Bliss Is an Acquired Taste

The bliss of concentration is an acquired taste.

It’s a specific kind of happiness, which the Thais call santi-sukha, which literally means the happiness of peace. This is a basic level of well-being that we tend to overlook because it carries no excitement, no thrills. It’s just a basic sense of ease that’s steady, like the flame of an oil lamp.

For most of us, we notice pleasure and pain because of the back-and-forth, the ups and the downs. When things are steady and on an even keel, we tend to lose interest and not notice them. But that’s precisely the kind of well-being we’re working on here: the kind of happiness that’s steady, that doesn’t go up and down. We have to learn how to appreciate that. As we stick with it more and more, we begin to realize that we wouldn’t want to be without this kind of happiness, without this kind of well-being.

But then the next question is, is it really steady?

As you examine it, you find that it, too, involves a certain level of feeding. You’re feeding off of the breath, the ease you can create with the breath. You’re also feeding off of the steadiness of the intentions that keep you here. But over time, you get more and more sensitive to the fact that even the steadiness of concentration is not totally steady.

It involves a very subtle kind of movement, back and forth—sometimes more intense, sometimes less, but there’s always a slight inconstancy to it. You want to get sensitive to that because that’s what motivates you to look for something better.

But in the beginning of your concentration practice, you want to focus on the steadiness. That’s what motivates you to get into the concentration to begin with and to try to stay there. We often hear the Buddha talking about how the five aggregates are stressful because they’re inconstant, and as a result we’re taught not to identify with them; but there are levels of the teaching where the Buddha says you don’t focus on that yet.

You focus instead on the fact that some aspects of form, feeling, perception, mental fabrication, and consciousness are actually pleasant, and you want to pursue them for that pleasure.

There’s the pleasure of the precepts, the pleasure of generosity, both of which are conditioned things. There’s the pleasure in concentration, which is also conditioned, and you want to motivate yourself to develop that and to appreciate it so that it can provide you with nourishment on the path.

If you jump right in and say, “Well, everything is inconstant, stressful, and not-self, so let’s just go beyond the concentration and move on to the next step, not bother with working on the concentration,” that simply short-circuits the path. It starves the path. You’re gaining training in happiness; you’re gaining sensitivity in what it means to experience well-being so that you’ll be able to recognize the ultimate well-being when it comes.

Even though the path involves a kind of feeding, it’s the kind of feeding you need so that you’re not feeding on something more blameworthy, something more unskillful. This is the happiness that’s relatively pure, not absolutely pure, because there’s still a kind of feeding.

Still, at this point you need to feed, so you go for what’s relatively better.

This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the Dhamma Talks Section, Meditation Series book Meditations 8, “Examine Your Happiness.” (Also in audio format at, “Examine Your Happiness,” December 28, 2014.)