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I love poetry, but I think it often comes out bland and tacky. I don’t like the rhyming scheme so much, but sometimes it adds to a poem. I try it here, feeling only a fraction creative this morning. I’ll try for another more heartfelt rendition soon. I’ve never written a Jhana poem before, but … Read more
My Experience with Kasinas As I was deciding how to go about my meditation practice, and what I would do and not do, I chose to eliminate the idea of Kasina meditation in favor of meditation on the feeling of the breath at the nose as my meditation object. Once I was able to reach … Read more
I realized recently that I’ve never written about the various nimittas that show up when a meditator has full concentration on the breath. My own common nimittas are tingling in my hands and sometimes bright round circles in the mind. I usually teach about these types and rarely mention other types of nimittas. So below … Read more
I’ve been working on my next book for the last couple of days. It’s a book about Jhana. Not the Buddhist Jhana. Not some other teacher’s idea of Jhana. There will be nothing in the book about Jhana apps or anything like that. The book is about the deep Jhanas I experienced with a very … Read more
I have been speaking to some of my students about the difficulty in reaching Jhana – the Visuddhimagga Jhanas – and I’ve been trying to figure out different ways to help people enter Jhana. Trying to figure out different ways to teach entering the Jhanas, using different words that might resonate with people better than … Read more
This was a question I received the other day during a coaching call, and to be honest I wasn’t sure what to say. A meditation practice of focusing on the breath can be harmful in rare instances where someone has trauma they’ve not dealt with and it brings up murderous or suicidal intentions. But can … Read more
Entering Jhana during your meditation session may be elusive for many of you. Maybe all of you. It’s something that occurs naturally, but sometimes we fight it, we fear it, we question what we’re supposed to be doing and Jhana remains just out of reach. It’s very common for someone to write me or tell … Read more
There are a couple of basics you need to do in preparation for reaching the Jhana states in your meditation sessions. Some of these activities can be done well before your meditation session and others happen in your session in real time. Getting into Jhana doesn’t require some elaborate preparation. It doesn’t need you to … Read more