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.”

the neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting are different from those of meditation and prayer

[The] regional increase in endogenous generation of delta oscillations [is] not due to peripheral cardiac or respiratory activity, nor due to implicit language processing, and is associated with feelings of transcendental bliss and decreased self-oriented cognition.

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.

Mahānāma, when a noble disciple has reached the fruit and understood the instructions they frequently practice this kind of meditation.

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.

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 deep silence that is underneath all things is always present, always available.

The first detailed EEG study of jhāna meditation, with findings radically different to studies of more familiar, less focused forms of meditation. While remaining highly alert and “present” in their subjective experience, a high proportion of subjects display “spindle” activity in their EEG, superficially similar to sleep spindles of stage 2 nREM sleep, while more-experienced subjects display high voltage slow-waves reminiscent, but significantly different, to the slow waves of deeper stage 4 nREM sleep, or even high-voltage delta coma.

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

Should any non-human think to overthrow their mind, they’ll eventually get weary and frustrated.

As it is not possible to bend back a spear, it is not possible to overthrow a mendicant who has developed love.

Just as a palm fruit that has just been removed from its stalk is pure and bright, so Master Gotama’s faculties are tranquil and the color of his skin is pure and bright.

What high and luxurious bed does the Buddha use?

Learn through your practice the moment when the flower blooms…

Allowing inner awareness to be unrestricted…

Three verses to inspire the development of undistracted awareness.

Whether we are beginners or more advanced, it is impossible to accomplish any of our dharma practices without joy.

In meditation one lets go of the complex world outside in order to reach the serene world inside. In all types of mysticism and in many traditions, this is known as the path to the pure and powerful mind.

… if you smile, the cars will go faster

If there’s nothing to see, consciousness turns off

simply abide by that natural state,
There is neither meditation nor distraction.

You begin by sitting in a comfortable, upright position…

… allow the mind, which is the source, to settle

… most yogis succeed with that method

But what if samādhi was a relief?

You can’t get much simpler than the breath.

… the subject indicated extremely high magnitude of reward, [yet] the objective activation of the reward system was not extreme.

When most other cortical activity is reduced, a much smaller reward signal can be detected and will be perceived as more intense than when cortical “noise” from other sources is high, as in normal awareness. Indeed, during normal awareness it takes drug-induced hyperstimulation of the dopamine pathways to generate such extreme subjective reports. If this signal-to-noise view is correct, then jhana’s reduced sense awareness is not incidental to achieving extreme pleasure but is a contributing condition.

… a trapper doesn’t cast bait for deer thinking, ‘May the deer, enjoying this bait, be healthy and in good condition. May they live long and prosper!’ 🖖

A lovely illustration of the importance of samatha jhana for living the holy life sustainably, and a memorable simile on the ways that Mara can trap a mendicant.

I have arrived, I am home
In the here, in the now
I am solid, I am free
In the ultimate, I dwell

An invitation and encouragement to stop and heal.

Sensual pleasures give little gratification and much suffering and distress, and they are all the more full of drawbacks. Even though a noble disciple has clearly seen this with right wisdom, so long as they don’t achieve the rapture and bliss that are apart from sensual pleasures and unskillful qualities, or something even more peaceful than that, they might still return to sensual pleasures.

A lay person is puzzled at how, despite their long practice, they still have greedy or hateful thoughts. The Buddha explains the importance of absorption for letting go. But he also criticizes self-mortification, and recounts a previous dialog with some Jain ascetics.

And even those disciples of his who fall out with their companions in the holy life and abandon the training to return to the low life—even they praise the Master and the Dhamma and the Sangha; they blame themselves instead of others, saying: “We were unlucky, we have little merit”

The ascetic Sakuludāyin is amazed at how revered the Buddha is by his disciples, and the Buddha explains why his disciples love and respect him so dearly:

Udāyin, when my disciples have met with suffering and become victims of suffering, prey to suffering, they come to me and ask me about the noble truth of suffering. Being asked, I explain to them the noble truth of suffering, and I satisfy their minds

The Buddha then goes on to enumerate in detail the path of tranquility meditation and its fruits, including several uncommon lists, such as the eight liberations and the ten kasiṇas, the perfection of which is the ultimate reason the Sangha honors and respects their teacher.

Note that the “uncommon lists” here aren’t found in this sutta’s Chinese parallel and are somewhat out of proportion to the rest of the sutta, suggesting that they are late additions.

For it is death in the training of the noble one to reject the training and return to a lesser life.

The Buddha explains why some people progress on the path of meditation and why others fall short of the ultimate goal.

There is a way of developing immersion further

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

There is carnal happiness, there is spiritual happiness, and there is happiness more spiritual than the spiritual.