Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 10: Leigh Brasington

Episode Date: April 22, 2016

Leigh Brasington has been practicing meditation for decades and is one of the most prominent American teachers of Jhana meditation. The Jhanas are a set of altered states of consciousness associated with profound amounts of bliss, happiness and ecstasy. Entering Jhana is done through meditating with intense concentration and it's considered a controversial topic by many in the Buddhist world. But can regular people access the Jhanas? And are they even real? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. I'm Dan Harris. This time on the show, we're talking about a subject with which I am obsessed. It's a deeply nerdy, so prepare yourself. It's actually a controversial meditation topic.

It's a kind of meditation known as janna meditation. If you haven't heard that word before, it's an ancient Indian word, J-H-A-N-A, John A meditation. It involves getting deeply concentrated in meditation, and then allegedly accessing these altered states of consciousness that are associated with profound amounts of bliss and happiness and ecstasy, which, as given my personal predilections, as you might imagine, it can incredibly interesting to me. However, as I said, controversial for a number of reasons. One, in the Buddhist world, there are debates about whether the Janas are a waste of time, a diversion, potentially an addictive diversion that doesn't help you reach enlightenment.

You have to buy into enlightenment in order to take that debate seriously. The second controversy is, can regular people access the Johnna's? Do you have to be on retreat from months at a time basically become a monastic or can regular schmows like you and me access the janas? And the third debate is not really a debate in the Buddhist world, but I'm going to throw it in there, which is, are these things even real? I mean, I said allegedly earlier because I don't know if the janas are real, maybe people are deluding themselves into having these experiences for thousands of years.

I don't know Anyway, my guest today knows exponentially more about this than I do and can correct any errors or omissions in the foregoing His name is Lee Brazington. He is one of the most prominent American teachers of John a meditation Lee. Thanks for coming on Oh my pleasure happy to be here. You wrote a great book that I just finished reading called Right Concentration, which explains, I'd heard of the Johnas for years. I didn't actually know what they were until I read your book. Incredibly clear and compelling. So let's just start by what are the Johnas and what did I get wrong in what I've just said? Actually, you did very good with what you just said. Thank you.

I'm going to mess everything up going forward just so you know. Okay. So the Janas are eight altered states of consciousness that are brought on by concentration and each yields even more concentration. This allows you to stare step your way down to deeper and deeper levels of concentration. The genres are a warm up exercise for what's usually called insight practice, an investigation of reality. If you... I can always just hop you right there.

I will interrupt you at times just because I'm always mindful to use a loaded term of the fact that some in our audience will not be familiar with some of the terms we're going to use here. So, insight practices are generally in Buddhist speak, and this is all sort of a Buddhist subject, are what lead you to enlightenment, to seeing what the nature of reality actually is. Exactly. We've talked about it, it's impermanent, and several other things that we can get into as well. I'm going to get too geeky quite yet. The binary, sometimes people set this up as a false binary, is that if you're doing John a practice, you're getting caught up in these states of bliss and you're not doing

insight practice, which allows you to see exactly what our world is and is not made up of. Right. If you're driving on the road to the Grand Canyon, you're not seeing the Grand Canyon. And so it's pointless to drive on the road to the Grand Canyon. That's your pushback. Yeah. There are warm-up exercise. Normally when we look at the world, we tend to look at it from a very egocentric perspective.

Basically, can I eat that or will that eat me? Well, maybe we get a little more sophisticated than that. But it's all about me. Is this something I want to get? Is this something I need to get rid of? I is the most important part of that. If you get sufficiently concentrated, then you're in a less egocentric place

and you have a less egocentric perspective. It turns out that I is not the center of the universe. And so if you're looking from a less egocentric perspective, you have a much better chance of seeing what's actually happening. So this is the purpose behind generating these states of concentration. So how do you can, can I access the genres? I mean, I have a full time job of baby and a very limited amounts of concentration. Is this possible for regular people? Yes, in fact, I've taught the genres to regular people in over a hundred residential retreats,

but there's the key word, residential retreats. In order to learn them, you're probably going to need to leave behind for 10 days as a minimum, the baby and the job and the family and everything else and just go off and meditate. But that's fine. I do a 10 day retreat every year. So it is possible. It is possible. In theory for me.

Yes. Now, I never know for a student who comes on my retreat whether they're going to experience genres or not. There is a high enough percentage who do that makes it worthwhile to teach. But, you know, when I first started, I would go through the interview questionnaires to look to see, all right, who's going to do really well. I could have taken the paper since I was growing them up in the air and the ones that came up right side up, meant one and upside down

meant the other and been just as accurate. No way to tell in advance. You pay your money and you take your chance and basically. Okay. So, all right, I wanna get, let's go, let's get seriously detailed on this because you do a great job of getting into

great detail in your book without ever ever being boring. Okay. So you sit down on the cushion, what do you do? All right, so the first thing you need to do is generate a basic level of concentration. And the later literature it's called access concentration. It's called access concentration, because it's sufficient concentration to give you access to the janas. Now, we should actually, the word concentration is a translation of the poly word Samadhi.

And poly is an ancient Indian language spoken in the time of the Buddha. Exactly. But Samadhi probably could be better translated as indistractability, if that's even a real word. What you want to do is generate the ability to not become distracted. So you sit down and you do an access method, Most commonly following the breathing, but there are a number of other methods that you can use. You can use a systematic scan of the surface of your body. Sweeping is often

called. You can do loving kindness, meta-meditation. You can use a mantra. We just stop you for a second. I'm going to do this occasionally, but loving kindness meditation just for the uninitiated that is where you systematically visualize people and send them good vibes and can get you into a state of real concentration and joy. Yes, exactly. And you also have mentioned what was the fourth technique you mentioned? Mantra. Mantra meditation where you silently repeat a word. Right, or phrase.

Or phrase. Yeah. They're actually, according to the later commentaries, 30 different methods of generating access concentration. So lots of ways to get yourself this basic level of indistractability. Once you've gotten that generated, and on a 10-day retreat, it might take you four or five days

to be consistently generating that, because normally you go on retreat and first thing you do is you think about your job and then you argue with your boss and then you plan your vacation and write. So when all that settles down, you have a chance of getting to access concentration. Once you're there, hang out for a while, and then there's a trick. And the trick is instead of, for example, continuing to follow your breathing, you shift your attention to some pleasant sensation. The pleasant sensation might be your smile. You might notice Buddhist statues often have a smile

on the face. That's not just for artistic purposes. That's actually for teaching. If you smile when you meditate, by the time you get to access concentration, the fake smile you put on when you start it will become genuine and you'll have a pleasant sensation you can focus on. Other possible places for finding a pleasant sensation are the hands, the heart center, particularly if you're doing loving kindness meditation, top of the head, third eye, you name a body, third eye, the spot, sort of on your forehead between your eyes. Sometimes people find pleasure there. Often when people get concentrated, there's a sort of tingling sense there, and some people find that pleasurable. You have to believe that there is such a thing as a third eye. people find that pleasurable. You have to believe that there is such a thing as a third eye.

Okay, it's not a visual eye. I know. It's an area in between, well, the area between just above your eyebrows and above your nose in the center. And if you get sufficiently concentrated, you will possibly notice sort of faint tingling sensation there that you're not noticing in the rest of your forehead.

So you've spent a few days getting quiet. You then have what you or your teacher deemed to be a sufficient level of indistractability. And then the trick is you shift your focus from whatever had been your primary object of meditation to some pleasant feeling, whether it's on your third eye or your hand or wherever, or your smile, and then what? And then you do nothing else,

except stay focused on the pleasant sensation, which is actually quite difficult. I mean, if you're following your breathing, you know, a lot of excitement there. I mean, the breath is coming in, the breath is going out, I'm being a bit of a physician here. Right? If you're focused on the slight pleasure generated by your smile or the warm glow in your hands, it's pretty subtle and not much is happening.

So you need to be very indistractable to stay with your attention on such a subtle object. If you can do that eventually, not right away, but eventually it will actually increase in intensity, just slightly. And if you can just continue to focus on it, it very slowly will continue to increase in intensity until it suddenly propels you into an obviously altered state of consciousness full of glee and joy. And this is the first John. And this is the first John. Glee enjoy. I mean, how intense I mean, I have, I mean, I've been public about this at pretty pronounced history of problems with addiction. So I strongly attracted to Glee and joy. So how intense is this? Sometimes you want to see afterwards, did you actually blast a hole through the roof

because it can be that intense. It can be somewhat mild and sustaining. I never know how intense somebody's going to get it. If it comes on really intense the first time, it probably won't ever be that intense afterwards, but it might still be quite intense. Some people find that it's mild, they can sustain it for five to ten minutes. No problem. Other people have had enough after thirty seconds. If it's really intense, ten seconds might be enough. That's the glee part.

Glee is a translation of the polyword PT, which we don't really have a good English translation for. P-I-T-I. Right. And that is, again, an ancient polyword, and it's Glee joy bliss. Glee rapture euphoria ecstasy. It's an energetic release with a primarily physical component. And it's accompanied by Suka, sucrose, right? Sweet. And that's spelled SUKKHA, Suka, right?

I'm gonna add to my closing. One K. One K, SUKKHA. Right. And that's more of an emotional sense of joy or happiness. Gotcha. So two different things happen in the first gen, which is, right.

But they happen so inner mix that in the first John, you may not be able to distinguish what's PT, what's Sukha, what's Glee, what's Joy. Okay, but that doesn't matter. They'll both be there. So you're getting this just huge dose, well, depends on the person, but you may be getting a huge dose of physical rapture and glee, coming with an emotional joy. Right. Happiness. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

That's the first, John, if you can sustain it and sustain your attention on it. Why would you not be able to sustain your attention on something that awesome? Because it's so awesome, you go, wow, and it goes away. Oh. Okay.

Right. Or it feels like you're going out of control. This is because you are going out of control. And if you are control freak and you're find yourself going out of control, you might just freak out and back off of it. So do people get up and walk away from the cushion in these moments sometimes? No, but they might open their eyes and take a really deep breath or something to make it go away. And are you screwed at that point? Can you get back or what's the deal?

You probably screwed for that 45 minute to our meditation session, but yeah, because you're on a retreat, you got another one coming up in another 45 minutes or so. For better or worse, yeah. So, okay, so that's the first, Johnna, what's the move at that point? Okay, so you wanna stay in this state

for some period of time, inversely proportional to the intensity. Okay, if it's really strong, yeah, 10, 30 seconds, if it's mild, 5, 10 minutes. The next move is to the second, Johnna, and to get there, what you want to do is take a nice, deep breath, and really let the energy out with the exhale. This will calm the PT, the Glee, the physical component, and you shift your attention to the emotional component, the joy, the happiness.

When you take that breath, it'll sort of decouple the physical PT-Glee part from the emotional joy happiness part. And now your focus of attention becomes joy happiness. And now you're just focused on being happy for no reason other than the fact you have a very concentrated mind. And this second, John, I would imagine one can hang out there for longer than one could hang out in the first jonna, given the intensity. Right. Yeah. Even a very intense second jonna is not problematic. Now, of course, all of this stuff is neurotransmitters just like everything else

that we experience. You might run out of neurotransmitters associated with the suka, the joy happiness, and then yeah, fall out of it, or perhaps just on your own move on towards the third, John. Okay. Okay. What's the third, John? Okay. How do we get there? The third, John, the physical component, which is in the background of the second, John,

is gone completely. And the joy happiness is tuned down to more sense of contentment, wishlessness, satisfaction. Satisfaction is so complete that if Mick Jagger had been practicing the therapy, he wouldn't be able to sing that song. Okay? So the move is simply to take another deep breath, exhale, let things calm down more. And in the process, turn the volume control on the joy, happiness down to contentment, wishlessness. And now you're focused on just being contented. At that point, it's a very still experience. And then the first John up with all the physical, you might be physically shaking, somebody could even see.

And the second the physical is in the background, maybe you use some rocking or swaying or something. And the third, all the physical is quieted completely. And you're just hanging out, focused on this pleasant sense of contentment, and it's very still. And then the fourth. The fourth is to let go of the pleasure of the contentment, and let your mind drop down to a state of quiet stillness.

It's described as a state beyond pleasure and pain, so very equanimous, very emotionally neutral. Again, it might be helpful to take a deep breath, but the key thing is to get in touch with the pleasantness of the contented feeling and just let that go. For myself in the third jonna, I've got a wispy Buddhist smile. First, jonna, big grin, you can see my teeth.

Second, jonna, big smile, no teeth. Third, jonna, the wispy Buddhist smile. First John a big grin, you can see my teeth. Second John a big smile no teeth. Third John the wispy Buddhist smile. All right then I just get in touch with the pleasantness of that smile and just relax it out to neutral. When I do that there's a sense of things dropping, physically dropping down. I just go with the dropping down until it settles into a place of quiet stillness. And that's the fourth John. And that's the fourth John. All right, we've got a couple more John's to get through, but let me go back to the question I asked at the outset of the podcast, which is how, I mean, people have been doing the John's for thousands of years.

I mean, the Buddha was doing the John's before he got enlightened, right? So this is an ancient Hindu technique, if I understand it, right? Well, we could say proto Hindu technique. It was in the spiritual traditions at the time of the Buddha, which is actually before Hinduism evolved. Okay, so it's been around for a long time. A long time. We don't have no idea how long. But how do we know that, how do you know that you're not, you didn't read the literature about the John's and then you'll convince yourself you're having these experiences? How do we know this is actually real? For a number of times I've actually meditated for science, okay? They've put a EEG bonnet on me and I've run through the janas and

They've shoved me in an FMRI and basically taking movies of my brains while I run through the Johnis. And yeah, it's not high quality Johnis in those circumstances because it's shall we say a less than optimal situation for meditation. But we have data that we can actually look at and see what's going on when I claim to be in Johnis II, all right, what's going on in my brain. One of the things that we know is that the left prefrontal cortex, which is associated with positive emotional states, shows a good bit more activity than the right prefrontal cortex, which is associated with negative emotional states. If you're sitting there focused on happiness, this is what you would expect. The other very interesting thing is that the

nucleus accumbens, which is in sort of the center of your brain, the reward center is as one of the neuroscientists put it, is on overdrive. So I'm feeling very rewarded when I'm in the second China. So there are certainly neurophysiological changes taking place. It worked with Dr. Judd Brewer at Yale and now at UMass mindfulness. And he has basically setups where he can detect how much selfing is going on in the brain. There are parts of the brain that light up when you think about, I did this or I want to do that where the ego was there.

Yeah, he calls it our default mode. Right. And the default mode network is shut down. The self-wing parts of the brain are really quiet. And there are other parts of the brain associated with attention that are lit up. So whether I'm doing exactly what the Buddha is doing, we don't know, but I'm doing something that has significant noticeable neurological effects. You're not making it up. Not making it up. So I should say, you talked about Dr. Judd Brewer, who formerly a vial now of the Center

for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts, the director of research there, he's a mutual friend of ours, and it's actually listening to Judd talk about the Johnna's and how important they were to his practice, as well as listening to my friend Jay Michelson, who was on this podcast a few weeks ago, who is, if you haven't listened to that, he is a journalist, a theologian and a lawyer. He talks about the importance of John as in his practice. Having these two smart guys whispering in my ear is what has partially produced my obsession with this subject. So again, you feel quite confident that you're not diluting yourself into these altered states. Let's put it this way. After practicing for six years I went on

retreat with my teacher, the late Venerable Ia Kema, for five and a half weeks. And I was just finishing learning the Janus at that point. And then she started making me do insight practice in the same sittings. And it was life-transforming. When I came back from that five and a half weeks, my friends could see I was practice in the same sittings. And it was life transforming. When I came back from that five and a half weeks, my friends could see I was different, and I've been different ever since. The amount and depths of the insights I got

with a Johnically concentrated mind were mind blowing. So, and I've seen this happen with other students. I mean, I teach them the John's, then I force them to do their insight practice and they come in with insights that are actually life changing. I've done a terrible job of structuring this interview because I was so, I was so, I just so badly wanted

to get you to describe what the, the Janas are that I then I didn't ask you anything about who you are or your background. And so now you've raised a bunch of questions that I feel like I need to pursue while bearing in mind that we're only halfway through the genres. So can we do this? Can we walk in to a gum, you think?

Oh, sure. Okay. So bear with me. We'll get back to the stepwise progression down into the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth genres. But let me just take a break and ask you. So you are a former software engineer. Right, uh, in the Bay area, right? San Francisco Bay Area.

Okay. So how did you get into meditation in 1985? Right. How and why? I had screwed up my knee going running. I was seeing a massage therapist and she was a student of meditation. And she said eventually there's going to be this meditation retreat. You should go.

Well, since I was unemployed and had nothing else to do, all I went. I had been sort of interested in meditation. I had seen some friends over Christmas who were into meditation and so forth and they were saying you got to do that, you got to do this. So all I went and the retreat was a 10-day retreat down in the desert in Southern California with a German Jewish terravada, a named Ia Kema. Very interesting person who was known for teaching the Johnus, although she didn't speak about the Johnus very much at that time.

And I knew nothing about the Johnus. I just was trying to learn meditation and she was an incredibly good first meditation teacher. She gave me enough background so that when the retreat was over incredibly good first meditation teacher. She gave me enough background of so that when the retreat was over, I kept doing it. Did you enter the janas on that first retreat? The first time I entered the janas was three years later on a retreat with Ajahn Buddha Dasa in southern Thailand and I stumbled into the first jana there. So you weren't trying to get into the janas when you first... I didn't know what a jana was. Oh, okay. I was just trying to learn meditation. I was trying to follow more than one breath in a row. And how did you stumble into the janas then? And why isn't that happen to me?

Okay. So it's four days into this retreat with a jambuditasa, and it's very much focused on mindfulness of breathing. And I'm sitting on a little cushion and my lower back is really starting to bother me quite badly. And it's about 40 minutes into a 45-minute sitting. And I slide forward on the cushion and when I do I slip off the edge such that my sitz bones are now on the little thin mat on the concrete floor, and my tailbone is still on the cushion. This has the effect of putting my hips in exactly the right posture, so I don't have to use my muscles to hold my back upright.

And that produces this huge burst of pleasure, which is PT, and it's a company by Suka. So it was a simple adjustment of posture, and I stumbled in. Four days into a retreat, I was quite concentrated. 40 minutes into a 45-minute seating. I was quite concentrated. I shift. It becomes more pleasant, which I notice, and boom, first-gen arises. And you had no idea what it was. Oh, I had no idea. I had a slight hint. There was a Dutch woman on that retreat who had asked, what am I to do with all this joy that arises

when I meditate? And my first thought was, oh, this must be what that Dutch woman was talking about. And my second thought was, I'm going to sit like this every time I meditate, which I did until my knee gave out and I could no longer sit on the floor. I assume many people listening or having the same reaction that I'm having, which is, where's my joy?

This doesn't happen when I meditate. I'm mostly physical pain and planning, you know, my lunch or whether I need a haircut. Right. You don't need a haircut. Oh, thank you. Okay. The key is to sit in a comfortable upright posture, not one where you're fighting it all the time.

You can sit so it looks really good or you can sit so it works really good. It's great if both of those are the same posture. But for many people who have spent their lives sitting in these evil devices called chairs, they've screwed up their abilities at cross-legged on the floor. So you might have to adjust your sitting some way so that you're not in such pain, maybe use a lot of pillows or maybe you even resort to a chair. And then, like I said, concentrate for a long time on not being distracted and then find some pleasure.

That shift defining the pleasure is the trick. You probably haven't gone looking for pleasure when you were meditating. Well, actually, let me tell you this further takes us away from the progress of the genres, but that's okay. Who cares? It's my show. I was on a retreat in November, I think, and up at the Insight Meditation Society with Joseph Goldstein, and I was becoming incredibly neurotic about how horrible meditator I am. And I was reporting this to Joseph in one of our meetings and Joseph basically prescribed me the Buddhist equivalent of valium. He says, you know, slow down. Here's what I think you should do.

You know, maybe take a very comfortable seat, he recommended, right on the bridge of your nose. And just follow your breath as it comes in, but don't follow it up the nose, just feel it as it right there and then right as it comes back out. You don't have to follow it up, it should just be really easy. Just try to feel the sensations of the breath coming in and going out right at the base of your nose. So I did that.

I actually took him literally in this call back to something you just talked about. I actually took a more comfortable seat than I usually do. I went and sat on these fluffy chairs that they have on the second floor. Very good. And one of the residents halls, instead of sitting in these sometimes sort of hot house

atmosphere of the actual meditation hall. And it was like somebody, I did it. I think he meant for me to just do it for a few minutes at the beginning of each sip But I actually did it for a day and a half. That's all I did right and It was like somebody injected A vial of benzodiazepine into my soul. I mean I just felt I mean I was laughing and making up stupid lists of nicknames for my cats and what I was just, well, mostly this wasn't happening externally. I don't think anybody would have noticed, but I was at a great mood and much less neurotic

about my meditation practice. And I was in touch with a lot of physical feelings. That in fact, that in fact called back in some ways to experiences I had when I used to abuse drugs. I mean, it was actually not a dissimilar feeling. some ways to experience as I had when I used to abuse drugs. I mean, it was actually not a dissimilar feeling. So in my, in the neighborhood of John, or is that just what happens when you get slightly more

concentrated? Yes. Both. Yeah, this is what happens. This is where the mind likes to go. I'm just a hippie computer programmer. And yet, I can teach people to get into the John's. It's because human minds like to go that way if they get quiet.

It's nothing special about me. It's something special about our minds. You get quiet enough and you stop covering up the natural state of the mind, which is actually kind of blissful. And that's what happened to you. And if you can focus on that pleasure, you will go into the first jhana, most likely. Now, no guarantees. You have to come on a retreat and try it and see. But yeah, I'm gonna come on a retreat, you know.

You know, you're not, you're, you know, I have a problem, I'm gonna follow you around. Excellent, good. Yeah, the, we're not trying to do something unnatural. We're trying to stop doing something unnatural. We're trying to let the obvious, you know, clear blissful state of mind that we have shine forth. Normally we're busy covering it up with nicknames for the cats and what the ball said that was really stupid and everything else.

Yeah. I found naming the cats actually to be intensely pleasurable. It was not deliberate thinking it was just what was coming up naturally. It's different for me than rehearsing and arguing with my boss. Yes, exactly. And that sort of stuff is not going to be so counterproductive. If you get too wrapped up in the cats though, yeah. Yeah, you're worrying about their, you know, kidney function or whatever. That's different. Hey there listeners. While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast

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learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. So, one of the things you're saying to book though is, and you just talked about we're not trying to... ...dut, dot, dot, dot. If you try to hard in some ways ways actually that is counterproductive. Yeah. You actually I think you described as you have to let the John come find you. Right. That's

what we remember back when I was describing the first John as you said what do you do after you focus on the pleasure? I said do nothing else. Let the John come find you. But that is hard to do for us type A striver folks. I mean, I'm not a, I mean, you describe yourself as a hippie computer programmer, but it's a type A. Okay, so you're type A too, so that it's a little counterintuitive.

Oh, yeah, yeah. This is not easy. If you were easy, everybody be doing this. All right, so yeah, it takes some hard work. And so that's why you got to go on a retreat and you got to spend time working on your concentration. But I found I found speaking of a heart. Since that retreat, I was on with Joseph, you know, I, I, I meditate a couple hours a day now, which is, um, pain the butt, but I do it. Um, and I find that

when I have a good long time, so if I can, if I've got an hour, maybe an hour and 15 minutes to meditate, if I start with a couple of body scans and then just do this, you know, taking a comfortable seat at the, at the bridge of my nose, then is that the, what's the right term for this? Yeah, I'm not sure what the, what I'm, the opening. Right, right, where the sort of top of the lip area meets the bottom of the nose. If I do that, I actually, I'm not in the jonna as far as I know, but I'm experiencing warm washes of physical pleasure. Yeah, you're beginning to get some PT.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I'm on the roads of the Grand Canyon. Right. Yeah, yeah. It would be different Grand Canyon in this case. Yeah, you're North of Flagstaff.

So can you pop into the jonna at a jonna at any time i need to be able to generate access concentration right so if i sit down to meditate and i realize i didn't buy the ticket i needed to buy and oh i forgot to pay that bill and no i can't get there but if i can sit down and get to access concentration yeah so it's a matter of, can I generate access concentration? Are there few enough distractions in my life that I can sit everything aside? Then yeah, I can go in right away. So like you have a train later today after this interview, you're gonna catch your key. If you're sitting there in the train and it's reasonably

quiet in the train, can you get into the into the genus? Probably could, yeah, but I like to look out the window. Given how pleasant the genus are, why don't you want to spend all of your life there? There's more to life than just altered states of consciousness. One of the things you mentioned early on was people get addicted to the Johnns or so it is said. Well, it turns out- Well, there's a term, John a junkie. Yeah, right. It turns out that it's not a problem for Westerners.

We have our famous short attention span, right? And so, yeah, you get high when you meditate, it's fantastic. And you get high when you meditate and it's fantastic. And then it's like I've been there done that. What's next? Well, what's next is insight practice. So I'm actually far more interested in investigating reality than hanging out in blissful states and One of the things that neurosciences found is that whatever state of mind you have a tendency to hang out in becomes your default. So I have a pretty pleasant, you know, sort of natural place to hang out.

So I'm sitting there on the train looking out the window and it's just nice looking out the window. I mean, I just met you. You seem like a pretty relaxed dude. I will give you credit for that. But are you, so what is, what is technically the difference between genre practice and inside practice? Can you just describe that for listeners who might not know the difference?

So genre practice, basically you're trying to generate this indistractability to deeper and deeper levels by shifting your focus to different and increasingly more subtle objects. The rapture, glee, and joy are not particularly subtle. Once you get to contaminate subtle, quiet stillness, that's pretty subtle. The higher genres are even more subtle. And so as you're successfully sustaining your attention on each of these more and more subtle objects, you're increasing your level of concentration, your ability to not become distracted.

But that's all that's happening. The insight practice is an investigation of what's actually happening, looking at reality and seeing it in terms of its impermanent nature, the fact that nothing is going to give you lasting happiness and the fact that everything depends on other things. Nothing stands alone. And what I guess what I was trying to get is technically what would be different. So if I'm trying to get to the janas, I'm paying attention to my breath, but in most insight practices, I'm also just paying attention to my breath.

So what's the real difference? Okay. With the janas, you want to only pay attention to your breath. You don't want anything else to happen. In other words, if you start planning, you don't make a note of the planning. You just go back to the breath. Whereas in insight practice, if you get carried away, you might actually turn your attention to what is carrying you away.

You might find it useful to drop a label on whatever carry away planning. You will definitely find it useful to relax. Anytime you get distracted, there's probably been some tension that's been generated. So when you notice a distraction, relax and bring your attention back. But you're not investigating what's going on any further than perhaps putting a label on what the distraction was. Whereas if you're doing an insight practice, you're more oriented towards investigating reality in somewhere or another. Should we get back to the progression of the Johnus who, when we left off, we were in John number four. Which is actually a very good place to have made this shift because according to the discourses of the Buddha, John 4 seems to be sufficient. The other John's appear to be optional. If you can do it great,

if not, once you're at 4, yeah, it's fine. You've got enough indistractability that your insight practice is going to be well enhanced. Okay, so I'm glad I brilliantly made the switch then. So, what does one do to get from 4, which is a pretty subtle place to five and whatever that is. Right. So the fifth John has the name, the realm of infinite space. It starts to sound like Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah. It's pretty far out there. The names are simply labels for an experience that you're having that appears to be that you are experiencing infinite space. I'm rather doubtful you're experiencing infinite space.

You've just put your mind into a state so that what you perceive is a vast, empty space. The way to get there is, well, now it's going to sound kind of weird. All right. We're pretty deep into kind of weird territories. Let's go forward. Oh, no, no, we're not deep in that. All right. So you're in a place of quiet stillness for the fourth genre, all right? You may find that you've slumped over because it's such an energetically down state that you physically have slumped over. All's such an energetically down state that you physically have slumped over. Alright, so get your energy back up and then find something that you can imagine expanding

without limit. What my teacher told me was get in touch with the boundaries of my being and expand them to fill the room, the building, the retreat center, the town, and just keep expanding till I hit to horizon and then just keep going. Just stay focused on outward expansions. Stay at the edges of the expansion. If you can do this, eventually a vast empty space appears before you. When she told you, you actually see it. You actually see it. If you're a visual person, if you're auditory or kinesthetic, you may know it in some other way. Since I'm very visual, I see it. Now, when my teacher gave me those instructions,

my immediate reaction was, oh no, she's gone. New AG on me. But no, she hadn't. I went back because I, Akima, was not someone that you would want to go in and say, well, your instructions just didn't seem real. I wouldn't do it. It was like, okay, I'm going to do this to the best of my ability. So when I go back and tell her it didn't work, because I just don't believe it. And so I sat down and got up to the fourth genre. And then I started that expansion and expanded for maybe, I don't know, five minutes and boomed as huge space appeared. It was like I had arrived at the Grand Canyon. Only there was no bottom and there was no other side. It was bigger than the Grand Canyon. And it blew me away. It happened to be on my birthday, and I remember going up to I afterwards and told her I got into the fifth John

And it was one of the coolest birthday presents I'd ever had in my life And yeah, so this fast infy space appears What's really interesting is sometimes I run into people that used to do this as a kid They'd lay in their bed at night And then they would imagine the ceiling opening up, and then they would just drift out into the stars, bigger, bigger, and suddenly it became very, very real. And now, when I give them the instructions,

they wind up, oh, yeah, same place I once as a kid. Yeah. What comes after that? OK, so you just hang out, focused on this infinite space for 10, 15 minutes, and then you shift your attention from the space to your consciousness of the space, become conscious of your consciousness, become aware of your awareness. It's sort of shifting from out there turning back. If you do that, it feels like you become absorbed into the space,

and your mind now becomes as big as the space. What's the name of this, John? The realm of infinite consciousness. Right? So, the trick is to realize you couldn't be conscious of an infinite space with a limited consciousness. Your consciousness must be as big as the space. Become conscious of how big your consciousness is. And Bingo, suddenly your mind feels absolutely huge. You were right. this is pretty weird. Okay, so that's the sixth John, huh?

And what's the number seven? The realm of nothingness, or no thingness. So, after you've been in Infinite Consciousness for five, ten, fifteen minutes, what is the content of that consciousness? Well, it turns out there is not really any content. The sense of space is long gone. And there's nothing. And so you put your attention on the sense of nothing.

And yeah, the nothing sort of stabilizes and gets a bit bigger. Now you're focused on no thing. It's sort of like you go down into the basement and you hit the light switch and it doesn't work and you're trying to see what's down there and you can see there's nothing right in front of you. And as your eyes get a little more adjusted, there's nothing back there and there's nothing down here. Well, there's nothing down here at all. So now you're focused on nothing, no thing. Okay, that's number seven. And then how do you get to,

how are you getting between these? Well, to five, it's just the altering, the expansion. Right, right, right. And then six, altering from the space to your awareness of space, from to get to seven, from the consciousness to the content of the consciousness, and to eight.

The name of the eighth one is the realm of neither perception or non-perception. Perception is the poly word, or the English word we used to translate the poly word that refers to our ability to name or conceptualize things, Sonya. So it's a place that, it's a place that has no characteristics by which you can describe it. But when you're there, you know your mind is in a state that has no characteristics by which you can describe it.

It is like that Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis when he asked what is pornography? He says, I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. That's about the best description you could possibly get of the eighth John. You know it when you see it. It's actually fairly easy to find if you have a really good seventh John. By then you got a big nothing, right? Let the nothing collapse and come to rest in front of your face and see if your mind goes into a state

where you can't describe where you are, has no characteristics, but you can stay in the state that has no characteristics. Why? Okay, what do you do when you get to the eighth jhana and why is there no ninth John, or maybe there isn't we haven't found yet? What you do is you stay there for a while and then you come out and start doing your inside practice. All right, is there a ninth John, there is a state called the cessation of feeling and perception referred to as neurota, which just means cessation. That is a state of suspended animation. Okay? That is sometimes referred to as the 9th John. It's talked about in the discourses of the Buddha, but it's never called the 9th John. There are lots of other altered states of consciousness that

people find. When I go to teach a retreat almost invariably, I'm gonna get a new student come into their first interview and say, can I tell you about something happened to me? And they'll describe one of the Johnas, that's the most common, an out-of-body experience, which are more common than they thought they were, or something I never heard of,

that it's clearly a concentrated altered state, but is not one of the janas. This is not an antibody experience. It's like off the map, kind of. And no two people describing a non-jana non-altered state of conscious, uh, antibody experience described the same stuff, all right. They're all finding these other states. And I've even found one on my own. I refer to it as John a 7 and a half because I got to it from the seventh John. Okay, so less less listeners start to

jump to the conclusion that you're a crazy hippie computer programmer, which you may be. I am, which you okay, but you, so you may be out of your mind, but we do have some of the science that you referenced earlier, and we do have thousands of years of people describing these same experiences in the same sequence. Right. Which kind of blows my mind. What does that say about our mind that this is possible,

that these very specific experiences happen in this very specific order? Who designed this? Why is this happening? And how did we even find it in the first place? I think it was just like I found the first John in the first place. People stumbled into it. And then over time, they systematized it, taking the ones with the most gross, the least subtle objects

and putting those ahead of those with the increasingly subtle objects. And over time, people discovered, oh, yeah, it's possible to stumble into these states. In fact, it's even possible to learn to intentionally go into these states, put them in the order. So they weren't invented, they were discovered. But, but, but, I mean, they raised these questions about whether there is some designer or inventor, at least in my mind about why would this, why would we have the, the sort of interconnected rooms that appear to have some architect, why would our minds work in this way? That one we don't know.

We have more data that hasn't been analyzed, neuroscience data, and it would be great to get some analysis of this, but of course, this is not a high priority thing for the National Institute of Health, and they're not handing out grants for Johnna's. But yeah, it would be quite interesting to understand what's going on. My best guess is that they aren't the product of intentional evolution. In other words, evolution wasn't selecting

for these states. They're a side effect of evolution. OK. The fact that the lower sinus drain hole goes up instead of down, we didn't select for that. That's a leftover from the fact that we used to be animals that walked around with our faces down in the drain hole in the right place. So there are parts of our body, physical parts of our body, that we have that didn't get selected for there just the leftover from something else happening. And I'm guessing that that's what's going on with these John Xates, but I'm just guessing this is total speculation.

But again, they serve a useful purpose. They serve a useful purpose. So as I said from the beginning, this is a controversial topic, and not just because of the debate over whether this is a useless diversion or a useful tool to help you reach enlightenment. The other controversy, well, the couple of other controversies, one is that there's a claim, it's been around for thousands of years, that once you reach, I believe, the fourth of jonna, that you can actually develop superpowers. Right. You don't buy this. I did walk on water one time in Sweden. It was early December. I had ice skates on. But there are people alive today who I mean I've had conversations with my teacher Joseph

Goldstein about the fact that he had believes he had a teacher who was able to get into these generic states and perform miracles basically. Right. Like, walking on in the air or multiplying your body or reading people's minds and stuff out of the X-men basically. Right. And I'm just a bit skeptical of that. I haven't seen anybody walking

a water except that one time in Sweden. Now I can pass through walls by using a trick called a door and that's another one of the supernova powers not using a door I guess but yeah I just want I don't want it to be somebody who said that they saw somebody who said that they saw somebody who said that they saw somebody who said that. My uncle's brother-in-law's cousins first wife's aunt said. So you've spent a lot of time with the Johnis. You have not noticed any... You haven't developed what they call the divine ear where you can read other people's minds

or things like that. The one thing I've noticed is that my ESP, whatever that is, okay, ESP is a well-known phenomena. We don't know what happens. We don't know is they're actually picking up something from somebody's mind or just picking up subtle cues or just not being very good at probability, all right? But there's a phenomenon when I say ESP people listening, know that what I'm talking about.

It gets enhanced when I do the chanus. Now I don't know whether that means I pick up even more subtle cues, or whether there is something actually going on. What do you mean by the UresP gets enhanced? What does that actually mean? All right, in example, I was on a retreat. We had no dessert at all on this retreat ever.

And one day I left lunch and was walking back to my room, and I knew we were going to have dessert that night. And I had no why, and I went that night, and there was chocolate. Now. It could be a wild guess. It could be a wild guess. But I've had other things happen like that, and it happens more frequently while I'm on retreat practicing John's than it does in ordinary life, but it doesn't happen in a way that's reliable. In other words, I don't always know when we're having to

cert, okay. But these sort of things happen, and I actually mentioned this to my teacher,AKMA, and she laughed and said, yeah, we all noticed that. So whatever ESP is, whether it's an actual phenomena or just simply not being aware of picking up subtle cues or whatever, or just not knowing about probability, it gets enhanced with a well-concentrated mind, and multiple people have reported this. So I'll buy that one, although I won't make a claim as to whether there is such a thing as scientific ESP or whether it's just misreading what's going on. Here's the other controversy. You have been accused of teaching what's called John Light, L-I-T-E, because there are

those who believe that you can't access somebody like Schmoel like me could not access the janas in a 10-day retreat. I would actually have to go on retreat for months. Yes, exactly. This is because over time, the understanding of the states that constitutes the janas changed. You can actually see this in the literature. You can see it beginning to change in some of the discourses that were

composed after the Buddha's death. You can start to see a bit of change starting to happen there. You can see that by the time of the Abhidhamma, which was composed about 200 years after the Buddha's death, there was more change and the change was towards deeper concentration. You look at the commentaries from 800 years, 90 years after the Buddha, very, very deep states. Clearly, different states than what are described in the sutras of the Buddha. Teravat and Buddhism, however, looks more at the commentaries than the sutras of the Buddha. They wouldn't claim that, but by studying the sutras and the commentaries and what Taravaten Buddhism is saying, Taravaten Buddhism is mostly Commentarial Buddhism.

They're looking at the janas as described in the commentaries. These are eight additional states, different from the ones I described. So beyond the ninth, Johnna then? Right. So there's actually Johnna's 9 through 16. Actually, I have on my website a list of 38 states that people have used the word Johnna to describe. So there's actually 38 different Johnna's. This has been so interesting.

I'm so grateful to you. You had to really alter your schedule a little bit to make it in here to do this. I'm really happy to do it. I really appreciate it. The book is right concentration. The website is leigb.com. Leaby.com. Check it out. Go on a retreat with Lee, read his book, go for it, unless you think he's making it up. I'm inclined to believe he's not. Such a pleasure to have you in. Thank you again, appreciate it.

Thank you. One last word. Yes. Actually, it's two words. Go. Whenever you're practicing, keep in mind, relaxed diligence. That's what's necessary to do this practice most effectively, relaxed diligence. That's what's necessary to do this practice most effectively, relaxed diligence. I would say that that is what's needed to do anything effectively. You're smiling and nodding. Lee, thank you again, I really

appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you for having me on. Thanks as always to the producers of the show, Lauren, Efron Josh, co-hand Sarah Amos and Dan Silver. You can hit me on Twitter at Dan B. Harris anytime you like. If you liked the episode today and you want to hear more like it, you can subscribe to the podcast, rate it and leave a review. Thank you for that and we'll talk to you next week. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.

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