| | I was over at KennethFolkDharma posting about enlightenment, Rigpa, ultimate reality, with my attempt to simplify things in a section called The Controversy (see link here: http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/3329416/Impermanence%2C+No-Self+and+Suffering?maxResults=20) and it lead to the standard complexities that arise around this perennially complex and difficult topic.
As I got nothing like the responses I wanted there, I thought I would post something back on home turf over here that explores some of this from my current point of view and practice, with a bit of history thrown in.
I remember the period in my practice from 1997 to 2003 April when I was a self-declaired anagami, could see emptiness in realtime, could get Nirodha Samapatti (Cessation of Perception and Feeling), had all 8 standard jhanas, chanced into the Pure Land jhanas but didn't know what to call them, and was really, really into dharma practice and my whole dharma trip.
I read book after book, poured through texts both for confirmation of what I was perceiving and also for pointers as to how to finish things up, including particular attention to Mahayana, Vajrayaha, Zen, and Vedantic texts, as well as Ceremonial Magick, Shamanistic texts. Most of the time things seemed pretty straightforward, empty, luminous, effortless, centerless, some very obvious mix of transcendence and intimacy, and I worked more and more to stay in a way of perceiving things that seemed right, clear, straightforward, direct, literal, non-dual, etc. By the end of that period, I would spend weeks thinking I had finished the thing up, very impressed with my insights, only to have a new A&P arise, and the thing would go round again with a new insight cycle, and during the Dark Night period doubts would set in as new, clearly not-that-well-illuminated territory would arise, I would see it the way I had learned to see layer after layer of experience, a new Fruition would arise, I would feel great, clear, like a spiritual superstar, and then around again.
During this period, luminosity was fascinating, emptiness was fascinating, centerlessness was fascinating, my jhanic abilities were fascinating, the whole grand quest, teachings, subtleties, and the like were amazing, so impressive to me, and it was a time of great profundity, arrogance, occasional confusion, rare humility, and lots of very clear, wonderful insights into the direct workings of experience and the mind. I relished my deep and profound understanding of very subtle concepts and teachings. It was during this period that I wrote most of MCTB, and these fascinations, perspectives, abilities and issues show through it clearly. Just so I am clear on this, I am not claiming not to be arrogant now, as that would be really delusional, but there is something about it that is different now, and seeing the last thing had this humbling quality to it in some ways.
I state all of this both to try to figure out what is happening with some of the people I see posting about various topics, as it is my nature to try to figure out where people are and what they may need, as well as to contrast it with what came next and to try to explain my current practice and reality as best I understand it, and explore how such apparently different visions of dharma practice and results can arise in people who have come up on what superficially appear to be so much the same traditions.
What came after April 2003 on that last retreat was something that was very different in most ways from what came before, and marked the largest shift in my practice since stream entry. It has taken years to try to get a sense of the full implications of the thing, but these are the highlights:
1) No longer does there seem to be any interest in the highest teachings, the rare texts, concepts like Rigpa, Maha Ati, True Self, Emptiness, and the like in the same way there is before. Before I was always seeking some concept to help me see something final, to verify something, fill some need, or provide a door to something even more amazing. Now, everything seems really literal, direct, obvious, clear, straightforward, and I can't come up with any ultimate concept that seems more profound than the obvious, basic, often relatively boring sensate world as it does its thing. The drive is gone. To pick up a dharma book and read it has to involve something related to my daily life practice or it has no appeal at all.
2) Before, I really liked the jhanas in a way that was beyond my like for most things. Now I look at them as something that I do to help heal, support and nourish this Daniel, as they do good things, and thus, whereas before they viewed more like someone would view a pleasurable drug, now I think of them as just another component of healthy living, like nutritious food, the vitamins I take, drinking enough water so I don't get more kidney stones, etc. In this way, something really different has arisen in my relationship to them, and, just like my vitamins, I find myself having to remember to use them for what they do rather than thinking, "First thing when I get home from work: Nirodha Samapatti, Baby!" as I used to do.
3) Before, there seemed to be options. Even at the best of my seeing emptiness and effortlessness in realtime, there seemed to be options. Now reality is this non-negotiable, complete, no-way-out sort of thing that simply does exactly what it does as it likes all the time, and whatever arises is simply it, however it is. This is a very different way of viewing things, and has profound implications, but the experience of the thing has taken years to get used to, and that getting used to it is just part of it, arising in its time and on its own, with this Daniel just being a part of that. Thus, whatever experience, rapture, perspective, state, stage, sense of non-duality, appreciation of emptiness, luminosity, degree of mindfulness, etc that arises is just that moment's thing as it is, nothing more, nothing less. This is something like the way things were before practicing at all, but with Fruitions, States, Stages and a whole host of previously unavailable ways that reality can present itself added to the mix.
4) No-Dog and Some-Dog seem fundamentally the same to me, whereas, for a brief period, No-Dog seemed like The Bomb, The Answer, The Ticket, and Some-Dog seemed so last week.
5) Training in Morality seems to be 90% of the practice at the moment, whereas for most of my dharma practice insight and concentrations seemed to be everything and morality was just something I did to support those most of the time. I say 90% due to the next point:
6) There are these energetic disturbances in the body-mind that arise sometimes and are unpleasant in varying degrees. Sometimes they are very short-lived, other times some aspect of the pattern morphs and changes and lingers for days to weeks. They are usually in the stomach, chest, neck or head, or some mix of these, and their frequencies, qualities, specifics, locations, and other aspects vary also. Sometimes they are clearly related to some issue or life-challenge, sometimes they seem completely random. These seem only superficially related to any sort of insight cycle and much more about something I have come to think of as an integrated psychological-emotional-energetic-body-mind field thing. The solution to these in general seems to involve patience, time, living well, honesty with myself in a relative way, healthy living, and mindfulness of the qualities of the thing as they arise and change. Most of my reading, practice, and interest these days has to do with these aspects of things, but as they seem to encompass my life in a broad way, this is a broad practice that is inherently integrated with daily life. In general, as they move through, I feel something good has happened and something has been learned or worked out. This seems to be my cutting edge of practice at the moment and it has been for years now, sort of a fusion various aspects of human growth and development. It is a very intuitive thing most of the time, and talking about it in more specifics is like talking about the qualities of light on water or the flight of a swarm of insects. I find most of my time going into things like work, building a straw-bale house, working on my relationships with people, helping my family, playing music, cooking food, thinking about how to help people coming up in this stuff, and some going to these energetic body-mind-emotional-psychology things. This is radically different emphasis from my practice before, where technical dharma practice came first, and the rest was seen as swirling around that for better or for worse.
I say all this as I see a number of people, most of whom have moved to KennethFolkDharma.org, who are fascinated with attaining to Rigpa, emptiness, joyful states, high concepts and rare teachings, plunging, debating, fascinated with all this, and it reminds me so much of my practice for those anagami years, and I so much want to try to tell them a skillful way to frame all this that at once brings it all back home and yet doesn't deny the beauty of all of that, and I am finding it really, really difficult to land this well with any of them, leading me to the conclusion that they will have to find it out for themselves.
There are lots of ways to interpret all this, and I am willing to play Devil's Advocate with myself as I make this list:
1) I have attained something that those who are still at what I call anagami haven't realized yet, with some of them calling "arahatship" what I called "anagram". As pointed out before by others including Kenneth, the irony of the title anagami being used in a pejorative way is clear and humorous and enviable. However, this clearly explains why they seem to be going through what I went through and have the same fascinations and difficulties that I did during that period I call "anagami" and yet can't seem to understand what I am saying as they are not there yet, just as I couldn't have understood what I am talking about now when I was in that territory either. This also explains why they have such strong reactions to Tarin and Trent, both of whom claim arahatship and describe things very much like what I describe, and when the three of us talk about this stuff, we are on similar pages much more than those over at KennethFolkDharma are. I am not sure how much of this rift is cultural, social or conceptual and how much is about divergent or disparate practice and attainments, but the effect is clear and real and worthy of serious consideration.
2) I have no idea what they are talking about. Haquan assumes that one must have had Rigpa pointed out in some specific way for one to find it. Kenneth, who says Rigpa and arahatship are two different phenomena, seems to think that with arahatship, one has the best platform to stabilize Rigpa, whereas I claim that arahatship is Rigpa, stabilized and done without other options. Either I have no idea what the Rigpa they are talking about is, having not run into it in 6.5 years since what I call arahatship, or they are thinking the emptiness and luminosity thing I saw on and off and worked to stabilize during my anagami period is Rigpa and they simply can't or don't want to understand my descriptions of that territory and make the connection.
3) We simply are both describing the same thing and using words really badly to do so, so we can't understand each other, but as the descriptions diverge so widely, and the attitudes and relationships to the thing are so different, it is hard to imagine this option.
4) There are parallel or divergent tracks of awakening. I loathe this argument with the whole of my being, but admit the possibility and my possible inability to see it.
5) Some other explanation I can't imagine at this point.
Some over there define Rigpa as precluding or excluding dualistic thought. I claim that Rigpa does not and cannot, with thoughts or any other experiences being just more things that arise in the clear light of wisdom, as thoughts clearly arose before the understanding of Rigpa, so how could something that is one definition of ultimate reality exclude any aspects of reality that could arise?
I put his out there realizing that I will probably be really frustrated with what follows, as this topic hits so close to people's senses of identities in multiple ways and aspects, and that tends to produce strong reactions, but perhaps something good will come out of the continued attempt to make sense of this apparently faction-producing and controversial issue and how our practice and good communication can help clarify these things. |