THE SECOND JHANA

THE SECOND JHANA

Breath meditation is an ideal practice for giving rise to strong states of concentration, called jhana. Jhana then provides an ideal basis for fostering the insights that can free the mind from its habitual ways of causing itself suffering and stress. Those insights can ultimately lead to an experience of release into the unconditioned dimension—called the deathless—where suffering and stress all end. So there are three aspects to advanced practice: jhana, insight, and release.

The Second Jhana

The second jhana has three factors:

1 singleness of preoccupation, 

2 rapture, and

3 pleasure.

As the breath and awareness become one, they begin to feel saturated. No matter how much you try to make them feel even more full, they can’t fill any further. At this point, directed thought and evaluation have no further work to do. You can let them go. This allows the mind to enter an even stronger sense of oneness. Your focused awareness and your background awareness become firmly one, and they in turn become one with the breath.

It’s as if, in the first jhana, you were identifying with one part of your breath and one part of your awareness as you worked another part of the breath through another part of your awareness. Now those dividing lines are erased. Awareness becomes one, the breath becomes one, and both become one with each other.

Another analogy is to think of the mind as the lens of a camera. 

In first jhana, the focal point is located in front of the lens. 

In the second, it moves into the lens itself. 

This sense of oneness is maintained through all the remaining jhanas and formless states up through the level known as the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness (see below).

Here in the second jhana, both the pleasure and the rapture become more prominent, but there’s no need to consciously spread them through the body. 

They spread on their own. The rapture, though, is a moving energy. Although it may feel extremely refreshing to begin with, it can ultimately become tiresome. When that happens, try to refine the focus of your attention to a level of breath energy that’s not affected by the movements of rapture. You might think of it as tuning your radio from one station playing loud music to another playing softer music. Even though the radio waves of both stations can exist in the same place, the act of tuning-in to one enables you to tune-out the other.

When you can stay with that more refined level of energy, you enter the third jhana…"

✿✿✿

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Excerpt from "Advanced Practice" in "With Each and Every Breath"

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You can read the full text here:

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/WithEachAndEveryBreath/Section0007.html