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jhana-sentences

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And because having been on this joy for a proper length of time, because of that, the mind is contented.

And it can let go of the joy and be aware of contentment.

Thats the third jhana and Ill read out what the Buddha said about it.

Further, great king, with the fading away of rapture, the meditator dwells in equanimity, mindful and clearly comprehending, and experiences happiness.

Thus he enters and dwells in the third jhana of which the noble ones declare.

He dwells happily with equanimity and mindfulness.

He drenches, steeps, saturates us and suffuses the body with his happiness free from rapture so that theres no part of the entire body which is not suffused by this happiness.

The word rapture is meant for the piti, for the delightful sensation.

That has been around long enough and because the meditator is completely contented, that part of the factors is now completely subsiding.

There is certainly a feeling of happiness still in the mind, but the strongest, that is arising, is contentment.

And this contentment is here mentioned as equanimity.

And the word equanimity is unfortunately banded about in the jhanas too much because we cant distinguish too well if we havent mentioned too often.

want to use contentment, but you can see that contentment and equanimity have a certain relationship to each other.

But what is actually happening is that the joy, which is something ones always looking for, always looking to be happy, has suffused one to the extent where contentment arises.

And this contentment can be seen and understood in this way, particularly after.

One first stays with those emotions and after one is out of them, in that recapitulation one recognizes what they have meant.

So the joy has meant that one doesnt need outside agents.

Now the contentment has meant that the only way to become contented is to be without wishes.

Because at that moment when there is this joy arising and has been actually experienced and one is able to let go of it, there is no wish.

The worldly view is Im going to be contented if Im going to get what want.

And then one makes a list of the things one wants.

And then one crosses off a few things one has already got.

And one may cross off a few things which one thinks, well, theyre not that important.

And then one remains with those that one has to be in order to be contented.

As long as one wishes for something, one has dukkha.

Thats the first and second noble truth, which is the sort of the kernel of the teaching.

The first noble truth, the noble truth of dukkha, that it exists.

And the second noble truth is the noble truth of the cause for dukkha, which is craving.

Which means wanting something, wanting to have it or wanting to get rid of it.

And here we have an absolute proof in our own experience that this is so.

That as long as we want something, theres always going to be dukkha, no matter what it is.

Because it means that we havent got it.

So we have something lacking, were minus something.

But here is a situation that has arisen in the meditation which has brought contentment.

So with that contentment, after coming out of it, one sees quite clearly, theres no other way to be contented, to be peaceful than to stop wanting things.

And may it ever look so justified.

Even when one can say, but everybodys got it.

If one wants contentment and peacefulness, ones got to stop wanting.

And this, of course, at first may seem strange, but one has experienced it oneself in the third jhana.

It is so obvious that one wonders why one has always acted upon it already.

But we dont until we actually have that personal experience.

Now what you can see from these explanations is that we dont just do the jhanas.

We have to understand it also.

So every jhana brings a new insight.

And some of them, insights which arise, may even be more than what Im talking about.

The ones which will change our outlook completely.

So the personal experience of something that weve always wanted, namely inner joy and contentment, brings about a turnabout in ones approach to ones life and what life has to offer.

Now here, the words, this mindfulness and clear comprehension are used.

Which means that we need to understand the experience.

The mindfulness means that were staying with it.

That it comes together with the recap or the review, what we have done.

So Id like to emphasize that once more.

That while were having the experience, were staying with the experience.

After its over, we have a review of it and we know what we have experienced.

The Buddha also gives a simile for this third one.

Now he also mentions that the noble ones declare that one dwells happily with this contentment and mindfulness.

So in this jhana, we still have two of the five factors.

Then we lost two factors on the second jhana.

Now we have lost another factor.

We have lost the rapture factor.

So we still have the happiness and the mindfulness, which is another word for the one-pointedness.

Great King, suppose in a lotus pond there were blue, white or red lotuses that have been born in the water, grow in the water and never rise up above the water, but flourish immersed in the water.

From their tips to their roots, they would be drenched, steeped, saturated and suffused so that there would be no part of those lotuses not suffused with cool water.

In the same way Great King, the meditator drenches, steeps, saturates and suffuses the body with the happiness free from rapture so that there is no part of the entire body which is not suffused by this happiness.

Now this in the translation does not come out about exactly as it does up there because up here we had equanimity, the matter of translating all these words.

While the rapture is gone, the happiness is in the background and the foreground is the equanimity is the contentment.

So each jhana is more subtle, each jhana is more sublime than the previous one and each jhana brings a change in a persons outlook if one practices them continually.

They are all useful for gaining insight.

Most people have heard many a time that our dukkha is due to wanting, but when one experiences that the contentment we can get in the third jhana is so much greater than anything weve ever felt before and that its strictly due to the fact that nothing at all was wanted, then we know it.

We always compare that to biting into the mango.

If weve never eaten a mango and we ask somebody what it tastes like, they will probably tell us that its very sweet, very juicy, very soft, very delicious.

Well we havent got a clue what it tastes like until weve bitten into it.

We know what it tastes like to have no wish.

Its the best taste that we can ever get.

There is a very interesting simile given in the Vissuddhimagga, which is the great commentary on the jhanas and Ill give it to you because its helpful.

It says like this, as a person wandering in the desert, having no water, seeing no water, parched, without any resource at all.

Well thats a person thats trying to meditate.

And then finally sees some water in the distance and a great excitement arises that his great thirst will be cringed because he can see theres water there.

And then of course he goes straight to that point of water and he stands at the edge.

And standing at the edge he is joyful that he can now have the water that hes been looking for.

But hes still excited about it because now its going to happen.

And then he goes into this water and starts drinking and now hes contented.

And having drunk his fill, he steps out of the water and goes to the nearest tree and lies down in the shade and rests.

Having had ones fill, one goes to the fourth one that goes to the rest.

So Ill read out what the Buddha said about the fourth one.

Further great king with the abandoning of pleasure and pain with the previous passing away of joy and grief, the meditator enters and dwells in the fourth jhana which is neither pleasant nor painful, contains mindfulness fully purified by equanimity.

He sits suffusing his body with a pure bright mind so that there is no part of the entire body not suffused by a pure bright mind.

What this says is that there is no emotion.

There is neither a great excitement nor one is exhilarated.

What happens is from a practical standpoint, the contentment which has already sort of slid into a feeling of peacefulness goes much deeper.

And although it says here and it always says that its mindfulness fully purified by equanimity, say that it is the mindfulness is the one pointedness which has to be there, which is the last factor which stays with us in the fourth jhana.

It is complete and utter peacefulness which results in equanimity which we can use in daily life.

The equanimity which at least to my way of understanding my own emotions, equanimity is something that we are aware of whereas in the fourth jhana the peacefulness can be so profound that one wouldnt be aware of the fact that one has equanimity.

One which just be there totally enmeshed and totally surrounded completely in the depth of this peace.

The fourth story Id like to translate it a little differently in order to explain it that way.

Equanimity as the highest of the four supreme emotions is a result and a very important one because knowing that one can actually have this utterly peaceful state whenever one wants to, when one sits down to meditate brings great equanimity with it in daily life because that residual effect is such that we know what goes on out there while it may be this way and that way.

What can it do to that peacefulness in the fourth jhana Nothing.

It has absolutely no effect on it.

Whatever happens out there, whether it is praise or blame, loss or gain, fame or ill-fame, happiness or unhappiness, how can it touch the depths of peace which is within us There is no connection.

So all that, what happens out there is just happening.