Thursday, September 12, 2019

16APS question: Skillful ways to induce Rapture and Pleasure in meditation?

https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/20913/skillful-ways-to-induce-rapture-and-pleasure-in-meditation/35013#35013

The fifth and six steps in Ananpansati, talk about training ones' self to be sensitive to these feelings, how can a mediator do this and avoid the dangers of getting caught up in them?

Here are EBT (early buddhist text) sutta passages that explain how one produces piti/rapture, and the nearly synonymous mudita, pamojja (altruistic joy). http://lucid24.org/sted/7sb/4piti/book/index.html
Ajahn Lee's book "Keeping the breath in mind" is a classic, this is my personal favorite book on breath meditation.
His student, the famous B. Thanissaro also has an excellent book on breath meditation, "with each and every breath", I'd say the most complete and authentic EBT guide to breath meditation in existence.
(Just google those authors and titles for the various free ebook formats pdf, epub, etc)
Now if you're really serious about your spiritual practice, and you want to experience 2nd jhana and higher, with a very powerful piti (rapture) and pleasure (sukha), you're going to need to keep 8 precepts, celibacy, lots of noble silence, and at least 4 hours a day of quiet meditation (sitting or standing). That will charge up your jhana battery. Otherwise, living an ordinary worldly lifestyle, people have weak batteries and are constantly draining their batteries through sex, sensual pleasures, talking too much, and the pitisukha in meditation may be too weak to be felt as anything unusual.
That's the secret sauce that most teachers don't know or don't teach. Since monastics have to keep 8 precepts anyway, then that's just normal for them and no need to ever mention. But for lay people, you're never going to experience strong forceful piti sukha unless you nurture the battery and charge it up.

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