What does it look like whenever you have Perfect Concentration (PC) on the breath or the feeling of the breath? The visual representation below will help you get a grasp on what exactly is going on over the course of time that you are meditating and trying to reach perfect concentration.
The goal of Perfect Concentration comes before ever reaching Deep Jhana.
The yellow line shows the distractions per minute going on in your mind as you attempt to focus on the feeling of the breath at the nose. This number is just an average across your entire meditation session that day. The number can be higher than 80 distractions per minute, depending on the person. I set it as the max though.
The orange line is the number of breaths you are able to focus on in complete attention during the session. This is the maximum number of breaths you were able to focus on in any one attempt during your session.
You can see that the distraction line trends downward over time. There are days when your concentration will be nowhere near what it was the day before, or week before. It varies considerably depending on what state the mind is in before sitting for your session.
The ‘good days’ advance slowly. There is no real outlier there. Progress is slow as the mind gradually slows down during sessions.
You can see how there are periods of positive change over a couple of days. These are sometimes set back by very high distraction/minute days. This is the natural course of things.
What isn’t plotted here is your mindset. After a few days of good concentration, and getting better and better focus, you may expect that to continue. You may WANT it to continue. You may attach to the idea that it WILL continue. Then it doesn’t. Then you get disappointed about the results. Then you consider stopping meditation altogether because you are frustrated you’re not progressing fast enough for your expectations.
This is the MAJOR CAUSE of people never reaching a state where they have Perfect Concentration on the breath.
You can also see how gradual the orange line (breaths taken in Perfect Concentration) increases. Very slowly. There is rarely a day where you’ll suddenly be able to focus 100% on the feeling of the breath 5 times if you’ve only been doing 1-2 times just prior. It doesn’t usually happen that way. It could, this is wide open, but the probability is low.
The graph stops at 120 days. That is just a very rough estimate for how long it took me to reach Perfect Concentration. Keep in mind that that level of focus didn’t just continue on from that point, it was variable for a while – a few weeks, a month, until I was able to reach PC. pretty regularly (90% of sessions – as an estimate).
It may only take you 60 days. It may take you 180 or 240 days. It may take a year. There is no guarantee.
I believe that most people could probably reach it within 1 year of persevering. Just regularly showing up to meditate and following good instructions.
It’s sad, but most people just don’t have that in them.
We were raised – especially lately – with this idea that good things come immediately.
It’s completely untrue for reaching Perfect Concentration and Deep Jhana.
If you just want any kind of thing someone is calling Jhana, see some of the apps on the market they are telling us can transport you into Jhana without hardly any effort at all. You can probably get into their idea of Jhana today before you go to sleep.
Is that life changing Jhana?
Maybe for somebody, that’s enough?
Perfect Concentration
Around 6 breaths of 100% focus without distraction you attain the state – Perfect Concentration. At this stage you can sometimes go for hundreds of breaths in PC. This is the point where focus becomes effortless and you are locked-into the state of mind where you can concentrate on the feeling of the breath in the nose endlessly. Well, until your body tires of it.
NOTE – Numbers are arbitrary and chosen to reflect a real-life scenario so you can see visually what is going on. Progress IS OCCURRING. It’s hard/impossible to see sometimes, but over time you ARE progressing. 🙂