The Middle Paths (2nd and 3rd)

RE: Empty Hands

Florian Weps — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:03:53 GMT

Hi Martin,

It's not foreign at all. It's not extraordinary at all (until the one end comes loose, that is surprising). It's just what happens between the place out there being looked at (or listened to...) and the place in here doing the looking, and awareness of this state of affairs.

But I'm glad you liked my descriptions.

Cheers,
Florian

RE: Empty Hands

Martin Potter — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:46:51 GMT

Brilliant descriptions Florian!

Only problem is now I can't stop thinking of it as a foreign tendril or worm groping about in my head

- Martin

RE: Empty Hands

Florian Weps — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:14:52 GMT

Steph S:

I've been trying to get more of a handle on the attention wave and how it directs one. I'm at a crossroads where I can tell my insight sensibilities are carrying over to my actualism practice... and realizing trying to practice insight along with actualism confuses things for me. Where do you perceive this attention wave tendril? From how you describe it, I imagine it being on either side of the inside of your head (since that's where the brain is).. and its endpoints probably where each ear is.

First off, that's just me saying "this could be what Daniel and Tarin are referring to". I'm fairly confident, but I may be way off.

So, how do I perceive this? Hm, this may be highly specific to my vipassana practice, so YMMV. First, let me define terms: "point of focus" is the place perception is focussed on, such as the spot my eyes are focussed on, or the location (direction, distance) of a sound I am specifically listening to by picking it out of all the sounds I hear. Or the spot on my skin I focus on when I feel a touch. That's what I call "the focus". That one's pretty easy to get, I was aware of it long before doing systematic vipassana.

Then there's a slightly more subtle point: the "dot of attention", the "place where the hearing is", the "place where the little listener homunculus sits" - I became aware of that only after doing strong noting practice for a few months. Initially, the "place where the hearing is" would be solidly located in the back of my head, between the ears, the "place where the seeing is" a bit behind the nose etc.

One of the surprising things that happened around the time of my stream entry was how this second location, this "dot of attention" became detachable. I could look at something (point of focus) and sort of move the dot of attention (place of seeing) out through the eyes, even up to the point of focus. When I did that, I noticed how an oscillation would develop between the two points, how they could collapse (fruition), and so on. If you like, you can think of them as "object" and "subject" of perception. Anyway, the two are obviously connected in some way, and here's the thing: the focus end of the thing, unless kept still in concentration, does this probing, groping motion ever so often, like an inchworm looking for the next leaf (a graphic description I stole off Ven. Thanissaro).

Okay. Can you relate to the description? I first noticed it in the visual field, thus my descriptions have a visual slant to them, but don't be too fixed on that, it works just like that for the focus and attention dot in all of experience, even thoughts or kinesthetic stuff).

Steph S:

Could you provide more detail on what happened when you included the tendril and what happened when you ignored it?

When I include the tendril, it runs the show. I can make it really rigid with concentration, freeze it into a jhana, for example. I (sort of) can collapse it into fruition. I can let it do its thing and be aware of that, noticing how it's related to the ñanas as they cycle by. It seems to have a strong relationship to the "energy" sensations, cakras, meridians, that stuff. Thus, I'm pretty sure of my identification with Daniel's "attention wave".

When I exclude or ignore the tendril, which I've only managed successfully twice, for a few moments, and later, for a few minutes, and listen to the stillness in sounds, look at the transparency I'm seeing things through, the focus of the tendril will still try to fasten onto some sound or sight, and upon doing that there will be a sense of a signal or jolt travelling through that thing to the dot of attention side. These signals have an "energy" flavor to them, related to the cakra/meridian energy. That's what I remember, at least.

Steph S:

I can tune into the stillness and silence and when I do there's not being and centerlessness. Try seeing if you can notice the static quality of how physical objects in reality look, like those short films where the whole background is paused and the sound is muted, but the characters are still moving around. At the same time pay attention to the "sound of silence".. that hum at your ear drum (not the Simon & Garfunkle song... although I recommend that too.. haha). This is really fun practice.

Yeah, that's how I experienced it. If by centerlessness you mean how the tendril doesn't have a special significance, nor does it assign a special significance to any sight or sound or touch, then yes, there was centerlessness.

Cheers,
Florian

RE: Empty Hands

Steph S — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:19:29 GMT

Florian Weps:

The dot of attention vs. focus of perception thing is perceived with increasing clarity. In a way, these two are "endpoints" of a connection or tendril which samples experience, looking for reassurance that everything is still there. In a recent chat discussion with Tarin, he pointed out to me how sensations send a little energy surge through this probing tendril, and how it's different from the field of experience, and from the stillness in hearing, the transparency in seeing, and so on. I experimented with tuning into this stillness/transparency in sensations, both including and ignoring the probing thing which I tentatively identify with Daniel's "attention wave" and Tarin's "stir of passions". So far I've succeeded twice, for a few moments and a few minutes.

If the attitude regarding this thing makes all the difference between insight practice and AF practice, I can certainly see how the two lead in different directions: The energetic twangs of the attention-focus-tendril are highly unwelcome when tuned into the still transparency, but when humming along in concentration it is really amazing. It doesn't like to idle, it seems.

Comments, advice about sights to see, things to try, and traps to avoid are welcome, as always.

Cheers,
Florian

This is fascinating. I've been trying to get more of a handle on the attention wave and how it directs one. I'm at a crossroads where I can tell my insight sensibilities are carrying over to my actualism practice... and realizing trying to practice insight along with actualism confuses things for me. Where do you perceive this attention wave tendril? From how you describe it, I imagine it being on either side of the inside of your head (since that's where the brain is).. and its endpoints probably where each ear is.

Could you provide more detail on what happened when you included the tendril and what happened when you ignored it? I can tune into the stillness and silence and when I do there's not being and centerlessness. Try seeing if you can notice the static quality of how physical objects in reality look, like those short films where the whole background is paused and the sound is muted, but the characters are still moving around. At the same time pay attention to the "sound of silence".. that hum at your ear drum (not the Simon & Garfunkle song... although I recommend that too.. haha). This is really fun practice.

Steph

RE: Empty Hands

Florian Weps — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:58:50 GMT

Update: recognition of not-self takes only slight effort, an inclination of the mind. A comment Vince made on the "Getting it done" Hurricane Ranch discussion really struck me: "Why does it take effort to notice emptiness" (quoted from memory).

When I do incline that way, it's so pervading, almost palpable, as to seem like a recently and abundantly added quality.

I think this impression is due to it pervading even my most private thoughts, even the inside of my skull from where I look out at the world, a bit like exposure, like hearing my voice on a recording or seeing a movie of myself.

The dot of attention vs. focus of perception thing is perceived with increasing clarity. In a way, these two are "endpoints" of a connection or tendril which samples experience, looking for reassurance that everything is still there. In a recent chat discussion with Tarin, he pointed out to me how sensations send a little energy surge through this probing tendril, and how it's different from the field of experience, and from the stillness in hearing, the transparency in seeing, and so on. I experimented with tuning into this stillness/transparency in sensations, both including and ignoring the probing thing which I tentatively identify with Daniel's "attention wave" and Tarin's "stir of passions". So far I've succeeded twice, for a few moments and a few minutes.

If the attitude regarding this thing makes all the difference between insight practice and AF practice, I can certainly see how the two lead in different directions: The energetic twangs of the attention-focus-tendril are highly unwelcome when tuned into the still transparency, but when humming along in concentration it is really amazing. It doesn't like to idle, it seems.

Comments, advice about sights to see, things to try, and traps to avoid are welcome, as always.

Cheers,
Florian

RE: Is hard jhanas necessary to obtain 3th path?

Julie V — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:35:54 GMT

Thank you very much for the responses! From both of you, I definitely got the answers I was looking for.

I have been a dry insight worker, and it is great to hear that it's possible to attain the third path with sole dry insight path. Thanks also for the different markers for the third path. I actually really like your point about the more and more understanding that here and now is an ultimate reality. I definitely feel like I got a lot more understanding from the second path than the first one. I'm now curious about how much more I can feel that way as the insight deepens; this definitely motivates me to practice well again and yeah ... to get there as soon as possible.

Also, your comment about the amount of time you practiced in daily life to get the third path is very helpful. Having practiced mostly in daily life (I only had a chance to go onto my first weeklong retreat about a month ago), it's good to know that it again is possible to do it in daily life.

With all of these being said though, I'm quite interested in the jhanas practice at the moment, and I think I will give it a try. As you said, Daniel, it probably does not hurt!

RE: Is hard jhanas necessary to obtain 3th path?

Pavel O. — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:36:21 GMT

I can't really offer anything as insightful as what Daniel wrote but I can vouch for the efficacy of the dry insight path, in that I got third path without being able to access the formless realms and never even came across nirodha samapatti. The progress that I have made and still am making does not appear to be in any way impeded by my lack of concentration ability. The only thing that I genuinely wonder about is whether the very difficult and unpleasant Dark Nights I have been through would have been any easier to travel through if I have had spent some time mastering concentration practice.

All the best.

RE: Moving into Equanimity

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:38:18 GMT

Thanks for your response Tarin!

I shall attempt to respond to your points within a flowing framework rather than one by one.

So I have been looking at 'being', or at least attempting to look back at it from objects that 'it' is interested in. Quite soon I became uninterested in this - the sensations chosen aren't special, and selectively chasing certain being-object clusters just 'exaggerates' the unsatisfactoriness of that mode of experience. That's a really word-y way of saying that duality is unsatisfactory, and not something one wants to maintain, on the whole! This is quite a useful insight - really turning the 'what' (I am doing) into a 'how' (am I doing it) - though I appreciate that there are all kinds of sensations that one can hitch up to in the move away from this. I have been looking at allowing attention to be free, and noticing the clinging quality rather than the particular sensation, since then, after a particularly nauseating experience of watching a sensation-cluster I was clinging to. So currently there is a sense of being, attention-wave on mostly (rather than off!), and playing with being free. It should at least give me some more clarity about what to see through. What can I say so far? I'm noticing the fluidity of experience and how an almost surreal collocation of scatterings of sensations make up most of that experience. At times, I can see how certain passages of experience would be nightmarish and Dark-Night-y if you were trying to cling on but just couldn't. It's easier by far from being basically in and around Equanimity. Mostly just a gentle curiosity, and actually quite a sense of breadth - it's an easier and truer place to live from. I'm not sure what the clinging of Being wants exactly - I'm not sure I want to move towards 'content' territory, as I'm looking at things from the sensation level. I don't know that the answers would be terribly profound - some way of survival, security, peace oddly enough - that latter is perhaps something that Being and Awareness can agree on at last!

At times the clinging is quiescent, which simply allows the attention wave to expand outward to the wider field. The 'me' is it seems quiescent being. Once the clinging puttered a bit and then stopped altogether. This was peaceful and quiet to another degree altogether. The weary engine of being was having a rest! It was akin to a PCE - in fact may have essentially been one while sitting, I suppose. The attention wave goes out, there is a simple free curiosity and open-ness. I'm at the point where the issue is not whether I am comfortable with this state or with the idea of living from it, or even have what I would call immediate stability problems - I am not even that keen to pursue it in any direct or full-on sense - it is that I don't really understand it anything like well enough to maintain it or set up the conditions to bring it about. Of course, after the event one can marvel at it a bit, and inevitably this will lead to a variety of feeling-type responses. That open empty peacefulness is after all quite magical, if one separates from it...

If I lose mindfulness, usually in the sometimes hectic working environment, or am lost in thought, and return, I notice a 'mood' sometimes which is heavy with belief in the 'importance/seriousness' of 'things'... and let go of it, and the open playful dimension returns. It is just letting go of a habitual delusion. If I sit at work in my lunch-hour, for 15 mins or so, I allow any formless realms or fruitions to arise, and they do so easily enough - that is I suppose the more samatha element of my practice. My main sits I work with all this other stuff in.

I'm off on a week's retreat in about 36 hours time or so, though will keep my eyes on DhO until then.

Best wishes Vajracchedika

RE: Is hard jhanas necessary to obtain 3th path?

Daniel M. Ingram — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:11:27 GMT

Great questions.

It is worth knowing that definitions and markers for Third Path vary, and we are not all quite on the same page in these regards, as well as having different emphases as to what is important for Third Path. Thus, you may have to get used to a little friendly controversy regarding what is important and essential.

I tend to emphases the following things for Third Path:

1) Have completed at least 3 full, new insight/path cycles. This is not necessarily a guarantee of third path, as counting insight cycles is problematic and sometimes inaccurate, as one can review old territory after having crossed the A&P of the next path, get a Fruition (from the path you have already attained), think that Fruition was of the new path, and believe you have finished the next path, when really it was just review from the previous one. This is more common than most think. Now it is true that people who come up in traditions that don't emphasize path cycles or maps can be anagamis but just don't know what to count, and so for them this criteria is not as useful.

2) Have a substantially increased appreciation of this being ultimate reality, the truth of the dharma being here and now, of things being empty/luminous/causal in real-time when walking around. This understanding can deepen as third path deepens, but one should have a substantial appreciation of it in ways that people in second path simply don't. Kenneth doesn't emphasize this as much as I do. More panoramic and spacious perspectives should be more readily available to the mind in times of difficulties and in general.

3) There are the jhanic criteria, of which I prefer Nirodha Samapatti as more hard evidence than the Pure Land Jhanas. Not all anagamis will be able to get Nirodha Samapatti, so this is not as good a criteria, but if you can get it, you are very likely third path.

How important is it to have hard jhana skills in order to get Third Path? Well, this is a complex topic. The texts and commentaries do make some mention of the relationship between anagamihood and concentration mastery, but there are also "dry insight workers" who don't have much in the way of jhanic skills.

I personally had been into the formless realms solidly right after stream entry when playing around, but I was on retreat and my practice was very strong on that retreat and particularly right after getting stream entry. However, when I went to back to working and daily life, my concentration skills were moderately diminished, such that the 4th jhana in some moderate strength was pretty easy to get, but formless realms and more solid concentration attainments were much more elusive and spotty. However, once I got Third Path, which I did in daily life on a few hours a day of practice having crossed the A&P of that path on a short retreat, I suddenly had much easier access to the formless realms in daily life and was soon able to get Nirodha Samapatti also in daily life. Thus, I didn't have really hard jhana before getting Third Path.

In short, while there is something about the width and openness of the formless realms, particularly the first two, that does something good to the brain and helps with Third Path, it is certainly not necessary to have them mastered before going for Third Path, though, if kept in perspective, couldn't hurt and might help, obviously.

Is that helpful?

Daniel

Is hard jhanas necessary to obtain 3th path?

Julie V — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 01:10:35 GMT

I'm a newbies here on this site, but Daniel's book and blog have been very helpful to my practice since I started a couple years ago. It's also great to read so many interesting posts here. Thank you very much, Daniel and everyone for all of these knowledges and comments! I really appreciate them.

Anyway, to get to the point, without any proof here, I suspect that I have obtained the second path 3-4 months ago. Now I'm onto the third, and I just need some advices about the 3th path. I have read on Kenneth's website that you would need to be able to access all different stratas of mind before reaching the 1st pure land jhana, which is the indication of the third path. These different stratas of mind seem to include all of the 8 jhanas (if I'm not mistaken). Because of this, I'm wondering then whether being able to master all of the 8th samatha jhanas is necessary for obtaining the 3rd path.

Just a little bit about my practice: I have been practicing in Mahasi Sayadaw tradition (based on IMS curriculum). I haven't been contratrating much on samatha practice. The only couple of times that I have tried to concentrate (using metta as my object), I always ended up hating everyone around me. That happened about 1 month of using metta as my main practice. When I decided to switch back to insight practice, my perspectives about people around me seemed to soften again. Because of all of these experiences, I think that I would post here to see what others think about hard jhanas before attempting to concentrate again. Any comments are much appreciated.

With Metta :-)

Empty Hands

Florian Weps — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:29:29 GMT

This is the continuation of a previous thread.

tarin greco:

Florian Weps:

An update is long overdue -

(...)

What's a bit of a surprise is what I call "tuning into not-self" during everyday life, which now increasingly often (several times a day) occurs on its own, not requiring my conscious intention to turn up, though I can also trigger it reliably by just looking at my hands, whether they are still or typing or chopping onions or whatever.

when the shift happens, do your hands wind up looking different?

Here's what happens:

There is what I originally (a few weeks ago) would describe as "a change in lighting", "seeing things in a different light", "less dazzling", but which, upon repeated observation, is more like just the absence of a soft-focus effect. I see every hair, crease, scar and mole, they are all familiar, but that familiarity is noticeably lacking a romantic component, since it's not "my" hand. Lots of associations just don't happen when I look at my hand, and that makes for a difference; not quite a visual difference, though, more a difference in seeing than in what is seen.

What's also interesting is the touch sensation - touching one hand with the other hand, for example. Here, the absence of soft-focus is if anything even more conspicuous. Funny how many associations go with a simple touch sensation, and most of them don't occur after the shift. I first noticed that when giving someone a backrub recently.

Tarin:

on that note, have you ever gotten the impression that what you're seeing 'out there' and the other place (in the non-visual space behind the visual field) were somehow trading places?

and have you ever gotten the sense that what you see (or otherwise experience) at any given moment is only different from anything else (which you could experience at any other given moment) because they are 'at different planes of focus'?

Trading places: hmmm. I've had dream experiences (A&P-esque) that could be described like that, but not for the last few months. I'll let you know if and when it happens.

Different planes of focus: I've been noticing what could be called planes of focus (or orders of magnitude), but haven't associated that with any sense of differentiating. Interesting, I'll see where this leads.

Tarin:

Florian Weps:

I'm not acutely aware of cycling, but the passes through the fear ñana are often very noticeable in everyday life, and present as strong and, well, fearful energy sensations in the chest area. On the subject of energy sensations: I regularly (but not always) get a "superconductor rod" energy sensation extending from the crown down to the abdomen -very solid, straight, smooth, and "bright", with "bright" in the energetic sensation sense, not visual at all.

do you notice any discernable movement along this 'rod' as you continue to cycle?

I only get this energy rod thing in meditation, if at all, and then I only begin to notice it in A&P. I do get moving energy sensations in various places associated with the traditional chakras, but they are more like whirring or fizzing, nothing like the solid sense of high conductivity. Think lightning-rod vs. placing your tongue across a 9V block battery's contacts.

Cheers,
Florian

RE: Moving into Equanimity

tarin greco — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:11:34 GMT

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

ah, good to hear.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

It has become clear over this last few days that the pursuit in any sense of any particular state is, well, not exactly an avoidance of this basic sense of dukkha, more a reflex of it - it is as it were what you do if you are not able to look back at it.

have you seen how being, its avoidance, and its reflex all seem to be the same thing? and if so.... isn't it just so funny?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

At times I have a clear awareness that this core sense of being is the source of all bifurcation, all objects of experience in terms of the aspects of cognition and perception - though that might seem to be going a bit too far. The various objects of interest are all thrown up to distract attention from the self-building going on. The last thing that the sense of self wants is to be looked at, and not moved from. It loves the tension between itself and some object. And so after quite a few years I seem to have begun a period of directed practice, which is to look back at the source and see if it will be still - the wish to be more peaceful has surfaced more the last year or so, and I can see that this will lead to that. The sense of self flares from time to time, and kind of edges me back into re-observation, but I don't mind. At times there is a level of stillness and integration which is new and simple, though I am aware that the core self is just quiescent rather than gone.

are you immediately - then and there - aware of its quiescence? if so, how are you aware of it; in what form does the quiescence appear/present?

*

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I have the experience of what is now clear to me was a PCE to look back to for that (ie the being gone) - see original post.

what is your take now on the feeling-tones as you described them? were they there in the (experience of what you are now calling a) pce? or were you fabricating, after-the-fact, their then-existence?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I wouldn't say that my feelings were 'me' during practice particularly, but these sensations and the 'intentions' to move from them - yes, these are 'me', and I think substantially we mean the same thing Tarin.

what i meant by "'i' am 'my feelings', and 'my feelings' are 'me'" is that being is both 'me' and 'my feelings'... thus, you could say, in a way, that the phenomenon of being simultaneously is and produces both 'me' and 'my feelings' (as well as my desire to move away from those feelings).

is that what you meant, too?

*

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I often found in years past that this core sense of self / dukkha was that which seemed to 'hold me back', resisting the flow of practice quite unaccountably, and so believed it was something that needed to be eliminated somehow - the only thing in the end that helped was days of pure patient acceptance. When I am still it is felt mostly in the solar plexus area at the front and somewhat before me if at all. If I am not fully focussed on it, and am in some sense fighting it, it moves to the mid-back, opposite the solar-plexus. It is here that I am most familiar with it in previous experience. Because of this past experience of self-as-resistance, and the immense difficulties it has 'caused', I can see how it is bound up with cycling and the Dark Night in particular. I had a sense of my 'real' self also in the heart and hara, where the more 'spiritual' aspects of my experience seemed to make their home, and they were in tension with the solar plexus, constantly dragged back by it. Now I feel almost friendly to this beastie, and am also more integrated, with the apparent end of the heart and hara. I am not in tension with it, as I see it is 'the source of me', and that there is nowhere else to go - but it is in tension with just about everything!

ok.. why is it in tension? what does it want?

*

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

When Tarin you ask if I have a sense of this other centre - between the hara and sexual centre - well, not particularly at the moment. They look to me though like a list of qualities that would be inevitably cultivated by serious practice - but that may just be my personality!

or perhaps just a playful willingness to have fun with a bit of sensitively directed attention.. a gentle intuiting of sorts.

i say this because several people i've been face-to-face with have reported success at doing this on their very first try.

(besides, who doesn't have a bit of a soft spot somewhere for feeling buoyant, sweet and naive?)

*

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I really appreciated your posted conversation with Daniel at Hurricane Ranch - thanks to you both. Some short shocking episodes of radio interference on the recording aside!

you're welcome.. and those mysterious recordings were mysterious.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Clearly as I've already intimated in this post that experience of the self being gone referred to in my previous post was a PCE - this makes it clear to me that the sense of self can actually be eliminated altogether, and that it is unproblematic - it went on for a few days, so no problems there.

is it equally unproblematic that all feelings - and feeling-tones can be eliminated altogether? and is it unproblematic because you've seen how genuinely worthwhile what is there, instead, is?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I was slightly disturbed by the recognition that PCEs seem to have occurred early in my life around my mid-teens, and instigated the whole spiritual path thing, as well as leading to the mutha of all Dark Nights.

a pce does seem to have functioned as an arising and passing event (as is mapped in the progress of insight) for some. for others, it doesn't have that effect, and is simply forgotten and buried under all the other, louder, memories (until it is later recalled).

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I am not sure what relationship PCEs have to the Cycles, as a sense of self seems to be requisite for cycling - perhaps the sense of self can go into abeyance almost 'accidentally' under certain circumstances, leading to a sense of the future of the path via a PCE way beyond where one might be.

that was probably what happened to me, actually...

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

This would indeed kick off The Dark Night without Any hope of EVER Getting Out if that were the case!

...and yet, i came out ok! (better than ok, in fact)

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Before realising that this recent experience was a PCE, I had thought it was just the natural end of the Path. I still see it as the end, and rather than trying to cultivate PCE directly, I am still practising as if seeing through the sense of self will lead to that. It just has to be done completely I suppose... Isn't trying to 'get to' any experience (or even non-experience, like the PCE) seriously problematic?

no, not if trying to 'get to' it actually takes you there.

it can seem paradoxical.. because its something that 'you do' and something that happens 'on its own'.. at the same time.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I became much clearer I think about what the Attention Wave is from hearing this conversation. Do I understand correctly that it is that aspect of consciousness which directs and usually limits the 'direction' of attention? Volition is a very crude add-on, but intentions are often involved with it - though if one is unpurposive one could not call it intentional either. The sense of self moving and clinging would be its 'cause'. It manifests as attending selectively. It is very much like the effect on a reflection in a pond wrought by a ripple from a point - the centre is perhaps fairly clear, but everything else is unclear, in that image...in fact is quite like the effect of one of those long-legged insects that walk on the water, zipping about here and there mucking up the reflections.

that it is the ripple sounds about right.

also, consider that it may be the reflection itself.

tarin

RE: The nature of the Fruition 'experience'

Daniel M. Ingram — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:18:12 GMT

I appreciate the difficulties in crossing into a new set of terminology and trying to translate into that. It truly is not easy and takes a lot of time.

This is relatively technical dogma from one point of view or just standard terminological definitions from another point of view, but regardless, as to NS being a Fruition: no, it isn't. It has a different setup, entrance and exit, and, as it has no qualities, it has no basis for analysis, and thus is the only attainment that is neither classified as an ultimate or relative attainment, given that there is no way to know one way or the other.

Thanks for the passage: good reading.

Daniel

Moving into Equanimity

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 07:44:36 GMT

This is a continuation of my previous thread 'Contribution to the Discussion about Emotion', and is also a reply to Tarin at the end of that thread.

So, an update. Well, as the title suggests, I seem to have moved into Equanimity. It is however somewhat different than previously, partly because it's been a bit of a gruelling journey on the way here. I am not sure if anything particularly initiated this move, except becoming more at ease with the fundamental sense of dukkha. Suddenly pretty much full-blown Formations presented themselves - quite sweet and eerie, as I was just sitting in the Park meditating during my lunch-break!, and there was a great ease with vibrations / dharmas, and with the whole breadth of the Field of Awareness. Perhaps because of recent forays into 7th and 8th dhyanas, the spaces between things, and things like attitudes and intentions were much more easily seen as objects, encouraging Formations to arise more easily. Though there was a day or so of my consciousness spreading out into the space, so to speak, rendering the whole of my subtle body alive to the fingertips, and some resting quite spontaneously in seventh, I wasn't particularly interested or concerned to pursue this. In fact, a distinguishing mark of this period of Equanimity is the lack of interest in pursuing higher states of consciousness.

It has become clear over this last few days that the pursuit in any sense of any particular state is, well, not exactly an avoidance of this basic sense of dukkha, more a reflex of it - it is as it were what you do if you are not able to look back at it. At times I have a clear awareness that this core sense of being is the source of all bifurcation, all objects of experience in terms of the aspects of cognition and perception - though that might seem to be going a bit too far. The various objects of interest are all thrown up to distract attention from the self-building going on. The last thing that the sense of self wants is to be looked at, and not moved from. It loves the tension between itself and some object. And so after quite a few years I seem to have begun a period of directed practice, which is to look back at the source and see if it will be still - the wish to be more peaceful has surfaced more the last year or so, and I can see that this will lead to that. The sense of self flares from time to time, and kind of edges me back into re-observation, but I don't mind. At times there is a level of stillness and integration which is new and simple, though I am aware that the core self is just quiescent rather than gone. I have the experience of what is now clear to me was a PCE to look back to for that (ie the being gone) - see original post. I wouldn't say that my feelings were 'me' during practice particularly, but these sensations and the 'intentions' to move from them - yes, these are 'me', and I think substantially we mean the same thing Tarin.

I often found in years past that this core sense of self / dukkha was that which seemed to 'hold me back', resisting the flow of practice quite unaccountably, and so believed it was something that needed to be eliminated somehow - the only thing in the end that helped was days of pure patient acceptance. When I am still it is felt mostly in the solar plexus area at the front and somewhat before me if at all. If I am not fully focussed on it, and am in some sense fighting it, it moves to the mid-back, opposite the solar-plexus. It is here that I am most familiar with it in previous experience. Because of this past experience of self-as-resistance, and the immense difficulties it has 'caused', I can see how it is bound up with cycling and the Dark Night in particular. I had a sense of my 'real' self also in the heart and hara, where the more 'spiritual' aspects of my experience seemed to make their home, and they were in tension with the solar plexus, constantly dragged back by it. Now I feel almost friendly to this beastie, and am also more integrated, with the apparent end of the heart and hara. I am not in tension with it, as I see it is 'the source of me', and that there is nowhere else to go - but it is in tension with just about everything! When Tarin you ask if I have a sense of this other centre - between the hara and sexual centre - well, not particularly at the moment. They look to me though like a list of qualities that would be inevitably cultivated by serious practice - but that may just be my personality!

I really appreciated your posted conversation with Daniel at Hurricane Ranch - thanks to you both. Some short shocking episodes of radio interference on the recording aside! Clearly as I've already intimated in this post that experience of the self being gone referred to in my previous post was a PCE - this makes it clear to me that the sense of self can actually be eliminated altogether, and that it is unproblematic - it went on for a few days, so no problems there. I was slightly disturbed by the recognition that PCEs seem to have occurred early in my life around my mid-teens, and instigated the whole spiritual path thing, as well as leading to the mutha of all Dark Nights. I am not sure what relationship PCEs have to the Cycles, as a sense of self seems to be requisite for cycling - perhaps the sense of self can go into abeyance almost 'accidentally' under certain circumstances, leading to a sense of the future of the path via a PCE way beyond where one might be. This would indeed kick off The Dark Night without Any hope of EVER Getting Out if that were the case! Before realising that this recent experience was a PCE, I had thought it was just the natural end of the Path. I still see it as the end, and rather than trying to cultivate PCE directly, I am still practising as if seeing through the sense of self will lead to that. It just has to be done completely I suppose... Isn't trying to 'get to' any experience (or even non-experience, like the PCE) seriously problematic?

I became much clearer I think about what the Attention Wave is from hearing this conversation. Do I understand correctly that it is that aspect of consciousness which directs and usually limits the 'direction' of attention? Volition is a very crude add-on, but intentions are often involved with it - though if one is unpurposive one could not call it intentional either. The sense of self moving and clinging would be its 'cause'. It manifests as attending selectively. It is very much like the effect on a reflection in a pond wrought by a ripple from a point - the centre is perhaps fairly clear, but everything else is unclear, in that image...in fact is quite like the effect of one of those long-legged insects that walk on the water, zipping about here and there
mucking up the reflections.

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 05:55:34 GMT

Hi Tarin

I am replying in a new thread, called 'Moving into Equanimity', as this one is becoming unwieldy!

Vajracchedika

RE: The nature of the Fruition 'experience'

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 10:46:30 GMT

Hi Daniel, and thanks for your response! I seemed to miss it unaccountably - perhaps there was a busy period on the site, and it passed off the front page of Recent Posts really quickly...

It's something of a problem, having come to your book after 20 years of practice within a different tradition ie not explicitly Noting, certainly not exclusively. I am still making major inroads into understanding my experience in the terms of your book at an intimate level. I use metaphor quite a bit - partly because at this level one is quite clear that any rational structure may or may not provide useful insights and directions, but is definitely not to be equated with the direct experience...but it is important for communication to have a common language, obviously, so I'll try and bear that more in mind.

I came across your book soon after my second experience of NS, and I think that in the light of this Fruition seemed really a lot less significant - NS itself is a Fruition is it not? and I think I was looking to that too much as I was trying to understand Fruition in everyday practice. The afterglow from NS is certainly hours if not days, and for me has been like being in a Pure Land.

However, as time has gone on, I am clearer about the everyday experience of Fruition, and easier about just letting it happen. In answer to Trent, there is a build-up of a few seconds before it, and an afterglow like a subtle mild wave of expansion lasting maybe 5-10 seconds, though in a sense it just keeps on expanding outwards and becoming more still like a ripple in a pond does... 'resetting' is a good way of describing it. I can say more clearly now that the ability to know or be aware of anything is lost at that peak - it is like the attention wave turns inside-out and cancels itself out altogether. I think prior to MCTB I would in a sense fight the Fruition moment by 'looking for Insight' at the time when one's practice was coming to a peak, so to speak, and this just confuses things. It was less frequent during a particularly tough period of Re-observation recently, in that it would arise only under more specific meditative conditions, but it is otherwise frequent. Except for the period just mentioned, I can and could repeat it in something like the way Trent suggests.

Regarding the 3 samadhis, which I said I would look up:-

I quote from Sangharakshita's lecture on Right Meditation:-

"Now we come on to three which is samadhi proper, the state or the stage of being fixed, being established in Reality, in other words the state or the stage of being Enlightened, being a Buddha. And there are of course many ways of looking at this state or this stage of samadhi. Often of course it’s described in negative terms. It’s described for instance in terms of the destruction of the asravas as they’re called. The word asra means a sort of poisonous flux, a bias, a sort of lopsidedness in our nature. And the asravas are three in number. First of all there’s the kamasrava or the bias towards the poisonous flux of the desire or the thirst for contact with material things, for their own sake, on their own level. Then secondly bhavasrava, the bias towards, the poisonous flux of conditioned existence, in other words the attachment to or desire for any mode of being, any mode of existence short of Enlightenment itself. Then thirdly avijjasrava, bias towards the poisonous flux of ignorance, in the sense of spiritual darkness and unawareness.

So in the first place, in the first instance, samadhi proper is described as the complete absence of any vestige of these three asravas, these three poisonous fluxes or biases. A state in which sense experiences, material things, mean nothing, a state in which there is no desire for any kind of conditioned existence, where one isn’t really interested in anything other than nirvana or Enlightenment itself, because one is that at that moment, and a state of complete illumination and clarity and freedom and Enlightenment, when there is no shadow of ignorance or spiritual darkness.

Now in addition to this negative description there are also various positive descriptions, though here of course we must tread rather warily and realise, understand, that we’re trying to give a hint or two about something which really goes far beyond any power of words to express. Some of the texts, some of the teachings, mention a group of three samadhis, in this higher sense of this term samadhi. Not that there are really three in the sense of three mutually exclusive states. The so-called three samadhis are more like different aspects or different dimensions of the one samadhi.

The first of these is known as the Imageless. It indicates the state of samadhi’s perfect freedom from all thoughts, from all conceptualisation. If we think for a while, if we can just imagine, even, a state in which we’re fully and clearly conscious, fully and clearly aware at the highest possible level, but there’s no discursive thought; if we think, as it were, of the mind as being like a beautiful bright blue clear sky with no cloud - not even a speck of cloud, this is what this state of imageless samadhi experience would be like. Most of the time of course the sky of the mind is full of clouds, full of grey clouds, full of even black clouds, sometimes full of storm clouds, occasionally of course full of clouds tinged with gold, but usually rather dark and grey and unpleasant. So the state of samadhi is a state of imagelessness, freedom from all clouds of thought. A state of freedom from conceptualisation.

The second samadhi, or aspect or dimension of samadhi, is known as the Directionless, also translated as the unbiased, because samadhi is a state in which there’s no particular direction in which one wants to go. There’s no particular preference. One as it were remains just poised, like a sphere resting on a completely horizontal plane, it’s just poised there, there’s no particular reason why it should roll in this direction or in that direction of its own accord, it just stays where it is. So samadhi, the Enlightened mind, is like this. It has no particular tendency or inclination in any particular direction because it has no individual or egoistic desire. It’s a rather difficult sort of state to express but if one thinks of it perhaps in terms of perfect spontaneity without any particular urge or impulse to do anything in particular then one may get somewhere near it.

Now the third samadhi or third aspect or dimension of samadhi is known as that of the Voidness - sunyata. Sunyata doesn’t mean emptiness or voidness in the literal sense, it means reality. So sunyata samadhi is the state or the stage of full and complete realisation of the ultimate nature of existence which cannot be put into words. It’s not just a glimpse as in the stage of Perfect Vision. It’s a full, a total, and a perfect realisation. Now this samadhi of sunyata, Ultimate Reality, is connected in some of the texts, in some of the sutras, by what is known as the ekalaksana-samadhi or the samadhi of one characteristic, which is also known as the samadhi of same-mindedness, or even-mindedness. This is a state or stage or experience where one sees everything as having the same characteristic. Usually of course we see things as having different characteristics. We say some things are good, some are bad, some are pleasant, some are unpleasant, some we like, some we dislike, some are near, some are far, some are past, some are present, some are future. In this way we give different characteristics to so many different things. But in this stage, in this state of samadhi, you see that everything has got the same characteristic - it’s all sunyata, it’s all ultimately real, in a sense it’s all the same in its very depths, in its ultimate depths. So inasmuch as everything is basically the same there’s no reason why you should have different attitudes towards different things. If everything is the same obviously you have the same attitude towards everything. So this is this particular state or this aspect or dimension of samadhi. So if one sees everything as same, everything as having the same characteristic, obviously one is in a state of peace and tranquillity and stability and rest."

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

tarin greco — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 07:49:40 GMT

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Hi Tarin

hi ian,

a quick reply from me this time, as i have little to say and am markedly more interested in how things have been going since you last updated us here.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

The hara is much quieter, and seems to have substantially 'died' as well - it would normally be a 'reservoir of bliss', and a kind of backdrop for any difficulties experienced and would cushion them, so to speak. It is open, steady, quiet, on the positive side of neutral, spacious.

have you ever located an area just under the hara, above the sexual centre, that has feeling-elements of both but the gravity of neither?

some words that might describe this place: light, buoyant, untethered, quietly interested, curious, naive, sweet.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

It is classic Re-observation to have one's beak firmly up against what actually is the case, as opposed to what one would like to be the case. One's false resistance is now low after previous stages, and if one is willing things can be absorbed very deeply. I wonder if re-observation is the stage of transformation. Progress is surely more than a process of dissociation or disidentification, however useful and creative that might be. Awareness in the end will do the work by itself, but it is work, and it is transformation. However difficult it has been, I trust the process of the ending of the heart, and would not (be able to) go back. The inner landscape is so different now though that I don't not see any easy way to full-blown Equanimity - it is like I'm being funnelled through the centre of the worst of what is left.

well, there is a sense in which 'what is left' is simply you. i am here thinking of a phrase which has served me well many times to consider: it goes "'i' am 'my feelings, and 'my feelings' are 'me'".. can you see a way in which this might be the case? if so, does the understanding (that these equivalences are so) help direct the worst of what is left... into being the best of what is left?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

So Tarin, when I say I am becoming 'comfortable' with this dis-ease, it is not in the sense of being willing to accommodate it indefinitely. It is in the sense of getting some measure of it, weathering the excesses of early clear awareness of it, and getting more equanimous about having it there and looking into it (in all its variability). I have an unavoidably clear experience of what it is like for it not to be there, and if it is manageable, look to see the ending of the dis-ease and a return of complete clarity. I do appreciate your concerns about a Transcendent Awareness as some kind of refuge. Since my last post here, I've had a couple of experiences of putting down spontaneously the experience cluster which is the sense of self, while walking home from work. Thy were brief and quite weak, and though interesting not really what I would want. They may have just arisen as an escape from stress!

how are you now?

tarin

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Jorge Freddy Martinez — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:32:20 GMT

Now I have noticed a pretty substantial shift in my perception, like a weight taken off my shoulders. I often now wonder how I was able to live under so much “weight”. I’m finding to have a “teflon mind” (using Nikolai’s terms here!) for a few things, and how things that used to really affect me have lost considerable grip into what is left of the ”self”. There is a sense of the ride being partially done, like what was done is done and never again to be needed to be done, and that equally whatever is left to be done will be certainly done and over with in the near future.
Now I’m taking about a month “off” in order to examine the place I’m at right now (I’ve been meaning to write a lot of my experiences and I just haven’t gotten the time, I would like to pay a lot of attention into those things that have fundamentally changed in me, and go over the stages, particularly investigate fruition. I just don’t want to have an “oopsie” and continue riding before I go ahead and do some of these things mentioned above.

Metta!

Jorge Freddy

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Jorge Freddy Martinez — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:30:19 GMT

About a week after that I found myself back in equanimity, and this time, I could differentiate almost perfectly different maturity levels of equanimity seen on Ingram’s map. Again the gut feeling of something special about to happen was present, yet to be totally honest, I felt like I was missing something, and the idea of repeating the cycle without attaining new path was not sitting well with me. I don’t know if the cycle repeated or if I “slipped back” but I lost equanimity after a short A&P event. I remember the whole “practice at this time shall be about constancy, and not heroics) so I decided to make my practice all-dry (all Vipassana). This time my noticing became a lot more detailed, and my awareness when observing the 3 characteristics was keen and precise (I found myself falling asleep during meditation, but I would continue to note: thought, thought, sensation, image, “oh crap” dream, oh, thought, thought; and would wake up and continue without interruption. It was during these days when I was meditating and as I was observing the sensation vibrate, as it started to disappear I felt like I had sort of “penetrated” its nature and I felt it diminish with ALL my awareness, as if falling down a cliff then nothing happened and almost instantly afterwards I felt this gargantuan pops!, 4 in total. I had no doubt of my experience of fruition and my attaining to 2nd path at that time.

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Jorge Freddy Martinez — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:30:06 GMT

At this time, I had been having some “migraine-like” headaches ever since the dark nite days, and even though the pain was absurdly strong, I felt ok about it (I guess strong equanimity?). One day during meditation I felt 2 small “pops” followed by another 2 more, they were barely noticeable, so I did not make a big deal about it. I don’t really remember if my headache went away right after that, or during the meditation of a few hours after that but it was certainly gone the same day. Another session later the same day I noticed myself hitting Jhanas in an uncannily strong way, and was jumping within them at will. Certainly my already strong concentration was feeling even stronger and refined, entering the 7-8 Jhana in a stable way for once. All I kept telling myself was “well, if I have reached stream entry, congrats Jorge, but we are continuing to push forward regardless”. Later that night, I said I would try to see if I can go higher than the 8th Jhana (I went ahead and remember your story about reaching the Pure Land Jhanas) I figured my concentration is so strong, why not give it a shot. I hit the PL1, (quite stable to my surprise) and as I tried to reach higher I entered a very cloudy and foggy unstable state, and then after that I had the most amazing A&P experience I could imagine (I’d be glad to expand on it if anyone cares to hear about it, it was A&P nevertheless). I noticed day after day a very small and subtle, yet profound changed in my perception of myself and the world around me afterwards, change that was very hard to notice when I found myself going thru another dark nite (this is really when my wish for further investigation and review of the cycle started to be born).

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Jorge Freddy Martinez — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:29:36 GMT

I would love to share some of the details with the wonderful Dharma Overground community.
Let's talk a bit about my practice. I started practicing meditation about 20 years ago with my parents (doing a lot of visualization, white light, chakra cleansing, etc) but my practice had been very scattered and rare, despite a very strong natural concentration ability. About 6 years ago I experienced a typical A&P phenomenon during a sitting. Of course without having a single clue as to this representing a stage of insight (probably because I was totally unaware of such practice at that time) after feeling my body vibrate strongly, getting crazy rapture, feeling overjoyed, etc., I thought I had touched God and that I had reached the highest spiritual point, and that blah blah blah....basically felt into the 10 corruptions and thought "this is it". After that, I did not feel the need to meditate anymore. Interestingly enough, I started to enter in depressive stages a few weeks after this experience. School, family, friends, girlfriends, etc., did not seem to give me any sense of fulfillment. the situation worsened year after year, to the point of actually becoming suicidal around 2 years ago. All I could think of was how unfair and miserable life and the world are, and how worthless I had become (at least I felt that way). Somehow I gathered up some strength and decided to stick around until "life" or "God" or whatever it was that created me decided to "uncreate" me. My depression continued however, until one day when I said to myself "enough! this is it! I'm done living this life! in this world of human rules and laws, of suffering and impermanent happiness. I became fascinated with a book by Chopra called "How to know God" and his definition of the perfect God (unmanifest, unchanging, etc) resonated with me, so I went ahead and decided to follow Buddhist insight practices head on. First I started doing Samatha because that's what I understood (within my ignorance at that time) to be the way to reach enlightenment (by reaching Nirodha). I was able to access the first 4 Samatha Jhanas with incredible ease (perhaps a couple of weeks after starting to practice them) and then started to be able to enter into the formless Jhanas (I would enter them quite softy but it was certain of their manifestation.

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Jorge Freddy Martinez — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:29:12 GMT

[/quote]
About 99% of people who say to me that they got a Fruition actually got the A&P or some such thing.
[/quote]

I'm certainly a member of the "Skeptics of Attainment Society" to put it humorously. I have many fellow practitioners that continue to be "in love" with the idea that A&P is the most spiritual of events and that enlightenment is a step away from it, regardless of how many times myself and many others remind them of the 10 corruptions of insight. I'm pretty glad to have read many books, and talk to enough knowledgeable people, but most importantly, to have experienced enough things in my practice to have the ability to distinguish A&P from non A&P. Of course, one shall never say never!
:-)

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Daniel M. Ingram — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:59:14 GMT

I would definitely try to repeat what you think was a Fruition for educational, recreational, insight-related, and verification purposes.

About 99% of people who say to me that they got a Fruition actually got the A&P or some such thing.

Anyway,

Enjoy,

Daniel

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Jorge Freddy Martinez — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:53:07 GMT

Dark night yogi and Daniel,

Thanks much for your input. I guess there are are a few nuances between some things I have read and heard in terms of the practice and my actual experiences that have confussed me a bit.

Daniel:

Dark Night Yogi is right: you will move on when it is time to move on, and possibly before you want to, and that is just fine.

Anyway, don't worry about it: review if you like so you will know the stages well, or move on. One way or the other, that dharma will only wait so long.

So it seems that I have no control whatsoever over the cycles, and all I can control is how I practice insight while going through the cycles. Up until now, my noticing during practice seemed confined to the particular stage of the cycle at that time (during the dhukka stages I could only notice the end of the sensations but not the beginning, nor could I reach equanimity). I know people going through all the insight stages in a single seating, which I have only been able to do shortly after attaining to 1st path (but I was not able to replicate fruition) and after reaching the stage of equanimity. Worst case scenario I could say “forget this reviewing stuff” and continue full force ahead. Being a bit of a overachiever (and hoping to maybe teach some of this stuff to others) I wanted to get gain as much knowledge on the stages as possible (which may unavoidably happen later in the future).

Thanks again guys for your time and expert opinion!

Metta
Jorge F

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Jorge Freddy Martinez — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:11:08 GMT

Trent H.:

Hiya,

Jorge Freddy Martinez:

Any type of advice would be greatly appreciated!

Congrats...though I'm not sure what kind of advice you're seeking, as you did not mention any sort of problem?

Trent

Hey Trent,

Thanks for the congrats. Basically my asking for advice was based on how to review stages without starting up the whole new cycle (at least not yet).

Metta,
Jorge F

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Daniel M. Ingram — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 02:54:42 GMT

Dark Night Yogi is right: you will move on when it is time to move on, and possibly before you want to, and that is just fine.

Assuming you are not some sort of a basket case, which you probably aren't if you have gotten second path, then do as you like, you will probably be fine.

There is no particular way to predict who will have a hard time where, but these days with all the good information and support, people coming up are having, in general, an easier time than we did back in the day, as the maps are better and the community is more conducive to real conversations about real practice. There was simply nothing like this when I was going through this stuff.

Anyway, don't worry about it: review if you like so you will know the stages well, or move on. One way or the other, that dharma will only wait so long.

Daniel

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Dark Night Yogi — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 10:12:46 GMT

Congratz!!

Well, I read in MTCTB and around these forums that you should try to review and get familiar with the stages.. I didnt really try to analyze the review phase, I was more focused on progressing as fast as I could. The review phases of 1st and 2nd path have been really good with me, like tidal waves of pleasant chi as an aftershock of the fruitons and paths. They both lasted about a week each.

I do get what you mean when you say you dowanna progress. They do feel good. As time passed for me, my psyche just felt that it was time. Take your time but there should be no reason for you to Panic. (if thats why ur doing samatha only). You'll eventually wake up one day and feel that you've had it with reviewing. It felt for me like with each new cycle of reviewing, the cycles felt thinner and thinner, and you gain more and more confidence in the way you feel to start a new path.

I've just finished (i think) 2nd path, from Aug last year, to June this year, and its been a trip. I'd be glad to tell you about how 2nd path was for me if you are interested.

Mudita!

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 09:01:59 GMT

Hi Tarin

Replying in order to your two posts...

From Tarin: just a suggestion.. have you investigated what/where the 'here' is, wherefrom the clinging (to sensations at the gut which are 'at a distance') is observed?

This hasn't been problematic, so I haven't particularly... there does not seem to be a 'where' - there are some relatively minor responses in the rest of one's organism suggesting the mode of 'being attentive'.

From Tarin: do you find any difference between the feelings clustered around the solar plexus and those lower down at around the navel or just below it (at the hara/tan tien)? if so, do those those around the solar plexus come in surges, or palpations, or sometimes form into what feels like a knot? and do those feelings lower down, at the hara/tan tien, feel more smooth and calm? does that area feel rather more like a stable core than like a knot? and, can you detect any motion down there at all?

The hara is much quieter, and seems to have substantially 'died' as well - it would normally be a 'reservoir of bliss', and a kind of backdrop for any difficulties experienced and would cushion them, so to speak. It is open, steady, quiet, on the positive side of neutral, spacious.

Regarding the solar plexus: "when it clings to a sensation to any degree the sensation becomes like an empty tin that is crushed under its own internal vacuum." This is much less the case now, these surging or crushing feelings. It is milder and relatively steadier. I've seen that the discomfort is simply a reaction of the mind/organism to awareness, in that the last thing this sense of self wants is to be seen as it is, naked! This sense of self is fundamentally inconsistent, like the ordinary heart, involving beliefs that are completely at odds with the reality of the situation. If one sifts the whole experience, nothing justifies the necessity or basis for this sense of self. So, if it seen steadily and completely, it cannot but dissolve. In my case it is also throwing off a few nightmares! The most exciting one was of being attacked by a rabid big rottweiller suddenly from behind, and waking up as I threw it off against the wall! Ordinary life seems pretty tough at the moment too.

From Tarin's post: "I have noticed the last week growing concern about what is left, if anything, beyond the six self-illuminating sense-fields, once they are completely 'revealed'." what about it has been concerning?

Well, the sense that there is less and less to stand on - it is like the supports for one's sense of self are dissolving into the sea like little icebergs, leaving one teetering on what unstable few are left... My previous rather implicit model of the meditative life was perhaps about Refinement, a kind of cleansing of the mirror of one's awareness, leaving some purified remnants of the sense of one's self. Now though the process has become one of Loss. The experience of Awareness without a sense of Self I drew attention to in my first post of this thread is in fact both, though I suppose the Refinement is actually via the Loss.

It is classic Re-observation to have one's beak firmly up against what actually is the case, as opposed to what one would like to be the case. One's false resistance is now low after previous stages, and if one is willing things can be absorbed very deeply. I wonder if re-observation is the stage of transformation. Progress is surely more than a process of dissociation or disidentification, however useful and creative that might be. Awareness in the end will do the work by itself, but it is work, and it is transformation. However difficult it has been, I trust the process of the ending of the heart, and would not (be able to) go back. The inner landscape is so different now though that I don't not see any easy way to full-blown Equanimity - it is like I'm being funnelled through the centre of the worst of what is left.

So Tarin, when I say I am becoming 'comfortable' with this dis-ease, it is not in the sense of being willing to accommodate it indefinitely. It is in the sense of getting some measure of it, weathering the excesses of early clear awareness of it, and getting more equanimous about having it there and looking into it (in all its variability). I have an unavoidably clear experience of what it is like for it not to be there, and if it is manageable, look to see the ending of the dis-ease and a return of complete clarity. I do appreciate your concerns about a Transcendent Awareness as some kind of refuge. Since my last post here, I've had a couple of experiences of putting down spontaneously the experience cluster which is the sense of self, while walking home from work. Thy were brief and quite weak, and though interesting not really what I would want. They may have just arisen as an escape from stress!

RE: Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Trent H. — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 06:23:29 GMT

Hiya,

Jorge Freddy Martinez:

Any type of advice would be greatly appreciated!

Congrats...though I'm not sure what kind of advice you're seeking, as you did not mention any sort of problem?

Trent

Attaining Fruition After Attaining to 2nd Path

Jorge Freddy Martinez — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:16:02 GMT

Hello everyone,

So I recently attained to 2nd Path and made a resolution to spend one month simply experiencing life as a 2nd pather (I've been wanting to write a lot of my experiences, not to mention wanting to get a hold of many aspects of my life that were neglected somehow during the foot race of path attainment). One of the main things I want to do is to have a very constructive Review stage where I can go and re-visit all the insight stages in order to do further study of them, specially the fruition state. When I attained to 1st path I was so pumped that I decided to skip the Review stage and plunge into cycling again, so I don't have experience reviewing stages after attainment. One of my concerns is that I'm hesitant to do Vipassana because I do not want to accidentally start up a cycle and get the "ride" going full force again. I have simply been doing Samatha meditation since path attainment. Any type of advice would be greatly appreciated!

Metta!
JF

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Jeffrey S — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 04:31:14 GMT

Tarin or trent, is this process the original poster is going thru with feeling unplesant feeling-tones part of the process for AF or enlightenment? It seems like an enlightenment thing. Do you go thru this for AF? Doesn't AF encourage you to "feel good" all the time?

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

tarin greco — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:11:55 GMT

Bruno Loff:

Tarin you have mentioned some relationship between various areas in the body and your own progress, e.g., that solving some sort of problem in the gut relates to a sense of "loosing oneself" in the world. There seems to be some relationship with the chakras, as if AF is what you get if you purify them in a certain way. What do you think?

i think it would make more sense to consider it the other way around, like this:

if the centre of being is abandoned entirely (through and through, including its empty core), then the entire structure of being (and feeling) is abandoned. if the entire structure of being is abandoned, the parts of the body which were taken as energy centres no longer have any significance as such.

does this answer your question adequately?

tarin

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

tarin greco — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:01:42 GMT

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

the heart-response is indeed an attempt to find refuge or escape from this raw, visceral discomfort of being. further, it is a blind response, for though it is given shape (and made relatively superficial) by social and interpersonal conditioning, it is, at root, entirely instinctual.. it is a part of what the passions do.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

This discomfort does seem quite fundamental to self-hood, because, though it is apparently variable in so many ways, obviously impermanent and not-self, it is a consistent indicator of clinging and 'centring in sensations'. When it is particularly active it is like a wound, and the ways in which it is trying to express or exert itself are like a flow of pus or poison.

and when it is not particularly active, it is like a scab.. just waiting to be scratched open again.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

It seems a bit dramatic to put it like that, but the image does speak for itself, rather. The awareness of it is like being trapped or imprisoned, if one was to allow a reaction to form to it - I think this is why it is so difficult to reach in a clean way - without the background we have in practice, one would perhaps inevitably formulate a dualistic response, so as to move away from this discomfort, either into some other experience, or into a response or evaluation of some unhelpful sort.

another common - though admittedly less so - response is to formulate a non-dualistic response, so as to transcend the discomfort (without moving away dualistically).

to explain:

one can say to oneself that any reaction formed to 'the raw experience of dukkha' is also impermanent and not-self, and as such, one needn't interfere. then one can allow the reactions (one's thoughts, feelings, and actions) to arise and pass on their own, just as one allows 'the raw experience of dukkha' to arise and pass on its own.

now, while this method can make sense in theory (as it operates on an internally consistent understanding of the three characteristics), when actually put into practice, the result is so limited; one is still subject to momentary afflictions (such as fear or irritation or insecurity) because one is still dwelling in the illusion that the cause of these afflictions (which gives rise to them) has an actual existence. so long as this is the case, it makes no difference whether or not one identifies with the cause (which is the feeling of being/Being).. so long as this cause exists, the effects (the afflictions) will arise.

further, i have observed that there are a good number of people who, having practised this (or other, similar) method(s) and reported these (or other, similar) results, have gone on to compound their ignorance of the aforementioned illusion (of being/Being) by believing that they are a transcendent awareness which cannot be touched by these afflictions, and who, therefore, do not care that these afflictions continue to arise.

if you want the discomfort (and all its unhealthy consequences) to truly end, be wary of doing this.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

So meditation for some time has had this 'being dragged into the torture chamber from the prison-cell' quality to it. There is nowhere else to go, which is in a sense the worst of it, as the sensations themselves are on the whole not too bad. It is in a sense a static experience - the work is in not going away from it or trying to make something else out of it. The death of the heart-area has meant that I can see this fundamental unease (much more) cleanly and clearly - oh joy!

joy indeed, as seeing the fundamental unease (more) cleanly and clearly puts you in a (better) position to bring it to an end.. provided you care enough to keep going until that's done.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

My working model is that this is fundamental suffering and its activities are the asavas, as 'outflows' seems the right term, and this is a common translation of 'asavas'. So I believe we have the blindness and the jewel of refraction, re-cast as wound and 'flow of poison'.

my advice, in case you would like it, would be to notice, again and again, how the 'flow of poison' colours your experience. contrast this colouration with what your experience is like when the poison isn't flowing.. or contrast the different flavours of poison, the different ways in which it flows, from each other.

also, notice, again and again, what things the flow of poison activates in response to. notice the subtle details of cause and effect in action here. abandon the causes that lead to poison; favour the causes that lead to its absence.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I have been looking at the actual experience and trying to see it clearly. The centre of it not easy - metaphorically it is like blinded craving bound in a sheet, at times trying to get out - in some way it seems to do with the link between awareness, body and mind. It in fact seems to be the way in which mind distorts the relationship between awareness and everything - though I might be being premature. It is consistently wrenching and pulling at experience to some extent or another.

have you read daniel ingram's descriptions of what he calls 'the attention wave'? you may find his first two posts (the original post and his first reply) in the af and insight: pce mode and cycling mode thread to be of interest.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

It is broadening and easing on the whole with each sit - I really cannot just swallow this one whole, and have to let it unfold at walking pace, so to speak. It has been quite a task just to be comfortable with it - now that I more or less am, I am not sure if there is anything I can do in terms of seeing through it in some way - or whether it is even susceptible to that... It seems like an opportunity of sorts - but for what exactly?

in case you are thinking of this phenomenon in terms of clinging or blind reaction, consider that if the wrenching and pulling and distorting of experience is there (such that feelings of anxiety or discomfort can even arise in the first place), this means that the clinging/reacting is already happening, and as such, that no amount of 'not identifying with it' is going to fundamentally change what is already taking place.

if that makes sense to you, consider asking yourself these questions:

am i willing to get comfortable enough with the discomfort that i am able to see/feel it clearly, in such detail (and with such willingness) that the illusion which gives rise to it is penetrated sufficiently and my experience becomes wondrously sensate (and pristinely unaffected)?

am i willing to actually do this, rather than only become comfortable enough to dissociatively surrender my ability to do the very best thing i can do for this very body living this very life... which is to bring it (this body) to a state in which it can always live peacefully in the most down-to-earth and clearly manifest way?

tarin

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

tarin greco — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:15:17 GMT

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Thanks Tarin for taking the trouble to reply.

Since I last posted, I've been on solitary retreat for a week (in early June), and quite a bit has happened which proves relevant to this discussion.

thank you likewise; it has been a delightful exchange and i am glad to continue it.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

One thing that is clear is that the heart-area really is dead and gone. Whole aspects of wanting or caring are just not there. It is also clear that this does not seem to affect my daily functioning at all. I have had some fairly tough things to deal with, such as someone close to me having a nervous breakdown requiring hospitalisation, and seem to have managed situations well enough. I seem to be much more easily distracted by thoughts when sitting - the heart area is empty - the gut is really where I seem to be clinging, if anything is apparent. However I seem to notice clinging to sensations there as 'at a distance', and I lose interest easily.

just a suggestion.. have you investigated what/where the 'here' is, wherefrom the clinging (to sensations at the gut which are 'at a distance') is observed?

if so, what/where is it?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I suspect that the attachment in the gut has to go next. In fact it is a good clue to a rather mucky sense of Being that seems to predominate, which occasionally clusters around sensations in the solar plexus or below that - but actually not very much, and not that uncomfortably.

do you find any difference between the feelings clustered around the solar plexus and those lower down at around the navel or just below it (at the hara/tan tien)?

if so, do those those around the solar plexus come in surges, or palpations, or sometimes form into what feels like a knot? and do those feelings lower down, at the hara/tan tien, feel more smooth and calm? does that area feel rather more like a stable core than like a knot? and, can you detect any motion down there at all?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

With regard to your question - "what do you suppose the 'feeling-tone' is like when it reaches complete and total cleanliness and clarity? what do you suppose the 'feeling-tone' is like when there is not even a trace of anything which can be even in the slightest way distinguished from the nature of awareness itself?" - what can I say? This state I am in is residually unpleasant, unpleasant 'at a distance', but oddly enough seems closer to pure awareness than what went before. To generalise from this 'progression', if it is that, I suspect that any sorts of feeling-tones, however refined or subtle, pertain to the organism, and are something secondary to awareness - as they seem to have substantially gone in my case with the death of the heart-area.

i would say that feeling-tones pertain to a particular faculty of the organism (the affective faculty, which produces the intuited feeling of being/Being) rather than (the entirety of) the organism itself.

i would also say that awareness pertains to the organism; no organism, no awareness.

(of course, what exists regardless of whether or not the organism or awareness exists still exists.)

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Perhaps they are to do with the fluid sense of self that arises following stream-entry, which is why they seem an 'advance' at the time. I suspect there is more to do before I can be clearer. I have noticed the last week growing concern about what is left, if anything, beyond the six self-illuminating sense-fields, once they are completely 'revealed'.

what about it has been concerning?

tarin

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 08:04:02 GMT

Further reflections about the 'blindness and the jewel' metaphor from Tarin's post...

I seem to have moved on into Re-observation since the last post, and indeed posting helped me clarify and move on, I think. Without the active heart-area, I could see I was in a sense at the mercy of this raw experience of dukkha which seems on the whole to focus around the solar plexus or just below. The heart-response if it was around would be in a sense a refuge or escape from it, and perhaps in that sense would be sentimental or indulgent. This discomfort does seem quite fundamental to self-hood, because, though it is apparently variable in so many ways, obviously impermanent and not-self, it is a consistent indicator of clinging and 'centring in sensations'. When it is particularly active it is like a wound, and the ways in which it is trying to express or exert itself are like a flow of pus or poison. It seems a bit dramatic to put it like that, but the image does speak for itself, rather. The awareness of it is like being trapped or imprisoned, if one was to allow a reaction to form to it - I think this is why it is so difficult to reach in a clean way - without the background we have in practice, one would perhaps inevitably formulate a dualistic response, so as to move away from this discomfort, either into some other experience, or into a response or evaluation of some unhelpful sort. So meditation for some time has had this 'being dragged into the torture chamber from the prison-cell' quality to it. There is nowhere else to go, which is in a sense the worst of it, as the sensations themselves are on the whole not too bad. It is in a sense a static experience - the work is in not going away from it or trying to make something else out of it. The death of the heart-area has meant that I can see this fundamental unease (much more) cleanly and clearly - oh joy!

My working model is that this is fundamental suffering and its activities are the asavas, as 'outflows' seems the right term, and this is a common translation of 'asavas'. So I believe we have the blindness and the jewel of refraction, re-cast as wound and 'flow of poison'. I have been looking at the actual experience and trying to see it clearly. The centre of it not easy - metaphorically it is like blinded craving bound in a sheet, at times trying to get out - in some way it seems to do with the link between awareness, body and mind. It in fact seems to be the way in which mind distorts the relationship between awareness and everything - though I might be being premature. It is consistently wrenching and pulling at experience to some extent or another. It is broadening and easing on the whole with each sit - I really cannot just swallow this one whole, and have to let it unfold at walking pace, so to speak. It has been quite a task just to be comfortable with it - now that I more or less am, I am not sure if there is anything I can do in terms of seeing through it in some way - or whether it is even susceptible to that... It seems like an opportunity of sorts - but for what exactly?

RE: Interesting practice notes

Nikolai S Halay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:02:41 GMT

Jeffrey S:

Hello.

Also, any advice on how to penetrate the 8th Jhana? I figure the important thing to note would be the arising and passing away of 'perception', right? There is also a certain "I" which disappears in the 8th jhana and in it's afterglow that takes some time to recover. I'm making a prediction here that once that is penetrated then I will effortlessly move back to a state without pre-8th jhana sense of "I" very effortlessly and be able to reside there.

It makes me wonder what state the arhat resides at? Does it lack perception the way 8th jhana does?

Those are my thoughts. Questions and criticism welcome

In my experience of the 8th jhana, it is not really a jhana where you can start analysing and pulling it apart. It gets a bit crazy with the not registering and registering of perception blipping back and forth rapidly. Usually I come out of it if I start trying to "penetrate" it as you say. You are either in it or out of it. And the arhat state is one where all the phenomena physical and mental, which includes the formation of the sense of self, is seen as equal, no better than, no higher status for one sensation over another. The whole playing field is leveled. No king of the hill. No stickiness or clinging element there. The mind is a teflon mind. No phenomena has anywhere to land as it arises and passes away. Habitual tendencies still arise but do not stick. You do not "eradicate" the sense of self. It is seen for what it truly is and it's illusory higher status is taken away and it still arises and passes away like any other phenomena.

Hope this helps.

Nick

RE: Interesting practice notes

Nikolai S Halay — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:56:11 GMT

Nice pracitce notes!!

For a lot of middle paths practice notes one can go to Kenneth Folk's site and see quite a few. Mine included.

www.kennethfolk.com

Nick

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Bruno Loff — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:36:06 GMT

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:07:55 GMT

Thanks Tarin for taking the trouble to reply.

Since I last posted, I've been on solitary retreat for a week (in early June), and quite a bit has happened which proves relevant to this discussion.

Four things I suppose I can say about that retreat. I spent quite a few days mostly absorbed in the formless realms, particularly the seventh and eighth, as they are relatively new to me as stable attainments. As has been my experience with other dhyanas, one has some solid quite deep samatha-type sits as one's mind quite consciously experiences the relief of a new deeper kind of peacefulness, and it is also like meeting a long-lost old friend in some ways. I have personally re-titled the eighth the 'What the effing hell was that?' jhana. It seemed transparent how it is on the way to NS.

During the last few days, I could see more clearly than ever before the fluidity of experience, by means of the 3 marks, and how things are 'not really there', are resistless, are a gateway to something I describe to myself as Infinite Life - a metaphor for the sense of perfection that flowed out of any aspect of experience that I opened to. This was part of an A&P phase, which suggested to me that the experience I refer to in the first post was a path, as I suspected.

However the most relevant experience to this thread was something that occurred on day 3 or so. Now and again, always on retreat so far, I have these sits which pop up out of the flow of practice, about the heart(-area) and its place in compassion, the spiritual life, or what have you. In this case, my sense was that my heart-area was finally exhausted with the emotional activity of life - depleted, done for, unwilling to go on. Once I saw this, it was clear that I just had to let it die. So it did - it wasn't exactly a relief (that is to underplay it). The previous experience in this series late last year was of the fact that life being what it was, the heart has to break - it will be shattered, and there is no help for it. So it did that too, then. On this retreat, it had come to the end of the road. It wasn't a difficult experience, and there was such a rightness to it, that it didn't take any 'doing' - both the heart-area and 'me' were in complete agreement. After that, pretty quickly I carried on with the flow of practice as before.

I suppose I expected to be left with some cleaner or clearer sensitivity of some sort, and I had every confidence that it would be some kind of clarification or enhancement of previous experience. However it has proved to be rather uncomfortable and awkward, both as an experience and also as I try to make sense of its implications. It has taken a couple of months to even get a handle on it.

One thing that is clear is that the heart-area really is dead and gone. Whole aspects of wanting or caring are just not there. It is also clear that this does not seem to affect my daily functioning at all. I have had some fairly tough things to deal with, such as someone close to me having a nervous breakdown requiring hospitalisation, and seem to have managed situations well enough. I seem to be much more easily distracted by thoughts when sitting - the heart area is empty - the gut is really where I seem to be clinging, if anything is apparent. However I seem to notice clinging to sensations there as 'at a distance', and I lose interest easily. I also have little grip on the cycles and actually struggle to analyse my experience in terms of dharmas. Usually I sit at work during lunch-break for 10-20 mins, and often that passes through to Equanimity and Fruition, ditto when I meditate during a walk in the country, but in a certain rather disconcerting way I have ceased to care what is happening. Frequently it all seems to be happening to someone else to whom I just seem to have privileged internal access, so to speak. At the same time, I am not in any sense falling back from practice. I have as much faith and confidence as before - I just seem to be lost and not minding! It is vaguely apparent that I am in some kind of Dark Night, with Disgust and Desire for Deliverance beginning to sound more clearly the last week or so, but there are lots of sub-cycles.

I suspect that the attachment in the gut has to go next. In fact it is a good clue to a rather mucky sense of Being that seems to predominate, which occasionally clusters around sensations in the solar plexus or below that - but actually not very much, and not that uncomfortably. I think that the difference between the eighth jhana and NS quite possibly IS this 'mucky sense of Being'. It is a kind of false tension; when it clings to a sensation to any degree the sensation becomes like an empty tin that is crushed under its own internal vacuum. Broad awareness is quite easy, particular interest quite hard because I have to force the interest. I have an inkling that I am somehow now 'static' and am being 'forced' to just open to experience as it is, and not in a profound way. Because of this it seems like something of a desert - I would have seen this as some kind of living nightmare a few years ago. So Tarin, I seem to have got exactly what I didn't want, and I suspect it will get 'worse' before it gets 'better'!

With regard to your question - "what do you suppose the 'feeling-tone' is like when it reaches complete and total cleanliness and clarity? what do you suppose the 'feeling-tone' is like when there is not even a trace of anything which can be even in the slightest way distinguished from the nature of awareness itself?" - what can I say? This state I am in is residually unpleasant, unpleasant 'at a distance', but oddly enough seems closer to pure awareness than what went before. To generalise from this 'progression', if it is that, I suspect that any sorts of feeling-tones, however refined or subtle, pertain to the organism, and are something secondary to awareness - as they seem to have substantially gone in my case with the death of the heart-area. Perhaps they are to do with the fluid sense of self that arises following stream-entry, which is why they seem an 'advance' at the time. I suspect there is more to do before I can be clearer. I have noticed the last week growing concern about what is left, if anything, beyond the six self-illuminating sense-fields, once they are completely 'revealed'.

Am still reflecting on what you write about the jewel and the blindness, so no response as yet - very interesting!

Interesting practice notes

Jeffrey S — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:23:11 GMT

Hello.
The middle paths seem pretty undocumented, and I remember that it was all I really wanted to hear about for quite some time after stream-entry, so I thought I would add some notes for myself and for others to reference and compare themselves with.

Recently I've been really seeing the three characteristics in the 7th jhana, Nothingness. I seem to have had very concrete and specific understandings with new clarity that I never had before, which are as follows:

I've reached remarkable clarity concerning what that "I" actually is, what it's habits are, and so on. I used to think that the "I" did all sorts of things that, now once I really look at it, it doesn't actually do. In fact, I uncovered some fear about being the "I" too much. I find that the "I" is actually not such a bad guy. Sure, he's the source of delusion, but he only wants what's best, and you can't kill him on the spot anyways, so you might as well enjoy him. In fact, that's the point. You can't get rid of him, but listening to him and comparing him to luminous space in order to drive home the point that what he is or is doing is fake can be enjoyed. It's like you're unconsciously identified with the "I" (I say unconsciously, because you can only ever see what he is doing with self-reflection, which is why noting practice is so powerful. It can seem like you are aware of "I" as it is happening once your noting skill get good) yet you also are also somehow identified with this open space that you can compare the mental constructs to, and as long as you favor that open space or luminosity you can feel a sense of pleasure. Yes, the "I" sucks, but when you are with the open space then there's something pleasing about it. And like I said, "I" isn't such a bad guy. Once you hit stream entry he's on a path to self destruction anyway.

Another effect of really penetrating the 7th jhana is that I find it really easy not to have a self image as I walk around and deal with people. The regular mental habit is to point at mental impressions or constructs and say: "This is where I am, this is what's happening, this is how I work, etc, etc...". It's like a mental artifact that would float through space and I would map my progress on it. Now it's easy to feel the sense of I (through rapid self-reflection or noting) without having this "other" construct to work through, or I will enjoy the mental constructs as they come before my mind's eye because I no longer doubt their unrealness. They dissolve quickly.

Another effect is that I can see that the "I" really believes what it believes. I can think conceptually that "all is one", but at the same time I'm granted the clarity to look back and say "Oh yeah, 'I' don't really believe that or act on that. 'I'm acting on this other belief." This makes it clear that I need to change my basic understanding, or what I thought was always true and never doubted, instead of adding new ideas and concepts on top of what I already have. I differentiate this from a kind of "harsh wisdom" which is wisdom that is forced upon yourself, such as demanding of yourself that you be a "good person" when you really hate someone's guts. Both of these ideas need to be seen through, but it's seeing through the basic understanding that causes fundamental changes.
(Consequently, for those interested, I'm writing out of a mix of both concepts and what "I" really believes. This is because neither is sufficient on it's own to get my points across. The interplay between them is quite interesting.)

I can't be sure if these insights are tied to being in the middle paths or if they have to do with penetrating the 7th jhana only. It feels like anything below 7th jhana is understood to be false by default and will dissolve away without any effort. This seems like a pretty high attainment and especially required for traveling further down the path. Is it possible that one needs to penetrate the jhanas for arhatship? Can anyone past this stage comment on which part of their meditation career they started penetrating the jhanas, so maybe we can figure out if this is one of those things which mediators tend to do automatically without outside influence at certain parts of the path, which is what seems to be happening to me?

Also, any advice on how to penetrate the 8th Jhana? I figure the important thing to note would be the arising and passing away of 'perception', right? There is also a certain "I" which disappears in the 8th jhana and in it's afterglow that takes some time to recover. I'm making a prediction here that once that is penetrated then I will effortlessly move back to a state without pre-8th jhana sense of "I" very effortlessly and be able to reside there.

It makes me wonder what state the arhat resides at? Does it lack perception the way 8th jhana does?

Those are my thoughts. Questions and criticism welcome

RE: The nature of the Fruition 'experience'

Daniel M. Ingram — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 04:03:09 GMT

Dear VIV,

I have been working a whole lot lately and so got a little behind on my DhO reading.

Sorry I am just getting to this now.

A few things:

Fruitions are a complete and utter gap without anything going on at all and not even that. Reality, every single bit of it, including space, awareness, "primordial" anything, consciousness, perception, perspective, time, timelessness, unity, nothingness, somethingness and anything else: all completely and utterly gone, such that nothing is there to mark the gap except the entrance and exit and the fact of a complete resetting of the mind and an utterly atemporal, aspacial gap. Do not settle for any muted definition or wiggle on this one: it won't help.

NS is quite an attainment. It does really change things and is important. It is only accomplished by anagamis and arahats who have access to the formless realms. As stated, the setup is specific to it, sort of like the easter-egg functionality in a game like Mario Brothers, in which, say, one jumps on the golden mushroom on level 5 three times, the green egg appears, and you use this to open the secret magic crystal once you cross the bridge. In exactly that way, an anagami or an arahat sets up the entrance by rising to 8th, coming out and resolving and then, if one is good or lucky, it happening. It is complete in the way Fruitions are, but its entrance and exit are different, and the afterglow is a whole different world of afterglow from anything else. Criteria again should be strictly applied: not anagami or arahat, not it, not set up in the proper way, not it, anything happening during it, not it, entrance and exit not in the specific order or mode of NS, not it, afterglow not really profound and long-lasting, not it.

The A&P in all its variants and complexities is a pernicious mimic and this should be watched for with care.

As to which path, I don't see anything that specifically talks about the information or criteria that apply to that sort of thing, such as progression of the paths, insight cycles, progression of various walking-around perspectives, ability to perceive certain aspects of things.

Helpful?

Daniel

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

tarin greco — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:18:44 GMT

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

tarin greco:

yet there is no feeling-tone whatsoever in the most profound (and priceless) mode of experience i have known, and so the assertion that 'there are feeling-tones in our most profound experiences' is incorrect (and, to that extent, it is problematic).

This way of communicating seems to me to be rather didactic and irritating.

why do you find a statement i made which pertinently points out an inaccuracy in a statement you made ('there are feeling-tones in our most profound experiences') didactic and irritating?

and would you call this irritation that you experienced an emotion, or a feeling-tone, or.. ? do you find that there is a feeling-tone which makes things seem irritating?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Universalising from the experience of one person is necessary on occasion (Namo Buddhaya!), but it is a risky process, and it is rarely useful to assume absolute knowledge in the actual process of communication. It usually loses you your audience, except under special circumstances.

pardon? it is precisely because i disagreed with the universalising comment you made ('there are feeling-tones in our most profound experiences') that i contradicted it (with a statement which, by the way, read, 'there is no feeling-tone whatsoever in the most profound (and priceless) mode of experience i have known...)'.

yet, i do not find your way of communicating irritating in the slightest (being entirely absent of the conditions which give rise to either emotion or feeling-tone, there is nothing which urges me to), so you have no risk of losing your audience in me for this reason (though i would prefer the term 'interlocutor').

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

if i am understanding you correctly, i would call the 'feeling-tones' you describe 'passions' and the 'ordinary emotions' simply 'emotions'.

yet, what you have communicated (what you have actually written) is that 'there are energies which pertain to awareness itself which manifest as tones or perfumes within the field as one acts or comes into relationship.'

what could be more extreme and powerfully biased than feelings which 'pertain to awareness itself' .. or which 'manifest as tones' of reality itself .. or which are (as you have also written earlier) 'like a perfume that pervades experience'?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

It is so opposite that it is difficult to appreciate where you are coming from.

i understand why you think experiencing energies which pertain to awareness and feeling-tones which perfume and pervade experience is opposite to ordinary ol' feelings.. can you understand why i am saying that what i am talking about - which is those energies'/tones'/feelings' entire absence - is opposite to both the conditions that you contrast?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I have a degree in English Literature and Philosophy, and lesser qualifications in Ancient Greek and Latin; and so, while I can be aware of the etymology of words, I do know that a word's intended or even original meaning tends to get lost within its broader connotation. The connotation can become so explicit that it becomes the meaning, as it were.

i understand how this happens.. so let's try again, and perhaps with a broader context.

what i mean by 'passions' are subtle feelings, which, in action, daniel ingram calls, understandably, 'the attention wave' (see the thread entitled 'AF and Insight: PCE Mode and Cycling Mode').. and which colour one's entire mode of experience in very basic ways.. and which, when one's experience of them has become very rarified, manifest in very much the ways you describe (i.e. '[t]he different subtle feeling-tones that arise from the True Nature however are like a perfume that pervades experience, or the different facets of a jewel.').

these passions are near the source of suffering (which is the blindness that maintains them).. they lay far deeper than the sense of personal identity (which forms them into emotions). past this identity, they are perpetuated like this:

the source (the blindness) of suffering maintains its existence by acting. in acting, it necessarily goes through a prism of sorts, and in going through this prism (which is also itself), it gets refracts into different tones.. and views the world through them (through itself as these tones).

it is accurate to say that these tones are different facets of a jewel.. but it is inaccurate to say that this jewel is the end of affliction. rather, this jewel is suffering's very core.. and it is what gives rise to afflictive feelings of any sort and at any level.

seeing this jewel for what it truly is is a big step toward seeing the blindness in action, and in ending the blindness, and thus in ending the stress the blindness causes (which is no less than the entirety of affective affliction, both active and latent).

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

The particular point at issue is whether the whole sensitive faculty is eliminated at Enlightenment, not putting too fine a point on it. You are telling me that it is. I beg to differ, and at least question this - and, let me hasten to add, not from the viewpoint of established Enlightenment.

what i am actually telling you is that by eliminating the whole affective faculty, affliction and all possibility of it is eliminated entirely. furthermore, in the absence of this faculty (latent affliction and all), sensitivity abounds, and far more than it ever did before. it is a sensitivity which is actual - which is sensate - and of which the source is clear (the experience of this world as it actually is as the human being that one actually is).

with this sensitivity, i can comprehend, for example, the moods of others more clearly than i ever could before, for now it is clear to me how clearly others wear their moods on their faces, in their voices, and in their actions... my theory of mind is not lacking. i am privy to how others look, what they say, and how they behave in a way that is uncoloured by any feelings or feeling-tones whatsoever, and find this sufficient for knowing at least as much as i did before (my affective faculty vanished), and often, it seems, even more.

i am glad to hear you are not questioning this from the viewpoint of established Enlightenment, as i would prefer to engage with you and communicate about our respective experiences as directly is possible.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

So far, I do believe that the emotional structure around the constructed self actually dies completely, and is even felt as a death - but then the sensitivity that is coerced and even corrupted in this ordinary emotionality is liberated, and what essentially will be left is a kind of love, between the True Nature and the phenomena of the Field of Awareness. The True Nature and the phenomena of the Field are not essentially different in nature or even in 'position' at this point - I am just (mis-)using language. The difference is such though that the sensitivity feels like something other than emotion altogether. Perhaps your descriptions of a sense of wonder, of the sensed world being perfect, etc. are in fact a description of this. These feeling-tones will be 'found' 'in' the very phenomena of the field of awareness, because, well, where else is left? The difference is in the ending of the structure in the Field that distorts sensitivity and leads to Craving, not in the sensitivity itself.

my claim is that sensitivity is distorted by these feeling-tones which you are locating 'in' the phenomena (of which you are sensitive) itself. here, it may be relevant to once again ask you the following key questions (which you have neglected to address in your reply):

as you have said both:

'However the feeling-tone is cleaner and clearer as time passes, and more positive and continuous if more subtle.'

and:

'The more concentrated I am, and the closer to my True Nature possibly, the less definable this feeling tone is, the less distinguishable from the nature of awareness itself.'

...then let me again ask you this:

what do you suppose the 'feeling-tone' is like when it reaches complete and total cleanliness and clarity? what do you suppose the 'feeling-tone' is like when there is not even a trace of anything which can be even in the slightest way distinguished from the nature of awareness itself?

tarin

RE: The nature of the Fruition 'experience'

Trent H. — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:36:34 GMT

Hi,

Well, it is hard for me to follow your passage because you use a lot of terms that I am simply unfamiliar with, and which make not a lick of sense to me when considering the normal meaning of words. For example: "Infinite Life."

However, it sounds likely that you are experiencing fruition, and the "opaque mist" is likely the "after-glow" of the experience. To clarify, does this "mist" begin to build up in the visual field for 1-2 seconds, followed by a peak -- like if the "mist" completely filled all of your experience (this is where the blink-out occurs, but with low concentration it won't be noticed)-- and then gradually dissipates? If so: how long on average does the mist take to dissipate?

Can you trigger this experience anytime you want? If that sounds foreign already, try this: shut your eyes, intend your attention inwardly (as if to go as deep as possible), "flex" the back of your head / base of your neck (the brain stem area), and while fluttering your eyes upward. Try doing all of that simultaneously-- drilling deep with the attention-intention/fluttering/flexing for a few seconds each attempt-- and see what happens. If it works and a fruition occurs, relax after the peak or you'll probably get a headache from the fluttering/flexing. The reason for toying with this is because I don't think it's is possible to do unless you're an anagami or arhat, so the ability to do this may help you clarify that issue.

Best,
Trent

RE: The nature of the Fruition 'experience'

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:48:54 GMT

So, more of a proper response to you, Trent.

The sense of what I call True Nature arises up to and then fades after the 'blips', more or less. One's awareness becomes increasingly clear, then there is the short little 'jump', almost like a shock of energy but more like a clarity/knowing experience, often with a slight physical jolt, and then there is a mild pleasant floating phase afterwards. The image of the sense of an opaque perfectly smooth mist is an attempt by me to communicate the sense of where this experience leads as you can feel quite a bit of your ordinary mind falling away - the mind becomes more 'white'. The actual blip is like a step change within a smooth curve. Perhaps it is an unknowing experience - just very brief.

Please be aware how metaphorical my language has to be. I have so much experience of the jhanas, over 25 years, and other meditative phenomena, that I'm purty sure that it is not a blip of jhana - such a thing wouldn't really be noteworthy. This experience I am trying to understand is repeatable, and seems to relate to phases of Equanimity mostly. I experience it most days at least once nearly always during sitting. On this retreat it occurred a few dozen times over 4-5 days. It hasn't occurred distinctly the last 5 days as the A&P is still rattling around, I guess.

NS is pretty unmistakeable. Hard 8th jhana is obviously on the way there, as verbalisation, cognition and perception are all muted, and it thus has a reminiscent feel. NS is so powerful partly because it is voluntarily undergoing your own death-experience - I can't see how there can be anything quite like it.

Regarding my horribly condensed and convoluted passage about the A&P - please forgive me! - I was trying to say that I felt I was experiencing the proper A&P of the next Path, instead of a brief passing experience relating to my current Path, because that usual momentary experience of accessing the fluidity of experience through the 3 characteristics in a deeper way became indefinite, samadhi-like, and was rather like the more open cleaner awareness that fruitions seem to be centred in. I cannot say that it was exactly like the fruition itself, as that phenomenon is too brief for me to make anything of. What I can say is that I seemed to be seeing into the empty heart of any phenomena in the field, that there was only this clean awareness that was not centred 'here', and that this emptiness was Infinite Life. Initially the energy of this Infinite Life seemed to arise from the hara, not from the heart-area, but after a sit or two it seemed more clearly to come out of the heart of phenomena. In a way this awareness was just like that in the 'opaque perfectly smooth bright mist' metaphor, in its being so even-handed and without knots, obstructions or centres. What I 'saw' in the field of awareness were phenomena tending to this brilliant openness, and in a fundamental way they were not really there. This is what I was getting a 'good look at', and this is why I saw this new A&P as having the same 'content' (?no-content?) as previous fruitions - more accurately, of the time around fruitions.

The 3 samadhis - they are taught in my tradition, but I will have to hunt for the source. Each of the 3 characteristics has a samadhi that it is an entrance to. I have a particular love of the teaching, because I bumped into the samadhi of Wishlessness in a fairly dramatic way about 20 years ago once on retreat. I am interested in how samadhi fits in to the Cycle of Insight - because over the years I've had a number of particularly significant experiences of this sort.

RE: The nature of the Fruition 'experience'

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 05:43:34 GMT

Hi Trent

Thanks for your very full response, which will take me some time to get to properly...

Here is a link to my previous report about NS amongst other things.

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/432110?_19_threadView=flat

I do have a lot of jhana experience 6th and below, and an increasing amount of 7th and 8th jhana under my belt - I had a couple of solid 8th jhana sits on this retreat, and although one can be left wondering what the hell that was in some ways, it is nothing like NS.

The 3 Samadhis - I'll have to look out a resource for that - they are basically accessed through the 3 marks, and are the Samadhis of Emptiness, of WIshlessness, and of Signlessness.

RE: The nature of the Fruition 'experience'

Nikolai S Halay — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:27:19 GMT

Trent H.:

By the way, Nirodha Samapatti (NS) is also a complete break in awareness, and the entire process is quite noticeable since one must have pretty darn good concentration to access it in the first place. With that said...are you sure you attained to it? NS is an incredible attainment in terms of what comes after (it seems to change one in some fundamental way), for reasons no one can seem to figure out nor clearly define. It is worth being honest with oneself just in case, and double-or-triple-checking to ensure you've really done it.

Hi trent,

I was wondering if you could elaborate on your experience of nirodha sampatti as to what you found "quite noticeable" and how maybe it changes you. I ask because I think I am running into it. I sometimes use Kenneth's "imagine shining a light inwards to the third eye area" trick. I passed through several months of "third eye" headaches and pressure during 2nd path but these days I feel the spot an inch or so behind the eyes (pineal gland?) with great clarity and when I focus on it, the mind sinks into a visually darker absorbtion. Things seem to drop away. And if I keep my concentration there for enough time , I will have a fruition which brings much more of a full body bliss wave than a normal fruition. The mind will then "unsink" from this "darkness". And at times "sink" back down into it. I can't seem to be able to get more than a fraction of a second where the senses shut down. Can you talk about your experience with it?

Nick

RE: The nature of the Fruition 'experience'

Trent H. — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:31:33 GMT

Hi there, I decided to comment although this is "specifically direct at Daniel." Just a few things worth considering.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

An important concern for me was that Fruition did not seem to occur in the way offered in MCTB, in the section 'Was that Emptiness?'. I came across the book very soon after an experience of Nirodha Samapatti, which stood for me as as it were the ultimate unknowing experience, with a distinct and unmistakable loss of any sort of awareness.

My experience of Fruition was of a kind of peak experience which ended a cycle, involved some kind of non-verbal understanding of the way things were, and it was in a sense an end in itself. However, there was not a complete break in awareness. Awareness refined, became very still and 'rarified', like a perfectly smooth opaque bright white mist, very alive, and then faded back into normal functioning. It was usually a brief experience of a few moments, with sometimes two or three fruitions in a row, like little blips; but at times this experience seemed to be extended for seconds or minutes...

On retreat, I was able to look at this more deeply. After an experience of centrelessness a few weeks ago, I'd had a bit of what became apparent as the first few jnanas going on, and had some work to do for a day or so. Then for three or four days a lot of these Fruition experiences occurred in such a context that I could see them much more closely, as I was spending much of my time in the arupa-jhanas. I shall start another thread regarding Formations soon, as this was also a fascinating area of improved understanding.

This experience does not sound like fruition in some ways, it sounds more like high equanimity with hard jhanas coming and going or an experience of formations in a way that really stood out for you (or something of the like). The reason I say this is because if there is not a complete break in awareness, it isn't a fruition. When you mention the "little blips," what were they? Little blips of the "smooth opaque bright white mist?"

By the way, Nirodha Samapatti (NS) is also a complete break in awareness, and the entire process is quite noticeable since one must have pretty darn good concentration to access it in the first place. With that said...are you sure you attained to it? NS is an incredible attainment in terms of what comes after (it seems to change one in some fundamental way), for reasons no one can seem to figure out nor clearly define. It is worth being honest with oneself just in case, and double-or-triple-checking to ensure you've really done it.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Lo and behold though, Fruition did present in the ways described in the book around pages 276-7, with most of the Fruitions being of the Emptiness with Impermanence variety. A small number were of other varieties. However I could see quite clearly that a certain fundamental awareness did not go, even if much of my ordinary functioning would begin to fade/peak, then blink out with one of the signs as in MCTB, and then fade back in. My rationalisation was that this awareness is fundamental, and the term True Nature would do for it for now. It is only one's changing self that goes and returns, as it were.

To ensure I understand, are you saying that you experienced your "True Nature" before and after the "fruition" (the blink out)? What duration did you experience this "Nature?" For example: 2 seconds before the fruition and 2 seconds after, or what?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Normally with A&P, I attend to experience in its fluidity briefly at the beginning of a sit and there is the double dip, and it is like 'going underwater' into the world of meditation - usually within a minute or so. Here, it was as if that actual brief experience in the double dip was indefinitely extended. The content of it though was of the Fruitions previously recently experienced - and so I was able to get a really good look at an awful lot - another thread for that required! Of course, Fruitions as such, in the way that I had previously known them, were not to be found during this time...

I don't understand this at all. Are you saying the content of the A&P was the same as the content of the previous fruitions? I'm asking primarily because fruitions are, by definition, bereft of content. With that said...perhaps it is worth asking: what was it that you were getting a "really good look" at?

Fruitions in the sense of "smooth opaque bright white mist" were "not to be found during this time?"

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

So, if I have questions, they are: (1) Do you recognise this description of Fruition, or am I up a gum-tree?, and (2) What about the 3 Samadhis and their place in the cycle of Insight?

(1): See above; clarify via answering the questions if you wish.
(2): What are the 3 Samadhis by another name (I am unfamiliar with this terminology)?

Best,
Trent

PS. I do not recommend meditating in a tree...although falling out of one would surely let you know what your "True Nature" actually is.

The nature of the Fruition 'experience'

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 18:17:29 GMT

I guess this one is specifically directed at Daniel! I would like to say again how much I've appreciated MCTB - it's been one of a handful of the most significant teachings I've had in 25 years or so of practice, and I only wish I had come across it sooner.

I've just been on a week's solitary meditation retreat. This has been my first opportunity to practice in a full-on way since I came across the book in February, and was not only significant as a retreat, but my first real chance to look more deeply at a couple of issues that had been bothering me about it. Please hear me in the context of overall trust in and appreciation of your work and practice.

An important concern for me was that Fruition did not seem to occur in the way offered in MCTB, in the section 'Was that Emptiness?'. I came across the book very soon after an experience of Nirodha Samapatti, which stood for me as as it were the ultimate unknowing experience, with a distinct and unmistakable loss of any sort of awareness.

My experience of Fruition was of a kind of peak experience which ended a cycle, involved some kind of non-verbal understanding of the way things were, and it was in a sense an end in itself. However, there was not a complete break in awareness. Awareness refined, became very still and 'rarified', like a perfectly smooth opaque bright white mist, very alive, and then faded back into normal functioning. It was usually a brief experience of a few moments, with sometimes two or three fruitions in a row, like little blips; but at times this experience seemed to be extended for seconds or minutes...

On retreat, I was able to look at this more deeply. After an experience of centrelessness a few weeks ago, I'd had a bit of what became apparent as the first few jnanas going on, and had some work to do for a day or so. Then for three or four days a lot of these Fruition experiences occurred in such a context that I could see them much more closely, as I was spending much of my time in the arupa-jhanas. I shall start another thread regarding Formations soon, as this was also a fascinating area of improved understanding.

Lo and behold though, Fruition did present in the ways described in the book around pages 276-7, with most of the Fruitions being of the Emptiness with Impermanence variety. A small number were of other varieties. However I could see quite clearly that a certain fundamental awareness did not go, even if much of my ordinary functioning would begin to fade/peak, then blink out with one of the signs as in MCTB, and then fade back in. My rationalisation was that this awareness is fundamental, and the term True Nature would do for it for now. It is only one's changing self that goes and returns, as it were.

Imagine my consternation in the last couple of days when I was frequently seeing right through the three marks to the corelessness of phenomena, and then spending half-a-sit or so most sits in a state of one-ness with that core-lessness. The nature of all phenomena was 'the same as' the True Nature. I began thinking, and I suppose still am, of the 3 Samadhis - but then, as things were getting pretty wild (meditating in dreams, spontaneous orgasm-like experiences, etc.), I realised this was also quite clearly the Arising and Passing Away. I have had isolated experiences before that I would call Samadhi proper, but in those I was as it were locked in to a state of knowing and could barely function in an ordinary way. Harder than the hardest of jhanas. This was somewhat more fluid, but had the same quality of quiet somewhat marvelling union with a dharma truth which was 'here' and not 'over there'.

Normally with A&P, I attend to experience in its fluidity briefly at the beginning of a sit and there is the double dip, and it is like 'going underwater' into the world of meditation - usually within a minute or so. Here, it was as if that actual brief experience in the double dip was indefinitely extended. The content of it though was of the Fruitions previously recently experienced - and so I was able to get a really good look at an awful lot - another thread for that required! Of course, Fruitions as such, in the way that I had previously known them, were not to be found during this time...

So, if I have questions, they are: (1) Do you recognise this description of Fruition, or am I up a gum-tree?, and (2) What about the 3 Samadhis and their place in the cycle of Insight?

And, because you are an all-knowing god, you might be able to tell me which Path it was the A&P of! It seems much clearer that there is only one A&P per Path when you are practising with continuity and vigour, but Path-moments seem to be trickier to assess after the first one or two.

Somewhat as an aside, I had a much clearer sense of why this practice works, and how it works. Working at the level of fundamental sensations completely undercuts the ordinary self and its functioning because that self precisely does not see that it is a construction, and does not even expect a threat from that quarter. It does not know what its foundations are, or that it has them. The Dark Night is broadly the after-effects of undermining these foundations. The discomfort of the Dark Night seems irrational and kind of unrelated to the work one does in practice because the self is threatened but cannot see from where the threat comes - that would be to know too much, and be the cause of its own demise. This at least explains the sense I have had the last few months that the self is like a hand trying to grasp itself - but sensations of course cannot grasp themselves - which one also sees.

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Bruno Loff — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 14:52:47 GMT

Indeed, both Tarin and Trent refer to their mode of experience as perfect, priceless, interesting, just to name a few.

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 06:33:10 GMT

Hi Tarin (and Bruno!)

Thanks for getting back. It does look like I need to go into more detail.

This way of communicating seems to me to be rather didactic and irritating. Universalising from the experience of one person is necessary on occasion (Namo Buddhaya!), but it is a risky process, and it is rarely useful to assume absolute knowledge in the actual process of communication. It usually loses you your audience, except under special circumstances.

if i am understanding you correctly, i would call the 'feeling-tones' you describe 'passions' and the 'ordinary emotions' simply 'emotions'.

Well, 'passion' as a term here in the UK has connotations of extreme and biased emotionality, as in 'crimes of passion', 'being passionate about...', 'passionate love', 'in a passion', etc. Pretty much exactly the opposite of what I am trying (or it seems perhaps failing) to communicate. It is so opposite that it is difficult to appreciate where you are coming from. I have a degree in English Literature and Philosophy, and lesser qualifications in Ancient Greek and Latin; and so, while I can be aware of the etymology of words, I do know that a word's intended or even original meaning tends to get lost within its broader connotation. The connotation can become so explicit that it becomes the meaning, as it were.

To then go on to draw conclusions other than those that I have drawn, and so on, in the guise of the words ('feeling-tones') I have used but not the meaning I intended them... where shall I start? this is the hi-jacking...

The particular point at issue is whether the whole sensitive faculty is eliminated at Enlightenment, not putting too fine a point on it. You are telling me that it is. I beg to differ, and at least question this - and, let me hasten to add, not from the viewpoint of established Enlightenment.

So far, I do believe that the emotional structure around the constructed self actually dies completely, and is even felt as a death - but then the sensitivity that is coerced and even corrupted in this ordinary emotionality is liberated, and what essentially will be left is a kind of love, between the True Nature and the phenomena of the Field of Awareness. The True Nature and the phenomena of the Field are not essentially different in nature or even in 'position' at this point - I am just (mis-)using language. The difference is such though that the sensitivity feels like something other than emotion altogether. Perhaps your descriptions of a sense of wonder, of the sensed world being perfect, etc. are in fact a description of this. These feeling-tones will be 'found' 'in' the very phenomena of the field of awareness, because, well, where else is left? The difference is in the ending of the structure in the Field that distorts sensitivity and leads to Craving, not in the sensitivity itself.

So it seems to me, so far...

very best wishes
Vajracchedika

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

tarin greco — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:28:34 GMT

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Hi Tarin

I am not sure why 'passions' occurs to you as in any way an appropriate or equivalent term for 'feeling-tones' (...)

the word 'passions' occurred to me as an appropriate and equivalent term for what you have dubbed 'feeling-tones' because it is the word i have used, for the past few years, to refer to the phenomenon which you have, in this thread, described quite clearly as follows:

'...I notice feeling tones which do not seem to emanate from any particular aspect of my experience but which are coloured by the current state I am in within a cycle. They are often subtle forms of contentment or bliss or joy, faith or interest, things like that. Not emotions as such, because they seem qualities of awareness itself, and are not derived in any obvious sense from immediate events. The more concentrated I am, and the closer to my True Nature possibly, the less definable this feeling tone is, the less distinguishable from the nature of awareness itself. '

'Emotions have a closed-ended and conflict-ridden nature that is rather too wearing to be maintained indefinitely. The different subtle feeling-tones that arise from the True Nature however are like a perfume that pervades experience, or the different facets of a jewel.'

'there are energies which pertain to awareness itself which manifest as tones or perfumes within the field as one acts or comes into relationship.'

'there was a sense of the glory of life unfolding, a perfect continuous unfolding - a sense of Being recognising itself in its many forms, or better through its various forms.'

i have understood this mode of experience to be very close to the root of suffering itself. thus, the word 'passion' is appropriate (not least of all because 'passion' comes from the latin - as passionem/passio/pati - for 'suffering').

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

(...) - perhaps English is not your first language?

english is my native language, though i also speak another (unrelated, non-indo-european) language fluently and can comprehend and get by brokenly in another two. i also have a growing knowledge of and appreciation for the etymology of words (mostly those rooted in latin or greek), which is what, in particular, makes me aware that the word 'passion' is a suitable term for the mode of experience you describe. why you do not know this, i cannot be sure.. perhaps english is your only language?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

If people took this 'translation' seriously they would seriously misconstrue what I am saying.

yet, as you have said this:

'However the feeling-tone is cleaner and clearer as time passes, and more positive and continuous if more subtle.'

and:

'The more concentrated I am, and the closer to my True Nature possibly, the less definable this feeling tone is, the less distinguishable from the nature of awareness itself.'

...then let me ask you this: what do you suppose the 'feeling-tone' is like when it reaches complete and total cleanliness and clarity? what do you suppose the 'feeling-tone' is like when there is not even a trace of anything which can be even in the slightest way distinguished from the nature of awareness itself?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

You also draw parallels between feeling-tones and emotions which seem to deny the essential differences that I am pointing to - in charitable mood, I suspect that this is because you do not understand what I am getting at initially, and so believe that the comparisons you make are fair.

ok then, for the sake of your charitable mood, let's here assume i do not understand what you were getting at initially. so that i understand, will you point out what parallels, exactly, i have drawn between feeling-tones and emotions which deny the essential differences you have pointed to? and will you also point to those essential differences (which the parallels between feeling-tones and emotions i drew are supposed to have denied)?

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

It looks to me though as if you are distorting and hi-jacking my points to promote PCE material. It is a risky business, to 'translate' someone in this carte blanche fashion - one really needs to qualify what one is doing quite carefully if one is not to give the appearance of simple arrogance.

before i can sensibly respond to your claim that i am distorting and hi-jacking your points to promote pce material, i will need further clarification about which of your your points are supposedly being distorted and hi-jacked.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

Did not the Buddha essentially teach that the ending of craving is the ending of suffering? He does not anywhere speak of the ending of feeling altogether as being a worthwhile goal. I sincerely doubt that as an end-result this would be admirable.

i am not particularly concerned with (anyone's interpretation of) what the buddha taught or didn't... what i am concerned with is what really constitutes the end of suffering[1]. my experience showed me that inherent in any feeling, however subtle or diffuse, is desire (the movement of feeling *is* desire). as desire is suffering, any feeling-tone (which is necessarily born of desire) is suffering.

regardless of this, however, the facts (drawn from your own report) that: 1-your feeling-tone becomes 'cleaner and clearer as time passes', and 2- that you are able to distinguish a feeling-tone from 'the nature of awareness itself', should clue you in about something here.

tarin

[1] besides, i took this to be a discussion between you and me, not you, me, and the buddha.

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Bruno Loff — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 15:07:57 GMT

I don't know Vajracchedika, the stuff that Tarin has been describing sounds incredibly similar. You say:

I suppose then, to return to the initial topic, that it seems to me that one drops emotions which arise on the basis of the constructed Ego as that dies away; and this is emotion and feeling as normally understood- but there are energies which pertain to awareness itself which manifest as tones or perfumes within the field as one acts or comes into relationship.

Tarin describes a process of successive "thinning" of feeling, and the end result of this unfolding, which seems very much like what you are going through (based on the previous paragraph). I find it very plausible that he has gone through the same territory you are now in, and I find it weird you reacted so vigorously.

Of course, it might be unpleasant to discover that all the emotions and perfumes might one day be gone... but Tarin seems to describe the end result as a good thing...

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:27:45 GMT

Hi Tarin

I am not sure why 'passions' occurs to you as in any way an appropriate or equivalent term for 'feeling-tones' - perhaps English is not your first language? If people took this 'translation' seriously they would seriously misconstrue what I am saying.

You also draw parallels between feeling-tones and emotions which seem to deny the essential differences that I am pointing to - in charitable mood, I suspect that this is because you do not understand what I am getting at initially, and so believe that the comparisons you make are fair. It looks to me though as if you are distorting and hi-jacking my points to promote PCE material. It is a risky business, to 'translate' someone in this carte blanche fashion - one really needs to qualify what one is doing quite carefully if one is not to give the appearance of simple arrogance.

Did not the Buddha essentially teach that the ending of craving is the ending of suffering? He does not anywhere speak of the ending of feeling altogether as being a worthwhile goal. I sincerely doubt that as an end-result this would be admirable.

best wishes
Vajracchedika

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

tarin greco — Sun, 30 May 2010 13:52:09 GMT

hi ian,

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I am not sure why it should be problematic that there are feeling-tones in our most profound experiences.

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

We are sensitive organisms, and consciousness has this adaptive and responsive sensitivity as part of its nature - my growing impression is that it is a thorough transformation, or better, releasing of the emotional faculty, the heart-aspect of our ordinary experience. So much so that use of the term 'emotion' can be argued as being completely inappropriate. Perhaps it is inappropriate to attempt to even see correspondences between these feeling-tones and ordinary emotions, but hey this is what we have to play with - perhaps a new palette is required?

if i am understanding you correctly, i would call the 'feeling-tones' you describe 'passions' and the 'ordinary emotions' simply 'emotions'.

in my explorations into the relationships between feeling-tones and ordinary emotions, i could find no clear and steadfast correspondences, but to say there was no relationship at all would simply be untrue. off the top of my head, here are the sort of notes i had on this territory (making use of your terminology):

-feeling-tones are always implied in ordinary emotions.
-feeling-tones exist as the undercurrents of ordinary emotions.
-ordinary emotions cannot exist apart from feeling-tones, as they are sculpted of feeling-tones, via a sense of identity felt to exist apart from those feeling-tones.
-feeling-tones can exist without ordinary emotions via a sense of identity felt to not exist apart from those tones (which tones are 'like a perfume that pervades experience').
-the thinner or more transparent the current feeling-tone is, the less it pervades experience/the less it is part of it - and the more experience becomes scintillantingly, sensately clear - and the more a sense of child-like, almost forgetful, wonder predominates (which sense i here dub naivete').
-the feeling-tone of naivete is very thin and the sustained experience of it rapidly leads to ever-further thinning (as the very feeling-tone of naivete is easily forgetten/not noticed in all the wonderment - and the fun that is being had - so its existence is not further fuelled).
-at some not-easily-discernable point along its course of thinning, the feeling-tone becomes so thin that the tone becomes unsustainable and vanishes completely, leading to an entirely different mode of experience, of which all the feeling-tones (particularly the positive ones) can be (easily) seen to be imitations (or that they are somehow gesticulations toward it), and in which there is no 'perfume that pervades experience' - there is only this experience entirely, resplendent in all its perfection.
-this mode of experience is the pure consciousness experience (pce).

about which last point i thought, 'i'd do well to live like this all the time'.

tarin

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Sun, 16 May 2010 08:52:14 GMT

Hi Tarin

Language is a mine-field - so some clarifications... The phrase 'as one acts or comes into relationship' is something of an external description, if you will, or a conventional one - not a description of the actual structure of the inward experience.

As I remember, there was a sense of the glory of life unfolding, a perfect continuous unfolding - a sense of Being recognising itself in its many forms, or better through its various forms. This was not a Pure Land jhana, which (in my experience so far) more obviously involves a response by a subject. My sense was that awareness had collapsed completely into the forms of awareness, because there was no subject holding it away from that. I could reflect on the experience, and make comparisons - noticing the complete absence of even the most subtle tension, because quite obviously, the source of the strain had gone. But these thoughts were just part of the unfolding.

I allude to aesthetic and appreciative emotions in trying to clarify my point... an example would be how one might notice with love someone being completely themselves in a gesture or action, someone you didn't have any particular investment in or requirement of... I don't really mean those particular pinnacles of aesthetic feeling which tends to intensify the subject, so to speak. Another example would be a sense of the subtle beauty of a landscape. The feelings are particularly involved with what is before one, and not so obviously bound up with one getting what one wants, one's-self, or whatever.

I am not sure why it should be problematic that there are feeling-tones in our most profound experiences. We are sensitive organisms, and consciousness has this adaptive and responsive sensitivity as part of its nature - my growing impression is that it is a thorough transformation, or better, releasing of the emotional faculty, the heart-aspect of our ordinary experience. So much so that use of the term 'emotion' can be argued as being completely inappropriate. Perhaps it is inappropriate to attempt to even see correspondences between these feeling-tones and ordinary emotions, but hey this is what we have to play with - perhaps a new palette is required?

RE: Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a rep

tarin greco — Sun, 16 May 2010 07:15:36 GMT

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:

I have been following the various discussions about issues regarding Feelings (using the term in a broad non-technical sense) and their place within notions of AF and Arahatship with a lot of interest.

(...)

After this latter I felt 'emptier' than I ever had. I went for a walk out in the country, noticing then not just that I seemed particularly 'quiet' but that I was 'gone'! I was aware of the whole field of awareness, but was not around to react - I understood thoroughly what it meant to eliminate the ego and craving altogether, and that it was not at all threatening. The construct that reacts, emotes, has an attitude or view - was simply not there; and I mean not just pacified but altogether gone, blown out completely like a candle flame. I could see directly that I was incapable of emotion as ordinarily understood, because there was not a substrate for it - but there was a subtle and pervasive sense of peacefulness and beauty about the whole thing. The unity and completeness of the field of awareness were so apparent, because there was no confusing or clouding factor at the middle mucking it up. It also had a stability about it that was quite remarkable, again because there was nothing there to even be disturbed.

(...)

I suppose then, to return to the initial topic, that it seems to me that one drops emotions which arise on the basis of the constructed Ego as that dies away; and this is emotion and feeling as normally understood- but there are energies which pertain to awareness itself which manifest as tones or perfumes within the field as one acts or comes into relationship. If they have any parallel in ordinary experience, it is to the aesthetic and appreciative emotions. These are much steadier and don't cloud your vision, or take centre stage at all. I suspect that there is some samadhi in which the union with the True Nature is so complete that there is no emanation of energies in this way - or perhaps that would be nirodha samapatti, in which the complete basis is gone - maybe that is what it would take.

in the experience you refer to (on your walk out in the country), did you notice any 'energies which pertain to awareness itself which manifest as tones or perfumes within the field as ones acts or comes into relationship'? or were those part of what was absent?

i'd like to make sure i understand you correctly before responding in full.

tarin

Contribution to the discussions about Emotion; with a bit of a reporti

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Sat, 15 May 2010 20:32:07 GMT

I have been following the various discussions about issues regarding Feelings (using the term in a broad non-technical sense) and their place within notions of AF and Arahatship with a lot of interest. I practice in a formless way that bears in mind Daniel's teachings in MCTB though I do not 'note' as such, as my awareness is steady enough for a noting process to be just clutter. I have been thinking about emotionality and spiritual progress for some time, as my experience has been heading in the direction away from distinctive emotion. However the feeling-tone is cleaner and clearer as time passes, and more positive and continuous if more subtle.

The model I am developing goes something like this: ordinary unreflective experience involves a constructed false ego to which emotions pertain, as an expression of the conflict with reality that is bound up with that state. At stream-entry one sees that one's ordinary experience is hollow at the core, and a process of dis-identification begins. This may well release a good deal of quite strong positive emotion such as bliss etc., which can be pretty spectacular, but if one has enough meditative steadiness, these emotions are more obviously empty than the knotty ones more common previously, even though they still emanate from the personality. Somewhere around second or third path, one bumps into one's True Nature, and begins to appreciate what it is or would be to live from that, even if that appreciation is to some extent indirect. I call this phase living from the Relative True Nature, because one is working one's way back to what is most fundamental, but is not there yet. This is the phase of looking at the nature of duality in one's experience, and being aware of the ways in which it is warped, but being also aware that one is as yet not free. It seems also to be the phase in which one checks whether aspects of experience are unconditioned or not. Different aspects of feeling, perception and awareness are puzzling - there is curiosity. During this phase, which seems to be the one I am in, I notice feeling tones which do not seem to emanate from any particular aspect of my experience but which are coloured by the current state I am in within a cycle. They are often subtle forms of contentment or bliss or joy, faith or interest, things like that. Not emotions as such, because they seem qualities of awareness itself, and are not derived in any obvious sense from immediate events. The more concentrated I am, and the closer to my True Nature possibly, the less definable this feeling tone is, the less distinguishable from the nature of awareness itself.

I suspect that talk of the emotions of bodhisattvas is simply anthropomorphising this kind of state ie looking at the Relative or even Absolute True Nature from the viewpoint of ego. One is not driven by these feeling tones, but one looks to others from their perspective as if one might be... One engages in a fluid and responsive manner with one's experience, and that looks like emotion to the spiritually inexperienced. Emotions have a closed-ended and conflict-ridden nature that is rather too wearing to be maintained indefinitely. The different subtle feeling-tones that arise from the True Nature however are like a perfume that pervades experience, or the different facets of a jewel. They are akin to the factors of jhana apparent secondarily within the vipassana jhanas - they arise from the insight process, and contribute to it, but are not in themselves the goal or motive for practice.

The last month or so I have noticed lots of cycles or part-cycles, with phases in which each sit seemed to consist of the passage through a cycle from A&P to fruition and review. Now and again, the Dark Night part of the cycle bites a bit for a few days, and can lead to disconcerting rather undermining feelings; or the focus of interest regarding an aspect of insight changes with somewhat new appreciations in an A&P phase. I've been getting to know the seventh and eighth vipassna jhanas, and seem to have lost interest in the sixth, which was my old haunt. It is a little bit odd that this is manageable while working full-time, and sitting once or twice a day - though I guess it has to do with the greater clarity about cycles and the vipassana jhanas from reading Daniel's work, which made so much of my previous experience suddenly clear and explicit. Lately however I have been aware of changes of perception within Equanimity, some of which (surprise, surprise!) have the look of Daniel's discussions about the Three Doors in MCTB. Odd sort-of inverted cone distortions of the field with a swirling aspect, other odd fallings-into the object of awareness, or a particularly unsettling sickening feeling of relaxing into a deeper levels of experience which felt too nauseating to be a good direction to go in (but was nonetheless)!

After this latter I felt 'emptier' than I ever had. I went for a walk out in the country, noticing then not just that I seemed particularly 'quiet' but that I was 'gone'! I was aware of the whole field of awareness, but was not around to react - I understood thoroughly what it meant to eliminate the ego and craving altogether, and that it was not at all threatening. The construct that reacts, emotes, has an attitude or view - was simply not there; and I mean not just pacified but altogether gone, blown out completely like a candle flame. I could see directly that I was incapable of emotion as ordinarily understood, because there was not a substrate for it - but there was a subtle and pervasive sense of peacefulness and beauty about the whole thing. The unity and completeness of the field of awareness were so apparent, because there was no confusing or clouding factor at the middle mucking it up. It also had a stability about it that was quite remarkable, again because there was nothing there to even be disturbed.

All this went on quite steadily for a couple of days. I expected it not to last, and a few full-on days at work returned me to the more normal cycling mode; but it did seem like a completion and a Path, and was no doubt just one of the 12 or more that seem to occur at this phase! I would say though that it was the first time in 25 years of practice that I had a clear sense of the end of all paths; the first time that I had felt that this, when fully established, would be freedom and enough. i feel that I've moved from an experience of the Relative True Nature which knows where 'things are leading', to a glimpse of the Absolute True Nature which will draw me on. It feels as though faith has become knowledge - though it was such a quiet and unassuming phenomenon really...

I suppose then, to return to the initial topic, that it seems to me that one drops emotions which arise on the basis of the constructed Ego as that dies away; and this is emotion and feeling as normally understood- but there are energies which pertain to awareness itself which manifest as tones or perfumes within the field as one acts or comes into relationship. If they have any parallel in ordinary experience, it is to the aesthetic and appreciative emotions. These are much steadier and don't cloud your vision, or take centre stage at all. I suspect that there is some samadhi in which the union with the True Nature is so complete that there is no emanation of energies in this way - or perhaps that would be nirodha samapatti, in which the complete basis is gone - maybe that is what it would take.

RE: Stream Entry and Beyond

Daniel M. Ingram — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 06:05:39 GMT

Dear Paul,

Glad you are getting something out of all this. It is great to hear your story and your progress and I do hope it, like the many others here who have done great things, will inspire those who are still wondering if they can do it to go ahead and really try.

This is a great community, and I am also thankful for everyone who hangs out here and contributes to this group effort of awakening and fun and interesting practice.

Stream Entry and Beyond

Paul Hurley — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:19:27 GMT

Hi,
I don't post here very often. I have been meditating now for almost eight years. The first seven of those were solo and clueless. I had no idea what I was doing. I knew nothing of maps or that teachers such as Daniel actually existed. I had a kundalini awakening around my third year and crossed the A&P last year for the first time without realising what it was. It coincided with me finding Daniel, his book and this forum. Since about October last year I have been working with Kenneth over at Kenneth Folk Dharma because I feel more inclined toward Advaita practice - I'm not very good at noting. On the fifteenth of January of this year I attained to stream entry and very soon after the sixth jhana and in the last three weeks I have attained to the state of "Witness," or non-dual awareness. I am also strongly established in equanimity once more, so perhaps second path is not far off. This has all happened in a year. I have not been on a retreat in the eight years I have been practising, however I do practice every day, if I'm lucky, maybe two lots of thirty five minutes and pay very close attention to advice. During my daily activity, I practice surrender as often as I can. I am posting this here to encourage those who, like me, may not have the opportunity to go on retreats, even short ones. I have a young family and my wife is not well. If I can do it, then you most certainly can too! I would however like to affirm very strongly that if you can go on retreat, take it, eat it up, and strive on. I think what Kenneth and Daniel are offering to this global community of practitioiners is a priceless gem. Without them, I would probably have spent the next ten years clueless as well. I wish you all well, as Buzz Light Year said, 'To infinity and beyond!!"
Paul

RE: End of 8 month sabbatical

Vajracchedika Ian Vajra — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:45:34 GMT

Hi Lee - I'm new to the site, and have just read your report on your practice. It was really interesting to read such an evocative, thorough and well-considered account!

A couple of the issues struck me quite forcibly - everything being lighter in tone; the much-reduced prapanca; the business of 'just watching' patterns in your life play themselves (hopefully, I suppose, play themselves out in wider awareness!); of letting people be themselves more without having to get in on the act; but particularly, this seeing that 'self' and 'other' are just other names for the process of clinging and aversion to sensations.

This last has become clearer to me the last year or so too. At best when sitting, I can see the odd process of identifying with some particular bunch of fluid sensations going on in an open non-reactive space, like a piece of string which has tied itself into a knot amidst other pieces of string which are floating around just happily straight (sorry about the metaphor!). Looked at macroscopically, you get 'self' and 'other', persons and things, mine and yours. In detail, there are the streams of sensations and events seen in the light of open awareness. The sensations are just themselves, but the knot-tying seems to comes from the mind-sense; it seems to be a constant stream of 'holding-on' events, that can superficially make it look as though you are just giving attention to these sensations, but this stream is in fact quite tiresome and distorting of the field. The general bunch of sensations honoured with this knotting-process changes over time, and does seem to actually change the experience of the sensations so honoured. It feels pretty much cutting-edge for me to attend to this clearly - as ever, there is perhaps not much to actually 'do' about it beyond giving it awareness, though I find reflecting about it off the cushion, and discussion both helpful.

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Trent H. — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:09:51 GMT

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

Correct. To clarify slightly, I think it is unwise, unhealthy, uncomfortable, inhibits clear comprehension of a situation, and simply does not help.

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

I have a problem with what you wrote above, because I don't see any emotional response as being right or wrong. I think it is very hurtful to think that it is wrong to experience an emotion, which is why I take issue with some forms of conservative Buddhism. Feelings of compassion naturally arise when we are able to take on the perspective of another, and that person is suffering. If someone you love, say a close friend, loses their child in a car collision, and you see them suffering, a natural, uninhibited response is empathy. You feel sad because they feel sad. There is a collective sharing of the grief, and I don't see this as a bad thing at all. Emotions, in my understanding, are not the cause of suffering, as the autonomous human being always has an option of how they will respond to them. So rather than promote a kind of mass anhedonia, I think we'd be better off promoting mass maturation.

I too do not see any emotional responses as being "right" or "wrong." These words carry all sort of connotation regarding reward and punishment, and are often used as charged words to justify a selfish position. Feelings of compassion naturally arise, but I do not think this validates compassion as something to indulge in. I can think of all manner of things which are "natural" which are better off kept under control. Compassion has gotten by thus far through history as an "okay" selfish feeling to partake in, and I'm not really sure why (though I have my guesses). After all, one is called all manner of things when one chooses to no longer share in others' sorrow, such as "cold," "uncaring," etc; which has little to do with why one would choose to no longer feel compassion. My point being that compassion has become sacred and that sacrosanct status is locking humans into a cycle of endless suffering...and for what?

Emotions are not the cause of suffering, specifically. It is the identity which is the source of the instinctual passions, which could be thought of as a conditioned blue-print of the world which says "react to X, Y, Z because of A, B, C." Suffering is nothing more than a term we ascribe to a chemically caused tension-- felt in the brain and/or psyche-- set off by a self-justified imperative to survive (which could be personal or group related) and reproduce. The specifics of these imperatives vary a bit from person to person due to their unique experiences (parents, peers, other influences), but also share staggering similarities due to many of them being endemic. For instance, the instinctual drive to reproduce is part of one's blue-print regardless of where one was born. This is how blind nature equips a species: a rough and ready software package for survival at all costs. It does not care a bit about you or I personally, it is simply what you're born into.

Humans, with their unique ability to "always (have) an option of how they will respond to them," -- which is due to the intellect-- are in a distinct position to rewire the entire blue-print of the human condition until selfishness is gone entirely. Perhaps I am mistaken, but is not human maturation in this context generally seen as a process of becoming less selfish and more sensitive to others? With that in mind, I think that this is very much a promotion of "mass maturation," it is just a radical step in that direction; hence the hesitation / wariness to step away from the tried and true methods we've been passed down since birth.

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

No problem. There is not, to my knowledge, "official" academic research in the form that I think you are looking for. For one, freedom from the human condition is a relatively new discovery. In this case, though, one's own intellect is plenty enough to validate the claims (rather than deferring to the irrational notion of what has been deemed "credible" by the masses). The entire field of psychology is currently quite a corrupt and confused mess. It is a case of the blind leading the blind. We humans are in a position to ameliorate and end all sorrow from ourselves, and yet our modern day "psychology experts" would much rather keep us all at a "normal" degree of suffering, because it's "natural." After all, ya "can't change human nature," eh? Fortunately, they are incorrect: it is possible. And not only is it possible, but it is necessary. One only needs to open a page of news to see war, rape, murder, abuse, suicides from loneliness and all the like ravaging the otherwise fair people of this earth. Does one dare to care enough to end all of that (personally, which if done by all, is globally) by taking a radical step of self maturation?

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

Anyways, I was asking because I didn't know if the AF model or theory (not just an 'actual freedom from the human condition' as an actual achievement) was based on or at all validated by good science. Science has its limitations, but it is also a very reliable tool when wielded properly.

The methods for gaining an actual freedom from the human condition have been empirically proven to work by humans whom were enlightened and those that were not-- without significant variation thus far-- in other words: "good science."

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

Again, I'm enjoying our conversation. Thank you for taking the time to explain some of your ideas. I've been wanting to gain a better understanding of your ideas for a while now, and this helps.

I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying the conversation. It takes a considerable amount of openness and patience to even begin to question some of the things we're talking about, and I'm glad to partake in that investigation with you.

Regards,
Trent

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Chuck Kasmire — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:45:34 GMT

Are theories useful?

I've been thinking about what value theories really have for us. We debate - such as on this thread - which theory is more valid than another. What value do they actually have?

Personally, I think we should focus on the effectiveness of practices as opposed to the accuracy of theories. All traditions claim to be 'the truth' and many claim to be 'the direct path' or 'the true path' - they can't all be right - yet many seem to provide a reasonable path. Not knowing why bread rises doesn't prevent you from making bread.

Primarily, I feel they provide a conceptual framework for practice and living ones life and as such compose an element of what Buddha termed a 'raft to carry you to the far shore'. The question is 'Does this raft get someone to the other side?'.

An aspect which makes all this stuff tricky is 'How do I know that a particular approach is founded on an actual deep awakening experience?'.

We have to consider the flavor of the language and the territory that language covers and not try to make too much of individual terms like 'true self' or 'ultimate' or ‘Nibbana’. We have to look at the various qualities of the transcendent experience that a tradition is trying to point out. Then we can see if something is clearly missing or perhaps just less emphasized. Another way, and perhaps more useful, is to ask ourselves 'Do developed practitioners of this tradition demonstrate the transcendent qualities that the tradition speaks of?'

For example, here is a description of Nibbana from The Island by Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Pasanno of the Thai Forest Tradition:

Nibbana is a word that is used to describe an experience. When the heart is free of all obscurations, and is utterly in accord with nature, Ultimate Reality (Dhamma), it experiences perfect peace, joy and contentment. This set of qualities is what Nibbana describes. ...From the Buddhist viewpoint, the realization of Nibbana is the fulfillment of the highest human potential – a potential that exists in all of us, regardless of nationality or creed.

So if I go hang out with these guys, to what extent do they embody these teachings? Not only does such a description tell me something about what qualities the tradition is aiming at but also how to judge the effectiveness of that tradition - by spending time with those that have followed that path.

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Jackson Wilshire — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:52:22 GMT

Trent:

I sincerely agree that "considering another person" is a sensible thing to do, as is caring. But I wonder, what does compassion, love and justice, have to do with that? Of the two options, do you think that it's a better idea to care and feel compassionate, or to care without compassion?

As a follow-up question, what do you think is "higher:" feelings such as compassion, love and justice or the acts of caring, intimacy (closeness), and allowing others the freedom to be without "my" sense of justice?

Compassion and the act of caring / giving needed aid (perhaps what you meant by "compassionate action?") are two entirely different things. I am quite capable of aiding another, if they need and/or request, but need not share their sorrow to do so. I think this is a healthy alternative, as this keeps me happy personally, allows me to function more effectively (I don't have to worry about myself), and also demonstrates to the sorrowful persons that they need not hurt (demonstrating an alternative to sorrow in a situation that feeling sorrow is "normal.") With that in mind, is it still necessary to share the alcoholic's suffering; or does it seem more helpful to care without being compassionate?

Thanks for clarifying. It seems as though you view compassion as a feeling or emotional response as unwise or unhealthy, but you see no problem with what I described as compassionate action. Helping people is OK, but feeling compassion or sharing in their sorrow (which you seem to find synonymous) are to be avoided. Is that right?

Further, given your example, all compassion would have to be "idiot compassion," as any demonstration of sorrow (in this case, sharing someone elses') sets an example ("enables and perpetuates") that it is okay to feel bad about situation X, Y and Z for whatever reason.

I have a problem with what you wrote above, because I don't see any emotional response as being right or wrong. I think it is very hurtful to think that it is wrong to experience an emotion, which is why I take issue with some forms of conservative Buddhism. Feelings of compassion naturally arise when we are able to take on the perspective of another, and that person is suffering. If someone you love, say a close friend, loses their child in a car collision, and you see them suffering, a natural, uninhibited response is empathy. You feel sad because they feel sad. There is a collective sharing of the grief, and I don't see this as a bad thing at all. Emotions, in my understanding, are not the cause of suffering, as the autonomous human being always has an option of how they will respond to them. So rather than promote a kind of mass anhedonia, I think we'd be better off promoting mass maturation.

Trent:

"As for sources, the question doesn't really make sense to me. Rephrased, the question reads "are there any sources outside of (an actual freedom from the human condition) for this?" With that in mind, I suppose any opinion by a human being whom is not free from the human condition would constitute such a source. My point being: you're speaking with a fellow human right now, and I am speaking my mind genuinely (rather than repeating someone's "teachings" or the like)."

Pardon my asking for "sources". My comment did indeed come off as a bit pretentious. I don't mean to ask for sources of someone else's "teaching". Rather, I highly value empirical scientific research in the field of psychology, though it's not the only thing I care about. Developmental psychology is one of those disciplines that is very well researched and documented, and the conclusions drawn are difficult to refute. Human beings follow are "growth to goodness" course throughout their lives, so long as their development is not arrested along the way due to abuse or other trauma (physical or psychological). Emotions play a large role in that, which is why I have a difficult time finding validity in any view that suggests that certain emotions should be completely cut off.

Anyways, I was asking because I didn't know if the AF model or theory (not just an 'actual freedom from the human condition' as an actual achievement) was based on or at all validated by good science. Science has its limitations, but it is also a very reliable tool when wielded properly.

Again, I'm enjoying our conversation. Thank you for taking the time to explain some of your ideas. I've been wanting to gain a better understanding of your ideas for a while now, and this helps.

~Jackson

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Trent H. — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 05:18:56 GMT

Hello Jackson,

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

When I say "lower stages," I am referring to those early, self-centered stages we all go through as we develop from infants to children to adolescents to adults, and higher. The reason I consider them to be in a hierarchy (or "holarchy" as Wilber often calls them - more on that in a minute) is that the scope of one's concern expands as one's identity shifts from being totally self-centered (egocentric), to being identified with one's self and other's close to them (ethnocentric/socio-centric), to being identified with and concerned with one's self and all human beings (world-centric), and so on.

And of course one should remain concerned with one's own welfare each step of the way. This is why each stage is it's own holarchy, in that it transcends and includes the level that came before it. Just because someone is world-centric doesn't mean they should care about one's self or one's family, local community, or nation. The difference is that they are not "just" selfish; "just" self-interested at everyone else's expense. It's all included as one develops, unless of course there are any major pathologies occurring at any of these stages… but that's another topic entirely.

Okay, thanks for clarifying.

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

So, in short the answer is Yes. I do think that considering another person as well as one's self to be "higher" than only considering one's self. And that is why I see compassion, love, care, and justice (and other things I'm leaving out) to be relatively high attributes of mature, responsible human beings.

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

Compassion and the act of caring / giving needed aid (perhaps what you meant by "compassionate action?") are two entirely different things. I am quite capable of aiding another, if they need and/or request, but need not share their sorrow to do so. I think this is a healthy alternative, as this keeps me happy personally, allows me to function more effectively (I don't have to worry about myself), and also demonstrates to the sorrowful persons that they need not hurt (demonstrating an alternative to sorrow in a situation that feeling sorrow is "normal.") With that in mind, is it still necessary to share the alcoholic's suffering; or does it seem more helpful to care without being compassionate?

Further, given your example, all compassion would have to be "idiot compassion," as any demonstration of sorrow (in this case, sharing someone elses') sets an example ("enables and perpetuates") that it is okay to feel bad about situation X, Y and Z for whatever reason.

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

Although, now that I've re-read the quote, you seem to be implying that one's abillity to feel compassion is the very thing that allows them to feel sorrow themselves? Not sure that I follow... Are there any sources outside of AF for this?

Well, I am not saying that specifically. I think perhaps I've clarified this by my other responses, but if not, feel free to ask again. As for sources, the question doesn't really make sense to me. Rephrased, the question reads "are there any sources outside of (an actual freedom from the human condition) for this?" With that in mind, I suppose any opinion by a human being whom is not free from the human condition would constitute such a source. My point being: you're speaking with a fellow human right now, and I am speaking my mind genuinely (rather than repeating someone's "teachings" or the like).

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

And no, I wouldn't consider an arhat innocent. I'm not even fond of that term anymore, as it's obviously not one's personal identity who gets enlightened. Awakened or not, we're all people, and we're all imperfect, and we're all worthy of being called out on our shit. That's not an excuse, but a call to continue our efforts to grow and mature in a way that is beneficial to ourselves and as many others as possible.

I see. Evidently I'm a bit slow, though, as I am not following the "obviousness" of your next sentence. Who's identity gets enlightened, if not an identity specific to one human being (hence, a personal identity)?

Do you think that humans are capable of outgrowing their "imperfect(ion)" so that no one needs suffer anymore? Or are you using "imperfection" in the sense of "infallibility?"

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

Thanks for the engaging questions :-)

Anytime, it's fun to talk about the things that concern us all and to work together to try to figure out how to improve our lot in life.

Regards,
Trent

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Jackson Wilshire — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:26:20 GMT

Hi Trent,

I agree that the D.A. practice could be effective to do what you stated - to make consciousness that which was previously unconscious, so as to be to face up to it and learn to re-integrate it in a more skillful, mature way.

When I say "lower stages," I am referring to those early, self-centered stages we all go through as we develop from infants to children to adolescents to adults, and higher. The reason I consider them to be in a hierarchy (or "holarchy" as Wilber often calls them - more on that in a minute) is that the scope of one's concern expands as one's identity shifts from being totally self-centered (egocentric), to being identified with one's self and other's close to them (ethnocentric/socio-centric), to being identified with and concerned with one's self and all human beings (world-centric), and so on.

And of course one should remain concerned with one's own welfare each step of the way. This is why each stage is it's own holarchy, in that it transcends and includes the level that came before it. Just because someone is world-centric doesn't mean they should care about one's self or one's family, local community, or nation. The difference is that they are not "just" selfish; "just" self-interested at everyone else's expense. It's all included as one develops, unless of course there are any major pathologies occurring at any of these stages… but that's another topic entirely.

So, in short the answer is Yes. I do think that considering another person as well as one's self to be "higher" than only considering one's self. And that is why I see compassion, love, care, and justice (and other things I'm leaving out) to be relatively high attributes of mature, responsible human beings.

You wrote:

I ask because compassion, justice, and love are all selfish to the core and, upon close inspection, validate their opposites' existence. And so, although well-meaning, the antedotal aspects of, for instance, "compassion," actually serve to validate sorrow (as a generality) which allows it to continue wreaking havoc on the person feeling it.

I recognize this line of reasoning from my brief encounter with AF, though I never was able to buy into it. It sounds as though you are saying that compassionate action somehow encourages sorrow, or even enables it. Any act that enables and perpetuates sorrow is clearly "idiot compassion" - which is like giving a beer to an alcoholic experiencing withdrawal, because you don't want him to suffer the pains of withdrawal. That's not compassion in my book. It would be more compassionate to stay with that person in their struggle to overcome the addiction, so they wouldn't have to go through it alone. In this way both people suffer, and healing results rather than perpetual sorrow/suffering. At least that's how I see it.

Although, now that I've re-read the quote, you seem to be implying that one's abillity to feel compassion is the very thing that allows them to feel sorrow themselves? Not sure that I follow... Are there any sources outside of AF for this?

And no, I wouldn't consider an arhat innocent. I'm not even fond of that term anymore, as it's obviously not one's personal identity who gets enlightened. Awakened or not, we're all people, and we're all imperfect, and we're all worthy of being called out on our shit. That's not an excuse, but a call to continue our efforts to grow and mature in a way that is beneficial to ourselves and as many others as possible.

Thanks for the engaging questions :-)

Jackson

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Trent H. — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:35:52 GMT

Hello Jackson,

The DA material, although I am only vaguely familiar with it, seems to be useful insofar as it can help a person be aware of things they were previously not aware of. As one cannot willingly, purposefully change something unless they're aware of it, I think the approach may be useful in aiding that process, if nothing else.

I second the notion that children are not born innocent. Children are quite capable, as you mention, of many selfish and downright aggressive acts against others. For example, fighting over toys, or crying when they don't get candy at the super market.

Jackson "awouldbehipster" Wilshire:

For the lower stages offer nothing great in terms of compassion, care, justice, or true, deep, honest love.

I was wondering if you would be willing to share more of your thoughts on the quoted section above. There are several interesting things in this one sentence. For instance, when you refer to "lower stages," you seem to be making a hierarchical judgment that might imply much more than what is being said. What might be being implied, why is it being implied and to what end is that being done?

I was also wondering if you are (and I would not want to put words in your mouth) making a distinction that implies that "compassion, care, justice (and) true, deep, honest love" are the "higher stages?" With that said, what exactly are the "lower stages," and why are they "lower?" I ask because compassion, justice, and love are all selfish to the core and, upon close inspection, validate their opposites' existence. And so, although well-meaning, the antedotal aspects of, for instance, "compassion," actually serve to validate sorrow (as a generality) which allows it to continue wreaking havoc on the person feeling it.

With that in mind, and this is mostly a question based in curiosity, would you say that an arhat is "innocent?"

Feel free to PM me / e-mail me if you would rather reply that way (if you reply at all), I would not want to drive the topic too far off of its' original course.

Regards,
Trent

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Jackson Wilshire — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:34:53 GMT

Tom Carr:

I will say that I take Wilber less seriously ever since I read his comments on the evolution of the wing in "A Brief History of Everything". It seemed to me that he didn't have an understanding of the basic theory of evolution as taught in an undergraduate biology class. He acts like he is such an expert on everything.

Ha, ha! Yeah, Wilber can come off as a bit of a 'know-it-all' at times. Hell, so can I! So I know what you mean, and I appreciate your comment.

I have no real beef with the Diamond Approach as a practice that some people might find beneficial to some degree. What I disagree with is the theoretical orientation behind the work; namely, the romanticized idea that we were born "pure" but somehow lost this original purity as we moved through adolescence into adulthood. This goes against the research of all of the major developmental psychologists, whose work has been tested countless times over many decades in many different cultures.

Young children do seem joyous, don't they? They seem to be free to be happy, and they aren't bogged down with worldly concerns like we adults are. Well, this isn't actually the case. Most children younger than 5 are not able to really take the perspective of another, and are thus inherently narcissistic, egocentric, and just plain old selfish. The pleasure principle reigns supreme. It is at the ages between 5 and 7 that children begin to understand that others are important, too, and thus they become more socio-centric (or ethnocentric, family/community centered). Would we say, then, that the pure, joyous young children were cast down from their inherent "goodness" in order to find greater concern for others? I think not. For the lower stages offer nothing great in terms of compassion, care, justice, or true, deep, honest love. For how can we know the joy of fully loving another if we cannot even consider their perspective? Do you see what I'm getting at?

And this is what the D.A. is based on - recapturing "innocence" or "purity" that was lost.

That's not to say that we can't benefit from depth work that allows us to discover and reintegrate those aspects of ourselves that were repressed due to immature defense mechanisms. Of course we can! But this isn't reaching into a higher, wider sense of being. But rather, re-incorporating lower, less significant, less spiritual aspects of our selves that are causing us to act out in maladaptive ways. This is why psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be helpful, and why so many Westerners find value in body-scanning and noting practices found in meditative techniques like vipassana. It helps us to get back in touch with our body so we don't feel so fractured (of course, vipassna is used to gain real insight as well). But the sense of wholeness gained via depth psychology (as well as, I would argue, the D.A.) is NOT the same as transpersonal insight or awakening.

That's my opinion at least. Thoughts?

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Tom Carr — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:36:15 GMT

Ken Wilber wrote an excellent critique of the Diamond Approach in his book "The Eye of Spirit." It is worth reading, even if only for the sake of clarity. He makes some really good points that I don't think can be overlooked. Needless to say at this point, I am not a fan of the Diamond Approach. There are much better maps out there.

Thanks for the reference to the book. I will read what he has to say.

For me, human consciousness is mysterious. I have tentative theories about some things, but I am certain of very little.

Both Wilber and Almaas and lots of their followers all seem too certain. I have been doing the Diamond work for 4 years but I will probably never chime in to defend one point of view against another. I am not an expert.

I enjoy reading the back and forth discussion of these issues though, so please keep posting.

I will say that I take Wilber less seriously ever since I read his comments on the evolution of the wing in "A Brief History of Everything". It seemed to me that he didn't have an understanding of the basic theory of evolution as taught in an undergraduate biology class. He acts like he is such an expert on everything.

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Jackson Wilshire — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:08:14 GMT

Mike Monson:

I was very briefly a clinical pyschology undergraduate student about 30 years ago. I remember asking one of the professors about Freud and psychoanalytic theory and he laughed and said "no one teaches that stuff in regular colleges anymore." He said it was because there was no scientific basis for Freud's opinions and that his books belonged in the "literature department."

Your professor held quite an unfortunate view, as do many psychologists today - especially professors. I'm not a big fan of Freud, being that I think he got a lot of things wrong. But I have a feeling this professor didn't care about whether or not Freud's theory was valid in terms of treatment or articulation of 1st person interior realities. Rather, the scientific materialist paradigm rejects interiors as either unreal/unverifiable, or just the side effects of physical, observable material realities. They have an exterior-only paradigm, which is, like I said, unfortunate, as it denies the fact that interior realities can influence external correlates (i.e. matter) just as much as the external realities can influence interior ones. The mutual dependence is hard to miss, even though we still can't see another persons thoughts, feelings, unconscious, or shadow.

Sorry for going so far off topic.

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Mike Monson — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:38:06 GMT

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Jackson Wilshire — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:29:52 GMT

Theory of Holes

"Our understanding that the personality of ego is an imitation of the essential person, the person of Being, can be made more clear by what we call our “theory of holes.” This perspective, which was developed in detail in our books Essence and The Void, states that whenever an essential aspect is missing or cut off from one's consciousness there results a deficiency, a hole, in its place. This hole is then filled by a part of the psychic structure that resembles the lost essential aspect. One fills or covers the deficiency with a false aspect in its place. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 96)"

Our personality (AKA our sense of self or "I") is just to cover up negative experiences from our past. He goes over the whole process to recover what that sense of "I" is covering up. Its completely bloody fascinating.

Yikes. This "theory of holes" is part of the "Diamond Approach," which Almaas created. While it sounds nice, it actually contains many pre/trans fallacies regarding awakening. For, you see, the D.A. is all about recapturing an innocence lost in childhood, and see the ego as a distortion of our former purity. Nonsense. This approach confuses pre-egoic innocence with trans-egoic Essence.

This theory obviously became popular due to the fusion of psychotherapy and Eastern meditation practices. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a process of looking into one's unconscious to discover aspects of one's self which have been repressed due to immature defense mechanisms. When one begins to re-integrate such aspects of their personality (and stops fighting them), they tend to feel more balanced, more resilient to external influences. This is, however, not the same thing as spiritual awakening. Failure to see the difference is what allow the Diamond Approach to be taken seriously.

So in a sense, the Diamond Approach may help someone to drudge up old memories and discover areas where they feel a lack, and thus learn to re-contextualize those experiences into something that brings a feeling of wholeness and personality integration. But all this does is bring fractured pre-egoic stuff back up to the ego level. It's nice, but it isn't trans-egoic insight.

Ken Wilber uses the following analogy: "If you step on an acorn, you are going to damage it, and it will have a hard time growing into the oak that it might be. But what you are hurting and repressing is the acorn—you are not repressing or stepping on the oak, because that hasn’t emerged yet—there aren’t any leaves, branches, roots, etc., to step on. So you can definitely repress or damage joy at any of its stages of growth, and this will make it less likely that Essential Joy will emerge later in development. But that Essence is an emergent that comes down, not a recontacted infantile state coming back up. It is God descending, not id arising."

In my understanding, based on the findings of developmental psychology, the ego was not a mistake to be corrected. Rather, the adult personality is a step forward from pre-egoic, narcissistic childhood modes of being into healthy adult modes of being. That's not to say that the ego can become sick, which is why personal psychotherapy is so important.

A healthy ego acts as a sound launching pad for trans-egoic realization, which is always accomplished with much more grace and tact when a healthy sense of self is retained before, during, and after the process of awakening. Just because a person may realize, or even dwell in, levels of consciousness that are above and beyond the ego, the ego continues to function and play an immensely important role in the life of the individual and those in which s/he has the opportunity to be in relationship with.

Ken Wilber wrote an excellent critique of the Diamond Approach in his book "The Eye of Spirit." It is worth reading, even if only for the sake of clarity. He makes some really good points that I don't think can be overlooked. Needless to say at this point, I am not a fan of the Diamond Approach. There are much better maps out there.

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Tom Carr — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 02:10:28 GMT

his writing style, flowery language, and what seems to me to be loose use of terms (I haven't gone back and read the source stuff where he may very well define them, don't know) somehow makes my skin crawl,

I have been doing the work for 4 years. I have gotten a lot out of it. However I agree, and lots of other students would agree, that he is not a great writer. And saying that is being polite.

The actual techniques and the presence of the teacher are what have been important. I may never attempt to read one of the books again.

If you want to read about him, get What Really Matters by Tony Schwartz. Schwartz was Donald Trump's ghost writer, was turned off by all the materialism, and took several years on a quest which involved interviewing most of the well known spiritual teachers in the USA in the 90's. Those that he was most impressed by he calls the Integrators. They include Jack Kornfield, Ken Wilber and Hameed Ali (AKA A.H. Almaas)

RE: third path please help

tarin greco — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:59:47 GMT

robert thomas hindmarch:

so, its been a couple weeks and heres whats happening.
If anyone would like to say something regarding this territory or give a diagnosis please do

sure. to me, this stands out to me as the most potentially interesting part of your report:

robert thomas hindmarch:

Lots of cycles like everyone has said, but some are not whole cycles, some are only the second half, some the first, some skip around from being a little of this and a little of that.

are you starting to get the sense that any place in the cycles can lead to any other place? if so, it may be telling of something. where is it that you must be, right now, if no matter where you are, you can get anywhere else from there directly? hint: it's only ever one possible place.

insight into this aspect of the thing reveals a level of clear seeing so inclusive that to merely call it 'wide' would fall far short. it won't be a matter of incorporating strata in the sense field anymore, it's more akin to seeing it all at once (including the sensations which have thus far implied seeing). eventually, this clear seeing will lead to dispassion, which in turn will effect release (the wisdom eye). this takes a degree of tranquility, but that is what the practice engenders (it comes with dispassion).

tarin

RE: third path please help

Daniel M. Ingram — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:58:40 GMT

Realizing that I could be wrong, sounds very anagami-esque to me.

Good descriptions. I was also very fascinated with teachings on the fundamental nature of the mind then, and believe that is normal and expected.

I think I mention this somewhere in MCTB, but anyway, at some point I got to the place where, after each new full progress cycle and the new Fruition, I would feel done. Thoughts did their thing, body did its thing, field was wide open, clear, centerless, natural, and then period of time later, some disturbance would arise, some new layer of stuff, and then there would be more work to do, and the feeling of doneness would fade, and then a new cycle would be completed, and I felt really done again, and so on, time and time and time again.

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Daniel M. Ingram — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:18:43 GMT

This may simply be a personality quirk of mine, but his writing style, flowery language, and what seems to me to be loose use of terms (I haven't gone back and read the source stuff where he may very well define them, don't know) somehow makes my skin crawl, but that is probably just my own stuff, which perhaps is from my own holes, or whatever.

Regardless, somehow I had a very hard time figuring out exactly what he was saying that didn't sound like fluffy New Age fru fru whatnot and thus find it hard to line things up with the rigor I usually like, and thus I many not be much help on this one.

RE: third path please help

robert thomas hindmarch — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 03:17:16 GMT

so, its been a couple weeks and heres whats happening.
Lots of cycles like everyone has said, but some are not whole cycles, some are only the second half, some the first, some skip around from being a little of this and a little of that. as for seeing sensations where they are I feel like I can do that at any time I choose. seeing "emptiness" in real time is one of my favorite things now, like fruitions. where I used to do a lot of the "phala samapati" or whatever that someone was talking about in another thread( getting in no dog and having repeated fruitions over and over again) I now like to do a lot of seeing reality here and now. It has a distinct feel to it that Im not ready to try to discribe but it also leads to a new fruition. this new fruition presents a couple of the doors more clearly and more like daniel describes them in mctb. it is a much wider entrance and its inclusiveness leaves a much heavier after glow than any have in the past. It feels like its incorporating the entire sensate field with many subtle stata. Another indicator that anagami could have been completed is that my experience of fruition and emptiness implies alot more mahamudra and dzogchenish kinds of things. Ive been much more fascinated with the "nature of the mind" and realizing that nature (which leads to noself cessations). however the joke is that Im a drikung kagyu vajrayana practitioner so that could come with the territory. Im also very fascinated with my new understanding and fruitions/emptiness and it feels much more lucid than first or second path. the seventh and eighth jhana are much easier to access right now also. If anyone would like to say something regarding this territory or give a diagnosis please do
love, metta, tashi delek

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Chuck Kasmire — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:17:10 GMT

J S S:

I also want to add that he points out the relationship between Bruno's ideas of yoga (which I thought was brilliant by the way) and Arhat-ship. In theory the Arhat will over time gain and integrate the 'highs' of yoga naturally and can speed it up with surrender and by increasing his inner sensitivity. Can you arhats confirm this?

Which post or thread of Bruno's do you have in mind?

Thanks,
-Chuck

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

Chuck Kasmire — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:50:19 GMT

J S S:

I would like to ask the Arhats here if they would read this and see if they notice any correlation.

Hi J S S,
Yes, I find these descriptions very much relate to my own experience. Very nicely put. Thanks for the link.

Another important part of his map is the theory of holes

"whenever an essential aspect is missing or cut off from one's consciousness there results a deficiency, a hole, in its place. This hole is then filled by a part of the psychic structure that resembles the lost essential aspect. One fills or covers the deficiency with a false aspect in its place. "

Exactly! Looking back, I feel the entire awakening process is one of unfilling the holes and reconnecting with that lost essential aspect. 4th path in a sense = 20/20 vision for discovering filled in holes - the rest is left as an exercise for the arahat.

"Our personality (AKA our sense of self or "I") is just to cover up negative experiences from our past."
Yes. In my experience we in a sense recoil from the totality of our experience in an effort to avoid these negative experiences. This recoiling manifests as locked in tension in the body. Our solution is to turn away from this tension - numb the body essentially. This tension does not disappear but instead manifests as a projected world of self and other in the mind. I feel the 4 paths allow us to see this tension and process of recoiling very clearly - but they do not actually release it.

I am writing this up as an exercise to put forth my own understanding. Now I can go look more at what he has to say. Thanks for the links,
-Chuck

RE: A Better Map of Third Path

J S S — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:27:24 GMT

A Better Map of Third Path

J S S — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:18:36 GMT

Okay. So I don't really amount to everything the Arhats claim to be. I have ample evidence that I hit third path about a month ago, and I'm not going to offer any justification for why I think that. I don't think this is the time or place. What I want to offer in this discussion topic is a unique model for all of the insight path, but one that is more accurate in the hazy stages in third path and even goes over what development is like after Arhat-ship.

How would I know what development is like after Arhat-ship? Well, I don't. And this isn't my theory or map. This is something that was discovered and put forth in the psychology community by Hameed Ali (under his more famous pen name: AH Almaas). It's fascinatingly specific about spiritual progress and offers a deep understanding of human consciousness. I'm going to offer some of his basic theory (it gets very deep and complicated. He has books and books out on the entire process and as far as I know these books are only used in certain meditation groups.)

First of all, what you call Arhat-ship, he calls the Pearl Beyond Price (from now on known as the Pearl). I would like to ask the Arhats here if they would read this and see if they notice any correlation. The reason I believe they are the same thing is because of Kenneth Folks critique on van der Hut's Summary of Aziz Kristof. As a reader of AH Almaas, it is clear as diamonds that the "Heart" enlightenment (#3) is describing the same thing AH Almaas is when discussing the Pearl, and I couldn't help but notice how Kenneth seemed intimately familiar with the experience and called it Arhat-ship.

Almaas puts forth the Pearl as an ultimate goal in the spiritual process, but in his book Pearl Beyond Price, he was also able to describe some of the process that happens afterward (which should be of great interest to all Arhats on this board).

His process of enlighenment is based on the idea of Being (otherwise known as Emptiness in the theravada tradition). He talks about how one has to cultivate Essence in order to grow. He calls essence:

Essence is not an object we find within ourselves; it is the true nature of who we are when we are relaxed and authentic, when we are not pretending to be one way or another, consciously or unconsciously. Essence is the truth of our very presence, the purity of our consciousness and awareness. It is what we are in our original and undefiled beingness, the ultimate core reality of our soul. Essence is the authentic presence of our Being; it is, in fact, Being in its thatness. Different spiritual traditions have given it different names: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam called it Spirit; Buddhism calls it Buddha nature; Taoism calls it the Tao; Hinduism calls it Atman or Brahman. The various traditions differ in how they conceptualize Essence and how much they emphasize it in their teaching, but essence is always considered to be the most authentic, innate, and fundamental nature of who we are. And the experience and realization of Essence is the central task of spiritual work and development in all traditions. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 8)

Another important part of his map is the theory of holes, which he defines as such:

Theory of Holes

Our understanding that the personality of ego is an imitation of the essential person, the person of Being, can be made more clear by what we call our “theory of holes.” This perspective, which was developed in detail in our books Essence and The Void, states that whenever an essential aspect is missing or cut off from one's consciousness there results a deficiency, a hole, in its place. This hole is then filled by a part of the psychic structure that resembles the lost essential aspect. One fills or covers the deficiency with a false aspect in its place. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 96)

Our personality (AKA our sense of self or "I") is just to cover up negative experiences from our past. He goes over the whole process to recover what that sense of "I" is covering up. Its completely bloody fascinating.

I'm just touching the surface of what he has to offer. He also has theorys on A&P/DarkNight and relates them to Mahler's seperation/individualization model of ego development (in the book Pearl Beyond Price). If you check out his website you'll find lots of good resources. A good book to start out with would be his book Essence, but any other works as he introduces his material in an easy to understand manner.

Highly, highly recommended. Tell me what you think. I will answer any and all questions to the best of my ability.

RE: Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characterist

Daniel M. Ingram — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:36:44 GMT

All sensations naturally showing themselves.

RE: Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characterist

Daniel M. Ingram — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:36:04 GMT

Steady keeping at it every second, every sensation, including tiredness, fatigue, drowsiness, boredom and any other sensations that might comprise burning out. They too are objects for insight.

RE: Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characterist

Dark Night Yogi — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:06:45 GMT

Yes thats right i dont do noting much. I do but more softly when im stuck or Dark night

I feel my center deep in the upper abdomen/bottom of the lungs

my to do: do more lying down meditation/try lying down meditation duringfree meditation time. stretch my legs on the bed every so often while meditating. (w/c i couldnt pull off well in the hall). try to sit in the front row so ill feel like everyone is watching me and do better.

this time around no more evening fruit.

question:during the times where ur in equanimity and your chi is strong, your sensations are very subtle(like the point where you can sweep fast and thru your spine), would you really push it or should you conserve energy. these r the times i often push more, and end up burning out

thanks Daniel and Nikolai,
Cheers!

RE: Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characterist

Nikolai S Halay — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:50:26 GMT

Aaah that makes sense. I seem to be doing a lot of that at the moment. Thanks for the clarification.

RE: Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characterist

Daniel M. Ingram — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:28:36 GMT

For most, the middle of one's head. For some, the middle of one's chest.

Regardless, all through every sensation in the full volume of the experience field.

RE: Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characterist

Nikolai S Halay — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:06:40 GMT

Daniel M. Ingram:

First: resolve to get third.
Second: notice that all phenomena are transient and aware where they are in a wide open, centerless way.
Third: see all sensations all through the center, including everything to do with practicing, effort and all of that come and go.

Hi Daniel,

Could you clarify what you mean b y seeing the sensations all through the center? What do you mean when you use the word center?

Thanks,

Nick

RE: Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characterist

Daniel M. Ingram — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:53:36 GMT

If you have second and are going for third, the precise technique is not so important, but some things to watch for can help:

First: resolve to get third.
Second: notice that all phenomena are transient and aware where they are in a wide open, centerless way.
Third: see all sensations all through the center, including everything to do with practicing, effort and all of that come and go.

None of this is contrary to Goenka instructions.

Further, were you on a mahasi retreat and they assessed you to have second path, you would be unlikely to be given noting practice, unless something caused you to flounder and thus you needed to get unstuck, but instead would be given something much more direct: see the Three Characteristics of every and all phenomena from the time you first woke up in the morning to the time you went to sleep at night, directly, completely, totally, all through everything, in every instant.

If you are actually second, you don't need noting unless you really get stuck or just really like it and want to add it in. It would be like going to college and spending time reviewing the fact that "C" "A" "T" spells "CAT". You already know "C" "A" "T" spells "CAT". Time to read Shakespeare.

RE: Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characterist

Dark Night Yogi — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:31:11 GMT

thanks nikolai!
during and when i got back from retreat (more evident when i got back from retreat)
regarding the sensing body vibrations, i felt i could not see my thoughts
it felt sorta alien, because im used to living in my head (My personality type is INTP). i felt so in touch
with the real world and my body, i didn't feel like me at all.
I observed the equivalent sensations to the body of each negative thought i had and they were powerful and obvious, not
something i was used to.

I remember equanimity states doing noting and doing Goenka, noting felt more 3D and balanced like IMAX, Goenka equanimity felt like the outside world
was crushing me.

Habits i got from Mahasi Noting was noting other peoples' suffering, and being pretty sensitive to it to the point that
being with a lot of people or in public, i get to note everyones' suffering and restlessness and have it affect me.

From Goenka, i got the habit of staying with the breath, multi-tasking. Anchoring with the breath and interacting with the world at the same time.
great style. isnt It actually not being here and now. You feel less alive or engaged, yet more at peace. You have less clarity with outside stuff
I consulted with the asst. teacher if this was the right thing to do and it was exactly and i was a bit surprised becoz of my previous style of
only allowing one object. he said, eat while being aware of the breath and try to be aware of both.

maybe thats what makes the music/Chanting Ok makes you get used to 2 objects. and also there to make other
techniques harder to pull off and of course to develop equanimity. perhaps goenka is really clever in designing the rules just like how zen has these
rules to trick the students

though maybe my sensitivity to sound is strong, is it just me, i got 1st path doing sound, and i used to visualize the physical space that the sounds create
(like sonar?) i thhink sound is a good object. it has the right amount of stimulation compared to breath but not enough to make u restless. also maybe its more natural becoz of our evolution for us to be like watchmen. equanimity and sound go together intuitively

RE: Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characterist

Nikolai S Halay — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:55:38 GMT

Although I am one to talk. I got 1st path by doing my own thing on a Goenka retreat after 9 years of following instructions. But lately I have thought how beneficial the Goenka technique has been for me. It has made me utlra-senstive to every sensation on the body in and out, at any time (that might be a bit of a path influence) but I think being aware of every vibration on the body wherever attention goes will help your practice a great deal, if you aren't already feeling the subtlest of vibrations on the body already. It was the ultimate jumping ground and preparation to take things to another level for me and I think it is still influencing my experience of the paths and jhana etc..

I say, why not just follow the instructions to see where it takes you. It could get interesting and if you feel it's not benefiting you, do what you have to do to get more enlightened.

Give it a chance. You are already 2nd path! No need to rush it too much. My experience tells me this thing is going to get to 3rd path in it's own god damn time.

Have an awesome course DNYogi!!!!

Lots of metta mixed with fruition bliss,

Going to 10 day Goenka retreat. Thinking of doing Noting/3 characteristics

Dark Night Yogi — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:43:28 GMT

Has anyone tried not following the Goenka instructions?

I sat one goenka course before and i found the technique very good. It surprised me.
However, I attained 1st and 2nd path doing the Mahasi/3 Characteristics. Going for 3.
I assume that this will make practice more powerful and progress faster in this retreat if i use this.
I have never tried doing this for more than 2 1/2 days straight so it would be something new to do Mahasi/3Characteristics
for that long.

Any advice on how to approach equanimity and aiming to get a path, with the cycling faster than pre-stream entry, where you stay in equanimity until you fall back down. Now, theres a time-limit before you're going back to the 3 characteristics again after a 2nd path fruiton

Thanks
Metta

RE: third path please help

tarin greco — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:45:42 GMT

hi robert,

as what i did for 3rd path was more of the same (i went for seeing the whole picture, here and now), you did answer your own question after all.

i'll also add that the following things were useful: seeing the sensations that imply focus, that imply out-of-focus, that imply focusing, that imply looking, that imply perspective, that imply distortion, that imply distance, that imply duration, that imply directness of experience.. and of course, the usual suspects of sensations that imply things like space, super-space, emptiness, silence, luminosity, presence, etc etc.

daniel's advice in his most recent above post is spot on, come back to it and read it again periodically until you're confident you know what it means and thus can do it yourself (with the confidence that understanding instills).

and forget the notion that you have to sit to do this, if you really want to get it you should be doing it in everyday life.. sufficient obsession is sufficient. ok, good luck.

tarin

RE: third path please help

robert thomas hindmarch — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:12:39 GMT

Another question. forgive me if this sounds strange but im about to take a nap and it just occurred to me that this could be very important.
this is greatly directed at tarin but also you to daniel
just a few months after I was convinced id gotten stream entry and could prove it to myself with the criteria in mctb, I read on the old site tarins alternative for doing second path. and although i did make a lot of time for formal practice, i colored it with the technique he describes. this technique sounds very similar to what is suggested for third path and tarin even says that in the article. how would one go about 3rd then. if that was my practice for second (which is just a matter of rising through the cycle) would i just deepen it now, just go for seeing through the whole picture. I guess ive sorted answered my question a bit, but just out of curiosity how did you do third path tarin? just an extension and completion of what you practiced for 2nd. now my original question is actually sounding silly after processing it but please do tell what you did for third tarin

RE: third path please help

Daniel M. Ingram — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 07:40:22 GMT

If you are in third path territory, and without implying anything about that: cycles and cycles and cycles, big cycles, little cycles, interrupted cycles, cycles where you push forward, where you seem to retreat, cycles that lead nowhere, cycles that really shift things big-time, and more cycles.

Fuzzy stuff where you want jhana does ring very strongly Dark Night, but which one at that point can be nearly impossible to figure out and doesn't matter: if you are an anagami: either you saw things are empty, luminous, not you, not self, not other, natural, panoramic, clear, centerless, or you did not. That's the only game in town, really, and that's the challenge to the practicing anagami. Uncovering every single subtle and more subtle and more subtle and closer and more intimate and more you and more near and more vulnerable and more hidden layer of stuff that seems to be pretending to be subject and seeing it how it is: that's the job of the practicing anagami. It can be a long, complex, strange road with many plateaus and valleys along the way. Settling into and syncing with this moment, or better yet realizing it is already synced, regardless of how it presents or any of our ideals for it: that is the work of the practicing anagami.

RE: third path please help

robert thomas hindmarch — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:12:19 GMT

im also wondering if the nanas present themselves differently at third path, maybe in a more subtle background sort of way.
I sat the other day and was seeing through all these subject patterns in a new way very easily. then yesterday and today my concentration has been fuzzier and there has been quite a bit more of the buzzy, disconcerting sensations, and just an overall buzziness with my attention. it did not appear like the first two a&ps, much more inclusive and less rapturous. Im guessing that im dark nighting right now becuase I had a serious urge today to be in jhana. im pretty sure actually, all the signs are there, its just that the a&p presented it self so different this time around. has anyone had this experience, does it sound familiar?

RE: third path please help

robert thomas hindmarch — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:05:40 GMT

thanks again tarin.
when i go into the third samatta jhana i get this buzzing in whats the "center" of perception. it really bugs me sometimes, and other times its pretty awsome, like another reality.

i have been feeling like im seeing through just about the whole picture. when i sit, i can make an effort and then ill see the subject sensations that were "making the effort" then the sensations that "saw through" and it just keeps going further and further back until i feel like all thats seen through and the percieving of emptiness and go from the front, to the back, upside down etc. very panoramic and with out a struggle, as long as im not in a conversation or jamming out to the radio in the car hahaha.

I seem to think the practice of vipassana is different for me now. im guessing this might be the emptiness ive heard you seasoned practicioners refer when talking about third path. its not like previously where i felt i was not seeing the whole picture in first and second. in first definitelly, and still in second i felt like it was only part of the fractal, but what im sensing now is a very wide complete seeing through, and of course i can see through the sensations implying that but it wont help me articulate this.

RE: How aware are you of the cycling process?

Nikolai Stephen Halay — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:12:22 GMT

Excellent!

Thankyou Tarin and not just for the reply. Your advice awhile back when I talked about witnessing the images and sensations of "I" was to observe space, anticipation, facination, etc and all those subtler things that prop up this"I" . This is all I could remember when I wondered what to do. And I believe it's what got me over the line. I got to the totality of the experience. Amazing!

And I will see what goes on around this ball of energy and post a reply.

When I think of who helped me , it is you and Daniel who I feel the most gratitude to. All my merits to you!

Nick

RE: third path please help

tarin greco — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:11:33 GMT

thanks for the descriptions, and you're welcome. based on what you've written, here's two things to consider:

when hints of new territory show up, pay close, moment-to-moment attention to the specifics of the patterns, picking out their bits and pieces for an increasingly detailed view. this can really enliven and awaken your mind,

i also recommend hanging out in the 3rd jhana more, paying attention to how it affects the qualities of your mind (noticing the sensations that make them up), as well as the specific bodily sensations, particularly ones that imply wideness or hollowness or fuzziness or some kind of distortion. what is cooling about this territory can be creepy, but what is creepy can be thrilling, which thrill can lead to surety can lead to equanimity.. its a matter of perspective (be sure to also notice the sensations that imply perspectival shifts). and as always, be sure to balance energy and tranquility so you're neither excessively jumpy/reactive or spacing out, either of which can cause you to miss the good stuff.

let us know if that's useful

tarin

RE: How aware are you of the cycling process?

tarin greco — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 01:13:37 GMT

hi nikolai,

i notice the thing with the sensations moving up through the body too (cooling off as goes higher, and then disappearing/integrating into the sensations that imply space/background/mental phenomena before resulting in a cessation moment) ... but i also went through almost a decade of u ba khin/goenka style vipassana (with an almost-exclusive emphasis on bodily sensations and vibrations). i know path-winners who haven't/don't experience this stuff, so it may be the result of the style of training or model of practice and progress, or a personal orientation, or both.

a tip you may find handy as you are inclined to notice this: as it moves, pay attention not just to the most obvious aspects of it, but look around it (like around its edges) and see if you can spot subtler stuff happening at the same time. how does the quality of the sensation change? how does the upward progression through the centre of your body affect its surrounding areas, like the periphery/the surface of your body? is there a sense of interplay between the sensations that imply the core (where you feel the ball of energy, as you call it) and sensations of the periphery?

tarin

How aware are you of the cycling process?

Nikolai Stephen Halay — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:57:08 GMT

Having complete awareness of the cycles

Hello all,

I posted this on Kenneth's site but noone is replying so wonder if anyone here would.

My name is Nick. I just finished a 10 day Goenka course 4 days agao. Some of you may have read my account in Dharma Diagnosis.

I am fully aware of every cycle which am going through. And that awareness is purely physical. I have practised in the Goenka tradition for the past nine years. I feel every sensation on the body. Or rather wherever the mind is placed I feel vibration there. And as we speak there is [pleasant sensation all around. So for me AP is feeling the body as a mass of flowing pleasant vibrations. Now from reading other people's account of experiencing their cycles, it seems some are not so sensitve to what seems to be going on inside the body. This is what I see.

There seems to be a ball of energy which makes its way up the spine or close to it and stops at each of the places that correspond to chakras but it is starnge how the cylces seem to pass and stop at the exact chakra spots. Daniel has told me that talking about chakras in my experience probably indicates they are AP events but I certainly get fruitions at the end of a cycle. The bliss waves are undeniable. The sensations eminating from those spots in order as this ball of energy stops at each one and cleans it out so to speak and is clearly seen. This really corresponds with what Goenka says about burning out the sankharas. It really feels like it is clearing a path up the body and at the moment it spends a heap of time at the forehead . On the course I realsied I could manipulate it and stop it at a point on the body and watch it burn out , or what felt like a burning out of the unpleasantness there. So it starts at the bottom close to one's anus then up to the stomach, which I always assume is the fear knowledge then up to the solar plexus point, then the chest, the throat , by now I have passed into this equanimity stage and the sensations shift into subtler pleasantness almost a cooler feel. Then it passes to behind the eyes and stays at the forehead then up to the crown and then I have a frution. I see this clearly and without any need to feel the mental reaction to each of the flows of sensation to be witnessed.
For years everytime I had a strong negative reaction, I was able to pinpoint where on the body that reaction was stemming from. I was almost always focused on the chest and throat area and at times when scared the stomach. That is what Goenka's method is all about.

So is it possible that people who have a ttained path are not as concentrated? How much are people aware of the cycles? To what clarity? and what is observed?

RE: third path please help

robert thomas hindmarch — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:30:55 GMT

wow, that is just the sort of experience I was looking for someone to share. I posed the question without much discription of my own personal insight territory because I remember the hurricane ranch conversation and how third path was stated as being "a completely different animal than the first two". so I was looking for some sort of reframing of perspective than what Ive been working with. but today I decided to log my sit anyway.

jan 9th
all sessions are 20 min with a 2 min period in between to be mindful and log
1st
"Im not even concentrating "on anything" in particular and the entire field is vibrating and disapearing before I can say "click"
2nd
concentration was fuzzy and I started to notice the third nana arise but not all the way to a&p. then thoughts and tensions proliferated in awareness
3rd
with increased concentration physical sensations of excitement and anticipation became strong (due to events in daily life) along with some guilt fear and shame
4th
concentration went subtler yet again but towards the end got fuzzier and dream like. I was noticing extremely subtle subject patterns way in the previous background. this I believe is a new cycle coming forth, where session one was the old review. its as if im bordering a new a&p.
5th (was about 30 min or little longer)
I started with a metta practice that lead very quickly to the third samatta jhana (which has always bothered me through out my life. had many accidental trips there that scared me as a child). I then did yidam and guru yoga with the vipassana/dzogchen/witness perspective, so I was noticing even more subtle subject sensations (there so subtle that its actually just one or so formless sensations that somehow " imply or tie in" other sensations, which i guess is what makes the subject pattern) as there are much more going on since im practicing yidam and guru yoga. then I sat for a little while back in my subtle vipassana practice.

Im understanding this whole fractal thing a lot more, and how things just keep getting further back and wider and wider and wider

thanky you both Daniel and Tarin for your concern and assistance. you have both helped me progress many many many times that your not even aware of just from how youve both openly described your practice and what youve gone through.
love, metta, tashi delek