Buddhist Geeks

Leigh Brasington explains how the mind progresses through the four jhānas—from initial access concentration and the energetic, pleasure-filled first jhāna to the progressively quieter states of happiness, contentment, and equanimity—emphasizing their practical characteristics, traditional similes, and their role in supporting insight practice. 💎 The Jhāna Community This recording took place in The Jhāna Community . If you’re interested in accelerating your meditation practice, and want to explore many dimensions of jhāna, consider checking out our community of practice: 💬 Transcript 🤖 AI Transparency : The transcript below was lightly edited with ChatGPT to correct for spelling & grammar errors. Also – we like em-dashes – so we kept them. 🤪 Leigh Brasington : So last week I talked about how to get to the first jhāna. You’ve got to get yourself settled. You’ve got to generate access concentration, which may take a while. There’ll be distractions. Label the distraction, relax, and come back. My favorite label is “story.” I am distracted, and I see I’m telling myself a story, and I just go “story,” and it goes away. Sometimes I’m telling myself a story about something I want to get, sometimes about something that shouldn’t be happening. Sometimes I’m telling myself a story because I’m bored with my breath and I just want better entertainment — and I’m a good storyteller. So: story, and it’s gone. But eventually the mind settles in, I’m not getting distracted, and I’m knowing each in-breath and out-breath. If I’m doing mindfulness of breathing and I stay there for a while, this is access concentration. And then I shift my attention to a pleasant sensation and do nothing else. This focus on the pleasant sensation has the effect of generating a feedback loop of pleasure, which eventually turns into the first jhāna. I’ll read you what the Buddha has to say about the first jhāna. This is from the second discourse in the Long Discourses — the Samaññaphala Sutta, the Discourse on the Fruits of the Spiritual Life: “Quite secluded from sense pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states…” Okay, that’s the abandoning of the hindrances, the getting past the distractions. Basically, you’ve got to abandon the hindrances temporarily. So this is the seclusion. It says one “enters and remains in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by thinking and examining, and is filled with rapture and happiness born of seclusion.” One enters and dwells in the first jhāna. So there’s the actual entering of the jhāna, and then there’s stabilizing it so that it lasts for a while. It says “thinking and examining.” The Pali words are vitakka and vicāra . Vitakka means thinking, and vicāra means examining or pondering. Unfortunately, in later Buddhism those words — but only in the context of the jhānas — got changed to “initial attention” and “sustained attention” on the meditation object. The Buddha would be shocked. I’ve done research on all the places in the suttas where vitakka shows up. There are 979 locations, all right? So it’s an important word, and it means “thinking,” always. I looked through to see if I could find any place where Sujato — I’m just looking at his translations — has “placing the mind” instead of “thinking,” and doesn’t have “keeping connected,” which is his translation of vicāra , and it’s not related to the first jhāna or the second jhāna. And I found all of them: none. Zero. Okay. Although you may hear that it’s initial and sustained attention to the meditation object — and you do have to do that, no doubt about it — but that’s not what these words mean. I suspect the reason for the change is that, as time went on, the understanding of the level of concentration needed to call something a jhāna kept increasing. And then they couldn’t have thinking. With this level of concentration, you couldn’t have any thinking and examining. You had to come up with something else to explain what was there. So they just took something that you did have, changed the meaning of the words — only in the jhāna instance — and stuck that in there. Not helpful. When you’re in the first jhāna, your mind is not really deeply concentrated. It’s like, “Oh wow, this is intense.” Because the next thing it says is that the state is “filled with rapture and happiness born of seclusion.” Rapture is pīti , and happiness is sukkha . And suddenly you’ve got all this excess energy — the pīti — and it’s like, wow. “Oh, this is intense. What’s going on here? Is this… this has got to be the first jhāna. I’m sure it’s the first jhāna. This couldn’t be…” Whatever. You’re commenting on it and you’re thinking about it. Now, it’s true it’s a little bit unstable, and so you do have to keep putting your attention back on it and not get lost in it. But basically what’s happened is that you’ve arrived in a state where the pīti comes up and predominates, and you have all this physical energy, and there’s some background happiness, and you’re commenting on the exp

🤖 AI Transparency: The transcript below was lightly edited, for both spelling & grammar errors, using ChatGPT. In this talk jhāna teacher Leigh Brasington draws on teachings from his teacher Ayya Khema , offering a clear, practice-based guide to entering the first jhāna, a meditative state of joyful concentration described in early Buddhist texts. A Jhāna Retreat If this sounds like your jam, consider joining Vince Fakhoury Horn & Brian Newman for The Flavors of Jhāna retreat , this coming January in Portugal. 💬 Transcript Leigh Brasington : Very nice to be here, I appreciate the invitation. I always like talking about the jhānas—very interesting topic. So what I’m going to do today is share the basic instructions for how to enter the jhānas as I teach them. I learned them from Ayya Khema . Actually, I stumbled into the first one when I was on retreat with Ajahn Buddhadasa in Southern Thailand. I didn’t know it was a jhāna. They told me I was experiencing pīti . I knew I liked it. It changed my practice from something I knew I should do to something I wanted to do. Just the pleasure of it—yeah, I’m a greed type—okay, here’s a nice source of pleasure. The jhānas are eight altered states of consciousness. Actually, in the suttas there are four jhānas and four immaterial states, and it’s not until much later that they’re referred to as the eight jhānas. That’s convenient if you want to talk about the four immaterial states and the four jhānas at the same time, but they’re definitely different in the suttas. We do find many suttas where there are the first four jhānas and then three or four of the immaterial states, so it’s a pattern that makes a lot of sense. Most of the Buddhist teachings are in three categories: sīla , samādhi , paññā —ethics, concentration, wisdom. Sīla is morality, keeping the precepts. Samādhi is usually translated as concentration, but I actually prefer “indistractibility.” Concentration’s got that furrowed-brow thing—people try too hard and it doesn’t work. That’s one problem with teaching jhānas. I give students two warnings at the beginning of a retreat. First: if you have expectations, you’re in trouble. Expectation is wanting—the first hindrance. Over and over again the Buddha talks about the abandoning of the hindrances as a prerequisite for entering the jhānas. The other warning is that if you start fooling with concentration and you have any unresolved issues, they might come up. Hopefully none of you have unresolved psychological issues—but yeah, seems to be a problem for humans. Then paññā is wisdom. Basically what the Buddha is saying is: clean up your act, learn to concentrate your mind, and use your concentrated, indistractible mind to investigate reality and understand what’s actually happening. The jhānas in the suttas are frequently preceded by the abandoning of the hindrances. You might notice when you’re meditating and get distracted, you could label most distractions with one of the five hindrances: wanting, not wanting, sluggishness, restlessness, remorse, or doubt. What’s really necessary to enter the jhānas is a mind that’s relatively quiet. In later Pali literature it talks about “access concentration.” I’ve adopted that phrase to describe what you have to generate before entering the jhānas—not the deep concentration described in the Visuddhimagga , but good enough to have a chance at the jhāna as described in the suttas. So, basic instructions. Sit in a comfortable, upright posture—comfortable enough that it doesn’t generate aversion, but not so comfortable you fall asleep. Once you’re settled, put your attention on your meditation object. The Visuddhimagga mentions about thirty possible objects for developing access concentration. Most people work with mindfulness of breathing—the most common. Others use mettā meditation, or any of the brahmavihāras . A body scan works too—just slowly noticing sensations through the surface of the body without trying to change anything. Some teachers, like Ajahn Sumedho, teach using the nāda sound—the subtle ringing you can hear when it’s quiet. That can work too, though I don’t recommend it unless you want to hear that sound forever. A fifth option is a mantra. If you do a mantra until the mantra starts “doing you,” that’s a sign of good concentration. If you’re using the breath,

Vince Fakhoury Horn reflects on his experiences within the Insight meditation tradition, as an authorized teacher in the lineage, arguing that its senior leaders have remained complicit, through their silence, on the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. 💬 Transcript Vince : Today I want to speak to you as an authorized representative of the Insight meditation tradition. I was authorized to teach—empowered to teach—by Trudy Goodman and Jack Kornfield in a public ceremony in Los Angeles several years ago. This is largely going to be a story about my experience with the Insight meditation tradition and a kind of out-loud contemplation and meditation on how this tradition, from my point of view, has ended up two-plus years into what I saw, and see still, as a genocide in Israel with the Gazans—the Palestinians in Gaza—and how the Insight tradition has remained silent, largely silent, on such an important issue, one of the moral issues of our time, I think. And of course, I have to acknowledge as a Palestinian American, my view is informed by my own history. But I also want to say most Americans have no clue what the history is here. And I run into this every single day as I talk to people, as I try to share my honest experience—not hide—to be courageous and open about what it’s like to be a Palestinian living in America today, watching people that I care about be murdered, watching my family in the West Bank be terrified as they live in conditions which I could only describe as concentration-camp-like conditions. Two of my close family members here in Western North Carolina—two members who married into the larger clan of Fakhourys that live here. The last name of my grandfather was Fakhoury—Latif Fakhoury. He raised me; he was my father basically; I called him Pops. A number of family members live here in this area who immigrated here so they could get support from each other. Two of them have shared that they’ve both lost over 200 family members in Gaza. I want that to land with you for a second. Two hundred. That’s a whole family tree. People are losing family trees. So to me, as a Buddhist practitioner and as a Palestinian American—as someone who cares about things like this—I’m just completely, utterly fucking heartbroken, and I have been for the last two years. And I feel like during that time I’ve waited, I’ve waited, I’ve waited for the leaders of my own lineage—for my own teachers—to take a courageous moral stand. And the reality is they have not. And I don’t think they will. And so how in the world did we get here? I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’ve been looking at my own disappointment and disillusionment around it. And I’ve been disillusioned and disappointed before by teachers—you know, I’m not new to this game. I’ve been a teacher for 15 years. I’ve seen people get disillusioned and disappointed with me. That’s, in part, normal. But this is not. I want to claim that this is not normal. This is an abdication of moral responsibility at the deepest level. And I guess it’s not that surprising to me as I reflect back on my own experience with this tradition. When I first started engaging in the Insight tradition, around 2003, I went up for my first retreat at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. It was with Joseph Goldstein and a number of other teachers, who themselves had just exited a six-week retreat with Sayadaw U Pandita, a famous Burmese meditation master who was christening the new Forest Refuge long-term retreat facility with a retreat for the teachers of the Insight tradition. And for me, this was like falling in love. It was exactly what I was looking for—the hardcore retreat experience. I had been reading Daniel Ingram’s work prior to this—my first teacher—and he advocated for this hardcore contemplative approach. So it was great. I fell in love. I loved the Buddhist tradition. I loved the teachings. I loved the opportunity to go deep and be hardcore in my practice. But I noticed even then—me, a millennial practicing in an almost completely Boomer culture—that the politics of the place were weird. I remember complaining about this many times to my partner and other friends: how we would go on these retreats and the teachers would act apolitical, but then they would proceed to share reams of political opinions in their Dharma talks—some of which I agreed with and many of which I did not. And I found their political views to be quite homogeneous and quite apparent, and yet somehow being couched in apolitical terms. That was the first thing I found odd. So now when I look at it, this is a modernist movement. This is a modern movement. And part of what one does in the modern world, especially in the marketplace, is you depoliticize things. It’s not smart business to bring politics into your product or yo

In this Buddhist Geeks episode, Vince Fakhoury Horn and Robert Wright explore the intersection of Buddhism, ethics, and geopolitics as they reflect on Palestine, Jewish-Buddhist responses, moral responsibility, and the role of mindfulness amid global violence. Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

Vince Fakhoury Horn : The Flavors of Jhāna—I can’t remember where I first heard this term. I think it was from you or from Kenneth [Folk]. Brian Newman : Maybe we should start there. You came to me and said, “What should we call the retreat?” And I said, “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to do it in Portugal—what should we call it?” You threw it back at me, and I said, “Can we call it the name of my half-written book?” So folks, this all comes from a story that’s part of a lineage. This is a Kenneth Folk story, and it’s his way of demonstrating Jhāna on the spectrum. Kenneth says: imagine you’ve got a bunch of strawberries. You crush them into a strawberry smoothie, and you drink it. What does it taste like? A hundred percent strawberries. Now imagine a glass of clear water. You take a strong strawberry extract in concentrated form, drop in a single drop. What does it taste like? Strawberry—but just one tiny drop. And Kenneth’s punchline is, “It all tastes like strawberry, motherfucker.” His point is that it doesn’t matter where you are on the spectrum of Jhāna. On one end, you’ve got the Pa’auk tradition —completely absorbed, so much so that a gun could go off next to your head and you wouldn’t notice. On the lighter end, you’ve got Leigh Brasington , teaching Jhānic factors in a very Sutta-based way, or even lighter approaches. But Kenneth’s point is: it all tastes like Jhāna. Different flavor, same essence. Even the tiniest drop in the ocean still tastes like strawberry. That’s how I understood the story when Kenneth told it. Much of this dialogue centers around an upcoming 10-day meditation retreat on the same topic, The Flavors of Jhāna , that will be co-taught by Brian Newman & Vince Horn. Vince: The Flavors of Jhāna —I can’t remember where I first heard this term. I think it was from you, or from Kenneth [Folk]. Brian: Maybe we should start with that, yeah. So, Vince, you came to me and you said—no, I said to you, “What should we call the retreat?” And you were like, “Hey man, you’re the one that wanted to do it in Portugal, what should we call it?” And you put it back to me. And I said, “Can we call it the name of the book—my half-written book?” And so this is, folks, this is all coming from a story that’s part of a lineage. And I promised we’d tell some of those today. So this is a Kenneth Folk story, and it’s his way of demonstrating Jhāna on the spectrum. So Kenneth says this: imagine that you had—glass—imagine a few different scenarios. You’ve got a bunch of strawberries, and you crush ’em into a strawberry smoothie. And you just have a pure strawberry smoothie, and you drink that smoothie. What would that taste like? And the answer is, that would a hundred percent taste like strawberries, because that’s all that’s gone into the making of the strawberry. Now, what if you just had a glass of clear water and a pretty strong strawberry extract in a really concentrated form, and you dropped one drop of that into a glass of water? What would that taste like? And then the answer is, that would taste like strawberry—with just one tiny concentrated drop. And Kenneth’s punchline on this is: “It all tastes like strawberry, motherfucker.” I believe that’s the punchline. And his point is, it doesn’t really matter where you are on the spectrum of Jhāna. And we could say, when we say the Jhānic spectrum, we’re talking about on one end we have the Pa’auk tradition , which would have you completely absorbed, so much so that a gun could go off by your head. On the lighter end, we would have Leigh Brasington , who teaches Jhānic factors, a very Sutta-based approach—or maybe some even less rigorous, less absorbed type of Jhāna. And Kenneth’s point is: it all tastes like Jhāna. What are you talking about? It’s just a different flavor. And how much of that actual flavor do you need to be able to recognize it? His point is, the tiniest little millionth part in a glass in the ocean would still taste like strawberries, so to speak. Let me know if you have a different interpretation of that story. That’s how I interacted with it when Kenneth told me. Vince: Yeah, no, I have a similar interpretation of what he was teaching there. He was kind of pointing to this depth dimension of Jhāna, and using the strawberry analogy to point out that, yeah, these states are patterns of mind.

Vince Fakhoury Horn : I was thinking about where to start with the 9th Jhāna, and I think the first thing to say is that the 9th Jhāna is not a state. So why in the world are we within a community of practice called The Jhāna Community , which is explicitly aimed at developing and cultivating certain states of mind, or states of consciousness, why would we be focusing on something which is not a state? Let me let me share a little bit where this term came from. So I'm borrowing this term from a researcher who I spoke to some months ago. This is a researcher working on a project studying advanced meditation . They were asking me about my experience with jhāna's and then asked, “Do you have any experience with anything that would be considered like a 9th Jhāna, or anything beyond the eight traditional jhānas.” And I had to think about that because I'd never heard the term, “the 9th jhāna.” I'd heard other things, weird things, but I hadn't heard that one before, so I thought about it and I was like, “Well, I guess the only thing I would describe as the 9th jhāna is just sort of resting in awareness, or just being open and not doing anything, just being”, what I would normally in my own models call Awareness Meditation, and that is the spirit of this exploration today. Want to explore the 9th jhāna with Vince Horn? Join him for another round of The 9th Jhāna in The Jhāna Community beginning September 30th, 2025. The 9th Jhāna is an exploration of how to explore these states of consciousness that arise in meditation naturally and organically when the mind and body are settled, through the doorway of a very different kind of meditation object, which is not an object at all. We take awareness as our “object.” Of course, awareness can't take itself as an object, right? If you could take awareness as an object, that wouldn't be awareness. It'd be some experience. With the 9th jhāna we're learning how to rest in awareness, to be aware of awareness. And there are lots of ways to do that, and there's lots of ways to think about that. So today I wanted to kind of just share a few different frames with you, uh, as an attempt to frame the unframeable. Awareness isn't something which we can frame properly because it's not an experience, or it's not a thing, or state. But we still have to talk about it. Because it's like the whole point of the Buddhist meditative tradition in a certain way. So how can we talk about something that doesn't fit into the normal categories of how we think about reality? One way I think we have to talk about this, and this is a longstanding conversation in the Buddhist contemplative tradition, is we have to talk about how we enter into this awareness of awareness. And there's a longstanding debate here between what in the Buddhist tradition they call the Sudden and Gradual schools. They're not actual real schools, okay. In fact, they're probably not really actual people who really believe either one of these extreme positions anymore. But, over thousands of years, you could say a dialogue has been happening across these different lines of looking at how the path unfolds. And one of the so-called schools says that the path is a gradual process, it's something that you develop through time. In a book called One Dharma by a Teacher named Joseph Goldstein , he does his best to try to make sense of these different approaches and he describes this kind of approach where you're gradually developing stage by stage or step by step. He calls this the Building From Below orientation. But there's also, as he describes it, a way to Swoop From Above with Awareness. You don't necessarily have to spend 20 years and you know, five Goenka retreats, or whatever the amount of stuff that you did, before you realized the basic truth about awareness, which is: good luck trying to not be aware. Ken Wilber, one of my early mentors, he used to always point to awareness, he'd say, “Try to stop being aware of my voice.” And Ken talks a lot [laughs] and he'd just keep talking, talking, talking about how you can't not be aware. And it's true, it's hard to shut awareness off. So here, how do we actually, suddenly realize that we're already aware? This is the Sudden School, which Joseph Goldstein described as Sweeping from Above. You could just realize it's already done. You're already aware, you're already awake. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , in a book called I Am That he said, “To be aware is to be awa

This episode of Buddhist Geeks features a candid and heartfelt conversation between Vince Fakhoury Horn and Tasshin Fogleman about Palestine, the TPOT subculture, and what it means to embody true Bodhisattvahood. They explore the limitations of online discourse, especially around contentious issues, and reflect on the importance of good-faith dialogue, friendship, and spiritual integrity in times of crisis. Join Vince Fakhoury Horn and Brian Newman outside of Lisbon, Portugal at the beginning of 2026 for a 10-day intensive jhāna retreat. There, we’ll be exploring The Flavors of Jhāna . Episode Transcript Vince: Hey Tasshin. Tasshin: Hi Vince. We just talked before I hit record. We just talked still. It's like formally. Hi. Hi. Tasshin: We're here. Vince: Yeah, exactly. That's good to see you. Tasshin: Yeah, good to see you too, brother. Yeah. Vince: Yeah, man, I appreciate you being willing to I invited you to have this conversation on X or my favorite platform to hate, Tasshin: My favorite platform to love. Vince: Great. I was there with you for a while, but yeah, it's getting a little weird. It's it's getting a little Faschy, X but we'll probably talk about that. So I propose that we talk about, this was the theme I proposed to you, which is Palestine, TPOT, and True Bodhisattvahood.. And it's, I guess in response to a lot of frustrated, angry, maybe righteous and not in a necessarily, in all bad sense. But yeah, in some posts that I've been sharing on X since I don't know it's been ongoing since the October 7th in my case. So I guess I wanted to explore that with you because I consider you to be one of my friends in the TPOT subculture, which we can get into and talk about what that actually is, Uhhuh because it's pretty, and it's it's vagueish, but, or decentralized at least. But it seems like you're well respected in this decentralized subculture and I think I'm part of that as well, but I seem to be taking a very different role from you and how I relate to it, which is a little bit more critical and Challenging and, I haven't found that's really endeared me to many people in the community. But some people like yourself have engaged with my critiques in what feels like a good faith way, and I've really appreciated that. So I thought, it'd be cool to have a, an even more personal conversation where people could see potentially if we decide to release any of this. And I don't know, just the human side of this, which doesn't come across often in 280 characters. Tasshin: Yeah. I appreciate all that context. I think that's really helpful and I think it's good to have a conversation about this. I think that I've been really struck by your perspectives on this and in general, I really value your perspectives and your opinions about the path and about practice and, we've had a number of disagreements over the years, but I've always walked away, like really learning a lot. And yeah, I do try to engage in good faith and I think especially one of the practices I have just for any kind of conflict in general is if I feel like text-based mediums especially can only hold so much. I don't even like to discourse or disagree on Twitter. I use it for other things and it's hey, if I'm, I've said this to you before, if we have a disagreement, let's get on a call and actually talk about it. And because it's just, you can actually hear the other person's perspective and where they're coming from in a way that text just really doesn't afford. So I'm glad we're talking about this. Yeah, I think it's great. Yeah. Vince: And the downside of doing that without recording it and sharing it back, because of course then it's just like a private thing that happens Right, and doesn't necessarily filter out in the same way to the collective. Tasshin: Totally. Totally. So Vince: This is cool. Yeah. Thank you. Tasshin: Do you have any suggestions for where you'd like to start or what feels like a good starting place? Vince: I would be curious to see your take on what TPOT is or how you'd describe that phenomena. I did spend a little bit of time reflecting on it, and I came up with a little, like micro definition, but I don't think it's exhaustive this a starting point. But I'm curious even before sharing that, if there's anything, thoughts on TPOT and what it is, if you've thought, have you meditated on that? How do you can, Tasshin: yeah. I love that and I'm so curious what your definition will be. I suspect it'll be s

What is Access Concentration? This is the question I want to bring forward in this talk. I recorded something on this topic many years ago—too many, honestly, to comfortably admit. At the time, I was working on a project that was essentially a secular meditation app. That’s basically been the through-line of my career: building and teaching through these kinds of projects. The app was called Meditate.io, and we had a course titled Concentration Meditation . In it, we aimed to explain the basics of how concentration really works. That course now lives on in The Jhāna Community under the name Concentration 101 . It shares some really good foundational ideas, one of which is the concept of Access Concentration . I found this idea so useful in my own Buddhist meditative practice that I really wanted to bring it into a more secular context. There’s a YouTube clip that gives my best simple explanation of what Access Concentration is, and I won’t go too deep here since that recording already exists. That’s the beauty of recording something—you don’t have to keep repeating yourself. But here’s the short version of how I understand it: Access Concentration is when the object of your focus—whether it’s the breath, the body, a sound, a visual orb, a mantra, or anything else—moves into the center of your attention. It shifts into the foreground, and everything else fades into the background. That background doesn’t disappear entirely; distractions and thoughts may still be there, but now they’re peripheral. The object of your focus becomes primary. This shift is important. It’s a turning point in practice when your attention starts to settle and stabilize. Of course, we can fall out of access. Some people think they’re only in access concentration if they maintain it the entire time they’re sitting—but that’s a much deeper, more stable version that usually takes time to develop. Unless you’re a natural at this—and few are—it takes consistent effort. In any given moment, if your meditation object is the main thing in your attention, you’re in access. And sure, distractions will pull at you—that’s normal. You fall out of access, and then you come back. Return to the breath. Be with it. At first, the breath might not hold your full attention. Maybe it gets 50%, then 30%, then 20%, then something else pulls at you. It’s a dynamic process. In my experience, concentration becomes more fluid and interactive the deeper you go. But at some point, your focus stabilizes: more than 50% of your attention is on the breath. It begins to draw you in—it has gravity. You want to give it more attention. There’s interest. There’s intimacy. In the traditional Buddhist framework, this state is called Access Concentration because it’s the doorway into the jhānas. You can’t access the jhānas without first stabilizing in access—at least, according to later Buddhist sources. And here’s a side note for the Buddhist nerds out there: the term Access Concentration doesn’t show up in the earliest teachings. It came later—about a thousand years after the Buddha’s time. Imagine a thousand years of mostly-male monastics meditating, likely trying to outdo each other, and eventually producing this giant meditation manual called the Visuddhimagga , or The Path of Purification . That’s where we find the term Access Concentration, described in the section on concentration—one of three main sections in the book. According to that model, you reach Access Concentration just before entering jhāna. The Visuddhimagga describes 40 different objects that can lead to access, though I doubt that list is exhaustive. (Hopefully someone caught that Pokémon reference. I know Buddy did.) So, what is Access Concentration again? Another way to understand it is this: it’s one of the five jhāna masteries . To master meditation, you have to be able to access the states you want to enter. In other words, Access Concentration is the ability to get to the object—mentally and emotionally—so you can begin to absorb into it. If we want to use a numerical analogy: Access is when more than 50% of your attention is with something. You’ve entered into relationship with it. And from there, you can deepen that relationship, becoming more absorbed. In the KASINA meditation app I’ve been developing, there's a visual orb that users can move toward them on the screen. As it moves closer, it fills the screen—you merge with it. That’s what happens with the breath, or love, or the body, or even not-k

By Vince Fakhoury Horn Today, in The Jhāna Community , I want to center our exploration around the completion phase—also known as enlightenment. What is the relationship between enlightenment and jhāna? That’s what we’ll explore. The Goal of Vipassana Jhāna In Vipassana jhāna practice, the goal is insight—clearly seeing the way things are. This clear seeing leads to awakening, within the Buddhist frame. Trudy Goodman uses a beautiful metaphor for this, comparing the phases of insight to the phases of the moon: “Can we appreciate all the phases of the moon, all the stages of our life? Can we see past the patterns of perception that too often eclipse the wonder of being alive? Birth, growth, fullness, letting go, vanishing into the mysterious dark—these are the eternal cycles of life.” The completion phase, in this metaphor, is the full darkness of the moon: the vanishing. Describing the Unconditioned Early Buddhist texts describe the apex of this phase—Nirvana—as a kind of vanishing. Bill Hamilton, Kenneth Folk’s teacher, once said: “Nirvana is an experience of the unconditioned which defies any description. Any description of Nirvana is not a description of Nirvana.” There are no reference points. Concepts can’t contain it. It’s not a “thing.” It’s a different kind of experience. Bodhidharma, founder of Zen, said: “When the mind reaches Nirvana, you don’t see Nirvana because the mind is Nirvana.” Beyond Meditative States I remember talking with Kenneth Folk about how many meditation teachers end up teaching a state —a temporary condition—as the goal. But awakening is not about achieving and clinging to a special state. There are moments of direct contact with the unconditioned. But the next moment might involve answering the phone, cooking dinner, or helping someone. At first, these seem like separate domains. Eventually, they can be integrated. This practice is about learning to release identification with all states—even the expansive and blissful ones. Wanting to Be “Permanently Okay” It’s understandable that we want to find a place where we can be permanently okay. That desire comes from a younger part of us—vulnerable and needing security. But the adult part of awakening is what frees us to be present for life as it is —even the messy, painful, inconvenient parts. Paradoxically, it’s not what we thought we signed up for. We imagined transcendence. What we found was this —the real. The Journey Doesn’t End Here Here’s the good news: the journey doesn’t end at the completion phase. Awakening is recursive. It loops, like the moon’s phases. “To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.” In early Buddhism, the highest achievement was to break out of saṃsāra. But transformation happens not by escaping, but by cycling with change . Philosopher John Vervaeke says: “Evolution is revolution with change.” If your cycles bring new learning, new understanding—that’s evolution. The Big Picture That’s the bigger picture I love to teach. Meditation isn’t about escaping life. It’s about working with the natural cycles of our minds and lives—and transforming through them. And this isn’t in contradiction to Nirvana. When the realization deepens, you see that every experience, every thought, every person is it . Even the thought, “There’s somewhere else I should be” —that’s it too. Embodying the Mystery So what’s the point of all this state-jumping, deconstructing, and releasing? For me, part of the point is to embody the mystery . Reggie Ray writes in Touching Enlightenment : “To be awake, to be enlightened is to be fully and completely embodied… to be entirely present to who we are and to the journey of our own becoming… with no external observer waiting for something better.” That’s the journey of vipassana jhāna. Nothing left out. Full intimacy with reality. Awakening Is Collective Ultimately, awakening isn’t a personal project. Everyone is on this journey—even if they’d never use those words. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Awakening leads to the realization that we are in this together . Eventually, the idea of my awakening dissolves into our awakening. So Now What? So the question becomes: How can I show up fully for this

Overview: In this episode, Vince Horn and Daniel Thorson explore the evolving landscape of Western Buddhism, unpacking the tensions between Consensus Buddhism and Pragmatic Dharma, while reflecting on ethics, teacherly authority, and the possibilities for a more integrated future. Vince Horn: I'm here with Daniel Thorson , hanging out in your office-slash-bedroom. You've been in the Asheville area for what—a year now? Daniel Thorson: Almost two years, actually. Vince: Whoa, really? That’s wild! And this is our first time recording together since you moved here. Doing it in person feels weird—so hyper-intimate. Daniel: Yeah. It’s a whole 3D—or maybe even 4D—experience. Vince: More D than that if you include yourself. Daniel: Totally. Vince: So, I suggested we record because, well, we were going to hang out anyway, and you’ve been writing a really interesting series on your Substack, The Intimate Mirror . Daniel: Yeah, that’s the one. Initially, I was exploring AI as a kind of mirror—how to use and work with it. But I’ve taken a side journey into critiquing Western Buddhism. I’m planning to do some reconstructive work too, eventually. Vince: Especially the American convert Buddhist scenes we’ve been part of, right? Like, the Buddhist Geeks orbit, Insight Meditation world, maybe even broader— Consensus Buddhism , as David Chapman calls it. Daniel: Exactly. My focus is mostly on modern Western Buddhist culture. That includes Insight Meditation, but also Westernized Zen, and even American Vajrayana. It's like a meta-sangha of Buddhist Modernism. Vince: Right. Like the teachers who went to hang out with the Dalai Lama in the 90s and asked, "How can we make Buddhism more friendly to the West?" And now there’s this whole ecosystem. Daniel: Definitely. And I want to be clear: I'm not critiquing individual teachers. It's more about the communities and cultures that have grown around them—looking at their gifts and their shadows. Vince: So you’ve got Consensus Buddhism on one hand and Pragmatic Dharma—what you call the Tech Bro Buddhist scene—on the other. I loved your piece on the " Upper Middle Path and the Tech Bros ." You brought in critiques I’ve seen mostly in academic circles—people like David McMahan and Ann Gleig —but you made it much more accessible and relevant. Daniel: Thanks. That was the goal: take these ideas out of esoteric academic circles and bring them into contemporary discourse. Especially around communities like ours that are immersed in Buddhist Geeks-type spaces. Vince: It felt like a kind of moral responsibility to name the limitations and mistakes we've seen—or made—over the years. Like, I see a lot of younger folks in the liminal web, teapot Twitter, etc., getting into Buddhist modernism the way we were 15 years ago. Daniel: Exactly. And I think it's important we help them avoid some of the pitfalls. Not because we’re better or more advanced, but just because we've had more time to metabolize these dynamics. Vince: Right. I mean, early Buddhist Geeks was full-on modernist—tech, enlightenment, Daniel Ingram’s stage models. But it evolved. Ann Gleig even said she saw postmodern elements starting to emerge in that community. I think she was right. Daniel: Totally. And part of my own evolution, especially through training at the Monastic Academy , has been this inquiry into ethics—specifically, how ethical responsiveness is missing in a lot of Buddhist spaces. That’s especially problematic in a time of planetary crisis. Vince: It’s not just about meditating in caves or on retreat anymore. There's a demand for something deeper and more responsive. A lot of Buddhism as it’s been practiced here feels

Emily Horn is joined by renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg to share reflections on her beloved teacher, Dipa Ma , a Bangladeshi meditation master, who was known for her extraordinary concentration, profound insight, and unwavering kindness. Sharon recounts her personal experiences with Dipa Ma, highlighting her maternal yet fierce presence, her ability to see deep potential in her students, and her unique approach to integrating mindfulness into daily life. Episode Links : 🔗 Dharmaseed – A library of recorded Dharma talks, including talks from Dipa Ma, Sharon Salzberg, and many other teachers. 🔗 Insight Meditation Society (IMS) – The meditation center co-founded by Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Joseph Goldstein. 🔗 Spirit Rock Meditation Center – A meditation center in California, also associated with Jack Kornfield and the wider Insight tradition. 📖 " Dipa Ma: The Life and Legacy of a Buddhist Master " by Amy Schmidt – A biography of Dipa Ma, mentioned as a key resource for learning about her life and teachings. 👤 Sharon Salzberg – Official website with her books, teachings, and upcoming events. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

In this episode of Our Beloved Teachers , dharma teacher Leigh Brasington reflects on his transformative experiences studying with Ven. Ayya Khema, one of his most influential teachers. Leigh shares how Ayya Khema's clarity, discipline, and groundbreaking teachings on meditation, including the jhānas, shaped his practice and teaching path. The conversation also delves into Ayya Khema's extraordinary life story and her pivotal contribution toward reviving the Theravāda fully ordained nun’s Sangha. Episode Links : 👤 Ayya Khema 📖 I Give You My Life by Ayya Khema 👤 Leigh Brasington 📖 Right Concentration by Leigh Brasington See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

Vince Fakhoury Horn is joined again by dharma teacher Trudy Goodman , founder of InsightLA , to share reflections on her beloved teacher, Kōbun Chino Otogawa . Kobun (February 1, 1938 – July 26, 2002), also known as Chino Otogawa Roshi, was a Japanese Zen priest who brought his unique and deeply compassionate teachings to America. Renowned for his unconventional approach, he emphasized practicing dharma within daily life, often blending traditional Zen wisdom with a quiet, everyday presence that resonated with many students. In this conversation, Trudy shares stories of Kobun’s compassionate presence, his devotion to helping those suffering, and his profound yet playful approach to teaching. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

In this episode of Buddhist Geeks, Brian Newman discusses his journey into deep jhāna meditation practice. He explores his training in the rigorous Pa-auk tradition, the challenges and breakthroughs he experienced, and the balance between traditional and more modern approaches to jhāna, ultimately advocating for a playful, less rigid approach to accessing these deep states of concentration. Episode Links : 👤 Brian Newman 🔗 Appamāda Viharī Meditation Center 👤 Sayalay Susīlā 👤 Pa-auk Sayadaw 👤 Kenneth Folk 📖 Grist for the Mill by Ram Dass & Stephen Levine 📖 Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel M. Ingram 🎧 Mastering the Jhānas with Tina Rasmussen & Stephen Snyder See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

In the episode on " Technological Metamodernism ," Vince Fakhoury Horn and Stephen Reid discuss the intersection of technology, metamodernism, and the potential middle paths that navigate between techno-optimism or e/acc and eco-dystopianism or doomerism. They explore how emerging technologies can be aligned with deeper values, such as sovereignty, relationality, and wholeness, while also addressing the challenges of our current technological trajectory​. Episode Links : 👤 StephenReid.net ✉️ Stephen Reid in Correspondence - Stephen's substack 🔗 Futurecraft - The site where the Technological Metamodernism course is being hosted​. 🤑 Support the open sourcing of the Technological Metamodernism course ( via PayPal or via Crypto ) 🔗 Meaning Alignment Institute - Mentioned as part of the discussions, this institute focuses on aligning emerging technologies with human values 🔗 Rebel Wisdom - A platform formerly associated with Alexander Beiner, one of the special guests of the Technological Metamodernism course. 🔗 Life Itself - A project focused on the "Second Renaissance," mentioned in the context of Rufus Pollock's work​, another of the special guests of the Technological Metamodernism course. 🎙️ Future Fossils Podcast - Hosted by Michael Garfield, yet another of the special guests of the Technological Metamodernism course. 📖 Reality Switch Technologies by Andrew Gallimore 🔗 Gitcoin - The platform that supports the quadratic funding method mentioned by which Stephen is raising funds in order open source material from the course. You can contribute to the funding for that project here. 🎙️ Lunarpunk Dreams Podcast by Stephen Reid See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

In this episode of Buddhist Geeks, Vince Fakhoury Horn shares his experience of working with the meditation startup Jhourney , and raises concerns about their insufficient training and appropriation of Buddhist meditation practices, advocating for a more responsible and deeply informed approach to secularizing Jhāna meditation. Episode Links : 📝 The Second Generation of Mindfulness by Vince F. Horn 🔗 The Meditation Research Project 🔗 The Jhana.community See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

In this episode Ryan Oelke chats with Judith Blackstone , contemporary spiritual teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of The Realization Process, and author of her latest book, The Fullness of the Ground: A Guide to Embodied Awakening . They discuss a variety of aspects of what it means to embody nonduality, including different views on nonduality, how to practice and live a path of embodied nondual awakening. Episode Links: 📖 The Fullness of the Ground: A Guide to Embodied Awakening by Judith Blackstone, PhD 💻 The Realization Process See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

In this episode, recorded during a Buddhist Geeks Retreat, Vince Fakhoury Horn teachings on several ways to meditate, including Concentration, Mindfulness, Heartfulness, Inquiry, Awareness, Embodiment, and Imaginal forms of practice. Each approach to meditation leads to different results, even as the ultimate goal remains the same, which is to realize the essential nature of mind, and be able to embrace the ongoing journey of exploration and growth. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

In this Our Beloved Teachers episode Emily Horn speaks with Spring Washam about her relationship with Harriet Tubman, and the teachings she has received from her. Spring speaks about the importance of faith and courage in navigating challenging times and the connection to the unseen world, while emphasizing that Harriet Tubman is not just an ancestor for African Americans, but for everyone. She encourages people to tap into the strength and resilience that Harriet represents to better support each other in these transformative times. Episode Links : 📖 The Spirit of Harriet Tubman: Awakening from the Underground by Spring Washam 🎙️ Our Beloved Teachers See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

In her talk titled "Homemaking Dharma," Emily Horn discusses the process of creating a spiritual home, which involves working with heartbreak, grief, and our shadow aspects. She emphasizes the importance of understanding our spiritual story and incorporating elements of our ethnic and cultural backgrounds into our practice. This journey towards wholeness requires the practice of mindfulness and love, and although it can be messy and require rumbling with our stories, it ultimately leads to a sense of interconnection with others. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

This talk, titled "Contemplating the Anomalous" was given by Vince Fakhoury Horn on a Buddhist Geeks retreat in July, 2023. It explores the stages of a paradigm shift in understanding, going from ignoring the anomalous, to encountering anomalies and experiencing resistance, to exploration, and finally toward genuine transformation. Using examples from both Science and Meditation Vince attempts to illustrate the learning process as it’s experienced from each point of view. This talk also touches on the topic of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) and the potential for a collective paradigm shift in our understanding of the Universe and our place in it, that includes both interiors and exteriors. Episode Links : 👤 VinceHorn.space See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

Meditatewith.ai is a web app prototype, aimed at demonstrating the possibility of learning Multiplayer Meditation–an out-loud, social, interactive, & trauma-informed protocol–with an AI partner first. The purpose of the company behind this prototype, Interbeing Inc, is to improve the mental health and well-being of all humans using interpersonal meditation practices. In this episode, recorded during an event inside the Buddhist Geeks Network, co-founders Vince Fakhoury Horn & Chris Ewald introduce what they’ve been working on for the first time in public, and then field a wide variety of questions from participants. Episode Links : 📱 Meditatewith.ai 🎙️ Emerge Podcast: Vince Horn on Meditate with AI 🔗 Wefunder Crowdfunding Campaign WeFunder Legal Disclosure : We are 'testing the waters' to gauge investor interest in an offering under Regulation Crowdfunding. No money or other consideration is being solicited. If sent, it will not be accepted. No offer to buy securities will be accepted. No part of the purchase price will be received until a Form C is filed and only through Wefunder’s platform. Any indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

The Vimalakīrti Sūtra is a Mahayana Buddhist text from the 2nd century CE that explores the nature of enlightenment and the teachings of the Buddha. In this contemporary commentary on the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, Pragmatic Dharma teacher Kenneth Folk shares his personal understanding of what he refers to as “a magical spell.” Episode Links : Watch the Video Version of this Talk on Youtube Kenneth Folk Dharma The Vimalakīrti Sūtra , translated by Burton Watson Pragmatic Dharma Training See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

Vince Fakhoury Horn is joined by long-time teacher, Kenneth Folk, to share about his beloved teacher, Bill Hamilton, who American dharma teacher Shinzen Young referred to as "an unsung hero of Western Mindfulness." Bill was an enigmatic dharma teacher who practiced in the Insight-Theravada tradition. He was the founder of the Dharma Seed library, did more than 7 years of silent retreat practice, and wrote an excellent contemporary dharma book called "Saints & Psychopaths." Episode Links : 👤 Kenneth Folk 👤 Vince Fakhoury Horn 📖 Saints & Psychopaths by Bill Hamilton 🔗 Dharma Seed 📺 Remembering Bill Hamilton with Shinzen Young 📺 Remembering Bill Hamilton Featuring Daniel Ingram Memorable Quotes : 📺 " Enlightenment. Highly recommended, can't tell you why ." – Bill Hamilton 📺 " Suffering less, noticing it more ." – Bill Hamilton 📺 " You don't have to go looking for suffering ." – Bill Hamilton 📺 " You could get enlightened rubbing that tape box ." – Bill Hamilton 📺 " They're doing psychology ." – Bill Hamilton 📺 " There's more than one objection of mindfulness ." – Bill Hamilton 📺 " This is the ultimate self-improvement project, even beyond one's self ." – Kenneth Folk See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

Vince Fakhoury Horn is joined by dharma teacher Trudy Goodman , founder of InsightLA , to share reflections on her beloved teacher, Seungsahn. Seungsahn Haengwon (Sungsan Haeng'weon Daeseonsa, August 1, 1927 – November 30, 2004), born Duk-In Lee, was a Korean Seon master of the Jogye Order and founder of the international Kwan Um School of Zen . Episode Links : 👤 Trudy Goodman 👤 Seungsahn 📺 Bob Newhart Therapy: Stop It! 👤 Maha Ghosananda 🎧 Zen Predator 📖 Sex in the Forbidden Zone by Peter Rutter Memorable Quotes : " What am I? " – Seungsahn " Your Body already a corpse ." – Seungsahn " That is Great Faith ." – Seungsahn " This is how it happens ." – Trudy Goodman See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info . Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe