Silent Joy

The Buddhist Jhanas

The peace we feel
when letting go
is indistinguishable
from joy

I have pondered the Pali terms Piti and Sukha lately. They are the first two constituents of the First Jhana. The Jhanas are states of peace and/or of absorption encountered in Buddhist meditation.

Piti is variously translated as bliss, as rapture, as ecstasy, and other like synonyms. Piti is considered a tangible feeling, sometimes disturbingly so. Sukha is also a positive feeling, though mellower than Piti and is often translated as happiness, joy, delight and such. Some teachers hold that these feelings are purely mental, others that they are a mental and physical blend, others still that they are purely physical. I guess the best word would be psychosomatic — gendered by mind, experienced as body.

For the longest time, well, fifty years or so, which I guess would qualify as a long (if not the longest) time, I’ve taken my 1968 spiritual fountain as Piti or Sukha or both, but as I now see it, on closer look, the joy I sense in meditation when letting go is not as violent (yes, I believe that is the right word) as Piti which in retrospect strikes me as an accidental detonation of some chakra or other, as if I had stumbled on a bliss trip wire.

I guess Piti indeed does describe that 1968 rush, but not the Piti of Jhana for no real joy or happiness followed; that’s to say, no Sukha, just the gushing, humming, blissing light which pulsed and pulsed then withdrew as the room returned to a stunned and breathless younger me.

Today, I think that for fifty odd years I’ve been barking up the wrong Bodhi tree.

My 1968 spiritual orgasm (which is how I described it at the time) was an overwhelmingly energetic physical feeling drowning me in bliss, swimming me in warm ecstasy; it was a five or so minutes long gigantic humming in light, a flood of energy rushing from feet to head and then just everywhere. Yes, it does indeed fit the description of Piti, but, as I said, no happiness or joy followed, no jhana signs. Today, I would still describe it as, yes, an orgasm — a concept that should communicate to 99.99% of humanity puberty and older.

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