Within the Thai Forest Tradition, jhāna is approached as a practical means for freeing the mind rather than as an end in itself. Deep concentration is valued as a powerful support for insight into impermanence, suffering, and not‑self, yet teachers consistently warn against attachment to peaceful or luminous states. The cultivation of jhāna is framed within a broader training in morality, sense restraint, and simplicity of life, with forest seclusion and few duties providing the outer conditions for inner stillness. Ethical conduct and continuous mindfulness of the body, death, and the dangers of saṃsāra are treated as essential foundations, so that concentration develops on a mind already inclined toward renunciation and clarity.

The principal meditative methods used to develop jhāna are mindfulness of breathing and recollection of the Buddha, often through the “Buddho” mantra synchronized with the breath. The breath may be followed at a single point or throughout the whole body, with relaxed, continuous awareness and a steady letting go of discursive thought. As attention stabilizes, the mind gathers into one, thinking falls silent or becomes very faint, and qualities such as rapture, happiness, lightness, and spaciousness arise. Some teachers speak in terms of access and fixed samādhi, or simply weaker and stronger samādhi, while others explicitly discuss nimitta, jhāna factors, and movement through stages, though all emphasize that these states should not be clung to or taken as a self.

Different forest masters articulate this path with their own emphases, yet their orientations converge in important ways. Figures such as Ajahn Mun and Ajahn Mahā Boowa highlight deep, unwavering samādhi as a base for investigating the citta, encouraging repeated entry into powerful concentration while warning strongly against identifying with its brightness or stillness. Ajahn Chah and others speak less in technical terms and more in terms of balance, urging practitioners to calm the mind enough for insight and then to use that calm to investigate, rather than becoming “addicted” to serenity. Across these lineages, daily sitting and walking meditation, close guidance from experienced teachers, and the ascetic rigors of forest life all serve to test whether jhāna truly reduces greed, hatred, and delusion.

Insight and concentration are not treated as separate tracks but as mutually supporting aspects of a single path. Stillness is developed so that the mind can see more clearly, and after emerging from samādhi, practitioners are encouraged to contemplate body, feeling, mind, and dhammas with a sharpened, dispassionate awareness. Jhāna is thus honored as essential for profound insight, yet always understood as a conditioned, temporary state to be known and released. The measure of its success lies less in the refinement of inner experiences than in the growth of humility, patience, and dispassion in the midst of ordinary life.