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/neidanman 4d ago
not sure on the jhanas, but i saw an interesting video on kundalini the other day. It was from christopher wallis, a practitioner and scholar who has translated & studied original source texts to trace a history of kundalini terms/practices etc. One things he said is that siddhis in the older texts have more of a general use in terms of 'making life better'. I.e. that its not so much/just 'powers' that can come from developing the energetic side, its more that the energy can be used to make life better/easier. He did also say though that it was seen that if you did that, then it was an 'opportunity cost' type situation, where using energy that way, would make awakening/spiritual progress slower/take more lifetime(s).
from experience of being on a daoist energetics path since 98, i'd say this is how things have developed. As the system clears and purifies and then the qi builds, life overall becomes more easy and less painful. Also i wouldn't say i 'direct energy that way', more that it naturally happens that some energy goes into making life easier, and some goes more into practice/the spiritual side.