In certain meditations, like the kasinas and also the breathing meditation, anapana, where the object before absorption is very clear and bright, the object in which you are absorbed in is also very clear. As in the example of the water kasina and the access concentration of water kasina before the first absorption, it may be a completely clear pool of water which is very still. When you are entering into the absorption, it is like sinking into the wateras if you are diving and finally in the water. When in the water you don’t know anything. But once out of the water you know how the mind was, how you were while under water, so to speak. This is a very clear and blissful experience, but you know how clear and blissful only when you come out of it.
For these types of absorption there are four rupa jhanas, that means there are four levels and each is different in character. In the suttas it is very clearly said that they differ in terms of jhana factors, called jhanangas. These are cetasikas, certain states of mind that are present and which play an important part in the respective jhana, absorption. For example in the first jhana the factors involved are: vitakka, vicara, piti, sukha, ekaggata. Vitakka is ‘initial application’. Initial application is the force of the mind which brings it to the object. This is a mental force. Vicara, sustained application, is the force of the mind that is keeping it on the object, and is again a mental force, something like an energy. Piti is joy or interest. Sukha is a very happy feeling. And ekaggata is one-pointedness, that means when the mind is as if one with the object. These mental factors which are present in the first jhana play an important part.
But it does not mean that when you have these five factors you have the first jhana. Even if you don’t have any concentration these five mental factors are already there. When you think of food, when you miss very much your food, or your ‘Penang Laksa’ there are also these five factors present , because the mind keeps running to the Laksa, it stays on it thinking ‘how nice if I have Laksa’, and then after that when you think of the Laksa you have joy ‘when I had Laksa it was so nice, I was enjoying myself’ and you feel very happy also and the mind is actually as if you could taste the Laksa, then these five factors are there but it is more like wrong concentration, greed.
You must know what the five jhana factors are to understand the jhanas. You must know at least something about Abhidhamma before you can have a clearer idea. These five factors actually describe a type of consciousness, a type of mind. When you know what factors are present you know what jhana you are in. For example, in the first jhana you have all the five factors involved. In the second jhana, you don’t have the initial and sustained application, you have only joy, happiness and one-pointedness. In the third jhana, you have only happiness and one-pointedness. In the fourth jhana, you have only equanimity and one-pointedness. From the description I’ve given on the absorptions you definitely cannot know it while you are in the jhana. While you are in these absorptions it is like you are in deep sleep, you are in a state deeper than deep sleepso how can you know while in it? You know it only before you go in, because before you enter it will be clear which factors are stronger and which are weaker and have to disappear, or after emerging, through making of proper resolutions to reflect on the factors present. We will not go into this because it is not part of our topic.
What I want is to give you a good idea of what access concentration and what actually fixed concentration is in what we call pure samatha jhana, when we talk about first, second, third and fourth jhana as samatha jhana. According to our experience it is important to have a certain degree of understanding. It is because of a lack of this type of understanding that wrong views arise. You find that in the Brahmajala Sutta, the discourse on wrong views, a large extent of wrong views do not come through thinking or philosophies, they come from meditative experiences. Because people hold on to their meditative experiences as something which is true and good but which in reality is very false, it gives rise to many types of wrong views. For example, one of them is dittha dhamma nibbana dittha dhamma vada. Nibbana you understand, dittha dhamma is a present state, vada is a view. This is the view regarding the present state as nibbana. For example if a person gets attached to the jhana as nibbana then he goes into wrong views. Of course there is nobody who can argue with him because he thinks “I have experienced it and you not”. At certain times entering into jhana is as if going into a void, the object becomes so subtle that it is very easy to fall into false views if one does not have a proper teacher. Even before going to the blissful absorptions one can experience many subtle states which can be misunderstood.
Therefore tonight’s talk is to give you an idea so that you do not get attached to these experiences. If you cannot differentiate between upacara samadhi and appana samadhi, access concentration and fixed concentration, it’s even easier for you to make a mistake between what is nibbana and what is not nibbana because nibbana is something more subtle and deeper than jhana. For example, when people are practising meditation and everybody starts saying, “I’ve got first jhana, second jhana, third jhana, fourth jhana, this magga-phala, that magga-phala”, we don’t say that they are wrong because we don’t really know what their experiences are, but the fact that they are saying all these things so easily and so happily makes it obvious that there are attachments. And you can see sometimes when they say it, they are very proud of it. If they are actually attached to wrong views it is even worse. We hope that this will not happen among the Buddhists here.
If a person has really gone through all these practices he will know that it is not easy to know whether somebody has this jhana or that jhana, this magga-phala or that magga-phala. One would be very reserved in making such statements. Therefore, if somebody says all these things too freely, we don’t say directly that he is wrong, we say, be very careful with him, you may go into wrong views.
