Joshua,
Baron of the french empire. . .?
What's that all about? Some sort of parody of the ego? A playful dalliance?
Well, be that as it may. . .
Joshua, Baron of the french empire:
Transferred to fourth vipassana jhana yesterday so I had a crack at attaining path today. 8th jhana was very clear, like I was seeing my whole body as sensation in the third person behind me. However for the first time, it is like a dragon is guarding the treasure! Soon after getting to 8th, it was a war of attrition to see who would crack first. I was blasting jhana and the enemy was tightening my chest more and more and more. I alternated stances, width of focus, mind content but it just continued for what I felt to be a very very long time.
I had to retreat but that demonic dragon's days are numbered!
This is an example of a "silly post" that I mentioned on one of my other replies. The kind I usually don't respond to. Primarily because its premise verges on the ridiculous.
In actuality, it seems to be evidence of someone "practicing" without the assistance of a qualified mentor or instructor, who has
only the slightest idea about what he is doing, and who is having a problem with an accurate discernment of phenomena. Such a person needs to go back to square one and focus on discernment of a long breath as opposed to a short breath. When one is then able to clearly discern
that, then perhaps they are ready to move on to discern other, more complicated states of consciousness.
I'd have to agree with the comments provided by Nikolai and Daniel, as difficult as it may have been for them to spend their time writing them.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by 'go and crack a path in the 8th' and why it was a 'boss battle'? These poetic descriptions are confusing. Did your chest tighten during this occurrence? When you say you 'alternated stances, width of focus and mind content', was this all going on as what you are calling '8th jhana' was being given shape? Or was that pre?
Perhaps doing something more simple will help, like hanging out there with the very same dispassion mentioned informing how the 8th jhana of neither perception nor non-perception's object of consciousness (the very hard to describe neither perception nor non perception part) is held.
None of that sounded all that 8th jhana or Equanimity-esque.
Tone-wise it sounds more like Re-Observation, no?
Phenomenologically the descriptions are light, so not a lot to go on. . .
Rather than that, there is this dramatic, hero-esque thing, which sounds below that, before that, what might come in earlier stages, so it sounds to my ear, and not based on a lot of data...
People who seem to be too preoccupied with "reaching path" (whatever
that is) don't seem serious enough to actually focus on accomplishing what the practice of the Dhamma itself aims to help one with: namely, the alleviation of greed (unconscious passion), hatred (or aversion), and delusion (personal ignorance).
Don't put the cart before the horse. There's a reason it's called a "gradual teaching" or a "gradual path." Spend some time, as Nikolai suggests, contemplating
where you are. Spend some time identifying the five aggregates within your ability to discern them from your direct experience of them. Spent some time contemplating dependent co-arising and what that means in terms of your direct experience. This all takes
TIME! It is a gradual path. See?
If this comment feels like a smack in the face, well, then it
ought to. It was meant to STOP you from continuing down the pathway that you have misguidedly chosen to walk. It was meant to be a SHOCK!
It was meant to say: "Wake up and pay attention! For
once in your miserable life."