r/streamentry 2d ago

Practice If 'access concentration' takes four hours every day then what am I doing?

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u/dave2048 1d ago

Ayya Khema’s advice, according to Leigh Brasington: “do it faster.”

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u/Common_Ad_3134 1d ago

"do it faster"

For context, afaik, that was only after he'd done all 8 jhanas, right?

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u/dave2048 1d ago

I think it regarding traversing(?) the four rupa jhanas. It was in his book Right Concentration. The book does read more like his journal of notes that he wrote while studying. It’s like a collection of all of his shortcuts.

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u/Common_Ad_3134 1d ago

I found the exchange in Right Concentration:

A year later I sat with Ayya for five weeks. I learned jhānas six, seven, and eight and was thoroughly enjoying running ’em up (one to eight) and running ’em back down (eight to one). Not too long after I gained some skill at doing this, I was again in an interview with Ayya, and she said, “Now you must do insight practice in the same sitting after you do the jhānas.”

“But it takes me the whole sitting to go up and back down,” I protested.

“Do them faster.”

I thought it was worth mentioning that this happened after he learned the jhanas, because the OP hasn't gotten to jhanas yet. It's not really possible for them to do jhanas any faster. I would guess that if the OP tried to do them faster, it wouldn't be very helpful.