Hello DO. I’ve debated a lot whether I should post here or not, but I’m at the point where I need some real information, and this is the only place I’ve found that seems to care about these things. I’m posting in this forum because the opinions I’ve developed over the last few months are a bit hostile to the whole viewpoint presented by Daniel and the rest of this crew. (I’ve come to call you all “Type A Buddhists” haha… Many people wear that designation with pride, though, so please don’t be too offended.

) I know this is a huge post, and I feel pretty conceited talking about myself so much, but I’m hoping you all can understand. I’m giving all the gory details because I want solid opinions. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past four months steeped in doubt and I’d like to remove it once and for all.
Anyway, I’ll start with a the back-story. Around July last year I started meditating. I don’t remember exactly what my thought process was at the time, but I can link it to an understanding I came to in the shower on July 4th after watching some fireworks. I’ve found a few potential names that could apply to it in DO terminology, but the “no-dog” state seems to work the best. I called it “freedom” at the time. I know that’s a bit corny, lol, but I’ve always dealt with a lot of anxiety in my life, and I’ve gone through lots of philosophies trying to figure out how to get rid of it. I called myself a Taoist for a number of years, dabbled with psychology, etc. Anyway, this was the first time I really felt like I had any control over how I felt. I realized I was anxious, but it didn’t seem to have any real bearing on my mental state. It was like I was outside of it looking in, or the anxiety was perfectly fine as it was. Truth is, I became pretty obsessed with it for a while. It was VERY difficult to access (and still is, really), but I noticed that a kind of complete submission was required. Obviously this sets up a dilemma: you have to accept the feeling to be free from it. This actually links up with Taoist thought rather well, so it makes sense that that’s the first real “insight” I would have.
Months went by and I was still struggling, but I felt like I was on track to something real for once. Meditation started out very difficult. I could hardly sit still, I couldn’t watch my breath at all, to be honest I’m not sure why I kept doing it, haha. Things got easier over time though, and I found a method that I liked. I wasn’t sure it even counted as meditation, but it felt nice enough so I continued with it. (Basic method was – and still is – pay attention to different body parts in succession. Like feet, lower legs, upper legs, etc. I linked it to the breath at some point, too.) Eventually I started getting what I called “deep” meditation, where my body would go a bit numb and I could sit still without 100 little pains screaming at me. My mind never went blank, but I noticed there was a foreground and a background of attention, and I could keep the thoughts in the background mostly. Looking back, this might have been that torpor state that they warn about in Zen, or maybe some kind of Yoga Nidra. Later in the year I had a few “visions”. They weren’t anything in particular (I saw a jar with stickers in it, lol) and I didn’t give them much credence, but it was probably something on the dreaming end of the spectrum. They were very vivid and realistic, like I’d opened my eyes for a moment.
Then on New years eve I had A Big Event. (I know, the timing of these things are kinda fun. ^^) I was sitting on my couch, again trying to deal with anxiety, and I was able to let go completely into some kind of full-body euphoria. It lasted for, maybe, ten seconds and afterward I felt a kind of open spacious quality in my chest for the rest of the night. It was an almost emotionless state. I felt so relieved. I just sat there for a few hours doing nothing at all.
I hadn’t done much research on Buddhism, but I ran into the progress of insight and thought it might have been an A&P experience. I ran into the DO around that time in my googling, and that’s where my “epic journey of confusion” began lol. Nothing in the progress of insight the way it’s described in MCTB seemed to match up with my experiences aside from the A&P, and even that just didn’t match much at all. I didn’t seem to have any special vision of things arising and passing, I couldn’t relate to the three characteristics in any way, all the talk about vibrations seemed like nonsense. You might say I hated the whole concept of “vipassana meditation” and threw it out the window fairly early on. (Sorry guys! :3)
I know the first question you’ll all ask is, “what about the dark night?” It’s hard for me to say though. I’ve always had a lot of anxiety, even since I was very young, so if anything changed in intensity or duration it’s hard to know. I kept the possibility of it in the back of my mind, though, hoping it would help me understand whether I was doing insight meditation or not. I had a few experiences that could be related to that, but it’s hard to say.
Anyway, I decided in the end that I must have had a jhana experience, and began thinking of my meditation as jhana – even though that didn’t seem to line up fully either. When I’d sat down on the couch to deal with the anxiety, the event had happened very quickly – probably within 10 seconds – and I couldn’t say I was concentrating on anything in particular at the time. The following days, when I would sit down to meditate, I would focus on letting go, and I would go into the euphoric feelings almost right away. I tried to force it at first and had problems with my eyes getting so crossed I would see purple black spots, but I quickly discovered it was much easier just to let go. Sometimes I would hit a state of mind so emotionless that I would simply lay on the floor for hours thinking about how relieved I was. I felt completely empty and free.
My thoughts never stopped during meditation, and I’ve never made much real effort to concentrate. “Just let go” always was the core principal. I’m fairly certain that I’ve developed the jhanas up to the 7th at least. I’ve had a few hints of the 8th recently, maybe. It’s hard for me to say, though. Nothing ever seems to match up quite the way it’s supposed to.
As you can see, I don’t have much to go on with all this. If I really did have an A&P experience, it wasn’t really preceded by the other insight knowledge’s that I can relate to. I still don’t have a clue how a person is supposed to meditate on the three characteristics. I’ve read about the noting technique, but it felt so clunky when I tried it. In the first month or two after the big experience I was practicing mindfulness in a very deliberate way and found that, a few hours into the day, I could consistently hit a state where I could remain in an Eckhart Tolle style “now” for the nest of the day. It would be gone when I woke up the next day, though, and it really impacted how much work I was doing (I work from home). It was definitely a kind of concentration state.
I had a few things that could have been the dark night, and I seem to have gotten past them. There was one point where my anxiety had a new quality to it. It felt a bit like I was going to be sick to my stomach. I thought that could have been dark night related. I would hit that state off and on, try to let go, be incapacitated for an hour, then it would flip over completely and I’d spend the rest of the day in a rather calm and relieved mood. I figured maybe that was equanimity? I still didn’t understand how any of it related to the three characteristics or the things I was supposed to understand with the insight knowledges.
At this point, thought, I was operating under the assumption that I was following the progress of insight – maybe just in a way that ignored some/most of the steps. I was hitting a state of mind that seemed to line up with “high equanimity” (though I thought this could just be the 4th jhana) and I was getting some interesting phenomena. One night as I went to sleep I felt like I was inside my skull. I was moving my jaw and it seemed like it was outside of “me”. I had a feeling of being sucked down a vortex, but nothing seemed to happen with it. It just kind of stopped at some point. That had happened to me before while meditating (along with my eyes rapidly flickering back and forth), and I wondered if I was close to a fruition. I also felt like I was probably deluding myself.
That’s when another wrench was thrown into the works. I started hitting a state during the day where it felt like I was living in a jhana. It was a kind of warm contentment that would just sit in the center of my chest. It was very different from any of the other things I had felt with meditation, and I linked it to a very specific way of looking at things. The first time it happened I was sitting on my couch, looking at a plastic cup on the table, and trying to practice mindfulness. The thought occurred to me that I was trying to see the cup as something special so it would capture my attention, but it really wasn’t. It was just ordinary. That seemed to trigger something and I looked around at everything and realized how ordinary it all was. This sounds pretty dumb typing it out, but it seemed like I’d removed my judgment of things in such a way where I’d finally found a balance. This warm glow started, and you could almost call it the “anti-boredom” and the “anti-anxiety”. Equanimity seemed cold and dead in comparison. I felt like every breath I took was…well, like eating chocolate, haha. These descriptions are actually the best I’ve come up with. All I can say is that it had this deeply rooted feeling of contentment attached to it that didn’t seem related to anything in particular. The state would come and go on its own, but it seemed to be linked to letting go, like everything else had.
This is where things really diverged for me. I’d been practicing jhana all the time these other things were happening (generally 20-30 minute sit every day), and while I wasn’t too certain about the insight knowledges, I was fairly certain about this new state and the jhanas. It almost seemed like, through mindfulness, the third jhana was becoming a baseline state of mind. Around this time I started spending a lot of time reading through the sutta pitaka and trying to understand for myself what the Buddha was saying. I really began to wonder if Theravada (and the DO by extension) was really just something quite different from the original teachings. I’ve seen many places where Keneth Folk and Daniel talk about enlightenment as the realization of anatta or “no-self,” but what about nibbana? What about the ten fetters? What about transcending all stress and suffering? I understand how the four paths are supposed to relate to the fruitions, and how things are done in Burmese Buddhism a la the vissudimagga, but that doesn’t line up with my readings of the sutta pitaka. The Buddha seemed, mostly, like a jhana teacher who found a way to bring jhana out of meditation and into everyday living through mindfulness. The morality teachings and the philosophy all seem to support this idea. The meaning of Anatta in pali is actually “not-mine” and “not-I”, so saying the buddha taught “no-self” doesn’t make much sense in context as I’ve read it. There are even a number of suttas where he specifically says those sorts of metaphysical views aren’t helpful.
Anyway, I guess the question I have really been burning to ask is, what’s the point of it all in the end? What will this “Type A Buddhism” – Pragmatic Dharma – Burmese Theravada bring me in the end if I continue trying to develop it? I don’t doubt that you all have a very real tradition you’re carrying out here, but I just don’t understand how it relates to the promises made by the Buddha right in the original texts. Those of you who are Arahants in this tradition, are you completely free from all stress? Are you ever angry or sad? Are you anxious? If you do still have these problems with your life, why would you recommend anyone follow the same path you have? I’m being very honest when I say I don’t really care about truth or ultimate reality. I spent a lot of time in my late teens and early twenties “thinking about the universe”, and I’ve grown mostly disinterested in it. The ultimate reality I’ve come to like most is the one that has the least explanation.
So, I guess that’s the point of this post. What’s the point? If I’m close to a fruition for stream entry, and that just means more cycles to go through with a final ending that is basically just a disconnection from my emotions, or that “no-dog” state, it doesn’t seem very worthwhile to me. My path so far has been focused on the jhanas and mindfulness, and I’ve found a state of mind that really is extraordinary. It’s not permanent, and it isn’t nibbana, but I wonder if it will lead me there – or, at the very least, if it can bring me to the baseline of contentment I’ve been searching for. If that means my destiny is to become a jhana junkie (as I’ve seen it called here), then that’s fine, because I’ve seen it actually work. That’s the spirit of pragmatic dharma, isn’t it? Do what works to reach the goal you want.
I don’t mean these questions as an attack, either. I know you all put in a lot of hard work and have a great deal of conviction in what you’re doing. If you believe I can reach my goal by following your path, please feel free to offer guidance. I’m still completely unsure if I’m even lining up with your practices at all. I really do feel like I’m at a crossroads, though, and I’m very open to whatever you all have to say.
If you’ve taken the time to read all this, thank you for listening. :3