The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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So welcome, everyone, to the next week of our series on samadhi.

And if you hear in the background all the many birds,

I'm sitting meditating outdoors at the lands of spirit rock and accompanied by the birds and occasionally

by the animals that are here and it's nice to be meditating outdoors.

So this week, the topic is the third Janna,

the third of the three absorptions that the Buddha emphasized.

And with this, happiness comes to the foreground.

The word is Sukha, S-U-K-H-A.

And perhaps we get into this third genre,

things get very simple, very ordinary, not ordinary exactly,

but very simple.

Nothing really special exactly, except that it feels so good.

It feels so nice and so still and so quiet. There's virtually no thoughts at all. Certainly no discursive thinking, no conversational thinking.

And there's one wonderful descriptions of all the Johnnas that maybe is a nice entryway into the third ghanah.

Abiding in the Janos, in any of the Janos, is called the happiness of renunciation,

the happiness of seclusion, the happiness of peace, the happiness of awakening. I say of this kind of happiness that it should be practiced, cultivated, that it should be frequently done, that it should not be

feared. It should not be feared. So I don't know how many of you fear, happiness and joy,

but certainly some people fear going into this very deep stillness,

where for temporarily, we're putting aside all the reference points we have

for how we live our life, including any reference point of me, myself, and mine.

...