Charles wrote:
Hey man,
First of all I hope you’re doing well, and thanks a lot for sharing so much valuable info!
I have a couple of questions:
- Do you still use the dark stuff behind the eyelids as a method to access the jhanas? Is the technique basically to stare at the darkness as if it were a kasina?
I’ve been meditating for many years using the breath, and it’s only with great effort that I’m able to get into soft jhanas (and mostly only up to the 3rd usually). 90% of the time I get very, very relaxed watching the breath and this leads to dullness after an hour or so.
- How easy is it to master the hard jhanas using the dark stuff behind the eyelids as a meditation object vs the breath?
I’m starting to believe the breath might not be the best object of meditation for me. I’m normally very relaxed when I meditate and the breath just fails to get my concentration going. It puts me to sleep because it’s very soothing and hypnotic. I have no trouble staying with any object of meditation. No trouble at all relaxing naturally. No trouble with wandering mind, my mind is very calm. However my main difficulties are generating energy and not falling into dullness after 1-2 hrs. Anyway, I’m interested in what your thoughts are.
All the best,
Charles
Firstly, I believe all concentration meditation is a hybrid breath meditation. So, whatever your object is, in order to stabilize it you have to stabilize the breath into coherent patterns. Attention and the breath are firmly interlinked and interdependent. When using visual objects, the breath must be stabilized into a coherent rhythm which is then linked mentally to the image (your object). If you do kasina meditation, you will find that at certain stages the object moves in phase with the breath, basically proving what I’ve just said to be true.
In order to use the dark stuff behind your eyelids as a genuine object, you cannot just stare at it diffusely. This will lead directly into the kind of pseudo-sleep patterns you are experiencing (and I will talk about the problems with relaxation and hypnagogia in meditation shortly). Instead, you have to choose a circular surface area within the dark stuff behind your eyelids and draw a mental boundary around it. You then use your concentration muscle to force awareness to remain only within that circle (and this is a lot harder than it sounds, which is the whole point of concentration meditation — it is something out of the ordinary you are doing, which is difficult to achieve).
The breath will begin to be controlled in phase with the attention you bring to that circle. So, you might find that attention remains within that circle if you make the in- and out-breath flow into one another continuously and rhythmically (and this same pattern will show itself in any successful concentration meditation).
The concentration muscle in an action of the forebrain against the back brains. You will find thoughts trying to enter that circle as energy patterns (which is what thoughts are before they become differentiated into verbal chatter and imagery). The concentration muscle is that part of your awareness you use to repel those energy patterns back as soon as you detect them incoming, thus driving them away before they become thoughts. That’s right — you must intercept thoughts before they become thoughts, and this is achieved via mindfulness of energy patterns attempting to arise at the periphery of the object which are attempting to enter awareness. You will find that your breath automatically modulates during this “push back”, and that the more coherent your breath flow, the fewer thoughts will actually arise.
All these systems must be trained together. This is why concentration is so difficult. It is never a case of, “Just do this.” It is a completely active process requiring total dedication. Mindfulness must be maintained simultaneously of:
- The breath and the breathing pattern that best creates concentration, and endeavouring to create these smooth and coherent in-/out-flows.
- The object itself (in this case the patch within the dark stuff behind your eyelids you have chosen as your object).
- The energy patterns arising at the edge of the object (from elsewhere in the brain) that attempt to penetrate your awareness field and become thoughts. These must be actively pushed back against using the concentration muscle (which gets stronger and stronger each time you are able to push something away).
If you manage to maintain all these factors consistently for several seconds, the first jhana can arise literally within those few seconds. (I am not saying I can do this every time — preceding mental and physical state are huge factors. However, I’m now pretty good at it.) However, in reality, as a beginner, you are more likely going to end up running through the system in clumps as you practise. So, you might look at the object for a bit, then lose focus. Then you might remember that the breath is important, so you work on making the breath more flowing and consistent for a bit, and notice that the object stabilizes as a result of that. Then you might get excited about the object suddenly stabilizing, and get all sorts of distracting thoughts about it (maybe along the lines of, “That feels good. Does that mean jhana is coming?!”). Then you might remember that you have to push those thoughts away using the concentration muscle, and start doing a bit of that, which helps the other two processes you have running.
Now, there is a reason why, in other posts, I have advised against doing 1-hour sits for concentration practice for beginners who cannot yet attain the first jhana reliably. This reason is that the above process is very mentally taxing and can typically only be maintained for 20 minutes or so. (Things become a lot simpler once you can get the first jhana, since the meditation tends to “run itself” after that and actually requires less mental effort.) So, I believe you are better off throwing everything you’ve got at the object — utilizing all the factors of mental control I just described — for 20 minutes. If you don’t get at least some of the jhanic factors (rapture, bliss, one-pointedness or equanimity) during that time, you probably aren’t going to get much further after that, since much of your mental reserve has already been spent.
I will say again, however, that if you DO manage to get all the processes (breath control, concentration muscle, and attention on the object) working together in a stable way, then this is called access concentration, and first jhana could arise at any moment. Like I said, if you can maintain access concentration in a very stable way, first jhana can arise after just a few seconds. I think the people who say, “You need a few minutes in access concentration for the first jhana to arise”, are perhaps only maintaining access concentration with a 50-75% stability. That’s okay — there is a momentum built within access concentration that stays even if you lose it for a few moments. But this is the reason why they need that extra time. If you can really get the three processes I described working strongly in sync with each other, then you can hit first jhana very rapidly.
And then you have things like kundalini, hatha yoga, and pranayama you can use to generate the focused energy required for very fast jhanas, and I will talk a bit about that in a moment.
But to close off your question about using the dark stuff behind your eyes as an object, I will say a couple of things. No, it is no easier than a standard breath meditation, since breath control must be very high whatever the object of concentration. Also, the dark stuff behind your eyes is quite a strange object to use in terms of outcome. If you use a flame afterimage, you already know that the vision will progress through predictable stages — such as it collapsing to form a red dot, then a white star, then the white star pulsing in phase with the breath, then noticing the fractals in the edge of the star, and then eventually experiencing geometric patterns and total jaw-dropping universal imagery if your concentration is high enough.
With the dark stuff behind your eyelids, however, there is very little set pattern. It is basically pure potential energy. It is similar to white noise. If you listen to white noise long enough, you may start to hear voices in that noise. That is your mind projecting itself onto essentially a random field of potential. The dark stuff behind your eyes is very similar. If you do manage to stabilize it to a flat circular “screen” that you then hold in awareness, all sorts of things can then be projected onto that screen. I have had precognitive visions suddenly appear, and even a demon one time. Sometimes I have had faces of people I know suddenly appear, in what seems to be telepathic clairvoyance of their activities (though I have not been able to confirm any of these visions up to this point). Sometimes the visions are just garbage, such as scenes or objects that appear to just be the mind making sense of what’s going on, similar to a dream. When these visions “filter in” they tend to do so very spontaneously, like a shimmering clear image suddenly appearing in the surface of a lake. I have found this to be consistently jarring (and therefore difficult to maintain concentration upon), though simultaneously it can be very interesting.
I believe the “dark stuff behind your eyelids” object is very hard to use and even more difficult to master. However, I did use this meditation object almost exclusively for the first year I did jhana — which was before I knew what jhana even was. So it is certainly possible.
I’m starting to believe the breath might not be the best object of meditation for me. I’m normally very relaxed when I meditate and the breath just fails to get my concentration going. It puts me to sleep because it’s very soothing and hypnotic. I have no trouble staying with any object of meditation. No trouble at all relaxing naturally. No trouble with wandering mind, my mind is very calm. However my main difficulties are generating energy and not falling into dullness after 1-2 hrs. Anyway, I’m interested in what your thoughts are.
I think the problem goes something like this: Here in the West, we have this idea propagated through TV, magazines, book and films, that meditation is “sitting down with your eyes closed relaxing and trying not to think.” It is the impression that meditation is basically zoning out in a largely passive process. I would say about half of all the emails I receive from beginners are based on this fundamental misrepresentation they have that meditation is somehow about “relaxing”.
It is total crap.
Now let’s compare this impression to actual Eastern yogic meditation. First they do hatha yoga to create coherent energy patterns within their body — streams which can then be directed into their minds for meditation. Then they do pranayama breathing to further coordinate these energy currents into highly refined streams, while simultaneously training the breath for concentration. Then they do kriya (kundalini) yoga to cleanse their chakras and further prepare all aspects of body and mind for meditation. Then, they practise raja yoga (concentration meditation), channelling all that super-refined, highly potent energy through their object (e.g. the third eye) in a totally active, totally conscious, and totally intentional way, to create a state of samadhi (jhana).
Is there anything “relaxing” in that process? 
I have caricatured that somewhat to make a point (but not much). There are Eastern meditations, such as Buddhist anapanasati, which are more aligned with the Western idea of “relaxing meditation” — but it is still highly active in terms of how attention is directed, and I do not want this point to be lost. Samadhi/jhana is also somewhat physically relaxing but is highly mentally energizing. Any kind of true concentration meditation practice is totally mentally active and is nothing to do with “tuning out”.
In my post Mailbag: Generating Piti and Sukha on the Breath, if you saw me do that you would not think it is relaxing at all. It requires forceful circulation of breath and intense focus within the bridge of the nose, and I can attain jhana sometimes within seconds using that method (after which I do appear to “relax” physically, but mentally I am very active).
I think for people struggling with what is basically falling asleep during meditation, you could do well to go in the opposite direction: Instead of relaxing yourself, stimulate yourself. Pranayama breathing, especially kapalbhati, is an extremely useful way to generate stimulating energy streams, I have found. Practise kapalbhati for a couple of minutes, then throw that generated energy at the object in the form of attention. It is far easier to generate the rapture and bliss feelings through stimulated energies in this way (as opposed to sedated energies, i.e. relaxation), and these feelings can be “run with” all the way to jhana by tuning into them while maintaining attention on the object.
Hope that helps! 