It’s an excellent question, actually!
I have definitely experienced the bliss and trance-derived and trance-induced pleasure of Buddhist meditations. I spent a lot of hours meditating and developing that ability while I was on the spiritual path.
It is vastly different, a totally different phenomenon, an entirely different ballgame.
Superficially it can seem to be similar at first, so I understand your question. With the jhanic (i.e. trance-state meidtative) bliss, it is felt in the body (at first) like thereis a bliss and pleasure coming forth from every part of the body. With practice in meditative concentration (ie blocking out thoughts, single-pointedly focusing on just one thing), you can develop this bliss to encompass more of your body, to fully drench in it. Then it is like every part of your body is emanating forth this blissful pleasure.
The key, or trick, to developing the ability to do that (and take it further) is in seeing that the jhanic bliss derives from a viewing of the normal sensate phenomenon that you experience as dissatisfactory or displeasurable in some way. In that way you train your psyche to reject and distance yourself from them. This withdrawal from the senses is what produces the jhanic bliss[1]. And the more thoroughly you do it, the more you besorb yourself in the bliss.
The deeper trance states from there follow the same pattern and it works remarkably well. If you do it enough you start to see (either naturally, or from instruction) that this bliss you are experiencing has a ‘coarse’ quality to it. There is a more ‘refined’ bliss that is ‘underneath’ the coarse one. By then finding the coarse bliss dissatisfying, it sort of evaporates off, leaving just the refined bliss instead, which is more equanimous/peaceful yet you perceive it as better[2].
If you go deeper still then you ‘see’ even this remaining pleasure as less desirable than not having any pleasure at all, and you enter a deeper trance that is marked by equanimity and calm [3]. At this point you are still percipient of your body, and if you are able to stick through it, this is the next thing to be seen as dissatisfying and to slough off, which brings you to an out-of-body experience (ie no perception of your body at all)… and deeper and deeper it goes.
I say all this from experience – that is how it worked for me, I actually experienced all these things – with corroboration from the Buddhist texts that I studied as a guide.
So with that background in mind, what is the difference between that and pure intent?
The experience of the two is simply totally different. The bliss felt in my body was affective in nature. It had a hedonic tone – a positive one but a hedonic tone nevertheless. It was something that I felt, intuitively, as in the way I would feel an emotion. It was something ‘I’ controlled, that ‘I’ trained ‘myself’ to increase, that ‘I’ could direct to other parts of my body.
By contrast, the purity experienced as pure intent, is not affective in nature. It is anhedonic pleasure. It has no ‘cap’ to it the way hedonic pleasure does, it can increase forever without it being “too much”. I do not experience pure intent via my senses or my feelings, neither sensately nor intuitively. It’s a different sense, an existential sense. It quite simply is not an emotion, mood, or feeling, it’s not affective in nature at all. It is not something ‘I’ generate, ‘I’ cannot direct it anywhere. Rather it is something I can attune to, and increasingly allow myself to experience more of it – but I am not directing where it goes or how it is experienced.
In other words the bliss is something I generate/generated inside of me, while the pure intent is something already-existing that I allow myself to experience more of.
It is also notable that the bliss is something derived from withdrawal and seclusion. It is in a sense incompatible with worldly sensate existence – hence needing to tuck oneself away and meditate quietly to go deeper into it. Following the bliss leads you to another world – at the very least, away from this world. By contrast, as pure intent originates in the actually-existing universe itself, following pure intent leads you more towards the universe, rather than away from it. It takes you outside of ‘yourself’, but the result isn’t a secluded or out-of-body state, but rather, being here, now, more than you ever had been before!
In short, they are very different, and the way of knowing the differences is experientially, so I can easily compare the two and give an answer such as this one.
Cheers,
Claudiu
At Savatthī. “Bhikkhus, to whatever extent I wish, secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, I enter and dwell in the first jhana, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture [piti] and happiness [sukha] born of seclusion. […] with the subsiding of thought and examination, I enter and dwell in the second jhana, which has internal confidence and unification of mind, is without thought and examination, and has rapture [piti] and happiness [sukha] born of concentration. SN 16.9 ↩︎
[…] with the fading away as well of rapture [piti], I dwell equanimous, and mindful and clearly comprehending, I experience happiness [sukha] with the body; I enter and dwell in the third jhana […] SN 16.9 ↩︎
“[…] with the abandoning of pleasure [sukha] and pain, and with the previous passing away of joy and displeasure, I enter and dwell in the fourth jhana, which is neither painful nor pleasant and includes the purification of mindfulness by equanimity. SN 16.9 ↩︎