What The Hell is a Jhana?
Day 19: the opposite of a panic attack, apparently!
Here we go again. It’s a full nineteen days of meeting intentions and getting in a daily chat with you, (at you?) If you tuned in yesterday, you’ll know what I mean. Thus far today’s promising to be a good one, even though next on the list is the weekly food shop. The sun’s shining, the sky is impossibly blue and there’s a gentle cool breeze. To cap it all, my morning meditate is not only done but was a good one.
It’s always better for me when I’m awake first and the rest of house is still quiet. I get the first thing in the morning kitchen jobs done, like emptying the dishwasher, doing any washing up, drying etc put everything away from the night before, feed the birds, have my morning vitamin C, (a natural antihistamine I’m reliably informed), make a cup of green tea, (not that I’m a creature of habit or anything 🤔), and assuming it’s not actually raining, head off down the garden & park myself on the bench looking back up past the house to the rocky outcrop of a hill behind.
This is my quiet place for meditating. Not that it was quiet this morning. The birds seemed to be singing their hearts out, competing not for the singiest song, more for volume. I think the Peacocks won. It was (relatively) quiet, a lack of internal combustion engines helps, the road noise being successfully masked by the smaller hill behind. It feels safe here, wrapped up as it is in the crook of the V formed by the hedges meeting at the apex of the triangle that is the plot of land we call home.
Today turned out to be a Jhana day. Mostly I don’t think about what type of meditation I’m going to do until I’m sitting there, just letting the ambience of the particular day and my state of mind take the lead.
It went well. I thought I’d walk you through the meditation process. Jhanas have cropped up in our daily natterings from time to time but I’ve not gone into any detail yet. Let’s give it a go and see what happens.
First up is a breath meditation. Just settle in, relax, become aware of now, the state of the body etc etc, you know the drill. Once settled, I focus my awareness onto my breath. When I used to do Mindfulness meditating, this was always letting my attention sit with the movement of my belly, usually the feel of cloth moving across the skin of my stomach as it rose and fell with each breath. It’s easy to keep your attention on it and if that attention wandered, to bring it back.
With this I’m using a different point of focus. This one’s about noticing the feel of the air moving across the tip of my nostrils. It’s a far more subtle movement, especially as the breath slows and becomes shallower which makes it more difficult to notice and to keep track of. The point, from what I’ve picked up, is that in order to keep your attention on this far more subtle sensation, your concentration has to be at a reasonably good level.
Again from what I’ve read, it seems that this is a standard method of meditating called Anapanasati, (interestingly, Wikipedia calls this version a post canonical method, whatever that is). Often this is what I do for the whole session, especially if I’m either a little tight for time or my mind is too bouncy to contain for long. It’s only recently that my histamine problems, (year round rhinitis) have subsided enough for me to do this.
Once I can concentrate well enough to keep track of my breathing for a few minutes, with only a handful of small distractions, the Jhana stuff starts. The first level is about body sensations, specifically pleasant ones. What I do is look for any vaguely pleasant physical feeling, anywhere. It’s normally a slight tingling in my fingers, sometimes my feet, sometimes both. Today was warmth of the sun on the back of my neck.
So I stop noticing my breath and simply transfer that concentration onto these vague sensations. By holding my attention there and being open to them becoming stronger, bit by bit, they do. The sensation increases and gradually spreads. I’m getting quite good(ish) at it these days but when I first began trying it was really tricky to keep my attention there. It’d lose track of it all and start noticing back ache, knee ache, my feet going slightly numb, cold breeze, all those usual gripes that try to pop you out of meditation, know what I mean?
Anyway, bit by bit, as I got better at holding my focus, the feeling does indeed spread and grow. Eventually, when you can keep it together long enough, it rushes at you and flies everywhere. I find the increased feelings come in waves rather than a steady build up, each one slightly bigger and more consuming than the last. When you get to the point that your breathing is no longer shallow and regular, more irregular and deeper because the sensations are flying around too strongly and you can only really hold it for a few seconds before letting it all subside again, that’s a Level One. Apparently. According to what I’ve read.
It’s also been called a the exact opposite of a panic attack. Like a pleasure attack, I assume? An unnecessarily hyperbolic phrase in my opinion. But, to be fair, not too far off the mark either.
Which, I’m afraid, brings us to the end of today’s story folks, as my timer’s just thrown its noisy weight around telling me “time’s up, please stop writing!”
This topic may turn up again tomorrow. It’ll depend on what falls into my thinking space when I pick up my tablet/phone. It could be more Jhanas, it could stories about tonight’s Advaita philosophy group or it might even be chatting about my first experimental attempt at a rye flour Bara Brith. It’s very tasty, 100% gluten free and is sitting there showing off in the photo at the top of this page.
See you next time.