| | I have not yet settled into a routine sitting practice -- partly because of obstacles in my life right now, but also, if I'm honest, because I find sitting to be rather unpleasant. Instead, I've been practicing mindfulness while walking, focusing on the feeling in my feet. With some practice, I'm finding that I can sustain attention for fairly long periods of time.
I was re-reading the "Stages of Insight" section of MCTB and was struck by the possible realization that I may already be in stage 3, and perhaps have been there for such a long time that it now simply feels "normal" for me. As I mentioned before, I've understood my thoughts and body sensations to be objects for almost as long as I can remember. Indeed, it's only now occurring to me that perhaps other people don't perceive their world that way -- sort of a "reverse insight" into the way others may be living. I must say, if there really are people who see no distinction between their thoughts and sensations and "themselves," they are asleep indeed.
"Cause and effect," as I am coming to understand it, also seems to be something that I've realized for a long time. My understanding of this stage is something like this: Before "Mind and Body," if you truly identify with your thoughts and sensations, then you are either blind to them, or you believe that you are causing them through the exercise of your free will. Once you achieve "Mind and Body" and are able to examine those objects with some distance, you soon notice that they have causes and effects. For example, your thoughts are not pristine exercises of free will, but rather can be seen to arise and fall in response to certain stimuli, etc. What's more, you realize that one thought causes the next, which causes the next, etc., and can see that (if you are asleep to them) these chains can extend for days, weeks, even years at a time, one causing the next -- with you and your life being carried unknowingly along with them. You have the illusion that you are choosing your life, but in fact you're just being carried along.
If that realization is "Cause and Effect," then I've been there a long time. It's really the inevitable result of being aware that your thoughts and sensations are not you. But that makes sense, because it's precisely because it's an inevitable conclusion that it's a universal stage that everyone who looks will perceive.
Finally, I think "The Three Characteristics" has been part of my outlook for years as well. I'm less sure of this one, but at least one aspect of this insight seems to be that these chains of causation that you're able to observe have nothing to do with "you" -- they're just things that happen. And another aspect of the insight seems to be that you really can't put your finger on anything in your world or mind that isn't somehow part of these chains of causation. If these are the insights, then this is something that has been part of my worldview for years.
Again, it's a bit surprising to me that others may not see the world this way. That said, it does seem to explain something that has sort of puzzled me. I tend to have a very philosophical outlook on life, in that it's easy for me to disengage from events and recognize that things happen for reasons that aren't clear, but that there's no real reason to get upset as long as the sky is blue and the breeze is gentle, and so on. Why get wound up in the drama? This is a natural outlook for me -- but I've noticed (obviously) that lots of other people emphatically do *not* see the world this way. In ways that are sometimes hard to understand, it's been a wall that exists between myself and others -- including otherwise highly-intelligent people that I would have thought should be able to perceive the world as I do. I've struggled to understand this in the past, but it now strikes me that these early stage insights might just be the explanation. There's a truth -- a very simple truth that anyone can grasp with some basic observations -- that is completely obvious to me but that lots of other very smart people have simply never noticed.
If anyone's reading this, does it ring any bells to you? |