Is it realistic for the lay practitioner to achieve the first jhāna in the day to day meditation practice?

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

16 June 2023

MINDFULNESS is the key to SAMADHI

Question: Is it realistic for the lay practitioner to achieve the first jhāna in the day to day meditation practice?

Than Ajahn: It depends on the strength of your mindfulness.

If you have strong mindfulness, you can have jhāna. If you don’t have strong mindfulness, you don’t have jhāna. Some people have strong mindfulness and they could have jhāna anytime, anywhere. They don’t have to become monks. Some monks have no strong mindfulness, so they could not have jhāna even though they have all the time to develop mindfulness, but if their mindfulness were strong enough, they could have jhāna.

Jhāna is the ability to concentrate on one object, not to let your mind think about other things. It’s like when you try to put a thread through the needle hole. You need to have a still hands, and not a wobbly hands. If your hands shake, you can’t get the thread into the needle hole. It’s the same thing with your mind.

In order to enter jhāna, your mind has to be steady. It has to be fixed on one object, like watching your breathing and not thinking about any other things. When you think, your mind starts to shake and it cannot enter jhāna.

You need strong mindfulness to keep your mind still, not to shake. Some people have that, maybe from previous lives. So, when they meditate, they can get the mind to become calm easily, quickly. Some people don’t have mindfulness, so they struggle when they sit, because when they sit, they start to think about this and that, and then come back to the object of the meditation for a few seconds. 

Then, they go and think about this and that again. So, this way they’ll never be able to get the mind to become still, become calm, to enter jhāna.

Thus, you need to develop mindfulness. You can do this all the time from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep. 

Just focus on whatever you do. Don’t go and think about other things while you’re doing something with your body. If you’re walking, just watch your walking. If you’re eating, just watch your eating. Just watch your bodily activities. Don’t think about other things at the same time.

We tend to do two things at the same time. When we are eating, we plan about what we’re gonna do next, or where we’re going to go later. This is not mindfulness. If you have mindfulness, when you’re eating, then you only eat. The mind will only think about what you’re doing at the moment. 

Watch what the body is doing at the moment.

Do not go thinking about some other things.

So, if you want to succeed in meditation, you first have to develop mindfulness: strong and continuous mindfulness.

From the time you get up to the time you go to sleep, focus on your body activities. If you have to think about what you do, then just focus on what you have to do. If you think about what you’re doing, it is Okay because you’re still watching your body. But if you think about some other things, then it’s not okay because your mind has gone away. You want to bring it back to the present, to what’s happening right now.

When you work, you have to concentrate on your work. If you have to think about your work, then you have to be mindful of your thinking, not thinking about any other things. 

But it’s best not to think. So, it’s best not to work, because when you work, you still have to think. When you work, you have to think about what to do about your work.

So, it’s better not to work if you can afford it. When you don’t work, you have all the time to stop your mind from thinking because there is no reason to think. Then, when your mind starts thinking, you can stop it by concentrating on what you are doing.

If you cannot stop it by concentrating on watching what you’re doing, then you use a mantra, like repeating the name of the Buddha, ‘buddho, buddho, buddho.’

When you recite the mantra, then you cannot think about what you want to think. The goal of having mindfulness is to have the ability to be able to control your thoughts, to stop your thoughts.

Right now, your thought is like a runaway car; you cannot stop it. You have to get on the car and apply the brake. Right now, your thought just keeps thinking. You are thinking all the time. So, you have to apply the brake to your thought by using mindfulness.

If you have strong mindfulness, you don’t need a mantra. You don’t need to focus on your body activities.

You can just have your mind stop thinking and it will stop.

It’s a matter of how long you can stop it. You may stop it momentarily. Then, when you forget, it starts to think again.

So, you have to keep stopping it because if you cannot stop your mind from thinking, your mind cannot be calm, cannot enter jhāna.

“Dhamma in English, Jan 20, 2017.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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