This makes a lot of sense to me, but I am not an expert meditator.
How would this model explain jhanas? Something like: “If you stop reacting to things in general, it will leave you enough capacity to react very strongly to something, if you choose to focus on that thing and ignore everything else”?
Many people think of the jhanas as states of high energy absorption into an object of concentration, but I think of them in kind of the opposite way. I see the jhanas as the mental processes that make up conscious experience quieting down and settling into inactivity.
In the first jhana, the heavy sensations of stress and emotional burden relax into the lighter sensations of excitement and joy. (You can imagine rocks breaking up into pebbles, which then break up into sand.) The intensity of the first jhana varies depending on how heavy the emotional burden of ordinary consciousness is, sort of like how taking off a tight shoe is more of a relief than taking off a loose shoe. By the fourth jhana, the emotional system has relaxed into neutrality. Then in the fifth jhana through cessation, the world model relaxes into lower information states ending in unconsciousness.
This process happens because the mind is relaxed and still. Mental activity gradually diminishes because we’re not giving it any fuel. Nonreactivity is how we settle into relaxation and stillness, because when we react to sensations we disturb our field of experience.
So nonreactivity is the condition that allows the jhanas to happen naturally and on their own.
This makes a lot of sense to me, but I am not an expert meditator.
How would this model explain jhanas? Something like: “If you stop reacting to things in general, it will leave you enough capacity to react very strongly to something, if you choose to focus on that thing and ignore everything else”?
Many people think of the jhanas as states of high energy absorption into an object of concentration, but I think of them in kind of the opposite way. I see the jhanas as the mental processes that make up conscious experience quieting down and settling into inactivity.
In the first jhana, the heavy sensations of stress and emotional burden relax into the lighter sensations of excitement and joy. (You can imagine rocks breaking up into pebbles, which then break up into sand.) The intensity of the first jhana varies depending on how heavy the emotional burden of ordinary consciousness is, sort of like how taking off a tight shoe is more of a relief than taking off a loose shoe. By the fourth jhana, the emotional system has relaxed into neutrality. Then in the fifth jhana through cessation, the world model relaxes into lower information states ending in unconsciousness.
This process happens because the mind is relaxed and still. Mental activity gradually diminishes because we’re not giving it any fuel. Nonreactivity is how we settle into relaxation and stillness, because when we react to sensations we disturb our field of experience.
So nonreactivity is the condition that allows the jhanas to happen naturally and on their own.