r/streamentry • u/tea_and_samadhi • 5d ago

Ānāpānasati Does Jhana (Lite Jhana/Leigh Brasington) turn the world from endurance to easeful?

For a lot of people life really has one large purpose, to endure until consciousness ceases. That's it, to endure.

And that seems like an extremely painful way to exist and leads to short term harmful action solely for the experience of relief. Take food and drug indulgence, or even having children when one can't provide.

My question is, does jhana make life not just easier, not just more endurable...but actually easeful and joyful? Or does it just make life less shit, but it's still a shit that we need to endure? I will obviously have to remove ill health and physical disease as a factor from this question.

Looking for hope here. Looking for motivation. Looking for a real way out not just after death for a better rebirth or no rebirth at all, but looking for a way out of suffering in this very life.

Can the jhanas as taught by Leigh Brasington make one actually happy to be alive? And I really mean that, happy to be here.

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u/AngryWater 4d ago

It certainly makes you happy whilst you're in it, but you generally can't spend your whole waking life in Jhana. It definitely seems to improve the ability to concentrate in general life, but I don't think concentration practices on their own permanently reduce suffering. You seem to need to do insight work for that.