Manufacturing Bliss

I wasn’t sure what sort of insights I wanted to explore. I had attended the Jhourney retreat primarily to satisfy my intellectual curiosity about a strange phenomenon. Still, I couldn’t help but notice ... things. Why, for example, had I been so quick to pick up the jhanas? I had thought of myself as a sort of lovably grumpy person, not particularl... See more

I later realized that was a mistake. The power of the jhanas was not that they offered a temporary escape from our otherwise pallid lives — as we typically think of pleasurable vices — but that, with repeated practice, they somehow elevated my everyday life to be more jhana-like.

Jhanas were first described centuries ago, but they’ve only recently experienced a modern revival. According to the suttas, the Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha entered the first jhana spontaneously as a child, and later encouraged the pursuit of the jhanas as a “path to awakening.” But as Buddhism spread and became more formalized, jhanas were cord... See more

For some reason, the notion of others being happy seems to trigger a “tall poppy” syndrome among the unhappy, as if there were only so much happiness to go around. Even Zerfas, when he tried to explain his early experiences to friends, found that they were “either skeptical or concerned,” which made him not want to talk about it. I, too, avoided te... See more

Peer pressure can work in positive directions, but so too is there downward pressure to not be happy, to not seek the insights, to continue mimicking the pleasure-chasing activities so as not to disturb the (lack of) peace. Just as not everyone eats well and exercises, despite knowing they ought to, not everyone wants to reflect on their life and r... See more

I felt like a scientist, traipsing off to my cabin each morning to lie on my spare bed for 45-60-minute “sits,” walk around the grounds, then record my observations in a notebook, until it was time for dinner. In the evenings, we logged our experiences using presupplied Chromebooks. I had a daily “interview,” a one-on-one conversation with a Jhourn... See more

Stephen Zerfas, cofounder of Jhourney, a company that aims to help more people experience jhanas, describes them as “the opposite of a panic attack.” Instead of an escalating anxiety loop, jhanas are an escalating pleasure loop, the intensity of which is comparable — depending on whom you ask — to an orgasm, an MDMA-induced cuddle puddle, or the th... See more

The San Francisco Bay Area has a long history as the playground of consciousness. For decades, many of its resident technologists have been both habitually curious about — and determined to master — the inside of their brains. This sort of cerebral hedonism is hardly visible to outsiders, in the way that visitors to Miami might be dazzled by the sp... See more

The basic technique was finding a “meditation object” — something or someone that sparked a pleasant sensation — then trying to intensify and heighten that sensation. But we were told to experiment, because certain techniques were likely to work better for some than others. This, too, was a marked departure from the typical dogma of meditation retr... See more