Meditation Journal Entry – Frustration while Meditating

I sat and meditated tonight and tried to keep mindfulness of breathing for about 30-40 minutes. I was pretty focused on attaining some sort of diff. experience and so none was attained. I was actually getting frustrated that nothing was happening and that I couldn’t concentrate because of things happening in the environment (noise). I tried laying down and that helped, but then the phone rang and I stopped to answer it. That ended that attempt.

It’s funny that no matter how little it is that I desire to repeat an experience – a jhana or another absorption experience it won’t come until I let that desire go entirely. Sometimes I can let it go, other times it just hangs around in the mind and won’t fully disappear. This is what I’m talking about when I say that Buddhist monks and other followers of religion must have a SERIOUSLY difficult time with getting into the jhanas and then repeating the jhanas as they start to occur because so much is built up around the idea of attaining jhana that when it comes it is like the holy grail. People get too excited about it and about repeating it – and it may never come back! I’ve met monks here in Thailand that have never entered Jhana 1. How is that possible?

Don’t put a big focus on Jhana and it may come. I didn’t know what jhana was when it came. Actually, all through the jhanas I didn’t know what was going on at the time. Then, years later a western monk, Santikaro, told me over the phone that this was normal experience. Jhannic experience.