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4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 12:16 AM
I'm pretty sure I got 4th path a few days ago, or at least something that in many respects resembles what Daniel describes as 4th Path. It feels like I lost the piece of myself responsible for resisting sensations. Everything is in flow all the time. I can't detect any aversion/attraction except for a short while after coming out of Nirodha Samapatti. For example, I can clench up my muscles in my whole body as tight as I can without noticeable feelings of aversion and on the relaxation there are no noticeable feelings of attraction. Nothing sticks, at least not in the ordinary physical, mental, or emotional universe.

Yet, at the same time, it feels like I'm beginning to access a new world of phenomena behind my third eye and above my crown. These are the only areas that have any kind of solidity to them when I focus on them, I can detect some slight clinging but not really able to investigate it yet.

In addition, a lot of buried emotions are surfacing but much easier to deal with. Old trauma stuff coming up suddenly for healing, but it's easier to cope with. There is a strong sense that emotional healing and intellectual house-ordering is now the number one priority for further development. Meditation is starting to seem more like any other activity, just as I would tie my shoelace to put my shoes on, I might enter jhana to focus on a positive mental quality or use fast mindfulness to diffuse some tension, but it is all without the urgency and drama of before. Meditation has become part of the daily life-world, not some special exception to it; it is immanent rather than transcendent.

The exception to this seems to be Nirodha Samapatti which still feels like it taps me into something beyond what my mind has presently encompassed and permeated, it's like a whole world beyond my individual self that is still waiting to be uncovered. There is a sense that if any part of the "I" remains, it remains at this level or higher.

There is some sense of loss of direction, yet without really changing how I feel about my daily life practices. It's like, even to change what I'm doing in daily life there would need to be somebody to make that change, so it just continues. There isn't indifference or apathy on the level of my personality. On that level I'm just as excited about my projects as before, but there is no longer a subjective identification with this level. I'm making it sound starker than it is. There are moments where the subjective identification with the psyche feels present in a ghostly, wispy form, and then moments when it's completely gone. I suppose this is still the transitional period.

I've been feeling some grief for the old sense of I, it's like losing a familiar constant companion. Tonight, I had a good cathartic cry over it, which led me to the insight that the "I" which was lost is not really lost, but has just become a part of everything I experience. That old "I" now exists in a fully immanent way in my body, my psyche, my perceptual world. It is not longer subject or object, but it's not gone either, it's just everywhere, in everything. This insight made me feel better about the whole thing, and helped a bit with the feeling of directionlessness. This body and psyche have their path through the world, which still needs to unfold. That unfoldment still needs to happen, and any "I" that is left in the higher realms has as it's job to help this body and this psyche on this path. I don't feel much desire at this point to liberate the residual cosmic 'I'. I've never considered myself a Buddhist, never considered myself committed to the project of uprooting the Self. Somehow, I found myself walking further and further down this Buddhist path of insight, but here might be the place where I stop, or it might not be. I don't know yet.

I have decided to embrace the idea of not knowing. Not knowing what this new state really is, not knowing what comes next, not knowing what might be possible. I've realized that Daniel's maps helpful only to get one to a certain point, and then they become so much baggage. They aren't maps of ultimate reality any more than anything else. We only cling to them because certainty is so comforting. Nobody has a map of all of reality. In principle, all maps show only those pieces of reality that the map-maker has so far explored and been able to articulate. Even within those territories its contours reflect the conceptual schema of the map-maker.

I like to believe that reality is endlessly intricate and inexhaustible, but of course, I have no way to know if that's true.

After all the work it took to get here, 4th path seems more like a stepping stone to something much vaster than I can at present conceive. It's a bit of let down in some ways, but only because I built it up in my mind to be bigger than it was. It does feel like an important change, but in a way it's more incremental and less radical a change than was stream entry. It certainly doesn't feel like an endpoint, although it is the end of a certain phase of the work.

My advice to anybody in the middle paths is to balance insight work with working to better yourself on a personal level, heal your psyche, develop positive mental qualities, discover a meaningful purpose for your body and psyche in this incarnation, build a good life in the ordinary sense. If you rush to 4th Path, leaving your emotional self bruised and battered along the way, you might get here only to discover a very unhappy psyche that is no longer you, but is still very intimately experienced. You might also not know what to do with your new found enlightenment. I can only imagine that it would harder find a strong sense of life purpose after 4th path than before, I feel blessed to have developed a lot of faith in my life purpose before this point. Enlightenment isn't suicide, it doesn't make the problems of your body and psyche magically go away (although it might make them easier to deal with in some ways).

Thanks to everybody on the board for all the online support and fellowship, thanks to Daniel for his amazing book and his courage in taking all this stuff out of closet, thanks to my teacher Vincent for his support and guidance.

All the best,
Avi

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 4:10 PM as a reply to Avi Craimer.
Ok, I just have to say, the clear sign of 4th path is that concepts are now seen to be empty. This is the benchmark. Increased flow, seemingly leading to bigger things... hard to say. It should be a major event, not sort of things are better.. I would mainly expect a definite, 'point source' event at which time space opened up to your perception and concepts were seen in a radically different light.

There seemingly is no consensus on this for some reason, but I find this ridiculous. 4th path is the first true glimpse of emptiness. It is a HUGE Step!! It is breaking beyond the mind of closed conceptual reasoning for the first time! Do not take it lightly. There should be a significant adjustment period, because experience is greatly relieved, but as well intensified, and this comes as a new and interesting source of both pain and pleasure.

There is pain that comes with loosing a solid fixed view of concepts. 4th path is a major shift in wisdom, and this truly is not a comfortable shift, it is intense. You cannot hold concepts anymore, try as you might. You cannot truly identify with them. Every concept that arises is let go of automatically, identification is broken. Concept is seen to be empty of reality. This really caused me quite a headache..

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 3:13 AM as a reply to T DC.
T DC:
Ok, I just have to say, the clear sign of 4th path is that concepts are now seen to be empty. This is the benchmark. Increased flow, seemingly leading to bigger things... hard to say. It should be a major event, not sort of things are better.. I would mainly expect a definite, 'point source' event at which time space opened up to your perception and concepts were seen in a radically different light.

There seemingly is no consensus on this for some reason, but I find this ridiculous. 4th path is the first true glimpse of emptiness. It is a HUGE Step!! It is breaking beyond the mind of closed conceptual reasoning for the first time! Do not take it lightly. There should be a significant adjustment period, because experience is greatly relieved, but as well intensified, and this comes as a new and interesting source of both pain and pleasure.

There is pain that comes with loosing a solid fixed view of concepts. 4th path is a major shift in wisdom, and this truly is not a comfortable shift, it is intense. You cannot hold concepts anymore, try as you might. You cannot truly identify with them. Every concept that arises is let of of automatically, identification is broken. Concept is seen to be empty of reality. This really caused me quite a headache..



Daniel's defintion of 4th.


1) Utter centerlessness: no watcher, no sense of a watcher, no subtle watcher, no possibility of a watcher. This is immediately obvious just as color is to a man with good eyesight as the old saying goes. Thus, anything and everything simply and obviously manifest just where they are. No phenomena observe any others and never did or could.

2) Utter agencylessness: meaning no agency, no sense of doing, no sense of doer, no sense that there could be any agent or doer, no way to find anything that seems to be in control at all. Whatever effort or intent or anything like that that arises does so naturally, causally, inevitably, as it always actually did. This is immediately obvious, though not always the forefront of attention.

3) No cycles change or stages or states or anything else like that do anything to this direct comprehension of simple truths at all.

4) There is no deepening in it to do. The understanding stands on its own and holds up over cycles, moods, years, etc and doesn't change at all. I have nothing to add to my initial assessment of it from 9 years ago.

5) There is nothing subtle about it: anything and everything that arises exhibits these same qualities directly, clearly. When I was third path, particularly late in it, those things that didn't exhibit these qualities were exceedingly subtle, and trying to find the gaps in the thing was exceedingly difficult and took years and many cycles. I had periods from weeks to months where it felt done and then some subtle exception would show up and I would realize I was wrong yet again, so this is natural and understandable, and if someone claims 4th as I define it here and later says they got it wrong, have sympathy for them, as this territory is not easy and can easily fool people, as it did me many, many times over about 5 years or so. However, 4th, as I term it, ended that and 9 years later that same thing holds, which is a very long time in this business.

There are other aspects that may be of value to discuss at some other time, but those are a great place to start for those who wish to claim this. If you truly have those, then perhaps we can talk about a few other points that are less central and essential.
taken from here.

This is a good benchmark for how 4 th path is best defined at the dho (being daniel's site and all) . But if you wish to put your own definition on whatever experience, so be it. Oh, for me the emptiness of concepts sounds more like 3rd path in my own experience.

My advice....give it a few months. Let any honeymoon period settle. Then see.

Nick

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 6:00 AM as a reply to Nikolai ..
Nikolai:


This is a good benchmark for how 4 th path is best defined at the dho (being daniel's site and all) . But if you wish to put your own definition on whatever experience, so be it. Oh, for me the emptiness of concepts sounds more like 3rd path in my own experience.

My advice....give it a few months. Let any honeymoon period settle. Then see.

Nick


Is this a benchmark for 1) DhO-style 4th path or 2) a benchmark for "being like Daniel"? Daniel has own unique mind and practice history, and his own unique take on things and way of describing them (with perhaps a tendency towards hyperbole!). My question really is how many other people really identify with this description? Does anyone really fully identify for it? What about you? For example, Tom does, in part but not fully, and relates his experience to Folk's analysis:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/3373753

And by raising the question, I am implying that it might not be a good benchmark for 1), and I was interested to consider what would be a good benchmark and how one would come to decide upon that (an old debate, I know).

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 9:38 AM as a reply to Avi Craimer.
No aversion or attraction at all apart from after NS? That's impressive. There's plenty in my experience that I would describe as "slightly unpleasant", which I've been putting down to subtle underlying aversion as I can make it go away by shifting to a non-clinging, non-conceptualizing mind.

"Everything is in flow all the time."
I think I'm experiencing this, in that intention has been integrated and no longer seems to be coming from a self, but there's still a sense of "efforting", or at least "maintaining" linked to a sense of being and presence that isn't quite complete ease and spontaneous unfolding.

"a few days ago"
This makes me suspicious, as I've had several big fruitions that had me convinced that they were MCTB 4th path for a period of days only to eventually admit to myself that some aspect of perception was still slightly inadquate and unsatisfying. E.g. a sense of intention still coming from somewhere "other", a subtle feeling of "I am" not found in any particular body part, a subtle sense of presence/being, or a habitual conceptualizing. There have even been times where my perception has regressed after a day or two. Assuming you've had similar experiences, what makes you so sure this time?

"The exception to this seems to be Nirodha Samapatti which still feels like it taps me into something beyond what my mind has presently encompassed and permeated, it's like a whole world beyond my individual self that is still waiting to be uncovered."
Wow, that's a much deeper appreciation than I'm getting. What I've been taking to be NS is simply where I tune out of 8th jhana (not necessarily even a particularly hard one) and have a fruition that repositions the pressure in my head so that it goes from the back (for 8th) to the sides behind the ears (which I associate with 6th, though I'm not usually in a hard 6th at that point). There is a sharp increase in concentration that lasts for hours, bodily relaxation, and almost without fail it kicks off a new DN within a day. But on the whole I'm not finding it terribly interesting or impressive.

"That old "I" now exists in a fully immanent way in my body, my psyche, my perceptual world. It is not longer subject or object, but it's not gone either, it's just everywhere, in everything."
Could you elaborate on this? If it is no longer subject, why call it "I"? Try "asserting the external element" where you take the completely dispassionate/objective sense of seeing an inanimate object and apply it to the body/mind. Is there resistence to this, or a sense of encroaching on a subject? I've found it beneficial to continue beyond the point where it could be said there is only a subtle, diffuse feeling of "I am" (don't want to imply that I've made much progress in this).

"any "I" that is left in the higher realms"
I don't mean for this to start sounding antagonistic, but how is this not baseless speculation, or bordering on the kind of assumption-making the Buddha rejects in SN 12.35?

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 3:20 PM as a reply to Avi Craimer.
Yeah you sound like you are enjoying life too much. Things aren't that great, trust me.

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 4:22 PM as a reply to Nikolai ..
Nikolai .:


This is a good benchmark for how 4 th path is best defined at the dho (being daniel's site and all) . But if you wish to put your own definition on whatever experience, so be it. Oh, for me the emptiness of concepts sounds more like 3rd path in my own experience.


Nick


Frankly I could be wrong, but I don't think Daniel founded this site so that everyone could just take his opinion and be done. It was probably founded more in the spirit of discussion and sharing of experience.

And that said, I seem to have a bit of a different take on 4th path than Daniel, and I am here expressing it. If I can have a different opinion than Daniel, likely other people can as well. So perhaps they would benefit from such a divergent expression!

If 4th path was Daniel's trademark expression than I could see the validity of your concern. However, 4th path is just Daniels attempt at describing phenomena related to attainment. For the sake of coherence, as well as faith that Daniel and I are describing the same basic pattern of attainment, I have chosen to use '4th path' to refer to the first true experience of emptiness; a major attainment on the path and the completion of the Hinayana.

If you wish to debate this, OK, but I stand firmly by my position.

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 5:42 PM as a reply to T DC.
TDC: Divergent opinions are good, but if you are going to use shared terminology like "4th path", it seems best to have some general agreement in terms of what this means phenomenologically in order to give people a more clear understanding of the path and not unintentionally confuse or mislead. I agree with you that there is not going to be a full agreement on the stages as we bring to our practice our own unique preconceptions and ways of interpreting non-conceptual information, but I have yet to find anyone who seems to have made the journey through the paths describe it the way you do. It also does not line up well with my own experience. Could you cite one person besides you who would describe 4th path as the first true experience of emptiness, or something that can be described in a similar way? When you suggested this before and said Daniel's writing suggested the same thing, I provided you with textual evidence to the contrary from Daniel's Simple Path model, to which you did not respond.

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 10:05 PM as a reply to B B.
Thank you all for your comments. I'm replying to BB's questions, but in those replies I respond to some of the other points that have been raised.

B B:
No aversion or attraction at all apart from after NS? That's impressive. There's plenty in my experience that I would describe as "slightly unpleasant", which I've been putting down to subtle underlying aversion as I can make it go away by shifting to a non-clinging, non-conceptualizing mind.

Okay, I've been returning to some stressful situations in daily life and there is some aversion returning. However, there still seems to be something fundamentally different about the way I experience this aversion. Like I can completely watch it unfold with relative effortlessness. It doesn't seem to have the bite on me that it did in the past. I feel motivated to continue working with it using mindfulness, but I doesn't seem necessary in the same way. It's like the aversion no longer feels like a threat. Also, it's drastically diminished. In time this might show itself to be a change of degree rather than a change of kind, but so far it seems like a change of kind.

B B:

"a few days ago"
This makes me suspicious, as I've had several big fruitions that had me convinced that they were MCTB 4th path for a period of days only to eventually admit to myself that some aspect of perception was still slightly inadequate and unsatisfying. E.g. a sense of intention still coming from somewhere "other", a subtle feeling of "I am" not found in any particular body part, a subtle sense of presence/being, or a habitual conceptualizing. There have even been times where my perception has regressed after a day or two. Assuming you've had similar experiences, what makes you so sure this time?


I didn't say I was sure. In fact, I said quite explicitly that I was trying to be comfortable with not knowing. I agree that things will become clearer in time, and I may judge that I was too hasty in evaluating this state. However, I will say that the nature of the change was unlike anything I've experienced through dozens of third-path cycles. It's possible that it was just a particularly large new cycle fruition, but in general my experience has been that the impact of new fruitions gets less and less with each cycle. This shift felt almost as strong as stream entry. On a more meta-level, I'm starting to doubt that Daniel's description of 4th path as an endpoint is really accurate for everyone. I've spoken with enlightened teachers who have started out using Daniel's maps and eventually come to a point where they claim that Daniel's map stops making sense of their experience. They say that although they are pretty clear that they have experienced something like 4th path, it doesn't have all the characteristics that Daniel attributes to it. In particular, in their experience, it doesn't eliminate all duality. Therefore, my working definition of 4th Path is a bit different from Daniel's. My working definition is a thorough and permanent dis-embedding from that part of the mind that seeks to control personal experience. This leaves it open that one might still be embedded (identified with) other parts of the mind (those which are unattached to personal experience; more on this below).

B B:

"The exception to this seems to be Nirodha Samapatti which still feels like it taps me into something beyond what my mind has presently encompassed and permeated, it's like a whole world beyond my individual self that is still waiting to be uncovered."
Wow, that's a much deeper appreciation than I'm getting. What I've been taking to be NS is simply where I tune out of 8th jhana (not necessarily even a particularly hard one) and have a fruition that repositions the pressure in my head so that it goes from the back (for 8th) to the sides behind the ears (which I associate with 6th, though I'm not usually in a hard 6th at that point). There is a sharp increase in concentration that lasts for hours, bodily relaxation, and almost without fail it kicks off a new DN within a day. But on the whole I'm not finding it terribly interesting or impressive.


How is "never failing to kick off a new DN within a day" not interesting? To me, your observation underlines the importance of concentration states for making rapid progress in insight. Like I said, the sensations in my third eye, crown, and above my crown are the only ones the still seem attached (at least among the sensations I'm currently aware of). These attachments are only noticeable after jhana practice. When I wake up in the morning they are invisible and don't seem to affect the flow state. I'm sure that doing vipassana on these sensations would produce further progress of insight, which means cultivating NS in order to do this work seems like an good idea when I'm ready to continue progress of insight.

B B:

"That old "I" now exists in a fully immanent way in my body, my psyche, my perceptual world. It is not longer subject or object, but it's not gone either, it's just everywhere, in everything."
Could you elaborate on this? If it is no longer subject, why call it "I"? Try "asserting the external element" where you take the completely dispassionate/objective sense of seeing an inanimate object and apply it to the body/mind. Is there resistence to this, or a sense of encroaching on a subject? I've found it beneficial to continue beyond the point where it could be said there is only a subtle, diffuse feeling of "I am" (don't want to imply that I've made much progress in this).

I like that "external element" test. However, one interesting thing is that the further I go, the more compassionate and connected I feel by default to all external objects. Hence, I can feel the same towards my personal psyche as I do toward various external objects, yet, in neither case is this a state of dispassionate awareness. There is a sense of deep detachment from the contents of my psyche including emotions, but not indifference towards them. There is still a tender concern for them grounded in loving-kindness and compassion. I suppose I've always been more drawn to the Bodhisattva ideal of enlightenment than the arhat ideal, so perhaps that is why I'm developing in this way.

I have the sense that the "I" I was previously identified with was nothing more, and nothing less, than my body, psyche, thoughts, and external perceptual world. Now, I see these four aspects of reality as four distinct worlds that I can watch like a man looking through a telescope. I can zoom in on psyche and experience emotions and narrative in a lot of detail, or zoom in on body, or zoom in on world, or zoom in on conceptual thoughts, but in none of those cases do I get sucked into those experiences and identify with them. In certain respects, being zoomed in on a experience feels similar to being identified with it, but there is some piece missing that makes it so that I don't stick to the experience. It's more like watching an experience happen to somebody else, but as I said above, this should not be taken to imply that I feel indifferent toward them. There is a distinct feeling of interested compassion as I am aware of them, which is not noticeably different from my interested compassionate awareness of other people, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. To me this is a strong illustration of the direct relevance of B.V. practices to the realization of insight.

B B:

"any "I" that is left in the higher realms"
I don't mean for this to start sounding antagonistic, but how is this not baseless speculation, or bordering on the kind of assumption-making the Buddha rejects in SN 12.35?


Well, as I think I mentioned, I'm not a Buddhist. I'm a non-traditional theist who got stream entry and was then called to keep going down the insight path as part of my larger path of divine service. I believe that there is a divine intelligence who in some way partakes of our own intelligence. In fact, as I've mentioned in other posts on this forum, it seems to me that the Mahayana/Vajrayana take on Pure Awareness is very close if not identical to the theistic notion of God in God's ineffable fully transcendent aspect. The key basis for contemplatively grounded theism is not speculation, but rather the appreciation of how new content, form, and meaning, emanate out from the ineffable experience of God/Awareness/nibbana. Vajrayana traditions clearly believe in this kind of emanation when they speak of new Buddha Deities emanating out of "pure light of Awareness". Therefore, I classify them as theistic. In contrast, Theravada and the early Buddhist teachings do not acknowledge this phenomenon or do not appreciate its significance. But, this is a longer discussion that's not entirely relevant to the matter at hand.

In terms of my thoughts on the higher sense of I, it's an identification with aspects of consciousness that are closer in the emanation hierarchy to this ineffable God/Awareness. The Kabbalistic tree of life provides a nice model of this. Tiferet is the highest sephira that is fully personal, the next four levels above that are various kinds of transpersonal consciousness, with the highest, Keter, corresponding to Pure Awareness. So in my model, 4th Path is defined as the elimination of all attachments to personal consciousness, i.e., the lower 5 sephira. This is compatible with attachments to transpersonal consciousness remaining. Now, of course, I recognize that this definition might be eccentric, and so be it, it's the one that makes sense to me. Having articulated it just now, I realize that this is a better model for the Bodhisattva ideal than for the arhat ideal. Well, the former is closer to my ideal, so that's what I'll continue to identify 4th Path with it for myself. Other people are free to identify 4th Path with whatever they consider a natural marker based on their own ideal :-) At the end of the day, 4th path is just a word. Maybe, I'm miss using it, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of clear agreement about what it actually amounts to. For everything beyond 3rd path, I think it's more important to know what areas/facets of your life are effortlessly joyful and harmonious, and what areas/facets of your life are not. Regardless of where one is in the insight territory, if one simply focuses on improving those aspects/facets of consciousness that are not yet effortlessly joyful and harmonious, one will end up doing pretty well.

Thanks for your thoughtful responses and questions.

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/5/14 10:27 PM as a reply to Avi Craimer.
Avi: I like your thoughts and your unique voice. Clearly this is stuff you have given some thought to, and it shows. What I would have called 4th path, and the experience I had that lines up most closely to Daniel's definition, involved the clear seeing of of there never being an observer, i.e "in the seen, just the seen". This was seen so deeply that afterwards it seemed there was just life in its vivid display, no inner or outer, no sense of agency, no sense of there being a landscape upon which to experience emotions. In what you are describing there is still the sense of an observer, albeit one who is not moved by what was previously seen as personal contents. But...I understand what you are saying on the lack of clarity, and I don't think things are black and white, basically ever. I myself was diagnosed as being at 4th path by two prominent teachers in the pragmatic dharma scene six or so months before I had the experience mentioned above in a way that really stuck and permeated, and it was quite a different experience than what had come before. I would also suggest that if one believes there is no consenus on what is fourth path (something I would not necessarily disagree with) it would be wiser to just call such things a "shift".

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/6/14 1:34 AM as a reply to William Golden Finch.
I think very few of us have any real idea of all the possible directions we can take our brains in. I know post 4th path (as defined by Daniel), I had further baseline shifts dependent on certain practices. But they haven't brought me exactly what I have been looking for ever since teenage-hood. Ultimately I'm not and really haven't been looking for some 'ultimate non-duality' nor "emptiness" seen in everything and anything. I am, at the heart of it, looking for nothing more than peace.That is it. And I know where to find it. I just lack the momentum to make it flip.

There are acts of mind and body that result in peace, and there are acts of mind and body that result in no peace. I'm optimising the peace inducing ones till there any no need to remind myself to do so. Daniel's 4th path makes it very easy to do this, though other post-4th baseline shifts made it hard to maintain a 'drive' to do so. So in a sense , any "practice" to induce this peace is simply what happens when the conditions set up triggers to optimise that peace. And triggers happen from time to time, but are often absent when responsibilities in life take point.

Yes, I am not really 100% at peace. Having a baby soon, financial concerns arising, life stuff ballooning, responsibilities growing, has brought some things to the surface that weren't ever triggered before. I relate very much to what Gil talks about in the following talk. (Thanks Richard for posting it). Screw all the titles and 'paths' and what they are supposed to mean. It's peace is all i want. And after much ruminating, what I would like to pass on to my son if there is but one thing he inherits from me that is worthwhile. MCTB 4th did not end in this peace. The practices I did post 4th path, did not end in this peace. THey did all end up making this mind unbelievably pliant and malleable. When the thought and will /urge to do something about the lack of peace is there, it doesnt take long for the the mind to drop the formations that suck. But I don't always experience the urge nor trigger to do so. This ultimately is my current dilemma. It is like I am coasting along, and any progress to this peace may seem random and triggered by the unlikliest things. (unlike a burning desire to get "enlightened" like pre-all these shifts).

Perhaps then for me, the benchmark has shifted and should be whatever brings a peace that doesn't go away. Hmm, thanks for the current trigger. May it last longer than a day.


http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/74/talk/22715/


My current subject to change 2 cents.

Nick

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/6/14 2:39 AM as a reply to William Golden Finch.
William Golden Finch:
What I would have called 4th path, and the experience I had that lines up most closely to Daniel's definition, involved the clear seeing of of there never being an observer, i.e "in the seen, just the seen". This was seen so deeply that afterwards it seemed there was just life in its vivid display, no inner or outer, no sense of agency, no sense of there being a landscape upon which to experience emotions.


That's interesting, because the senior pragmatic dharama teachers I've talked to have never achieved the state you describe even though they consider themselves to have achieved 4th Path. Perhaps, it's just a thing that some people experience and other people never experience regardless of how long they practice. Or perhaps its a matter of people interpreting the same experience in different ways through their different perspectives. It would be interesting to start a thread to solicit comments on this, and to see if we can isolate any differences in the practices of those who do and those who don't experience 4th Path as observerlessness.

I can say that I have no desire at present to experience what you describe as 4th Path. Before the Shift that occurred last week, I was totally fascinated with that idea of observerlessness, although I always had some mixed feelings about it (see below). Now it's very clear to me that experiencing observerlessness is not interesting or important for my spiritual development, certainly not the ideal. Perhaps it will become so at some point in the future, or perhaps not. If there was an action I could take today that would guarantee that I would never get the observerlessness experience you describe, like an infallible irrevocable Bodhisattva vow, I would take it right now without hesitation. I don't think there is any such guarantee, so who knows how I'll develop in the future, but right now, I'm certainly not after that. I always find it interesting how the ideal that one seeker wants more than anything is anathema for another seeker (at least at a given stage of development).

William Golden Finch:
I would also suggest that if one believes there is no consenus on what is fourth path (something I would not necessarily disagree with) it would be wiser to just call such things a "shift".

I can accept that term, but you've got to admit that this thread wouldn't have been half as interesting if I had titled my post "Shift".

Nikolai:
MCTB 4th did not end in this peace. The practices I did post 4th path, did not end in this peace. THey did all end up making this mind unbelievably pliant and malleable. When the thought and will /urge to do something about the lack of peace is there, it doesnt take long for the the mind to drop the formations that suck. But I don't always experience the urge nor trigger to do so. This ultimately is my current dilemma.


Nick, your post was very interesting and it triggers in me a recurring fear about 4th path. I've often been concerned that actually achieving complete centerless-ness would result in a loss of motivation, and what you are describing seems to confirm that fear. That's why I resonate a lot with the Mahayana idea of stopping short of full enlightenment for the sake of compassionate service. The Hindu mystic Ramakrishna reports that after achieving a non-dual state that lasted over a month, he was visited by the goddess Kali and told to return to a partially dual state in order to help others. I've always like this story. Maybe it will be another trigger for you. Maybe there is some unfinished business in the dual state that you need to return to in order to find the peace you're looking for. Just a thought.

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/6/14 3:19 AM as a reply to Avi Craimer.
hi Avi,

I forgot to say, congratulations! Whatever it is that you have achieved, you have achieved something, and, in the culture of pragmatic dharma, it should be celebrated.

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/7/14 1:32 AM as a reply to sawfoot _.
sawfoot _:


Is this a benchmark for 1) DhO-style 4th path or 2) a benchmark for "being like Daniel"? Daniel has own unique mind and practice history, and his own unique take on things and way of describing them (with perhaps a tendency towards hyperbole!). My question really is how many other people really identify with this description? Does anyone really fully identify for it? What about you? For example, Tom does, in part but not fully, and relates his experience to Folk's analysis:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/3373753

And by raising the question, I am implying that it might not be a good benchmark for 1), and I was interested to consider what would be a good benchmark and how one would come to decide upon that (an old debate, I know).



Hi,

I am the Tom that he is referring to in the above post.

This is more an issue of realizing inherent truths about reality rather than a debatable difference between two different subjective forms of enlightenment. That things happen causally, without inner and outer, without agent, without center and subject is definitely an important attribute of awakening and fundamental reality. My point in my post was that there are some exceedingly subtle remaining exceptions to this that arise from time to time that need attention. I wasn't saying that this fundamental aspect of reality is false, as this is just not the case. I am also not implying that you were saying this, but rather am writing this post to clear up a lot of the endless debates I keep seeing on this forum.

Kenneth's model adds a lot of additional very important developments that are deemed by many on this forum to be either impossible or somehow tangential to the process of awakening. Perhaps there should be more effort to combine the two models as they are not incompatible with each other. Here are Kenneth's stages 5-8 (Kenneth's version of 4th path is stage 5).



Stage 5: The tipping point. Practitioner has a profound sense of completion, as though “done is what needs to be done.” (One interpretation of the 4th Path of Enlightenment. And here is my 2010 commentary on interpretation of the 4-Path model.) The longing to be enlightened seems to have melted away. With further ripening at this stage, it will be seen that there is more to be done; the practitioner still experiences many of the old neurotic patterns, but has some distance from them. “It’s still happening, but it doesn’t seem to be happening to me,” is a common report. How common is this stage? As a rough estimate, I’ve guided 20-25 or so folks to this stage over the last 5 years. I occasionally meet someone who has come to this through some other system. At this stage, the practitioner is identified with emotional feelings rather than a conceptual self. So he or she will resist and argue with more advanced practitioners about what comes next...

Stage 6: Emotional transformation. Marked attenuation of feelings. (See Damasio’s Looking for Spinoza for the distinction between emotions and feelings. Feelings are the subjective component of emotions. Emotions can and do carry on without the corresponding feelings, as emotions and feelings happen in different parts of the brain.) Practitioner may still display full range of emotions as observed by others while reporting only contentment, well-being, acceptance, etc. This new emotional stability sets the stage for...

Stage 7: Proprioceptive selfing is seen clearly. From the platform of the emotionally stable mind, it becomes possible to see that certain sensations, especially around the face, eyes, and forehead, are sporadically signaling “this is I, me, mine.” See Metzinger’s comments about Ronald Melzac’s neuromatrix and “a kind of proprioception that is so subtle, it’s almost unconscious” (paraphrased from memory, but here is the video). When the moments of operation of this proprioceptive selfing are juxtaposed, moment by moment, with non-selfing moments, the selfing is seen as painful and the mind conditions itself to stop doing it. This proprioceptive selfing seems to operates at several layers, however, because it comes back at a subtler level, as do feelings of fear, irritation, and aversion. Here is a Youtube video in which I sketch out the first 7 stages. (At the time, I did not know there were more stages available.)

Stage 8: A deepening of the insights from stages 6 and 7, plus a crushing blow to the ownership and agency aspects of selfing. (See Metzinger, The Ego Tunnel, for more on ownership and agency as components of selfing.) Practitioner feels very “enlightened” at this point, even somewhat alien as compared to “normal” people. Lots of disorientation. At times some sense of “divine retardation,” in which practitioner feels him or herself losing interest in some things that mattered previously, while simultaneously feeling profoundly OK with these changes. Life gets simpler as unnecessary ideas and attachments slough off. Friends can drift apart if some neurotic need no longer needs to be fulfilled. Conventions and concepts soften in favor of “this is happening now.” Disorientation becomes the norm and one adapts to it. Some motivations, e.g., need for social status, need to be right, need to please others, which began to lose steam at KF5, fade further. How common is this stage? I personally know at least seven people, five of whom are my students or former students. As of this writing (April, 2012), I also consider myself to be at this stage.)


You can see that Kenneth's version of 4th path is not the same as Daniel's version. However, by stage 8 they have become one and the same with several additional factors which are very important. Particularly, the emotional transformation is completely absent in Daniel's model. I am claiming a very pronounced emotional transformation which is absent in most of the discussions on this forum (and often debated as not possible), but mysteriously seems to appear in Kenneth's model and is not even the final stage of his model. Kenneth's model does contain the "utter centerlessness and agencylessness," but places it at the very end of his list whereas Daniel would have it placed way back at stage 5. There doesn't seem to be any discrepancies in the realizations attained, but rather in their ordering. To be clearer I will add some factors of awakening that seem to occur across populations of different people but rarely seem to occur simultaneously within a single person.

1. Utter Agencylessness (meaning no exceptions, no matter how exceedingly subtle they may be)
2. Utter Centerlessness
3. Utter Timelessness (Always and forever now)
4. Marked Emotional Transformation There are different degrees of this. Emotions (edit: to be terminologically accurate replace emotions here with Kenneths term "feelings" as above) arise rarely and when they do arise they arise very briefly (this is my current experience). Emotions may or may not carry on externally though in my experience I think some of them (or perhaps even many) do. There are others who have reached a point where emotions do not arise at all. This realization does not negate realization 1, 2, or 3 though it is hotly debated ad nausea around this forum whether this is possible or occurs at all.
I think the possibility here is that this may or may not occur and does not seem necessary to the realization of 1, 2, and 3.

The above are the major ones. Here are a few more:

A. Feeling like you are "no longer on the ride."
B. Vastly decreased (or possibly completely eliminated) neurotic thoughts/obsessions/tape loops
C. Ceaseless peace/contentment that is not necessarily really phenomenal itself (as contrasted with the brahma viharas), but occurs due to all the above factors as all of the above listed numbers are "absences" rather than presences. Notice abence of agent, absence of time, absence of center, absence of emotion (edit: technically "feeling" as above), etc. One tiny difference being numbers 1, 2, and 3 are actually always already absent but mistakenly thought to be present.
D. Absence of the need for approval, absence of the need to impress, etc. see similarity to B.
E. Absence of Proprioceptive selfing as stated above. Definitely an absence of those sensations in the facial area. This is more important than it sounds and I would also extend this definition to the chest area as that is where many of the previous emotions (edit: "feelings") came from.

The realization of these items seems to happen in various degrees (on a spectrum) and in varying orders and some may never occur for some people.

So what do we mean by 4th path? Daniel defines it as the full and complete realization of 1 and 2. This is not surprising, since MCTB is "rigorously technical" and these two are the most technical of all the attributes on the list.

As you can see the emphasis on Utter Centerlessness/Agencylessness is lacking in Kenneth's model and the emphasis on emotional transformation (and most of the lettered points, most of which are simply consequences of 1, 2, 3 and 4) are lacking in Daniel's model.

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/6/14 5:44 AM as a reply to Tom Tom.
I have limited personal investment in this (as I am "pre-path") but it feels like as a community, there could be some kind of attempt to clarify a lot of these issues.

So one way to do this would be for someone to collate a bunch of attributes/and attainments which characterize more advanced spiritual development, and create some resource on the wiki.

To me, the idea of 4th path seems like a problematic concept, but there does seem to be a vaguely linear process of spiritual development, marked by non-linearity/discontinuities/shifts/attainments/paths, some of which are are lasting and some of which fade over time, and with some tending to occur before others.

If it were me, as a psychologist type, I would be wanting to create a questionnaire to ask a bunch of people who identify as 4th path or beyond, where I create a worded a bunch of attainments, and looked for agreement:

For example:
A. Feeling like you are "no longer on the ride."
strongly agree
agree
disagree
strongly disagree

or :
a Utter agencylessness
b Marked reduction in sense of agencylessness
c Reduction in sense of agency
d Strong sense of agency

And then would look to see when those events occurred, how they patterned together, to what extent they were lasting, and the consistency across respondents.

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/6/14 6:56 AM as a reply to Avi Craimer.
state you describe is remarkably similar to what I define as 'no-self mode' and I had it at what I believe was beginning of 2nd path. At 1st there was burden of proof that self is illusion but only at 2nd it actually actualized in effortless and self-sustaining way. Mind changed its natural resting place from 1st jhana (which is base for 1st path) to 2nd jhana.

I use my matroska theory of mind to conceptualize it (for my left hemisphere to 'get it' ;) ). In it you can change jhana level of most inner layer of mind at will, stages of insight change more outer level and paths change most outer layers jhana level. So when you attain 2nd path minds outer layer is in its A&P stage, obviously it is going to be big shift for the better and your self will take a hit (actually it is just fine, but seems less important than experience to 2nd jhana mind, right?) while everything, every sensation seems to be for their own sake experienced by themselves without need for any watcher and trying to have one is felt like rather artificial, like imagining things and not inherent quality of world, more like creating image of yourself watching yourself but in reality it feels like all is happening on their own even this illusion of self and watcher

It would be 4th path if you were stressing different aspect of experience. Here I have to agree with T DC theory on what 4th path is because even though I am not there I can imagine that when 4th jhana hits I will have to see what is behind mind, namely see emptiness directly. In other jhanas there is also some kind of transparency but only at 4th there is this inherent complete transparency and non-blockingness that would make emptiness experience seem really real.

BTW. imho 99% people who claim 4th path on DhO are really 2nd path so its nothing personal emoticon

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/6/14 9:30 AM as a reply to Avi Craimer.
Haha, yes, I agree. 4th path does tend to draw people's attention. You would think it wouldn't have the same resonance after Kenneth and Daniel who claimed 4th path and believed it to be the end, then went on after some time to do other practices that brought about further shifts. Having known some of the same teachers as you, and not throwing out too much of anyone's personal business, I think it is more likely a difference of interpretation rather than depth. I actually was not looking for an experience of observerlessness, and it can not be characterized as an experience. When shifts have occurred for me it has been because some aspect of mind was seen clearly, and in the seeing clearly, there was a relief, often preceded by some sense of anxiety.

For those who are curious, here is a link by a practitioner working his way through the 7th to the 8th stage of Kenneth's map, which I believe closely corresponds to MCTB 4th path, and Zen's "no mind experience" ...you get the point. Anyways, it deals with some of these observer/observerless ideals.

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2011/10/zen-exploration-of-bahiya-sutta.html

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/6/14 9:26 AM as a reply to Nikolai ..
Nikolai,

Do you know if there has ever been a thread devoted simply to "post 4th practices"? It seems people have gone off in wildly different ways after and it would be interesting to see the results of different practices since they do seem to favor different outcomes. I am also curious for you if there is a particular set of practices that have been most useful. I have found somatic practices to be most useful but that may be due to my own specific inclinations.

Bill

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/6/14 10:44 AM as a reply to Paweł K.
Paweł K:

BTW. imho 99% people who claim 4th path on DhO are really 2nd path so its nothing personal emoticon


I agree,
Latest map i saw has 144 levels available on earth. I think if one starting to reach there he sure has a brain what knows most of the details about the path to get there.

edit: im sure there are beings who know whole path but they don't share it, no idea why, mayby later levels we will know why..

edit: ok found an hint from:
http://www.ascendedmasteranswers.com/spiritual-path/free-will/104-why-does-god-allow-lower-spirits-to-exist-and-to-tempt-us-against-our-free-will

So for each of the 144 levels possible on earth, there are certain lower spirits that will give you exactly what seems to justify the illusions that represent that level of consciousness. How do you progress from one level to the next? By coming to see through the illusions that represent your current level.


to Avi good job

RE: 4th Path
Answer
4/6/14 11:03 AM as a reply to William Golden Finch.
William,

William Golden Finch:
Haha, yes, I agree. 4th path does tend to draw people's attention. You would think it wouldn't have the same resonance after Kenneth and Daniel who claimed 4th path and believed it to be the end, then went on after some time to do other practices that brought about further shifts.


It is interesting how seductive the idea of an endpoint it. Especially given the emphasis in various traditions on the idea that part of enlightenment is about getting beyond all ideas of beginning and end (birth and death). It makes me a little suspicious of pragmatic dharma teachers who despite claiming enlightenment are still obsessed with ideas of "getting there" or of "having got there". My own bias is in favour of an endless transformation model. In a certain sense, I think the whole trick is just getting oneself to deeply stop looking for any endpoint to the natural processes of our existence. Stop looking for permanence, stop looking for that magic state, stop the bi-polar bouncing between wanting the peacefulness of death and then, upon achieving a measure of that peace, craving a return to the excitement of life. This is just want I think is meant in the yogic traditions by the idea of unifying shiva (death) and shakti (life). Theravada Buddhism on the whole seems pretty one-sidedly focused on Shiva, and I can't help but think this will produce unbalanced spiritual development. In fact, the whole Mahayana reformation was sort of about trying to correct this death-seeking tendency in early Buddhism. It disturbs me when I see people on this board who clearly seem depressed or traumatized using those death-seeking tendencies within the pragmatic dharma movement to avoid the emotional healing work they so desperately need.

Maybe the reason that the models only go so far is that the model makers eventually drop the need for model building since that need is itself a symptom of lack of peace and looking for an endpoint. If so, then all those models that seem "more advanced" because they posit further stages may actually be less advanced than modelless models of advanced practice. The former are still driven by craving for "progress" toward an endpoint. There is in that craving an implicit desire for the permanence of the final death. In contrast, once one drops the need for endpoints (and this might happen at any number of different points in the models) then one is free to allow one's life to simply unfold in accordance with it's inner nature. Taoist teachings provide a good perspective on this sort of thing.

William Golden Finch:
Having known some of the same teachers as you, and not throwing out too much of anyone's personal business, I think it is more likely a difference of interpretation rather than depth.


Can you say more about this? How might the experience be interpreted differently? What might be the factors in a person's belief system or pre-realization practice that make them interpret it one way rather than another?

I'd like to check out that practice log, but the link you posted take me to a page that says the page in question does not exist.