Neurobiology of Reward in Jhāna

In this talk jhāna teacher Leigh Brasington draws on teachings from his teacher Ayya Khema, offering a clear, practice-based guide to entering the first jhāna, a meditative state of joyful concentration described in early Buddhist texts.

A Jhāna Retreat

If this sounds like your jam, consider joining Vince Fakhoury Horn & Brian Newman for The Flavors of Jhāna retreat, this coming January in Portugal.

💬 Transcript

Leigh Brasington: Very nice to be here, I appreciate the invitation. I always like talking about the jhānas—very interesting topic. So what I’m going to do today is share the basic instructions for how to enter the jhānas as I teach them. I learned them from Ayya Khema. Actually, I stumbled into the first one when I was on retreat with Ajahn Buddhadasa in Southern Thailand. I didn’t know it was a jhāna. They told me I was experiencing pīti. I knew I liked it. It changed my practice from something I knew I should do to something I wanted to do. Just the pleasure of it—yeah, I’m a greed type—okay, here’s a nice source of pleasure.

The jhānas are eight altered states of consciousness. Actually, in the suttas there are four jhānas and four immaterial states, and it’s not until much later that they’re referred to as the eight jhānas. That’s convenient if you want to talk about the four immaterial states and the four jhānas at the same time, but they’re definitely different in the suttas. We do find many suttas where there are the first four jhānas and then three or four of the immaterial states, so it’s a pattern that makes a lot of sense.

Most of the Buddhist teachings are in three categories: sīla, samādhi, paññā—ethics, concentration, wisdom. Sīla is morality, keeping the precepts. Samādhi is usually translated as concentration, but I actually prefer “indistractibility.” Concentration’s got that furrowed-brow thing—people try too hard and it doesn’t work. That’s one problem with teaching jhānas.

I give students two warnings at the beginning of a retreat. First: if you have expectations, you’re in trouble. Expectation is wanting—the first hindrance. Over and over again the Buddha talks about the abandoning of the hindrances as a prerequisite for entering the jhānas. The other warning is that if you start fooling with concentration and you have any unresolved issues, they might come up. Hopefully none of you have unresolved psychological issues—but yeah, seems to be a problem for humans.

Then paññā is wisdom. Basically what the Buddha is saying is: clean up your act, learn to concentrate your mind, and use your concentrated, indistractible mind to investigate reality and understand what’s actually happening.

The jhānas in the suttas are frequently preceded by the abandoning of the hindrances. You might notice when you’re meditating and get distracted, you could label most distractions with one of the five hindrances: wanting, not wanting, sluggishness, restlessness, remorse, or doubt. What’s really necessary to enter the jhānas is a mind that’s relatively quiet.

In later Pali literature it talks about “access concentration.” I’ve adopted that phrase to describe what you have to generate before entering the jhānas—not the deep concentration described in the Visuddhimagga, but good enough to have a chance at the jhāna as described in the suttas.

So, basic instructions. Sit in a comfortable, upright posture—comfortable enough that it doesn’t generate aversion, but not so comfortable you fall asleep. Once you’re settled, put your attention on your meditation object. The Visuddhimagga mentions about thirty possible objects for developing access concentration. Most people work with mindfulness of breathing—the most common. Others use mettā meditation, or any of the brahmavihāras. A body scan works too—just slowly noticing sensations through the surface of the body without trying to change anything.

Some teachers, like Ajahn Sumedho, teach using the nāda sound—the subtle ringing you can hear when it’s quiet. That can work too, though I don’t recommend it unless you want to hear that sound forever. A fifth option is a mantra. If you do a mantra until the mantra starts “doing you,” that’s a sign of good concentration.

If you’re using the breath, you might notice some signs as you get concentrated. A diffuse white light may appear. That’s called a nimitta—just a sign that concentration is strong. Don’t do anything with it; it’s like a road sign telling you where you are. Later Buddhist texts describe a bright circular light, but the suttas don’t mention that. Still, if you see it, good—you’re concentrated.

As concentration deepens, the breath may become shallow or even seem to disappear. Don’t worry—you’re not going to die. Your body knows how to breathe. What’s happening is that your body doesn’t need as much oxygen because you’re still and calm. If you notice the breath slowing down, resist the temptation to take a deep breath. That resets the chemistry that helps bring on the first jhāna.

So: you sit, settle, put attention on your object. When you get distracted, label the distraction, relax, and come back. Labeling helps disidentify from it and shows where the mind tends to wander—wanting, aversion, past, future. Notice how seldom the distraction is in the present.

Relaxation is key because most distractions create tension. Just relax and return to the breath—or whatever object you’re using—letting it flow naturally. Access concentration is being fully with the object, with only wispy background thoughts like, “Is this what he meant?” instead of full-blown planning.

Once you realize you’re in access concentration, stay there for five to fifteen minutes. Time will feel distorted, so just hang out. If you’ve been there long enough—or your breath is so subtle it’s not usable as an object—there’s a trick: drop attention on the original object and shift to a pleasant sensation.

If you look at statues of the Buddha, he’s always smiling—that’s a teaching. Try smiling slightly and notice the pleasantness of it. Focus on that pleasantness. For some people it’s the hands—a warm, tingling glow. For mettā, the heart center. It could be anywhere: third eye, top of the head, shoulders, feet—whatever’s pleasant.

Once you’ve found a pleasant sensation, here comes the hard part: do nothing. Just enjoy it. Anything you do will mess it up. Remain focused on the pleasantness itself. If you stay steady, the pleasantness will intensify gradually, building until it erupts into pīti-sukha—physical rapture and emotional joy.

The instructions, in short: sit, settle, focus on your object; label distractions, relax, return; stay non-distracted; find a pleasant sensation; focus on it; do nothing else. The jhāna will find you. You don’t do jhāna—you set up the conditions for it to arise.

The most common problem is jumping too soon—grabbing at pleasant sensations before concentration is stable. Wait until you’re really steady. Another problem is trying to make something happen or getting excited when it does—both break concentration. You can’t enter jhāna and stay in control. You have to let go into the experience.

Ayya Khema said, “Letting go is the whole of the spiritual path.” That applies here. The first time the jhāna comes, it might feel mild or like it’s blowing the top of your head off—either is fine.

The length of time to stay in the first jhāna is inversely proportional to the intensity. If it’s strong, 20–30 seconds is plenty; if mild, up to 10 minutes. When you’ve had enough, take a deep breath to release the energy, then focus on the sukha—the emotional pleasure. The first jhāna is pīti with background sukha; the second is sukha with background pīti.

The purpose of the first jhāna is to get you to the second. If you’re concentrated enough, you can enter any jhāna directly, though that usually takes years of practice.

You could think of the mind like a still pond. Normally it’s wavy; concentration calms it. Then you drop in a pebble of pleasure, and the ripples bounce and reinforce until they rise as a geyser—that’s the first jhāna.

I suspect pīti involves dopamine breaking down into norepinephrine, and sukha involves opioids like serotonin. I’m a retired computer programmer, not a neuroscientist, but Jud Brewer thought that made sense. Focusing on the pleasant sensation is rewarding—it releases dopamine, which stimulates the nucleus accumbens, generating opioids. The norepinephrine explains the heat or vibration some people feel.

So essentially, you’re setting up a feedback loop of pleasure. Everything we experience is neurotransmitters; this is just a skillful way of using them to shift consciousness. The first jhāna alone won’t give deep enough concentration for strong insight—that develops more in the higher jhānas, especially the third and fourth.

So, by the time you get to the third and fourth jhānas, your concentration is deeply enhanced. The first jhāna is mostly about learning how to make the mind happy. It’s a wholesome form of pleasure, because the hindrances have been set aside. It’s blameless pleasure. The Buddha said it’s a pleasant abiding here and now. It’s not sensual pleasure—it’s mental pleasure.

You can’t be lustful or hateful and be in the jhānas at the same time. The hindrances have to be abandoned first. So, the first jhāna is a good antidote for desire, aversion, restlessness, doubt—all of that.

If you look in the suttas, you’ll see that the Buddha talks about entering and abiding in the first jhāna, then emerging and reflecting on it. He often says, “He enters and abides in the first jhāna, then emerges mindful and clearly comprehending.” The reflection part is where insight comes in.

You can look back and notice what was present and what was absent. “Okay, in that state, there was one-pointedness, there was rapture, there was happiness. There wasn’t anger, there wasn’t craving, there wasn’t restlessness.” You begin to see the conditionality of mind states—how some qualities lead to happiness and peace, and others to agitation and suffering.

That’s insight. Seeing cause and effect directly. And the more concentrated the mind, the more subtle the distinctions you can notice.

Now, I should emphasize: the jhānas are not necessary for awakening. There are people who wake up without ever entering them. But they are very helpful. The Buddha himself discovered the jhānas as a young man, then later realized they were a useful foundation for insight. He used them as part of his own path to awakening.

The first jhāna trains you to gather and steady the mind, and to be at ease with pleasure that doesn’t depend on external conditions. You can use that stability and joy to look into impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self.

It’s like building a campfire. You need enough kindling to get it going, but once the fire is burning steadily, you can cook something useful. Concentration is the kindling; insight is the cooking.

People sometimes get attached to the jhānas. It’s understandable—they’re very pleasant. But they’re not the goal. They’re a tool. They show you that the mind can be trained, and that happiness doesn’t have to come from the world—it can arise from the mind itself.

And, importantly, they show that pleasure isn’t the enemy. The Buddha didn’t advocate self-torture; he advocated wisdom. Pleasure used skillfully can support wisdom. The pleasure of the jhānas is wholesome because it’s not mixed with craving or clinging.

When the Buddha first described the Middle Way, he said it avoids the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification. The jhānas are the perfect expression of that. They’re pleasure that’s blameless, balanced, and leads onward.

If you keep practicing, moving through the first, second, third, and fourth jhānas, what happens is that pīti—that energetic, bubbly joy—drops away. The mind becomes more serene, more equanimous. By the fourth jhāna, it’s just pure awareness, neutral feeling, total balance.

That’s the foundation for deep insight practice. In that stillness, you can start seeing impermanence very clearly. The slightest movement in the mind stands out. You can watch sensations arise and pass with precision.

So, to sum up: the first jhāna is pleasure and joy born of seclusion. You get there by letting go of the hindrances and focusing on a pleasant sensation until it amplifies. The second jhāna is pleasure and joy born of concentration itself—more stable, less effort. The third is equanimous pleasure—contentment without excitement. The fourth is pure equanimity and mindfulness.

The jhānas are not something you force; they’re something you allow. You set up the right conditions, and the mind naturally inclines toward stillness and happiness.

And then, when you emerge, you use that clarity to investigate. That’s where the liberating insight arises—not in the absorption itself, but in seeing how it all functions.

The Buddha described this process as samādhi-paññā, concentration leading to wisdom. The jhānas are simply one way, one very skillful way, to cultivate that.

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