Jhana Consciousness: Buddhist Meditation in the Age of Neuroscience

An interdisciplinary deep dive into Buddhist jh?na meditation and how it can transform our understanding of self and consciousness

States of profound meditative concentration, the jh?nas are central to the earliest Buddhist teachings. For centuries in Southeast Asia, oral yog?vacara (yoga practitioner) lineages kept traditional jh?na practices alive, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reforms in Therav?da Buddhism downplayed the importance of jh?na in favor of vipassan? (insight) meditation. Some began to consider the jh?nas to be strictly the domain of monastics, unattainable in the context of modern lay life. In recent years, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in the jh?nas, and as researcher Paul Dennison shows, the esoteric and sometimes “magical” pre-reform practices of Southeast Asia hold powerful potential for modern lay practitioners living in a more scientifically minded world. Drawing on traditional Buddhist doctrine, teachings from lesser-known meditation texts such as the Yog?vacara’s Manual, and findings from the first in-depth, peer-reviewed neuroscience study of jh?na meditation, Dennison unpacks this ancient practice in all its nuance while posing novel questions about perception, subjectivity, and the nature of enlightenment.