RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 4:20 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 11:00 AM

Personality in the Absence of a Self

Posts: 487 Join Date: 1/23/12 Recent Posts
As people who are enlightened know, your personality will carry on just fine without you. A teacher even told me that the personality is enhanced and becomes even larger when the illusion of the self is no longer in the way. She described having met Dipa Ma and Mahasi Sayadaw on separate occasions in the early 80s. Dipa Ma was late arriving, because she couldn't debark the plane without blessing everyone (and perhaps everything) on it. She radiated compassion and metta. Mahasi was different. People referred to him as Mr. Void (behind his back!), because he was inscrutable and would give terse answers to any questions. He also had a habit of (unintentionally) sneaking up on people, because he was so quiet. ("Positively vampiric", indeed.)

Point being, both of these individuals are highly enlightened, but they have very distinct personalities. Enlightenment does not turn you into a generic, purely equanimous personality. People retain their respective styles of interacting with the world and other people. They retain even strong likes and dislikes.

Unfortunately, at least in Theravada and Theravada-inspired traditions, there seems to be very little understanding of how enlightenment affects the personality and how enlightenment is experienced by different personality types. The best Theravada brings to the table is the 10 fetters, each of which is supposed to fall away at different stages. But there are many problems with this model.

First of all, the fetters themselves are abstract. The fetters are: identity view, doubt, ritual attachment, sensual desire, ill will, material lust, immaterial lust, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance. Each of these could have many meanings and interpretations, and it's hardly clear what they meant in their original context. Also, some personalities, by their nature, are going to exhibit some of these traits more than others. I know people that, at least in the opinion of many, aren't at all conceited. It didn't take enlightenment to accomplish that; it's just how they are. You could make a case like this for many of the fetters, and it's owing to the fact that they're not at all concretely specified.

Second, it's not clear that enlightenment really does result in the fetters going away. This issue has been covered at length in the pragmatic dharma community, so I won't bother to expand on it.

Third, this is a negative description of what happens to the personality as it undergoes enlightenment. It purports to show what drops out of the picture. It doesn't show what new, positive traits arise; nor does it attempt to show what happens to already existing personality traits once enlightenment has taken place.

Fourth, they're not really personality descriptions at all. Personality has more to do with your style of interacting with the world and with other people. It's a general framework you use for coping with things. It's your characteristic reactions to people and things. It's your particular sense of humor. It's the kind of people who draw you in and the kind of people who repulse you. So not only can't the fetters account for the personality; it's not clear they're even meant to do that.

Pragmatic dharma has largely dispensed with the fetters as a description of enlightenment. It has also differentiated spiritual development from Western psychology. This was a good and necessary antidote to the extent to which dharma had become identified, not with actual awakening, but with a specific subculture (60s anti-consumerist, psychotherapeutic, liberal culture). This made it possible to put aside for a moment the project of making a Really Nice Person (which is what a lot of American dharma seems to be about) and to speak directly and clearly to the awakening experience itself. This experience was now understood, not in terms of being "nicer", but rather of being able to see clearly through any notion of a center-point in one's experience, to stop for good the illusion that one sensation could perceive another sensation.

And yet, undergoing this process really does seem to do something to the personality! The problem is, we don't know exactly what it does. We're no longer expected, as enlightened people, never to feel or express a dark emotion or hold a strong opinion. We don't confuse it with being a bland coward. But we're left with something, and it's not clear what we're left with. One person might say, "I'm nicer to my spouse." But some people were always nice anyway. Another might say, "I don't get angry anymore." But what about a person who naturally denies their anger? And another might say, "My suffering has decreased." Whatever THAT means!

(I really, truly, deeply, sincerely wish that we, the pragmatic dharma community, could stop using the word "suffering" as a translation of "dukkha". It's confusing and misleading and vague and melodramatic for so many different reasons. But that's another post...)

I had a discussion with someone who said that after stream-entry, her anger noticeably decreased. I thought that was really interesting, because my anger hadn't seemed to decrease at all! It made me briefly and casually doubt the extent to which I was "really enlightened".

But then given more time and more paths, I realized, my anger isn't decreasing a whole lot; however, I'm less bothered by contradictions that come up in my experience and in my practice. My tendency to withdraw from something just because it's confusing or because I don't understand it has diminished. And for me - a person who really needs to figure things out before actually doing them - this is huge! Having that kind of confidence to figure things out as I go along is a quantum jump in terms of capability. And I know it's related to meditating, because the trait is most pronounced with regard to practice and with regard to things directly connected with practice.

So the point is, the effects of enlightenment on the personality are going to depend upon what your personality is like in the first place. The fact that you do not perceive one particular trait to be diminishing or increasing is meaningless. Humans aren't collections of isolated traits. And that's the problem with the fetters. What reason is there to believe that, by doing this practice, you're going to see your "sensual desire" (whatever that means in this context), decrease, as though someone reached in and started turning the volume down on something? That's just not what humans are like. (Now, if you happen to live in a monastery far away from members of the opposite sex, then I could see that happen, but that's caused, in part, by the context in which the whole thing is taking place.)

Regardless of what the personality actually is, it at least has the appearance of being an organic process that develops along some trajectory. So the tricks are: (a) figuring out what the different personality types are, and (b) seeing what happens to those personalities as the body-mind in which the personality resides wakes up.

I think this is basically what Riso & Hudson were trying to do with their version of the Enneagram. Each enneatype has nine distinct health levels. As spiritual practice advances, you find yourself at higher health levels. Looking at the health levels for my own type, I can see how this might have happened. What they're giving you is a map - much like our progress of insight map - except it's for your personality as the process of awakening unfolds.

Unfortunately the foundations of the enneagram are bizarre and highly complex. There are plenty of ways to divide up personality. Why should we prefer this particular one over others? And what if you don't like numerology, deadly "sins", or romantic notions of Cosmic Consciousness? These are foundations for the theory. Still, the maps R&H provide are a good clue for how to proceed - if it could be set on a more secure foundation.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 11:49 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 11:49 AM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Great post. I've been thinking about Enneagrams but it looked so complex I haven't tried. Do you think doing the Riso Hudson test is of value in improving communication with others?
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Jane Laurel Carrington, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 12:33 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 12:33 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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I find that right after a path (I've had two) there's a honeymoon, when my anger disappears. I just let things be. But as I begin a new path, the old patterns gradually come back. It's kind of disconcerting, really, but I just re-read MCTB, and Daniel pointed out that the fallacious belief that we are "done" with our patterns haunts us well into the middle paths and bites us in the back again and again. This just happened to me last week. I have no idea what full awakening will bring. At the moment, I'm unable to evaluate my progress in my never-ending quest to stop being a jerk (the first training) other than to say that I'm more sensitive to it, perhaps. But I don't know. My husband seems to think I'm easier to live with than I used to be. Apparently, the best way to get a clue is to ask those close to you, not rely on your own perceptions.
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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 12:40 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 12:40 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Richard Zen:
Great post. I've been thinking about Enneagrams but it looked so complex I haven't tried. Do you think doing the Riso Hudson test is of value in improving communication with others?


No, not really. The RHETI at least has the advantage of being more accurate than other tests that I've seen. But in about 99.99% of the cases I've seen, people don't use knowledge of their type to do anything other than solidify the sense of self and rationalize their shit behaviors. (I'm overstating it, but it's not that far from the truth.)
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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 12:46 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 12:45 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Jane Laurel Carrington:
My husband seems to think I'm easier to live with than I used to be. Apparently, the best way to get a clue is to ask those close to you, not rely on your own perceptions.


Hah! I guess that's the ultimate test of sila - and one which, being a bachelor, I happily cannot submit to!

I didn't realize how far I had come until I started mixing in some 3rd gear practice. As an experiment, walk around for the rest of today, treating everything as though you're already enlightened. You have come pretty far along the path, so it's not like you're totally making it up.

When I did this, I found it evoked very specific feelings and attitudes, none of which seemed scripted or clichéd. In fact, it was that experience which put the thought in my mind a few weeks ago to write this post.
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Jane Laurel Carrington, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:00 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:00 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Fitter Stoke:

Hah! I guess that's the ultimate test of sila - and one which, being a bachelor, I happily cannot submit to!


You've got friends and coworkers, don't you?

Fitter Stoke:
I didn't realize how far I had come until I started mixing in some 3rd gear practice. As an experiment, walk around for the rest of today, treating everything as though you're already enlightened. You have come pretty far along the path, so it's not like you're totally making it up.

When I did this, I found it evoked very specific feelings and attitudes, none of which seemed scripted or clichéd. In fact, it was that experience which put the thought in my mind a few weeks ago to write this post.


Hm. I've always thought it was an exercise in self-deception to try to act the way you imagine an enlightened person would act, even for enlightened people. I have, in fact, done some of that, and what happens is my shadow side gets in the last laugh.

Besides, from your first post in this thread, I might get the impression that there's no one way such a person could act. Please enlighten me! emoticon
Jason , modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:00 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:00 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Thanks for a clear and concise summation of this confusing subject. I often wonder if there is some practice or study that should supplement my meditation to help bring the benefits more into daily life and the realm of personality. This impulse, so far, just leads to casting about for answers that many are selling but none can provide (that I know of). Of course, it's really just about me trying to escape the limitations of my life and personality (yes, suffering!). I'm still looking for conditions that can supply me with happiness. There's a lot of delusion in that obviously, and yet it seems like there must be more one can do in the realm of sila to make life and the world a bit more hospitable. Somewhere between Tantra and Tony Robbins, the answer lies.
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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:19 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:19 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Jane Laurel Carrington:
Fitter Stoke:

Hah! I guess that's the ultimate test of sila - and one which, being a bachelor, I happily cannot submit to!


You've got friends and coworkers, don't you?


Actually, not long after finishing the second path, I asked some people if they thought I had changed at all, and I was told I seemed less excitable.

"I'll drink excessively to that!"

Hm. I've always thought it was an exercise in self-deception to try to act the way you imagine an enlightened person would act, even for enlightened people. I have, in fact, done some of that, and what happens is my shadow side gets in the last laugh.

Besides, from your first post in this thread, I might get the impression that there's no one way such a person could act. Please enlighten me! emoticon


Right! Exactly!

Okay, let me make the practice more explicit, so you don't go out with a riding crop, swatting people and making people kneel before you.

Sit quietly, get relaxed like you're about to do some insight work, but just say to yourself something like, "I am already fully enlightened" or "I'm already there" or "I made it" and then just watch what feelings, thoughts, or whatever come out. And then hang out for a few minutes and then do it again and see what comes up.

The first time I did it, the immediate reaction was "Pff," but then after about 15 minutes of it, some very definite impressions/feelings/thoughts whatever started coming up. It was nothing earth-shattering, but I was surprised to see how much I already understood.
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Jane Laurel Carrington, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:28 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:28 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Sounds good--I'll give it a try. Can't hurt, right?
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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:40 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:36 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Jason B:
Thanks for a clear and concise summation of this confusing subject. I often wonder if there is some practice or study that should supplement my meditation to help bring the benefits more into daily life and the realm of personality. This impulse, so far, just leads to casting about for answers that many are selling but none can provide (that I know of). Of course, it's really just about me trying to escape the limitations of my life and personality (yes, suffering!). I'm still looking for conditions that can supply me with happiness. There's a lot of delusion in that obviously, and yet it seems like there must be more one can do in the realm of sila to make life and the world a bit more hospitable. Somewhere between Tantra and Tony Robbins, the answer lies.


Well, I don't know how far along the path you are, but I'll give a synopsis of how it's been for me. I didn't really notice anything for the first two paths. It was about a month after the third path that the baseline started to shift a bit, almost like the cup had gotten full and was now overflowing off the cushion. But it was actually a little more deliberate than that, because I started using various non-dual techniques (e.g., see the practice I suggested to Laurel). Then things started getting interesting.

One thing I've noticed is that, whereas before there was this oscillation or cycling with the practice (progress of insight stuff), now there's a cycling with the personality, too. I very rarely experience any ñana-related stuff off-cushion. It's just not something I'm used to. But now there's a kind of cycle going on with the personality. It's nothing as detailed as the progress of insight. It's more like an opening and a closing. When it's open, there's a drastic lack of anxiety, and boredom is impossible. It's just short of a peak experience. It's just blissful. And when it's closed, there's all the usual dark emotions, except now the volume is turned up to 11. But if I don't let it bother me that much, it changes direction and opens again.

It's interesting that you bring up Vajrayana, because those traditions, for whatever their difficulties, seem a lot more concrete than Theravada-based ones (pragmatic dharma, included). They work directly with all the emotions, even/especially the nasty shit. I've been trying to incorporate some of those ideas into my own work, in my own half-assed, Theravada-ish way. I think the idea in Vajrayana is that you use the base of emptiness to effect transformation of form. My own interpretation of that is to use the extreme spaciousness I can create with vipassana, but then deliberately embed with and fire up the unwanted (or the wanted) emotion, so that there's understanding of it on an almost cellular level.

Again, I'm mostly just making stuff up. Theravada-inspired stuff gives so few pointers on how to deal with these things. It's bifurcated. On the one hand, you get instruction for hardcore vipassana. But since going up and down ñanas and getting fruitions is mostly irrelevant for life, the teacher then supplements it with Western psychotherapeutic ideas, because, well, you have to say something about life.
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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:45 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 1:45 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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On second thought, maybe it is just off-cushion ñana cycling. I don't know yet. I have to see more.
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Nikolai , modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 6:09 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 6:09 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Fitter Stoke:


It's interesting that you bring up Vajrayana, because those traditions, for whatever their difficulties, seem a lot more concrete than Theravada-based ones (pragmatic dharma, included). They work directly with all the emotions, even/especially the nasty shit. I've been trying to incorporate some of those ideas into my own work, in my own half-assed, Theravada-ish way. I think the idea in Vajrayana is that you use the base of emptiness to effect transformation of form. My own interpretation of that is to use the extreme spaciousness I can create with vipassana, but then deliberately embed with and fire up the unwanted (or the wanted) emotion, so that there's understanding of it on an almost cellular level.

Again, I'm mostly just making stuff up. Theravada-inspired stuff gives so few pointers on how to deal with these things. It's bifurcated. On the one hand, you get instruction for hardcore vipassana. But since going up and down ñanas and getting fruitions is mostly irrelevant for life, the teacher then supplements it with Western psychotherapeutic ideas, because, well, you have to say something about life.


Ive found Thanissaro to have some useful things to say about mastering fabrication and if you consider all emotions fabrications, it makes sense to master how to fabricate what one wishes at will. Pliancy and malleability of mind being the objective. Can one resolve to fabricate nana or jhana for example at will post path? Same thing. How is a jhana and nana fabricated? How does one fashion them at a whim? How does one come to 'know' their handle'? How does one simply end or bring about the cessation of a jhana or nana (post path abilities either seemingly innate or learned depending on yogi's conditioning) ? When one develops such mastery of fabrication, it can be applied to all types of fabrication, including emotions and moods. Fashioning 'joy' at a whim so that the mind is more conducive for discernment of the nitty gritty of fabrication is a factor of awakening as I see it. How is 'joy' fashioned ? Master this, and it doesn't matter what is going on inside? Hacking vedana is one way to really start to master nama rupa. Ive always taken the theravada path to be one of mastering fabrication, its fashioning and cessation. This may not gel with some modern pragamtic dharma teachers though. For me it has been a very fruitful endeavour.

My 2 cents.

Nick
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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 12/9/12 12:56 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/9/12 12:56 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Nikolai .:
Fitter Stoke:


It's interesting that you bring up Vajrayana, because those traditions, for whatever their difficulties, seem a lot more concrete than Theravada-based ones (pragmatic dharma, included). They work directly with all the emotions, even/especially the nasty shit. I've been trying to incorporate some of those ideas into my own work, in my own half-assed, Theravada-ish way. I think the idea in Vajrayana is that you use the base of emptiness to effect transformation of form. My own interpretation of that is to use the extreme spaciousness I can create with vipassana, but then deliberately embed with and fire up the unwanted (or the wanted) emotion, so that there's understanding of it on an almost cellular level.

Again, I'm mostly just making stuff up. Theravada-inspired stuff gives so few pointers on how to deal with these things. It's bifurcated. On the one hand, you get instruction for hardcore vipassana. But since going up and down ñanas and getting fruitions is mostly irrelevant for life, the teacher then supplements it with Western psychotherapeutic ideas, because, well, you have to say something about life.


Ive found Thanissaro to have some useful things to say about mastering fabrication and if you consider all emotions fabrications, it makes sense to master how to fabricate what one wishes at will. Pliancy and malleability of mind being the objective. Can one resolve to fabricate nana or jhana for example at will post path? Same thing. How is a jhana and nana fabricated? How does one fashion them at a whim? How does one come to 'know' their handle'? How does one simply end or bring about the cessation of a jhana or nana (post path abilities either seemingly innate or learned depending on yogi's conditioning) ? When one develops such mastery of fabrication, it can be applied to all types of fabrication, including emotions and moods. Fashioning 'joy' at a whim so that the mind is more conducive for discernment of the nitty gritty of fabrication is a factor of awakening as I see it. How is 'joy' fashioned ? Master this, and it doesn't matter what is going on inside? Hacking vedana is one way to really start to master nama rupa. Ive always taken the theravada path to be one of mastering fabrication, its fashioning and cessation. This may not gel with some modern pragamtic dharma teachers though. For me it has been a very fruitful endeavour.

My 2 cents.

Nick


Thanks, Nick. I'll look in this and let you know if anything comes out of it.
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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 12/9/12 3:17 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/9/12 3:17 PM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

Posts: 487 Join Date: 1/23/12 Recent Posts
Nikolai .:
Fitter Stoke:


It's interesting that you bring up Vajrayana, because those traditions, for whatever their difficulties, seem a lot more concrete than Theravada-based ones (pragmatic dharma, included). They work directly with all the emotions, even/especially the nasty shit. I've been trying to incorporate some of those ideas into my own work, in my own half-assed, Theravada-ish way. I think the idea in Vajrayana is that you use the base of emptiness to effect transformation of form. My own interpretation of that is to use the extreme spaciousness I can create with vipassana, but then deliberately embed with and fire up the unwanted (or the wanted) emotion, so that there's understanding of it on an almost cellular level.

Again, I'm mostly just making stuff up. Theravada-inspired stuff gives so few pointers on how to deal with these things. It's bifurcated. On the one hand, you get instruction for hardcore vipassana. But since going up and down ñanas and getting fruitions is mostly irrelevant for life, the teacher then supplements it with Western psychotherapeutic ideas, because, well, you have to say something about life.


Ive found Thanissaro to have some useful things to say about mastering fabrication and if you consider all emotions fabrications, it makes sense to master how to fabricate what one wishes at will. Pliancy and malleability of mind being the objective. Can one resolve to fabricate nana or jhana for example at will post path? Same thing. How is a jhana and nana fabricated? How does one fashion them at a whim? How does one come to 'know' their handle'? How does one simply end or bring about the cessation of a jhana or nana (post path abilities either seemingly innate or learned depending on yogi's conditioning) ? When one develops such mastery of fabrication, it can be applied to all types of fabrication, including emotions and moods. Fashioning 'joy' at a whim so that the mind is more conducive for discernment of the nitty gritty of fabrication is a factor of awakening as I see it. How is 'joy' fashioned ? Master this, and it doesn't matter what is going on inside? Hacking vedana is one way to really start to master nama rupa. Ive always taken the theravada path to be one of mastering fabrication, its fashioning and cessation. This may not gel with some modern pragamtic dharma teachers though. For me it has been a very fruitful endeavour.

My 2 cents.

Nick


This quote from your "hacking vedana" piece stood out to me:

See if you can change the mind's perception of the feeling tone as the complete opposite... a pleasant one!! See what happens to your unpleasant or non-felicitous 'mood' when the jumping platform (vedana-feeling tone) for becoming is a pleasant one. It's a fake it till you make it approach. Tell me how it goes!


I have been practicing something like this, inspired from a comment Daniel made in his discussion with Tarin at Hurricane Ranch:

Daniel Ingram:
In that same sort of way I'll talk about a concept that I found useful, which is sort of 'fake it till you make it' ... Because I haven't figured out how to always get into a PCE at will, I can't do anything like that, but I can definitely make it more likely to occur, by tuning in to - like essentially thinking of this as my vacation house that I'm sitting in, and having my car by my vacation car, and the restaurant I'm eating in, whatever it may be, be my vacation restaurant, at my vacation resort. You know, and even my vacation job. "This is the job I sort of show up to as my vacation job." ... And if I bring that same quality of just wonderous enjoying and newness and freshness of perspective to my same old house and same old socks that I'm putting on, and my same old bathtub that I'm getting into or my same old car that I'm driving down the same old road. And just notice that 'wow this is actually a really beautiful place that I live....


I haven't had a PCE from doing this, but I do find it puts me in a marvelous mood. A lot of those neutral sensations are seen to be pleasant, in the sense of, "Wow! How have I been ignoring all this beauty for so long?" This generates gratitude, and gratitude seems to provoke the experience even more, until there's very little efforting involved in just feeling great and being happy to be alive.

This is something I'm interested in working on more and something which I've been actively practicing, but only over the course of the last few weeks. I'll probably have more to share as the practice matures and I experience more of the results.
Joel Rosenblum, modified 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 12:50 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 12:50 AM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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I am skeptical that anyone who is not completely happy and equanimous is actually enlightened. In other words, you may have lost some sense of center/self, but you still have a ways to go if you still feel angry, lusty, etc.

Indeed, if you TRULY lost all self-referencing, then there would no longer be any selfish desires AT ALL. That's why Buddha said that you would die within a week of becoming an arahant if you didn't join the Sangha. And guess what? He didn't just make that up. It's a tradition in India for people to starve themselves to death after becoming enlightened.

Let's just be honest here. What the heck is the point of being a so-called arahant if you still go around acting selfish?

And if it's true that some folks here, like DI, actually no longer have any sense of self, and are on "automatic pilot" so to speak, then it seems they have put the cart before the horse. But I tend to think that people simply under-estimate their sense of self because they believe in the Law of Attraction (which is true to an extent). It's tricky to balance real honesty with positive thinking.

Now, it is true that arahants don't automatically gain metta, but rather "just" lose the defilements (so nothing wrong with being Mr. Void). That is depicted in the Suttas. And that is where Mahayana comes in to emphasize metta...
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Not Important, modified 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 12:59 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 12:59 AM

RE: Personality in the Absence of a Self

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Well it's all speculation at this point, I would love to straight up agree with you that the fetter model is accurate.

But then again, most people who uphold the fetter model don't even practice, on the other hand, the ones that do reject it. It's actually quite an odd situation. What's more is that there is some evidence that the fetter model came into being much later, taking precedence over the asavas (outflows), of which there were originally three: thirst, ignorance and becoming. All of which are probably eradicated at technical 4th path.

Plus there were laymen arahats during the Buddha's time, as per the Bhallikadisutta:

012.04. Bhikkhus, the householders Bhallika, ... re ... Sudatta, ... re ... Anàthapiõóika, ... re ... Citta, ... re ... Macchikàsandika, ... re ... Hatthaka Aalavaka, ... re ... Mahanama the Sakya, ... re ... Ugga the householder of Vesali, ... re ... the householder Ugga, ... re ... Sura Ambattha, ... re ... Jãvaka Komarabacca, ... re ... the householder Nakula ... re ... the householder Tavakannika, ... re ... the houeholders Purana and Isidatta. The householders Sandhana, ... re ... Vijaya, ... re ... Vajjiyamahita, ... re ... Mendaka. The disciples Vasettha ... re ... Arittha, ... re ... Saragga, endowed with six things and taking a sign from the Thus Gone One has seen deathlessness realized the highest and behaves. What six?

Unwavering faith, in The Blessed One, in the Teaching, in the Community of bhikkhus, in the noble one's virtues, in the noble one's knowledge and the noble one's release.

Bhikkhus, the disciple Saragga endowed with these six things and taking a sign from the Thus Gone One has seen deathlessness realized the highest and behaves.


So I don't know.

Also the whole arahats die if they don't join the order thing was purely from Nagasena in the Milinda-Panha. Here's a link to a related article on the asavas: http://dharmafarer.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/30.3-Sabbasava-S-m2-piya.pdf

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