First Jhāna Junkyard, Revisited: a Garden and a Prerequisite

Yesterday’s post, Why Everyone, Not Just Monastics,
Needs to Work on First Jhāna, has been updated with two additions.

The first jhāna terms, and a garden in the junkyard

The section What first jhāna actually trains now names the first jhāna terms behind the junkyard skill.
In the middle of all that toxic waste,
the monk is tending a garden:

You reach for the skillful ones (vitakka),
turn them over (vicāra), water them with pīti and sukha,
and watch them flourish.

The body relaxing is passaddhi, the pacification awakening factor.
The physical pleasure is sukha.
And that relaxed, pleasurable, unburdened state is in the first jhāna spectrum.

An important footnote on the laypeople’s “advantage”

The post argues that laypeople have the advantage here,
not the disadvantage: a layperson’s day is wall-to-wall junk,
so it’s also wall-to-wall opportunity to train.
That advantage has a prerequisite, and a new footnote spells it out.
You need a baseline of samatha (serenity),
enough to suppress the five hindrances at will,
before the lay life works for you instead of against you.

The footnote also covers what happens when samatha and vipassanā get out of balance,
pictured as three warriors: one with a spoon,
one skeleton sharpening his blade past usefulness,
and fourth jhāna in the center, swinging a sharp sword every day.
And it explains why your silent retreats only pay off if you’ve done your homework the rest of the year.

Read the updated post.