How to Jhana: Healing and Gathering the Mind Around the Upliftment Within

Please feel warmly welcome to join us for a daylong retreat on how to jhana. The Buddha championed jhana, discovering it initially as a biological necessity on the path to unbinding into the natural state of the mind. Derived from “jhayati” (meaning “it radiates and shines forth"),  jhana is a settling  down and a revealing of the underlying unity and pleasantness beneath the experience. When the recognition of the natural state of the mind is discovered and gathered around, appreciations of our innate radiance are not uncommon. The word “zen” comes from jhana in Pali or dhyana in Sanskrit. Zen is truer to its root meaning as a sense of gathering around a sense of beauty and wonder. This is a start to understand how to jhana.

The Buddha encouraged us to gather the mind around an object, especially the breath, although many other wholesome objects may be used like metta. Mindfulness directed on a wholesome object will save the mind from its obsessions and hindrances. The qualities arising when attending to wholesomeness blend with actual sensations of wholesomeness, until the mind is infused and unified with the quality of its wholesome object. A kind of merging arises that is not mystical, but it is an enhancement of something we do every day. 

Even trying to jhana is not a vain exercise. When we search for the shining forth of awareness within, we recognize the ease that is already there beyond our cogitations and planning. That is why trying to jhana will itself bring about the wisdom to awaken and be free.

Oft mistaken as concentration,jhana arises only when the mind and body are at ease, not  exerted. So please consider arriving well rested, well watered, and appropriately fed for you. Even if you aren't fully at ease, jhana is a positive feedback loop. A little bit of jhana will create the conditions for a feeling of wellbeing and health that will in turn invite the mind to jhana even more.

What to bring: Water bottle, your favorite pillow, meditation shawl, comfy clothing, and a yummy dish to share with our resident monks and your fellow meditations. Please consider taking delight in offering yummy, healthy food gifts to others as an object to jhana around. 

Please write me if you have any questions.