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A Realtime Chronicle of 2nd Path?

The following is a rapid-fire email exchange between Tarin (theprisonergreco) and Kenneth, in March of 2009. Tarin's communications are in italics, Kenneth's are in standard type.

1) From Tarin:
@Kenneth: "I began reporting to U Kundala that I was experiencing hundreds of little flashes of cessation each day, like the winking out of consciousness for a moment. They came singly or in waves, and I could induce them at will."

let's chat about this a bit? are you talking about something different than just inclining the mind toward the end of phenomena? or are you talking about noticing how everything ends in a total way, like how when you notice that attention/the mind is totally discontinuous, cessation becomes obvious. because if so, that's what im finding i'm noticing more nowadays.

after dark nighting pretty hard earlier this week, i just had a big fruition today that stopped me in my tracks, and from the after-effects, which are still continuing to unfold slowly, i think i may have finished a path. not that it really changes anything. in your experience, what was the difference between 1st path and 2nd path fruitions when you reviewed them? (as referenced in the story with u kundala). it's a bit early for me to say - if its that time at all - but i intuit that a 2nd path fruition would afterwards just seem to have been more relevant somehow. other than that, i notice no difference.

tarin


2) From Tarin:
as things continue to unfold this is clear than before: the mind blinks in and out of something that is fundamentally no different from the mind

3) From Kenneth:
Very nice, Tarin.
Primordial awareness underlies it all. The manifest universe arises from and is not separate from primordial awareness. Even cessation is known.


4)
so is there a cessation-beyond-cessation?
can primordial awareness as you call it be known?


5)
Primordial awareness is always known. It's just obscured by other stuff. If you follow your mind all the way upstream, you leave your identity behind and primordial awareness knows itself. This is thogal (spontaneous arising), the highest dzogchen teaching. I call it the simplest thing. I think it was Jed McKenna who said "that which cannot be further reduced." When the simplest thing knows itself, emptiness and form are integrated. It isn't possible to see primordial awareness without also seeing the universe arising from and passing away into it, leaving not a trace. It's quite remarkable, really. Primordial awareness is unstained although it is inseparable from the world.


6)
how is this different from what is seen when awareness is reflected on? where's the so-called stick stirring in the fire?


7)
The stick that stirs the fire is the no-dog. It's not the simplest thing. It's the second to simplest thing. When even the "I am" goes away, there is still knowing, but without the sense of a knower.


8)
ah ok! so the 'i am' really does go away, eh? for how long at a stretch have you been able to get that to stick? (or no stick, haha)


9)
Smoothly in and out of no-stick for hours at a time. Flowing between no-dog, no-stick, dharma reflection, absorption, the occasional practical thought, back to no-dog, back to no-stick.


10)
man, that is some accomplishment. can you get no-stick to go through the reflections and practical thoughts too sometimes?


11)
Hmmm, I'd say it's more like a smooth flow in and out. Even though the no-stick is always there, it's so subtle that it is easily obscured.
Another way of saying it would be that it's like the sky. If you're looking at something else, you're not looking at the sky; but the sky is always right there where you left it, should you happen to remember to look up.


12)
hmm.. so by no-dogging enough, no-stick will start showing up, smoothly in and out? no arahat path required?


13)
This is my belief. Perhaps you can help me prove it. I wasn't able to do it until after arahatship, but I don't take that to be conclusive evidence that it can't be done. I was laboring under the limitations of my belief system. I frankly don't know the answer. I have a friend who is not an arahat, but who seems to describe the no-stick very clearly.

I'm convinced, however, that the no-dog is accessible before Fourth Path: this is the whole point of advaita. They teach you to dwell in the no-dog until the no-stick arises. Although communication is by nature imperfect, it seems clear to me that my wife is able to dwell in the no-dog, pre-2nd Path. And I get the impression from you that you are able to dwell in the no-dog. And although I never learned to dwell in it much pre-arahat, I had many brief experiences of the no-dog all along the way, beginning with my very first opening.

It may be that no-stick is synonymous with arahatship, so I'll be very interested to hear about your experiences with this. As always, the problem with drawing firm conclusions about what is possible is that we have such a limited sample size.


14)
not just no-dog, but also no-stick, has shown up for both me and two of my dharma friends, and none of us are arahants. in fact, as far as we know, neither of them has gotten any path either, but both of them have a deep and integrated understanding of emptiness that has strongly influenced me over the almost 10 years that i've known both of them as practitioners.

if i'm understanding your terms correctly, my friends and I used to discuss no-dog and no-stick all the time, but we called it 'witnessing as consciousness' and 'witnessing without a witnesser'. both of us have had limited experiences of the latter. i certainly know what the no-this-side-that-side is like, though i cant just induce it at will (no-dog is the closest i know how to.. and no-dog keeps deepening).
my take is that no-stick is hinted at from time to time when anyone dwells in no-dog clearly and with good concentration. arahantship probably just makes no-dog deeper and 'more complete', and as a result, no-stick much more accessible.


15)
i just got back from taking a walk. i definitely got a new path - sure of it now.
the in-my-face quality of cessation is pretty clear. i can 'call them up' now in a way i couldnt just a few hours ago. i feel light and happy like after i just got first path.. it could be that im just sleep deprived too. my mind is so awake.
you know what im noticing more than before? how 'out-of-control' my experience is, and in a good way. in a way that seems to almost suggest acausality or even reverse causality. like this thing is just going to do what its going to do anyway.. including predict (think) totally contradictory things!
so is this thing conditioned or unconditioned? man.. that seems to be the question now.
ps- i really cant tell now if fruitions even exist as separate from the world of things or not. like even a non-event must be an event. was i deluded somehow in thinking that there was a difference? that there was a difference not just between the sensations that imply form and the sensations that imply emptiness, but even between that and what i thought was emptiness itself? that reminds me of this old non-dualistic greek philosopher, parmenides, who emphasised that nothing doesnt exist. what do you think?


16)
Philosophical claptrap. :-)
Just dwell in the no-dog and be happy. You've got a lot of work to do fleshing out the stinky phase before you can fall from grace and be a chump like the rest of us. Enjoy it while you can.


17)
hah, screw you guys im not gonna fall from grace like the rest of you chumps, my grace is more humble than yours


18)
LOL. Nice one, Stinky. :-)
[Kenneth is referring to the "stink of enlightenment.”]


19)
i totally resonate with your descriptions of the 3 types of cessation by the way. except maybe the dukkha ones, those descriptions arent as clear ot me. go into more detail if you can? once again, like with first path, this path fruition was through anatta door - really catches you off-guard, dont it


20)
Roll your eyes up into your head and let them flicker. Is the flickering continuous, or does it come in pulsing waves? Watch for the end of a cycle of flickers. There's just a tiny bit of tension as you focus on the end of the wave. Ftrrrp, ftrrrrp, ftrrrp. The hard stop is a dukkha cessation. The smoother, slippery ones are anatta.

21)
oh shit. i get it. im much more inclined to notice anatta door but if i keep looking ill notice the dukkha ones too. 'hard stop' indeed. can do this with any other sensation/vibration too.

22)
cessation seems to happen wherever/whenever i look for it. do you think this could be true for anyone if only they just knew that? that it's possible that all anyone has to do to find a cessation is to look for it?


23)
Wouldn't it be pretty to think so. But I suspect that is not the case. The Paths are somehow physiological. I don't think the circuitry is in place to experience First Path...until it is...and that is, by definition, First Path. Same with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Path. There seems to be some re-wiring of the energy flow within the body/mind.

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