I have a friend who's been meditating 2-3 hours a day for a few years now, and has somehow managed to never run into normal meditation knowledge at all. He'd never heard of Jhanas before!
So I read him descriptions of the Jhanas to see he'd encountered them independently 1/
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He related to some of the descriptions, but inconsistently. like first and second jhana he was like ??? never felt that, but I read third jhana and he was like oh yeah that sounds very familiar. overall he didn't find them to be much of a pattern match
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Not sure what this means, but it updates me slightly in the direction of "ppl who experience jhanas are doing so because they've been previously primed by hearing ppl describe jhanas'
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I'm not sure I personally count cause I did most of my own meditation while on psychedelics, but I have spent very many hours in bizarre states, most of them before hearing about jhanas, and I also do not find the jhanas to be a natural description of anything I've experienced.
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tho mebbe u gotta do very specific jhana meditation to experience them, and it's not just something that happens to anyone who stares at their own mind enough?
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er to clarify: I was under the impression jhanas are supposed to be a progression, but he claimed to have experienced something that the third jhana description sounded like, but not the first two; maybe he did independently discover them, but not in order?
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Do you think Bhuddism has some monopoly on the concept of meditation?
Also fuck me how middle-upper class can one possibly be to meditate for *hours* per day.
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he comes from low class, worked hard and intelligently in a blue collar field and retired early
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yea he should i feel like I'm listening to someone from a foreign country when he talks about meditation
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Strong practice is a necessary but not sufficient condition for jhanas and other "later" states!
Yes lots of people hit them by accident or even spontaneously, but it does depend on someone's type of practice, and sometimes you do have to know what you're looking for (piti)
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