Who experienced Jhana, and how?

The cultivation of calm or tranquility and the development of concentration
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waterchan
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by waterchan »

Zom wrote:In the 1st jhana there is no painful bodily feeling (SN 48.40). So if someone thinks he attains 1st jhana, he should check if this is the case. While in jhana it is impossible for him to experience even slight bodily discomfort, not talking about gross one, like aching knee, itch, etc.. :reading:
It seems that this resistance to bodily affliction is greatly amplified in higher jhanas. In one of the suttas, a monk in jhana was taken to be dead and carried away to be cremated. But the fire just wouldn't burn him or even his robes.

I wonder what would happen if he came out of jhana while being cremated!
quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur
(Anything in Latin sounds profound.)
santa100
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by santa100 »

That was Ven. Sanjiva in MN 50, who entered the Cessation of perception and feeling meditation. More info. from another thread here
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waterchan
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by waterchan »

Thanks for the sutta references, santa100. :smile:

On jhana, as David said, obviously some kind of indication is necessary to get the practice around and motivate people to meditate. And I sincerely wish from the bottom of my heart that more and more people can experience the blissful serenity of jhana which in my opinion is an extremely important step on the path. And if you have experienced jhana, fantastic, more power to you!

But the Internet is the wrong place for jhana claims. And the main reason is there are already more than enough self-proclaimed http jhana attainers, http stream winners, and http arahants, the vast majority of which we cannot verify due to the anonymity provided by the internet. A claim that cannot be verified adds little to the discussion.

By the way, I can enter the fourth jhana at will and I am also a millionaire.

Attainments are best divulged to a trustworthy monastic or lay teacher who is in a suitable position to assess your claims.
quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur
(Anything in Latin sounds profound.)
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tiltbillings
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by tiltbillings »

waterchan wrote:
Attainments are best divulged to a trustworthy monastic or lay teacher who is in a suitable position to assess your claims.
Absolutely.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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fivebells
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by fivebells »

waterchan wrote:I sincerely wish from the bottom of my heart that more and more people can experience the blissful serenity of jhana which in my opinion is an extremely important step on the path. And if you have experienced jhana, fantastic, more power to you!

But the Internet is the wrong place for jhana claims. And the main reason is there are already more than enough self-proclaimed http jhana attainers, http stream winners, and http arahants, the vast majority of which we cannot verify due to the anonymity provided by the internet. A claim that cannot be verified adds little to the discussion.

By the way, I can enter the fourth jhana at will and I am also a millionaire.
When someone is asking, as J0rrit did, how many people experience jhana and who in his audience has developed jhana, the optimistic assumption is that they're assessing whether it's a sensible goal for themselves, in which case it may be useful for them to hear from people who think they've done so. How does the impossibility of verifying such claims over the internet (or otherwise, for that matter) enter into it?
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waterchan
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by waterchan »

fivebells wrote: When someone is asking, as J0rrit did, how many people experience jhana and who in his audience has developed jhana, the optimistic assumption is that they're assessing whether it's a sensible goal for themselves, in which case it may be useful for them to hear from people who think they've done so. How does the impossibility of verifying such claims over the internet (or otherwise, for that matter) enter into it?
My response to J0rrit would be the same — that jhana attainment, or any kind of spiritual attainment, is not a very useful thing to survey on an Internet forum. It is pretty much like asking "Who here is a millionaire, and how did you become one?"

As James The Giant has alluded to, such claims coming from real-life acquaintances can be dubious enough.
quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur
(Anything in Latin sounds profound.)
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fivebells
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by fivebells »

And that's fine, but that's not what I was responding to.
Sylvester
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by Sylvester »

daverupa wrote:
Zom wrote:
Actually in first jhana it is impossible to experience any bodily feeling.
According to SN 48.40 only painful bodily. And pleasant bodily feeling ends only in 3rd jhana.
This really depends on how we render 'kaya', and whether or not we're overlooking a Pali idiom.

http://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f= ... =60#p74489

Gasp! Do I detect a heretical flirting with the Middle-Indo Aryan conception of kāya?

Personally, I feel that Dmytro and I covered more ground in this thread -

http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=13998

See also the discussion on MN 36, where the non-development of the "body" is taken up; sounds suspiciously like the Indic vernacular/idiom for "himself". I wonder why it is so easy to miss that elephant in the room that is MN 148's allowance for mind-contact to give rise to kāyika feelings, without being necessarily pierced by the anusayas that generate the cetasika responses.

Perhaps I should first convert to Upanisadic Hinduism. There are just too many linguistic echoes from the BAU and CU in the suttas, that it might be easier for me to make the breakthrough to the Dhamma if I clung to MN 1's dhammas like an Upanisadic sage. :stirthepot:
SarathW
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by SarathW »

Please consider the following as well:

"When a monk is attaining the cessation of perception and feeling, friend Visakha, verbal fabrications cease first, then bodily fabrications, then mental fabrications."

http://buddhasutra.com/files/cula_vedalla_sutta.htm
====================
As SN 36:11 points out,
verbal fabrication is present in the first jh›na; bodily fabrication, in the first three
jh›nas; and mental fabrication, in all four jh›nas and the first four formless
dimensions based on the fourth jh›na.

Page 37
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writ ... 120810.pdf
“As the lamp consumes oil, the path realises Nibbana”
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Modus.Ponens
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by Modus.Ponens »

fivebells wrote:
waterchan wrote:I sincerely wish from the bottom of my heart that more and more people can experience the blissful serenity of jhana which in my opinion is an extremely important step on the path. And if you have experienced jhana, fantastic, more power to you!

But the Internet is the wrong place for jhana claims. And the main reason is there are already more than enough self-proclaimed http jhana attainers, http stream winners, and http arahants, the vast majority of which we cannot verify due to the anonymity provided by the internet. A claim that cannot be verified adds little to the discussion.

By the way, I can enter the fourth jhana at will and I am also a millionaire.
When someone is asking, as J0rrit did, how many people experience jhana and who in his audience has developed jhana, the optimistic assumption is that they're assessing whether it's a sensible goal for themselves, in which case it may be useful for them to hear from people who think they've done so. How does the impossibility of verifying such claims over the internet (or otherwise, for that matter) enter into it?
:goodpost:

We are adults here. It is reasonably assumed that, if someone says that he attained jhana, the rest of the people don't believe it like it's the bible.

I don't see the reason for such a strong taboo among buddhists. Especially when the topic is asking precisely about that.
'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.' - Jhana Sutta
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Modus.Ponens
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by Modus.Ponens »

SarathW wrote:Please consider the following as well:

"When a monk is attaining the cessation of perception and feeling, friend Visakha, verbal fabrications cease first, then bodily fabrications, then mental fabrications."

http://buddhasutra.com/files/cula_vedalla_sutta.htm
====================
As SN 36:11 points out,
verbal fabrication is present in the first jh›na; bodily fabrication, in the first three
jh›nas; and mental fabrication, in all four jh›nas and the first four formless
dimensions based on the fourth jh›na.

Page 37
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writ ... 120810.pdf
Hello

Even though that is at plain sight, there are people _ such as Sylvester, but not just him _ who just refuse to see the obvious. This subject has been covered at least 2 times in great depth and the arguments for hard jhana end up being so convoluted that it is just one more confirmation that it makes no sense.

:shrug:
'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.' - Jhana Sutta
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tiltbillings
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by tiltbillings »

>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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tiltbillings
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by tiltbillings »

Sylvester wrote: There are just too many linguistic echoes from the BAU and CU in the suttas, that it might be easier for me to make the breakthrough to the Dhamma if I clung to MN 1's dhammas like an Upanisadic sage. :stirthepot:
Study of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad and the Chandogya Upanishad should be mandatory.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
fraaJad
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by fraaJad »

J0rrit wrote:Hello there,

I was asking myself yesterday how many laypeople actually experience Jhana? So my question would be who of you did experience Jhana or does experience Jhana on a regular basis? And what kind of practice are you doing? After what time and how much meditating did you experience it?
hello jorrit,
I experience jhana on a regular basis, and I'm a layperson. I'm a husband and a father. I've never been on a retreat.

I'm doing samatha-vipassana as taught by Bhante Vimalaramsi. So I'm talking about "sutta" jhanas, not visuddhimagga jhanas.

I started experiencing the 1st jhana after maybe a year of sitting 30 minutes a day, often only on the bus. After another year or so, (and making time to sit for real at home), I began experiencing the arupa jhanas. Now I've been doing this practice for 7years off and on, and I'm currently working with the 8th jhana. Some days, it takes me an hour to get that deep. Some days I don't get there at all. I'm also working on mastering the jhanas in daily life.. For example, if I had a good long sit in the morning, I can pop into the 4th jhana while sitting in a meeting at work. Then I can direct myself to the 5th, or 6th. If I'm in the right mindset, the 7th. I can still listen to what people are saying, and if I start talking I drop back down, usually. It's often very blissful..

I created this account with a pseudonym, specifically so I could talk about what's possible, without any worry about "bragging" or whatever. I have seen many posts on this site like this, and my hope is to help out, give hope, show that it's possible. Maybe that's impossible. :-)
please feel free to PM me, or ask questions right here.

metta,
jad
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James the Giant
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Re: Who experienced Jhana, and how?

Post by James the Giant »

fraaJad wrote: ...I can pop into the 4th jhana while sitting in a meeting at work. Then I can direct myself to the 5th, or 6th. If I'm in the right mindset, the 7th. I can still listen to what people are saying, and if I start talking I drop back down, usually.
Sorry to say, you aren't in any kind of jhana if you are still listening to what people are saying, let along talking. Unless you have thrown everything the Buddha said out the window, and have invented your own definition of jhana.
There is debate whether sounds can be heard during 1st jhana, but actual processing of the meaning of those sounds, understanding a conversation, etc, means you are not one pointed, and thus not even in 1st jhana.
Then,
saturated with joy,
you will put an end to suffering and stress.
SN 9.11
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