| | This is my first post here after being introduced to Daniel Ingram's superb MCTB, which I'm currently reading through for the second time – so many thanks to Daniel if you are reading this. The resources on this site & quality of the discussions are pretty amazing too. I thought I'd recount an experience I had at the age of 20 (that is, 40 years ago) as it's always had the nature of 'what on earth was that?' about it. At the time I was a practicing Christian, of the Anglo-Catholic sort, and I'd become interested in Christian mysticism, and perhaps in a small way had started doing some kinds of 'spiritual exercises' (from a book by F.C. Happold). In fact, I wasn’t brought up a Christian – I became one from my own conviction at 16 and ceased being one at 21.
Anyway, I was out for a walk in the fields one rather misty morning and was pushing through a thicket of bushes when I happened to look up and saw the end of a twig, on which a water droplet was hanging ... and everything disappeared. No world, no me, no space, no time – nothing that can really be said about it. When everything 'winked back on' a moment (I assume) later, I knew without the slightest shadow of a doubt that I'd had an enormously significant 'spiritual experience' (to call it that), but I didn't have any idea of what it was, or where it had come from. Well, being a Christian at the time, I naturally assumed that God had something to do with it and that it was some sort of 'mystical' experience.
Within a year or so I was no longer a Christian - I was at college, into sex, drugs, rock & roll & radical politics and 'religion' had dropped away. At the same time, due to this experience, I was still completely without doubt that there was a ‘spiritual dimension’ to life. Anyway, to cut a longish story short, after a few years I moved towards Buddhism, which attracted me initially exactly because it wasn’t a ‘religion’ and offered method rather than belief.
I still didn’t have much clarity, though, as to what this ‘experience’ may have been. I began to guess it may have been something to do with formless jhanas (which I had no immediate experience of), and later I supposed it might have been some kind of insight experience. For quite a number of years I did a lot of samatha and devotional practice, with a relatively small amount of rather discursive ‘insight’ reflection-on-the-Dharma type stuff; not very effective to be honest. It took a horribly long time for it to really sink in that I was not getting anywhere – in fact, I realised that on some level I’d lost confidence in the possibility that any kind of insight, let alone enlightenment, was at all likely to arise ‘in this lifetime’, beyond what had happened when I was 20.
Ten years ago, I did a long solitary retreat, on which for some reason, and using a book, I did a lot of Mahasi-style vipassana practice (I'd never practiced in this way before). In the end, with no guidance, I got myself very freaked out, thought I was about to have a heart attack, and had to cut the retreat after 2 months. But it did somehow get me out of the rut, though it left me with a bit of an aversion to that approach for the time being. So I pursued my parallel interest in Dzogchen/ Mahamudra and got pointing-out and some very good teaching. I ‘got’ nature-of-mind (or ‘self-recognition’ of rigpa) and in the wake of this, noticed that self-view, had vanished, confidence in the Dharma was unshakable and there was a clear understanding of what was & wasn’t the path. Again, I wondered whether my ‘experience’ at age 20 had anything to do with mind-itself / pure awareness, but it didn’t seem to relate in any obvious way.
Now, of course, at long last, I’ve come across Daniel’s description of fruition – as on p. 241 of the printed book, and that first paragraph fits my experience more clearly than anything I’ve previously come across. So the question remains – if it was a fruition, how did it arise without any previous stages or methodical practice? I don’t know much about this, but the main possibilities that occur to me include: 1) it wasn’t a fruition 2) it was and arose ‘spontaneously’ 3) it was the completion of an insight cycle started in a ‘previous life’? (I do have some intimation from childhood of what may be a ‘previous Buddhist life’) 4) other possibilities that I haven’t thought of.
Sorry this got a bit longer than I intended, but maybe the extra detail adds some valid info. Anyway, I’d certainly much appreciate any comments or perspectives anyone can offer on this.
Cheers! Tejananda |