15 – THE FORMLESS REALMS starting with THE FIFTH JHANA
The fifth through eighth jhanas (j5–j8)
are called “the formless realms” or “formless jhanas”,
or, for you Paliglots, the arupa jhanas.
To distinguish the first four jhanas from the latter four,
the first four are thus sometimes referred to as “the formed jhanas” (rupa jhanas).
The formless realms can also be mistaken as
much more significant than they really are.
The trick is to come to a balanced understanding of what they are
and what they aren’t,
what they are useful for and what they do not accomplish.
This is not always easy.
THE FIFTH JHANA, BOUNDLESS SPACE
To attain Boundless Space, the fifth jhana,
we continue to cultivate the fourth jhana
and begin to gently pay less attention to the objects or occurrences in the
meditation space and more to space itself.
When this state is really cultivated,
all or most images and sense of a body are gone,
and almost all that is left is vastness.
When this state is mastered,
all bodily qualities and ordinary forms are totally gone,
and the sensations of boundaryless vastness pervade.
There is still subtle thought operating and the illusion of a separate self,
that is,
duality,
but the mind is extremely quiet and the duality very subtle.
~~~
The equanimity of the fourth jhana remains,
as the formless realms use that state as their foundation.
From the fifth jhana, meditators have a few options:
1) get stuck, which may be more likely if they are
incorrectly practicing “non-dual formless practices”
by fixating too much on phrases such as “space-like awareness”;
2) go on to the next formless realm (Boundless Consciousness);
or
3) investigate this state so as to attain insight into it.
For this option,
special care and extreme precision must be brought to
each instant of the many sensations making up the perception of
space, silence, or equanimity
so as to see each of these experiences arise and pass completely in each instant,
not satisfy, and not be a self or the property of a self.
This article was Inspired by
Buddha’s step by step instructions to obtain Enlightenment
as refined by The Arahant Daneil M. Ingram.