Advanced Stages: The Difference Between Equanimity, Tranquility, Happiness and Joy

[ardacigin]

This is an important part of my spiritual training where my experiential understandings of these elements on this path are rapidly improving. All 4 of these elements - equanimity, tranquility, happiness and joy - are inter-related but highly distinct lines of development.

A meditator eventually needs to develop these skills to a very high level and integrate all of them to their lives deeply before insights into different facets of awakening can arise. Especially love = consciousness will be 100 times easier if you develop these Samatha factors. To do that, you need to understand what skills you need to develop.

 Let's define these terms first.

Happiness: This is a specific feeling of physical and mental pleasure in the mind-body. It can arise with zero meditation experience if 'things' are going your way. This is the usual dopamine high non-meditators experience. Happiness can also be trained to access all the time with stability in the higher stages of meditation. Happiness can also arise independently of joy.

Joy: Joy is a comprehensive positive mental state. In the context of meditation, it usually arises with happiness in dependent of external circumstances in an internal manner due to unification of mind. It also can arise without any pleasurable feelings and happiness in the mind.

Joy skews your awareness, emotional health and cognitive interpretations towards what is wholesome and loving effortlessly. 

In a joyful mind, the following will occur:

Something that usually creates a lot of suffering and negative feelings in a non-meditator will only produce mild-unpleasantness.

Something that produces mild-unpleasantness will only produce neutral feelings.

Something that produces neutral feelings (like sitting down and breathing) will produce mildly pleasurable sensations.

Something that produces a lot of pleasurable feelings will produce ECSTATIC levels of bliss.

The combination of joy and happiness in meditation directly reduces craving and suffering in a significant manner. 

Tranquility: This is basically calm abiding contentment. Contentment is the keyword here. We tend to think that someone who is tranquil is dull and neutral. This has negative connotations.  It is also inaccurate in the context of meditation.

Tranquility induces a calm and serene state of mind. That is true but it does so with energy. So if you are dull, that is not true tranquility. Also, the feeling of neutrality is a misconception as well. Equanimity and neutrality are not the same things in the slightest.

This is important because any lack of clarification here can result in a meditator wasting years of their lives getting deeper into sustained states of dullness thinking that they are developing tranquility. So watch out!

You can have crazy levels of equanimity with joy and happiness. In fact, that is what you are developing with Samatha. The point is not to develop sustained dullness and emotional neutrality with equanimity.

That means you've developed equanimity without happiness and joy. You still need to go back and develop these wholesome emotional states for optimal insight investigation.

Back to tranquility!

So tranquility means calmness and serenity. That is only 1 side of it. It actually means practicing contentment with calmness. Contentment is different from equanimity. It is extremely important in reducing craving. This one distinction helps you to develop and deepen meditative joy and happiness into daily life.

 Contentment will enable you to glean more satisfaction from the already existing joy and happiness. It will also reduce craving even more radically than just happiness and joy.

If you've thought that high degrees of meditative joy and happiness you experience in meditation has already reduced a lot of craving already, think again!

Contentment + meditative joy enables you to see how much suffering resides even in crazy high states of happiness and mental pleasure. This is 3rd jhana practice. But you deepen that practice further with Samatha factors and bring all of those qualities into daily life with TMI.

This tranquility aspect of development naturally comes after fully developed meditative joy. Here is how it occurs in a nutshell:

1- Wow! I'm experiencing a lot of happiness and joy internally. This is fucking amazing. I can support this mental state with smiling as well.

2- Wow! This is extremely resilient. I can maintain this in stressful situations.

3- Hmmm...I sometimes experience a reduction in meditative joy when I get really tired and sleepy. Let me try to understand what leads to this experience.

4- I guess there is subliminal craving and suffering attached to meditative joy. I also fear that I might lose this in the future. The overall craving gets overwhelming when I get tired so happiness and joy go away. I don't really know how to combat this issue...

5- I also can't quite maintain joy and happiness in daily life when I'm moving around and doing stuff. It is still very stable but I don't momentarily taste the joy and happiness in evey microscopic movement of my body in movement. I think I need to work on this more.

Because, meditative joy in movement results in craving and suffering. I guess I have developed a decades-long habit of urgency and movement with craving. I tend to move fast and speak fast. I lose a lot of mindfulness in these states.

I need to add more contentment, tranquility and body awareness to every microscopic body movement, otherwise joy and and happiness can't be maintained on a momentary basis. I might get the illusion that it is stable but it actually isn't. And I'm still suffering quite a bit.

6- WOW! When I bring tranquility, joy and happiness are dominating my conscious experience with more stability in a state of contentment. I also experience more reduction in craving and therefore suffering less when I'm doing stuff in the world, talking to people and planning stuff. 

7- This basically means that I can wake up in the morning - get the joy and happiness with tranquilty- pay EXTRA attention to maintaining this in movement with contentment and re-train the nervous system to stay in the present moment without craving. This is the next level after meditative joy development. Your entire life truly turns into high-quality meditation at this point. 

At this mastery, you are a stage 9 TMI meditator if you've also developed metacognitive awareness and stable attention sufficiently. The next step is adding the equanimity aspect of development. This is very challenging and is the final step in developing samatha.

Equanimity: This is sublime non-reactivity to pleasure and pain.

The nervous system shuts down its 'craving' operating system and activates equanimity. Your body and mind stop interfering with the present moment experience. This leads to the complete elimination of suffering at the HIGHEST level of mastery. But in its developing stages, it results in significant reductions in craving and suffering. 

As a stage 10 TMI meditator, you will have a highly developed equanimity. But it won't be high enough to result in full elimination of suffering permanently. That requires deeper and deeper awakenings, not just advanced Samatha development.

So once you have meditative joy + tranquil contentment, you already have some degree of equanimity. But it is not enough to do advanced insight practices.

You can probably get to profound equanimity occasionally in formal sits, the game plan is to get there every day. Then every sit. Then to get that equanimity in daily life. And then to start an adventure into insight development.

At this point, you'll have the following skills applied both in formal sits and daily life:

1- Stable Attention & Momentary Attention (consistent upacara and kannika levels of samadhi)

2- Joy and Happiness (piti and sukha)

3- Powerful Metacognitive Awareness (satisampajanna )

4- Tranquility and Contentment (passaddhi)

5- Profound Equanimity (upekkha)

This is the end of stage 10 TMI practice.

You can do many things at this point.

Self-enquiry in no-mind?  Go for it! You have the skills to do it.

Dependent origination practice? Go for it! You have the skills to do it.

Craving reduction? Go for it! You have the skills to do it.

Mahamudra? Go for it! You have the skills to do it.

Infinity and love? Go for it! You have the skills to do it.

Compassion and Shadow work? Go for it! You have the skills to do it.

Emptiness and Impermanence? Go for it! You have the skills to do it.

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by ardacigin

[Jordan94]

Nice always inspiring to read your posts

 

About the definition of hapiness, wouldn't it be more like an absence of dissatisfaction, or said other way just satisfaction/contentment of the present moment ? rather than mental/physical pleasure

[ardacigin]

3 hours ago, Jordan94 said:

Nice always inspiring to read your posts

 

About the definition of hapiness, wouldn't it be more like an absence of dissatisfaction, or said other way just satisfaction/contentment of the present moment ? rather than mental/physical pleasure

@Jordan94 Hi Jordan  Glad you've liked the post.

The absence of dissatisfaction is quite different than happiness. A normal person actually experiences a lot of suffering when they feel happy. They just don't know it. Unless you bring the contentment and equanimity component, the amount of happiness will always lead to craving, therefore suffering. Even if there are heroin levels of pleasure.

Also, the absence of dissatisfaction doesn't directly mean full satisfaction. That would lead to an awakening experience. We always, even as meditators, experience suffering and craving to a lesser degree. After a certain threshold point, happiness and joy arises. But that doesn't mean dissatisfaction is fully eradicated. There are degrees of satisfaction.

Happiness, on the other hand, is a mental and physical feeling of pleasure. It may not lead to satisfaction without enough contentment. You can grasp after it even as a meditator. So the arising of joy and happiness is only the beginning. 

Your life gets 100 times better living there but you should still investigate the sense of dissatisfaction in states of pleasure and see what actually creates that suffering and dissatisfaction. It always leads to some sort of craving. Once you apply contentment + equanimity and maintain that, you experience a radical reduction in suffering. This, in turn, means experiencing more satisfaction from existing levels of pleasure.  

Hopefully this was useful

Edited December 14, 2019 by ardacigin

[Surfingthewave]

@ardacigin Fantastic post thank you. It's so important to define these states. For me in the past I have got stuck in the contentment state, this could be due to the practices I follow. I'm currently working on equanimity, the ability to reduce craving and sit with the suffering. I seem to go round in circles with this state. 

What resources / practices guide our work and how often to you have formal sits? 

[ardacigin]

3 minutes ago, Surfingthewave said:

@ardacigin Fantastic post thank you. It's so important to define these states. For me in the past I have got stuck in the contentment state, this could be due to the practices I follow. I'm currently working on equanimity, the ability to reduce craving and sit with the suffering. I seem to go round in circles with this state. 

What resources / practices guide our work and how often to you have formal sits? 

@Surfingthewave Hi! I recommend doing the practices described in 'The Mind Illuminated'. That is the technique I'm using. I meditate everyday formally for 1 hour on average and 3+ hours informally. That is a normal day.

Depending on my goals, I can increase or decrease this schedule. I tend to meditate the moment waking up to going to bed these days.

Because the quality of the informal sits are increasing due to 3rd jhana contentment. My current practice itself is 'Let's rewire my usual craving response in movement and bring that joy and contentment into every momentary experience'.

To do that, I must continually maintain metacognitive introspective awareness of what my mind is doing, how it feels in the present moment, how much craving do I experience, how much happiness is present with stability, what my attention is doing etc.

It sounds like a lot of work but it gets effortless after awhile and this guarantees solid mindfulness in daily life.

Anyways, this is what I do currently. In formal sits, I try to get to profound equanimity for stage 9-10 work in TMI. It is actually challenging even with all this joy and contentment. It is hit or miss sometimes. I need to develop more physical and mental pliancy.

That is currently my practice

 

[Raptorsin7]

@ardacigin Did you get all these insights just from following the book? I'm at a point in my practice where I have pretty stable attention and awareness, but I have virtually no joy or happiness from my practice. I'm basically just suffering, getting relief from suffering when i sit to meditate, and then i'm just lost in thought and procrastinating the rest of the day.

[zeroISinfinity]

Advanced stage. Things get very interesting I guess. Equinimity you say, Good luck with it. 

Permanent Self Realized state. Your true timeless state. Relax kiddo.Really wish I can. It:s normal. 

Edited December 14, 2019 by zeroISinfinity

[Consilience]

Thank you for the post! This is fantastic 

[ardacigin]

2 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@ardacigin Did you get all these insights just from following the book? I'm at a point in my practice where I have pretty stable attention and awareness, but I have virtually no joy or happiness from my practice. I'm basically just suffering, getting relief from suffering when i sit to meditate, and then i'm just lost in thought and procrastinating the rest of the day.

@Raptorsin7Okay. I totally understand what you are experiencing. I've worked with TMI for 3-4 years and only recently joy and happiness started to arise. Back then I was thinking like this:

'My concentration and awareness is pretty good. I occasionally get to effortlessness. I've also had one or two deep mystical experiences. But where the hell is this joy and happiness Culadasa is talking about? Meditative joy? What is that? I've never experienced significant joy or happiness in meditation? In a formal sit, I tend to feel neutral calmness the first 20 mins and after that, I tend to usually feel some frustration and boredom building up in the mind and body. My concentration is good. But why is Culadasa emphasizing joy and happiness so much? Maybe I'll never experience that and go straight for some insights. I feel like I'm not following the instructions properly '

That was my thinking patterns for the majority of these last 3-4 years. 

After doing an intense 4 hour long extrospective awareness based TMI practice one day, that night, things have shifted radically. Joy and happiness started to pervade my life.

So the key for me was doing a long session like that. I remember being super concentrated and being able to apply really solid awareness of external sounds. Due to that, I've had a legit psychedelic state (that lasted for 4-5 secs) somewhere in the 3 hour mark.

This was the longest uninterrupted meditation sessions I've done with such high quality ever in my life. So maybe, try to build up some motivation and attempt something like that. You can move around with mindfulness since 4 hours is a really long time. You can walk in meditation. You can also lay down when you feel a lot of negative sensations. But the trick is to never lose that TMI mindfulness. 

I also was really sleepy in those 4 hours but somehow decided that I was not going to sleep and maintain mindfulness for 4 hours. I remember my resolve being very intense. 

Hope this gave you some motivation and inspiration. I've experienced almost the same thing you did. So keep going and crank up that intensity.

That day, my technique was: 

Attention is on the Breath sensations and all awareness is extrospective attending to external sounds. My eyes were open the whole 4 hours. 

I really liked this technique and I've been practicing sound awareness with the breath for a while now. This may not be the most optimal for you but I felt really comfortable with extrospective sound awareness. 

Now I see the body awareness and introspective awareness is also super important and easier to practice. But then again, everything is easier to practice once you momentarily experience joy, satisfaction and happiness. 

In short, strengthen your resolve, find your 'go-to' TMI technique that you are good at, do a long 4 hour session sitting, moving and laying down and hopefully experience some nice spiritual gains after that.  

Also if it doesn't work, just try again next week. (or as soon as you can)

The difference between 1 hour long sits 4 times a day and 4 hour straight uninterrupted session is HUGE! The former will most likely create some nice momentum but the latter will get you 100 times deeper and create a 10 times more intense momentum.

Long sessions are amazing and this helps me to see why retreat intensity is so important on the spiritual path. Again, 4 hours is a really long time so learn to maintain TMI techniques while walking and laying down. Don't attempt 4 hour long SDS sits like Shinzen  That requires stage 9-10 levels of TMI mastery. Move around or lay down whenever you feel like giving up  but maintain the technique. Reduce the pressure and you'll get to 4 hours.

 

Edited December 14, 2019 by ardacigin

[Raptorsin7]

@ardacigin Thank you very much. I did one day super long day of yoga, and meditation and I feel like that day turned me into true seeker. I will do another day like that. Tonight I will try to do at least a 2 hour sit.

[ardacigin]

@Raptorsin7 Great! How did the 2-hour sit go? Anything you want to share or ask about?

[Bryanbrax]

so as a beginner of meditation where should i begin

i've tried meditation in the past with music playing and the first time i tried it i felt energy flowing out of me , the moment i was done i felt lighter.

my second meditation experience which was months later , after sitting for about 30 minutes i went into this state where i couldn't feel my physical body it felt as if my energy body or whatever was swaying side to side , it was a peaceful sensation.

all this experiences was before i barely knew anything about anything , i just simply did it because i heard it helps to calm the mind.

now i've been trying  to come back to meditation now that i know what's possible with it , but the results have not been fruitful my mind just chatters my legs shake when am in a meditative posture  and i can barely hit the 20 minute mark , before i was able to reach 40 minutes without any struggle.

what's your advice ? 

 

 

[Raptorsin7]

@ardacigin I did 2 hours of meditation today, with like a 30 second break when i moved from my couch to a chair. I had a lot of resistance from thoughts around school and I didn't reach any state of effortlessness, joy, or happiness. But I have winter break coming up soon and i plan on doing a bunch of days of long sits. 

I will keep trying to find happiness and joy in my sits. Also, your content is awesome keep posting man!

[Raptorsin7]

@Raptorsin7 Where does the joy and happiness come from in the sit? I notice it's hard to fully let go and surrender, i'm usually getting lost in a thought or some bad feeling then i bring my self back by saying quietly in the mind let it go. But what changed in your meditation from when you weren't experiencing a lot of happiness and joy from it to now. What is the difference in your sits now?

Okay so I think I need to do a long session, like 4 hours you were talking about uninterrupted. Tomorrow I will try to do another 2 hour session and see how it goes.

[ardacigin]

4 hours ago, Bryanbrax said:

so as a beginner of meditation where should i begin

i've tried meditation in the past with music playing and the first time i tried it i felt energy flowing out of me , the moment i was done i felt lighter.

my second meditation experience which was months later , after sitting for about 30 minutes i went into this state where i couldn't feel my physical body it felt as if my energy body or whatever was swaying side to side , it was a peaceful sensation.

all this experiences was before i barely knew anything about anything , i just simply did it because i heard it helps to calm the mind.

now i've been trying  to come back to meditation now that i know what's possible with it , but the results have not been fruitful my mind just chatters my legs shake when am in a meditative posture  and i can barely hit the 20 minute mark , before i was able to reach 40 minutes without any struggle.

what's your advice ? 

 

 

Stable attention is the first step. Before developing the 4 elements described here with internal happiness, joy, tranquility and equanimity, you need to develop the ability stay with a pre-defined object in the present moment. Dullness and distracting thoughts are not important to deal with at this initial stage of concentration development.

There is only 1 key advice. Thoughts intrude, you become aware that you don't focus on the breath and then you come back to the breath with a smile on your face. gently. Without getting frustrated. This creates a feedback loop of positivity that will induce these 4 states in the future.

Again, I recommend TMI technique taught by Culadasa. Read his book. And always try to find the joy and happiness in meditation. Otherwise, boredom, frustration, dullness and sadness will pervade your sessions.

It is cool to meditate with music etc. but your technique must be defined precisely. If it is noting gone at the end of every beat, then you should be able to do that consistently. You must also do that while being aware of the body, breath and mind in s state of metacognitive awareness. That requires intermediate levels of attentional and awareness skills.

So try to do a silent formal sits in the beginning. Do these music and video meditations informally in your life. Still do them everyday but not as a formal sit. These are very important and will help you bring mindfulness in daily life once you go deeper with formal sits.

Hope this helps