The Jhana Roadmap: A Technical Guide to Meditative Mastery

Part 1

Finding Your Playground

This Roadmap covers all eight jhanas, but finding your own "playground" - the specific jhana or stage of practice you're currently working on - is crucial.

Identify your current "playground" where you're learning and experimenting at the edge of your Jhana practice. Spending most of your time there will help you gain mastery (deep learning and integration, not simply achieving a specific Jhana state and moving on).

If you already have a practice that reliably leads to pīti (rapture) and jhana, continue with it. However, if you're uncertain, be open to experimenting with different approaches and discuss your practice with the teachers during interviews.

The Key to Jhana: Piti (Lovely Well-being)

"Jhanas depend on happiness" - Buddha

Jhanas embody happiness but also rely on happiness as a foundation. The key to experiencing the Jhanas is the arising of Piti, a sense of well-being and rapture.

Many Paths to Piti

Any practice that cultivates Piti can be a valid pathway into the Jhanas: concentration practices, insight techniques, or even something unique to you. You can try various "springboard" practices to help you access Piti, such as:

Working with the breath
Metta (loving-kindness) practices
Insight techniques

Experiment to find what works for you. Techniques from the book "Seeing That Frees" can also be used to support the arising of Piti and access deeper meditative states.

Rules of the Roadmap

Avoid distractions that might disrupt your inner joy, but welcome challenges and disruptions as opportunities for growth.
Be responsive to what works for you.
Meditate whenever you like.
Embrace an attitude of openness and inclusivity. Don't strive for a brittle samadhi that is easily shattered by noises or distractions. Instead, cultivate a soft, pliant, and open awareness.
Remember that jhana depends on happiness. Take care of your heart by inclining the mind towards appreciation, gratitude, beauty, and connection with others and nature. These qualities nourish the base level of happiness necessary for jhana practice.
Be responsible for your own inspiration.

Establishing Resolve and Intention

Establish a clear, simple, and firm resolve to do jhana practice. This includes working with hindrances and difficulties that may arise. Maintain this intention while remaining open to trying new approaches within your "playground" - the specific jhana or stage of practice you are currently exploring.

Embrace malleability and be willing to experiment with different techniques and practices to find what works best for you in allowing pīti (rapture or joyful interest) to arise.

Working with Emotions and Hindrances

Approach difficult emotions with care and spaciousness. While the primary approach is to encourage emotions to quieten, it's important to hold them with compassion when they do arise. Trust that you can reconnect with any authentic feelings after the practice if needed.

Investigate your relationship with the hindrances (obstacles to meditation). Aim to develop wisdom by not believing the stories they generate and not taking them personally.

Devotion, Service, and Ethics

Engage with a spirit of devotion and service. Reflect on what you are devoted to in the face of life's challenges, and let this energize and uplift your practice.

Support the shared intention of non-harming and celebrate the ethical dimension of practice. Upholding the five precepts (refraining from harming living beings, taking what is not given, sexual misconduct, false or harmful speech, and intoxicants) creates a foundation of safety and mutual care.

Embrace noble silence as a support for deepening in meditation and a gift to yourself and others.

Cultivating Happiness

Focus on activities that cultivate happiness and support your Jhana practice:

Appreciation
Gratitude
Connection with nature and others
Openness of heart

Prioritize openness of heart and soul as this outweighs focus and concentration in terms of Jhana practice.

Skillful Relationship with Emotions

Ultimately, the goal is to have a wide range of skillful ways to relate to emotions, including:

The ability to hold grief
The ability to quiet emotions at will
Spaciousness and openness: allowing the body to hold difficult emotions without shrinking

Building a Foundation of Happiness

Finding inner resolve and a sense of devotion in the face of challenges.

Feel how your sense of devotion toward practice, goodness, or ideals energizes your body. Notice the feeling of resolve and strength. This creates a sense of well-being and stability.

Devotion and resolve build a minimum base of happiness that underlies your Jhana practice and supports your life and work.

By embracing these principles and practices, you can cultivate a deep, transformative Jhana practice that enhances your focus, flow, and overall well-being

Preliminary Guided Meditation: Part 1

Preparation

Find your posture: Settle into a comfortable, upright seated position. It could be on a chair, cushion, or the floor. The key is finding a posture that feels both alert and relaxed.
Engage your senses: Notice the sensations of your body in contact with the chair, floor, or cushion. Pay attention to how your body feels.
Expand awareness: Gently expand your attention to include the entire space around you. Be aware of the room and its boundaries.

Counting Breaths: Phase 1

Bring your awareness to your breath, Observe the natural flow of the breath in and out, without changing anything and Notice the sensations in your body as you breathe.

Start the count: Begin by inhaling slowly. As you breathe in, count mentally from one to nine. Let the count match the natural length of your inhale.
Reverse the count: Now, exhale slowly. As you breathe out, count backward from nine down to one.
Find your rhythm: Adjust the length of your breath and the speed of your counting until it feels comfortable and smooth.
Maintain body awareness: While focusing on the counting and the breath, try to remain aware of your whole body as well.

Visualization and Internal Sound (Optional)

Visualize the numbers: As you count, you can try visualizing the numbers in your mind's eye. See them brightly and clearly.
Inner hearing: Emphasize hearing the numbers in your mind. Make them loud and clear in your "inner ear."

Adjusting Difficulty

Shorten the count (Phase 2): Gradually shorten your breath. Continue the inhale/exhale pattern, but now count from one to six.
Shorten further (Phase 3): Shorten the breath even more. Count from one to three on both the inhale and exhale.

Whole Body Awareness

Always return: Throughout the practice it's natural for your attention to wander. Gently bring your focus back to the sensation of your whole body, even as you count and focus on the breath.

Notes

Energizing practice: Remember, this practice can help energize your mind and body. This is especially helpful if you're feeling a bit sluggish or tired.
No visualization needed: If you struggle with visualizing, simply focus on the feeling of the breath and hearing the numbers in your mind.
Find your focus: Experiment to see what makes this practice come alive for you. You might find focusing more on the breath, the counting, or the sense of your whole body most helpful.

Throughout your day, carry this sense of clarity and aliveness, keeping in mind that this practice is readily available to help you energize and center yourself whenever needed.

Preliminary Guided Meditation: Part 2

Preparation

Find a comfortable seated position
- Balance alertness and receptivity
- Make subtle adjustments to feel dignified and at ease

Step 1: Expand awareness to whole body space

Felt sense of the entire area
Slightly bigger than your physical body
Fill this space with bright, alive sensitivity
Tune into overall sensation, not visual image

Step 2: Notice breath effects on whole body space

Inhale: expands the space
Exhale: gently contracts the space
Happens throughout entire space, not just ribcage and lungs

Step 3: Establish smooth, comfortable breath rhythm

Allow breath to lengthen and slow down naturally
Inhale: brings energization to whole body space
Exhale: invites relaxation and letting go
Feel these qualities permeating your entire being

Optional Step: Imagine breath coming in at solar plexus

Notice or imagine energy currents emanating from that point
- Flowing down toward legs and feet
- Flowing up toward head
- Happening simultaneously

Step 4: Experiment with length and quality of breath

Try different variations:
1. Extra long inhale and exhale
2. Shorter, subtler breath
3. Smooth breath
4. Slightly coarse breath
Discover what type of breathing allows whole body to feel
- Most comfortable
- Spacious
- Pleasant
Adjust and change approach as needed

Step 5: Permeate whole body space with sensitivity and responsiveness

Cultivate willingness to experiment with breath
Use breath to:
1. Gently open the body
2. Deepen your meditation
With each inhale: feel breath energy bringing life and clarity to cells
With each exhale: feel release of tension or holding, allowing deeper states of awareness

Note

Take as long as you'd like with this practice
Meet yourself where you are
Allow the process to unfold with kindness and curiosity
When ready, slowly bring attention back to surroundings
1. Open eyes if they've been closed
2. Take a final deep breath in and out
3. Gently transition to your next activity

Part 2

An Introduction to the Jhanas

Focusing on One Point: Intensity, Directionality, Subtlety Detailed

When practicing meditation with the aim of entering the jhānas (deep states of blissful unification of mind), there are two main approaches: focusing on the energy body as a whole or focusing on a single point such as the breath sensations at the nose, upper lip, or abdomen. Both are valid and can lead to jhāna. The key is to find what works best for you.

If using a single point, it's important to maintain a light background awareness of the whole body to provide balance and prevent over-effort. The whole body awareness also allows you to discern when pleasant sensations arise so you can gently encourage them to permeate the entire body.

Rather than fixating on the meditation object with rigid, unwavering attention, emphasize the quality of your attention in each moment, playing with three key factors:

Intensity - Experiment with dialing the intensity of your attention up or down, like a dimmer switch. More intensity is not always better, so find the optimal balance.
Directionality - Your attention can either actively probe and move toward the meditation object, or receptively allow the object to come to you. Play with this directionality to see what bears fruit moment-to-moment.
Subtlety - As samādhi deepens, both the meditation object and your attention should naturally become more subtle and refined. Let this happen and match the subtlety of your attention to the increasing subtlety of the object. Don't artificially force the breath to remain coarse. Increasing subtlety is a key marker of deepening samādhi.

Enjoying the pleasant delicacy of a well-attuned, subtle attention helps the process unfold. You're more likely to attain jhāna with a delighted interest in the details than by measuring your progress obsessively.

As you get more continually absorbed in the meditation object, the area of focus may naturally expand, which is normal and desirable. The pleasant sensation will eventually permeate the whole body. So even when starting with a single point, you're heading toward a whole body absorption.

The jhānas are classically defined by the unique flavor of bliss and the degree of subtlety in each one. The progression through the jhānas is a progression of increasing subtlety. This is essential to understand. So as your practice matures, savor and appreciate the nuances. Tune in to and enjoy the subtlest fluctuations in what you're experiencing.

Perfection is not the goal - jhāna is not defined by perfectly stable attention, but rather by the degree of samādhi and subtle bliss. You may experience periods of stable absorption mixed with periods of adjusting and re-connecting with the meditation object. That's normal.

The key is to be an artist, improvising and experimenting with your attention, guided by what feels most skillful in each moment. Over time, you'll get a feel for the optimalintensity, directionality and subtlety. With patient and persistent practice, the deepening of samādhi into the jhānas will naturally unfold.

Let your attention dance with the meditation object, fine-tuning the intensity, direction and subtlety to optimize the unification and bliss that characterize the jhānas. Enjoy the process and you'll progress faster than by striving and straining.

For the 8th jhana:

It involves sinking the mind even further from the 7th jhana of nothingness into a very subtle hypnogogic state. The mind may experience strange imagery, patterns, memories or concepts arising, but one should not engage with them. One has to gently relax back into the quiet stillness of mind, without perception or non-perception.

For cessation of perception and feeling:

From the signless concentration of mind, one relaxes even further, allowing the borders of awareness itself to dissipate. This leads to a state of pure lucid awareness, without object, which eventually ceases completely. Upon emerging, one experiences great joy and relief, having made contact with Nibbana (unconditioned reality).

Some general advice given:

These stages require very deep and prolonged meditation sessions of 2-3 hours minimum. If the mind gets distracted by formations, one should return to radiating equanimity to regain dispassion. Patience, disenchantment and letting go of any attachment, even to meditation experiences, is crucial. Following the noble eightfold path and developing insight into the three characteristics (impermanence, suffering, non-self) is necessary.

The Jhana Roadmap: A Programmer's Guide to Meditative Mastery