Can jhānas help me to become more dutiful? Quite frequently in my life I encounter choice between things that I must do and competing things that feel good and sometimes I cave in. Like maybe if I understood on emotional level that I don't actually value pleasure so much I would easier time following my duties. How about this?
I recently learned about a paradox of the jhānas, which seems relevant here. Basically, that the jhānas are a series of progressively more attenuated states of consciousness, so each stage feels better and better because you’re holding onto less and less. But the paradox is that, as you progress through the stages, there’s also less of you to feel those better feelings. You become "thinned out" in a sense. Perhaps that could be related to why people tend to lose interest in them?
Turns out the "thinning out" of the sense of self in and of itself is closely related to a sense of well-being. The reason being that in order to sustain a sense of self, we have to keep an energetic contraction going in our mindstate that contains some amount of unease.
Personally in my practice I mostly don't care about jhanic bliss, but am very attuned to this thinning out of the sense of self as you called it. In a way it's the much more fundamental mental mechanism!
On why the jhanas don't seem to be addictive:
Firstly I think there can be some addictive behaviour with Jhanas, namely for people who used to have them but can't get them back. Can't attest to that personally, just anecdotally.
Secondly (sorry for this being a bit rambly), I think an addictive mind state and a jhanic mind state are at odds with each other in a way that makes moving towards jhana a hard sell to the addictive mind. You can't enter jhana with a very addictive mental state because it is full of craving. However letting go of the craving is something the addictive mind is intensely afraid of. So it does not want to move towards jhana because it would mean confronting this fear. Also, because these states are so different, I think it can be difficult to even remember on a gut level what jhana feels like when in an addictive mind state. Sort of like how it can be hard to remember in the gut what a psychedelic trip felt like once it has worn off. So the addictive mind might be more likely to crave a pleasure that seems more recallable at that moment than jhanic bliss.
I mean no disrespect with this observation—I’ve read a couple of your essays now and find mostly right on, and enriching. I wasn’t even aware of jhanas. Anyhow, you point out that jhanas don’t produce external rewards—but and I’m sure you already realize this—the telling that you can achieve them does. But thanks anyhow for doing so. Sometimes what ends up a kind of humble brag is just necessary fallout.
I also wonder if this has some applications to states just below nirvana (i.e. what I imagine many monks are in - not fully enlightened, but pretty close and relatively happy). I know nothing about what that's really like, but I always imagined it would be somewhat boring. As in, I'd much prefer to actually live life and experience all of the stimuli that come with that (both good and bad) than just sit in a temple in a mountain somewhere smiling.
So I think it'd be useful to try and get closer to nirvana/enlightenment because it would make everyday life better, but not solely as a means to end. For me that's permission to not worry so much about being perfect in meditation, because being good at meditation isn't the end goal. As long as my meditation makes a little bit happier/less stressed/less anxious in every day life, it's worth it because that is the end goal.
To some extent this is nothing new and is even said my some meditation teachers, but this article helped me understand that.
Overall I hope a lot more work is done on jhanas (I don't necessarily means scientific research, just more people talking about them, experimenting with them, etc). They seem seem super interesting and a very unexplored path.
I think you're on the mark with your comment about overcoming self-hatred. For me the chief benefit of being able to access a pleasurable state like the jhanas is that they redirect our focus from rumination aka default mode network thinking. That's good for one's mental health and it's also good for social interaction. If you can even taste such states in social situations you're more likely to engage with others with goodwill, less likely to take offense at imagined slights, etc. It's better while waiting in line in the grocery store, or wherever, to feel a pleasant physical buzz than to curse the shoppers in front of you. And so on.
Thanks a bunch for this. I just finished my first meditation retreat (Dhamma Vipassana) , and think I experienced some kind of jhāna. I’m figuring out how to integrate meditation seriously into my life now. This is a very helpful read.
> Pure pleasure in isolation, after a short period of time, is pretty boring, or even annoying.
I haven't experienced jhanas so I don't know what your experience was like, but something about this sounds off to me. It seems to me that boredom and annoyance are fundamentally incompatible with pure pleasure. You could simultaneously experience boredom/annoyance with *some* sort of pleasure, but if you're bored or annoyed, then you cannot be experiencing pure pleasure.
Can jhānas help me to become more dutiful? Quite frequently in my life I encounter choice between things that I must do and competing things that feel good and sometimes I cave in. Like maybe if I understood on emotional level that I don't actually value pleasure so much I would easier time following my duties. How about this?
I recently learned about a paradox of the jhānas, which seems relevant here. Basically, that the jhānas are a series of progressively more attenuated states of consciousness, so each stage feels better and better because you’re holding onto less and less. But the paradox is that, as you progress through the stages, there’s also less of you to feel those better feelings. You become "thinned out" in a sense. Perhaps that could be related to why people tend to lose interest in them?
Turns out the "thinning out" of the sense of self in and of itself is closely related to a sense of well-being. The reason being that in order to sustain a sense of self, we have to keep an energetic contraction going in our mindstate that contains some amount of unease.
Personally in my practice I mostly don't care about jhanic bliss, but am very attuned to this thinning out of the sense of self as you called it. In a way it's the much more fundamental mental mechanism!
On why the jhanas don't seem to be addictive:
Firstly I think there can be some addictive behaviour with Jhanas, namely for people who used to have them but can't get them back. Can't attest to that personally, just anecdotally.
Secondly (sorry for this being a bit rambly), I think an addictive mind state and a jhanic mind state are at odds with each other in a way that makes moving towards jhana a hard sell to the addictive mind. You can't enter jhana with a very addictive mental state because it is full of craving. However letting go of the craving is something the addictive mind is intensely afraid of. So it does not want to move towards jhana because it would mean confronting this fear. Also, because these states are so different, I think it can be difficult to even remember on a gut level what jhana feels like when in an addictive mind state. Sort of like how it can be hard to remember in the gut what a psychedelic trip felt like once it has worn off. So the addictive mind might be more likely to crave a pleasure that seems more recallable at that moment than jhanic bliss.
I mean no disrespect with this observation—I’ve read a couple of your essays now and find mostly right on, and enriching. I wasn’t even aware of jhanas. Anyhow, you point out that jhanas don’t produce external rewards—but and I’m sure you already realize this—the telling that you can achieve them does. But thanks anyhow for doing so. Sometimes what ends up a kind of humble brag is just necessary fallout.
Seems to imply some sort of immanence, or meaning being out in the world rather than in our heads.
If we can’t Jhana max these other needs the way we can pleasure, maybe it’s because they’re about external conditions, not internal states.
I also wonder if this has some applications to states just below nirvana (i.e. what I imagine many monks are in - not fully enlightened, but pretty close and relatively happy). I know nothing about what that's really like, but I always imagined it would be somewhat boring. As in, I'd much prefer to actually live life and experience all of the stimuli that come with that (both good and bad) than just sit in a temple in a mountain somewhere smiling.
So I think it'd be useful to try and get closer to nirvana/enlightenment because it would make everyday life better, but not solely as a means to end. For me that's permission to not worry so much about being perfect in meditation, because being good at meditation isn't the end goal. As long as my meditation makes a little bit happier/less stressed/less anxious in every day life, it's worth it because that is the end goal.
To some extent this is nothing new and is even said my some meditation teachers, but this article helped me understand that.
Overall I hope a lot more work is done on jhanas (I don't necessarily means scientific research, just more people talking about them, experimenting with them, etc). They seem seem super interesting and a very unexplored path.
I think you're on the mark with your comment about overcoming self-hatred. For me the chief benefit of being able to access a pleasurable state like the jhanas is that they redirect our focus from rumination aka default mode network thinking. That's good for one's mental health and it's also good for social interaction. If you can even taste such states in social situations you're more likely to engage with others with goodwill, less likely to take offense at imagined slights, etc. It's better while waiting in line in the grocery store, or wherever, to feel a pleasant physical buzz than to curse the shoppers in front of you. And so on.
Thanks a bunch for this. I just finished my first meditation retreat (Dhamma Vipassana) , and think I experienced some kind of jhāna. I’m figuring out how to integrate meditation seriously into my life now. This is a very helpful read.
> Pure pleasure in isolation, after a short period of time, is pretty boring, or even annoying.
I haven't experienced jhanas so I don't know what your experience was like, but something about this sounds off to me. It seems to me that boredom and annoyance are fundamentally incompatible with pure pleasure. You could simultaneously experience boredom/annoyance with *some* sort of pleasure, but if you're bored or annoyed, then you cannot be experiencing pure pleasure.
It's a physical pleasure, but we might prefer as a goal something arguably more important, such as self-knowledge.