How Long Does It Take to Attain Jhana? A Case for the Deep Sutta Jhanas

In the manual, I made clear that the four jhanas I am talking about are the deeper sutta jhanas — as opposed to the Visuddhimagga jhanas and the lite jhanas — but I did not go far into why. The purpose of the manual is meditation retreat guidance, not polemics about which jhana is the "real" one the Buddha taught. This essay is where I make that case.

How Long It Takes to Attain Jhana

I also gave a rough timeframe in the manual, and it is worth repeating up front, because it is the honest answer to the question many people ask: how long does it take to attain jhana?

"As far as I’m aware, the most common duration of retreats is up to two weeks. You should not expect to attain jhana, even the first one, in up to two weeks of retreat. I’m not saying it’s impossible. Honestly, I don’t know. But it’s unlikely enough that it should not be expected. …

I want to dispel unrealistic expectations in both directions—that the jhanas are too easy or too difficult. I’ve suggested that one should not expect to get into the first jhana within two weeks of retreat. Let me add a hint from the other direction: Attaining the first jhana within more or less one month of retreat is possible.

​Again, I’m not saying it’s impossible to be quicker. I’m also not saying one month is a standard that should be expected. I’m saying that if things go relatively well—the four key factors for attaining jhana are present—the first jhana happening in more or less four weeks of dedicated practice is realistic. 'The first jhana happening' is still quite far from mastering all four jhanas though."

And for all four jhanas:

"To anchor the expectations regarding the timeframe for going through all four jhanas, let’s say that if things go very well, it’s possible to do it within three months of retreat. Again, I’m not claiming it’s impossible to be faster. I’m also not saying that getting into all four jhanas in three months is a standard. I’m saying that if things go very well and the key factors for attaining jhana are fulfilled, it’s not impossible to do it within three months.

By three months of retreat, I don’t necessarily mean the most intense retreat, meditating constantly all day. But I do mean a set-up where the meditator is dedicated full-time to the on- and off-the-cushion training, quite secluded, and meditating several hours a day (such as in the daily retreat schedule example provided earlier)."

(Jhana Training Manual, Jhana Training chapter)

This is faster than the Visuddhimagga model would allow, and slower than the lite jhanas promise. The rest of this essay explains why I think that middle ground is where the suttas actually point.

The Three Kinds of "Jhana"

I know this is not the full picture of the "jhana landscape," but for simplicity let us stay within the three-type framework:

• The lite jhanas — something attainable within a two-week retreat.

• The deep sutta jhanas — profound, whole-body-pervading experiences (but not absorptions — see the manual for what I mean by that), attainable roughly within one to three months of full-time retreat if things go very well (as described above).

• The Visuddhimagga jhanas — full absorptions as described in the Theravada commentaries.

  
  

My understanding is that the suttas point to the middle one, and that the other two miss in opposite directions. Let me take each end in turn.

Why the Visuddhimagga Jhanas Overshoot

The commentarial model builds the jhanas into something more total than the suttas describe — and it does so largely with vocabulary the suttas do not use for the jhanas at all. My measure throughout is the one the Buddha gives in the Mahapadesa Sutta (AN 4.180): test any claimed teaching against the discourses and the discipline, and weigh it by whether it is found there. It is on that basis that I take the suttas, not the later commentaries, as the standard for what jhana is.

The Key Terms Are Not in the Suttas

"Access concentration," the formal counterpart-sign (nimitta) as a precondition, and appana samadhi (absorption) as the threshold of jhana are all later Theravada systematizations. They are absent from the suttas in that developed form. The whole conceptual framework is a commentarial overlay; it does not fit the discourses, and once you hold the jhanas to that overlay, the bar rises above anything the suttas actually specify.

Pervading the Whole Body Is Not Absorption

As I already briefly noted in the manual, the jhana similes themselves point away from full absorption:

"Given the jhana sutta similes that talk about pervading the whole body by something, I find it difficult to interpret the four jhanas as absorptions in which one does not experience the physical body."

(Jhana Training Manual, Theory chapter)

The similes themselves are collected in the Jhana Training chapter.

This is, in fact, the key qualitative difference between the four jhanas and the formless attainments. Absorption is the "upgrade" the formless attainments have and the four jhanas do not.

What "Noise Is a Thorn to Jhana" Means (AN 10.72)

Consider also AN 10.72, where noise is called a thorn to the jhanas. This might seem to support the absorption reading, since the same discourse lists, for example, thought and examination as a thorn to the second jhana, rapture to the third, and perception and feeling to the attainment of cessation of perception and feeling — and in each of these cases the thorn is the factor that has dropped away in that state. So one might read "noise is a thorn to the first jhana" the same way: that one cannot hear in the first jhana at all.

But the discourse's own framing tells against that. A crowd of eminent Licchavis arrives making an uproar and a racket, and the monks respond not by entering jhana and becoming deaf to it, but by withdrawing to a quiet forest — which the Buddha commends. If the first jhana sealed off hearing the way the second stills thought, there would be no reason to relocate. That the remedy is to escape the noise only makes sense if sound can still affect the meditator. "Noise" here is the gross uproar of a crowd, not the faint sounds of a quiet forest — so what counts as a thorn is loud disturbance, not sound as such. Furthermore, the first jhana description mentions seclusion from sensual pleasures, not a shutdown of the senses as the description of the formless states does. The conclusion naturally follows: the first jhana is not a state in which hearing has stopped; loud noise simply disturbs it.

A personal note. I have experimented with this style of practice (kasina) myself, and having experienced both the deep sutta jhana and the Visuddhimagga-style practice, my preference is clearly the former. The kasina practice was, for me, too intense and forced — I was close to getting a headache from it. I see the deep sutta jhanas as more in line with the sutta descriptions and more conducive to wholesome states of mind.

Why the Lite Jhanas Are Too Easy to Be the Real Thing

By "lite jhana" I do not mean one specific method. I have heard of several different practices that fall into this category, and their common denominator is that the "jhana" can be attained relatively quickly. In line with the manual, let us anchor this to the usual up-to-two-weeks duration of most lay retreats. So here, "lite jhana" simply means anything called "jhana" that is not uncommonly attained within a two-week retreat.

I have several reasons for doubting that what is reached in that window is what the suttas call jhana.

A "Superior Human State" You Can Reach in Two Weeks?

The Buddhist monastic rules speak of the four jhanas as superior human states (The Buddhist Monastic Code I). Two of the monastic (Patimokkha) rules turn on exactly this.

First, if a monk falsely claims such an attainment — he reports having it, but it is not factual — he commits the most severe class of offense (parajika) and is automatically and irreversibly no longer a monk. Only four of the 227 monastic rules carry this weight.

Second, monks are prohibited from reporting these superior human states to laypeople, even when the claim is true. The rationale appears to be that if laypeople knew which monks could reach these states, they would prioritize them when offering alms.

Now ask yourself: does it make sense that something attainable in two weeks would be classed as a "superior human state"? I don't think so. If the jhanas were really that easy, most monks should be able to reach them, and they would be nothing special. Would it then make sense that lying about them is one of the four gravest things a monk can do? (For comparison, lying about other things than the superior human states is only a pacittiya offense, set right by a confession to a fellow monk.) Would it make sense to lay down a specific rule forbidding monks from mentioning the jhanas to laypeople, if they were so easy and common? I don't think so.

The Culmination of the Eightfold Path

Now place the jhanas in the context of the whole Buddhist practice. The four jhanas are the last factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. They are described as "the higher mind" (MN 6) and, like awakening itself, as "a footprint of the Tathagata" — the Buddha (MN 27). In the gradual training of the suttas, they come only after one is virtuous, restrains the senses, develops mindfulness and clear comprehension, resorts to seclusion, and abandons the five hindrances (MN 27). Do you really think this can all be done, and the jhanas reached, on a two-week retreat? I don’t think so.

Samadhi Is the Core: It's Not Just About "Letting Go"

Some proponents of the lite jhanas tend to emphasize the abandoning of the jhana factors and to sideline samadhi (or they work with very unusual interpretations of what samadhi means in the first place). You hear it said that the jhanas are born of abandoning, letting go, non-grasping — and you hear rather little about samadhi.

But the suttas are explicit: the first jhana is born of seclusion (viveka) and the second jhana is born of concentration (samadhi). Concentration, the unification of mind, is the core of the practice. The four jhanas are themselves the very definition of right concentration (samma-samadhi). Deep samadhi is what generates the jhana factors — rapture and pleasure, piti and sukha — and then what allows the mind to be refined by gradually dropping them, culminating in the "pure bright mind" of the fourth jhana.

In other words, the deep sutta jhanas combine both aspects: deep samadhi and the refinement of the mind by abandoning the jhana factors. And the first is a necessary condition for the second one to take place. Samadhi is the source, and the abandoning is downstream of it, not a substitute. (I also make this point in the manual.)

Jhana Is a Whole-Body-Pervading State

The jhana similes describe rapture and pleasure (in the third jhana, pleasure only) pervading the entire body — like the soap-ball saturated with moisture, the lake fed by a cool spring, the pond of lotuses steeped in water. These are profound, whole-body experiences, not a pleasant calm with a feeling of gladness laid over it.

This is where the real question lies. No one denies that the lite practices can produce something pleasant — a settling of the mind and joy. The question is whether that something is the rapture and pleasure the suttas describe. The similes set a high bar: rapture and pleasure strong enough to saturate the entire body, as those similes describe — leaving no part untouched.

Samadhi Simply Takes Time

My core objection is straightforward: I do not believe it is possible to generate enough samadhi in such a short time. The mind-body needs time to adjust and to develop the necessary depth of samadhi. You cannot bypass this with neurofeedback or by meditating ten hours a day. Just as you can hardly become very good at a sport in two weeks, no matter the conditions, you can hardly develop samadhi to the jhana level in two weeks. It simply takes longer for the mind-body to learn and ingrain this skill. And the depth required is real: the four jhanas are not an early stage of the practice but the suttas' own definition of a very advanced stage of it, and even to enter the first one requires samadhi developed to a considerable depth.

You might object that, by this reasoning, even the timeline I suggest is too quick. Well, first, two weeks and four weeks of retreat are a big difference — I believe most people with retreat experience would agree that even a single week of full-time retreat is a relatively long time in which a great deal can happen. Second, when I say roughly one month for the first jhana, I do not mean a well-developed first jhana; I mean some initial, brief rapture and pleasure beginning to arise. Third, one month is the scenario where things go very well — which is not at all guaranteed, and more often things do not go so well.

Jhana Overestimation Has Become the New Normal

I'm afraid that, along with the increased interest in jhana, jhana overestimation due to jhana misinterpretation has become the new normal. And as with any overestimation, it does not help the practitioners themselves, nor the others who take their claims at face value. You can take this essay — together with my discussion of overestimation in the manual — as a sincere heads-up to those who still believe they are attaining jhana on two-week retreats.

The Middle Between Two Extremes

Overall, I think the Visuddhimagga interpretation is a Theravada doctrinal error that turns the jhanas into full absorptions, which they are not. And the lite interpretations seem to be a product of simply trying to make the jhanas more accessible, stripping them of the depth and profundity that the eighth factor of the Noble Eightfold Path deserves. The suttas, I think, point between these two extremes.

The purpose of this essay is not to dismiss the practices themselves. I do believe these practices can have their value and their benefits. I just don't think they are the states the Buddha was describing when he spoke of the four jhanas.

My aim is to help recover what the four jhanas actually are. This is no small matter. They are among the most repeated teachings in the suttas, and the definition of right concentration, the last factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. Misread them, and you misread one of the pillars of the whole path. Set the bar where the suttas set it, and you at least know what you are practicing toward.

And if you want to know how to get there — how to develop the deep sutta jhanas I describe here — there is the whole manual for that.

Sources:

Anguttara Nikaya (AN): The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications, 2012

Majjhima Nikaya (MN): The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications, 2009

The Buddhist Monastic Code, Volume I, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, 2013

Jhana Training Manual: Step-by-Step Journey From Mindfulness to Cessation, Tomas Piskacek, 2025

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