Blurb:

A strong strand of the scholarship of Lance Cousins focussed on the jhānas
and related matters, and he was also a practitioner and teacher of samatha
meditation, which aims at the jhānas. In this dual tradition, this paper explores
subtle questions about the nature of each jhāna as dealt with in the
Pali Nikāyas, Abhidhamma and commentaries. Its aim is to help illuminate
what it is like to be in any of these jhānas: what is going on in them, and what
has been transcended? What do the similes for each jhāna convey about the
overall situation in them? What kind` of thought and feelings are understood
to occur in them? To what extent does breathing stop in deep jhāna? To what
extent is hearing transcended in them? What happens in moving between
them? How are they related to developing insight?