THE THIRD JHANA

THE THIRD 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 Third Jhana

The third jhana has two factors:

1 singleness of preoccupation 

2 and pleasure.

The sense of pleasure here feels very still in the body. As it fills the body, there’s no sense that you’re filling the body with moving breath energy.

Instead, you’re allowing the body to be filled with a solid, still energy. People have also described this breath as “resilient” or “steely.”

There is still a subtle sense of the flow of the breath around the edges of the body, but it feels like the movement of water vapor around an ice cube, surrounding the ice but not causing it to expand or contract. 

Because the mind doesn’t have to deal with the movement of the breath energy, it can grow more settled and still. It too becomes more solid and equanimous in the presence of the bodily pleasure.

As the mind gets even more centered and still in this way, it enters the fourth 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