Goenka is a ‘dry’ path/sukkha-vipassana-yana. That is to say, it has people do insight meditation directly without doing samatha/tranquility meditation (which jhana is). So, I wouldn’t be surprised that you didn’t get jhana. These paths aim to develop knowledge of impermanence/anicca, unsatisfactoriness/dukkha, non-self/anatta, etc. without first developing the jhanas as a foundation. Paths that seek to develop the jhanas before progressing to insight are called ‘wet’/samatha-yana. It is possible to use the same meditation method to achieve different effects or goals and be used by different paths. Breath meditation/anapanasati is common to lots of paths, for example.
You can use many different meditation methods to access jhana (breath, bodyscan, forgiveness, lovingkindness, etc.) but bodyscan is simply the one I prescribe here because my clients seem to find it the easiest, because it is more ‘engaging’ than the breath and doesn’t lead you to getting absorbed in thoughts like with the more emotional meditation methods. The intention and the developing of positive emotion or sensation once you’ve gotten sufficient collectedness is the more important part.
It’s possible (and I am hedging a lot because it’s difficult to tell at this remove) that you experienced piti but not sukha and that’s why it did not feel ‘blissful’ — piti on its own, when very strong can sometimes feel unpleasant, even. I find that this is common with meditation approaches that aim for equanimous/neutral states of mind rather than explicitly pleasant ones. I wonder if the sensations you felt corresponded to what I described of piti. Did you feel or see brightness or lights even while your eyes were closed (I’m assuming they were)? That is a common sign of piti.
From what I’ve read, bhanga ñana isn’t jhana and is instead visceral knowledge of emptiness. To clarify, the jhanas I teach is based on the suttas, not the Visudhimagga, which came later and described deeper and more difficult to access states of consciousness.
Did you feel or see brightness or lights even while your eyes were closed (I’m assuming they were)? That is a common sign of piti.
It was mostly a visceral/tactile experience, but there was something subtle accompanying it visually, along the lines of hypnagogic imagery or synesthesia or visualization/imagination. The visual part wasn’t dramatic or central to the experience.
As far as what sort of visceral it was… I usually see piti described as tingly, sparky, that sort of thing. What I experienced was much more liquid: more like sloshing around in a bath of sensation than being peppered by fireworks.
It also wasn’t very “insightful” the way I had been primed to expect. I think I was supposed to interpret what was happening as being obviously indicative of the ceaseless arising and passing away of all phenomena or some such, but to me it seemed to be mostly a curious altered state of consciousness of no great relevance to my day-to-day understanding of how the world operates or how I ought to interpret my sense experience. More of a “woah, that was trippy” than an “aha, I get it now” sort of experience. It was not emotionally tinged except in the sense that I get a certain charge out of the curious and novel, and this was strikingly more curious and novel than the Goenka nostril-gazing I’d been engaged in for the previous several days.
Goenka is a ‘dry’ path/sukkha-vipassana-yana. That is to say, it has people do insight meditation directly without doing samatha/tranquility meditation (which jhana is). So, I wouldn’t be surprised that you didn’t get jhana. These paths aim to develop knowledge of impermanence/anicca, unsatisfactoriness/dukkha, non-self/anatta, etc. without first developing the jhanas as a foundation. Paths that seek to develop the jhanas before progressing to insight are called ‘wet’/samatha-yana. It is possible to use the same meditation method to achieve different effects or goals and be used by different paths. Breath meditation/anapanasati is common to lots of paths, for example.
You can use many different meditation methods to access jhana (breath, bodyscan, forgiveness, lovingkindness, etc.) but bodyscan is simply the one I prescribe here because my clients seem to find it the easiest, because it is more ‘engaging’ than the breath and doesn’t lead you to getting absorbed in thoughts like with the more emotional meditation methods. The intention and the developing of positive emotion or sensation once you’ve gotten sufficient collectedness is the more important part.
It’s possible (and I am hedging a lot because it’s difficult to tell at this remove) that you experienced piti but not sukha and that’s why it did not feel ‘blissful’ — piti on its own, when very strong can sometimes feel unpleasant, even. I find that this is common with meditation approaches that aim for equanimous/neutral states of mind rather than explicitly pleasant ones. I wonder if the sensations you felt corresponded to what I described of piti. Did you feel or see brightness or lights even while your eyes were closed (I’m assuming they were)? That is a common sign of piti.
From what I’ve read, bhanga ñana isn’t jhana and is instead visceral knowledge of emptiness. To clarify, the jhanas I teach is based on the suttas, not the Visudhimagga, which came later and described deeper and more difficult to access states of consciousness.
It was mostly a visceral/tactile experience, but there was something subtle accompanying it visually, along the lines of hypnagogic imagery or synesthesia or visualization/imagination. The visual part wasn’t dramatic or central to the experience.
As far as what sort of visceral it was… I usually see piti described as tingly, sparky, that sort of thing. What I experienced was much more liquid: more like sloshing around in a bath of sensation than being peppered by fireworks.
It also wasn’t very “insightful” the way I had been primed to expect. I think I was supposed to interpret what was happening as being obviously indicative of the ceaseless arising and passing away of all phenomena or some such, but to me it seemed to be mostly a curious altered state of consciousness of no great relevance to my day-to-day understanding of how the world operates or how I ought to interpret my sense experience. More of a “woah, that was trippy” than an “aha, I get it now” sort of experience. It was not emotionally tinged except in the sense that I get a certain charge out of the curious and novel, and this was strikingly more curious and novel than the Goenka nostril-gazing I’d been engaged in for the previous several days.