This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Awareness Filled with Joy; Samadhi (41) First Jhana: Well-Being. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good morning and good day to everyone. Welcome to our morning meditation.
In the topic of Samadhi1, a word that’s associated with it in Pali2 is the word sama. One of the appropriate translations of this word is harmony, a kind of balanced mind that’s balanced in the middle of how things are—the harmonious mind. For Samadhi, there’s a harmony that’s coming into play. We’re in harmony with what’s happening. And it’s a harmony that’s closely related to recognizing the signs, recognizing the signs that signify that we’re getting settled, calm, centered, that we’re letting go.
So, to simply recognize, to let go and recognizing how that feels good, the rightness of it, to feel the tranquility, to feel the settledness, to feel the stability, to feel the tranquility, and to not try to make something happen. There is a kind of letting go, letting go of trying to make anything happen. But there is a small prioritization for Samadhi, and that is to take in, to appreciate what is good, what is wholesome as we sit and meditate.
Of course, there are many things that can be difficult, many things which are challenging. But many minds are overly concerned with those things. Meditation is a time where it isn’t that we want to push these things away, but it’s also a time that it’s okay not to be concerned with them, preoccupied with them, and instead orient oneself to what is going well from the meditation.
If we are a sailboat and your sailboat is heading directly into the wind and the waves, it won’t go anywhere. It might even be pushed backward, and it’ll be very rough, very unpleasant. It’s appropriate for the sailboat to turn away a little bit from the wind, about 45 degrees, and then the wind can fill the sails, and then the sailboat can go. So then the boat is in harmony, the sails in harmony with the wind.
So, assume a meditation posture and gently close the eyes. Right from the start, assuming this posture, is there anything which feels good or nice for you? To have put down the concerns of the day or to return to your meditation posture, to be here for this meditation, and to feel, sense what feels good, even if it’s just a teeny bit. You’re a little bit already, a little bit calmer, settled, more content just to be this way. Let that fill your sails. Let that be what you notice. Instead of heading into the wind of your challenges, find the wind that fills your sails in a good way.
Gently taking some deeper breaths, then relaxing your body as you exhale. A little longer exhale than usual so the relaxing can be fuller. And maybe if you pause momentarily at the end of the exhale, just long enough to let there be some deeper relaxing, letting go in your body, maybe in the shoulders, maybe in the belly.
And then letting your breathing return to normal. And now, feel, are there any further feelings of calm or tranquility settling? With an ordinary breathing, on the exhale, relax the thinking mind. Quiet the thinking mind. And at the end of the exhale, have a little pause, ever so slight, so that you drop into your body more, settle into your body for the inhale. Gently relaxing the thinking mind on the exhale, pausing and dropping into the body.
And then let being now be centered on your breathing, breathing in and breathing out. What signs, what feelings are there now of calm, stability, maybe a lightness? Maybe a greater intimacy with your body. If awareness of breathing is your sail, let the good feelings, however subtle and weak they may be, let them be there as the wind filling the sail of awareness of breathing. Letting the mind be simple. The mind is in harmony with whatever feels good in the meditation.
If there are any feelings of well-being, even small feelings of joy or delight, contentment, let that fill the sail of your awareness. Let that gently fill you, fill your awareness of breathing. As if you’re sailing over the breathing, the body breathing, filled with whatever well-being is here. Keeping the sails full of wind so the sails don’t collapse. The sail of awareness filled with well-being, in harmony with whatever feels good from sitting and meditating, whatever feels good in your body.
As the thinking mind gets quieter, the sail of awareness gets fuller. Allowing the feelings of well-being, calm, quiet to spread through your body, as if your whole body is the sail of awareness, sailing continuously on the inhale, on the exhale. The whole body pervaded with whatever feels good about sitting in meditation.
And taking a few moments to sense, feel whatever feelings of well-being that are here from meditation. To harmonize with those, to open to those, to breathe with them.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, no matter how slight it might be, feel whatever sensations, feelings of calm or tranquility, well-being, settledness you might have. Feel it in your body. And it’s probably not a specific sensation, but a sensation which is more diffuse or something that spreads through the body. And imagine that it spreads beyond the edges of your body. With the eyes closed, the edges of the body are not so sharp sometimes. To feel the porousness of how feeling sensations of well-being expand beyond the edges of the body, seemingly.
Imagine that your feelings of well-being are like radio waves or light waves that spread from you, transmitted from you out into the world. Just like we don’t see radio waves, so we don’t see these wonderful waves of well-being that carry with them your care and well-wishing for this world.
And may it be that this meditation we do supports us to spread well-being into this world by wishing: May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may each of us stay in touch with our own sense of well-being as a reference point for what we can wish for others. May we spread goodwill into this world.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to this next talk in this series on Samadhi. We’ve spent some time now on approaching the deep, immersive experience of Samadhi. This is where Samadhi becomes mature or full. Sometimes the language of being fully absorbed is used. Sometimes fully immersed in experience is used. In the Buddhist discussions of Samadhi, it’s to enter and abide in Jhāna3. I love this expression: to abide, to dwell, to rest in these wonderful, immersive states.
So we enter into it. We’re approaching, and at some point, we enter, and there’s this transition. Sometimes it’s a slow transition; we just find ourselves fully immersed. Sometimes it’s a little bit faster. Sometimes it can feel like we are just happily settling into a body of water. For some people, this image is a little bit troublesome if they had some challenging experience with water, but it’s not uncommon for some meditators to feel like they’re going underwater and are very happy and very peaceful. When they come out of Jhāna, or out of this deeper immersion, it feels like they’re coming up out of the water, their head surfaces, and then they can gently let go into the Samadhi, and they’re happily going into this peaceful world.
The Buddha used the analogy of underwater lotus flowers for being so immersed in Samadhi—beautiful, multicolored lotus flowers which haven’t surfaced above the water. So they’re underneath the water. You just see them through the clear water, and they’re just floating in a very peaceful, clear water, peacefully immersed in the unmoving water.
So there’s this idea of entering. For some, it just feels like there’s suddenly a flip, like a switch has been switched, and suddenly we’re in a new state. Some people have the experience like it’s a sudden quantum leap, but it’s not usually a leap. It’s more like a dropping, more like a letting go, and it’s just, “Oh, wow, now I’m here.” Sometimes it comes with a feeling like, “Now we’re really here.” You know, sometimes we gradually go into it, and we find ourselves—the whole mind and body is not really going to leave. We’re abiding. We’re resting. We’re fully here with no tendency to wander off.
One of the things that keeps us here now, one of the things that is present, is a feeling of pīti4. The Pali word is pīti. I like to translate it as joy. Some people like to give stronger words for it because it can be stronger. Some people will use the word bliss. But it doesn’t have to be strong. It could be, sometimes, just delightfully sweet. But it’s a feeling of—sometimes it has a little bit of a thrill with it. A feeling like, “Oh, this is good.” It’s delightful. It’s a little bit energized. “Oh, this is good. Now we’re here.”
Sometimes it feels like there’s a little charge through our body, there’s tingling and warmth. Sometimes it’s centered in certain parts of the body that are tingling or vibrating in a nice, clear, and joyful way. Kind of like you would do if you smiled. Some people, even if they don’t feel joyful and happy, just simply making a gentle turning up of the corners of the mouth, something kind of travels through the face a little bit that feels like a little bit of joy or delight.
But what it is, the sense of—I just like to call it well-being, a feeling of the lightness of joy. For some people, this pīti is experienced more as a light, like seeing a white light. For some people, it’s experienced more as a pervasive feeling of joy and happiness. And the idea is that it comes from this absorption, just being fully here. There is nothing which is distracting us anymore. All the different things that we have in our life that are our challenges and difficulties, our judgments, our negative conclusions or negative bias have gone on vacation, have taken a rest, receded into the background. There’s nothing in the mind that’s unwholesome. There’s nothing in the mind which is troubling us in this state.
So without those troubling feelings and thoughts, what’s left feels good. It feels like a relief. It feels like joy. The analogy the Buddha uses for this is of no longer being in debt, having paid back a loan and being free of that burden. Or no longer being ill, free from illness. That feels good. It feels like, “Oh, finally I’m not sick or not injured.” Or being freed from prison. Sometimes the mind and these difficult thoughts can feel like a prison. Sometimes he describes it as coming out of a difficult desert journey that was dangerous and finally coming out the other side, and you’re finally safe.
So now all these unwholesome difficulties have kind of faded away. All the dangers have faded away, and now we’re fully here, and this is good. The idea is to be in harmony with that. Some people can still feel the acquisitive mind, the appropriating mind, the desiring mind can still operate, and they try to push it and have this experience be more intense, just kind of pushing it. And that’s usually not so useful.
What the Buddha talked about is taking the good feelings that come from being immersed, being fully here now, settled here, and letting them spread through your body. He used a variety of words: pervade, suffuse the body. And that’s really the only instruction he gives when we get into this first state, what’s called the first Jhāna. It’s characterized by this feeling of pīti, of joy, of delight, of thrill that can be, “Ah, this is really great. I’m here, wow,” and flowing along with it.
But an important thing to appreciate is that entering into these absorptive states of Jhāna has a lot to do with letting go. In one place, the Buddha says that these are known through letting go, seen through letting go, attained through letting go, and realized through letting go. So this kind of letting go—don’t try to push anything. Don’t try to make something happen. Don’t try to hold on to anything. It’s like you’re letting go into it. For those of you who have maybe done some sailing, it’s a little bit like you have to let go of the sail enough so it can be filled with the wind. You have to sometimes loosen the rope that’s holding the sail in tight against the middle of the boat so it can fill better. You have to let go so something can fill, so it can bellow outwards or balloon outwards.
The spirit of this is harmony. How can you stay harmonious, in harmony with the good states? We stay in harmony by not getting caught by anything—any clinging, any attachment, any appropriation into self, any self-congratulations.
So at some point, as the meditation deepens, as we settle in, what’s valuable is to start feeling the sense of well-being that can be here even before we go into immersive, absorptive states. It’s to let there be a reciprocity, a feedback loop between whatever little sense of relaxing peace, tranquility you have, as a way of the gentle wind that’s filling the sail of awareness, the gentle kind of encouragement. “Yes, stay here. Stay with the breath. Really be here in the present moment.”
Don’t overemphasize the feelings of well-being. At this point, don’t try to push them and make them bigger so much. Just let them kind of fill your awareness. Let them encourage you. “Stay here. Yes.” So there’s almost a feeling of, “Yes. Let go into this. Let go into this awareness. Let go into the breathing. Let go into now.”
The Buddha said that this kind of pīti, this feeling of joy that can arise in immersive meditation, is not something to be afraid of, and it’s not something to avoid. This was maybe one of the great contributions he made in the religions of his time, where there was a tremendous emphasis on asceticism, and in other places, an emphasis on ordinary, everyday kind of joys and delights and pleasures. He was offering something very different, something that was coming up, arising from a very deep place inside that wasn’t an ordinary pleasure but was a kind of a spiritual pleasure, a deep heart pleasure or joy. A deep pleasure of being in harmony with the moment, with the experience right here and now, so that we enter and abide in states of well-being.
So this week, we’ll talk about this first Jhāna and the different factors that come into play. For most of you, you’re not going to be in the first Jhāna, but perhaps as you listen to this, it’s relevant even in lighter states of meditation. And maybe also it’s inspiring, what’s possible, that we all have the human capacity for this. To know this is kind of a wonderful north star that inspires you to just be here, to let go into now.
So, thank you very much, and we’ll continue tomorrow.
Samadhi: A Pali word that refers to a state of deep concentration or meditative absorption, where the mind becomes unified and focused on a single object. ↩
Pali: An ancient Indo-Aryan language, closely related to Sanskrit, which is the scriptural language of the earliest Buddhist texts, the Pali Canon. ↩
Jhāna: A series of meditative states of deep absorption and concentration. There are traditionally four form Jhānas and four formless Jhānas, each characterized by specific mental factors. ↩
Pīti: A Pali word often translated as “rapture,” “joy,” or “bliss.” It is one of the factors of the first and second Jhānas and is described as a joyful and uplifting energy that can pervade the body and mind during deep meditation. ↩