Being Happier Than You Ever Realized For No Apparent Reason (Leigh Brasington)

Stephen Zerfas: Welcome to the collection of journeys podcast where we explore the stories of everyday people who have had their lives changed by the blissful and therapeutic states of jhana meditation

In this episode, we speak with Lee Brasington, one of the most famous jhana teachers alive today. Lee is the author of Right Concentration, a remarkably clear and simple book that is commonly cited by novices who learn to enter jhanas on their own. We discuss how Lee first learned the jhanas, and then spent years looking for a teacher to show him how to navigate them, and eventually, how the jhanas changed his personality to be happier and more prone to glee over time.

He shares how he believes the jhanas can show you it's possible to be happier than you ever realized. And for no apparent reason, and most importantly, how the jhanas can help you see what Buddhists call capitalized insights. Things like how malleable your ego really is. Lee visited us during an online jhana retreat, and field several questions from the audience near the end.

Lee, for, in case there's anybody here who doesn't know your background and who you are, could you give a little bit of, a little bit of the story behind how you, what it is that you do? And I think that will tie into how you got into the jhana.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah, I was thinking about this. So first, thank you.

Thank you for inviting me and so forth. I was thinking about, okay, what am I going to tell these people about how I got into the jhana? And I think, If I tell you how I got into the jhanas, I'm going to tell you what my background is. So I'll just do the both at the same time. We'll get straight to it.

That's great. Right. So 1985, my massage therapist says to me, you should go on this meditation retreat. It'd be good for you. And since I was unemployed, I said, yeah. And she said The teacher is giving a talk at the San Francisco Zen Center Wednesday night. You should go check her out. If you like her, sign up.

Okay. So I went and it was Ayya Kemma who turned out to be my primary teacher. And I don't remember what she talked about, but I do remember the clarity. And I thought anybody can give a talk that clear. Yeah, I'll go on retreat with them. Never having meditated before in my life. I thought I had meditated before but when I got to the retreat, I quickly learned that what I thought was meditation and what I came to thought was meditation.

No, not the same thing. So

Stephen Zerfas: the first like earnest meditation you ever did was with Ayya Kemma. Holy cow. Way to

Leigh Brasington: start with the best. Yeah, exactly. Start with the best. I had tried and I thought I was doing it, but yeah, Ayya Kemma said, sit there and just follow my breath. You know, don't think about anything.

Don't think, oh my God, that's kind of boring. It was quite a struggle for the first week. I'd come in. It's another 45 minutes of boredom. I mean, sit. And it was, it was really difficult. And then on day seven, she showed us the body scan. She was a student of Robert Hover, who was a student of Uba Khin.

Uba Khin is Goenka's teacher. And so it was the Uba Khin style body scan. And what she taught was on the surface only in about 35, 45 minutes to get through the whole body. And I found when I finished the body scan, I could actually follow my breath. Which I had been totally unable to before because it was too boring.

But it had given me enough concentration so that I could follow my breath to the bell ring. That was my practice for the next three years. Sit down. I had said start every sitting with META. And I really liked the META practice that she did. She did guided visualizations. And so I would start with ten minutes of META and then I would do a body scan and then I would just follow my breath to the bell ring.

And that worked really well. At least I was practicing. And I went on my second retreat in Thailand. At what swan moat with a Ajahn Buddhadasa, who was still alive back then. And.

Stephen Zerfas: Yeah. I want to hear about this retreat too, but I'm curious to know for, for a raw beginner who's sitting with somebody as a, like a legendary teacher with Ayya Kemma, but jumping straight into a full on retreat, like at this point, why are you sitting?

What Curiosity. Why are you sitting? Because it's relaxing?

Leigh Brasington: Curiosity. My several people that said meditation was a good thing and you should do that. And it was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.

Stephen Zerfas: People tell me I should do things all the time.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah, well, enough people had said that, that I trusted who they were.

They had given me good advice in the past. It was like, yeah, okay, well, maybe so. And one of them had handed me Shogun Trump's book Shambhala and said, read this book. Okay. I was at his house in Arkansas. So I read the book and it was good. And he said, well, now you got to meditate. And I was like, that's so boring.

And He said, what did Trump tell you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was curious about meditation. I had zero interest in Buddhism. My father was a Presbyterian preacher and he was a literalist. He wasn't a fundamentalist. He was a literalist. He took the Bible literally true, you know, know when they are Daniel and the lion stand and all the rest of it.

And then eventually I go, wait a second, wait a second. This, this is more Easter Bunny and Santa Claus stuff and just rejected all religion. And that's what my practice for the preceding 18 years before this retreat was ethical hedonism. I was out looking to have a good time. I wasn't going to screw anybody over doing it, but I was going to have a good time.

That's all it was about. And so I was curious about the meditation stuff because people I trusted were saying do it. So curiosity. So

Stephen Zerfas: I can see now how curiosity would get you to that retreat, but a full retreat and then you continue doing it and you went back for another retreat. It was at this point.

It sounds like there was a bit more than curiosity at play.

Leigh Brasington: So, what Ayya Kemma said that really interested me, at some point, I asked her a question. I don't remember what the question was. And her reply was, Oh, there's nothing to believe. The Buddha said, Ehipassiko, come and see for yourself. Nothing to believe.

Oh, come and see for myself. That sounds like science. And my background is in science. So this was a scientifically valid way to explore the mind. So now I'm curious, what can it do? The other thing, so when I went on that retreat, I was a very serious pothead. I was stoned like five nights a week for 14 years.

Not, not every week, but

Stephen Zerfas: serious. Yeah. When you said serious, you meant serious.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, I come home from work, get stoned, go out, see my friends, right. It's the weekend. Yeah, I get stoned all weekend, you know, that sort of stuff. I didn't get stoned Tuesday night because I had yoga Tuesday night, and I didn't get stoned Wednesday night because, well, you should clean up your act a little bit, but I was stoned Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

So, at the end of the retreat, I came and did a precept ceremony. And, you know, the five precepts, which I'm hoping you're all very familiar with. When she got to the fifth precept, the one about not taking intoxicants, she said, we are confused enough already. We don't need to ingest anything that will make us more confused.

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's true. If I really want to know what's going on. Remember, it's curiosity. What I want to know is what the heck is going on. I need to, I need to have a clear mind and getting stoned five nights a week. It doesn't do it. So I quit smoking. Then, you know, I had 10 days to dry out because it was a 10 day retreat and then I went home and all my friends smoked and I would say exhale in my direction, but I didn't smoke anymore.

Maybe get a contact high or something. And, so three years later, I'm on another overseas trip. I had already done three years around the world before I went on the first retreat. So now is this is a year long retreat. And I was in southern Thailand and I went to Wat Suan Mok, where Buddhadasa was from.

And he was still alive at that point. But Santikaro and a German monk were basically teaching the retreat. And it was mindfulness of breathing. If you want to know what I was studying, get Buddhadasa's book, Mindfulness with Breathing, and you can read exactly what I was being taught there. And on day four at the sitting before lunch, my back was killing me.

I mean, it was, it was really hurting. They had given me a little thin pillow about this thick. Yeah. About this wide, you know, square about this size and pretty thin to sit on. And so I slid forward a little bit on it and slipped off the edge of it, such that my sit bones were on the pad underneath and my tailbone was still on the pillow.

That had the effect of shoving my spine forward. And all the pain going away and PT erupting through the roof. And there were two thoughts occurred to me when it happened. I'm going to sit like this forever. And oh, this must be what that Dutch woman was asking about because it was, it was probably heavily mixed with Suka.

There was a lot of joy in it. I didn't know what it was. I just know I liked it. And So in teaching the 16 steps of Anapanasati, step number five is Piti. And so we get to that and I go, Oh yeah, that's what happened to me. That's what happened to me. And I talked to Santicaro. Yeah, it's Piti. So I had a name for this thing and I could get it going about once a day.

One time I got it going after the meta practice, which surprised me.

Stephen Zerfas: What was the schedule like at this point? How, how long were you sitting and how long was each sit?

Leigh Brasington: Wake up at four in the morning and I guess the sittings were 45 minutes to an hour, so there were two before breakfast. Do

Stephen Zerfas: you think this is probably like a 10 hour a day kind of schedule?

Leigh Brasington: It was at least eight hours a day. Okay, so eight plus hours a

Stephen Zerfas: day. On day four of your second retreat is when you shifted a little bit in your seat and that made all the difference. Yeah,

Leigh Brasington: yeah. And I continue to sit like that every sitting, no matter what. And, but it, what it changed was I was, I was no longer sitting because I knew it was good for me.

I was sitting because I wanted to sit. Wanted to get that, that feeling again. Yeah. Still being a hedonist. So Yeah, I could get it about once a day, and then towards the end of the retreat, I could get it twice a day. And then after the retreat was over, I stayed for almost another week, and it was just self retreat at that point.

There was still a bell to wake you up at four in the morning, and there were sits before breakfast, and so forth. And And then I left to go to one of the Isles of Hedonism off the coast of Thailand. And while I was there, I got into the PT every morning. You know, I'd get up and I would meditate. I could still get the PT going.

And then I started traveling and went to China and Tibet. And yeah, I wasn't meditating hardly ever. And came home. was visiting some friends in Memphis who had a isolation tank, a Samadhi tank, sensory deprivation tank. And they're like, you want to get in it? And I'm like, yeah, yeah. I always wanted to try that.

So I get in. start meditating, of course, hit the PT pretty quickly. An hour and 45 minutes later, they come knocking on the door wondering if I'm okay. Nobody had ever stayed in that long, but you know, I was having a blast. And so twice I got to the PT there and then I went to Ruth Denison's Monastery in Southern California near Joshua Tree.

Yeah, just, just doing odd jobs around the place. And then I was part of the staff for Ruth's three week retreat. During the one over Thanksgiving, I got back into the first jhana. I'm sitting there, and the retreat center is near military bases, and a big military transport starts coming in the distance, and I can hear it, and it's building, building, building until it flies right overhead, and I don't know, a thousand feet up or something like that.

And by the time it got overhead, I was back in full blown PT. It was triggered by the sound. And after that, I could get to the PT once a day, sometimes twice a day. And then when Ruth started teaching, she was also a student of Ubakian. So she would do a guided body scan. And boy, that would get me into the PT really strongly.

And, you know, I'm asking both the Thanksgiving teacher and Ruth, OK, I get all this PT, what am I supposed to do with it? I ask other teachers over the next couple of years as well. I don't remember anything they told me because it didn't fit my experience. And being rather stubborn, it's like they don't know.

And I just kept getting the PT. I, you know, came back to the Bay Area. Had a pretty good daily sitting. Going to a weekly sitting group. You know, get into the jhanas multiple times a week, get into PT multiple times a week. I still didn't know what was the jhana. When did that change for you?

Stephen Zerfas: What?

When did that change for you? When did you just, when did you learn what a jhana was and what to do with this?

Leigh Brasington: So it's a year and three quarters later, and my girlfriend hands me a flyer and says, you want to go on retreat? This teacher's pretty good. You look at the flyer and say, I came, I was like, yeah, she was my first teacher.

She was really good. You know, I'm thinking she was better than all these other teachers I sat with. So, yeah, I signed up for that retreat. I go on the retreat. I go to the first interview. And I came and I exchanged a little bit about my background and so forth. And then she says, okay. Tell me what happens when you meditate and I say, well, I can get to peachy.

She goes, Oh, good. That's the first. Here's how you do the second. Somebody knew what was happening and furthermore knew what was supposed to happen next. I had been telling people it's like I find the door to the magic castle and I go into the first room and I wander around and 10 minutes later I find myself back outside.

I know there's more rooms and Ayya Kemma said, it's not behind the bookcase. It's under the rug. You got to go down to get to it. I mean, she didn't say that, but that's what was going on. I was trying to move the bookcase and yeah, you got to get quiet. So she gave me the instructions for the second jhana.

Stephen Zerfas: Tell us what. So, so I'm curious to know what PT feels like to you in English, since that's a word that I know you've written extensively about, but it is something that means a little something different to everybody.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah, for me, there's a. Thrill that starts running up my back up my spine doesn't start at the tailbone starts solar plexus maybe a little higher about the solar plexus and bills runs up into my head.

I sit up really straight. I'm vibrating. It feels really good. Lots of energy. I've gotten skilled enough with it. Now, I can make it so intensely pleasurable that it's not even pleasant but it's just a very intense energy or I can make it quite mild. And, you know, if it's really intense, I'm in it for maybe 10 seconds before I move on to 2, or I can get it pretty mild and I could stay there for 10 minutes if I wanted to.

So I know where the volume is.

Stephen Zerfas: Oh, you volume control. Yeah. And when it's mild and you can stay there for 10 minutes, if you want to, what's like a benchmark for how good this feels or what it feels like that we might all recognize.

Leigh Brasington: The onset of it is like the first rush on marijuana. Okay, where you just grabbed and taken away someplace else. And what I feel at that point. It's not the. marijuana feel, but I feel, yeah, really happy and excited. And I've got this physical manifestation of that excitement. That's, that's, that's, yeah. Yeah.

And that's what comes on. My favorite translation of PT is glee, not rapture, not euphoria, not ecstasy, not delight, but glee because it's got a gleeful sense to it. It's, it's, it can be ecstatic. I can make it ecstatic if I wanted to or, or it can be kind of mildly if I wanted to, but I know where the volume control is.

And if you want to find the volume control on the PT, get it as strong as you can, and then just sort of look away from it and let it come to, Oh, and bring it back and look away. And then you can start to feel where the volume control is. That's

Stephen Zerfas: a, that's a fun depiction of how you do the volume control.

And how does the experience change when you move from that first jhana to the second jhana?

Leigh Brasington: Okay, so Ayya Kemma gives me the instructions for the second jhana and I said, but it takes me like, you know, 40 minutes of a 45 minute sitting to get there. And she goes, do it faster. Yes, ma'am. Ayokima was not somebody that you wanted to have any other discussion with other than, yes, ma'am, I'll go try that out and see what happens.

She was a very strong personality, very intimidating, and only four foot eleven tall. Okay, this really tiny person.

So Owen asked, what am I looking at? I'm not looking at anything. I'm just not paying attention to the PT as much. Okay. I'm not looking at anything. I'm just not paying attention to it, you know, and it might, might be, you know, what's going on in my body or something like that, but you know, it's just, don't pay attention to the PT and then look back at it.

And it comes back up. So the instructions you gave me were to turn down the intensity level of the PT and focus on the Sukha. The turn down the physical component, the excited component, and focus on the emotional component. Basically do a foreground background shift. Because the PT is very take a deep breath, calm it down.

And here's the Succa, and there's still a little PT hopping, hopping around in the background. So what I'm looking

Stephen Zerfas: for Can you give us a, an English description of what Sukha is? I also, once again, know that you've written extensively about it, but for everybody who's maybe not as familiar with your writing or with the

Leigh Brasington: Pali.

So Sukha is an emotional sense of joy or happiness, whether it shows up for you in something you would call joy or happiness is just, that's idiosyncratic. Some people say it's joyful. Some people say it's happy, but it's a positive emotional experience. And it doesn't really have much of a body.

reference compared to the PT. The PT is really body centered, but even with the Sukha, I mean, yeah, if you're happy, you feel good in the body. So there's still a nice feeling in the body and it's, yeah, it's joy or happiness. And when I'm switched to it, I'm focused on the emotional sense of happiness. Right.

I'm just focused on being happy, what that's like. So it's not a physical thing. In the first, jhana, it's the physicality of the PT. But in the second, it's not physical. It's emotional. And I'm just focused on what it feels like to be happy. And the happiness isn't steady. It comes up a little bit over two or three breaths and comes back down and it comes up again.

It comes up on an in breath, on the out breath it stays the same, comes up again on another in breath, the out breath it stays the same, building up over two, three, four breaths. And then As I exhale, it comes down a little bit and then it's steady as inhale and then down a little bit so that over a period of 4, 6, 8 breaths, it's just a little bit of up and down.

Stephen Zerfas: What's like another benchmark for really good jhana to when the Sukha when this emotional happiness is sort of in the foreground. What's a, an experience that maybe many of us have had that can relate to?

Leigh Brasington: It's your birthday, and somebody gives you a really nice birthday present and you open it and it's like, oh wow, I always wanted one of these.

That's for really good, jhana. Only it's not being triggered by an external source. It's being triggered by your concentrated mind. Okay, but it can be happiness as strong as Yeah, getting a really nice present. Okay, that, that kind of happiness. Or it could be milder, where it's just like, Oh yeah, this is nice.

Right. But it's definitely a positive emotional state. And in the background, there's still a little PT going on. And I find myself rocking. Or swaying. Just very gentle. In other words, it's not still and the, the up and down of the PT, that's not still either. That's a little in constant, you know, it gets a little stronger, a little weaker and my body is, yeah, just, just rocking a little bit with the energy.

This is leftover PT energy. Okay.

Stephen Zerfas: I've heard some quotes from, from some other teachers about J2. Like I think Robert talks about it being maybe a moment of confidence where you're like, Whoa, everything I ever wanted. It turns out is within me or I've heard Rachel O'Brien say once that a good day to can heal traumas.

You didn't know you had. It can just feel like it sort of moves all throughout the body. These descriptions, I guess, depending on how you look at it could sound like an order of magnitude bigger than getting something that you've been looking forward to on your birthday. Perhaps, but maybe when I'm seven and I, and I get like the thing I've been dreaming of for a year, that that's like an explosive kind of joy.

But I'm curious to know if maybe there's a couple of other benchmarks to help us get a sense for whether or not this is something really special or something that might happen. You know, on any given week in day to day life.

Leigh Brasington: So what I gave you was a benchmark for good, strong second jhana. The effects of good, strong second jhana are going to vary.

One insight is that the happiness is not out there. It's in here. That's what Robert Bay is talking about. When you get a present or your boss says, You did a brilliant job. This is fantastic. I'm going to give you a thousand dollar a year raise. You're really happy. The happiness is in there. The boss saying that or the present is only the trigger.

The happiness isn't in your boss's voice. It's not in the present. The happiness is inside of you, but it got triggered. And so what you're doing in Second Jhana is you're triggering your emotional response that feels like happiness. You are triggering happiness. Okay. And that's the advantage of it. You don't need something external.

You just need to get quiet and then you can trigger something like that. As for it, healing trauma, the people I know who are aversive types. So I'm a greed type. I mean, 18 years of being a ethical hedonist, you could probably already figure that out. Okay. So, you know, the three types, the greedy type, the aversive type, and the diluted type.

Okay, a greedy type walks into a party and goes, Oh, that food looks good. Those look like interesting people and aversive type walks in. He goes, those colors don't go together. That picture is crooked and the diluted type walks in. He goes. What's going on? What am I supposed to do? Okay, that gives you a sense of the greedy type is looking for pleasure.

The aversive type is looking for danger and how to avoid it. And the deluded type's not sure what they're looking for. For the aversive types, getting to second jhana can actually give an experience of happiness like they never have experienced before. Okay, because yeah, it's just been. Their life's been too hard and so in that sense it could be healing for trauma you didn't know you had.

You didn't know that it was possible to be this happy and especially to be this happy for no reason at all. So in that sense it can be quite healing.

Stephen Zerfas: But it depends on the personality type coming in, in your experience.

Leigh Brasington: Well, it's going to be more like if you're aversive type, you're going to benefit more from the Jhanas.

If you're a greedy type, you're going to learn the Jhanas easily because focus on pleasure to greed types. Oh yeah, I know how to do that. Right? The looted types, some of, sometimes they're really good at the Jhanas. Sometimes they never figured out it. It's, it's totally variable. But I do see a pattern in the greedy types learn the jhanas easily and the aversive types have more difficult but benefit more because it takes them to places they've never been before.

Stephen Zerfas: Do you think that it's possible to use something like J2, which is really emphasizing this happiness, to have as much happiness as you would find in the outside world or do you think there are still things in the outside world? That would trigger more happiness than is possible to find in yourself purely through J2.

Leigh Brasington: I wouldn't say more, but I would say different. In other words, happiness shared with another person is a quality that is remarkable, wonderful, everybody needs to experience a lot of, etc. And you can't get that from J2 because it's a solitary thing. The intensity level, yeah. But the sharedness you can't get by yourself.

You have to actually the two of you do something that makes you both really happy or the interview or the whatever of you does something that makes you really happy and you're all sharing in that happiness. So it can't give you that, but he can. It can take the neurological pathway for happiness and make it stronger so that you, when you are in a shared happiness situation, you experience even more happiness than you did before you started practicing J2.

Stephen Zerfas: Wow. So not only do you think that it's possible to find the same magnitude or even more magnitude happiness within via something like J2, as you could possibly find without, you think practice with J2 may in fact increase your ability to experience happiness. And the external world triggered by the

Leigh Brasington: neurons that wire together, fire together.

So if you fire the neurons in the pathway for happiness, it just gets stronger. Well, I think

Stephen Zerfas: we made it to the second jhana and how you learned. Yeah. Yeah. You can kind of keep going chronologically if you like, or, or we can jump straight to. How the third feels different from the second.

Leigh Brasington: So once I'd learned the second, I came with Cisco one, two, one.

All right. So first it was one and then two, and then it was one, two, one. Okay. And then when I got that, she gives me the instructions for three, which was basically to calm the happiness, the Sukha down to contentment, to wishlessness. So like I put it as satisfaction so complete that if Mick Jagger were practicing the third jhana, he couldn't sing that song, he would be satisfied.

Right? So, basically, take another deep breath, let the energy out, that'll calm the PT completely. So it goes away by definition, third jhana, no PT. And because of the calming, The, the PT calms more down to contentment, wishlessness

Stephen Zerfas: yeah. In this wishlessness, I'd love to also get like a bit of a benchmark, maybe some other experience that gives a sense for those of us who haven't been there, what this might feel like.

Leigh Brasington: After you've had really good sex and you're laying there with your partner in your arms and everything is perfect.

Not so bad. Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah,

Stephen Zerfas: we, so we've covered birthday parties, marijuana, sex, and Yeah, all the happiness you can imagine. This is, we've added a line up here. Yep. How, where to from here? Does it get better?

Leigh Brasington: Well, it depends on your definition of better. So, What you want to do to move to the fourth jhāna is let go of the pleasure of the third jhāna.

Being contented, really fully contented, being totally satisfied, is pleasant. I find I have a big grin on my face. You can see my teeth in the first jhāna. Second jhāna, big grin, no teeth. Third jhāna, wispy Buddha smile. It's still pleasant. So to move to the fourth jhana, all I have to do is relax all the muscles in my face.

And when I do, there's a sense of things starting to drop down. To move to the fourth jhana, let go of all the pleasure of the third jhana. And if there's a sense of things dropping, follow the dropping and let it descend until it comes to stop, which may take 20 seconds, 40 seconds, 5 minutes, whatever. And your focus at that point is on quiet stillness.

Because you've let go of the pleasure, you're now in a state of equanimity. No positive, no negative. It's emotionally neutral. But I don't tell students focus on equanimity because if I tell you focus on equanimity, yeah, what exactly is that? But if I tell you focus on quiet stillness, which you can find, if you do that, you will be focused on equanimity because that's what's there is quiet still equanimity.

Benchmarks for that is, yeah, I can't think of anything in the world really. It's just quiet and still.

Stephen Zerfas: So we're sort of off the map from everyday benchmarks

Leigh Brasington: now. Yeah.

Stephen Zerfas: How does why would someone want to move from that? wishlessness or any of the like amazing states that you mentioned earlier into this quiet stillness.

What's the appeal?

Leigh Brasington: The appeal for being in that state is that it's rejuvenating. You can be in that state for 15 minutes and you come out and feel like you took a nap, except you know you weren't asleep. Okay, so it can, it can be as rejuvenating as, as a nap. So that's one of the reasons for being in it.

But the real reason for going there. is when you exit it, you have a mind that is concentrated, clear, sharp, bright, malleable, wieldy, and given to imperturbability, which you can direct and incline to knowing and seeing. In other words, doing an insight practice. You have built a mind that has turbocharged your insight practice.

So when you come out, You can't have run through those jhanas with your ego running loose. I assume everybody knows you have to make up your ego. You have to think it up or emote it up. It's not a thing that's there. You have to continually create it. Well, if you run through the jhanas as far as four, you didn't spend any time creating your ego and it's gotten really quiet.

Furthermore, you have indistractability. You have the ability to not become distracted. So take your indistractable Mind that is examining the world from a less egocentric perspective. And explore the world, find out what's really happening. That's why you do the Jhanas. All that good feeling and everything along the way.

Yeah, that's, that's a side effect. That's a very cool side effect. It's really nice. But the real deal is the fact that when you come out of the Jhanas, you have a mind that can do your inside practice more. Profoundly. And the insights are what are really going to propel you down the spiritual path. Those are the things that are going to change your life.

Stephen Zerfas: When you say insight practice, so I've heard you can use this, this powerful mind to do like kind of capitalized insight practice, which refers to a number of practices in, in sort of Buddhist spiritual development. I've also heard that you can use this to turn towards working on yourself, and maybe more like Western psychotherapy related related tasks.

And then you've also thrown out kind of seeing, seeing reality as it is, which makes me think of like solving a tough technical problem or something. Do you do all three of these things? Do you do just one of them? Do you think it's possible to do all three of them? It's

Leigh Brasington: certainly possible to do all three of them.

I don't use the jhanas to find bugs in my computer programs. Okay. I just, just use my regular, but it might've done the job earlier than that. A, which would be helpful. Okay, but I don't sit down, run the jhanas and then start thinking about the bug 1, because I probably couldn't do it. Because if I had that bug, they are probably get and get the access concentration, because I'd be worried about the bug.

But nevermind. I don't really use them that often for psychological work, but sometimes it comes up. I'm mostly doing exploration of. Yeah, things as they really are. In terms of the three characteristics, Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta, the inconstant, impermanent nature of all phenomena, of all, all the thing, all the things of creation.

The dukkha nature, the unsatisfactory bummer nature of all the things of creation, and the not self coreless empty nature of all phenomena. Okay, that's what I really want to explore. Now, it may be that there are psychological insights you need to gain before you can effectively do these other explorations.

But You know, though the Anicca Dukkha and Anatta explorations are the ones that are going to be the most transformative, but yeah, it's good to do the others as well. You can't push them out of the way there. They're right here until you get those out of the way. You can't see the deeper ones.

Stephen Zerfas: Could you give us an example of, of an insight that you've had coming out of the jhanas, doing your insight practice, that forever after you, you, you remain like deeply grateful, or it's changed your personality.

It's something that you treasure because if it's the lasting effects off the cushion in a way that that would be like kind of emotional or intuitively appealing dust.

Leigh Brasington: So an experience without anybody having the experience. The, the, the experience of, yeah, the whole idea of somebody having the experience is optional.

It's possible for there to be experiences with no reference at all to a self. That, that, that's a really profound experience coming out.

Stephen Zerfas: let's, let's say, you know, maybe right in front of us was like you know, a 14 year old who wasn't familiar with any of these concepts. Why is it so profound to have an experience or to see that you could have an experience without a self?

Leigh Brasington: Well, because if you operate in harmony with reality, things tend to go better than if you operate at cross purposes to reality. And the reality is the sense of self that you have is something you're making up. It does not have a basis in any sort of scientific fact. It's, it's just a bunch of. ideas you have.

And because of that, because your self is a made up thing, it's more malleable than you thought it was, and you can begin to change it so that it's less greedy and averse, even deluded, so that you don't do the craving and clinging stuff with the same fervor that you used to do. And, yeah. That means that you don't have as much Duke as you used to have.

That's a pretty profound change.

Stephen Zerfas: It does sound profound. I'd love to hear if you have this, it's now been, Oh, what was it? I'm trying to remember the, the, the first date you threw out. It's been what, 30 years since your first jhana experience, 40.

Leigh Brasington: My first jhana experience was in 88. So, okay. So 35 years.

Stephen Zerfas: Yeah. Yeah. And so in all that time, many of us I'm curious to know if you have some, some thoughts on what you would have shared with the younger you I suppose it could be in your book or it could be maybe something that you've had since you've, since you've written a book, some new idea, what guidance would you give teaching yourself to learn these states faster?

Looking back, you

Leigh Brasington: know, it, it really, yeah.

unfolded pretty organically. The best advice I could have given myself was coming back from that retreat with, where I stumbled into PT, was go find Ayya Kemma and tell her what's going on. So I would have saved a couple years, but after that, finding the right teacher, yeah, after that, The way that unfolded over the two years of learning all eight jhanas and then other things that unfolded after that I wouldn't want to try and speed any of that up.

I needed the time to get skilled at the jhanas before I was ready for the steps that came next. Yeah, I actually have a related but maybe slightly different framing question. I mean, you've been teaching the jhanas for An incredibly long time at this point, and I'm curious if there are any traits or kind of mental attitudes that you found in students that have been particularly successful.

The, the, the best trait you can bring on a retreat to learn the jhanas is no expectations. Okay. Expectations are the worst thing you bring on any retreat. But if the people who do the best, they signed up for my retreat just, you know, because it was a good time to go on retreat or something like that.

They didn't even know what the jhanas were. Those are the people that do the very best. They got no expectations at all. The other things that are really helpful is someone who's willing to work really hard. You know, they're, they're doing 45 minute to hour. Sitting as much as they can. And they're not getting frustrated when it's not happening.

Frustration is part of the expectations thing, but they're, they're showing up and they're really working hard. And when the sitting is over. They do their best they can to be mindful. You know, mindful walking to wherever they're going to do their walking meditation. Mindful while doing the walking meditation.

Mindful while eating. You know, they're really trying to keep the mindfulness up. So, no expectations, diligent practice, and keep your mindfulness up as high as you possibly can outside of the sitting periods. Those are the three characteristics I say are going to be the most helpful. Let's

Stephen Zerfas: say somebody shows up and they have all three of those things in spades.

They're going home. They don't have any expectations, but they're willing to work for it. They're patient with themselves and they're just in the habit or excited to experiment with constantly gently being aware of their sensations throughout the day. How do you see this person fail in the first few days?

Leigh Brasington: It varies a lot. They get expectations. They work too hard, which, you know, they're, they're, they're grasping after the result. Again, it's another expectation thing. And so they're, they're doing hour and a half sits and only taking pee breaks, you know, when they come back and do another sit and they're exhausting themselves.

It's, it's not a sprint. That's one thing. Someone comes in, they've got all that, but they also have unresolved psychological issues. Okay, you start working with concentration and your unresolved stuff is liable to show up. And you gotta have to deal with it. And hopefully the teacher can help you deal with it, but it's really common that unresolved stuff shows up.

I've never taught a retreat where nobody came with unresolved psychological issues. I mean, it's just It's every, every retreat somebody's going to come with stuff like that. That can prevent them from getting into the jhanas. That's the most common stuff. The other things that keep people out are the they're not working hard or they're reading or, you know, they're going for long walks or they're talking to the staff or, I mean, you know, all these sort of things.

Stephen Zerfas: That That paints a picture of some of the common anti patterns that even the best kind of positions of us can still fall into.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah. And even if you're doing everything perfect, it doesn't guarantee it's going to work. Some people this just doesn't work for. I had a friend, unfortunately she died. She did two month longs and three two week retreats.

Really dedicated practitioner, never got anywhere near a jhana. I couldn't figure anything she was doing wrong. And the other guy, he did two, two months, two, two weeks, never got near a jhana, but his job was an office manager and he was doing 12 things at once all day long, five days a week. And he couldn't focus on a single thing and he suddenly disappeared.

You know, he was coming regularly in my retreats and never gone. Eventually, I. Go to teacher retreat to where he'd move to. And he contacted me, said, Oh, I'll pick you up at the airport and give you a ride. He'd switch to being a piano teacher instead of an office manager. A little more concentration involved.

Got to the fourth jhana on the next retreat, you know, so there are lifestyle things if you're, if you're doing something that requires a lot of multitasking, it's going to be harder to get to the jhanas because you've got to do one pointed task. I can't multitask. I mean, it's absolutely. Impossible. I got a one track mind, you know, but I can run really good stuff down that track.

Stephen Zerfas: Yeah, you can. How many people do you think are practicing the jhanas is in the U S at this point?

Leigh Brasington: How many people? Yeah.

Few hundred.

Stephen Zerfas: Oh, a few hundred. So, but you yourself have had what 2000 students since 2015, maybe since early

Leigh Brasington: times since 1995. Yeah, 95. I figure I've had 150 retreats. If it's 10 new students, every retreat, that's 1500. Probably the average is a little more than 10. So somewhere between 1500 and 2000. You ask how many are practicing, not how many have learned.

Okay. Some of the people learned and they go home and it, you know, it goes away after three months. So they're not practicing, but they go on the next retreat and it comes back. So if you ask how many are practicing these days, a couple of hundred, how many know the Jhanas well enough. So if they go on. a 10 day retreat.

They'll be in the Jhanas. Yeah, it could be as many as 2, 000.

Stephen Zerfas: And why do you think these aren't more popular?

Leigh Brasington: It's difficult. It's difficult to teach them and it's difficult to learn them. And we live in a culture where you pays your money and you get the results. And if you didn't get the results, you demand your money back. Well, Yeah, you go on a retreat where they're teaching you jhanas. So 150 retreats, four retreats, everybody got to the jhanas.

Two of those were small retreats and everybody had lots of experience. One of them was a month long retreat and the other one was in Portugal. The people who live in Mediterranean climates get into the Jhanas than people in any other place in the world. Okay. You know, the Brits have the most, the Brits have the most difficulty because they're so reserved.

But the people in registering clients, I mean, the jhanas are emotional states. Get into your emotions. Sure. They can do that. So they're great. The Israelis. The Italians, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, yeah, they do great. The Scandinavians are about like the U. S. And the Brits are the most, because they're the most emotionally repressed.

Stephen Zerfas: What about I'm curious to know about some of the Asian countries that haven't talked to there.

Leigh Brasington: I taught in Japan and it was a very small retreat. So, it's not a significant number of people to make any judgment, but the people on the retreat did. Well, but it was like, for students. Lee, do you feel like your your teaching philosophy has changed in any major way over the last 20 years?

Not in any major way. My skills are better, but the major philosophy thing is pretty much straight out. You came up basically what she taught me. You know, do the jhanas come out and do inside practice or keep the precepts. In other words, get your seal in order and sit down, get concentrated. Some body and come out and gain some wisdom by doing an inside practice.

It's fun. And the skills, is that all about just being able to ask discerning questions of people and kind of figure out where they are in their practice? Yeah, to just run into so many people and ask them what's going on and guess at what to give them and some of it works and some of it doesn't but I see that if somebody comes in and says this I should probably give them that, you know, those sort of things.

And

Stephen Zerfas: then I think I have one more question and then we can, we've had some people start putting questions in the chat and we can open it up to folks. Do you think there's anything that you've noticed you or some people find helpful to do before you sit, that may make it more likely that you find PT, get into the first jhana, engage in any of the later jhanas.

This could range from yoga, which it said it has kind of an interesting traditional role to do before Shavasana meditation to cold showers to diet changes.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah. So anything you can do to get yourself centered and calm is going to be helpful. So when I was working as a computer programmer, I'd get up in the morning, I'd sit in the hot tub, I'd do my yoga.

I'd meditate, I'd fix breakfast, and I'd get to work. I tried to get there before 1030. But, you know, I was a computer programmer. Most jobs aren't like that. But yeah. So, hot tub, yeah. One, that wakes me up and it's really calming. Two, yoga, yeah, it gets me centered. It's calming. And then meditate. So that helps.

I saw a question come around about diet. I can't really say. I mean, you don't want to eat a lot of food and try and meditate, so don't eat a heavy diet. I tend to eat more organic than anything else, but I'm not a vegetarian. I aspire to be a pescatarian, but if somebody serves me chicken or something, I'll eat it.

And, yeah, stay off the sugar. I mean, that has nothing to do with meditation. That's just to help people.

Stephen Zerfas: Just get life advice.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah, there's other ways. I mean, you know, eat fruit. You know, if you want a sweet, eat some fruit. But don't use white sugar. Stuff like that. You don't have to be, you don't have to be strict about it.

I mean, you can have cookies, it's Christmas after all, but don't have any more cookies until Easter or something. But yeah, diet doesn't seem to make much difference.

Stephen Zerfas: As a follow up, how about some, like, how about supplements or nootropics or even drugs? Did you find it easier? Maybe you never went back to marijuana, but is there anything that if someone had never been in the jhana is they might be a little experimental with?

Leigh Brasington: It's possible. It's interesting. I can often tell someone's past drug use by the. ease with which they find the first jhana. Whoa, whoa. Say more. Well, in other words, when you're entering the first jhana, you're going out of control. Right. You're all aware of this. You have to give up control to enter the jhana.

If you keep control, you won't get into the jhana. You have to actually let go into the experience to get there. Right. People that have done drugs have had experience of letting go into an altered state. So when things start to move towards an altered state, those who've never had any drugs, it's like, Oh, what's going on?

I'm losing control. They pull out. People that have done drugs. They're like, Oh, yeah, cool. I know this. So.

Stephen Zerfas: It's really interesting. Well, let's let's open it up from here. There is some folks have put some questions in the chat. If there's anything there that you think might be particularly interesting to answer. We go for it and then we can do like a hand cue. I know that he's got a question he would like to ask.

Yeah.

Leigh Brasington: So what am I looking at when I look away from the PT? It doesn't matter. I'm just not looking at the PT. Have you accessed jhanas in a dream, lucid or not? No, I have not. I have had students report they have. I have not. You mentioned body scanning. Could you please elaborate on the body scanning technique?

Bodies get techniques relate to metta or jhana. It's a method of scanning your body on the surface and get yourself calm and give you insight into impermanence and not self, and you'll have to. Get a lot more than that. There are guided body scans on my website. If you go to my website, which it's my first name, L E I G H, my last initial B, libby.

com, you can find some guided body scans, both for my teacher, Ayya Kemma, and for me. And it'll just get you concentrated. It's a different way to get concentrated other than the breath or metta. Have Jhanas changed your values? The Jhanas haven't changed anything, but the insights maybe have. The insights are what's transformative, rather than the Jhanas in and of themselves.

The Jhanas are the warm up exercise for the insight practice. And so that's what changes me. So, I value I value my friendship more. I value people telling me when I'm being stupid. I mean, it's really important you have people in your life that you can trust that will tell you, that was a really stupid idea or whatever, because it helps you from refraining from doing stupid stuff.

So I value there. Value the Dharma more because simply I've learned more of it and it's become much more value. Value unexpected. whatever more. Is there any insight practice you commonly recommend to greedy types after Jhana 4? So when I teach a Jhana retreat, I'm teaching a lot, I'm teaching more insight practices than I am teaching about the Jhanas.

And the number one insight practice I recommend is the one you want to do. Because if I give you urge Insight practice and you don't want to do it. It's not going to go so well. So do the one you want to do. Is there one? for greedy types. It is said that greedy types should look at the impermanent dukkha nature of reality.

That nothing you can get is going to give you lasting happiness because nothing you get That is going to last. Right? So investigate, investigate the impermanent nature or the Dukkha nature of reality. Those are good ones, but those are good for everybody. And the only people that really want to investigate Dukkha are the aversive types anyhow, because a greedy type is like, nah, I don't want to investigate Dukkha.

But they'll investigate the impermanence. Do you still have a sense of self most days? Every day? Yeah. Only the fully awakened people. Don't have a sense of self, even if you're at the third level, it says in the suttas that the sense of self clings to someone at the third level of awakening, like the scent of a flower clings to the flower.

It's still there all the time, except when you put your mind to it. And it's only the fully awakened ones that don't have a sense of self. And I am a long ways from fully awakened. Let's see, what else? Have you ever seen someone enter the jhanas via a more physical but still solo method like a sport?

Well, people enter into P. T. From sports. I mean, you take the last shot in the basketball game and it goes in and your team wins because of that, you're going to have PT. I guarantee you're going to have so much PT. You're going to have more PT than you'll ever get on the cushion. So yeah, it's possible to get.

PT or something like that, but it's not a one pointed focus on the experience. You singing the game winning basket, it's not a, yeah, at the point you shot it, maybe you were one pointed, but when it goes in and the PT arises, you're not one pointed. I mean, they're hoisting you on their shoulders and carrying you around and the whole stands are screaming and, but yeah, it's possible to get PT going.

It's possible to get Sukha going from a regular experience. I had a really great example. I was visiting my friends back in Arkansas, and I'd heard about this lady and I got my friend to introduce me to her and we went out and had lunch together. And it was a very nice lunch. She was a really very nice lady.

And so we leave, I leave there, she goes back to her job, and I'm leaving, going back to my friend's house. And I'm borrowing his car, and I'm driving down the street, and I come to a stoplight that I know is, each street goes individually. And it turns red just in front of me. Okay, and there's no turn right on red, which is what I wanted to do.

Okay, so I'm sitting there. I've got to keep an eye on the light so that the people behind me aren't blowing a horn when it's my turn to go. But I'm going to be sitting for a minute and I'm just reflecting on my lunch with this very nice lady. And I pretty soon was in Sukha as good as I ever had in the second jhana.

But it was triggered by a memory and then the light turned green and I made my turn and went back to my friend's house and it was all gone. So yeah, it's possible to have an external circumstance trigger the jhanas, you know, like the massive contentment, the Maddie's massive satisfaction because of something that happened in your life.

Yeah. So it's quite possible, but unless you have the one point in mind to focus on sustaining that experience to the exclusion of everything else. It's not a job. It's just a jhana factor.

Stephen Zerfas: Let's go ahead. I know you have a question that you want to ask a lot.

I hope

Leigh Brasington: I didn't scare you when I was in the practice interview and I saw you were there and I was like, No way. It's me. So I didn't mean to concern you or anything.

Stephen Zerfas: Okay, that's

Leigh Brasington: wonderful. I've got a meta question for like the people interested in like the pedagogy of meditation. I'm wondering how you got so well.

good at exploring the mind in that Stephen once said this amazing thing, meditation, it's like, sounds like poetry and then do it. And it seems like an instruction manual. And it's kind of like this mountain of fog where you're exploring, you have no idea where to go, and you can kind of do things and people can tell you what to do, but you have to explore that fog on your own.

And so I guess if I had to word the question one sentence, it would be could, can you break down what it's like for you to explore the mind and reach these states in like three to six steps like in general outside of, you know, like just the standard steps to get into a jhana. Yeah, so I don't, I mean, explore, learning the jhanas is exploring the mind, but when you first started, that was not what I was thinking about.

I was thinking about the insight practices, which is much more interesting exploration, but for the jhanas, it's like, get some valid instructions and Do what they said to do. Ayya Kemma said the reason that I was doing so well on the spiritual path was because I followed instructions. So find a good set of instructions and then to the very best of your ability, follow those instructions.

That's the key thing. I know

Stephen Zerfas: some people, I know some people have struggled not with following the instructions, but in like interpreting the instructions and really mapping that experience to their experience. And the, you know, a couple of words might carve out an interesting idea, but then you get inside your head and it's so high dimensional and it's not just left and right turns, you go up, down all over the place.

How do you reason from first principles or find ways to map your experience? two instructions when one is kind of like poetry and the other is really high fidelity.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah. So I resisted writing the book on the Jhanas for many years because it's just going to be some of the instructions. It'll be the, it'll be the line down the middle of the highway, but some people are driving over on the right shoulder and other people are driving on the left shoulder.

They're going to need different instructions. So I said, you can't learn the jhanas outside of a retreat setting, but people kept begging me and there was not a good book on the jhana. So I wrote it and it's amazed me that people can read the book and learn the jhanas. I did not expect that. And so the best thing you can do is get some good instruction and then go on a retreat where.

You can try out the instructions and then have an interview and as best you can and as clear as detail as you can possibly muster, explain what happens when you meditate. When I sit down I do this and this and it lasts about this long and then I shift to doing that and this other and this is what it feels like.

And then the teacher hopefully has enough to say, okay, yeah, when you get to point C there, you should try and do, you know, and give you something else to do. It helps you refine it. So it's like, go play with the instructions, you know, and then find somebody to talk about what's going on and do it in a retreat setting, which of course, you're obviously doing.

So, very good setup you've got here.

Stephen Zerfas: There are two final, or, oh, maybe now three, but there are a couple of final questions in the chat. One of them is, if you have any advice for beginners working through restlessness.

Leigh Brasington: Oh, boy. Restlessness is the last of the hindrances to go. So, figure out why you're restless.

I sometimes will be meditating away and suddenly I start getting really restless and I realize, oh, I'm not physically comfortable. I was so in my head doing the practice. I didn't really notice my body was uncomfortable. And yeah. It was restlessness due to physical discomfort. Sometimes restlessness, it can be because you want something.

Sometimes restlessness can be because you're afraid of something. So the number one thing is figure out what's behind the restlessness. When you become fully awakened, you no longer have a concept of self and with no self, no restlessness. So restlessness is a reflection of the fact that your self isn't quite settled in whatever the situation is.

So figure out what's behind it. Is it psychological? Is it physical? Is it, is it, did you drink too much coffee? I mean, you know, find out what's behind the restlessness and then address that rather than trying to address the restlessness itself. But what's, what's making you restless? What's not right. So that's it.

You're feeling restless. It could be boredom. I mean, I've had lots of meditation. Restlessness. It was simply due to boredom. There's a long retreat. I was bored and yeah, I was distracted and I was restless and it was bored. It was like, how did you deal with that? They say pay more. Boredom is due to not paying careful enough attention.

Okay. Get myself settled better here right now. Let's see. What am I? All right. I'm going to go back to the brush, you know, or whatever. Yeah. And just try and pay more attention.

Stephen Zerfas: It's, it's cool to hear some specific examples of this, this phrase, like your, your hindrances or your teachers is this kind of open question of like, what am I missing?

And if we can spot the hindrance, then maybe there's a little bit of a thread there to figure out what it is that we're missing.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah,

Stephen Zerfas: exactly. Yeah, right. Have you experimented with maintaining the Jhanas off the cushion? I know you frequently go from the Jhanas into insight practice, but do you ever see if you can, and maybe, and I also know that an important part of your definition of the Jhanas is that they have this one pointed quality to them.

And so it's almost like counter the definition to be walking around in a jhana, but perhaps there are jhanic qualities, the, the joy or the like happiness. Have you ever played with sustaining those for long periods of time after this?

Leigh Brasington: Not since I really got good at understanding. Oh, it's used for insight because The jhana ended well before the sit ended.

Right. So I'm now doing inside practice and the jhana just sort of fades away. The qualities fade away, but there have been times where okay. Yeah, the bell rang and I wasn't. And maybe I was still in the Jhanas or maybe I hadn't been out of them very long and so there were still qualities left. So Jhana qualities can remain, but the Jhana can't remain because from second Jhana on there's unification of mind.

So if I'm in the second Jhana and my mind is unified around the Sukha. I can't see where I'm going. I'm going to walk into a tree. Right? If I want to see where I'm going, I've actually got to pay attention to where I'm walking. And it's no longer unification of mind. So by definition is no longer a second jhana.

Stephen Zerfas: And, and so let's throw out that the, the, the, the word jhana for a second. And, but we know that the first jhana is really about this glee. And the second jhana is really about this happiness, the stillness and the fourth and this wishlessness in the third. Have you found that you're able to inject those qualities into your day to day experience, independent conditions when you're out in the real world?

Maybe washing the dishes or taking a hike.

Leigh Brasington: Well, like I said, I seem to be happier, more reward feeling than usual, but it's not me injecting it. It's just my, who I am has changed such that I am more easily attuned to glee. I am a happier person. I'm satisfied more easily. I can, I can thrive in quiet stillness.

So I don't, I don't try and inject it in. If, if I, if I'm in a situation where it'd be good to inject some happiness, I'm not going to think about it like that. I'm going to think about, well, how, what's the best way for me to deal with this situation? Yeah.

Stephen Zerfas: I see. That's great. And then I think let's close with you, you just mentioned a minute ago that the, when you published your book, you didn't think people were going to be able to use that book to learn the jhanas off the retreat.

Yeah. What what do you think you got wrong there? Like what, why did you think that that was only something that could be done on retreat? Did you learn something new by watching people succeed in

Leigh Brasington: learning the Jhanas? Yeah, so I never watched anybody learn the Jhanas reading the book. They read the book and they said they learned the Jhana and then they come on retreat with me and by George, they actually know the Jhanas.

So I guess what,

what I didn't recognize was that there are enough people out there that the instructions I put in there are suitable enough so that they can find the jhanas. I mean, it's the same instructions I gave on retreat and, you know. I would give them out and people would come in and we would tune up what they were doing.

And I felt the tuning, tuning it up. No, don't don't do that. Do this instead. Or you're you're forgetting about, you know, whatever. Those tune ups I felt were really important for getting people there, but apparently some people can get there without the need of those tune ups.

Stephen Zerfas: It's cool. Well that's a testament to how clearly and powerfully you wrote your book.

I was really blown away when, when I got my hands on a copy and was like, holy cow. This is the move. So that's, I think that's a big thanks for all of us. We, this has been so fun. Thanks so much for sharing both the, your background and my story and all these nooks and crannies of how you've learned and thought about the jhanas, super, super fun.

Leigh Brasington: Yeah, I really like sharing the Jhanas in any way I can with people. I came as teacher told her when she asked, am I doing it right? Because she told herself the Jhanas and then she found a teacher and describe what she did. And he said, yes, and furthermore, you must teach these. They're in danger of becoming a lost art.

And so, yeah, you people learning the jhanas, that's really important to keep these from becoming a lost art. So thank you very much for your work on this. Really appreciate it.

Stephen Zerfas: We'll certainly do our best.

Leigh Brasington: All right.