So when in deep, rapturous meditation, we enter the state of flow, when we are one with the present moment, this is the ‘immortal nectar.’ This is why the Tibetan texts speak of amrita as the elixir of timeless awareness. It’s not an external liquid. It’s a byproduct of steeping in the awareness of the present moment which, when all the hormonal centers of the brain kick in, feels like being soaked in honey, basking in the nectar of the eternal ‘now.’

This podcast episode explains the meaning of honey in myths from around the world by appreciating it as an apt metaphor for the experience of trance.

Totally focused on the specific, yet transported into the universal at the same time. This rapturous focus, in its sublime triple aspect, is the heart of human ritual experience.

Just as a fine thoroughbred steed…

These states cannot compare to anything experienceable in everyday life. Calling them the utmost meditative bliss, peace, and release is not an exaggeration.

An experiential description of the “nine jhānas.”

Jhāna practice is deeply embedded within other practices that help with the reemergence—The Noble Eightfold Path, the Saṅgha—so that once you come to these moments of malleability, the momentum of living a certain way will carry you through and allow you to come out of these states more beautifully.

the Dhamma for abandoning all

Bhikkhus, I do not see even one other thing that, when developed and cultivated, leads to the abandoning of the things that fetter so effectively as this

What fetters one? And what leads to release?

Samādhi, in all its glory is Samudaya.

Luang Dta Maha Boowa talks at the funeral for Ajahn Paññā about the importance of good teachers to keep us straight on the path.

This is the practice. I ask that all of you practise. Don’t ignore your heart, alright? Don’t let the Kilesa walk all over it.

This study explores the phenomenological structure of mystical experience among 139 Chinese Pure Land and Chan Buddhist monks and nuns. Semi-structured interviews, thematic coding, and statistical analyses demonstrated that Stace’s common facets of mysticism as measured by Hood’s Mysticism Scale successfully described Buddhist experience as modified by Buddhist doctrines.

These results lend strong support to the thesis that the phenomenology of mystical experience reveals a common experiential core that can be discerned across religious and spiritual traditions.

Just as pain arises as an affliction for a healthy person, even so the attention to perceptions dealing with directed thought that beset me was an affliction for me.

The householder Tapussa reflects that it is renunciation that distinguishes lay from monastic. The Buddha agrees by giving a long account of his cultivation of immersion leading up to his awakening.

Reverends, do you see this large tree trunk?

Having undertaken them, train in the training rules. When you have done so, what further should be done?

Reverends, an unethical person, who lacks ethics, has destroyed a vital condition for right immersion.

Mendicants, a mendicant practicing mindfulness of breathing who has five things will soon penetrate the unshakable.

The meditator skilled in immersion and in remaining in it is the foremost…

From pre-Buddhist antecedents via the Buddha’s own mastery of absorption until modern times, different constructs of absorption have developed which show considerable variation in terms of their concentrative depth and subjective experience.

For Ajahn Brahmali’s reactions to this article, see: “What Ven. Anālayo gets wrong about samādhi.”

Bhikkhus, the formless is more peaceful than the form realm, and cessation is more peaceful than the formless.

Remote jungle-thicket resting places in the forest are hard to endure, seclusion is hard to practise, and it is hard to enjoy solitude.

The Buddha explains the difficulties of living in the wilderness, and how they are overcome by purity of conduct and meditation. He recounts some of the fears and obstacles he faced during his own practice and how he overcame them all.

The present study recruited 12 advanced Buddhist meditators and compared their meditation-induced near-death experiences (MI-NDEs) against two other meditation practices in the same participant group. Changes in the content and profundity of the MI-NDE were assessed longitudinally over a 3-year period. Findings demonstrated that compared to the control conditions, the MI-NDE prompted significantly greater increases in profundity, mysticism and non-attachment. Furthermore, participants demonstrated significant increases in NDE profundity across the 3-year study period.

Findings from an embedded qualitative analysis demonstrated that participants (i) were consciously aware of experiencing near-death experiences (NDEs), (ii) retained volitional control over the content and duration of NDEs and (iii) elicited a rich array of non-worldly encounters and spiritual experiences. In addition to providing corroborating evidence in terms of the content of a “regular” (i.e. non-meditation-induced) NDE, novel NDE features identified in the present study indicate that there exist unexplored and/or poorly understood dimensions to NDEs.

Householder, the limitless release of the heart, and the release of the heart through nothingness, and the release of the heart through emptiness, and the signless release of the heart: do these things differ in both meaning and phrasing? Or do they mean the same thing, and differ only in the phrasing?

Venerable Godatta asks Citta the householder a difficult question about the meditative attainments.

As you practice jhana-oriented meditation, you move over time through a series of mental states that become more and more subtle as you proceed through them. You start where you are now and you go far, far beyond.

Percipient in this way, too, one is not sensitive to that dimension.

Ānanda exclaims how amazing it is that the Buddha has found a way to freedom while still experiencing the world.

Questioned by the monk Udāyī, Ānanda elucidates that he’s referring to the formless attainments and then goes on to recount a fascinating discussion on the meditation of the enlightened which he had had with the nun Jaṭilagāhiyā.

For the Buddha’s instructions on attaining this state, see the previous sutta.

… could a bhikkhu obtain such a state of concentration that he would have no I-making, mine-making, and underlying tendency to conceit…?

The Buddha instructs Ānanda on taking Nibbāna as an object of meditation.

… sexuality in its various manifestations is among the urges that are not intrinsically directed at specific objects and activities. Objects and activities come to play a role [only] because the mind has the tendency of keeping a record of objects and activities rather than of the states which are the real causes of satisfaction.

An admirable attempt to square Western psychological theories (especially those of Freud) with the Buddha’s experience of jhāna. The two essays in this volume provide novel psychological models which neuroscientists and meditators alike will find provocative as they grapple with the implications of this incredible state of consciousness.

For the independent there’s no agitation. When there’s no agitation there is tranquility.

Nibbāna is true independence.

… no coming or going or remaining or passing away or reappearing. It is not established, does not proceed, and has no support. Just this is the end of suffering.

The nature of Nibbāna especially as differentiated from the (other) attainments of Samādhi.

searches
And the origin of searches,
Where they cease and the path…

… by not grasping anything he should remain undisturbed.

The Buddha’s pithy instructions to samma-samādhi.

Some ascetics and brahmins regard the attainment of the meditation on universal water to be the ultimate.

The female lay follower Kāḷī of Kuraraghara in Avantī asks Venerable Mahākaccāna about a verse spoken by the Buddha in “The Maidens’ Questions” (SN 4.25). He replies unexpectedly in terms of the necessity of going beyond the ten kasinas to develop liberating insight.

The pain & distress dependent on sensuality do not exist at that time.

The Buddha encourages Anāthapiṇḍika to not rest short with generosity, but to practice meditation too.

I myself believe there is strong evidence in the Nikāyas that the jhānas become an essential factor for those intent on advancing from the stage of once-returning to that of non-returner.

Addressing the deabate of the jhānas’ role in attaining nibbāna, Bhikku Bodhi argues that, while not critical for attaining stream-entry, the jhānas are vital to further attainments.

… the fourth meditative absorption, this is just like that tree gradually blooming.

A translation of a discourse from the Ekottarika-āgama which parallels the Pāricchattaka Sutta.

… based upon virtue, established upon virtue, a bhikkhu develops and cultivates the seven factors of enlightenment…

Dragons nurture their strength in the Himalayas, then enter the rivers and reach the ocean. So too, a mendicant nurtures ethics and then develops the seven awakening factors to reach nibbāna.

Consistent with the idea that analytical meditation helps to train concentration, we observed that over the course of the debate, mid-frontal theta oscillations—a correlate of absorption—increased significantly. This increase was stronger for more experienced monks as compared to monks at the beginning of their education. In addition, we found evidence for increases in synchrony in frontal alpha oscillations between paired debaters during moments of agreement as compared to disagreement on a set of premises.

As for the person who has neither serenity nor discernment: in order to get those skillful qualities, they should apply intense enthusiasm…

How each kind of person should practice.

But when gold is freed from these five defilements, it is malleable, wieldy, and luminous, pliant and properly fit for work.

The hindrances are like corruptions in gold.

Throughout, mindfulness has the task of establishing and maintaining the kind of mental presence that enables a precise appraisal of the current condition of the body and the mind.

They contemplate the phenomena there—included in form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness—as impermanent, as suffering, as diseased, as a boil, as a dart, as misery, as an affliction, as alien, as falling apart, as empty, as not-self. They turn their mind away from those things, and apply it to the deathless

On making the jump from samatha to vipassanā.

Oh, what bliss! Oh, what bliss!

A former king, now a monk, talks to himself.

But what is that ultimate splendor compared to which no other splendor is finer?

A wanderer teaches his doctrine of the “highest splendor” but is unable to give a satisfactory account of what that means. The Buddha memorably compares him to someone who is in love with a women he has never met.

… when that bhikkhu is developing and cultivating the Noble Eightfold Path, it is impossible that he will give up the training and return to the lower life.

… samādhi power was, among other uses, employed to enhance the meditator’s ability to kill others. This article focuses on the abuse of samādhi power within Imperial Japan (1868-1945) with the express hope that once exposed and understood, its abuse will never be repeated.

what leads to imperturbability are the insights that:

1. sensual pleasures are defiling and obstructing,
2. material forms are made up of the four elements,
3. the above two and perceptions of them are impermanent.

[an analysis of] the meditative approaches to imperturbability depicted in MN 106 and its Chinese and Tibetan parallels.

This paper aims to differentiate the variety of animitta states, and to gain some understanding of their nature, drawing on the Pali suttas, Abhidhamma, and commentaries.

It cannot be stressed too strongly that the ariyan (Noble) Eightfold Path, culminating in sammāsamādhi defined as the four jhānas, is the exclusive province of the ariyasāvaka. It is beyond the knowledge and experience of the puthujjana or outsider, despite what is said in popular books

An unorthodox reading of the final step of the path.

Drawing upon the Yogācārin model, Dharmakīrti explains that the contemplative must first grasp the objects through cognition born of listening, ascertain them through reflection based on reasoning, and finally cognise them through meditative cultivation. This leads to valid perception.

So long as researchers are investigating “meditation” in the abstract, they will miss out on the process by focusing too much on the goals. They will assume that the “goal” is a particular state that can be attained and stabilized, and will fail to understand the various techniques that are required for getting there in the first place.

A comparison of the path of meditative attainment as presented by the fifth-century, Sri Lankan author Buddhaghosa and by the sixteenth-century, Tibetan author Dakpo Tashi Namgyal along with some reflections on what this might mean for contemporary, “scientific” research on meditative states of consciousness.

This is how a disciple of the noble ones dwells

… the person in whom the factors of stream entry are altogether and in every way lacking I call an outsider

In the quantitative analysis of a survey of 417 13- to 20-year-old [British] Buddhists, the 48% who had undergone a religious or spiritual experience (RSE) were significantly more likely to self-identify as a spiritual person.

Buddhists who had undergone RSEs were also more positive about spiritual teachers, a monastic vocation, attitude to Buddhism, supernatural phenomena and mystical orientation.

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been, was no ordinary vacancy

An Englishman recounts his experience of satori

Given that sensory deprivation increases neuroplasticity, meditation may also have an enhanced neuroplastic potential beyond ordinary experience-dependent changes.

Bhikkhus, there are these four Dhamma factors, primal, of long standing, traditional, ancient…

Contentment, good will, mindfulness and convergence are basic principles of the Dhamma.

… while I was seeking one door to the Deathless, I have come—all at once—to hear of eleven!

Venerable Ānanda teaches a wealthy merchant how to use eleven different meditative states as gateways to enlightenment.

Swaddled and sleeved in water,
I dive to the rocky bottom and rise

… this study critically examines the traditional Buddhist distinction between the ‘practice of serenity’ (samatha-bhāvanā) and the ‘practice of insight’ (vipassanā-bhāvanā); doing so challenges the traditional positioning of the four jhānas under the category of ‘serenity (or concentration) meditation’ and the premise regarding their secondary and superfluous role in the path

The river would keep flowing swiftly for a long way, carrying all before it.

A simile describing how samādhi depends on a momentum of practice to clear away the hindrances.

You begin by sitting in a comfortable, upright position…

… some see in viññāṇa anidassana a kind of consciousness essentially equal to nibbāna. But there are many problems with this

The Buddha has rid us of so many things that bring suffering and gifted us so many things that bring happiness!

… take a person practicing to give up and let go of attachments. As they do so, every so often they lose mindfulness, and memories and thoughts connected with attachments beset them. Their mindfulness is slow to come up, but they quickly give them up, get rid of, eliminate, and obliterate those thoughts. I also call this person ‘fettered’, not ‘detached’. Why is that?

Udāyī, I even recommend giving up the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception. Do you see any fetter, large or small, that I don’t recommend giving up?

Again raising the rule regarding eating, but this time as a reflection of gratitude for the Buddha in eliminating things that cause complexity and stress. The Buddha emphasizes how attachment even to little things is dangerous and a burden.

four cases of a dhyāna practitioner who is:

1. Increasing (熾盛) but thinks they are decreasing (衰退)
2. Decreasing but thinks they are increasing
3. Increasing and truly knows they are increasing
4. Decreasing and truly knows they are decreasing

Deep contemplative experiences and the philosophical conclusions which they yield are beyond history. Or are they?…

Though some may say, ‘[Sensual pleasure] is the supreme pleasure and joy that beings experience,’ I would not concede this to them. Why is that? Because there is another kind of happiness more excellent and sublime than that

The carpenter Pañcakaṅga disagreed with Venerable Udāyī about how many kinds of feeling the Buddha taught. The Buddha affirms that each has a genuine teaching, valid in different contexts.

Doctor, if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world

I will not perish

… having seen with wisdom, their defilements come to an end. And they understand that with wisdom. To this extent the Buddha spoke of the one freed by wisdom

Ostensibly a commentary on a single verse from the Dhammapada, this classic work synthesized the Buddhist Path into a single, comprehensive progression of purification from approaching the path, to purifying ethics, to purifying the mind with meditation and eventually insight. It is from the Visuddhimagga that we get the threefold division of the path into Sīla, Samādhi and Paññā. The ideas of “neighborhood” concentration, the confusion over samatha and vipassana, and much else in the contemporary Theravāda world can all be traced back to this enormously influential tome.

In its day, a landmark of commentarial scholarship and synthesis, today it contains some of the clearest and most detailed descriptions of the advanced stages of meditation that we have from ancient times. Despite, or perhaps even because of, the text’s limitations and subsequent disagreements over their correct interpretation, the Visuddhimagga is certain to remain a vital part of the Buddhist Tradition for centuries to come.

You might wish to drink the nectar of calm abiding…

Wisdom and consciousness–these things are mixed, not separate. And you can never completely dissect them

Venerable Sāriputta deftly defines a bewildering array of terms.

One should not neglect wisdom, should preserve truth, should cultivate relinquishment, and should train for peace.

A monk spends the evening in a barn with the Buddha, who rewards the well-mannered disciple with an elaborate and profound discourse on the path and its fruit.

Bhikkhus, before my enlightenment, while I was still only an unenlightened Bodhisatta, I too, being myself subject to birth, sought what was also subject to birth

The Buddha’s own spiritual autobiography, from searching to finding true deliverance.

Kammaṭṭhāna meditation should be practised so as to reach Nibbāna, thereby escaping from all kinds of misery

A thorough and concise overview of the entire path of meditative purification. A very helpful map, essentially summarizing the Visuddhimagga.

… the common interpretation of the jhānas as absorption-concentration attainments [is] incompatible with the teachings of the Pāli Nikāyas. […] one attains the jhānas, not by one-pointed concentration and absorption into a meditation object, but by releasing and letting go of the foothold of the unwholesome mind […] the entrance into the first jhāna is the actualization and embodiment of insight practice.

While I think that Arbel goes too far in saying that jhāna can only be an insight attainment, I think her thesis is broadly correct: the vipassana jhānas, while not at all like their fixed-concentration cousins, do exist, contain all the jhāna factors and, in fact, constitute sammā-samādhi.

For Bhikkhu Analayo’s comments on this sutta, see Upakkilesa Sutta, 2008.

Bhante Sujato pointed out that this sutta is likely a response to the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.3 which claims that “man’s inner light” is his infinite, eternal “self.” The traditional Hindu commentary on this Upaniṣad (inline above) takes pains to respond to the Buddhist critique.

For a more detailed, comparative analysis including a practice guide, see Bhikkhu Analayo’sarticle: “Gradual Entry into Emptiness”.

The heart which is not controlled by a kammaṭṭhāna is liable to the arising of “outgoing exuberance” throughout life […which] has been the enemy of all beings for countless ages, and a person who wants to subdue the “outgoing exuberance” of his own heart will need to compel his heart to take the medicine – which is the kammaṭṭhāna.

While the book’s title goes against the usual presentation of “sila, samādhi, [then] paññā,” the idea that “wisdom develops samādhi” is supported by such suttas as SN 48.45.

Bhikkhus, develop concentration. A bhikkhu who is concentrated understands things as they really are.

… what is confinement, and what is the opening amid confinement that the Buddha spoke of?

At Udāyī’s request, Ānanda explains an obscure verse spoken (in SN 2.7) by a deity. The nine progressive meditations are the gradual escape from confinement.

Upāli, it’s not easy to endure isolated wilderness & forest lodgings. It’s not easy to maintain seclusion, not easy to enjoy being alone. The forests, as it were, plunder the mind of a monk who has not gained concentration.

When Upāli asks to go into retreat, the Buddha warns him that secluded wilderness dwellings are hard to endure unless one is accomplished in meditation. He gives a long account of the training required before going into solitude, and ends by encouraging Upāli to stay in the Saṅgha.

There is a way of developing immersion further

Developing convergence for pleasure, understanding, mindfulness, and for ending the defilements.

Suppose a person was to catch six animals, with diverse territories and feeding grounds, and tie them up with a strong rope…

The senses are like a snake, a crocodile, a bird, a dog, a jackal, and a monkey all tied up together, pulling this way and that. Mindfulness is like a post that keeps them grounded.