After arriving at the Still Forest Pool, the eighth stage of Tranquil Wisdom meditation, discussed in the previous blog, we sit in equanimity, i.e, our mind is the Still Forest Pool, silent and unmoving. We await the appearance of a nimitta.
Nimitta is the sign of nirvana. We are in the neighborhood of nirvana when it appears. Its appearance is the ninth step.
Its failure to appear means that we have rushed through at least one of the first eight stages, or failed to practice Present Moment Awareness and Silent Present Moment Awareness at the outset.
If we experience no nimitta, we will need to go back and practice, with enhanced patience, the stages we rushed through.
Step ten – polishing the nimitta
Once the nimitta appears, the tenth step is to “polish” it, in the words of Venerable Ajahn Brahm. His book, Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond, describes how to stop the nimitta from wobbling, i.e., how to strengthen it before moving on to step eleven.
Step eleven – sustaining the nimitta
In step eleven, with the nimitta now stable, we sustain it by the techniques taught by Venerable Ajahn Brahm.
Step twelve – entering into the jhanas
According to Venerable Ajahn Brahm, once the nimitta is polished and sustained, the four jhanas and the four immaterial attainments may appear as the twelfth step.
Other scholars, however, teach that the four jhanas may be attained in step twelve, but the immaterial attainments are experienced in steps thirteen through sixteen, i.e., the last four steps of the Tranquil Wisdom meditation.
Depending upon how well we keep the precepts and how well the nimitta is polished in step ten and made stable in step eleven, we may make it to the first jhana only, to the second jhana only, and so on. No jhana can be skipped, i.e., we cannot experience the third jhana unless we have experienced the first two, and so on.
Just like the joy of the fifth step, the explosion of joy associated with the first jhana usually causes the meditation to end. It takes practice to let the first jhana mature into the second jhana, and so on.
The jhanas transport us from the third world of sense desire to the second world of form, also known as the fine-material world.
In the Theravada teachings, there are sixteen dharma realms in the fine-material world.
The beings of the fine material plane of existence are no longer subject to sense desire and they have left the lower six realms, the sense-sphere realm, never to fall back.
As the name of this collection of realms implies, however, the beings are free of the gross material world but they still have some connection to the material world and have not achieved samyak sambodhi, total liberation.
Of the sixteen planes of existence, three are associated with the first jhana, three are associated with the second jhana, three are associated with the third jhana, two are associated with the fourth jhana, and the final five are associated with The Pure Land, referred to in the Pali Canon as The Pure Abodes.
More specifically:
Development of the first jhana to an inferior degree leads to rebirth among:
Brahma’s Assembly (20);
Middling development of the first jhana leads to rebirth among:
The Ministers of Brahma (19); and
Superior development of the first jhana leads to rebirth among:
The Maha Brahmas (18).
Thus there are three planes of existence or dharma realms associated with the first jhana.
How can we know if we have attained the first jhana? The Pali Canon mentions four features of the first jhana, as follows:
1. Vittaka which is translated as “thinking”;
2. Vicara which is translated as “examining”;
3. Piti which is translated as “joy, bliss or rapture”; and
4. Sukha which is translated as “happiness.”
Venerable Ajahn Brahm translates vittaka and vicara as subverbal, i.e., non-thinking reactions of the mind.
He teaches that vittaka is the mind’s tendency to flow into a blissful state and vicara is the mind’s tendency to grasp at that blissful state. That grasping weakens the bliss but vittaka lets go of the grasping and the bliss strengthens again.
So if we feel blissful but that bliss seems to “wobble,” as Ajahn Brahm says, that’s the first jhana.
In the same inferior-middling-superior development way, development of the second jhana leads to rebirth among:
The gods of Limited Radiance (17);
The gods of Immeasurable Radiance (16); and
The gods of Streaming Radiance (15).
How can we know if we have attained the second jhana? Well, the first jhana is exhilarating and it doesn’t last long. When the pounding bliss fades away, and only happiness remains, we have entered into the second jhana.
The second jhana is a more stable level of concentration whose primary features are serenity and solidity and it can last for hours; the first jhana is unlikely to last anywhere near that long.
Inferior, middling and superior development of the third jhana leads to rebirth among:
The gods of Limited Glory (14);
The gods of Immeasurable Glory (13); and
The gods of Refulgent Glory (12).
Superior development of the fourth jhana leads to rebirth among:
The gods of Great Fruit (11).
However, if the fourth jhana is developed with a desire for insentient existence (which seems to be a contradiction in terms), then it leads to rebirth among:
The Non-percipient gods (10) “for whom consciousness is temporarily suspended” to quote Bhikkhu Bodhi.
As mentioned earlier, the six lower realms of the Mahayana dharma realms are the eleven lower realms in the Theravada understandng because the dharma realms of the gods of the sense sphere is one realm in Mahayana and six realms in Theravada. Thus, in Theravada, dharma realms 31-21 are the realms of sense desire and the lowest of the form realms (Brahma’s Assembly) is thus number 20 of 31.
Bhikkhu Bodhi calls the sixteen realms (20-5) of the fine-material realm the “objective counterparts” of the four jhanas.
But the formless world, the immaterial world (dharma realms 4-1), lies beyond the world of form, and it cannot be experienced until we experience the immaterial attainments.
When I first read about these realms of consciousness, and the creative names by which they are known, my first reaction was to smile. I thought the gods under the four great kings, the gods of the thirty three, and so on, were the products of someone’s over-active imagination.
I had the same feeling of comic relief when I first read about the levels of consciousness that belong not to the realm of desire but to the realm of form, enterable only through the jhanas.
Brahma’s Assembly, The Ministers of Brahma, the Maha Brahmas, the gods of limited radiance, immeasureable radiance, streaming radiance, limited glory, immeasureable glory, refulgent glory, of great fruit, the non-percipient gods, it was pretty corny.
Someone about 2500 years ago entered into very high levels of bliss and then wrote down his or her experiences.
As the bliss increased, that cultivator would report: I felt like I had entered into Brahma’s Assembly, but then it got even better and I met the Ministers of Brahma, higher still I met the Maha Brahmas. The bliss deepened and I met the gods of limited radiance and they took me to meet the gods of immeasurable radiance and they introduced me to the gods of streaming radiance and after that…
We learn early in our study of Buddhism that the Buddha talked often of the impermanence of things. He taught that those who build their inner happiness on external things are doomed to lose their happiness because nothing lasts forever.
A person who enters into the first jhana today, 2500 years after the experience of one early Buddhist was recorded, is unlikely to enter into Brahma’s Assembly, followed by meeting the Ministers of Brahma, and so on.
Brahma’s Assembly and all the other levels of awareness have morphed into something else by now.
A modern person who is ardent and resolute in the cultivation of Zen practices on an unrelenting, daily basis, will certainly enter into blissful states of mind and that bliss will increase in intensity with practice, but it would be a hindrance to believe that these states of bliss with these names will be encountered and that they will appear in the order as recorded by our ancient practitioner.
It’s fun to memorize these states of awareness (I can’t help it) but accepting them as factual, down to their names, would be ludicrous. They were one person’s experience thousands of years ago and we will have our own.
Note that in the Theravada dharma realm countdown, the non-percipient gods reside ten levels of awareness from the top.
Levels 9, 8, 7, 6, and 5 are the highest levels of the realm of form and these levels are the pure abodes of which the Buddha spoke, the realm of the non-returners. They are, from bottom to top:
The Aviha (9);
The Atappa (8);
The Sudassa (7);
The Sudassi (6); and
The Akanittha (5).
The lifetime of the beings in these Pure Abodes increases “significantly in each higher plane.”
We can find in the Pali Canon how far these abodes are from the earth and the specific lifetimes of the inhabitants of each.
No kidding: Some people have actually done the math. They can tell you which Pure Abode is located near the orbit of Jupiter, for example. I hope their humor is intentional.
And if we take such facts literally, we’re nuts.
The point is that there are levels of awareness beyond that of the fourth jhana but below the awareness of the immaterial world. But saying how far from earth they are is a metaphor that points to higher levels of consciousness, not physical worlds somewhere in our solar system.
The only lesson we can take from these bizarre names from ancient times is that levels of meditation do exist, each more refined than the one below it.
All we can do is practice and not worry about whether or not we have entered into Brahma’s Assembly or any other place with a name. We can give our own names to the stages that we encounter. Or we can just sit, follow the instructions, and forget about naming the levels of consciousness that we encounter as the mind meditates upon itself.
How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind
