My teacher Ayya Khema was asked this same question and she suggested asking those who dismiss or discourage jhānas why they do so since the jhānas appear in so many of the Buddha's discourses [over 300 suttas]. And then she speculated as to why. So I guess I can speculate as well.

During this course, we have looked at the jhānas as described in the suttas. That’s what I’ve been reading to you, discussing with you, giving you instructions on - or at least my understanding of what is described in the suttas.

As time progressed after the Buddha's death, the level of concentration necessary for an experience to be “a valid jhāna” kept increasing. You can see some increase in a couple of later suttas - there are two suttas [MN 43.19 & MN 111.4] where there is one-pointedness [ekaggatā] added to the description of the first jhāna. But both suttas are internally self-contradictory on that point - never mind.

By the time of the Abhidhamma, vitakka and vicāra are no longer “thinking and examining”, but “initial and sustained attention” to the meditation object. And one-pointedness is firmly established in the description of the first jhāna. So there was obviously an increase in concentration.

The commentarial literature started a little before the time they wrote down the Vinaya, the Sutta, and the Abhidhamma in the 1st century BCE. But the commentary writings about the jhānas are definitely somewhat later. There is a commentary called the Vimuttimagga from approximately the 1st or 2nd century. Clearly the concentration described there is more than in the Abhidhamma, but not as much as in the later Visuddhimagga which is from the 5th century. So the "understanding" of how much concentration you’ve got to have to make it a jhāna kept going up and up and up.

Now we come to modern times. Modern Theravada Buddhism is primarily Visuddhimagga Buddhism. They’re looking at the Visuddhimagga to tell us what the suttas say as opposed to just reading the suttas and doing what they say. Currently the hierarchy seems to be "Visuddhimagga, and oh yeah, we might look at the Abhidhamma because that goes into more detail, and oh yeah, it’s all the same as the suttas." But the commentaries and Abhidhamma clearly are not all the same as the suttas. There are numerous differences, not only in the jhānas, but in other important topics such as Dependent Origination and the Aggregates.

For example, in the Visuddhimagga it says, “[The] preliminary work is difficult for a beginner and only one in a hundred or a thousand can do it. The arousing of the nimitta is difficult for one who has done the preliminary work and only one in a hundred or a thousand can do it. To extend the nimitta when it has arisen and to reach absorption [first jhāna] is difficult and only one in a hundred or a thousand can do it." [Vsm XII.8]

If we take the most optimistic numbers, a hundred times a hundred times a hundred, that’s one in a million. So of people who come to meditation only one in a million can get to the first jhāna. But when we look at the suttas, everybody’s getting into the jhānas all over the place. These Visuddhimagga numbers don’t have to be taken literally, but it is quite clear that what is described in the Visuddhimagga is not readily available, in contrast to what's found in the suttas.

So now the first generation of our Western teachers go to Asia and want to learn to meditate. The Asian teachers maybe don’t even know the jhānas themselves. They know what’s in the Visuddhimagga. They are certainly not going to teach those jhānas to these hippies that have come over. They are going to teach them mindfulness of breathing, the body scan, Metta, those sorts of practices - excellent practices. So that’s what got brought back to the West. The jhānas were just dismissed, “Don’t waste your time. It’s too difficult. You’ll be wasting your time if you do that.” Or, “You’ll get addicted. They are so pleasurable you’ll get so addicted you’ll never do your insight practice.”

This is why they’ve been put, not on the back burner, but hidden behind the stove. It’s a mis-understanding of what the Buddha was actually teaching.

Luckily we have people like Ayya Khema and Thanissaro Bhikkhu and Bhante Gunaratana and a few others who look at the suttas and think, “You know, this stuff in the suttas is actually do-able.” And so they wind up teaching jhānas - and I’m in that lineage.

The "lost jhānas" are a combination of the understanding of the jhānas becoming so profoundly concentrated that almost nobody can do them, and the fact that Theravadan Buddhism is primarily Visuddhimagga Buddhism. So teachers who poo-poo the jhānas are not really looking at what the Buddha was teaching. They are looking at what was composed 800 years after the Buddha in a different culture. This has led to lots of confusion.

It’s really a shame. The jhānas clearly were a cornerstone of the Buddha’s teaching. They are right there in the heart of the Gradual Training and they are right there as Right Concentration in the Eightfold Path.

-- Leigh Brasington
-- 23 Jan 2025

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