from Hacker News

EEG Study of Buddhist Jhāna Meditation (2019)

by Curiositry on 2/17/25, 11:43 PM with 28 comments

• by swayvil on 2/18/25, 7:28 PM

  Hey I've done some samatha meditation.

  In samatha you do a thing with your attention.

  Your attention is basically your root sense. The sense behind your seeing, thinking, hearing, smelling etc.

  Your attention is usually all boggled and agitated, so it doesn't see so good.

  In samatha you de-agitate your attention. Make it calm. When it's calm you see better. Much better. Stuff that was invisible becomes visible.

  Samatha is a refined form of concentration. All of the people here are pretty familiar with concentration and what it's good for. So in samatha you just take it further.

• by nprateem on 2/18/25, 7:18 AM

  I can recommend 2 books for those who want to try to learn, but tbh i think a retreat is still required to reach them:

  1. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Right-Concentration-Practical-Guide...

  2. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindfulness-Bliss-Beyond-Meditators...

  Leigh Brasington reports that people he's spoken to who have studied kundalini yoga say the strong piti of the first jhana is the same as awakening the kundalini, so there's a bit of an "all roads lead to Rome" about these practices, which is encouraging.

  Both authors are on dharmaseed. Worth checking them out. They're both great teachers.

• by abeppu on 2/18/25, 7:01 PM

  The author of this study Paul Dennison also wrote a book Jhana Consciousness which discusses both this work as well as giving a more religious background on the jhanas, as well as the Samatha Trust organization that teaches the form of meditation specifically used by the participants in this study.

• by thatguysaguy on 2/19/25, 3:38 AM

  It's nice that that the url to an article about studying mysticism with science could also be read as "Frontier Sin"

• by sophyphreak on 2/19/25, 5:53 PM

  If you want to meet English-speaking monks who are dedicated to following the monastic rules, consider going to monastery in the Ajahn Chah lineage. There are others that are perfectly good (like Ajahn Brahm), but this lineage is unique in that you can find monasteries in the lineage all over the world. https://forestsangha.org/community/monasteries . This doesn't have much to do with jhanas. Just wanted to say

• by v3ss0n on 2/19/25, 12:22 AM

  Try fire Kasina, it is fastest way to achieve jhana with external object. It's brute force way so a bit rough with side effects and have long lasting effects.

  https://firekasina.org/

  Edit: fixed url

• by zozbot234 on 2/18/25, 1:21 PM

  (2019)