from Nick | by Nick

the meditative path is about wholesome construction and wholesome destruction The eight jhanas are useful because the first four teach wholesome construction, roughly of the brahmaviharas, and the latter four teach how to deconstruct until all is gone and you blink out

too much construction gives you what most people do all their lives: try and fight with the world and make it better for them, so they don’t feel uncomfortable. This tends to leave out the core fruit of the path: that well-being doesn’t require any particular emotion or state

too much deconstruction leads to vipassana zombies who habitually deconstruct. They feel good and rarely suffer, but it’s hard for them to be of the world, to help make this place better, and they’re missing the artistic exploration of qualia, not everything is about hedonic tone

I don’t play piano but from what I’ve read practicing the scales is a critical part of the learning path. Jhanas are like scales for meditation, they teach most of the basics skills you’ll need to go all the way without losing balance. They’re good and wholesome defaults

When you can do the jhanas well, usually after years of practice, you can ask your nervous system to go through them and it will know what to do. It’ll enter bliss, then joy, comfort, equanimity, then deconstruct self and space, then perception itself until cessation