Jhana, Hypotheticals
Jhana is What’s Left Over
I’ve finally figured out how to direct my mind towards jhana.
First, why would anyone want to do this in the first place? Well, it delivers the most intense bliss, the most intense sweetness, I have ever experienced. Better than anything of this world.
There’s no comparison or way to communicate the intensity of the bliss. It’s not “oh I feel pretty good!” – it’s “holy fucking shit what the fuck did I just experience.”
But what direction is this bliss in? Amazingly, it’s right under our noses.
Any thought or idea or intention you have is a cut into reality. You are carving out a tiny piece of reality to explore. You are living on a tiny tiny island – one minuscule aspect of reality.
Jhana is what’s left over. The massive, awesome, beautiful, blissful part of reality that you cut out, in order to focus on your island.
It is tricky to notice it, because how our minds normally work is to first cut out a piece of reality, then explore that tiny piece. But we can only see that tiny piece! We become convinced that “this is it”.
It’s not it. It’s just a morsel.
Our default behavior is to cut in order to explore. You need to un-cut.
The Buddha is really a genius. His entire teaching method is one of negation. That’s exactly what you need to do. Whatever cut you make, you need to negate that cut. The action of cutting creates the direction of jhana – the opposite direction of the island you’re studying.
“Letting go”. It’s more of an undo. A revert.
Letting go helps the mind to stop being so obsessed over the tiny island it’s on. You become convinced that’s it – it’s all you see, after all – and you search for any remnant of happiness on it. But it’s kind of a waste of time and unsatisfying.
Instead, re-integrate with reality. Un-cut yourself. Let go of the island, and explore in the opposite direction. What are you cutting off? The answer is: 99.99999% of reality itself!
The more detailed a description I can give, the more ammo for cutting I’m giving! The mind will take this information, and construct a “better” cut. It wants to explore and find this jhana people are talking about – so how do you explore? Cut, then inspect.
That’s exactly the wrong strategy for jhana!
This is why if you want to find jhana, you need to stop searching for jhana. You are on the Sean island, and looking for the jhana island. No no no.
Jhana is the entire world! The entire reality (including your tiny island).
You need to stop cutting.
It’s an entirely new strategy of exploration that your mind is not habituated to.
In that light, it’s silly to call it an “attainment”. This terminology is strange. You don’t attain jhana. You are stopping a behavior. If you stop drinking, do you attain soberness? No, it’s just your default state. You stopped drinking, and things naturally returned to normal.
You don’t attain bliss, you don’t attain jhana. You stop cutting. Reality naturally comes flooding in. Thank goodness it’s filled with bliss!
Whatever you do, don’t “focus” on bliss or jhana, don’t look for it, don’t try to cut things up in a clever way so they appear.
Instead, watch your mind closely. As you become more sensitive to how your mind works, you can feel a narrowing sensation when you focus on something. And if you relax and chill out, you can feel a widening sensation.
Don’t look for these sensations! Because looking is focusing. And you’re specifically trying to notice the difference between focusing vs not-focusing.
How do you even do this in the first place? How do you notice something you aren’t looking for? It’s very tricky! Every time you look, you cut, and the jhana scurries away in the opposite direction.
It’s like a man searching for the hat that he’s unknowingly wearing. When he looks in a direction, the hat moves away because the action of looking moves the hat. He swears there is no hat! He’s checked everywhere!
You are trying to study what it feels like to not-study something. You are looking for what it’s like to not-look. You are inspecting not-inspecting.
Any phrase I come up with, the mind will use it to cut – you need to un-cut.
It’s completely amazing that bliss is on the other side. It makes no sense. But that’s where it is!
You’re so busy cutting up reality, looking for the whole. Jhana is the stuff you’ve removed in your search. It’s what’s left over from your cutting spree.
It’s worth it, trust me!