..續本文上一頁oning the five hindrances there”s no insight, there”s no wisdom. So that should be one”s preliminary job, to overcome these five hindrances. And the way those five hindrances are overcome is what I”ve been teaching here this week, the jhanas. Traditionally, they say that where the five hindrances are overcome is called upacara samadhi. They call it "neighbourhood concentration", neighbourhood samadhi, where you”re just right next to jhanas but not fully in them. It”s like the entrance to this hall over here, you have to pass over the entrance, the neighbourhood, to come into this room. And also you have to pass over it as you go out. These are upacaras, neighbourhoods.

　　One of the mistakes which people make with understanding insight meditation, is that they think the neighbourhood as you go into jhana is a place where you should do insight. Just stop a bit short of jhana and try and do insight there. And that is one type of upacara, but that is a very difficult one and very unstable, because you”re not really quite sure whether those five hindrances have been overcome or not. You”re not really sure if you”re in that upacara samadhi where insight can truly happen because those hindrances are extremely sneaky at that stage, they can manifest just so easily. And also if there is a state just before jhana, because of the way of the mind it”s very unstable, and you can fall back so quickly. And that is why some people misunderstand, or fail to recognise, that there are two upacaras - there is the one on the way in to jhana and there is the one on the way out of jhana. In the same way you pass over the threshold of that door on the way in, and also on the way out. And of those two, it”s that upacara samadhi after jhana which has the qualities of being certain and long-lasting. Having trained yourself in this way, you know what jhanas are, and you know that state just afterwards is what the texts call the upacara samadhi. And from your experience you will know that state lasts much, much longer, is much more stable, than any upacara samadhi just before you arrive. It”s because when you are experiencing the jhanas, when you”re right inside them, it”s as if the five hindrances have been completely knocked out and made unconscious. You”ve slugged them, and the longer you stay in that jhana, the deeper the slug! So much so that when you come out of the jhanas, they are still knocked out - unconscious, inactive. You”ve beaten them down. And very often if you spend a long time in a jhana they”re beaten down for a long, long time. And anyone who”s had a very nice meditation, especially a jhana, will know that the state afterwards, the happiness, the joy, lasts a long time, effortlessly, because you”re full of energy, clarity, power. And that is the state where insight can be found, where insight is made.

　　You have to be careful, sometimes, of that state after jhanas, because sometimes the experience is so powerful and so beautiful, and sometimes the hindrances are knocked out for days. Sometimes for days after you get a nice jhana, you have no desire for things of the world. Even the food on your plate you can take or leave and you don”t really care. And you have no sloth or torpor - you can sit until late in the night, get up early in the morning, you”re just so mindful, perfectly, hour after hour, day after day. There”s no ill-will that can come up: even if a mosquito comes you sort of welcome it - "please come and take some of my blood! Out of compassion for all the other people out there, come on take some!". You get so much compassion because the mind is so high and full of joy. And sometimes people think that those states are full enlightenment.

　　You know, I wrote about it in that book "Seeing the Way" [2]. I had a nice meditation one ev…

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