Predisposition and Talent for Concentration

Vince Fakhoury Horn speaks with Brian Newman about “nut job jhāna,” tracing Brian’s journey through intensive Pa-Auk Sayadaw concentration training, his eventual integration of Kenneth Folk’s modern spectrum-based approach, and the balance between deep absorption and daily life practice.

A Jhāna Community Retreat

Come join Vince & Brian on Retreat this coming January in Portugal.

💬 Transcript

Vince: Welcome everyone to this exciting special event here in the jhāna community. We’ve invited Brian Newman to join us today to talk about, in quotes, nut job jhāna. Of course, we’re using this sort of tongue-in-cheek term for really hardcore, deep jhāna training.

Our mutual teacher, Kenneth Folk, jokingly used that term on a retreat that we were both at. And it stuck, in terms of just, again, tongue-in-cheek. But Brian has that background. Brian’s trained in the Pa-Auk tradition, which is one of the most prestigious and hardcore of the jhāna traditions in Asia that I’m familiar with.

And they have some, you could say, really high standards with respect to what constitutes jhāna. I would love to jump into that with you, Brian, but first, before we get into your nut job jhāna days, I’m curious to start with a bit about how you initially got into this stuff.

Did you grow up around it? Did you have a moment where you learned about meditation or dharma? What was your way into this world?

Brian: Thanks for having me, Vince. It’s a great question. My origin story changes depending on my mood in the moment, so let’s see what I’ve got here.

I didn’t start practicing until I think I was 38. I’m 50 now, guys, so that’s a 12-year practice history. And the practice was associated with me becoming an executive coach. I was a salesperson, and I switched professions. I was switching to doing one-on-one work with people, and I had the idea that I realized very quickly I needed to be a better listener.

I’d like to be a better listener. And I had the idea that if I got real still, if I learned how to be really quiet, then I could probably listen to my clients better. And what happened was, I got real still, and I realized how insanely loud my mind was, even if I wasn’t talking. That was a real revelation, and my practice quickly changed from becoming a better listener to getting super fucking enlightened.

It became the interest. Is it okay if I say things like that?

Vince: Thanks.

Brian: Oh yeah, for me it’s fine. Yeah, please. Is that okay, guys? You’re looking for nut job jhāna, but I’m gonna give you a true dose if that’s what you’re into.

And so I, like many of us, I think—I don’t know what you guys did—I started with a Goenka retreat. Who doesn’t? It’s so accessible. It’s so free. It’s so there, right? So you go do your Goenka retreat, and then I went and did Reggie Ray Tibetan stuff. So I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m doing Goenka, and then I go do Reggie Ray in the Tibetan tradition, and I’m doing other retreats here and there.

And then, you know what, it was—I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I spent so much of my life based on one sentence I read in one book—but it was Daniel Ingram’s book, actually. It was Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, which I think is a great gift to the Dharma community, a wonderful book that is very inspiring.

Daniel is clearly a great practitioner. Anybody who’s read the book understands what a great practitioner he is. And I appreciated that. And then, at the beginning of the book, there’s one line that says, “If I had to do it over again, I would’ve started by attaining at least the first jhāna before I got into my vipassanā practice.”

And I’m like, if this dude says that, I’m just gonna take that at face value and do it. And that became my jhāna journey. So that was probably a year into meditation when I got that book introduced to me. The book had a huge impact.

And then I was actually working with Ron Crouch at the time—another of Kenneth’s quite well-known students and a great Dharma teacher. And I’m like, “Ron, I wanna do jhānas,” and he says, “You’re not gonna do them with me ‘cause that’s not my thing.”

And we agreed that I would go do something, I would go pursue that, in a very nice way. Like, you always want the teacher that says, “That’s not my thing.” That’s the best teacher ever—“It’s not my thing. Learn it from somebody else.”

So I started to look for the jhāna teachers, which, twelve years ago, there weren’t many. Right, Vince? There’s hardly anybody. So it’s like there’s Leigh Brasington, there’s Steven and Tina Rasmussen—Steven Snyder and Tina Rasmussen—there’s Shaila Catherine. Both those two are in the Pa-Auk tradition.

Leigh Brasington’s Ayya Khema—it’s a totally different genre—and frankly, I couldn’t find anybody else. And I’m living in Asia at the time, guys. I’ve lived in Asia most of my life. So I chose the hardcore route—read Steven and Tina’s book—and I’m like, if I’m gonna do the thing, I might as well do it as hardcore as possible.

And I started to do retreats. I did one retreat with them, to be clear, and then I worked with them for about a year. And then I found a nun in Asia, Sayalay Susīlā, who has a retreat center called Appamāda Vihārī, which means “dwelling in diligence” in Sanskrit—which tells you exactly what kind of practitioner and teacher she is.

There’s something very special about finding a hardcore nun in Asia to teach you the Dharma. This is the way. I think it’s really a beautiful experience. She’s not public—you can go look at her retreat center, and the first thing you’ll read is “Not open to any new students. No private retreats allowed.”

All this is negotiable, in case you guys are interested. So she’s setting up a lot of obstacles for you to even get there. Interesting, isn’t it? Very interesting. Very Asian.

And I go to the retreat center, and it’s just a magical place in Penang—on the island, in the jungle, on a mountain. I can’t even describe it. And there’s nobody there. You guys, this retreat hall could fit 300 people. There’s a Buddha statue the size of a house in there. It’s unbelievable.

And I’m the only one practicing. Sometimes there’d be rotating nuns who’d come through. So I probably went there five or six times over the course of a couple or three years.

And in February of 2018, she said, “Brian, it’s very clear to me that you have attained the third jhāna, and I think you’re probably bouncing around the fourth.” This is the first time ever anybody acknowledged me as attaining jhānas.

So, Sayalay Susīlā had spent ten years at the Mahasi Center under the Sayadaw teachings, under Mahasi. Then she became lead attendant for Pa-Auk Sayadaw, traveling with him around Asia. She spent like three years with him in Sri Lanka. She told me once, in confidence, that one of her big breakthroughs was just softening in Sri Lanka, attending to Pa-Auk Sayadaw in this primitive environment.

She was with him the whole time—the lady behind the curtain. So I’m getting the Pa-Auk Sayadaw teachings in their full form from her. And this was a really beautiful experience to me. It’s what I’d been looking for—the essence of it, I thought.

And then I met Kenneth, and Kenneth took a hatchet to what I had learned in the traditional way. You guys, I think maybe you have some experience or know of Kenneth—he’s an iconoclastic teacher—and he really opened up the jhāna for me in amazing ways. That is where my practice is today.

So maybe I could just rephrase that. I have very traditional teaching, specifically in the Pa-Auk lineage. I’ve been validated in that lineage. Their model of attaining jhāna is a three-hour timed sit—you make a resolution, you exit three hours later without looking at a watch. You naturally come out of the absorbed jhāna after three hours.

I’m sitting on the floor, guys. I’m not sitting in easy chairs like they do at a lot of retreat centers—on the cushion, straight back, three hours, come out in a moment. That’s how you get jhāna.

If you talk to Steven or Tina, that’s the way they did it. They went through all eight. They did all the kasinas for every single one. This is serious—a multi-month practice to complete the whole cycle.

And Sayalay Susīlā said to me, “I think you should teach.” So I’ve been validated by her to go ahead and teach this.

So I have a very traditional Pa-Auk background. I’m very appreciative of those models and understand them very well. And then I have a really sort of modern, postmodern view as well—about not needing to be totally absorbed. I have a much looser view about jhāna on the spectrum. I believe there’s a flavor of jhāna that can be very light, and then a really strong flavor—and different ways to get into those states.

Vince: Okay, cool. We should talk more about the spectrum, because that’s something we’ve been exploring.

Brian: Are you into the spectrum community?

Vince: (Laughs)

Brian: I’m all into the spectrum. Yeah. It’s only the spectrum. Anybody telling you it’s not is engaged in black-and-white thinking, which is unskillful. Like, what is black and white in the world? Jhāna versus not-jhāna is a really misguided way to approach it. Think—how about, how much jhāna?

Vince: Okay, cool. Before we switch into that, could you talk a little bit more about the training that you received with Sila—

Brian: Sayalay Susīlā. S-U-S-I-L-A.

Vince: Right. One side note here: very interestingly, a couple of my friends here in Asheville recently organized a retreat for college kids and invited her out to lead it. They were telling me, “We’ve got this nun who’s in the Pa-Auk tradition, she’s from Malaysia…” The more details I got, the more I realized this was your teacher.

Brian: Really?

Vince: Yeah, and I was shocked because of how you’ve talked about how inaccessible she is. I was like, “Wow.” And they were like, “Yeah, no one’s ever heard of her.” I said, “I have. My friend Brian’s trained with her.”

Brian: Oh, that’s impressive.

Vince: Anyway—did she come?

Brian: Yeah, she did. She came and led a really—I think it was a weeklong retreat—for American college kids.

Vince: Oh man.

Brian: It’s amazing. She’s an incredible teacher. We have a close relationship. I can be joking with her and I’ll say, “I don’t know, these three-hour sits are killing me, they’re brutal.” She’ll say, “I’ll come sit with you tomorrow.” I’d never seen her sit before—like a stone, forever. You guys, eight hours, I don’t know, six hours? She’s just not going to move. She’s sitting like a fucking stone. So impressive.

Vince: Okay, so how does one learn to sit like a stone? What was the training like on the way up to three hours of stoniness?

Brian: This is the primary dilemma, guys, because all these books about jhāna—and I’ll tell you, the instructions on how to get jhāna—it’s two words, right? There are all these books, but it’s two words: “focus here.” That’s it. You realize that’s the end of the practice instructions.

So then we just become sort of masturbatory about all the different ways we can “focus here,” but it’s constantly “focus here.”

Here’s what happens. Westerners go to the Pa-Auk monastery—Pa-Auk now has one in San Francisco or something. He doesn’t live in Burma anymore, maybe in Malaysia, I’m not sure if he’s alive actually—but they go to the Pa-Auk monastery and are told to focus here, which is the only instruction in jhāna: focus here, focus on the anāpāna spot (or region, more modernly, since it’s not just a spot but an area).

Then the Western practitioner, who’s been trained at perhaps Western retreat centers where it’s really okay to psychologize your practice, will come in with all the reasons why they can’t “focus here.” They’ll tell lots of stories—life stories, traumas, challenges, aspirations. The teacher listens kindly, says some nice things, and they go back and try to practice more.

So the Western practitioner takes a long time, is what I’m getting at. It doesn’t seem to go too smoothly, is what I hear in the Pa-Auk monastery.

I haven’t been to Burma, but the laypeople—the Burmese women, often the ones who have the time to practice—will come in, the teacher says, “Focus here,” and they just go. They don’t think about it, because they’re reverent to the teacher. They just focus here. And two weeks later, they’ve got jhāna. This is well known.

There’s something fascinating about just taking that simple instruction and doing the thing for a really long time.

So I’m super into getting jhāna fast, and I have lots of hacks. A certain kind of person can jack their way, hack their way, grind their way into jhāna. If you guys want to know that, I’ll talk about that all day. I wanted to know it. It’s good to know, right?

However, I would suggest to you that jhāna is much better slow—like some other things in life. Slow food is better than fast food, right, Vince?

Vince: Indeed it is.

Brian: Making love slowly is often better than fast. Playing the saxophone with a slow vibe is nicer than playing it fast, I think, in many cases. Isn’t it amazing there are still practices in the world that encourage patience?

If you remember—or if you’ve read—the Buddha predicted that the end of times, the end of the Dharma, would come when people stopped practicing jhāna. So I think it’s wonderful that we’re talking about it.

I think it’s wonderful that Vince is in fights with people on Twitter about nuances of jhāna, because that means we’re still talking about it—and that means we’re not at the end of time. I’m super delighted by this. I have no opinion on the arguments; I just think it’s interesting we’re talking about it.

Twelve years ago, we weren’t even talking about it. I’m stoked about that.

What’s the practice, what’s the right way to say it—what are they actually teaching you in the practice? I think you’ve got to fill it out for yourself.

So I’m going to get “focus here” from the Sayalay, and she’s really not going to engage with me much more than “focus here,” and then question me if I say anything.

I’ll give you an example. I went to a teacher once—actually Tina—and said, “Every time I sit down to sit, all I’m getting is spiders. I’m just getting spiders all the time—spider images. I’m trying to do jhāna, I’m just getting spiders.”

And there were spiders all over the retreat center—somewhere in the Pacific Northwest—crazy numbers of spiders. I didn’t love spiders at the time. I’ve changed my relationship because of that retreat.

And I’m talking about the spiders, and she says to me, “What’s the most important thing to you right now?” And I said, “The breath—and getting jhāna.” And she says, “Then why are you talking to me about spiders?”

That was good teaching, you guys. She just said, “Focus here. Stop talking about stuff. Focus here.”

So that’s the instruction, I think. We need to fill that out a little bit for somebody who’s interested.

If you’re on this call today, you care about this, I think, so you want to fill it out. I’d suggest you go read some other books. Read Richard Shankman’s book, which tells you how all the different teachers think about jhāna—that’s a great start.

Go to Leigh Brasington and learn the jhānic factor way in—that’s a great teaching, totally in the suttas, very sutta-based. And then all the other ways we can hack our way in. Kenneth has lots of hacks.

But primarily, Vince, I’d say the teaching I got was “focus here,” and when you don’t feel like focusing here, focus here more. That was basically it. It was very rigorous, down the line. If you can’t take it, fine, don’t come back.

Vince: Okay. So in that sense, that fits with the kind of traditional method of—it’s pretty simple and straightforward and direct. But sometimes maybe there’s a lack of exposition or opening up to all the different ways you can hack or grind, like you said.

Brian: Yeah. So it’s extremely powerful, but if it doesn’t work for someone, it can really not work.

Vince: Yeah.

Brian: Even the sutta-based instructions are better than “focus here,” right? So here’s what the sutta says: Find somewhere really quiet. Bring mindfulness to the fore. So this—we could have a whole session: what does it mean to bring mindfulness to the fore?

Interesting. Does he mean bring it to the tip of your nose—maybe it’s an anāpāna spot thing? Does he mean bring it to the mind—have awareness that you’re doing a mindful practice?

If you’ve looked at the suttas about the bathmaker making the ball of soap—that’s the simile of the jhāna—those are great practice instructions for the practitioner.

May I remind you that the fruits of the practice are only available to those who practice—roughly quoting Mahasi.

So if we haven’t done the practice, “focus here” is the best instruction ever. If we have done the practice, the similes of the bathmaker—making that weird ball of soap—suddenly start to make sense.

The jhānic factors become entry points. You can have pīti all day long—have you ever had pīti just watching a movie or listening to angelic voices of a choir? I’m getting it right now, talking about pīti.

Why couldn’t I just take that and use it to access jhāna? Because it’s a jhānic factor—I think I could. So we start to—what we’re looking for, guys, and this is a Kenneth teaching—we’re looking for handles.

You’ve got six senses—five senses plus the mind—and there are going to be handles that allow you to hold jhāna in many different ways.

We could go through each of the senses and talk about handles, but let me just give you an example from the auditory sense—the ear sense.

Many people, not all, will get a ringing in the ears that’s associated with high concentration, and that’s called the nāda. Are you guys aware of that? It’s like the sound of the universe, sometimes said to be.

Does anybody get that—a ringing in your ears? You might not even notice. It’s very subtle. It’s said to be the cosmological sound of the universe—or it could just be the sound you hear internally when you get super concentrated.

So if I can get a sense of the nāda and there’s a jhānic factor arising, I know where to put my eyes, and I’m good at following the breath.

Ajahn Chah said he could enter jhāna in one breath. I suggest you can enter jhāna in one moment. You don’t need to—you can just go in, you can just drop in.

I’m saying this sort of nonchalantly only because I met Kenneth Folk some five years ago, and it’s true that you can only go in—but he was the person who made that a possibility for me, by opening the idea of that up, as did, in his own way, Ajahn Chah saying you could enter in one breath. That seemed revolutionary at the time.

Vince: That’s interesting. I never heard the Ajahn Chah quote on entering jhāna through the breath. But his background—a lot of people don’t know—he did super hardcore jhāna training and vipassanā-jhāna training before he met his teacher, Ajahn Mun, of course, who was like, “Let go of the states,” berated him for being in jhāna, right?

Brian: Yeah, which was a good advanced teaching.

Vince: But—

Brian: So, Ram Dass used to enter jhāna when he was with Babaji in India, and it’s talked about in Grist for the Mill, which is a wonderful Dharma book. And Babaji would see him super concentrated and he’d come up to him and say, “Hey, Ram Dass, how much money you make?”

He would deliberately break his concentration, to teach him about not being stuck in those concentrated states.

Vince: That’s lovely. Okay, so Brian—when you stopped intensively working on the Pa-Auk jhāna program, you said there were a few years when you were going on retreats and working hardcore on that project. Where did you leave that training—in terms of what you felt you’d learned or accomplished, or however you’d like to talk about it?

Brian: Yeah. My Dharma path has been a lot about trying to attain things I didn’t have—and then not being so impressed when I attained them. Does anybody have that experience?

I think this is a really good experience to have, guys, because it allows it all to fall away—and we become immune from states.

So the pinnacle of my nut job jhāna practice was probably when I checked into an Airbnb in Hong Kong and did a two-week solo. It was on an island actually, not in Hong Kong proper, and it was a super crappy, disgusting Airbnb—150 square feet total. I hadn’t vetted it first, and I brought enough food for two weeks.

I decided I wasn’t going to leave this 150-square-foot place for two weeks. And I didn’t. Basically, I wasn’t going to leave until I got jhāna.

So it was two weeks, but I was willing to extend it. I was just going to go for it. And I think I should have taken a picture—around day five, I started putting writings up on the wall. So I’d gone full-on mad person now—if the police came, it’s a crime scene.

And I didn’t bring much paper, so I’ve got paper towel tubes and stuff I’m writing on, and all I write is “focus here.” I put it everywhere I could possibly see—including the shower, you guys. It says “focus here.”

One of the areas you’re going to lose your concentration is in the shower and eating. So we learn, if we’re serious jhāna practitioners, you never let the pot stop boiling.

So really slow eating becomes a practice—maintaining the nimitta if you have it, or the awareness of the breath. And the shower’s a tough one—try washing yourself while maintaining jhāna. So: in the shower, “focus here.”

Around day 12, I had a massive breakdown—who wouldn’t? I actually left in the middle of the night and went down to the beach and cried for three hours. Then I finished the retreat out and said, “I’m never going to do that again.”

It was so much suffering to be free of suffering—which is a Dharma dilemma, isn’t it?

Around this time, I was really fortunate to have met Kenneth. The first thing Kenneth said to me was, “Don’t take this stuff so preciously. Let me show you how I can go through the eight jhānas in two minutes.”

I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “If you’ve been there once, you can just do it again right now. Just remember.”

That really loosened up the practice.

Now, I continued to go see the nuns. I asked Kenneth, “What should I say to her?” and he said, “Don’t tell her anything. Just say, ‘I’m here to learn, please teach me.’” That was great advice.

So I kept getting “focus here” from her and “magic” from Kenneth—and that duet really worked for me.

What ended up happening from Kenneth’s teaching was, he taught me eye postures. I think that’s the hack. If you’re able to bring your eyes—the jhāna one, two, three, or four—there are distinct eye postures (drishti, it’s called in Sanskrit). I think that’s the thing that gets us into jhāna quicker than anything else.

And, guys, just a general suggestion—it’s worthwhile to pay attention to where your eyes are in any practice of meditation.

If you’ve ever done Mahāmudrā, where do your eyes go when you do it? That’s interesting. Where are the monks’ eyes when they’re doing open-eye Dzogchen? You can take a look.

Very interesting what’s happening with eyes. There are some hidden teachings there, I think.

I mentioned to Sayalay Susīlā about eye postures once—against my better judgment—and she said, “You’re looking with your eyes.” Because she wants an internal drishti. She doesn’t want a real one.

And I said, “Yeah, I’m looking with my eyes.” And she said, “If you’re already doing it, keep doing it.” That seemed like an interesting way to respond.

So I felt Kenneth was really onto something there when she validated that.

Kenneth really helped me make things quicker so I didn’t have to sit long. I would sit like—daily life, three hours to start my day, for years. Then I’d sit an hour at night.

That’s how you maintain jhāna in daily life. I probably would have to do an hour and a half to two in the morning and thirty minutes to an hour later in the day.

With that practice, I could enter any jhāna on the Tokyo subway in rush hour if I was sitting down. That’s where I got with the practice.

So—what else do you need to do? At that point, I didn’t need to do anything else. I’d had it. I realized that there were two people in the world who cared—my teacher Kenneth and my friend Vince.

And I wasn’t really impressing anybody. My wife didn’t care, my friends didn’t care, nobody else cared. So it really loosened me up.

And when I got loose around it, I started to have some fun with it. My jhāna now is much more like playing the saxophone. It’s real gentle.

If there’s a nimitta, I’ll go with it, but I don’t worry about it. So it’s very—I’m going to call it opportunistic jhāna, where I’m not so rigorous.

Preparing to talk to you guys today, I wanted to dust off the skills, so I’ve spent the past couple weeks practicing pretty rigorous jhāna. It’s fascinating to do that—how fun it is, and how much it impacts my life.

I notice that I sit much quieter. My yoga practice is really different, just by doing a little jhāna practice before that.

Does that answer the question, Vince? I might have gone on a tangent.

Vince: Yeah, no—really interesting. What you were saying about ramping up your jhāna practice recently flashed me back to the last retreat I did—a jhāna retreat with Phillip Moffitt.

Right after that, I had a Rolfing session—where they massage the fascia—and it was shocking how much more pliable my body was after sitting on my ass for ten days breathing.

Even the Rolfer was like, “Holy crap, this is a lot different than our normal sessions.”

That really showed me the power of jhāna—like hard jhāna.

Brian: Yeah, and what you said is so interesting, because what’s the end game here, guys? Nobody ever said the end game was to get jhāna. What’s the end game?

The Buddha wants us to have a mind that is pliant and malleable—that’s what he said.

So if we have a triangle where first jhāna is the bottom layer, second is above that, and you get nirodha somewhere at the top—the peak of the triangle is a mind that is malleable and pliant.

Which is interesting, because that’s not quite what an absorbed jhānic mind is. The absorbed jhānic mind is super one-pointed—it can burn a hole through things, like a laser.

And I really lived in that dichotomy for a while. I had to make a life choice: which do I like better?

I like a pliant and malleable mind more than I like a laser-focused pointer.

I can see tremendous value in that. It’s great—for my golf game, if I want to putt, turn on the jhāna mind, great. Archery—wonderful.

If I need to sit down and plan a class I’m going to teach, I need four hours of focused concentration—no problem anymore.

But it’s much nicer to play the saxophone, I’d say—more in line with where I’m at.

Also, when you get something—you know how it goes—once you’ve got the call, you can hang up the phone. Isn’t that what somebody famous said?

Vince: That was Ram Dass, no?

Brian: Was that Ram Dass? Once you’ve got the call, yeah—you can hang up the phone.

Vince: Yeah. That’s cool. Makes sense. So you had this period where you were training intensively—and what I find really interesting about your description is what it took you to maintain that type of access in modern life.

Brian: We’re talking about that. People—yeah, no one’s—

Vince: I’ve never heard—

Brian: Wife goes to the bathroom at the restaurant—I’m going to be in jhāna. I’m waiting in a line at the grocery store—I’m going to be in jhāna. Crowded Tokyo subway—I’m going to be waiting for a client meeting in a corporate lobby—I’m going to be in jhāna.

That’s how I was living my life.

Vince: So you were living in a way that would keep you from losing access to that subtle level of concentrated awareness.

Brian: To go into the seventh jhāna while waiting in line at the post office—it’s no easy feat. That’s not meant to be egotistical.

It’s super cool to be able to play the drums. It’s super cool to do aikido. It’s super cool to cook Vietnamese food. And it’s super cool to go into seventh jhāna in the post office.

We all have our things we’re into. It’s just another fun thing to figure out in one’s life, for those who are interested.

Vince: Nicely spoken. Like a true lifelong learner.

You’ve mentioned the term nimitta a number of times, and I know probably everyone here is familiar, but for those who might not be—could you talk about what the nimitta is in the context of Pa-Auk training?

Brian: Yeah, sure. So, in the tradition, the nimitta is a sign—I believe nimitta means “sign”—and it’s something that arises in the mind through concentration.

In the Pa-Auk tradition, it’s ānāpānasati leading to the nimitta, and then one takes the nimitta as the object, which is interesting, right? Because you might wonder, why would you move away from the thing that got you there in the first place—the breath—and switch to something else? That’s a really interesting question.

Some traditions say don’t do that. Ayya Khema, my understanding is, said that was a distraction and one shouldn’t look at the nimitta.

Now it doesn’t matter—I’ll talk more about the nimitta in a second—but it doesn’t matter because a nimitta is going to arise.

Here’s what happens: in my experience, the nimitta arises—it’s a very exciting moment when it arises for the first time, and one wants to look at it, because this is the best thing we’re trying to get.

And the nimitta is squirrely. It always goes away when you look at it. So it doesn’t really matter whether you choose to look at it or not; if it happens for you—and not everybody is prone to getting it—then one will become absorbed in it, not by looking at it but by continuing the ānāpānasati practice that you were doing before.

Let me flesh out the nimitta a little bit more. It doesn’t happen for everybody, and the Pa-Auk tradition acknowledges this. There’s a separate path for those who aren’t predisposed to getting the nimitta, which I think is wonderful—isn’t it nice to have an alternative?

The alternative path is, you’re going to work on the four elements, and you’re going to do vipassanā using the four elements as your framework.

So instead of saying, “pressure in my shoulder” or “my elbow is resting on the chair,” you say “earth element,” because that’s earth. Then the wind element would be the pressure.

This is very interesting and shamanistic. So they want you to do four elements—you do that a ton until the body dissolves—and that’s enough concentration to start vipassanā practice, which is meant to get you enlightened.

Pa-Auk tradition is not about getting jhāna; it’s about getting enlightened. He just wants you to get all the jhānas super great, then bring that into vipassanā. His whole game is getting enlightened.

So much so that, if I’m not mistaken, in that tradition you have to revoke the Bodhisattva vow so that you can get enlightened.

I’ve had teachers who were asked to revoke their Bodhisattva vow so they could progress in his tradition—and they declined because they didn’t want to revoke it. Super interesting. Also tells us how these rigorous traditions differ from Mahāyāna and so on.

What else is not really talked about in the nimitta? Traditionally it’s considered a bright white light—like someone turned the lights on, headlights shining in your face.

That’s not true for everybody, though. Everyone can have different nimittas—reverse nimittas, black with a white ring around it, for example, not rare. And then there are just “signs.”

Probably the most concentrated I’ve ever been—way deep into a long solo in Penang—I was getting Buddha-head nimittas, spinning skull nimittas, upside-down Buddha-head nimittas—wild stuff. I could basically take any of those things as an object and use them.

I don’t know other traditions well enough to know what would happen, but the act of absorption is the nimitta getting bigger and closer, then a sense of being sucked into it. That’s absorption in the tradition.

And I think, Vince—you can see if you can validate this—I think if you’ve been absorbed, you know it. I don’t think it’s one of those things like, “Maybe I’m a stream-enterer, maybe that was A&P.”

I think if you’ve been absorbed—you know it.

Vince: Yeah, definitely.

Brian: What else about the nimitta? It’s very frustrating when it’s not arising and you’ve been told that’s the thing that’ll get you to jhāna. So baked into that practice is real frustration.

My first retreat with Tina and Steve—it was all about the nimitta.

So I just basically sat for eleven days not getting it and freaking out because I was a jhāna failure. I only learned later that not everybody gets the nimitta.

I’m fortunate that it arises for me—it’s wonderful to be absorbed into that.

Vince: This is a really interesting conversation, because for me, I don’t get nimitta—or not often. My very earliest practice years, there was a lot of light and visual stuff, then it all died down and didn’t arise again.

Even on very long retreats. So for me, I’m not super into the nimitta—vipassanā was more my way into concentration.

I would’ve loved the element practice, I think. But when I was on retreat with Jack Kornfield, I remember talking to him about the Pa-Auk tradition, and he suggested that probably only about 10% of people who went on those retreats—Americans, in this case—would even be able to get into Pa-Auk jhāna one.

So they would have the capability or body-mind fit for that model.

What do you think of that statement?

Brian: It’s so disempowering—it’s painful, isn’t it? Steven and Tina told me that I think they were on a one-month retreat with Pa-Auk the first time he came to the U.S.—and nobody else got jhāna on that retreat except for them. Which is wildly disempowering.

But I do think there are predispositions, Vince—and guys—it’s an open question.

I have a sense that maybe I’m just prone to concentrated states in general as a human being. I’ve done martial arts from an early age. I’m a black belt in Japanese archery, which is very single-pointed.

I’ve done three hours of yoga every day for ten years. So I’m doing lots of things that support concentration.

I’m not sure if it’s predisposition or if I developed it—but like anything in life, some of us have talents in some areas and others don’t. Which leads us to the wonderful truth that dry or wet both seem to work.

Vince: Okay, yeah—this is interesting. The best analogy here is high-performance sports.

I was an amateur cross-country track runner before I got old and became a parent. And I remember competing at the state level—you had to prove yourself in multiple races before that. You don’t just show up to the state championships and say, “I’m ready.”

So that’s something that seems different with the Olympic-level jhāna versus Olympic-level anything else. There’s more of a filter.

Brian: It calls to mind a couple of stories that are so on point with that.

I had a teacher interview once—the teacher said to me, “I can look around this retreat center and tell you who will ever get jhāna and who won’t. And Brian, you will.”

This was helpful for me—not so much for everyone else—but he’d been doing the practice for thirty years. He could tell.

And the first time I met Sayalay Susīlā, I remember vividly, I was in the kitchen of the retreat center and she comes up to me and says—the first words out of her mouth—“I can see you have very strong past-life pāramīs.”

The Western world isn’t unapologetically Buddhist-cosmology like that, but if you believe in karma, then maybe I’ve had some great past-life stuff going on.

She literally said, “You’re going to work on the light kasina, because that’s the fastest way to get jhāna, and fast is better.”

I said, “Okay.” Isn’t that great—to meet a teacher so rooted in the tradition?

In the suttas, the Buddha chose a red sapphire for a jeweler to concentrate on. Kenneth’s got a story—if you want to get concentrated, take a cereal bowl, set it on a table, and look at it every day for an hour.

There’s something special about finding an Asian teacher still in that model—they’ll say, “This is the best object for you. You probably did this in a past life. So do more of that.”

I’m not saying true or false—it’s just wonderful to hear it.

And, Vince, it does seem like there’s a quality of amateur versus pro.

Vince: Yeah, absolutely. Even within professional levels, there are distinctions—amateur pros versus Tiger Woods or Caitlin Clark.

This isn’t talked about much because most meditation conversations are broader—people just trying to maintain daily practice. We’re not professional jhāna practitioners, most of us.

But it’s useful to acknowledge that professional levels exist.

Brian: Right. And jhāna isn’t a hidden teaching—it’s right there in the five masteries: advert, enter, abide, exit, reflect.

That’s what I’d do next after “focus here,” because that fills out the whole practice. It starts with “May the mind incline to the first jhāna.” At the end we say, “Did the mind incline to the first jhāna?”

What a great practice.

And how many jhāna practitioners are doing that? If they’re not, they’re not opening up to mastery—it’s right there in the suttas.

Vince: Yeah, clearly this is what it takes to be a master.

Brian: Such a good model. And it’s interesting to consider that alongside what you mentioned—jhāna on the spectrum—because presumably you can attain that mastery at light, deep, or ultra-deep levels.

Vince: Absolutely.

Brian: My criteria lately is: did I have the flavor of jhāna?

Here’s a Kenneth story. Someone gives you a glass of clear liquid and adds a tiny bit of super-concentrated strawberry essence that has no color. They give you the glass and say, “Drink it.” You drink it. They ask, “What does it taste like?” You say, “It’s strawberry.”

It’s always strawberry. Doesn’t matter how much—it doesn’t have to be red or have actual strawberries to taste like strawberry.

So that’s my barometer now: did I have that quality? Because I know if the quality’s there, it’s just a ball rolling down the hill, gathering speed. That’s what jhāna is.

If I have longer to let that quality manifest, it’ll happen. If I only have thirty minutes this morning—good enough with just a taste, a little tingling on the back of the neck, a little bliss in the lower region. Sounds good to me.

Vince: Now, your earlier question about entering jhāna with the nimitta—how that’s very obvious—I’d say that rings true to me at the moderately deep or deeper levels.

But the light jhāna doesn’t have that quality for me. It’s not even close.

Brian: Not even close for me.

Vince: Yeah.

Brian: I think there’s a fine line between really deep jhāna practice and absorptions. What’s the difference? Someone tell me the difference between a long fruition, eighth jhāna perception/non-perception, and a good nirodha.

Maybe Daniel Ingram will parse that for us someday. Nobody really knows.

So basically, the way my practice concluded—or at least settled—was practicing one by one as they occurred, working up and down, vipassanizing the jhānas.

Every time I’d do this and reach the later stages, I’d be gone—not just absorbed, gone—for significant periods. And it happened often enough that I became clear about coming out—“Oh, auditory formations just kicked in, mind just came back online.”

It was like nirodha, pretty much. But maybe that’s perception/non-perception, maybe a super-long fruition. It doesn’t matter. I was gone for a long time. It seemed good.

Maybe it’s my personality—I don’t have the desire to parse those states so much.

I’m comfortable calling that the super high-end Pa-Auk tradition.

A teacher once told me—I asked, “How long does it take you to get to jhāna?” He said, “Two to three days on retreat, maybe more.”

I vividly remember that. I didn’t love it—I wanted access all the time. But to his credit, he was saying, “That’s how long it takes me to get a massive nimitta, get absorbed, sit for three hours, and demerge without a prompt.”

That’s amazing—for two or three days. I don’t know if I could get up to that level in just two or three days of practice.

Vince: Yeah, I heard the same thing—someone asked her how long it would take to power up to that level of jhāna where you can be absorbed for days, and she said, “Yeah, a few days.”

Brian: I totally appreciate that now. Then I was dismissive—“He’s defining jhāna too hard.” But now I see—that’s how long it takes to get that.

How long does it take to get a light jhānic flavor? One moment—less than a breath.

Vince: Cool. Okay, great. This brings nuance to the jhāna spectrum. The deeper end sounds attainable but requires lots of daily practice—multiple hours a day.

Brian: That’s my sense, and I’ve heard that echoed. I remember hearing Leigh Brasington say you need four hours a day or so.

Vince: Yeah, but it’s not like ten minutes.

Brian: Basically, for me, it’s the nimitta. When you take the pot off the boiling water, it stops boiling.

So in the classical Thai Theravāda tradition, they talk about guarding the sign—guarding the nimitta—like it’s the most precious thing. You never let it go.

That’s why I had to maintain such a long daily practice—so whenever I looked, I could find the nimitta.

It was frustrating to rebuild it if I lost it. So I tried to maintain it—but honestly, it’s not sustainable in daily life.

Here’s how that plays out in relationships: I’d be sitting there in jhāna at dinner with my wife, and she’d say, “Stop meditating.” And I’d be like, “Oh, you caught me.” I was completely tranced out, not even with her.

Vince: Yeah, I could see that being a problem.

Okay, so that’s an interesting statement—is it even possible to maintain ultra-deep jhāna in modern life?

Brian: Answer is yes—but at the cost of life. Yes, with significant practice—and being careful.

I’ve had—really crazy—you guys have had big experiences, I’m sure—it’s like being stuck in a third-jhānic state. Has that ever happened to you, Vince?

The world is super wacky. Trying to have a client meeting while being stuck there—not skillful. Quite difficult.

It has a direct impact on daily life.

Have you guys talked about correlating stages of insight with jhāna?

Vince: I think we’ve talked about it a little bit—that you can look at both the samatha-jhānas and vipassanā-jhānas as two different ways of looking at jhāna.

Brian: Yeah. Third jhāna for me sits in the whole dukkha-ñāṇa spectrum. Then the second and the first would be pre-dissolution. So third jhāna is dissolution and onwards, everything before that would be first and second.

Vince: Yeah, I was gonna say I feel like I spend about 50% or more of my time in third jhāna.

Brian: (Laughs) Yeah. So it’s an interesting question. When you—if we play with eye postures, or just notice—where do your eyes want to go when you close them?

Sometimes the anāpāna spot is comfortable; sometimes it’s super uncomfortable, maybe because we’re abiding in a dukkha-ñāṇa.

My position on that is: take the easy one. What jhāna do you want? If third is sitting there for you, take third, work down to first, then back up—play a little.

If I’m grinding away at first, like I was this morning—hilariously—I literally cracked up after twenty minutes. I was like, “Wow, it’s literally impossible to get first jhāna right now.”

But if I’d tried the others, I’m sure they would’ve been accessible. I was trying to make a point about how good I was—not skillful. It was a great comeuppance.

Vince: Yeah, Rob Burbea talks about that as well—in his jhāna retreat he said if you can’t get pīti going and access through the first, maybe the fourth is more accessible. Come in through the fourth, then explore the spectrum.

Brian: Rob Burbea—may he rest in peace—a wonderful Dharma teacher. What was the line he had about that? “Don’t control the breath”? Ānāpāna is all about letting go of the breath—notice it being long or short, count the breath, don’t control it.

Burbea said, “Who said don’t control the breath? Do whatever you want. Breathe well.”

He encouraged using the breath deliberately to provoke pleasant sensations in the body. Seems skillful to me. If you get some sukha, you’ll easily fall into jhāna.

He was totally iconoclastic—it’s not really spoken about how much of an iconoclast he was. He was so out there with some of the stuff he said—wonderful, helpful, what?

Vince: Yeah. It helped that he came up within the insight tradition and then became more samatha-oriented over time, so he maintained one foot in the institution but also went beyond it.

Brian: Totally.

Vince: Yeah. Thanks for mentioning him.

So anything else you want to say before we open it up for questions?

Brian: No, I think that’s enough. I’d love to hear from other people.

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