American Buddhist meditation teachers (jhana)

Tina Rasmussen, Stephen Snyder (jhanasadvice.com); Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

What is concentration-meditation and jhana practice?

Parents turn to mindfulness for kids (HP)

Meditative absorption (jhana or dhyana) practice is an ancient type of serenity-concentration meditation (samatha) that predates written history as a method to purify the mind/heart.

It was taught to the Buddha by his teachers, and he practiced and taught the absorptions throughout his teachings. It is a practice that was so important to him that entering the absorptions was his first act that led him from severe austerities to a path of happiness to enlightenment. Siddhartha soon became the Buddha. His last act before reclining into final nirvana, exiting samsara and thereby making an end of all rebirth and suffering, was also entering the absorptions.

• Pa Auk Forest Monastery (Burma)

Burmese meditation master and scholar-monk Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw is considered by many to be the leading Buddhist jhana teacher alive today. Tina Rasmussen and Stephen Snyder were taught personally by the Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw, who then authorized them as the first Western lay people to teach the serenity (samatha) practices as the Sayadaw taught them.

Their book, Practicing the Jhanas, is an accessible and direct experiential account of samatha practice. It has been endorsed by the Sayadaw, Joseph Goldstein (Insight Meditation Society), Guy Armstrong, Richard Shankman, Rick Hanson, and others, and was republished by Shambhala Publications.

• Retreats
• Daylong intensives
• Dharma talks at your location
• One-on-one spiritual guidance
• Free downloads of Dharma talks on jhana practice

American teachers Rasmussen and Snyder offer several services to meditation practitioners interested in the samatha practices of which the jhanas or absorptions are a part. Their services are for both experienced meditators interested in deepening their concentration practice as well as new meditators beginning a concentration practice. More

• Practicing The Jhanas: Traditional Concentration Meditation as Presented by the Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw (147 page paperback published by Shambhala Publications)