The aim of meditation is to calm the mind, be more effective, less stressed and more focused, right? Yes, and so much more…
Meditation has become a bussword in corporate circles for its potential to help executives raise their performance. Advertisements for corporate meditation programs include comments like…
“Executive meditation offers a potent toolkit for leaders aiming to refine their decision-making ability and overall leadership excellence. By dedicating a few minutes each day to mindfulness practices, you can significantly boost focus, emotional balance, and cognitive flexibility.”
“Mindfulness meditation increased performance on all executive functioning tasks”
So is that what it’s all about? I’m sure it does as advertised, but that is just the surface, meditation can be so much more….
Buddha spoke of the 8 Jhanas (meditative absorptions). What did he mean by this? Let’s briefly explore the first 4 Jhanas:
There’s quite a bit to it and It’s a journey, not a destination… Buddha said that “growth, which ultimately leads to perfect freedom, is a gradual process”.
The First Jhana – Building Contentment and Patience
We firstly build contentment by learning to become aware of and let go of our expectations, e.g. if we start out our meditation with an expectation of how it should go and then it doesn’t met expectations, we become disappointed and discontented. But if we started our meditation indifferent to how it will go, we are able to gain a sense of satisfaction however it turns out. This expands into letting go of daily excessive demands and expectations of self and others which can result in greater peace and contentment in day-to-day life.
Secondly, it is to build patience especially firstly with ourselves in our meditation practice. It is all part of a journey, and it is okay to not have the perfect meditation session. The Buddha said, “Intention is kharma”, so just by setting out with the intent to meditate you progress on your spiritual path.
The Second Jhana – building feelings of happiness
With more practice we come to understand how impermanent everything is, nothing stays the same, everything changes, including ourselves. We will stop being dependent on anyone or anything to make us happy anymore. We have developed our own self confidence and don’t need to buy, eat, consume, possess anything external to be happy. We will understand deeply that both positive and negative experiences come and go, and we can face both with peace and serenity.
The Third and Fourth Jhana’s – a peaceful mind
If we reach this point, we are grateful to have acquired a great deal of good kamma.
Sometimes this altered state of mind may be created by chemical or other mind-altering substances, but the mind isn’t prepared for this and can’t gain any deep insights. When achieving this inner peace through the third jhana, we can carry over some of this insight into everyday life.
Up until the beginning of the fourth jhana, the ego is still the observer. In the fourth jhana we move into a state of equanimity (defined as a state of mental balance and even mindedness, or immeasurable peace). We realise that the purpose and end of meditation is not to find inner peace (when we manage to hold onto this peace for long enough, we become clear that this can’t be all there is). We lose sense of the “I”, have absolute clarity of mind and understand that people’s problems are caused by thinking and reacting. We attain a level of consciousness without dukkha (suffering).
We have a taste of letting go of self/ego. The more we practice the easier it becomes. Everyone has a different experience with this path, but all can do it.
This is just a very brief explanation of the 4 Jhanas.
More about the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth Jhanas next time!