This is the attribution of a cause: this is said to be the cause of doing something? There might be something more going on here than meets the eye?
Then, there is the attribution of an effect: ‘I’ am meditating, ‘I’ am directing ‘my’ attention to the breath, ‘I’ am returning ‘my’ attention to the breath etc. - it ain’t necessarily so?
It may ‘appear’ like this, in the ‘thinking process’ (cognition). The thinking process produces this explanation. It is a ‘product’ of thought?
Ajahn Brahm has clearly stated that the sense of a ‘doer’ is absent in Jhana. There is no sense of a ‘doer’ who is directing the attention in Jhana. If there is the sense of a doer directing things, attaining jhanas with form or without form - this is not jhana.
There may be trans-like states that are mistaken for Jhanas?
This confusion about jhana appears to be commonplace among many so-called jhana-teachers and their students.
Jhana - like everything else - is not-self. There is nobody going nowhere, there is nobody entering and emerging from anything at all. This is just a manner of speaking. It’s based on an erroneous conception - cognition - thought process.
We are routinely bewitched by language. Witgenstein said, this is the source of all the confusion in philosophy. He said, the true purpose of philosophy is like releasing a fly that is trapped in a bottle*. He believed that most philosophers throughout history had failed miserably - the fly remains trapped.
‘Who can unknot the knot?’ - Visudhimagga