Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha - An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

Thus, when in each of those ñanas, one can learn something from its jhana aspect, and when in each of the jhanas one can notice what insight territory is available there. Further, as the division between 220

The Vipassana Jhanas

samatha and vipassana is actually not nearly so straightforward as some would make it out to be, there can be a lot of natural movement back and forth that can occur between vipassana jhanas and samatha jhanas even when trying to keep to just one side. As the Three Characteristics are always presenting themselves, even in seemingly created, blissful, stable samatha territory, those with strong mindfulness and

concentration may have to work to avoid perceiving them. Also, those doing strong insight practice may again and again chance into territory that has a more samatha feel, and if they are expecting things to be purely by the ñana descriptions they may get lost or confused by this.

Lastly, those who have attained at least stream entry are constantly cycling through the ñanas from the 4th to the 11th and then to Fruition, so even if they try to do pure samatha practice, the pull towards each next ñana/vipassana jhana is strong, and they basically are always from then on doing some fusion of the two even when they try to keep things purely on the samatha side.

I will illustrate the vipassana jhanas with a description of some candle-flame meditation I did when on retreat and playing around with the samatha jhanas by using kasinas. Kasinas are various traditional practices that involve using physical objects such as colored disks, candles, etc. as a starting point to attain samatha jhanas, powers and the like. They are described in the standard references I list in the chapter on the the Concentration States.

The retreat when I first really nailed down the details of the vipassana jhanas was a 17 day retreat that I went on when I was an anagami (the third stage of awakening in one of the models of awakening, to be discussed shortly). I didn't begin playing with this territory until around the second week of the retreat, and by that point my concentration was very strong and flexible. It didn't take me more than a day before I could go through the following cycle. Initially, I would stare at a candle flame until I really could stay with it, then there would be a natural shift, I would close my eyes, and I would see the visual purple phenomena where the afterimage of the flame was burned onto my retina.

This would fade in a few seconds to be replaced by a red dot in the center of my visual field. The red dot was clear, very round, pure, bright 221

The Vipassana Jhanas

and seemingly stable. However, within a minute or so it would begin to shake, roll off to one side, and I would notice all sorts of things about how intention and observation messed with the position, stability, and clarity of the dot. First seeing the dot is the first samatha jhana, and in this case is the equivalent of Mind and Body, where mental phenomena become clear external objects. Noticing things about intention influencing the position and stability of the dot is cause and effect.

Shortly thereafter this would become irritating and the dot would begin to shake, shudder, split up, spin off to one side or the other, and generally seem to misbehave quite on its own. This was the entrance to the Three Characteristics. After a while of this, practice would shift, become naturally stronger, and this slightly larger red dot would appear in the center again that stayed there on largely its own, but it had a gold spinning star in its center that would spin on its own with a speed and direction that varied with the phase of the breath, which I noticed when I would break my focus enough to notice that. This addition of motion, the image happening on its own, and somewhat wider attention (wider dot), not to mention bliss when I broke my concentration a bit and focused on my body, is the entrance to the second vipassana jhana.

The red dot with the spinning gold star would gradually acquire purple, green and blue rings around its outside, and then there would be a sudden shift where the red dot would vanish and be replaced by a slightly larger black dot. The black dot initially would seem to be a good focus, but quickly the area around the black dot got more interesting, with many very complex multi-point stars all circling slowly around it, getting wider and wider, with the interference patterns between them getting more and more complex, while the black dot faded somewhat, but to what was unclear. This addition of a problem perceiving the center but with complex patterns of experience with multiple frequencies going out to the periphery marks the early and middle phases of the third vipassana jhana. Further, as the thing got wider, there was this slightly disconcerting feeling that attention was out of phase with the visuals.