Jhana · Pāli: jhāna; Skt: dhyāna

In the Magga-vibhaṅga Sutta (SN 45.8) the Buddha defines right concentration, the eighth factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, as four jhānas, and the wording shows what deepening looks like. In the first, a practitioner “quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful (mental) qualities” enters “rapture & pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation”. In the second, “with the stilling of directed thoughts & evaluations”, there is “rapture & pleasure born of concentration, unification of awareness”. In the third, “with the fading of rapture, he remains equanimous, mindful, & alert, and senses pleasure with the body”. The fourth is “purity of equanimity & mindfulness, neither pleasure nor pain”. Each stage releases something the one before still leaned on, so the mind grows quieter rather than more strained.

Because SN 45.8 defines a path factor this way, jhāna is not an optional refinement in these discourses but the substance of right concentration itself. (For where such states sit in practice, see our guide to Buddhist meditation.)

The Sanskrit form of the word travelled east. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that the name Zen, “which means meditation, is derived from a transliteration of the Chinese word Chán”, which “is in turn a transliteration of the Sanskrit term dhyāna”, and that meditation “was picked as the name for this school because the historical Buddha achieved enlightenment (nirvāna) through the practice of meditation”. So in Theravāda the word names a graded set of absorptions, while in East Asia the same word became the name of a whole school.