Rapture and Pleasure Born of Seclusion
Last night I listened again to one of Sally Armstrong’s talks on Concentration Practice, which featured a reading of the Buddha’s description of the first four stages of deep concentration (the four material jhanas). This particular reading is from the Middle Length Discourses, Sutta 119, paragraph 18. (Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation)
Just to give you a taste, here’s what it says about the first stage:
“Again, bhikkhus [practitioner], quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a bhikkhu enters upon and abides in the first jhana, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought, with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion. He makes the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion drench, steep, fill, and pervade this body, so that there is no part of his whole body unpervaded by the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion.
“Just as a skilled bath man or bath man’s apprentice heaps bath powder in a metal basin and, sprinkling it gradually with water, kneads it till the moisture wets his ball of bath poster, soaks it and pervades it inside and out, yet the ball itself does not ooze; so too, a bhikkhu makes the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion drench, steep, fill, and pervade this body, so that there is no part of his whole body unpervaded by the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion.”
Sounds pretty cool!