If you practice jhāna correctly according to the suttas, the force is always with you and it grows exponentially.

Brief explanation of the jhana battery charging analogy 

The suttas don't explicitly describe it that way, the jhana battery getting charged.

The battery is just my 21st century analogy.

But a skilled meditator, comparing the jhana similes in AN 5.28 will understand that's what's going on.

For example, someone whose baseline is 4th jhana, with their battery full, while doing jhana (in any posture) is not going to get the physical pleasure of sukha of second jhana (intense hydraulic force) or 3rd jhana's smooth sukha. Only if they've done a fair amount of jhana battery draining activity, like thinking about Dhamma too much, giving Dhamma talk, doing physical labor, will they be able to get to taste sukha, and only for the time it takes for the jhana battery to full charge up again. It's just like eating. If you're hungry and your body needs nutrients, you'll get sukha in the form of brain pleasure chemicals to encourage you to eat more. 

What is the force in the 4 jhanas?

MN 62 sutta links

MN 62 mahā-rāhul-ovāda

• (The) Greater Rāhula Admonishment
  • 11 ways of contemplating 5 aggregates, same as in SN 22.59 anatta-lakkhana
  • Sāriputta tells him to practice ānā-pānas-sati
  • 1. Earth-property
  • 2. Water-property
  • 3. Fire-property
  • 4. Wind-property
  • 5. Space-property
  • 1. Earth-tranquility meditation
  • 2. Water-tranquility meditation
  • 3. Fire-tranquility meditation
  • 4. Wind-tranquility meditation
  • 5. Space-tranquility meditation

...

4. Wind-property

“katamā ca, rāhula, vāyo-dhātu?	"{And} what, ******, (is the) wind-property?
vāyo-dhātu siyā ajjhattikā,	(the) wind-property may-be-either internal
siyā bāhirā.	or external.
katamā ca, rāhula, ajjhattikā vāyo-dhātu?	{And} what, ******, (is the) internal wind-property?
yaṃ ajjhattaṃ paccattaṃ	Anything internal, belonging to oneself,
vāyo vāyogataṃ upādinnaṃ,	that's wind, windy, & sustained:
seyyathidaṃ —	such-as-these:
uddhaṅgamā vātā,	up-going winds,
adhogamā vātā,	down-going winds,
kucchisayā vātā,	stomach winds,
koṭṭhāsayā vātā,	intestinal winds,
aṅgam-aṅgā-(a)nusārino vātā,	{winds that} {course through}-parts-[and more]-parts [of the body],
assāso passāso,	in-breathing (and) out-breathing,
iti yaṃ vā panaññampi kiñci ajjhattaṃ paccattaṃ	or anything else internal, within oneself,
vāyo vāyogataṃ upādinnaṃ —	that's wind, windy, & sustained:
ayaṃ vuccati, rāhula, ajjhattikā vāyo-dhātu.	This is called (the) internal wind-property.

That's a description of the naturally occurring winds (vāta) that occur in our biological function. The forces required to belch, hiccup, fart, pee, excrete, hold in our pee and our poo. What do you think adult diapers are for? When the force gets weak, we can't hold in our poo. When the force is strong, we can hold it in for hours, even in great pain. 

When the force is strong, for example young teenagers who are celibate, even skinny willowy young boys can perform great feats of strength, bench pressing, squatting impressive amounts of weight. In fact, if you compare the power ratio, for example a 120lb teenager bench pressing 150lb of weight, that's much stronger and more impressive  than an adult 200lb muscle bound Adonis benching 180lb of weight.

 

The force (vāta, wind property) is the one reliable marker of all 4 jhanas 

The 4 jhanas formula isn't an exact science. It's really meant to illustrate  stages of progress in samadhi development, and is not meant to be a quantitative delineation of how much and how intense piti and sukha are for the first 3 jhanas for example. While some meditators may experience rapture and pleasure that feels like a cosmic orgasm, others might just go through stages of very unusual comfort and pleasant sensation. It depends on the health condition of the meditator when they were learning jhana whether sukha  bodily pleasure is intense or mild. Same as the difference between whether you're starving or mildly hungry, that's how euphoric you'll feel when you eat.

Passaddhi (pacification, relaxation awakening factor) is the switch that turns on the force

First jhana's main goal is train your mind to think kusala thoughts that can induce piti, pamojja, a mental joy, and emotional thrill that will cause people to relax their body. Relaxing the body deeply is passadhi, and that turns the force on like flipping a switch. But at first, the force is unsteady, it waxes and wanes, ebbs and flows, and you have to keep feeding vitakka and vicara skillful thoughts to drive the piti and passadhi action. 

For Second jhana and beyond, you no longer need to feed the 7sb awakening factor samadhi engine with skillful thoughts to get the jhanic process started.

You know what the force feels like, and how to turn it on instantly.

You can just flip the switch any time by deeply relaxing (passadhi), in any posture, to turn on the force.

This is the undirected samadhi referred to in SN 47.10, and the attenuating of V&V in AN 8.63. 

flip the passadhi switch and force is instantly on. Jhana on demand.

It's jhana on demand. Force drives current. The current circulates through all the energy channels of the body which form interconnected loops. Some of the energy current is physical, blood, lymph, some of it is invisible bioelectric and magnetic energy movement. The stronger the current, the faster the battery charges, the faster your energetic loops of energy infrastructure is repaired and expanded. 

Force, vāta (wind property), is a tangible thing you can kinesthetically sense, feel. It's not an imaginary thing, if you really got passadhi and jhana going.

Second jhana, like the simile says in AN 5.28, feels like you're sitting in a lake on springs, and you can feel a strong force of current from the jets shooting up from the spring that feeds the lake.

Or a 21st century analagy, like you're sitting in a jacuzzi hot tub and the jets of water are shooting up your tailbone and spine with tangible force you can physically feel. 

Second jhana feels hydraulic like this, it's a simile but it literally feels just like that, those exact physical sensations. 

You get the pleasure chemicals, euphoria, that you do from the same brain chemicals you get from eating food when you're starving, or the orgasmic pleasure from sex. 

That's why meditators compare jhana to sex. It can feel like that because the same brain chemicals are in play. The difference is with sex, the euphoria is localized to a few parts of the body, and vital precious energy (which is required to make healthy living babies) is leaving your system permanently.

In contrast, with jhana, it's full body pervasion of orgasmic physical sensation and the precious internal energy is retained and recirculated everywhere. 

The force is driving the current of orgasmic pleasure through every cell in your body in those interconnected loops of energy channels, and it can last for hours.  

Third jhana, you realize that emotional excitement (pīti) is just an unnecessary energetic expenditure, so mentally you remain calm and only feel the exquisite sukha. Again, in all 4 jhanas, piti and sukha can vary greatly from person to person, from sit to sit, because you're body is always changing. But the one variable you control is passadhi. You relax, it flips the jhana switch on, force drives current of energy. In second jhana, this current felt hydraulic. In third jhana, your jhana batter has already been pretty charged up, so you don't feel current and strong vibration, just soft still water that has pleasurable sensation pervading everywhere.

Once again, force is a tangible thing you can sense. It's not a magical, imaginary, or an abstract concept. It's as tangible as when you start to do one pushup, and you can sense you have the energy to do 20 or 30 more, or whatever. 

Imperturbable 4th jhana 

It's still the same force as MN 62 vāta describing ordinary bodily functions, and the same force that you can flip the switch any time you pacify (passaddhi) the body in the four jhanas, except now the force is strong enough to do some unusual things. 

The worst problem with heterodox LBT "jhāna", especially Vism. and Ajahn Brahm

They redefine "jhana" into a disembodied frozen stupor fetishizing samatha, divorcing it from vipassana, making the sutta instructions on real jhāna incoherent. Essentially destroying the Buddha's instruction manual on jhana and replacing it with an unholy abomination that can only be successfully practiced by (on average) one in a million serious meditators, and only in the sitting posture.

The Buddha taught an embodied jhana with samatha and vipassana harmoniously integrated, skillful thoughts used properly and holistically with the noble eightfold path, seamlessly integrated with 4sp satipatthana, and designed to be practiced in all four postures, at all times. 

This is why, even those who are able to accomplish Vism. heterodox 'jhana', are unable to do 'jhana' once they leave that environment with noble silence and sitting meditation 6-10 hours a day. 

Those who practice the authentic sutta jhana whole heartedly, along with satipatthana applied all day every day, in every moment every posture, their jhana battery is constantly getting charged, and the force grows exponentially. Jhana for them works just as well in a silent retreat intensive environment as normal day to day life, because they're working on that skill all the time. 

Heterodox (LBT Theravada) "jhana" doesn't properly understand the force. You never hear them genuinely teach or talk about passaddhi (pacification awakening factor) other than giving it lip service listing the laundry list of awakening factors. They never learned to relax consciously, they only learn to subconciously relax, with most of their attention focused on forcefully ignoring the body and even skillful thoughts. Using the wrong kind of force that leads to mental and physical tension (and eventually poor mental health), which is why most meditators who try that system fail. Tension is the opposite of passadhi. If you redefine the Buddha's breath meditation instructions to ignore the body and ignore thoughts right out of the gate, there's no way you're going to develop the subtle sensitivity to the body to relax deeply enough to achieve pacification of the body (passaddhi sambojjhanga). 

The genuine force in jhana requires passadhi.  

related topics

🔗📝 notes on passadhi (pacification) and force

Jhāna-constipation ⛜🌊

 

Forum discussion

https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=41682&p=651769#p651769

mikenz66 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 3:44 pmJacuzzi Jhana certainly sounds enticing...
...

frankk:

It may be, at first, until you have better states.
The point is, the force, pressure, sensations experienced in the four jhanas are just as tangible and concrete as the jacuzzi jets forcing water to create sensations on your body.
It's not always going to feel like a jacuzzi, or a spring lake, but the point I'm trying to get across is whatever jhana you're in, you can always feel tangible, physically sensed force.
If you have real passaddhi, you'll feel force somewhere or everywhere in the body when you develop the sensitivity.
Passaddhi and force is instant on, once you've practiced it enough. Of course most people aren't going to get their highest quality of jhana instantly, but once you recognize and learn to tangibly feel jhanic force, you can get on the jhanic force train instantly and deepen it, and it is not limited by posture, only by tension. So of course lying down has the least tension, followed by sitting, standing, walking.

A strong second jhana feels much better than a jacuzzi, it literally can feel like a full body orgasm that can last for hours.
But that's dependent on the health condition of the body, not everyone is going to experience it that way.

But everyone who does jhana correctly will feel tangible forces at work, that you can feel and sense with the physical body, and that can be practiced and developed in all 4 postures.

DiamondNgXZ wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 4:12 am

frank k wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 4:04 am
A strong second jhana feels much better than a jacuzzi, it literally feels like a full body orgasm that can last for hours.

But is that an ideal way to experience meditation? Wouldn't one be tired of it? Or cannot be mindful due to too much joy? Does one has to abandon all guilt too to allow joy to keep on increasing? I assume the exponentially means the joy and happiness which increases. Also, what do you think calming the mental formations mean in the mindfulness of breathing? How to apply it? Sorry, limited internet, cannot go to your blog.

frankk:

I don't think people are really catching the main point, which is, the strength of the jhana symptoms for everyone is going to vary, it MAY be as strong as an orgasm, or MAY be extremely mild if their health is excellent and their energy channels open and in great condition. But the one reliable marker for 4 jhanas is passadhi samobojjhanga, when done correctly, one will feel tangible forces in the physical body instantly. If the force is strong enough to drive a current (of heat, electricity, gooey magnetic energy) that permeates the entire body, and it feels mentally and physically pleasurable, it's most likely somewhere on the spectrum of the first 3 jhanas.