How Mental Absorption (jhana) Can Free Us from Addiction

The high states of concentration accessed through meditation increase the likelihood of developing insight into suffering and how to escape it.

The Jhanas can help keep us free from addiction (and ultimately free us from all types of suffering) because:

The jhanas are delightful. When we first encounter them, we are usually amazed such states of consciousness actually exist – it is like living for years in poverty, but then finding a huge casket of gold under your bed.

Jhana covers a spectrum of meditation experiences which can be broken up into stages. These stages are traditionally labelled as first jhana, second jhana, third jhana, fourth jhana (there are another four jhana states to explore, but the first four are sufficient for our purposes). As we progress from one stage to the next, the potential for developing insight increases.

Jhana is a strong state of concentration we can learn to enter while meditating. Once we are able to access jhana, we can then deepen it through a process of letting go.

We know without doubt that the more we let go, the more freedom we enjoy.

We stop blaming other people for our suffering once we gain insight into how we create our own suffering.

We discover the freedom of a still mind so we become less obsessed with external experiences as a way to make us happy.

It allows us to safely experience states of concentration that can be more pleasurable than drugs and without the nasty side-effects.

How to Use Jhana Effectively

I would say there is no danger from jhana so long as we don’t access these states as a way to avoid our life. This is a mistake I made. I began experimenting with deep states of concentration as a teenager, but I was using it as a way to escape family problems. Even though I would occasionally fall into light jhanas, I didn’t benefit from the experience because my intention was wrong.

Luangpor Teean advised us that jhana without insight is like placing a rock over weeds. While the rock remains, the weeds won’t grow, but as soon as we remove the rock, the weeds will come back. It is perfectly possible to become skilled at entering wonderful meditation states, yet still behave badly when we are not meditating.

To get the most out of the jhana experience, we need to be clear about what we are trying to achieve. We need to have the right intention or we could end up completely lost. So what would be the right intention? Our minds have been tricking us, and this is why we end up so lost in addiction, so I would suggest the right intention would be to learn how we are being tricked – this is something we will see more easily with deep states of concentration.

The Subjective Nature of the Jhana

The jhanas are subjective experiences, and this makes it problematic when it comes to discussing them. The situation isn’t helped because there is so much disagreement among the experts about what clarifies as a jhana (e.g. some meditation masters would say there should be no experience of external sound in the first jhana and for it to be a ‘real’ jhana we should be able to sustain it for three hours).

I would advise against getting caught up in the debate about jhana (or as the Buddha once described it, ‘the thicket of views’). I prefer the approach to this advocated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (inspired by his teacher Taan Por Fuang ) which involves a ‘post-it note’ approach to mapping the mental states we experience in meditation.

Once you understand the ingredients of a jhana, and you feel you have experienced this state, you can provisionally label it (your post-it note) – if it turns out later that you were wrong, you can move your post-it note to a new location.

Preparing the Mind for Jhana

There are three basic conditions for the mind to be inclined towards jhana: