You’ve probably tried meditation before. Maybe you downloaded an app, sat on a cushion, tried to focus on your breathing for ten minutes, and spent most of that time thinking about your grocery list. Maybe it helped a little with stress. Maybe you gave up after a week.
What if meditation can also produce experiences of profound joy, deep peace, and extraordinary mental clarity — states so vivid and unmistakable that people who experience them describe their lives as divided into “before” and “after”? These states are called the jhanas. They have been described for over 2,600 years, and most modern meditation approaches never mention them.
This isn’t esoteric mysticism or something reserved for monks living in caves. The jhanas are natural states your mind is already capable of producing when the conditions are right. And there is a method — called Tranquil Mind — that makes those conditions surprisingly accessible, even for beginners.
Here is what the jhanas are, what each one actually feels like, and how jhana meditation works in practice.
So What Exactly Are the Jhanas?
Think of the jhanas as progressively deeper levels of mental well-being that arise naturally during meditation. They’re not something you hallucinate or imagine. They’re not drug-induced altered states. They’re what happens when your mind becomes genuinely settled and calm — when the usual background noise of worry, craving, restlessness, and self-criticism temporarily fades away, and what’s left underneath is surprisingly wonderful.
The word “jhana” comes from an ancient Indian language, and it roughly means a state of deep mental composure. The historical Buddha described eight of these states, each one more refined and subtle than the last. The first four are described in detail further down this page; the fifth through eighth move into increasingly subtle territory — a sense of boundless space, then an awareness of consciousness itself arising and passing away, then a quality of deep nothingness, and finally a state so refined it’s described as “neither perception nor non-perception,” where the mind is barely aware of itself at all. These last four are often called the “formless” jhanas, because the mind has moved beyond its usual sense of boundaries and form.
What’s remarkable about all of these states is that you remain aware throughout. You’re not unconscious, you’re not in a trance, and you’re not zoned out. In fact, your awareness is sharper than usual. You can hear if someone calls your name. You simply have a calm, clear mind that isn’t pulled around by its usual habits.
Why Haven’t I Heard of This Before?
If you’ve used a meditation app or taken an introductory mindfulness class, there’s a good chance the jhanas were never mentioned. Most popular meditation approaches today are simplified extracts from a much larger system. They’re often focused on stress reduction or basic awareness training — which is valuable, but it’s a bit like learning to swim in the shallow end without anyone telling you there’s an entire ocean out there.
The jhanas are part of the original, complete system of meditation the Buddha taught. Over the centuries, as the teachings were transmitted through different cultures and traditions, the practical instructions for accessing these states became fragmented. Different schools emphasized different aspects, and some of the most transformative elements — including the jhanas — fell out of common practice.
In recent years, interest in the jhanas has surged. Neuroscientists are studying them. Experienced meditators from various traditions are talking about them openly. And more people are asking the obvious question: how do I actually experience these states?
They Arise on Their Own — and That Changes Everything
Here is the counterintuitive heart of it: you don’t chase the jhanas. You don’t force your way into them. They arise on their own — not because you achieved something, but because you stopped doing something. Specifically, because you stopped feeding craving.
In almost every area of life, effort produces results. If you are struggling, you try harder. You apply more force, more concentration, more will. But in meditation, applying force is not just unhelpful — it is the very thing that keeps the deep states away.
Why? Because craving always manifests as tension and tightness. In the mind, in the head, in the body. Every time you try to force a state to arise, every time you grip after an experience or push away a distraction with irritation, you are generating craving — the root cause of suffering, and the exact obstacle that prevents the jhanas from arising.
This is the trap many meditators fall into without realizing it. They bring a problem-solving, achievement-oriented mindset to the cushion, and the more they try to concentrate, the more tension builds. The mind becomes like a fist squeezed so tightly that nothing can flow through it.
Tranquil Mind does not approach the mind as something to be conquered. It approaches the mind as something to be befriended. The very name reflects this: Tranquil Mind — not Controlled Mind, not Disciplined Mind, not Concentrated Mind. And tranquility, by its nature, is not something you can manufacture through effort. It arises when the conditions that prevent it are gently released.
The Practice That Sets the Conditions
Jhana meditation in this method has three core components: loving-kindness as the meditation object, a technique called the 6Rs for working with distractions, and — perhaps surprisingly — smiling.
Loving-kindness as the foundation. Most meditation methods ask you to watch your breath. That can work, but many people find it dry, boring, or frustrating. The breath is a subtle and neutral object, and for a lot of people, trying to keep attention on something so subtle feels like work.
Tranquil Mind uses the feeling of loving-kindness instead. This is a genuine, heartfelt wish for happiness and well-being — first directed toward yourself, then toward someone you care about, called a Spiritual Friend. The feeling is warm, pleasant, and easy to stay with. Your mind naturally gravitates toward pleasant things, which means less struggle, less forcing, and faster progress.
A typical session starts with about ten minutes of cultivating that warm feeling toward yourself — silently saying something like “May I be happy, may I be peaceful” while resting on the actual feeling those words evoke, which most people notice as a gentle warmth in the chest. Then you shift to holding your Spiritual Friend in awareness and radiating that same feeling toward them for the remaining twenty minutes or more. Your attention rests on the feeling itself — not the words, and not a mental image.
The 6Rs: a gentle way to handle distractions. Your mind will wander. This is completely normal — it’s what minds do. The question isn’t whether it will wander, but what you do when it does. Many approaches tell you to simply “return to the breath,” which leaves most people feeling like they’re failing dozens of times a session.
Instead, you Recognize that the mind has wandered. You Release the distraction — not pushing it away or arguing with it, simply no longer feeding it with attention. Then — and this is the pivotal step — you Relax, consciously softening the tension or tightness that has built up in your mind and body. You Re-smile, putting a gentle smile back on your face, in your eyes, and in your heart. You Return your attention gently to the feeling of loving-kindness. And you Repeat whenever the mind wanders again.
The Relax step is what makes the difference. Every distraction leaves a residue of tension. By deliberately relaxing that tension, you release the underlying craving or aversion that caused the distraction in the first place. Each time you relax, you feel a small but real sense of relief. It is immediate, and it accumulates. Every completed Relax step is a tiny knot of craving genuinely let go — not suppressed, not pushed underground, but released.
If your mind wanders thirty times in a thirty-minute session and you run the 6Rs thirty times, that’s not a failed meditation. That’s thirty successful practices of letting go.
Smiling. This one surprises people, but it’s integral. A gentle smile throughout your meditation physically relaxes the face, generates a subtle sense of well-being, and keeps the practice light rather than grim. Seriousness creates tension. Tension creates craving. Craving is exactly what you’re learning to let go of. So you smile.
How the Jhanas Actually Arise
Every distraction during meditation is powered by one of the mind’s habitual patterns — wanting something, resisting something, restlessness, doubt, or sleepiness. These are the five hindrances, and they are not accidents or character flaws. They are mental habits, grooves worn deep by years of craving-based response to experience. Every hindrance is craving in one form or another, and every craving manifests as tension.
Each time you run the 6Rs — and especially each time you relax — you weaken one of these patterns slightly. There is a crucial difference between this and suppression. In suppression, the hindrance goes underground and will resurface. In genuine release through the Relax step, the hindrance loses its grip and fades. The mind is actually cleaner after each cycle, not merely quieter.
Eventually a hindrance runs out of energy entirely. It simply doesn’t have the fuel to pull your attention away anymore. The mind naturally becomes lighter, stays on the object more easily, and the warmth deepens and stabilizes. And then, when the conditions are sufficiently ripe, the first jhana arises.
Not because you made it happen — but because you finally stopped preventing it.
The First Jhana: Joy
The first jhana is most easily understood through a simile. Imagine a man wandering in a scorching desert, dying of thirst. He crests a dune and suddenly — there in the distance — he sees an oasis. A pool of cool, clear water. His whole being floods with joy. His heart lifts. His body feels lighter. He can barely contain his excitement.
That joy is piti — the Pali word for rapture or energetic joy. It is the defining characteristic of the first jhana.
When a meditator releases a hindrance and piti arises for the first time, it may come as a complete surprise. It is not subtle. There may be waves of warm, effervescent happiness, like something bubbling out from inside. There may be lightness in the body, tingling, warmth, even tears of relief or gratitude. The Spiritual Friend appears to smile back, and there is no need for effort anymore. The mind just stays on its object, held there by the pleasure of the feeling itself.
This is followed, within the same jhana, by a settling into sukha — happiness, contentment, a deep sense of well-being. The mind is still active in the first jhana; there is still thinking and examining. But the thoughts that arise are wholesome observing thoughts about the present experience. There is no craving. There are no hindrances. There is simply joy, happiness, and a beautiful sense of unification of mind.
The critical instruction at this stage: do not 6R the joy. Some meditators, fearing attachment, try to push the joy away. This is a mistake. The joy arises because craving has been released — it is the natural response of the mind to tasting freedom, however briefly. Allow it to be there. Enjoy it. This is one of the fruits of the path, and it is supposed to feel wonderful.
The Second Jhana: Deeper Joy and Confidence
As practice continues, the joy of the first jhana matures. It becomes quieter, more spacious, more confident. The man in the desert is no longer just glimpsing the oasis in the distance — he is walking toward it, knowing it is real.
The second jhana is characterized by a subtler, more pervading joy, along with a quality of strong confidence. The sense of the body may become very light, almost floating. Mind and body feel profoundly peaceful.
A notable shift happens here: the internal verbal quality of the first jhana starts to be felt as a tension in the head. The meditator notices that thinking creates a kind of tightness. Naturally, by applying the Relax step whenever this is noticed, thinking becomes less and less prominent. The second jhana is quieter than the first, deeper, more unified. This is sometimes called “noble silence” — a silence you feel rather than enforce.
The Third Jhana: Happiness and Contentment
When the man in the desert finally reaches the pool and steps in, the temperature is exactly right. Mind and body give a deep, involuntary sigh of relief. The joy of excitement transforms into something quieter: happiness (sukha) and a growing sense of mental balance.
This is the third jhana. The energized piti of the earlier states has settled into deep contentment. Meditators at this stage sometimes become anxious because the more dramatic joy has faded, thinking something has gone wrong. In fact, this is progress. The mind is going deeper, not shallower.
In the third jhana, the meditator begins to lose the felt sense of the body. Hands go missing. Legs disappear. One meditator reported feeling as if her head was simply resting on the floor with nobody attached to it. There is only the quiet, unified mind resting in happiness. Equanimity begins to emerge alongside the contentment — a quality of profound balance and evenness. No highs and lows, no urgency, no seeking. The mind is simply here, at ease, aware, and happy.
The Fourth Jhana: Equanimity
The happiness of the third jhana eventually quiets further, leaving behind only its most refined quality: equanimity (upekkhā). This is the fourth jhana, often called “The Beautiful.”
The Buddha described this state as having “neither pain nor pleasure, and purity of mindfulness due to equanimity.” It is not a flat or dull state. On the contrary, mindfulness in the fourth jhana is extraordinarily pure and bright. The mind is like a perfectly clear, still lake — not frozen, not empty, but completely undisturbed. Nothing shakes it; a loud noise outside is simply registered and released. Pain in the body may disappear entirely, not because you can’t feel it, but because the mind no longer reacts to it with resistance.
A remarkable shift often marks the transition into the fourth jhana: the feeling of loving-kindness, which has been centered in the chest and heart throughout the earlier jhanas, begins to move up into the head, radiating from the crown. This should not be forced back down. It is a natural development, a sign the practice is deepening exactly as it should.
From this still, luminous platform of equanimity, the practice opens into the four formless bases — Infinite Space, Infinite Consciousness, Nothingness, and Neither-Perception-nor-Non-Perception. These too arise naturally, as the loving-kindness meditation transitions at the appropriate stage into the fuller Brahmavihāra system, moving through compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity as successive meditation objects.
What Actually Sets the Conditions
The meditator’s job is simply to set the causes and conditions in motion. The effects take care of themselves. Those conditions are not mysterious:
- Ethical living and a clear conscience. The Five Precepts — not killing, not stealing, not causing harm through speech or action, not taking intoxicants — are not arbitrary rules. They are the foundation of a clean, untroubled mind. A mind burdened by guilt cannot settle into the jhanas. A mind that lives with integrity rests easily when it sits.
- A consistent daily practice. Thirty minutes every day is not a lot of time, but consistency is more powerful than occasional marathon sessions. The mind learns, gradually, that the sitting period is a safe time to let go.
- The right object. Loving-kindness is a feeling rather than a concept, so it engages the heart as well as the mind. It is immediately pleasant to practice, which means the mind’s natural movement toward pleasant experience aids the practice instead of fighting it.
- The Relax step, applied with diligence. Of all the conditions, this is the most transformative and the most often overlooked. Without genuinely relaxing the tension each distraction creates, the residue of craving accumulates.
- Smiling. It sounds almost too simple, but the smile is not decorative. It keeps the mind bright, agile, and observant, and prevents the grim, straining quality that kills many a practice.
- Not mixing practices. Tranquil Mind is a complete, integrated system. Adding concentration techniques, noting practices, mantras, or body scanning from other traditions introduces competing aims. Give the practice your full commitment for a genuine period before evaluating it.
The moment a meditator begins straining for the jhanas — trying to manufacture them, grasping after states that were present yesterday but are not here today — they have reintroduced craving into the practice. And craving, even craving for spiritual states, creates tension. Tension keeps the jhanas away.
Deeper, Not Higher
Prefer to watch? Nathaniel speaks to exactly this stage — what changes when you’re ready for more — in Episode 8 of the course.
Most meditators imagine progress as going higher — climbing to elevated states, ascending to purer realms of consciousness. The jhanas seem, in this picture, like summits to be conquered.
The actual movement is the opposite. Mental activity gets quieter and quieter, moving from the busy, active engagement of the ordinary mind toward something increasingly still and subtle. You are not going higher; you are going deeper — lower and slower, until eventually everything just stops.
Each jhana is not a higher floor in a building but a deeper layer in still water. The surface is turbulent. The first jhana is below the waves. The second, third, and fourth are progressively deeper and quieter. The formless bases are quieter still.
What You Can Expect
If you practice with consistency — ideally thirty minutes a day, the first ten minutes radiating loving-kindness to yourself and the remaining twenty to your Spiritual Friend — here is a rough sense of the journey.
In the first few weeks, you’ll likely notice your mindfulness improving; you catch the wandering mind more quickly. Daily life feels a bit easier. You may be calmer and more patient, and people around you might respond more positively without knowing why.
With continued practice, joy begins to arise naturally during meditation. You might feel a deep contentment, a sense of peace you didn’t know was possible. The body may feel very light during practice, or you may temporarily lose awareness of it entirely.
As for the jhanas themselves, the timeline varies from person to person. Some people have initial jhana experiences within days or weeks; for others it takes months. The key factors are correct technique, regular practice, and ideally working with an experienced guide who can offer personalized instruction.
The Jhanas Are Part of Something Larger
One last thing worth knowing: as wonderful as the jhanas are, they aren’t the ultimate point of the practice. In the original teaching they are part of a complete path — one that leads not just to temporary states of deep happiness, but to lasting freedom from the mental patterns that create suffering. The jhanas develop the clarity, equanimity, and insight needed for that deeper transformation.
You don’t need to think about that right now. You can simply start practicing, enjoy the benefits, and see where it leads.
The practice is simple. Sit comfortably. Smile. Generate a feeling of warmth and kindness toward yourself. Extend it to someone you care about. When your mind wanders — and it will — gently recognize what happened, let it go, relax, re-smile, return to the feeling, and repeat. That’s it. Everything else unfolds from there.
The jhanas are not myths, and they are not the exclusive attainments of enlightened masters on distant mountains. They are the natural unfolding of a mind that has learned to release tension instead of accumulating it, to meet each moment with kindness instead of craving, to smile instead of strain.
You set the causes in motion. The conditions do the rest.
Keep Exploring
The jhanas arise out of steady practice with loving-kindness meditation and the 6Rs — in sitting practice or walking meditation. The four brahmaviharas become the successive objects as practice deepens, and the five hindrances are what the 6Rs are gradually dissolving. For the method laid out in order from the first sitting, see the complete Tranquil Mind method.
Everything here is taught in full in The Tranquil Mind by Nathaniel T. Heidler — free as an ebook, and free to read on Kindle Unlimited. Or get free one-on-one guidance from a real teacher — always free, because we’re a nonprofit.
Guides are available for one-on-one sessions, small-group Zoom retreats, and in-person retreats. Tranquil Mind is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and donations are tax-deductible.
