218: The Nine Jhanas

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Sayar Myat 0:01

Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddhassa,Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddhassa, Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddhassa. Theravada Buddhism series, Dhamma talk number forty -one. The nine jhanas. Form jhanas and formless jhanas are accessible to everyone before the Buddha Sasana during or after. At all times they are accessible. Jana practitioners also understand experientially impermanence suffering, impermanence anicha and suffering dukkha. However, they cannot penetrate the nature of non self. Being attached to the concept of self or soul perpetuates rebirth in the thirty-one planes of existence. Some yogis believe form jhana rupa jana has the power to give birth in the fine material Brahma plane. In other words, as the Rupa Brahma, which is permanent and eternally blissful. That's their belief. Some believe that having a mind is the reason for all sufferings. With that belief, with that repulsion towards the mind they practice and succeed. And those people are reborn as a form only Brahma, in other words, mindless being, no mind. Because of their belief. Some believe having a body is the cause of all the suffering we are facing. With that repulsive nature towards the materiality or the body they practiced and achieved or attain the jhana that they are practicing. And then when they passed away, they are reborn in the formless Brahma Ram as a Brahma without body, simply mind only being. But regardless whatever type of Brahma one may arise as, they cannot escape death. Once the karma of those jhanas expire, exhausted, they will be reborn in the sensephere or sensuous rum. Hermits or holy men. But the nine jhanas also have another goal or objective, and that is to attain a bhina, supernormal power. They are practicing these and succeeding nine jhanas, not just to stop there. After that, you can practice a certain technique and attain supernormal power. That's mostly the how the hermits' practices are. But it's not exclusive to them. There are some monks who follows the Buddha, also had these abhina supernormal power. An example, Bhikkhu Devadatta, a cousin of Buddha. He had attained nine jhanas and also a bena supernormal power. But he is not an enlightened being. You all have heard the story. He tried to kill the Buddha to take over his place, the Buddha's place to manage all the Sangha. As a bina, no enlightenment. But there's also let's pick up another monk, Bhikkhu Maglana, the left hand disciple of the Buddha. That Bhikkhu was enlightened as well as he has Abina, supernormal power. So strong and so great he was placed in terms of supernormal power next to the Buddha. Other than Buddha, he has the most powerful, strong supernormal power. So these are the few we can see in the scripture monks who have abena with or without enlightenment. There are twelve different objects to concentrate on attaining the fifth jhana in the form sphere. Fifth jhana. You remember the definition of fifth jhana? They have two mental factors or jhana factors. Aquanimity upaka and one pointedness. If you have equanimity and one pointedness only, then one is in the fifth jhana. To achieve that fifth jhana, there are twelve objects. Out of the forty given in the scripture, twelve. If you pick up one of the twelve and meditate upon, one can attain the fifth jhana. And also the formless. To achieve the full levels of jhana in the formless sphere require four formless objects. Four different objects. One is infinite space, one is infinite consciousness, and the third one is nothingness, and the fourth object is neither perception or non-perception. These are the objects you meditate upon. But there's an interesting thing about formless jhana, because formless jhanas have two types of objects to deal with. In each of the full formless meditation, one object is to take or in other words to meditate upon. Another object is to abandon or to quit, to live it alone. What does it mean? Let's take an example and see. Let's take the first formless jhana. To attain the first formless jhana one has to take the infinite space as an object to meditate upon. But you cannot simply just go take the infinite space and meditate on it. First and foremost you have to abandon something. Prerequisite or requirement is one must also achieve and attained the fifth form jhana. So let's say you have attained the fifth form jhana using the adkasina, the addis as an object. If you have attained it in your mind, a brilliant, flawless Addis is there. Whenever you close your mind and call it, it is there. It's with you like an appendage. So first and foremost, you have to abandon that object. Throw it away, let it go. And only after you succeed in letting it go or abandon, then you can take the infinite space as an object to meditate upon. That's why it said you need to deal with two objects. One to abandon, one to take. Let's see the second jhana for the explanation as well. So we can sink into it. In the second jhana, second formless jhana, let's be specific. One has to take the infinite consciousness as an object to meditate, and one has to abandon. Before you start meditating on infinite consciousness, one has to abandon the infinite space that you had attained at the first formless jhana. That's what it means by one object to take, one object to abandon. One needs to deal with two objects in the formless jhana practice. That should be sufficient to explaining about this. Then you can go to the jhana for jhana of course. In all these the five form jhana, rupa jhana, and the full arupa jhana, formless jhana, if you look at it, they have objects, materiality or mentality. But this whole process, they don't have the concept of cessation of mind and matter. That's why these jhana practices can never penetrate into the concept of anatta, no soul, non-self. Because they are focused on totally on a materiality or mentality, not for the cessation. Let's see, along with these in lives, in all 31 planes, whenever we rise there's a feeling. Okay. Whenever a consciousness rises, there's a feeling with nana, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Let's pick up specifically pleasant feeling. There are many types of pleasant feelings or many levels of happiness and also bliss. In the mundane world, Lokia, mundane world. If you look at the pleasure of the animal kingdom, that pleasure is the lowest amongst all delights. The joy of the senses of human, human senses, is higher than that of the animals, but still intertwined, mixed with much suffering. The pleasure of the Dewa is much superior to that of the humans. The Deva experience some degree of despair only near the point of death. When the death closed, really close, then they have despair. Other than that, their whole life is constant pleasure, constant happiness. That's how each rams relate in terms of to the nature of the feeling. Sukha Vidana, pleasant feeling. Buddha always referred to especially the human Ram. In general, the enjoyment of the senses. Not as pleasure, but Buddha refers to them as suffering. That's why we don't understand. We are happy and we have lots of fun and pleasure and excitement, and the Buddhas keep on saying suffering, suffering. Most of the people can't accept it. Of course, pleasure is pleasure. Pleasure is not suffering, pleasure is not pain at our level, but in the eyes of a Buddha. All things that arises and passes away are simply suffering. Two levels of looking at it based on the understanding. Not only Deva, let's go to the Brahma run and see how these pleasures play the role. Five stages of jhana's bliss. When you are in a jhana, automatically the bliss is there. Jhana bliss of the fine material Brahma are much much superior and subtler and finer than that of the Deva. These Brahma bliss are compared to Deva. It is just like Deva comparing to a human pleasure. Again, the bliss of the formless jhana is superior than that of the form jhana. The reason is they don't have to deal with any materiality. Form Brahma has still has to deal with the material, the fine material of the body and the mind. Formless Brahma. No need to care about the body because they don't have it. Only the mind. That's why their bliss is the highest. Very peaceful and blissful. And they constantly dwell in that bliss. They don't come out of it. From the beginning of life till to the end, they are in that bliss. Formless Brahma. But still it belongs to the mundane world and is subject to arising and passing away. Simply put, birth and death. The Buddhists had the bliss or peace of the total liberation of freedom from the mind and matter which are constantly rising and passing away. It's the highest bliss of all bliss. And now let's look at a little story relation of the Buddha and the nine jhanas for information purpose. Prince Siddhartha before he became a Buddha, his name was Siddhartha Gautama, a prince. Prince Siddhartha renounced wealth, fame, and family at the age of twenty nine in search of deathlessness. Because around that time he saw an old person, a six person, and a corpse. Because his father shielded from every unpleasant thing, so he wasn't aware of these. And when he saw them, it shook him to the core and saw that birth, old, sickness, and death a suffering. So at that time the way he thing is, if one doesn't die, then there's no suffering. So it was in search of deathlessness. Not immortality, deathlessness. He approached the Hamid Alla Rat, who already attained eight jhanas and was teaching one thousand disciples. He approached him and asked him to teach him the jhanic techniques. He studied, he learned, and he practiced. And then attained the eight jhanas. And then Alara said, the hermit, now you know everything I know, and I know everything you know. That was his statement. In other words, you have you have graduated, and then he asked Sadhada to stay with him and teach the students as an equal to him, not under him, as an equal to him. Sadhada did not find the cessation of suffering in this eight jhanas. So he declined politely and moved on. And then he went to another hermit. He heard that this one has nine jhanas or something like that. So he went there. His the hermit name was Uttat. Yes, he's aware of the nine jhana, but he has never personally attained it. He got the technique from his father who had passed away already. How to practice to attain the ninth jhana. So he has the family secret recipe for ninth jhana. So Udhaga shared that technique with the Buddha or at that time Siddhartha. And Sadhatta practiced and attained ninth jhana. And that time Udaka said, You know everything Rama knows and Rama knows everything that you know. So it is not him, it is his father, because he hasn't attained. From that we can picture that Udhaga has no ninth jhana. The same time Buddha couldn't find release from all suffering in the ninth jhana. So he declined and went on in search of the cessation of suffering. Now he couldn't find or heard any news about any teacher who can teach him anything to escape from their all form of suffering. So he went on his own and practiced. At that time, one of the techniques called self-modification, you torture the body so hard. And the objective is to be released from all suffering, to escape from suffering. And that technique was quite popular at that time, and considered one of the holiest practice, maybe the holiest practice in that era. If you practice that, only the great heroes can take it. Nobody can take it, that kind of thing. Because you're torturing the body of basically yourself. Sadhada practice until the skin falls on the bone. To that level he tortured himself. Self-modification. Still, he did not find a way to escape from the suffering. Because self-mortification is the wrong path to trod upon to release from all suffering. If you look at his life, he had enjoyed pleasure to the fullest as a prince for 29 years. He also had attained the nine jhanas. Nobody at that time had attained it. In the pleasure, no release from suffering. In the jhana, no release from suffering. And self-modification, skin on bone. That's why you see some Buddha images, all the bone, one rib after the other, the eyes hollow, the skull pops out. That is his plight when he was practicing to that level. Still no release from suffering. There was a long story of course, but we don't have time, we'll cut it short. As he can't find release from suffering and all these things that he had investigated, search and practiced, he decided I have to abandon these because there's no result. Abandon the two extreme. Super pleasure nor this self-dorture. And he followed a middle path between the two. And finally he practiced and discovered the cessation of mind and matter. Nippana. At that time he looked with his mind eye, with a supernormal power. The two teachers who had taught him jhana, because they are wholesome, quite wholesome. So he looked for the two teachers to pay gratitude, to show gratitude. But both of them had passed away one after the other a few months before he had enlightenment. And they were reborn in the formless Brahma Ram. So they cannot hear the Buddha Dharma, they cannot see the Buddha. Buddha said Alara and Udagap had missed the rare opportunity to escape from Sansara. They practiced formless jhana. Very good, very wholesome, the result is supreme. But they were born bodiless, no eyes, no ears, nothing to see, nothing to hear, totally in sync with bliss. That's what formless jhana is. And then of course after that Buddha went on and taught all beings this middle path he had discovered the cessation of all form of suffering for the remaining forty-five years of his life. May all of you be able to practice mindfulness inside meditation and attain nibana as soon as possible. Thank you very much.