JHANA: Progress through jhānas comes by becoming aware of our own construing efforts, our preconceptions, even our efforts to be aware and mindful – everything that takes us away from ‘life’. These ‘distortions’ are not removed all at once but rather in a gradual way. Often one is not aware of them at all during normal life. When the gross preconception is dispelled, it opens up the possibility of dispelling a more subtle one, and so on. In fact, one cannot be perfectly mindful in a ‘positive’ way of one’s own activities. If one still ‘knows’ what they are doing, this means that they are living in the past. This is the key to the proper understanding of ānāpānasati formula.
Having knowledge of one’s activity of breathing in and breathing out is, in fact, an imperfection of mindfulness, its lower stage. One cannot be ‘positively’ mindful of one’s own breathing. What is then the pinnacle of mindfulness of breathing? When mindfulness is perfect, there is only the breathing body left. This very state brings with it the liberating insight. no special method of ‘insight’ was needed. This final stage of mindfulness of breathing is not reached by focusing on breath, but rather by becoming aware of everything that takes us away from it.
