Kasina practice and jhana

Hello.

I just signed up to report that today I tried the kasina practice for entering jhana that Kenneth has posted on the website "place a bowl a vouple of feet away. Stare at it."
... I did that for an hour and attained what I think was the third or fourth jhana.. And I'm completely baffled and amazed since I've never attempted any jhana related stuff before. So this leaves me slightly sceptical, "was it really jhana? Am I fooling myself?"

So I just wanted to ask whether this is normal? Or am I confusing shifts within the jhana with different jhana's? I am a little confused about Kenneth's description of the five chicken herding levels and jhana... Does each level of chicken correspond to a separate jhana, or do you go through all levels of chicken herding effort with respect to each jhana?

Anyways, very happy to have found this place!
(btw. my background is ~2,5 years meditation in the Tibetan tradition, mainly "resting with the breath" and four immeasurables)

Hi Olevin, can you provide more detail about your experience?

Hi AprioriKreuz,

Sure, but I went back yesterday and today to replicate the experience, and the results were not that great...
So now i can't really remember the first time, only vaguely, so I will report my experience from today. (I believe this time I got two the second jhana - again, I may be completely off target here, I'm very new to this practice =)

Anyway, here goes: I started with counting the breath until I had what I believe is "access concentration" (took about 20mins), then I opened my eyes and stared at the bowl. I felt a "pull" from the object of my attention, I relaxed sort of into it, and my focus became very steady, and blissful sensations coursing through my body. This went on for some time. There were "special effects", colors and lighting changed slightly, the bowl seemed like a solid sphere and so on...

Then the attention got rocky, sort of difficult to stay on the object, my vision split "in two" (two mirror versions of the bowl), and I noticed frustration. Then it calmed down again and the field of attention became very even and everything was just "there", there was much less focus on the bowl specifically. It was just there, not that interesting. I felt much calmer and freer. I noticed less tension around the eyes and back of my head (less tension in general). Then I noticed growing pain in my knee and decided to end the session.

Throughout there were this flowing back and forth of tension and relaxation in my face/"attention muscles", at times the pull from the object were much stronger "demanding" my focus. I noticed that as I was able to relax gradually, attention became steadier and easier..

Thank you for any hints or clarifications!

Ole

Did your sense of presence to attention change at all during this time? Did things ever become at all fuzzy and indistinct? How were the changes you experienced related to your breath? Were the effects you experienced just visual, or did they manifest in other ways?

We still need more information, olevin.