Go Do Jhana
April 18, 2024

When the Buddha was finishing a Dhamma talk and telling the monks to go meditate, he didn’t say, “Go do samatha,” or, “Go do vipassanā.” He said, ‘‘Go do jhāna”: Do concentration. Samatha—tranquility, and vipassanā—insight: Those are qualities of mind that you bring to the practice of jhāna, to the practice of concentration, and they get developed as you bring them. It is like bringing your weak body to an exercise. You engage in the exercise, and the body that you brought to the exercise gets stronger.

Of course, when you’re doing jhāna, you’re not focusing on jhāna itself or on the idea of jhāna. You’re focusing on the breath. So for the time being, make the breath the one and only thing you’re interested in right now, giving it your total attention, and be totally aware of it all around. Think of it filling up all your awareness so that there’s no room for anything else. That’s the kind of breath you want to focus on.

Then try to stay there. You’ll see that, in staying there, you’ll have to talk to yourself a bit. Ask yourself, “Does the breath feel really good?” “Is there any way it can be improved?” “If it’s already good, what can be done to maintain that, and when it’s maintained, how can you spread it around?”

You’ll have that conversation, and you’ll have an image in mind of how the breath surrounds you and how your awareness is all around, and there will be a feeling of pleasure. All these things are saṅkhāras, or fabrications: things you put together around the breath. These are the things you need to know, so everything you need to know gathers right here, and you’ll frame it in terms that are really useful to use in looking at it right here.

When you step back from your inner conversation, realize that you’re directing your thoughts and you’re evaluating things, and that’s all that it is: just thoughts and acts of evaluation. Seeing the distraction in these terms helps pull you out, and you can understand these fabrications better and better.

So, we’re accomplishing a lot of things by doing this one thing right here: trying to stay with the breath with the sense of ease, with the sense that this is our home. The word jhāna is related to a verb jhāyati, which means to burn. Now, in Pali, they have different verbs for burn. The way a regular fire burns is called jalati—the kind of fire whose flames flicker here and there. But a steady flame, like the flame of an oil lamp: The way it burns is called jhāyati. It’s so steady that you can read by it. That’s the quality you’re trying to develop in the mind, and as you do that, as I said, all the important things you need to know are going to gather right here, all in one convenient location, where you can read them for what they are.