Jhana.

During my very first retreat with my teacher more than forty years ago, I attained a very deep and profound level of meditation. Actually, I didn’t attain it – it happened – I was just trying to stay awake!

The retreat had been very difficult for me with lots of pain and discomfort. In those days the monastery was very poor with little or no heating which meant that the Dhamma hall was always like an oven if you sat close to the single gas fire, or like a fridge if you sat anywhere else.

So, I was there during the morning session, struggling with pain, sleepiness and the cold continually returning my attention to the breath and sensations in the body when it happened !

Suddenly there was no pain, no sleepiness and no cold. There was only an incredible brightness and lightness of mind, a tremendous feeling of well-being and that everything was in balance and harmony. It seemed that my body was not even touching my cushion as I sat there, and that when I walked (as I discovered later) my feet did not touch the floor. This was fantastic!

I sat until the bell was rung and then longer, not wanting to lose this experience until finally a voice inside my head said, ‘you should go and tell the teacher maybe he can explain this to you.’

That was good advice and so I climbed the stairs to my (future) teachers room.

I gently knocked on the jamb of the door (his door was always open – literally) and he answered, ‘Come in.’

It was in this moment that I realised that I did not know how to approach a Buddhist monk respectfully, and so I said, ‘Excuse me Bhante, but I don’t know how to approach you.’ He smiled, gestured with his hand and answered, ‘Oh, you just walk!’

I knelt down in front of him and described my still on-going meditation experience. He asked some questions which I answered as honestly as possible and he then gave me his interpretation.

‘This is jhana,’ he said, ‘called piti.’ It is a very beautiful state of mind, but just watch it because it will pass!’

Just watch it because it will pass.

This is the moment when I realised that I was in front of a true Master.

This experience was fantastic. It was wonderful, perhaps even mystical, but it’s not IT.

This is not what my practice is about – feeling good in the meditation.

This experience like everything else arises and passes away, to mistake it for something more profound than that is to misunderstand completely the teaching of the Buddha and all the Masters ever since.

’Whatever arises passes away and is not what you are.’

Chasing after profound meditation experiences will take us only to more suffering as we continually try to re-create a unique event in time.

One year whist leading our annual series of ten-day Vipassana and Loving Kindness retreats in Budh Gaya, a student came to my room with a problem.

Seven years before he had experienced a deep and profound state of meditation and since that moment every time he sat in meditation, he would try to re-create the same circumstances to meet the same effect. True suffering.

The Dhamma practice of Vipassana (the way to see things as they are) is to surrender into this moment of mind, to be with it peacefully and never identify with it as being who and what we are. If it is something peasant, enjoy it knowing that it will pass. If it is something unpleasant, be with it peacefully, knowing too that it will pass.

According to the Theravada tradition the last great teaching of the Buddha just before he died was, ‘Everything that arises passes away and is not what you are. Work hard to understand this truth.

It is through not understanding the truth of impermanence that we continually empower our suffering by attempting to hold onto those things that by their very nature are always moving away from us. Clouds passing through an empty sky.

This is Dhamma.

May all beings be happy.