doing at a particular time. I just let it happen; I dont do it. If
you deliberately move your head one way or another, youll notice it changes things. As I
was guiding you, I was allowing a strong feeling of joy to come. It was just a strong
feeling that was there in the background. Usually my head kind of tips to one side, but I
guess it might tip backwards as well. Whatever happens with you will be unique to you.
Its not going to be the same as me.
Student: I found it very helpful, the whole guided meditation. It helped keep a center, it
helped keep focus, it helped a lot. That was really useful.
Culadasa: Good.
Student: In the beginning of the meditation, it seemed relatively easy to follow your
suggestions. As the meditation went on, I got more distractions and my attention to my
breath was maintained for shorter intervals and the distractions that rose up tried to offer
more urgency in directing my attention away from them. It got harder. But at no point
could I identify why it got harder. So I guess my question is, why did it get harder or is
that unimportant?
Culadasa: Well, lets just examine. When you say it got harder, in what way did it get
harder?
Student: There was, in the beginning, exactly what you suggested that we dowatch the
breath, feel the pleasant sensation. Then youd fall away from that and come back, fall
away from that and come back, and then you made the suggestion that we could be good
at this and Im saying, Yeah, lets be good at this. Still, the interval of intentionality got
shorter and shorter and the intervals of distraction on either side of it got more clinging,
more intense, more urgent, morenot having to do with what youd said earlier about
just no longer being captivated by your object of meditation. It was as though there was
something else working against me.
Culadasa: OK. And there isother parts of your mind are working against you.
44

Student: But is that important?

Culadasa: What youre saying. I just want to examine this. Distraction comes along. Is
that distraction there at the same time as you are following the sensations of the breath.
Have you forgotten what you were doing due to the distraction, or is it just two things
happening at once?
Student: Some of each. There were times when I got lost completely. There were times
when I knew I was lost but I knew I could still see my object over here in the corner. As
the meditation wore on, I tended to be more lost. I was almost recaptivated by the
clearness that the urgency to attend to something else was entirely fake. But it was still
there. No, no, I want to go back to this. I kind of got lost in my getting lost. Id go back
to the meditation when you brought me back to it, and say now pay attention to this for a
little while. Ive never really observed, before today, that my intervals of distractions get
and my interval of attention gets shorter over the span of a longer meditation. Whats
making it harder?
Culadasa: By harder, you mean the fact that the tendency for distraction is coming more
frequently and lasting longer? OK. Thats what I wanted to know. Why that was
happening in this one, Im not sure but can you interpret your experience in terms of your
mind consists oftheres really multiple minds inside in your head, and theyre not all
wanting to do the same thing.
Student: Yeah.
Culadasa: This is a mind that is not unified, because there are different parts of it that
want to do different things, want to go in different directions.
Student: Yes, its more not unified at the end than it was at the beginning.
Culadasa: Yes, in your case, this time, it was ununified at the end than it was at the
beginning. Thats unfortunate. Im not sure exactly why that is. The idea of what were
doing, the sense of what you as a doer can actually do is to formulate an intention and
then to redirect the focus of your attention whenever you become aware its not where
you want it to be. OK?
The minds really tricky. A distraction comes up and you decide to ignore that distraction
and bring the attention back to the breath, but then some third factor comes in that wants
to have a big discussion about the whole thing. Right? And that becomes the real
distraction. The one that you let go of, that was just a decoy. The real distraction was the
thinking about well, this is hard to do, this other distraction is attractive and Im having to
force myself to go backthat was the real distraction.

45

Student: So really all Im going to be able to say is it got harder because I have gremlins
in my head.
Culadasa: We all have gremlins. What we all have are heads full of gremlins. You be
patient. You dont worry about these things that are happening. You just keep doing the
one simple thing that you can dojust bringing your attention back. Im not sure why
you had the particular experience you did. Expectations can be a part of it. If you start off
a meditation with expectations, then those expectations can work against you. I dont
know if thats what happened or not.
Student: Its just strange.
Culadasa: Yeah, its just strange. Right.
Student: So I was having this experience of when I would kind of get into what I was
focusing on and lose the other stuff the sense of I got to move my legs right now, I have
to stretch them right now. Like a really reactive reaction to getting absorbed in it. What
do you do with something like that? Do you just keep trying it?
Culadasa: When you have this sudden thought that, Oh, I gotta move my leg comes up.
Thats what youre asking?
Student: No, sorry. Im not describing it well. Its like a reaction or a panic. It feels like
Im about to go someplace and then a huge reaction comes up against going someplace,
like I shouldnt do that right now. It manifests as some task that I have to do right now
that I actually dont.
Culadasa: Be aware of it and try to go back to continuing with what youre doing. Its
very tempting to try to do something valid, but its actually more productive just to let it
be.
Student: For me, when those kind of distractionsparticularly the physical sensations
one that Ive had that Im not having these days was a very very strong sensation of
tickling in the back of my throat. Excruciating, it gets so strong. This is my understanding
of it. This is my story. Its that it is, on some level, frightening to go to this deeper
unknowing place, and theres part of meand its a protective part of methat distracts
me as a protection.
Culadasa: Yes.
Student: And that its a gentle thing. Its so that I can sort of accept that. Ive had to do
what you suggested. It was so strong that I couldnt leave it in the background. I had to
go and put all of my attention on it, let it rise to the peak of excruciating discomfort, and
then it went away. I see it as a protection, not as some distracting thing that some other
46

part of my brain is trying toI like to give it more of a protective, helpful, function.
Thats how I experience it.
Culadasa: Right. And thats good. All of these parts of your mind that are going to
provide resistance to one degree or another, theyre not all capricious. As a matter of fact,
what you could probably assume is that part of your mind thinks its doing whats best
and most appropriate at the time.
My objective was for you to gain some familiarity with your ability to move attention, to
expand and contract attention. The fact that you can increase the scope of your attention
and maintain that enlarged content with a high degree of clarity and vividnessthats
what Im hoping that you were discovering. Also, that you would notice the interaction
between the background awareness and the content of attention. The relationship between
them is interesting. When you become very focused on the content of attention, you tend
to lose more background awareness, but you dont have to. It only happens if youre
dont realize that its something that youd rather not have happen. Im first encouraging
you to be aware of all of these sensations related to the breath in sometimes a larger and
expanded area. Then Im redirecting you to notice the sensations in your body, notice
external sensations and things like that. I was hoping that in that moment you might
become aware to any degree that Oh, I kind of lost that awareness, but I dont have to
lose that awareness. I can sustain it. I can keep it there and let it be.
When we went back to the breath at the nose at the very end, I was hoping you might
have noticed how much clearer, sharper, vivid, more intense that perception was
compared to when you first started out with the sensations of the breath at the nose.
Student: There are two things. First off, the guided meditation really helped, especially
with dullness, to bring the bigger scope of what were doing back into perspective. One
of the things I noticed that was interesting was this tendency, when this energy in the
body started to arise, to start verbalizing gently. It was something I realized I had
internalized from retreat a while back when I was going through this a lot. So I was
offering that. I dont know so much if verbalizing it would help people like it helped me,
because that can be kind of a slippery slope. But it became so entrained that it didnt. It
didnt turn into spinning off into discursive thought. It was just a nice reminder, a kind of
release, to allow it to rise versus getting really excited around it.
The other thing is opening up a question about something Patricia brought up thats been
a block for me, which is going into these absorptions and these finer and finer states. The
loss of that discursive thought and that analytical thinking component of the mind is
really threatening to me. Its the part that I most identify with. One of the things I was
going to offer but I was also going to open it up to ways of working with this is Ive
noticed Ive been trying to notice more throughout the day and in meditation is the
47

feeling that Im giving up something thats solid and real to go into this place and Im
kind of losing myself in the process. I guess this is how we should be practicing anyway,
to notice when that self is really flimsy and how sporadic its arising is, so that it doesnt
feel like something thats constant that Im losing but something that was never really
constant, so its not really that big of a transition. Its something Ive realized has been a
huge block for me and it still is.
Culadasa: Theres a lot of attachment to those familiar discursive thought processesthe
analyzing and thinking and yakkity yak inside. To counteract that, to take a different
perception of those is Oh, this is peacefulness, this is calm, this is beautiful, this is
relaxed, this is easy. Its not that youre losing the familiar thought processes that you
identify yourself with but that youre gaining a sense of peacefulness and happiness, of
being relaxed and at ease.
Youll find what youre attached to. It wont be the same for everybody, but youre going
to find what youre attached to. Youre going to find where that resistance comes up, in
whatever form it takes. It may take a while. You may not recognize exactly what it is at
first, but it will keep coming up and youll have lots of opportunity. Just be aware of it.
You dont need to analyze it, you dont need to try to figure it out. If you just allow
yourself to be aware of it while its there and while you continue to do the practice, the
recognition and understanding of what it is will become clear to you. Then it will become
much easier to let it go.
Student: Im going back to something you were talking about last night. How do you
determine the difference between whether youre in a trance or in a deep meditative
state?
Culadasa: There is a subjective quality of clarity, of being really really alert and aware,
that will be there. If youre in a trance, whats happened is that theres a kind of dullness
developing. It makes it easy to stay in a particular state but there isnt that vivid quality of
really being fully conscious.
Student: Could you work through that dullness, or if you go back and forth between the
two, is that an OK thing to work on it that way?
Culadasa: The best way is to detect that dullness as soon as it starts to develop, because
thats when its easiest to counteract. If youve already got to a state where the dullness is
strong and its trancelikeIve often had people in classes say, Boy, that was a good
meditation. I dont know where I went, but I was gone. Thats the trancelike dullness.
(Laughter) You can sit there and an hours meditation passes like nothing. Youre not
really there. You dont want to do that. Its really hard to change that when youre in that
state. If you do that very often, your mind will tend to gravitate towards that state,
because its a really easy way to pass the time between when you sit on the cushion and
48

when the bell rings. (Laughter) So your mind will tend to do thatgo into a suspended
state. What you need to do is you need to practice being aware of dullness entering into
your meditation as early as possible and then rouse yourself out of it, bringing yourself
back to a state of vividness and clarity. OK?
Student: Ive never had a problem with dullness so Im not working from that direction.
One of the things I discovered was that the vividness and so forth can be seasoned a bit
with a little dullness.
Culadasa: As a matter of fact, yeah.
Student: Right at the beginning of dullness seemed like a really alert place, and very unAmerican.
Culadasa: The best way to season it is to step back into a meta-awareness where you have
this larger awareness of the mind itself and whats going on, where youre observing the
mind as the mind observes the meditation object. When youre observing the sensations
of the breath, for example, sometimes they can become so intense, theyre almost
painfully intense. When that happens, you dont need to stay that focused. You can kind
of step back and take a larger view. It will ease that up quite a bit. Its good to have that
degree of vividness and intensity. Put it this wayits good to have that power of
consciousness present, but use that to enhance the awareness component rather than
having it all crammed into the focus of your attention.
We do have to be careful of dullness. Theres a pleasant stability to dullness. Im not
talking the deep, strong dullness, drowsiness, things like that. Im talking about a
sustained, subtle dullness that makes it really easy to sit there and just kind of space out
until the bell rings. You want to be fully alert. You want to be fully present. You want to
be much more fully conscious than normal. You dont want to go to the other direction.
So you need to watch out for that. When you find your mind slipping into dullness,
sharpen up your perception. Intensify the focus of your attention until the dullness
disappears, and then enlarge the background awareness as well. The more you can sustain
this background awareness, the less likely you are to slip into dullness. The more focused
you become on some narrow little thing, then the easier it is for this dullness to develop.
If you find its there, sometimes intensifying what youre focusing on can be the most
immediate antidote to it. But that needs to followed up by expanding your awareness.
Otherwise, youll just go right back into dullness again.
Student: My question really was more about the definition, because I think Ive
experienced that, but thats not essentially what Im experiencing. But Im still
understanding the term.

49

Culadasa: Thats the definition. The less mindful awareness there is, the more dullness
there is, then the more trancelike it is. The more mindful awareness thats present and the
less dullness there is, the more its the kind of meditative state that were wanting to
achieve.
What well move onto after lunch in the afternoon is well do the experiencing the whole
body with the breath practice. This is where you start exploring different areas of your
body with your attention, becoming really clear on the sensations that are present and
asking yourself whether or not any of these are sensations that change or are related to the
breath. Then well begin sort of like we did this morning, adding these areas together and
seeing if we can get to the place of actually experiencing the whole body with the breath
simultaneously. Maybe you notice it this morning that because youre trying to monitor
much more sensory information at one time, theres not as much room for extraneous
thoughts to come in. The mind is not quite so likely to go and listen to the jet airplane
flying overhead or the dogs barking next door. Youll be aware of those, but the attention
doesnt move and pursue them. Well see if we can draw closer to entering a jhana of fullbody awareness this afternoon.

Session 4

Student: Would you say that Tanasara (?) Biku practiced the key to the ultralite jhanas? I
know he focuses on the whole body and things like that.
Culadasa: Im not sure what Tanasara Bikus views on the actual practice of jhana would
be. Ive only sat with him once, very briefly, it was a very general discussion. Jhanas
didnt even come up. I cant really tell from anything that hes written. Do you have some
experience or
Student: Ive listened to a couple of his talks and read some articles. It sounds pretty
similar, because he does keep that whole-body awareness in the process.
Culadasa: That would be what Id call the ultralite jhanas. Right.
Student; I participated in a jhana retreat that he gave, and I didnt understand most of it,
because at that time I wasnt really ready. It seemed to me he taught the whole gamut of
jhanas, not just ultralite, not just body consciousness.
Culadasa: But also deep jhanas that involve withdrawal from the senses? Aha. It would
make sense that he would be one that I would expect to be aware of the whole range of
jhanas. Whereas many teachers are stuck in this one particular wayThis is jhana and
50

anything else is something else. Tanasara Biku would be very aware of the different
ways its practiced. Makes sense.
Student: And he really thought they were very important, so
Culadasa: Yes. Very important and very misunderstood. There are some interesting
questions about methods of practice that dont involve samata training in jhanas. I
probably shouldnt really get into that, but there are people that claim to have higher-path
attainments, including arhat. In dry vapassana tradition, they then turn around and say
that the things that the Buddha said about the description of arhats and nonreturners and
once-returners and so forth are not accurate. That makes me really wonder whats going
on there. Its not something to get into.
Student: What is meant by the term the dry vapassana?
Culdadasa: Dry vapassana is a vapassana practice that does not involve the deliberate
cultivation of samata and its dry because it specifically lacks the moisturizing lubrication
of samata, of the joy, happiness, tranquility and equanimity. Most of the things that you
would have encountered under the label of vapassana in this country, the method of
Ubaken (?) thats taught by Govinka (?) and his students and the noting practice thats
widely disseminated from Mahasisayadah (?) and has been predominate at IMS and Spirit
Rock, these are dry vapassana practices.
Any other questions that anyone might have related to the handouts at this point?
Student: I had a small question about Mahalis (?) characteristics of flow. He talks about
how the flow experience is a feeling of exercising control and not being in control. I was
wondering if you could explain that a little bit.
Culadasa: Briefly, the feeling of being in control comes from an egocentric basis. I am
controlling this. Because a person can never be completely in control of everything, it
makes it very difficult for somebody with that point of view to actually experience flow.
Theyre constantly finding themselves in conflict with the things that they cant control.
The distinction here, to be capable of doing something, and to be doing the very best that
you are capable of, that is exercising control. That also happens with the recognition that
no matter how good you are at doing it, you wont always be completely successful, and
there will always be other factors that enter in that interfere with that. Thats the
difference.
On page 7 and the following pages is a description of the characteristics of the jhanas. I
thought I would just briefly go over that with you. The specific meditative states that the
word jhana usually refers to are organized as four distinct stages or states, meditative
states, that are described as the form jhanas. There are four other meditative states called
51

formless jhanas, which are usually described as being variations of the fourth form jhana.
Once you reach the fourth form jhana, then you can practice the jhanas of the four
formless bases.
Lets look at these first four form jhanas and how they are defined in the sutras and in
Buddhist tradition. Keeping in mind, as we said last night, that a jhana is a wholesome
absorption that occurs in meditation and is associated with the jhana factors. The first
jhana is defined in three main characteristics we can look at here. In the first jhana, the
meditator is withdrawn from sexual desires and from all unwholesome states of mind.
What does that mean? The key word is withdrawn. Youve gone, youve sat down to
meditate, youve let go of your worries, your concerns, your desires, your hopes,
everything else. Youre coming into the present; youre letting go of everything else thats
not part of this. So thats the withdrawal aspect. To the degree that you do that, have done
that, you know the feeling of peace and happiness that comes with that. Just for the
moment, letting go of everything. Basically, you have a time that is entirely your own,
that you owe nobody, you owe nothing; this is your meditation time. You dont have to do
anything else. You can forget about everything else, let go of it all. You let go of all the
unwholesome states like worry and desire and hope and fear and everything else.
The jhana factors that are present are usually present in whats called access
concentration. Before entering an absorption, you need to have already established a
certain degree of piti. Already, some joy and happiness will be present, youll have
already been practicing in that sit long enough that youve established a degree of
focused attention, single-pointed attention. Its already present. Then you are ready to
enter into the jhana. You have meditative joy and pleasure and happiness born of
withdrawal. So those are the characteristics. You enter the absorption.
The experience of entering of absorption is that what you focus your attention on and the
awareness of the jhana factors together are going to fully occupy your consciousness.
Theres no room for anything else. Thats the sense in which its an absorption.
Sometimes it will feel as though you are sinking into the meditation object, when that
occurs. Or, other times, it might feel like the meditation object expands and completely
fills your attention and awareness. But the effect is the same, however you might choose
to subjectively describe it to yourself. The end result is that you become quite absorbed
with the meditation object and the jhana factors.
With the second jhana, the way that you learn to do this is when youve learned to enter
the first jhanawhich is a very distinctive feeling and as Ive said, youve had it before,
youve been absorbed in other things before. When it comes in meditation, you recognize
it and its very distinctive. You learn to do that and you repeat it. You develop some skill
in entering the jhana, in staying in the jhana. Initially, you wont be able to stay in jhana
very long. Youll pop out of it. Its like on your way to entering the jhana, you acquire a
52

certain momentum. When that momentum exhausts itself, youre going to come back out
of the jhana. In order to stay in jhana for a longer period of time, you have your ability to
create the conditions for entering the jhana and remaining in the jhana. You need to
notice, in preparation for your meditation, what are the things that you did in the first part
of your meditation that contributed to all of the right conditions coming together to enter
into thejhana. By becoming aware of those things, youre able to do them more readily in
the future, and youre able to enter jhana and stay for longer periods of time.
The next thing you need to doonce you dont just spontaneously pop out of the jhana
after a few minutesis you develop the ability to determine how long youre going to
stay in the jhana. This is that same thing that some of you have already experienced
where, if you time your meditations regularly, you get to the point where you know when
the meditation is up. Its not like youre thinking about it, it just that all of a sudden the
thought appears that its just about time and sure enough, the bell rings, or if you look at
the clock, theres only a minute or so to go. It seems that some part of our
mind/brain/whatever has this capacity for monitoring time. So what you do then is you
practice determining in advance how long youre to stay in the jhana. You form the
resolution before you enter the jhana that youre to stay in jhana for ten minutes. Then
you get good at determining how long youre going to stay in the jhana and sure enough,
you come out and look at the clock and its been about the right amount of time. So you
become good at entering jhana and emerging from jhana and determining how long
youre going to stay in jhana.
Then the next really important thing is the review. This is actually part of the mindfulness
process. You review the jhana. You review the state of your mind before you entered the
jhana. You review your recollection of the jhana. That recollection will be very sharp and
clear when you first come out of the jhana. So you recollect what its like to be in the
jhana. Then, you compare that with the state of your mind now that youve re-emerged.
Thats the review.
These are the things that you learn to do in the process of acquiring mastery of the jhana.
This takes some amount of time. In the process, youll become very familiar with the
jhana factors, the qualities of a particular jhana, the feeling tone that it has, and youll
also discover that at first, entering the jhana, its very pleasing. You have a lot of
satisfaction of accomplishment. But at some point youll become dissatisfied with that
jhana. This is the real indication that youre ready to move on and learn the next jhana,
when you start feeling a certain dissatisfaction.
In the first jhana, you have a meditation object and what you will experience is that after
a while, the jhana has this unsettled quality. Its like its constantly vibrating. Thats
attributed to the directing and sustaining of attention. Even though your subjective
experience is of continuously being aware of something, in fact, it is a renewal of this
53

conscious attention to the object happening over and over again. Youll become aware of
that as a disturbing energetic vibration in the jhana. Thats part of what you become
dissatisfied with. When that happens, youre ready to move on to the next jhana.
In the ultralite jhanas, youll still continue to have a mediation object because you havent
achieved the degree of unification of mind yet in your meditation practice overall. You
havent achieved the degree of mastery where you can dispense with the meditation
object yet. As you get into the deeper jhanas, even the next level beyond ultralite, the
ones I call lite, you do not need to have a meditation object any longer. You can let go of
that. As a result of that, the vibrating, fluctuating quality of the first jhana is not present in
the second jhana. In the second jhana, the meditator has confidence and unification of
mind. What were speaking of hereand remember, these descriptions are applied across
the whole range of different degrees of depth of jhanais, in terms of the deeper jhanas,
you now have sufficient unification of mind that you do not need a meditation object.
Thats the way its defined. There is unification of mind without directed and sustained
attention. Thats essentially defining one of the most important differences between the
first and the second jhana. The joy and the happiness are still there; that part is the same.
And in this jhana, it is said that the joy and happiness are born of concentration rather
than withdrawal. In the first jhana, we were experiencing joy and happiness, the freedom,
the liberation, the Im just here for myself doing my thing, forgetting all my worries and
problems and everything else. Thats the joy and happiness of withdrawal. Of course,
there would have been joy and happiness reinforced by concentration in the first jhana as
well. But now, its because of this unification of mind that its become much deeper.
Really, the source of your joy and happiness is the degree of concentration and
unification of mind thats present.
The effect of that is that the pit, the joy, is very intense. So theres intense joy and
happiness and bodily pleasure. This is what, over time, as you practice this jhana and you
become skilled at entering the jhana, remaining for an appropriate period of time,
emerging from the jhana and then reviewing the jhana, as you continue to do that, youll
reach the point where you become dissatisfied with this jhana. What youre dissatisfied
with, in particular, is that agitated energy of piti. Because piti is strong. Very strong piti.
This is the time when youre ready to move on to the next jhana. You say to yourself,
something to the effect that Theres this agitation and disturbance and I can see what
greater serenity, what greater peace and happiness there would be if I could let go of this
agitated energy of piti. Thats exactly what happens, thats exactly what you do to enter
the third jhana.
Theres strong mindfulness, introspective awarenessso theres mindfulness and clear
comprehension. Theres no meditation object anymore except in the lighter versions of
the practice. Essentially, all of the power of your consciousness is going into this
introspective awareness, because its no longer focused on an object. Even the awareness
54

of that joyful mental state is now gone. The jhana factors that remain are the pleasure and
happiness, and now theres an equanimity thats developing as well. These are the jhana
factors of the third jhana: sukha, which, depending on the depth of your jhana, may still
involve a feeling of bodily pleasure, even though you wont be aware of bodily sensations
as such. You wont feel the weight of your body on the cushion, you wont feel any
normal sort of bodily sensations. Youll have a perception of the body as a pleasurable
object, And there will be happiness. The third jhana is a pleasant abiding with equanimity.
There is bodily pleasure and/or happiness. That sounds pretty nice, doesnt it?
Student: You said that in this stage, all of your power of awareness is going to what?
Culadasa: All of the power of your consciousness goes to awareness. What normally
happens is a large of the consciousness capacity that we have is concentrated in attention
to a single object. Now its all available at a very heightened level of awareness.
Awareness of the mind.
The third jhana also does eventually become less than perfectly satisfying. Theres a very
strong feeling of contentment and happiness, but you actually become discontented with
contentment. (Laughter) Once youve succeeded in learning to enter the first jhana, its
not too difficult to enter the second and third. But some people find that the transition
from third to fourth jhana to be a challenge. There can be a lot of attachment to the
happiness. The pleasure and the happiness can be strong sources of attachment.
Student: Its too much work!
Culadasa: Which is too much?
Student: Thats how I experience being content. Its more work than the fourth jhana.
Culadasa: Eventually it comes to be something that you get tired of and youre ready to
move on. Thats what you let go of in the transition from the third to the fourth jhana. The
bodily pleasure part of it is actually the easiest to let go of. Its the mental happiness, the
mental pleasure, that is the most difficult to let go of. Usually you wont be able to enter
the fourth jhana until you get tired of it. You do have to get tired of it. You have to start
having that inkling, that sense, that there is something even more sublime, even more
serene than what Im experiencing now. Thats when youre ready to move on.
The fourth jhana has purity of mindfulness due to equanimity, and equanimity is the only
jhana factor that remains. The mind of the meditator is said to be thus concentrated,
purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, pliant, malleable wieldy, steady and
attain to imperturbability.
Why is it called a form jhana? In all of these form jhanas, there is still an awareness of
space and that subjective feeling, the one you have right now, of being in a place in space.
55

Do you know what Im talking about? There it is. I am here. In the map of the universe
in your mind, theres the little red arrow that says, You are here. That and also the
feeling of pleasure that youve experienced in your body and so forth, these are what
make all of these jhanas retain their connection to the realm of the senses and the world
of space and time.
Once youve achieved the forth jhana, youve refined it to the point where really the only
thing that there is left to get rid of is this sense of being at a finite location in space.
Were you going to say something?
Student: I have a question about that. Do all of the first four jhanas have the quality of
introspective awareness?
Culadasa: They do.
Student: And is that associated with a sense of a being that is practicing that introspective
awareness?
Culadasa: Yes.
Student: So theres still a sense of self.
Culadasa: Thats right. There is still a sense of self. Everyone, when they first enter the
jhanas, it is so different than our ordinary sense of self. The absorption with the object
makes it feel like youve become one with the object. So it seems as though as theres a
sense of self. And youll sometimes find people saying or youll read something where
somebody says, In the jhana, theres no longer any sense of the self. Each of these
jhanas, as you practice them long enough, youll begin to begin aware that there still is
that same self-awareness, that same subject/object duality. Its not as apparent, but its
definitely there. You havent gone beyond it. Its still present in the formless jhanas too.
Its become very subtle there, but its still there.
Student: Its still that capacity within us that notices say, even a subtle distraction and
says return.
Culadasa: In a lite jhana, what will happen is there will be things that will disturb your
jhana and youll become aware of them in that way of introspective awareness. If they
havent disturbed the jhana too strongly, you can establish it immediately. So there will
just be this momentary interruption of the jhana. But it actually is an interruption of the
jhana that occurs. The deeper jhanas are accessed from a state of concentration where the
concentration is effortless, and in those, there is not going to be that kind of distraction
arising. You wont wobble in and out of the jhana and have that experience.

56

Youre full conscious in all of these jhanas. Youre not only fully conscious, your more
fully conscious than normal. Theres nothing dull or trancelike about the jhana. Its a
brilliant state of consciousness.
Ill just jump ahead to the description from the sutras of the fourth jhana. He sits
permeating the body with a pure, bright awareness, just as if a man were sitting covered,
head to foot, with a white cloth, so that there would be no part of his body to which the
white cloth did not extend. Even soon, the monk sits permeating the body with a pure,
bright awareness. There is nothing of his entire body not pervaded by pure, bright
awareness. So this is a very highly conscious state. The consciousness is experiencing
the jhana itself. Its experiencing the jhana factors in particular and it is capable of
identifying all sorts of other subtle characteristics of the mind.
If you look ahead totheres a sutra that I quote in its entirety here at the end, starting on
page 22. This is describing how Sariputrathis is a description by the Buddha himself of
how Sariputra became an arhat practicing the jhanas. He practiced mindfulness, and this
is how he practiced mindfulness. This is something thats repeated for each of the jhanas.
Ill read the section on page 22 that is about the first jhana. The important part of this is
repeated for each of the other jhanas as well.
There was the case where Sariputra, quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from
unskillful qualities (these are first jhana characteristics, youll recognize) entered and
remained in the first jhana. Rapture and pleasure born of seclusion accompanied by
directed thought and evaluation. Whatever qualities there are in the first jhana (this is the
part I was getting at), directed thought, evaluation, rapture, pleasure, singleness of mind
these are all the jhana factors. In addition to that (he goes on), contact, feeling,
perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness,
equanimity and attention, he ferreted them out one after another. Known to him, they
arose. Known to him, they remained. Known to him, they subsided. He discerned, so this
is how these qualities, not having been, come into play. Having been, they vanish.
So, the jhana is a state of profound introspect awareness, powerful introspective
awareness. Its not focused attention; its awareness. You sit in jhana and awareness
encompasses all of this. In lighter jhanas, you can focus attention on and reflect on and
evaluate some of these. There can be a certain amount of discursive thought and
evaluation that takes place. There are probably more like the kind of practice of
mindfulness that youre more likely to think of.
In the deeper jhanas, whats happening is youre sitting in that place of direct experience
of all of these things and as you do so, their nature begins to emerge, their arising and
passing away begins to present itself. You understand their nature. You understand the
relationship of them to each other, by simply observing with awareness. Not by
57

analyzing, not by focusing your attention on them, thinking about them, investigating
them and so forth. Just by observing. Do you follow what Im saying? Do you know how
that happens? Or is that a mysterious description to any of you?
Student: Yes, its complete mystery. I got lost trying to follow whichby the deeper
jhanas that show the nature of something and I cant figure out what you meant.
Culadasa: In the deeper jhanas, youre exercising the power that mindful awareness has
that does not require focused attention, thought, evaluation, investigation and things like
that.
Student: Right.
Culadasa: An experience in the world that I have thats an exact parallel to this might help
you, because you might have had the same experience like this. A few years ago, I
became interested in the birdsthere are many birds around where we live. I tried in the
usual way of focusing on individual birds, looking up what their names were and what
their characteristics were, and the experience that I had was that I kept making mistakes. I
think, Oh, thats such-and-such a bird. Then some birder would come along and say,
No, no, no its not. And Id say, But it has this and this. And hed say, Yeah, but see
there, thats whats different. So, OK. And also the experience that all five of those birds
look the same. How can they be five different birds? (Laughter) Yet somebody else could
come along and say, Thats that and thats a female that, thats a male that. So I said,
OK, I like watching them. I dont need to know who they are. So I just quit, and I sat
and I watched the birds, and I enjoyed watching the birds. I spent many many hours,
especially during the period when I was quite sick. I couldnt do much else. Id sit on hot
packs and Id watch the birds for hours at a time. I wasnt thinking about them. I wasnt
paying attention to who had a white collar and who had red earmark and all this sort of
thing. Didnt think about that at all. I just watched them. What happened as a result of
simply watching them and NOT analyzing them was I gradually got to know them all. I
knew this one was different than that one, because Id watched them. Theyd behave
different, had different personalities, looked different. There was no analysis required or
involved in it at all. There was just the understanding of them arose out of the experience
of awareness without needing to focus and analyze and so forth.
From that, later on what could do is I could look them up in the bird book and say, Yeah,
thats exactly right. I know that bird. One thing I never did get good at was remembering
their names. But through the application of awareness, my mind accomplished something
that could have done through the application of directed and sustained attention and
discursive thought and analysis. But it happened in a much more natural and easy way,
just through awareness.

58

With the practice of mindful awareness, the same thing happens. Understandings begin to
emerge. One of the things that I find is what Im calling awareness is more about the
relationship between things than it is about the things as separate entities. So when you
practice mindful awareness in your life, understandings and insights just arise. They
come up, they generate these ahas. You didnt figure them out. They just arrived. Thats
the way mindful awareness works. Thats the way insight arises out of the practice of
mindful awareness. At some level, whats been seen gets processed and integrated and
begins to make sense. You just get to enjoy the fruit of that. It comes up, and Aha. I
dont need to keep doing this to myself anymore, now that I see what Im doing. That
kind of thing.
Im trying to explain to Alana by what I mean by how you can come to know things
through mindful awareness, through mindfulness, even though there isnt directed
attention and analysis and evaluation. I want to know if that clarified that point. Does this
match with experiences that youve had. Insights and understandings that you have, that
they just emerge and you know they emerge from this more global awareness rather than
analysis.
Student: To hear you describe the experience of the birds and the different way of being
with those birds reminds me of how imagine people in another time, way prior to our
contemporary time, before there were dictionaries and all those quantifiable measuring
instrumentsnames and all that. People watched the way the clouds would move and
how that would bring about rain here and how the birds reacted there. It was a more
whole or global observation, which must have affected how they thought about their
internal experience. First of all, is that correct? Second of all, it seems like we have
another layer of complexity to move through nowadays, because our left brain is so
engaged and were taught to quantify and to evaluate and to judge and compare. Whereas
this left-brain function might not have been present in so-called more primitive times,
which are actually perhaps more advanced in this way.
Culadasa: Yes. The kind of awareness that Im talking about is actuallyif you watch
birds and deer and other animals like thatcatsIm famous among some people for
telling them that my cat doesnt think. (Laughter) What makes us unique is not so much
right brain versus left brain. Weve got large parts of our brains that have evolved to give
us special capabilities. Front parts of the brain, the forebrain. Leaving aside right versus
left or where, anatomically, this is, as I said earlier, what Im calling awareness is far
more fundamental, its a far more fundamental property of our minds than attention is. In
other organisms, this arose and was developed prior to the ability to focus attention and to
analyze. before the ability to store large amounts of information in our minds and to use
that information to predict the future and so on, all this sort of stuff. Both are really
important. We would not be what we are if we didnt the capacity for focused attention,
for analysis, if we werent able to dwell in a fictional future or in a remembered past. All
59

of these things are very important to what we are. Even though, in order to realize our full
potential, we need to learn to temper certain activities of our mind, theyre still extremely
valuable and important. So what were after is learning to use them far, far better in a
much, much better way. Focused attentionthat particular circuitry thats kind of up here
on the top of your brainhas the ability to dominate far too completely that other kind of
awareness circuitry thats located on the ventral surface of the cerebral hemispheres.
Practicing mindful awareness is bringing those two back into balance and exercising
them. Youre right that more primitive beings, prehomonid or even much simpler
organisms like lizards and snakes and birds and things like that have, naturally, much
more of this kind of awareness. If you watch a deer in the wild, theres awareness and the
deers attentionthere will be a sound and the ear will flick and the deer will turn and
focus just long enough to establish that this is not a danger, and the deer is back to
nibbling on leaves or whatever it is. This is an important part of the way they are and they
way they function. Were trying to learn once again to utilize some of that so that we can
achieve what were ultimately capable of. We have these new toys, and you know how it
is with new toys. You get so fascinated with them that you forget all the old stuff. Thats
kind of what happens with us. Were so busy using our forebrain and our left hemisphere
and doing all this analytical stuff that some of our potential isnt there or isnt being fully
realized.
Anyway, insight requires certain things. Insight involves attention, and thats what youre
doing in the stage after you come out of the jhana, where you review. Youre focusing
your attention on things that are recollected from the state of mind before you entered the
jhana, the state of mind when you were in the jhana and also youre putting your attention
on the corresponding things that are present in the state of mind after jhana. The
important thing about attention is its in its objective mode. Remember last night I said,
attention is always dualistic but it can either be subjectively enthralled by the object or it
can have the subject/object distance. To practice mindfulness, you need to use attention,
you need your attention to examine objectively and to be combined with this awareness.
Out of that emerges insight. Out of that emerges understanding of the relationships
between things, including the relationships between all the different kinds of mental
events that take place. Out of that comes this not intellectual, not analytical, but just this
profound understanding, this, Aha, yes. Everything is just process, is impermanent, there
is no self. Clinging to anything results in suffering, and so forth. These things just
become self-evident truths as a result of the practice of mindfulness.
In the jhanas, you have this awareness. Youve brought this awareness to its maximum
capability because youre no longer hogging a lot of your consciousness capacity to focus
it in on one particular thing. Youve dropped directed and sustained attention in the first
jhana, so in the second and third and fourth jhanas, and in the four formless jhanasor
the first three of the four formless jhanaswhat you have is introspective awareness: the
60

full power of your consciousness capacity in the form of this introspective awareness
taking in the reality of what your mind is. Afterwards, when you review, then the insights
begin to come up.
Did you read these descriptions of the jhanas from the sutras? Theyre quite beautiful. If
youve already read them, I dont need to read them to you.
Let me tell you a little bit about the formless jhanas, and then well take a break. The
fourth jhana is a very interesting one, because here you have awareness of your own
mind. That awareness actually has access to all kinds of things in your mind, about your
mind that you dont normally have access toeven the nature of mind in a way that
youve never previously experienced it. You experience your mind as being isolated and
separate, dont you? As a matter of fact, theres almost nothing more isolated and separate
than your perception of your mind compared to anybody elses, right? Are you familiar
with Carl Jungs collective unconscious? What does that mean to you? Would somebody
like to say what that means?
Student: It means that we dont own that unconscious knowledge but it pervades all of
humanity and from that arise all kinds of archetypical beings and thoughts. And its the
mind here, only the other way around.
Culadasa: Thats right. Thats exactly what Carl Jung was saying. He came to the
conclusion that we all share this one unconscious, which is where all of our archetypes
reside. And were all drawing from the same unconscious. Other people since then have
tried to say, well, you know, so much for that airy-fairy mystical stuff. What he really
discovered is that all of our minds are pretty similar, so they have the same stuff in there.
What you will find if you spend time in the fourth jhana is that the barriers between your
perception of your own private, separated mind and some larger collective mind begin to
disappear. The idea of the collective unconscious begins to really make sense to you.
What the Buddha said is that when he entered first jhana, second jhana, third jhana,
fourth jhana, he recollected all of his past lives. Theres a very interesting idea, especially
coming from a man who had already told anybody that there was no self and that the
doctrine of reincarnation was mistaken. All of his previous past lives. But if his mind
isnt really a separate mind but is part of a common mind, then that now has a different
meaning, doesnt it? If, in that state, he could access knowledge, memories, so to speak,
of all of the different forms that mind had taken, then it was an opportunity to recollect
past lives. Not one isolated series of A, B, C, D, E, F, G in a sea of other beings, but
actually, if all mind is interconnected in some way, then any of our minds has access to
the whole. Also, any life thats ever been lived is essentially your past life, right? He went
on to say that not only did he review all of his past lives but he reviewed the arising and
passing away of beings of every kind.
61

Student: So were all sharing this parallel life?

Culadasa: Thats exactly what this is saying to us, yes. In the fourth jhana, this is what the
mind potentially has access to. The barriers that separate the individual, isolated mind
break down. Which has led me to examining my dreams and realizing that I have dreams
that the only that they truly make sense is if Im accessing the actual lived and
remembered experience of other sentient beings in other places at other times. Ive been
places and Ive seen things in my dreams that no only have I never seen, Ive never read
about, heard about, thought about or even expected the existence of until I went to sleep
one night, and there it was. What you have access to in the fourth jhana is really quite
remarkable.
Student: This may be too involved to discuss here, so you can say no. Youve hit on a
confusion I have. One of my friends is very fond of shamanic dreaming and she very
much believes that absolutely there is an objective upper, middle and lower realm that
you enter in a certain way. The similarities in structure between what youre saying here
about entering and leaving jhanas and their structure is similar to what she says. So she
shamanic journeys. I kind of had an interest in that and I set that aside when I decided to
pursue Buddhist study a little more closely because it seemed to me I needed to be
concerned about getting lost in fantasy. A lot of your previous lectures are, Dont get lost
in fantasy. Now youre talking about the collective unconscious, youre talking about
possibly accessing the experiences of others. Im on board with you there. Im comparing
it to what she says. It sounds like she could be modeling this collective unconscious very
powerfully. So, my question is, if this collective unconscious is out there and there is
some other technique for reaching it, such as shamanic journeying, such as studying your
dreams, do we go for that or is it premature or is that an opportunity to just get lost in
fantasy?
Culadasa: Its very easy to get lost in fantasy, and theres nothing better about getting lost
in some other minds fantasy than getting lost in your own minds fantasy. (Laughter)
Thats a very important thing to keep in mind. Shamanic journeyingNancy and I
studied shamanic journeying, practiced it for many years after many years of practicing
Buddhism. It was really interesting. By studying with Michael Harner and learning to do
shamanic journeying practice, I was able to make so much sense of things in Tibetan
Buddhist tradition that had been puzzling. Shamanic journeying is a method of tapping
into essentially the same realm. Its the realm of mystery and power, really. This becomes
completely available to you if you spend time practices jhana. In the deep jhanas, fourth
jhana. What Im talking about here is the deepest jhana. Im not talking about ultralite,
lite or the - jhanas or anything like that. Im talking about the deepest jhanas. That all
becomes available to you. Shamanic journeying is just another way of tapping into that,
but not of coming into contact with it to the same degree. It is very easy to get caught in
some other beings fantasy, and thats no better than being caught in your own. Its like
62

channeling. Were channeling all these wonderful ideas from some other being, but how
to you know that being is any smarter or wiser than you are?

Session 5

NOTE: the recorder stopped working and the three previous sessions were missed; so this
is actually the final session (8).
Culadasa: Good afternoon and I hope you had a good lunch. I thought that it would be
good to do another meditation this afternoon, but maybe not immediately after youve
eaten. Before then, and while youre digesting, lets see if there are some things youd
like me to talk about before the weekend is over. It could be things likeI didnt really
say much about the formless jhanas. I really didnt talk very much about the deeper
jhanas, and so forth. Youve had a chance to look at the handout. Why dont you let me
know what things there are that you would like to spend a few minutes talking about
while we have the time and before we do that meditation.
Student: It seems like theres a reference to hindrances I never heard of before. And it
seems like theres this constant shift between systems of, well, this is the jhana system
and these are the stages of insight and theres a correspondence between the two. Im
kind of at sea with the mapping.
Culadasa: OK. Yeah. A little bit of orientation to the maps. OK. The ten stages of samatha
vipassanaI think youre probably all already with that, that they are available on the
Dharma Treasure website. With reference to those stages, we use a state corresponding to
stage 6 as access for the ultralite jhanas, which weve done here today. If you practice
those jhanas, it will accelerate your progress in becoming a solid meditator at stage 6 and
also stage 7, as well as stages 8 and 9. It will definitely improve your progress there. The
lite jhanas of the Leigh Brasington/Ayya Khema sort are accessed from stage 7 of the
samatha vipassana scheme. When you enter those jhanas, basically as you move through
the four jhanas, the jhanas themselves are very similar to moving through the subsequent
stages in the samatha vipassana practice. The result of practicing those jhanas is, once
again, so that you can use it to accelerate your progress through those.
I did make some reference to the sixteen stages in the progress of insight. The progress of
insight refers to a book written by Mahasi Sayadaw based on the Visuddhimagga and has
become pretty much the classic presentation of the dry vipassana method. The
progressive stages of insight are described as insight knowledges that a person acquires
sequentially. The insight knowledges go right through the insights corresponding to the
63

achievement of awakening, the path and fruition knowledges, to the review stage. Thats
a different system of stages, quite different. Although all of the knowledges that are
described in that stage are potentially experienced as a part of the ten stages, or if youve
become a tenth-stage meditator with fully developed samatha, then you should rapidly be
able to proceed to experience the knowledges from that sixteen-stage system that havent
already arisen for you in the process of your training. The sixteen stages are a dry
vipassana method and there is one group of stages thats commonly known as the dukha
yanas, or the knowledges of suffering. For a meditator who does not have samatha, does
not have piti and has not, prior to that point, had some experience, some preliminary
insights into no-self and emptiness, those can be extremely difficult, disturbing stages. If
youre doing a samatha practice, they generally will not be difficult. Youll move through
them quite quickly and theyre not very disturbing at all. But they are two different
systems, and if youre interested in the stages of insight, then I would suggest that you
can download for free Mahasi Sayadaws book. If you want to go to the source of that,
Visuddhimagga is very lengthy and its pretty serious text. Its heavy reading. It is
available as a two-volume paperback edition published by Shambhala thats available
from Amazon and other places.
The successor to Mahasi Sayadaw is Sayadaw U Pandita. U Pandita wrote a book a
number of years ago called In this Very Life. In that book, he presents what he calls
vipassana jhanas. They correspond to certain stages in the sixteen progressive stages of
insight. If we look at those vipassana jhanas, we see that its a really different usage of the
term jhana as compared to what we find in the sutras, what the Buddha spoke about and
what weve been talking about this weekend. It reflects the difference between dry
vipassana and samatha vipassana. The biggest difference between dry vipassana and
samatha vipassana is the absence of piti and sukha. Of course the jhanas that weve been
talking about are defined in terms of piti and sukha as jhana factors. The vipassana jhanas
that U Pandita describes, for the most part, dont involve piti and sukha. In the
progressive stages of insight, the fourth knowledgewhich is the knowledge of arising
and passing awayhas two parts to it. In between those two parts comes whats called
the knowledge of what is and is not the path. A meditator who arrives at the early
knowledge of arising and passing away has a level of concentration that is approximately
that of about a stage 6 samatha vipassana meditator. As a result of that, there will arise
piti and sukha, equanimity and a lot of other factors. These are listed as the ten
defilements of insight, or imperfections of insight. In the Visuddhimagga and by Mahasi
Sayadaw and U Pandita, in that system, if you are doing the noting practice that these
adhere to and you reach that level of concentration, and piti and sukha arise, you report it
to your meditation teacher. The meditation teacher will tell you that are not noting
diligently enough and to go back and practice and note more diligently. The piti and
sukha will go away. And they certainly will. Then, with the level of concentration that
you have, you arrive at the late stage of arising and passing away. Your mind is very
64

sharp and clear, and you see that everything arises and passes away, arises and passes
away. Thats why its called the knowledge of arising and passing away. Youre doing a
kind of practice that involves your mind moving back and forth between two modes of
knowing. Roughly, approximately what youre doing is youre going into the mode of
awareness and then something pops out of awareness. Then you go into the mode of
attentive focus, conceptionalization and you put a label on it. Then you let go if it and go
back to the mode of awareness until something else pops out. You zoom your attention in
on it and attach a label to whats happening. So your minds going back and forth
between these two states. If you do that, you get really really good at it, but it creates too
much activity in your mind for piti and sukha to be present. So if piti and sukha arise, that
tells your teacher that youre not noting diligently enough. In order to proceed along the
sixteen stages, according to that particular method of practice, you need to carry out the
noting practice with enough diligence that the piti and suhka pass away. So it is very
much a dry insight. Its dry of the moisturizing lubrication of samatha, the piti,/sukha
tranquility.
We can refer to the knowledge of what is and is not the pathby the way, the knowledge
of what is and is not the path, where these ten defilements arise is called that because
what meditators are taught in this system is that piti and sukha are too attractive and the
meditator will think, Oh, Im enlightened now, this is it, this is what its all about, and
will cease to practice. Thats not the path. According to this method, what is the path is
you go back to noting until piti and sukha disappear and you keep on practicing. That
particular stage, the knowledge of what is and is not the path, which is part of stage 4
the knowledge of arising and passing awaycould legitimately be described as a jhana
according to the way jhanas were described by the Buddha in the sutras because piti and
sukha are present and because there is strong concentration. However, the next time in the
sequence of the sixteen stages where you come to a stage that could reasonably be called
a jhana according to the sutra definitions, is the eleventh stage. This is called the
knowledge of equanimity towards formations. This is after youve gone through all
dukhan yanas, the knowledges of suffering and youve arrived at a state of very powerful
concentration and very strong equanimity in which youre just watching phenomena
mostly mental phenomena at this pointarise and pass away. Its a stage in that
progression thats very near to the knowledge of the path and fruition knowledge.
Student: Can you say the last part of the sentence? I couldnt hear you.
Culadasa: This knowledge of equanimity towards formation is basicallywhen we speak
of access concentration as being the point we access the jhanas fromthe knowledge of
equanimity towards formations is the access to insight. OK? This is the stage thats the
access to the illuminating insight thats called path knowledge and fruition knowledge.

65

The next stages that could be described as jhanas are the fruition experiences, because in
the fruition experience, theres a very strong bliss and theres a very strong focus of
attention. This different system, although its been made by U Pandita to correspond to
jhanasshes defined these vipassana jhanas. When we look at them, theyre really quite
different than the jhanas that weve been talking about.
Student: Do we need them all?
Culadasa: What?
Student: We need to be able to swim in two different systems?
Culadasa: No, you dont need to. You dont need to know anything about these systems at
all except that if youre practicing within one, its very helpful. If you were doing
Mahasi-style vipassana retreat, its very helpful to understand the sixteen stages because
if you practice according to the instructions, youre going to experience those stages.
Student: I dont want to get off the subject, but I have a question about this conversation
and going on about people getting into a state ofwell, Willoughby (?) has discussed it
openly. This does that have anything to do with that? Like getting stuck
Culadasa: That has absolutely everything to do with it. That is the dukhan yanas that
well, its more than just the dukhan yanas. There is a process of purification that takes
place in samatha vipassana, and its going to have to happen no matter what method you
do. What this involves, this is where all your old troublesome stuff of the past thats been
buried in the deepest subconscious recesses of your mind comes to the fore. That has to
be dealt with. Thats quite apart from the dukhan yanas. Another part of it is that when
your concentration becomes strong enough, even if youre meditating in such a way that
piti as joy and pleasure do not arise, youre still going to experience a lot of the other
physical, bodily manifestations. Youre going to experience feelings of tingling, burning,
twitching, aching, rocking back and forth, jerking and twitching, involuntary movements.
I think Willoughby described them as convulsive. I know a number of you in this room
have experienced those. That too is something that, as part of samatha vispassana, is a
good sign. Oh, pitis arising, and you just let it happen, let it complete its process of
developing maturation. In the vipassana practice, you just note it and let it go. Thats
exactly what the correspondence is here.
Student: I was wondering about what Cynthia was asking. I was having the experience of
these deeper emotions relating toI dont know if its quite called pitithe experience
of free-flowing energy.
Culadasa: Yes.

66

Student: This morning, the emotions were really blocking it. I felt tight area in my body.
The energy wouldnt flow. Yesterday, the energy was the cause of bringing these things
up. It would sort of push things through. Is that related to what you were just talking
about, the way that free-flowing energy is stopped by or moved there? Or am I just
talking about a kind of a sensory image thats different?
Culadasa: No, theyre really the same thing. You experience this energy moving in your
body and then you experience it as being blocked. Its not unusual, as you work your way
through those blockages, to find that those blockages are related to past experiences or
habits of mind, personality predispositions and things like that. In some meditation
teachings, they carry that to the extreme, where everything that you experience in terms
of energy movements, they try to relate it directly to some personality characteristic or
some problem that you have that you need to work through. What I find is that although
there are occasions where you have a particular block and the arising energy may become
blocked in your throat, and it may turn out that you have some problemsomething from
your distant past or some characteristic of your personality in the present or whatever that
can be metaphorically linked to the throat chakra, to right speech, and so on. Sometimes
that happens. But also, very often, you encounter these blocks in energy movement, you
work through the blocks in energy movement, and you never have the faintest inkling that
theres any psychological component at all related to them. Rather than go to either
extreme, I would say obviously there is some psychological component involved in the
experience of blockages of energy flow, but to assume that you need to somehow
discover what all of these are and work through them is totally unnecessary.
Student: So what then is the practice when youre trying to focus on flow and the
blockages are too salient [not sure of what was said]?: Theyre just again and again and
again drawing you away from flow to the blockage.
Culadasa: If youre perceiving an energy movement and theres s clear blockage, one of
the easiest ways to work with thatand I would suggest this be the first one that you try
is the principle that the energy follows attention. So you focus on the energy thats
blocked and you try with your mind to move it past the blockage or you shift your
awareness beyond the point of the blockage and you dig in and try to detect the sensation
of energy beyond that point until it begins to emerge. Very often that will help you move
through the blockage. Sometimes that doesnt work. Sometimes you just have to take the
blocked energy experience as your meditation object and justanything that pulls you
away from your normal meditation object very strongly and very consistently, you can
always take that as your alternative meditation object. Wait and see what it has to teach
you. If theres some psychological thing associated with it, then that gives it an
opportunity to come up. Some memory, some emotion, something like that. Then you can
confront and accept it.
67

Student: So if youre trying to that single-pointedness and the issue is that this blockage
is drawing you ,drawing you, drawing you, you recommend giving up the singlepointedness for now and working with the blockage?
Culadasa: You can take the blockage as the object of your single-pointed attention. Its
not going to be a suitable object to try enter jhana in, for example, but for absolutely
every other aspect of the practice, its extremely well suited. As a matter of fact, it has the
tendency to draw your attention and hold it, so its even easier to be in single-pointed
attention on it. Youre still training your mind. Attention is still being stabilized on an
intentionally chosen object. So the training effect is just as good as it would be if you
were focusing on the breath or some other intentionally chosen object.
Student: Id like to add to that. So, thats my state. Ive got knots, blockages, whatever
you want to call them. So in fact, going into jhanas at this point is kind of pointless. Its
just not going to happen. As you said, it wants to draw me in. These knots want to draw
me in. Its been this way seven or eight months. They are fabulous for pulling my
attention in to the point where, yes, its very easy to meditate that way. Focus on that, feel
the knot. Sometimes they release. These knots are releasing slowly. Not long ago its
gotten such that there are so few knots that around Christmas time I found it hard to
meditate, because I lost my objects of meditation. (Laughter) I just thought I would share.
Culadasa: Thank you. Thats very good. I think that will be very helpful for people.
Student: My experience today is I stopped calling those blockages by all those names. I
decided they were sukha. I like contraction. It just really felt like, OK, Ive come out of
the closet. I like contraction. (Laughter)
Culadasa: Thats good too. Thank you.
Student: Im always in a lot of knots. The only way Ive learned to deal with it now is
when you say you either go into it or you go past it. I can go into it intensively, but I still
have tension around its wrong. I have to put love into it. Until I started putting love
into them, they were scary.
Culadasa: Youre absolutely right. All of these things, the energy for resistance is actually
coming froma blockage is a resistance to energy flow. You have to stop resisting the
blockage before that knot can untangle. As long as you keep resisting the blockage, it
keeps it solid. It keeps it so solid that the energys not going to move. The same things
true if you have a very traumatic memory or really strong emotion that comes up. As long
as you resist that, youre actually feeding it strength. You have to turn it around and as
you say, love it, accept it, be OK with it. All right, you can be there.

68

Student: Until recently, I thought I was accepting it. I was paying attention to it, but what
I was actually doing was not giving it love and accepting. I was trying to figure it out and
paying too much attention to it in the wrong way or something.
Culadasa: What will happen, sometimesI dont know if this happens with youbut
you have something like that that comes up and you put your attention on it and it
dissolves and goes away. Then, you develop the idea that this is the solution, this is how I
get rid of it. But then youre still coming to the place of not allowing it to be there. Youre
just going in there and youre going to demolish it with permission. It doesnt really
work. When that happens, yeah, youve got to take the next step. Youve got to love it.
Youve got tohow did you sayyou came out of the closet.
Student: Its not that I love it. It is love, Well, its not that its love, it just feels good.
Contraction feels good!
Culadasa: Yeah. Whatever it is, youre completely undoing your own internal resistance
to it and since it is part of you, youre undoing its resistance as well.
Student: Sometimes when I welcome whatever that issay, maybe its a strong feeling
because I do believe its very important to love it, to welcome it and pay attention.
Sometimes it dissipates then. What I dowhich seems to respondis I invite it back. I
ask it to come back. I say, Id really like to get this back. And if I wait very patiently
and openly, it arises. I find that amazing, that we can actually invite that sort of thing.
That it responds.
Culadasa: Yeah.
Student: Whatever IT is.
Culadasa: Whatever it is. But it is a part of our own mind. As long as our mind is divided
against itself in any form, we are not going to be optimally what we can be.
Student: I was wondering about this Johns opinion about what that John was saying
regardingso you were saying that if the blockages are too bad to say, jhanas not for
me today, and to work with the blockages? Would that be your advice as well?
Culadasa: To which?
Student: Theres John, John and jhana. (Laughter) If youre trying to do the singlepointedness and the blockages are too salient [?], would your advice be to say that jhanas
not for me today and deal with the blockages or to persist at it and see if the singlepointedness will
Culadasa: See, thats the decision that you have to make. What Im saying is when that is
there so strongly that you cant just set it aside and proceed, then turn the tables on it and
69

take it as your object at that point. Do exactly what he said. But you have to decide
yourself. A person could potentially exaggerate this advice and every trivial distraction
that comes up, they want to take that as their object. Thats going to be
counterproductive. There is a point when you realize, OK, I cant just ignore this and
leave it be. Im going to have to take more direct action. Thats when you do it.
Student: First I want to say thank you for this handout. Its an amazing amount of
information, and the things youve pulled together and the way youve presented it. There
are a few things, though, that I had question marks and Im still vague on. You said that
you might talk a little more about the formless aspects. So, its the relationship between
form and formlessness and how thatyou mentioned space in here several times, in
different ways. So, how the form and formlessness relates to space, and then the
nimitta ?], the appearance, and the appearance of the meditation object. I think those are
related in a lot of ways.
Culadasa: Yes, those are a couple of things that I can say a little bit more about. Let me
go back to one other thing that was brought up earlier by Chris. She said there were five
hindrances that she didnt know what they were about. The five hindrances is a very
useful concept, useful tool, in Buddhism. There is an excerpt from a sutra there, where
the Buddha is distinguishing between wholesome and unwholesome absorptions and
those hindrances are listed. The first one is usually called sense desire. I find that too
limiting. Its worldly desire. Its desire for things of the sense realm that your mind
believes are going to make you happy and keep you from becoming unhappy. So desire
for the sense realm is the first hindrance. The second is aversion, or ill will, these
negative emotional states in the entire range from impatience to hatred. The third
hindrance usually is described as sloth and torpor. I prefer to refer to it as resistance,
procrastination and fatigue.
Student: Is that different from mental dullness that youve referred to?
Culadasa: The mental dullness is an aspect of torpor. That dullness is of two origins. One
is if you are mentally or physically tired. The other is because youre focusing your
attention and the mind is turned inward, it becomes de-energized, and you need to train
the mind not to do that. Its the same dullness, but for that particular hindrance, I usually
am interpreting that as more concerned with the dullness from genuine mental or physical
fatigue. I tend to think of the other kind of dullness as an inherent part of what happens in
meditation and is part of the training. You train your mind not to sink into dullness.
The fourth hindrance is agitation of the mind that is the result of worry and remorse
worry about whats going to happen because of this, that or the other thing, and remorse
about things that youve done or guilt or things like this. These are major psychological
hindrances that produce agitation in the mind. In passing, the best way to prevent those
70

hindrances from coming into existence is through the practice of virtue. If you live
virtuously, if you keep the precepts, if you practice the perfections, then you will have no
cause for worry and remorse.
The fifth hindrance is skeptical doubt. I must be doing this wrong, or I cant do this.
Theres something wrong with me. Im not like everybody else.
Student: Is it always self-referential, or could it be, This path is stupid.
Culadasa: That was the next one I was going to mention. (Laughter) Or, this is the
wrong method, this is not good. Or, my teachers full of crap. (Laughter) Or, this
whole Buddhism business is nonsense. Ive got to find something Its all the same
thing. Its skeptical doubt.
So, those are the five hindrances.
Student: It feels like the self-referential part, Im not able toit feels qualitatively
different than the other, like the teachers no good or I dont like sitting in this room.
Culadasa: Yeah, well it is qualitatively different. Its two qualitatively different forms of
the same thing. Skeptical doubt is a kind of a reverse faith. Its faith that its not going to
work. The two qualitative kinds are who youre blaming. Youre going to blame yourself
and youre going to blame someone else. Its still the same thingits not going to work,
I know its not going to work and that keeps you from trying. Thats the whole problem
with skeptical doubt. There is a kind of doubt thats really good. Its like, OK, maybe so.
Let me find out for myself. Thats healthy doubt. But skeptical doubt is what keeps you
from trying because youre already convinced that its not going to work. Some people
have a major issue with that in themselves. Everything in their life, theyve doubted their
ability to do. Or that somehow they are worthy to succeed and reap the fruits of what they
do. If thats in your make-up, youre going to have to deal with it, because its going to
come up really strongly over and over again in your meditation practice. The wonderful
thing about the meditation practice is its going to bring you face-to-face with it, and you
can get past it once and for all, and then eliminate it from every other aspect of your life.
Student: So there wouldnt just happen to be handy antidotes to these, a by-the-numbers
thing to do, huh?
Culadasa: Yes. You cultivate meditation. The things that we identified earlier as jhana
factors are also identified as the specific antidotes to each of these five. Unification of
mind, ekaggata is the specific antidote to sense desire. Piti, meditative joy, is the specific
antidote to aversion and ill will. Directed attention is the specific antidote to sloth and
torpor or, as I put it, resistance, procrastination and fatigue. Sukha, pleasure and
happiness, is the specific antidote to the agitation due to worry and remorse. Happiness
71

overcomes worry and remorse. Sustained attention is the specific antidote to skeptical
doubt. Which is a way of saying, Just keep doing it and youll get past it.
Student: It will work, even if you dont think so.
Culadasa: Thats right. But it for sure wont work if you dont try.
Student: It really is systematic, isnt it?
Culadasa: It is very systematic. Its wonderfully systematic. Every now and then youll
come to places where things have been bent maybe a little too much to make them fit into
a nice system, but
Student: Ive heard this quote repeated a bunch of times. I think its from Bob Thurman.
Its, Christians love God, Buddhists love lists. (Laughter)
Culadasa: Somebody wrote a book, Buddhism by the Numbers. (Laughter) And theres
called part of the Pali canon that is all the sutras that involve one thing, and the next
collection is all that involve two things, and then the next is called The Collection of
Threes, then theres The Collection of Fours, The Collection of Fives, The
Collection of Sixes. That is really true.
Let me go on then to formless jhanas and nimitta, appearance. The formless jhanas are
variations on the fourth jhana. As you go through these four jhanas, you progressively
become more and more completely removed from the material realm, the sense realm.
Lets call it the material realm, because were going to refer to space here. In the fourth
jhanaand this is even true of the deepest version of the fourth jhanathere still is one
powerful element of what we call form thats present. Theres one powerful connection to
the material realm, and thats the sense of location in space and limitations in space. The
practitioner has achieved the fourth jhana. The next refinement is to eliminate that by
taking infinite space and by essentially expanding boundaries until you have the
perception of infinite space. You can take that as the object of that jhana. Then youre no
longer located in a particular place in space. From there, the next formless jhana is very
very easy. That is infinite consciousness, which follows pretty much automatically that in
order to have a perception of infinite space, you must have infinite consciousness. So it
just takes a small shift in your focus to experience the jhana of infinite consciousness.
The next form jhana beyond that is the jhana of nothingness, no-thingness. It is the
experience of objectlessness that is built on this foundation of perception of infinite
consciousness in infinite space. To an infinite consciousness in infinite space, theres no
object, theres no thingness to be taken as object. But theres a subtle trick in this that the
mind is playing. For example, if you parked your car outside the door and then you
opened the door and looked out and theres no car there, youre going to have a
perception of no car-ness. It is very much a perception, and its a very strong, powerful
72

perception. Youve had this a lot of times, right? You open the drawer and its not there.
In ordinary perception, your mind is constructing a concept that consciousness takes as its
object to account for sensory experience. If theres nothing there, then its the absence of
that sensory experience from which the mind then constructs an object, which is the no
car-ness or or no-thingness. So the third formless jhana still involves perception and it
still involves a mental construct, a samkara (?). The construct corresponds to the absence
of any thing. So its the base of no-thingness, but theres still another level that you can
go beyond. In the terminology of the sutras, nonperception is a state of mind. Its a state
of consciousness. Its the state of consciousness when youre in deep sleep, under
anesthesia, unconscious. What we would normally refer to as unconscious is whats
called nonperception. Even where youre having a perception of an absence of
something, the base of no-thingness, is a perception.
So the next jhana, the fourth of the formless jhanas, is called neither perceptionbecause
the minds not taking any construct as an objectso its neither perception nor is it
nonperception. You have not lost consciousness, youre not in deep sleep, youre not
anesthetized. It is a state where youre conscious and fully aware and but you arent
conscious of anything. Its like a suspension of the act of perception. The act of
perception is uncompleted.
Student: So that aspect of self that exercises the faculty of perception, thats another layer
of self thats vanished.
Culadasa: Thats another layer of self thats been dispensed with. Its a very nebulous
kind of jhana.
Student: And you wouldnt have mindfulness, you wouldnt be fully aware?
Culadasa: You are conscious. Your consciousness is in the form of awareness, and its
awareness of the base of neither perception nor nonperception. So we could still say that
there is mindfulness of a sort here, but not in the form of an ordinary perception.
There is one more state beyond this that I didnt mention in this handout. Just for
completeness, Ill mention it now. Its called the cessation of feeling and perception. Its
not nonperception, its the cessation of perception. Its accompanied by the cessation of
feeling, and it also corresponds to the cessation of formations. It IS nirvana. The state of
the cessation and perception has the technical name naroda (?). It is nirvana. There are
two kinds of nirvana. One is nirvana with remainder, which is the kind of nirvana thats
experienced in life, momentarily, by a person when they are experiencing path or fruition
experiences of any of the four stages of awakening. It is the nirvana in which a Buddha
dwells throughout the remainder of his physical existence in the world. Thats called the
nirvana with remainder.

73

Nirvana without remainder is parinirvana. It is the nirvana that follows upon the
dissolution of the mind and body at the time of the death of a Buddha. Its called nirvana
without remainderno more body, no more mind, no more The other nirvana without
remainder is the cessation of feeling and perception. It is this ninth state thats beyond the
jhana of neither perception nor nonperception. What it says about this stateI can only
tell you what it says about itis that this is only achievable by arhats and nonreturners.
No one else can achieve this ninth state. When they achieve this ninth state, they are in
exactly the same nirvana that theyll be in following the death of their body. If I
understand the references to it that Im familiar with, if a nonreturner enters the cessation,
he will arise from the cessation as an arhat.
Student: Whats the distinction between a nonreturner and an arhat?
Culadasa: Technically, a nonreturner still has the inherent sense of being a separate self.
Although theres no desire for anything of the sense realmno aversion and no desire
there still is attachment to existence. An arhat has overcome the inherent sense of being a
separate self. Theres no desire for either existence nor nonexistence, because theres no
sense of being something separate that could either exist or not exist.
Student: Can you say again the name of this ninth state? Did you call that parinirvana?
Culadasa: Its nirvana without remainder and parinirvana is also nirvana without
remainder. So those are the two occasions of nirvana without remainder. One is when a
nonreturner or an arhat enters the cessation and the other is upon the death of the body of
an arhat.
Student: So, for the form stages of jhanas, its often talking about qualities, especially the
fourth state of neither perception nor nonperception. Theres energy or a process thats
still going on but its notwe wouldnt characterize qualities of it.
Culadasa: Thats right. There is really nothing to say about it.
Student: OK. So, shall I be silent? (Laughter) It makes me think of something Ive heard
often but I never think I understand. Thats signlessness.
Culadasa: Is which-ness?
Student: Signlessness.
Culadasa: Signlessness.
Student: Right. Which is often put up there with no separate self as being one of the main
aspects that we aspire to.

74

Culadasa: Yes. Signlessness, or andanita (?). Its actually different than the eighth jhana.
What it isthe sign being referred to or the appearance being referred to is the
appearance of substantiality, of, if not permanence, endurance. The appearance that things
have. The opposite of that appearance the direct experience of anicha (?). We say
impermanence but its really change. Constant change, flux. Signlessness is the
knowledge of essentially emptiness too. Its knowledge of emptiness. Its knowledge of
anicha, impermanence. It is the experience of having cut through the illusion, the
appearance of solidity, substantiality of self-existent entities that endure even if only
temporarily.
Student: And youre saying thats not comparable to this jhana of neither perception nor
nonperception.
Culadasa: No. To have the direct experience of things in their empty and impermanent
nature is not the same thing. Because a person can experience this jhana, somebody who
practices the jhanas can experience this jhana and not have that realization, not have that
knowledge. The Buddhas second teacher was teaching this particular jhana, the base of
neither perception nor nonperception, but he was not enlightened and had not had insight
into impermanence, no self and emptiness.
Student: But the jhanas and maybe particularly the formless ones might help us along.
Culadasa: All of the jhanas will help tremendously. Thats basically what the Buddha said
practice the jhanas with mindfulness, and insight will arise. If you practice the jhanas
as trance states, which is what the Brahmins had tended to do, without that kind of
mindfulness, then you would not. If you look at the jhanas that the Brahmins practiced
were getting into a lot of historical digression that may be boring everybody, I dont
knowbut if you look at what the Brahmins did, they did jhanas based on kasinas (?)
and on the elements: earth, water, fire and air. They became completely absorbed in them.
The Buddha set all of that aside and defined the jhanas in terms of the jhana factors, all of
which are aspects of mind that you can be aware of. It became, then, a practice of
mindfulness rather than a practice of trance state.
Student: All of this has helped. Thank you. But, the nimitta
Culadasa: Nimitta means appearance. To enter jhanas with an object, focusing your
attention on an object, that object has to be of a nature that is conducive to entering into
absorption. All of our ordinary perceptions are mental constructs built out of other mental
constructs, essentially to explain sensory experience. They are extremely complex and
complicated fabrications.
Student: Can you give an example of that?

75

Culadasa: For example, if you tried to enter jhana with the breath as an object, its not
going to work, because breath is a concept. It presumes body and it presumes air or
atmosphere and it presumes space and directionality in and out. We could list a thousand
other things that it presumes. So our ordinary perception of breath is an extremely
complex construct and its not suitable. When we get to the sixth stage, the appearance of
breath is altered. When youre having this experience of the whole body with the breath,
youre not experiencing the body in such a complexly fabricated way. You are having a
direct experience of sensations, more or less unmoderated sensations. This is what
happens when you reach the sixth stage anyway. Youve been observing the sensations of
the breath. We make a point of calling them sensations of the breath all the time. Its very
important to do that because as your meditation proceeds, at about the sixth stage, thats
really what it is. Its no longer breath. Its the sensations that happen to be related to the
concept of breath. Those sensations are suitable as an object to enter jhana with. You can,
at the sixth stagewhat this is, is this is the second kind of nimitta. The first nimitta or
first appearance is breath as we normally perceive it, as a complex construct. Its called
the parikama (?) nimitta. Parikama means preliminary or ordinary or beginners or initial
or connotations like that. When you get to the sixth stage, the appearance changes and it
become the ugaha (?) nimitta. Ugaha is acquired. Its acquired as the result of a practice
and the refinement of your perceptions, so that now you are just experiencing sensations
in a much more direct way. In the sixth and seventh stages, that can become even more
refined to where the sensations become unrecognizable. You might have the experience
that youre observing the sensations of the breath but you dont know which sensations
belong to the inbreath or outbreath anymore, because youre not attaching any concepts
to them. You can instantly find outyou can recognize and attach the concept, but your
mind is not bothering to do that anymore. You can go a little deeper into it and the
qualities of warmth, coolness, movement, sharpness and everything else that you could
identify within the sensations of the breathall those recognizable qualities disappear
and it becomes just like a vibratory phenomenon. These are the forms that this second
appearance can take, acquired appearance. It is suitable for entering jhana. This is using
the term nimitta or appearance in its proper speaking.
Theres a third nimitta. Its called patibhaga nimitta, or the mental counterpart
appearance. If you follow this progression through the tenth stage, the patibhaga nimitta
will arise. This is an appearance of the breath that is not sensation anymore. Its the
impact that the sensations arriving in the mind have. It produces an imprint in the mind.
That appears, and you can take that as your meditation object for entering the deepest of
all jhanas.
There are these three different appearances, stagewise, that the meditation object takes
over timethe preliminary appearance, the acquired appearance of just sensation. Those
are two extremes. Sensations arrive that represent raw sensations. They enter the mind
76

and are conceptualized. Here is just color and shape and here is car. Usually we see a
car. The acquired appearance would be like just seeing the color and shape without
attaching a label or recognition or concept to it. Between these two is where this
patibhaga nimitta, this mental counterpart image lies. Sensations enter the mind, and then,
preconceptually, before they have been processed, in this particular state you can become
aware of it. You can take that as your object. It is independent of the sensations that gave
rise to it. It is not a complex construct. Its not a conceptual construct. Its between the
two. That is the nimitta or meditation object thats used for entering the deepest jhanas.
If youll notice, when I went through these, youre using the second nimitta, the ugaha, to
enter the ultralite jhanas and are using the patibhagathe mental counterpart imageto
enter into the deepest jhanas. What are we using to enter into the lite jhanas and the light
jhanas? In the lite jhanas, youre actually using the piti sukha of access. Since that is
something that is pretty straightforward and simple and in the mind, its a suitable object.
Ive never heard Leigh Brasington and people that teach those jhanas call that a nimitta. I
guess they didnt feel like it was necessary to. The people that teach the light jhanas,
which use the light, the illumination, from piti as the meditation object, have usurped the
word nimitta and attached it to the light. The light is not an appearance of the original
meditation object, because Pa Auk and Ajahn Brahmalvamso teach meditation using the
breath, and the light is absolutely is not an appearance of the breath. It is a completely
different object that switch to once the illumination arises. They take the label of nimitta
and attach it to it so that it will be consistent with what it says in the Visuddhimagga and
things like that.
Student: So the nimitta for the deepest jhanas isnt necessarily a light?
Culadasa: No. You can enter the deepest jhanas with a light nimitta. The light does make
a very good nimitta. But you dont need to. You can wait and allow a breath nimitta to
arise. This is preconceptual and its alsoyou know, you have the sensory gateways. Its
beyond the sensory gateways but its not yet at the level of conceptualization. The
experience of it tends to be synesthetic. In the case of the breath nimitta, when it arises,
youll see the nimitta corresponds to the entire breath simultaneously. The breath is a
cyclic phenomenon that repeats itself over and over again. Have you ever looked at an
oscilloscope screen like a heart monitor, that traces the shape of an EKG, and it traces it
in the same place over and over again? It appears to be renewing the same image over
and over again. This is actually whats happening with the breath nimitta. Its an imprint
on the mind that, with each new breath cycle, is renewed and becomes conceptualized.
You can focus in and examine the parts of it and see six, eight, ten, twelve, sixteen
different parts to the inbreath and as many different parts to the outbreath. But you can
also come to this place where you conceive a mental counterpart image. Youre
essentially seeing the entire breath cycle in its entirety all at once, and it just gets
refreshed with every new cycle.
77

Student: Why does that produce a deeper jhana than the light jhana?
Culadasa: It doesnt necessarilylet me put it this way. Its not necessary to use that to
achieve the deepest jhanas, because you can achieve the deepest jhanas using light as
well. Those who are using the light as a nimitta to enter the jhanas, the light shows up
sooner than does the patibhaga nimitta. What theyre doing is theyre starting point is a
less completely refined stage of concentration, corresponding to stage eight or nine of the
ten stages. They can continue to deepen and refine their concentration, so those jhanas
can eventually become just as deep. Since the patibhaga nimitta doesnt even arise until
youve reached stage ten, youve already basically perfected concentration. OK?
Student: I dont want to take us off the subject, but someone asked a question earlier
todayI dont remember who asked itbut it was a good question about how to practice
the jhanas, or when to practice them or how to incorporate them into our practice. This
may not be the moment, but I wanted to remind you that you said that at some point
today you wanted to
Culadasa: Yes. I think this is exactly the moment. Were getting into the kind of technical
stuff that I really love to talk about, but Im sure must be going beyond some of your
interest. Lets back up. Lets take what we learned this weekend and talk about how to
use it. I would recommend that you take this understanding of the jhanas that you have
and you use it to improve the quality of your concentration and mindfulness. Go ahead
and work with this jhana that youve For those of you that have already had an
opportunity to experience, see if you can repeat that and see if you can develop some skill
around entering the jhana, remaining in the jhana, arising from the jhana when you plan
to and then reviewing the jhana.
We didnt really get into the reviewing, but thats an important habit. As soon as you
come out of the jhana, you reflect. Specifically, to begin withyoure going to do your
own explorationbut to give you some orientation about where to begin, recollect the
state of your mind before you entered the jhana, the state of your mind in the jhana, and
the state of your mind now, after youve arisen from the jhana with a view towards what
is there and what is not there. As the description of Sariputras practice thats given in the
handout there, you could even use that as a guideline. All of these different qualities of
mind, to examine themwhat was there, what was not there, how is it different, how did
it change, how did it arise, how did it pass away? Start off initially at least taking a
moment, thirty seconds or a minute, to reflect and see if you can remember each of these
states of mind of these three stages.
This will also be very helpful in your becoming able to more easily enter the jhana,
because sometimes youll be more successful than others. The more frequently you look
back at exactly what was going on in your mind when you entered the jhana, the more
78

clear its going to become to you exactly what the conditions are that you need to create
to enter jhana. Youll get more skilled at being able to enter jhana.
Practicing the first jhana in this way until such time as you get really good at it and you
start to get tired of it, then youll be ready to move on to second jhana. The other thing
that you could do, if youre practicing this, your concentrationkeep doing your regular
meditation practice as a part of this, but practice periodicallydepending on how much
time you sit. If you sit twice a day, you could make one a jhana sit and one just youre
regular samatha vipassana sit. If you sit only for forty-five minutes or an hour a day, what
you might do is on those days when your concentration is really good and you think
youre going to be able to enter jhana, then go ahead on those occasions and practice
entering the jhana. Thats the way that I would suggest that you do it. Depending on the
amount of time you have to meditate, either do both or else do the jhana practice when
you say, Hey, Im in a good place to do this today. Then do it. Your skill level will
improve.
The tremendous utility of these lighter jhanas is that it will rapidly improve the quality of
your concentration. If you practice in the way Ive described, it probably wont be very
long before you find that consistently youre sitting down and you focus your attention on
the breath at the nose, and your mind gets really quiet. When that happens consistently,
you dont need to go through all this rigamarole of expanding your awareness and using
the experience of the whole body with the breath as the meditation object to enter jhana.
We didnt really get a chance to do this in detail, but you have some description to take
with you. What to do then, when you have that kind of stillness, is practice entering the
lite jhana using piti and sukha to enter the jhana. OK? When your meditation starts to
have the qualities that are described for stage seven, then use the stage seven state as an
access for entering the lite jhanas using piti sukha as your meditation object. See what
sort of skill you can develop with that. If you do that, it should help you. Piti will become
progressively stronger. By the way, if youve been doing the one kind of jhana and then
you do the other, and you enter the first jhana using piti and sukha as the meditation
object, youre probably going to be quite amazed by how strong the sensations of piti are.
Thats all right. Theyll calm down. You just work with them and keep going in that way.
Tell me how this goes. You see, my background is deep jhana practice. I became
acquainted with the lighter jhanas more recently. Ive been guiding people individually to
use these to enhance the quality of their practice. Now Ive given this information to a
whole group of you. One of the questions in my mindand I dont know the answeris
it better to stay with the ultralite jhanas and, when youve mastered the first jhana, do
second jhana and then third jhana and then fourth jhana before you start working with the
lite jhanas? Or, as I suspect is going to happen, youre going to find that the quality of
your concentration becomes suitable for practicing the lite jhanas probably in the course
of becoming skilled at entering the ultralite first jhana. I dont know if maybe the most
79

appropriate thing to do is to just switch from ultralite first jhana to lite first jhana. Were
covering new territory here. I wish I could give you more specific guidance. Youll teach
me and then Ill give other people more specific guidance, OK? Please keep me informed
of how your practice is going so that I can guide you, but also so that we can get the
sense of what is most productive. Perhaps it will turn out that for different people its
different things. Well also discover what the circumstances are that dictate one approach
in preference to the other.
Questions about how to practice this?
Student: I just wondered, as a practical matter, are you going to keep up the tea sessions
on Thursday afternoons and is that a place where people can come to check in with you?
Culadasa: I think well keep going until Ive sampled every kind of tea they have and
gotten tired of them all. (Laughter)
Student: And when are these sessions?
Culadasa: On the first Thursday of each month at about 2 oclock in the afternoon at the
Seven Cups Tea House. Its just sort of an informal sangha discussion. I circumvented an
issue there, with that word. Its not quite clear whether we get together and we just get to
know each other socially or whether we try to talk about dharma at these tea sessions. We
make it a sangha discussion, so it can be both.
Student: This is back to a technical question. The mental counterpart image, is that going
to be there in all jhanas but we dont pay attention to it until we start to go into the deep
jhanas?
Culadasa: The mental counterpart, you dont actually have sufficient focus and clarity to
pick up on that until you become very advanced in samatha practice.
Student: That wasnt quite my question. My question was, is it there?
Culadasa: Oh, is it there? Yes, its there. Every single perception you have involves
sensory input that mental counterpart images created, and then the mental counterpart
image is whats processed by your mind, which comes up with car or my friend Joe
or flat tire or whatever it happens to be.
Student: Then it would also make sense to meI dont know the one-through-ten stages,
so this may be obvious if I did know. It seems to me that one could use the mental
counterpart image as a meditation object.
Culadasa: Well, see, its always there, for every person in the world, whether theyve ever
meditated or not or no matter what stage theyre at. Its being able to focus on it. Its
being able to perceive it.
80

Student: And if one could, one could use it, similar to the way one uses breath or light.
Culadasa: If one could, yes. If one could. OK, youre absolutely right. I dont know for
certain that there isnt somebody whos going to be able to pick up on that before theyve
reach the tenth stage of samatha.
Student: So are we trying to get into that part of our nervous system that is before we
assign identity to car and just live where its a blur of moving color that isnt a car until
you call it one?
Culadasa: Its not so much that were trying to get there and live there, because that
wouldnt be terribly practical. Were trying to get there to have a direct experience of
that, because having a direct experience of that is going to erase our attachment to the
view we have now that things are really the way they look like to us.
Student: When you go there, at least the little I know about it, is that you dont get to stay
there. You get to be right or wrong about what you see. You get toI just had this
experience over lunch. I was out walking to my car and coming back. Right next to the
sangha [not sure this is what she said] is a tree thats been TPd. Its in the immediate
yard next to us. Because of where it was placed in proximity and the fact that I was
thinking, Oh, isnt it nice to hang prayer flags at sangha (?), I only saw it out of the
corner of my eyes and I could swear it was prayer flags. Prayer flags, next to? No,
wait. So I got to hang then with that assignment of illusion instead of that I saw a
fluttering, neither toilet paper nor prayer flag. I didnt get to stay with the fluttering. I
fell right down into what I decided it had to be because of where it was located and what
I was tripping on. What Im asking is, if we cant live in that pre-processing interval, we
get to spend a lot of time being wrong.
Culadasa: The way it is, we spend a lot of time being wrong and we dont even know it.
So the first step is we still might spend a lot of time being wrong, but we know it. Which
leads to the subsequent step, which is that were not wrong quite so often as we used to
be.
Student: And were not attached to it.
Culadasa: Youre not attached to it. Thats the really important part. Youre not attached
to it.
Student: Oops, Im still attached.
Culadasa: You dont go around trying to force yourself to be nonattached. What you do is
you practice mindfulness and you let mindfulness bring you to a place where you really
and truly arent attached. In the meantime, you just remind yourself that this is probably
just a view Im attached to.
81

Student: But wont the unattached person see neither toilet paper nor prayer flags, or will
the unattached person be so clear that theyll obviously see toilet paper, but they wont
make any
Culadasa: That question assumes that toilet paper is whats really there. (Laughter)
Youre gonna love this. (More laughter)
Student: One more question about the mental counterpart imageis there a correlation
between the intensity of the counterpart image with the intensity of the original image?
Culadasa: The experience of intensity is a reflection ofhow to put ithow fully
conscious you are. To get to the place of being able to observe the mental counterpart
image, you have to have already really refined the power of your consciousness. Then
your perceptions will become very intense. This is something that, in the course of your
practice, youre going to have those experiences where for some reason or another in the
course of your meditation, youve been doing things that greatly enhance the power of
your conscious awareness. When the meditation is over, youre going to get up and
everything is going to seem so clear and so immediate. Thats going to last for a little
while. Youre going to cultivate that and the consciousness you bring to any experience is
going to bring more intensity to the way you experience whatever it is. That has to
develop before youre going towell, once again Ill qualify this. As far as I know, that
has to happen before somebody can be aware of the mental counterpart sign.
Student: Im asking something a little bit different. If Im in a tunnel and I say something
very softly, you get a very soft echo. This is the model Ive got here. If I yell, then I get a
very loud echo. So its not so much the difference of whether somebody is enlightened or
not enlightened. Im asking does a loud original image create a loud mental counterpart
and a soft original create a soft mental counterpart?
Culadasa: The intensity of the original sensory stimulus is going to be reflected in the
intensity of the mental counterpart, yes. Thats true. Its part of a continuum. If we kept
going down the continuum, we come to the point where the sensory input is subliminal.
Its making an imprint on the mind, which we can tell, because we can do tests a minute
later or a few seconds later and we can tell that sensory input did register on the mind.
But it didnt go to the next stage where it was conceptualized and you were conscious of
it. There is this definite relationship between stimulus intensity and whats called the
quality of the mental counterpart thats formed. OK? Thats what youre asking.
Student: Thank you very much. Thats exactly what I was asking.
Culadasa: It is now three oclock. I had proposed doing another meditation before we left.
Student: Can you give us a short break first?
82

Culadasa: It would have to be a short break, yeah. So, thats what well do. Well take a
short break and well do a meditation together and then well bid adieu until we see each
other next time. I hope your practice goes really well. Im looking forward to the
feedback from your ongoing practice and where it leads you. Ill say this muchIm
really pleased with the results that you told me that you got here this weekend. I had no
idea how well it was going to work. And its working better than I had hoped. Thank you.
Youre such good students!
Student: Now were going to go home and be out of this little hothouse of instruction and
it wont be the same. You want us to keep you informed of our practice and how well it
goes. Were going to go home and basically go with what were given and see where that
goes.
Culadasa: Thats right. The possibilities are endless. Who knows, we might do a twoweek-long jhana retreat together and then youll really get to go into these things.

83