"The side Effects of Meditation" - Discussion
Yeah. That.
I found that Vice/Tonic article linked to from FlashBoard this morning in my inbox. I read it and had a similar reaction.
Since when was factual accuracy, fair treatment based on reading all the relevant books, talking to the authors and their audiences, historical actions of the article's subjects and the existence of contradictory evidence a thing the popular media does?
I found that Vice/Tonic article linked to from FlashBoard this morning in my inbox. I read it and had a similar reaction.
Since when was factual accuracy, fair treatment based on reading all the relevant books, talking to the authors and their audiences, historical actions of the article's subjects and the existence of contradictory evidence a thing the popular media does?
Well that was interesting. 
I am kind of hesitant to comment for fear of getting between two such heavy-weight teachers such as Dan and Culadasa, both of whose books I've found quite helpful in my practice and whom I admire. But I found one particular part of Culadasa's video important, where he says that he does not allow people on meds into his retreats if they are not taking their meds. This is in contrast with Goeka retreats, where they insist that people stop taking their meds during a retreat, which has led to at least one suicide. In my experience from seeing what people write about here on DhO, people with psychological problems sometimes believe, either due to them being told so or otherwise, that meditation practice will allow them to get off their meds, even if their problem is neurochemical. Culadasa also makes a good point about teachers who don't do their own work, end up in leadership positions, then abuse students in various ways (the Sakyong, Richard Baker, Sogyel Rimpoche, Sazaki Roshi, etc. etc.). That is, I think, the other extreme, one of ego inflation.
Having myself gone through two rather extreme psychological breakdowns of the ego inflation sort during and after retreats (one of which you can read about in my memoir here), I think I can speak somewhat authoritatively of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a mind constructing a reality out of what is simply not there and a sense of one's own importance in the universe. What I was missing in both cases was someone who understood what I was going through and could "talk me down" as we used to say in the early 70's about how to help someone having a bad trip. In both cases, the retreats I was on were led by relatively inaccessable teachers, who I did not count as friends, and could not spend time with me. The problems cleared up after a while and I got back to normal life, however boring it may have seemed compared to the reality my mind had constructed.
So count me among those who believe that an upfront warning, as Dan mentions, afrequently repeated in Dharma talks as needed, and training for teachers who lead retreats about what to do if someone freaks out, would certainly help.
I am kind of hesitant to comment for fear of getting between two such heavy-weight teachers such as Dan and Culadasa, both of whose books I've found quite helpful in my practice and whom I admire. But I found one particular part of Culadasa's video important, where he says that he does not allow people on meds into his retreats if they are not taking their meds. This is in contrast with Goeka retreats, where they insist that people stop taking their meds during a retreat, which has led to at least one suicide. In my experience from seeing what people write about here on DhO, people with psychological problems sometimes believe, either due to them being told so or otherwise, that meditation practice will allow them to get off their meds, even if their problem is neurochemical. Culadasa also makes a good point about teachers who don't do their own work, end up in leadership positions, then abuse students in various ways (the Sakyong, Richard Baker, Sogyel Rimpoche, Sazaki Roshi, etc. etc.). That is, I think, the other extreme, one of ego inflation.
Having myself gone through two rather extreme psychological breakdowns of the ego inflation sort during and after retreats (one of which you can read about in my memoir here), I think I can speak somewhat authoritatively of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a mind constructing a reality out of what is simply not there and a sense of one's own importance in the universe. What I was missing in both cases was someone who understood what I was going through and could "talk me down" as we used to say in the early 70's about how to help someone having a bad trip. In both cases, the retreats I was on were led by relatively inaccessable teachers, who I did not count as friends, and could not spend time with me. The problems cleared up after a while and I got back to normal life, however boring it may have seemed compared to the reality my mind had constructed.
So count me among those who believe that an upfront warning, as Dan mentions, afrequently repeated in Dharma talks as needed, and training for teachers who lead retreats about what to do if someone freaks out, would certainly help.
I reformatted Daniel's reply to make it more readable.
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Dear Culadasa,Welcome to the Dharma Overground.I am technically on a solo retreat but this discussion seemed very significant and relevant to actual practice. Also, this type of public conflict can be very upsetting to practitioners, so I thought I might take some time to address these issues one by one as the occurred.D: I have no real investment in whether or not people use that term, but I do think the range of phenomena it is pointing to should be addressed by language that is congruous with the range of experiences, though clearly there is room for disagreement on what that language might be.D: “Enormously disrespectful”, “shame”, and “tragedy” strike me as a bit strong, but you are entitled to your feelings on this point. The more important point, beyond the tone of the post, is that I view things a touch more ecumenically, seeing this issue through the lens of various traditions all describing something fundamental about the normal range of development of human attention and insight that is broader than any one individual proprietary tradition, like one comparing diagrams of human anatomy from various countries across the centuries. Curiously, as the phenomena that I call various names, including dukkha ñanas and Dark Night stages, seem to occur to various degrees even in people coming from no tradition, those who, for example, had the A&P happen seemingly spontaneously to them without formal meditative training, it would seem to me that what we are talking about is a more universal human phenomena. I personally feel that, by giving a friendly nod to other traditions that also describe this territory, I am being respectfully inclusive. Clearly, experts disagree here.D: I personally can see both pros and cons from a marketing and tone perspective to using either Pali words without any cultural overlay to an English speaking audience, such as “dukkha ñanas”, or using terms that are more happy and benign-seeming, such as “purifications”, I personally do like something in the poetic resonance of the term “dark night”, though something in the possibly occasionally euphemistic term “purifications” does play to my dark sense of humor, if said with the right tone. Now we are obviously into matters of taste and aesthetics, and these are matters that people rarely change their minds on, and I have no problem with people having a preference here.D: I personally nearly always just use the term “dark night” without the qualifiers, and I can see why, from a Buddhist point of view, one might be uncomfortable with words like “spirit” and “soul”, though the terms “of the” seem benign enough to me, though they obviously seem unnecessary without the last term.D: Here we now get into categorical distinctions of something that I prefer to think of more dimensionally, across a nuanced range. While I can appreciate that someone might want to make categorical distinctions, and see their utility when it comes to function and other decisions about practice and instructions, I am not sure it is clear that those categories are exactly as Culadasa says they are, and these gradations seem to me to be at least partly his own system, which is fine, as we all have our systems. It is not clear to me from the descriptions in the Abhidhamma, Vimuttimagga, and Visuddhimagga exactly how intense they mean for those to be, and descriptions as they relate to function are entirely lacking.For example, what we get from the Abhidhamma, the first straightforward occurrence of the list of ñanas (beyond things like Mara’s Armies, which could be read as an insight stage by some such as myself), is pretty sparse. In A Manual of Abhidhamma, we find only this:One could clearly read that various ways, as it is ambiguous regarding the broader psychological and functional implications of those knowledges, and I personally find making definite assumptions based on that paragraph alone not straightforward. One could just as easily imagine that if one found every single aspect of experience (as all experience is conditioned) fearful, baneful, disgusting, and generating a wish to escape from all conditioned experience as simply signs of insight or possibly producing strong psychological reactions. In practice, what we see today is a wide range, a topic I will come to more in a bit, as that is clearly part of our disagreement.From the Vimuttimagga, the next commonly-noted book to contain the stages of insight, we also get descriptions of the stages of insight. However, on careful reading, one will find them described across a wide range of the text in its descriptions of wisdom and the appreciation of “ill”, meaning dukkha, and so it permits no easy summary, and also makes no specific mentions of psychological or functional implications that are easy to parse into modern terms. Thus, while I really like the Vimuttimagga, I don’t find it particularly helpful here.From the Visuddhimagga, which is like a super-long version of the Vimuttimagga, we get more information, but, again, it isn’t as helpful for resolving our discussion as I wish it was, as, to my eye, it appears to be somewhat contradictory, leading to the possibility of reading it multiple ways regarding how intense such things as the Knowledge of Terror might be. (See Chapter XX1, section 29 on, page 673 in the version I am reading).Two quotes of relevance, the one starting off the section, and then one further in. One might read these considering the implications for some typical adult layperson with children, a job, etc.Continuing on:Again, a pretty grim and graphic metaphor. What impression would a modern reader get of the stage of Knowledge of Terror from this? I get a pretty strong one, personally, though obviously it perhaps admits of ambiguity.Ok, wait, heads chopped off, dead babies, terror, all these metaphors, but not fear? Clearly, something complicated is going on here.Moving on to what the translation I have called Knowledge of Danger, quoting:While the practical, psychological implications for the typical practicing householder are unclear, one might presume, as I do, that one viewing things in this way could possibly experience a range of responses with a range of implications, as we see in the real world today.Quoting the Visiddhimagga again, we find in the section on Knowledge of Reflection, which I typically call Re-observation:Again, one experiencing reality this way, particularly in a typical lay context, particularly without some heads-up that such modes of experiencing reality this way might occur, might be predicted to have a range of reactions to such conclusions about reality, not all benign, as we see in practice in live meditators today. Most practitioners, perceiving themselves and/or their partner as “stinking, disgusting, repulsive,” etc. might reasonably be expected to experience some difficulties in their relationship, for example. Remember, the path in the Visuddhimagga recommends monastic life to pursue these practices, which is not surprising, given the effects they purport to result from insight practice.Getting to Mahasi’s descriptions, they are often not that extreme, curiously, with books such as Practical Insight Meditation not being anything like as gory and graphic as the Visuddhimagga, and Mahasi-style practitioners themselves often not having experiences as horrible as the Visuddhimagga describes, though that end is in the range of what can occur, just not commonly that severe.For example, one can find descriptions along the lines of such unpleasant sensations being generally hard to bear, with one described as a person walking a long, muddy road in the rain. That’s clearly nothing like dead babies and all those other Visuddhimagga-esque descriptions. Still, I unfortunately don’t have my copy of A Manual of Insight with me, or I would provide quotes and do more research to be sure I haven’t missed something that is as harsh as the descriptions found in the Vimuttimagga.Thus, I find a curious distinction that Culadasa puts the Mahasi descriptions at the far end, when it is hard for me to read them that way. This is simply my take on these things, one of many possible opinions.That said, I can definitely appreciate the fact that, when experiencing what I would call stage 8, Disgust, that some might, instead, have more of a sense of Dispassion instead, for example, as that sort of thing definitely occurs, so here we are on a similar page, at least when that does occur.D: Well, here we come to some mild complexity. Given that sorting out exactly what is the stage I would label the “Three Characteristics” from the “dukkha ñanas” or “Dark Night” stages is not always perfectly straightforward, as some people’s A&P stage is relatively subtle, we may have to agree to disagree on the degree to which this can always be perfectly delineated. Further, as we might disagree on exactly which stages might involve exactly which types of piti, some resolution might be complicated. While we both agree that some of those early stages can also have some heavy psychological content, I am inclined to suspect that, for some practitioners, we might map differently and delineate the “arising of insight” differently, and this topic might be worthy of further nuanced discussion to elucidate possible disparities.D: While I am not as perfectly confident that I precisely know that these are the exact and only causes of difficulty in insight stages, I agree that they may very well be contributory. I also agree that insight and the dukkha ñanas can cause all of these to arise at once, so here, at least, we are on very similar pages.D: Here we are again on very similar pages, at least in terms of effect, while I might admit a bit more wiggle room for being perfectly certain of knowing underlying causes with such assurance.D: Here again, we are on very similar pages, in fact to such a degree that I am surprised that there is any real underlying controversy, and wondering if this debate is much more subtle but seeming by the power of language to be more like a dramatic conflict. We might disagree on who “someone so predisposed” is, but regarding the effect, we seem aligned in my reading of what he is saying.D: I have discussed this story with Dr Britton herself, but I, for one, am not sure it is all so perfectly straightforward and, while advocating for training in Sila in the very first part of MCTB2 and at many points later on, given its benefit to the insight practitioner, I don’t believe training well in either Sila or Concentration are perfect prophylaxis against difficult insight stages, and I base this on numerous practitioners I have met and whose stories I have heard and read. I know some extremely virtuous, ethical people who have had significant troubles when these stages arise.However, if one believes this it is truly the case that one can clearly make that distinction and place the blame on a lack of practicing not-clinging and self-denial, then, given that the effects we are discussing are of a detrimental nature, a risk, if you will, then I, coming from a medical background that is prone to trying at least to discuss the risks and benefits of treatments with patients, one might provide in the introduction to TMI words to the effect of, “If you have not sufficiently practiced self-denial, virtue, and not acting and speaking in response to craving, you shouldn’t practice insight, as it might be so intense as to create inner chaos and throw you into a hell realm.” Perhaps other wording that conveys a similar message might suffice. One might helpfully add additional criteria or a checklist of self-identifiable failings in this regard to precisely weed out those who might end up in said hell realm.D: While I agree that the more extreme things that Culadasa calls “dark night” experiences fall into the far end of what I classify the “dark night stages”, as described in MCTB2, they fall across a wide range, from Fear being just mild tingles and a sense of something mildly creepy that fades rapidly all the way to full-blown unmitigated, dysfunctional terror. Thus, we find that he has a terminological preference for delineating the “dark night” only when it falls to one far end of the range, and I classify it as being more like a bell curve, with the horrible, long-lasting end being much more rare than more moderate experiences. Again, so long as one realizes that we are using such terminology differently, I see no source of conflict on this particular front.D: Ok, here we go. As we both see the light end of the dukkha ñanas occurring, and we just disagree on whether these are to also be called “dark night” stages, with me being more dimensional and him being more categorical, one can see that we are mostly arguing about language, at least regarding this point.D: Ok, wait, what? Think about those Visuddhimagga descriptions by Buddhaghosa and see if you can be sure no emotions are involved. After carefully reading these passages a few times, my sense is that a lot of emotion is discussed, mostly of the aversive variety. Regarding Mahasi’s descriptions, I don’t think they emphasize the emotions nearly to the degree that the Visuddhimagga does. I, while mentioning all sorts of emotions and psychological side-effects of these stages across a broad range, actually prefer to focus mostly on key insights, frequencies of perception, phase of attention, width of attention, the sequence of presenting changes in the practitioner, appreciation of the Three Characteristics, and other key perceptual changes as my core criteria.D: Ok, here we go, pretty close to agreement, and even some appreciation of what I would call 11.3, what I would label the mini dark night seen very close to path attainment far up in Equanimity.D: Alright, again, we largely agree here.D: True, if you can train people to do that, or they figure it out on their own, it can be very gratifying for practitioners to learn to perceive experience in the light of insight, so again, we are on a similar page on this point, and this is clearly what we are all trying to accomplish with all of this.D: Alright, here we go, getting to part of the heart of the conflict. I can imagine numerous reasons for the marked discrepancy in our experiences of the range of presentation of the dukka ñanas in the populations we have been exposed to, which I will explain after C makes his next point:D: Ok, here we go with some frank speculation and attempts to explain what is going on here that gives the two of us, both smart, caring, scientifically-trained meditation teachers and practitioners dedicated to the welfare of others, such markedly different takes on a few aspects of this discussion.I agree entirely, by the way, that a practitioner, properly trained in samatha with the ability to add a vipassana element, may, if they are skillful and many other beneficial factors converge (which C and I might disagree on to some degree, see above), pass through the stages of insight with very little difficulty or hardly notice them at all. I state this explicitly in MCTB2, particularly with regard to my experience with candle-flame meditation, which will allow a rare few with unusual talent to navigate these stages in realms of sound and light, for example, as C also agrees:D: I also agree, and state clearly in MCTB2 that training in samatha can, for those practitioners who don’t get stuck in its traps (which TMI does go out of its way to try to make sure doesn’t happen), make more smooth progress in insight.That said, there is a lot more going on here, I believe. First, I have a book and community that are very dedicated to frank discussion of these stages. I speculate based on my scientific background that practitioners who experience more difficult stages are more likely to self-select to join a community and email questions to a teacher who is much more into frank, open, and detailed descriptions of the dukkha ñanas. This is commonly called “sample bias”, in that we, based on our different advertising and telegraphing of styles of relating to this topic, are likely to be contacted by practitioners from different ends of the range. This applies doubly to Dr. Britton, who formally studies the farther end of the range of people having difficult experiences.It is also explicitly true that, in my experiences, dryer approaches to insight can produce rougher rides. I state this clearly in MCTB2, as is well-known. That adults can choose to have a rougher ride in exchange for the other possible benefits of the dry approach is their choice, but I believe again in a frank discussion of risks and benefits. Do I think that TMI is sometimes a bit slower and produces somewhat more vague microphenomenology than Mahasi techniques and candle-flame? Yes, but does it also likely produce a smaller range of ups and downs: also yes.TMI and MCTB2 are also designed to do some very different things. TMI focuses mostly on the phenomenology of training specifically in that tradition using its specific techniques, emphases, and focuses, and, trying to do what I think of as striking that Holy Grail of balances represented by the optimal balance of simultaneously cultivating samatha and vipassana. While in theory the maps in TMI may apply broadly to a range of other techniques, in practice its maps may make more sense in its particular practice context. It is possible that this approach somehow also screens out some practitioners from following in that traditions, both by ways explicit and more subtle, and some of these practitioners may be more prone in some way to difficulty, thus possibly further skewing the sample.MCTB2, on the other hand, deals explicitly with a wider range of situations, a wider range of techniques and traditions, and even what happens when people cross the A&P into deeper insight stages outside of formal meditation traditions in ordinary daily life. It spans a range of practices from very samatha-heavy (wet) to extremely harsh, rapid and dry vipassana, and provides a lot of other options. It leaves it to the practitioner to choose how they practice, where they fall on the wet-to-dry spectrum. It also recommends TMI as one of the books that people might choose if they wish to practice in a way that attempts some balance of these.I also charge nothing for my services, and Culadasa charges something, so perhaps more practitioners experiencing more dysfunction from insight or other factors are more prone to reaching out to me, as financial barriers might preclude access to more expensive services, and those experiencing emotional dysfunction might reasonably be expected to have fewer financial resources, on average.Regardless of underlying mechanisms that may skew the populations that we are exposed to, the effect is clearly real, as I read post after post and get email after email from people having a very hard time, and have been for the 20+ years I have been online and talking about the dukkha ñanas the way I talk about them. I get a lot of the type of practitioners reaching out to me that Dr Britton does, as evidenced by an hour-long skype call just yesterday with someone who, while previously very functional and accomplished, and a deep practitioner with some deep and lasting insights, had a hard moment that required low-dose antipsychotics, though now luckily is doing very well. They found being able to talk frankly about the range of what can occur on the spiritual path very helpful and normalizing.BTW, I would also suspect that someone having hard emotional difficulties who goes Googling is more likely to resonate with terms such as “dark night” than “dukkha ñanas”, as Pali just isn’t taught in schools the way it used to be, and this could also skew the sample heading in the direction of the community of practitioners I hang out in, who is more prone to using the term. Further, as discussions of meditation difficulties in online communities are likely to be picked up on in general by search engines, it is entirely possible that Google and the like are herding us into our little information silos, oblivious to the fact that we are experiencing very different worlds from each other. Given that this also appears to be a powerful political and social effect in other domains, it is likely to be occurring here without our clear knowledge beyond just knowing that it can happen in theory.D: I hope that this also is a skillful response that helps create more understanding and skillful practice than it creates further drama and complexity.Responding to the later post:D: I am not sure how you are reading my sentence as you are, but my intent by using the word “after” is straightforwardly “after”, meaning that they picked up MCTB after picking up TMI. Sorry if my sentence is unclear to you. It was my intent to state things as they were in the article. I get that it could also be read the other way, which was not my intent. I have edited the blog post for clarity based on your suggestion to reflect this. The sentence on my blog now reads, “and it mentions that a practitioner picked up TMI and then MCTB in the first example of being a book that inspired the meditation in someone that went horribly wrong.” Better?D: As you prefer.D: Which to me is largely a discussion of the fact that we use the terms differently, see above.D: Regarding our interactions and the nightly Q&A sessions, I believe that I attended 27, having missed three nights when I had to return home for my father-in-law’s funeral. These sessions started at 7pm and often ran past 8:30, some as late as past 9:30, so I just rounded them off to about two hours each. Of those 27, you missed a number due to being gone to Tucson, being tired, or having respiratory problems, I recall, and I estimated that you missed at least 7, yielding roughly 20 sessions of about 2 hours, give or take. It is possible that I am a bit off in my calculations, but the general range remains. It was typical during these sessions for us both to give an answer to a question, yielding a remarkable and rare occurrence where two teachers get to hear each other’s take on a question and get to understand each other better. I still have the recording of the one session we all agreed to record on September 2nd, and could post a link to it as an example of the style of the discussions if that would be helpful and clarifying, as it alone is 1 hour and 49 minutes long in unedited form.D: Closure sounds fine by me. I consider this closed if you do.D: Best wishes, practice well, and feel free to adopt frameworks and terms that best help you, the practitioners, to navigate the path.Happy Thanksgiving!Daniel
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Dear Culadasa,Welcome to the Dharma Overground.I am technically on a solo retreat but this discussion seemed very significant and relevant to actual practice. Also, this type of public conflict can be very upsetting to practitioners, so I thought I might take some time to address these issues one by one as the occurred.
Culadasa: In reply to your first question, I prefer not to use the term "dark night" at all.
Culadasa: The misappropriation of this wonderfully and deeply meaningful term from another spiritual tradition to describe frankly pathological states is enormously disrespectful, both a shame and a tragedy. But I realize it has arisen out of ignorance and misunderstanding of what this term truly refers to, and the fact that it "sounds" appropriately descriptive.
Culadasa: I could wish for a widespread agreement to abandon this term, but am skeptical that it will happen.
Culadasa: Perhaps we can make our apologies to the Christian mystical tradition by restricting ourselves to the two words "dark night", and be careful never to use the full phrases "dark night of the spirit" or "dark night of the soul"?
Culadasa: Having agreed to use this term for the moment, I would then make a clear distinction between "normal" dukkha nanas as they are described in the Visuddhimagga or the more extreme but still "normal" dukkha nanas as described by Mahasi; and the pathological states that are sometimes triggered by Insight in a poorly prepared mind. I would reserve the term "dark night" for the latter only. That's what we need a new word for, not the "knowledges of suffering."
“1. Investigating knowledge (28),2. Knowledge with regard to the arising and passing away (of conditioned things),3. Knowledge with regard to the dissolution (of things),4. Knowledge (of dissolving things) as fearful,5. Knowledge of (fearful) things as baneful,6. Knowledge of (baneful) things as disgusting,7. Knowledge as regards the wish to escape therefrom,8. Knowledge of reflecting contemplation (29),9. Knowledge of equanimity towards conditioned things (30), and10. Knowledge of adaptation (31).”
Visuddhimagga: “29. As he repeats, develops and cultivates in this way the contemplation of dissolution, the object of which is cessation consisting in the destruction, fall and breakup of all formations, then formations classed according to all kinds of becoming, generation, destiny, station, or abode of beings, appear to him in the form of a great terror, as lions, tigers, leopards, bears, hyenas, spirits, ogres, fierce bulls, savage dogs, rut-maddened wild elephants, hideous venomous serpents, thunderbolts, charnel grounds, battlefields, flaming coal pits, etc., appear to a timid man who wants to live in peace. When he sees how past formations have ceased, present ones are ceasing, and those to be generated in the future will cease in just the same way, then what is called knowledge of appearance as terror arises in him at that stage.”Consider viewing your spouse or children as “hideous venomous serpents”. Perhaps this is all just hyperbolic metaphor, but the Theravada tradition and the commentaries in general are generally known for attempting precision.
Visuddhimagga: “30. Here is a simile: a woman’s three sons had offended against the king, it seems. The king ordered their to be cut off. She went with her sons to the place of their execution. When they had cut off the eldest one’s head, they set about cutting off the middle one’s head. Seeing the eldest one’s head already cut off and the middle one’s head being cut off, she gave up hope for the youngest, thinking, “He too will fare like them.” Now, the meditator’s seeing the cessation of past formations is like the woman’s seeing the eldest son’s head cut off. His seeing the cessation of those present is like her seeing the middle one’s head being cut off. His seeing the cessation of those in the future, thinking, “Formations to be generated in the future will cease too,” is like her giving up hope for the youngest son, thinking, “He too will fare like them.” When he sees in this way, knowledge of appearance as terror arises in him at that stage.”
Visuddhimagga: “31. Also another simile: a woman with an infected womb had, it seems, given birth to ten children. [646] Of these, nine had already died and one was dying in her hands. There was another in her womb. Seeing that nine were dead and the tenth was dying, she gave up hope about the one in her womb, thinking, “It too will fare just like them.” Herein, the meditator’s seeing the cessation of past formations is like the woman’s remembering the death of the nine children. The meditator’s seeing the cessation of those present is like her seeing the moribund state of the one in her hands. His seeing the cessation of those in the future is like her giving up hope about the one in her womb. When he sees in this way, knowledge of appearance as terror arises in him at that stage.Visuddhimagga: 32. But does the knowledge of appearance as terror fear or does it not fear? It does not fear. For it is simply the mere judgment that past formations have ceased, present ones are ceasing, and future ones will cease. Just as a man with eyes looking at three charcoal pits at a city gate is not himself afraid, since he only forms the mere judgment that all who fall into them will suffer no little pain;—or just as when a man with eyes looks at three spikes set in a row, an acacia spike, an iron spike, and a gold spike, he is not himself afraid, since he only forms the mere judgment that all who fall on these spikes will suffer no little pain;—so too the knowledge of appearance as terror does not itself fear; it only forms the mere judgment that in the three kinds of becoming, which resemble the three charcoal pits and the three spikes, past formations have ceased, present ones are ceasing, and future ones will cease.”
Visuddhimagga: “35. As he repeats, develops and cultivates the knowledge of appearance as terror he finds no asylum, no shelter, no place to go to, no refuge in any kind of becoming, generation, destiny, station, or abode. In all the kinds of becoming, generation, destiny, station, and abode there is not a single formation that he can place his hopes in or hold on to. The three kinds of becoming appear like charcoal pits full of glowing coals, the four primary elements like hideous venomous snakes (S IV 174), the five aggregates like murderers with raised weapons (S IV 174), the six internal bases like an empty village, the six external bases like village-raiding robbers (S IV 174–75), the seven stations of consciousness and the nine abodes of beings as though burning, blazing and glowing with the eleven fires (see S IV 19), and all formations appear as a huge mass of dangers destitute of satisfaction or substance, like a tumour, a disease, a dart, a calamity, an affliction (see M I 436). How?Visuddhimagga: 36. They appear as a forest thicket of seemingly pleasant aspect but infested with wild beasts, a cave full of tigers, water haunted by monsters and ogres, an enemy with raised sword, poisoned food, a road beset by robbers, a burning coal, a battlefield between contending armies appear to a timid man who wants to live in peace. And just as that man is frightened and horrified and his hair stands up when he comes upon a thicket infested by wild beasts, etc., and he sees it as nothing but danger, so too when all formations have appeared as a terror by contemplation of dissolution, this meditator sees them as utterly destitute of any core or any satisfaction and as nothing but danger.”
Visuddhimagga: “47. Being thus desirous of deliverance from all the manifold formations in any kind of becoming, generation, destiny, station, or abode, in order to be delivered from the whole field of formations [652] he again discerns those same formations, attributing to them the three characteristics by knowledge of contemplation of reflection.Visuddhimagga: 48. He sees all formations as impermanent for the following reasons: because they are non-continuous, temporary, limited by rise and fall, disintegrating, fickle, perishable, unenduring, subject to change, coreless, due to be annihilated, formed, subject to death, and so on.He sees them as painful for the following reasons: because they are continuously oppressed, hard to bear, the basis of pain, a disease, a tumour, a dart, a calamity, an affliction, a plague, a disaster, a terror, a menace, no protection, no shelter, no refuge, a danger, the root of calamity, murderous, subject to cankers, Mára’s bait, subject to birth, subject to ageing, subject to illness, subject to sorrow, subject to lamentation, subject to despair, subject to defilement, and so on.He sees all formations as foul (ugly)—the ancillary characteristic to that of pain—for the following reasons: because they are objectionable, stinking, disgusting, repulsive, unaffected by disguise, hideous, loathsome, and so on.”
Culadasa: I would likewise exclude from the dark night term 1) the completely normal but often unpleasant purifications that can and should occur prior to the arising of Insight, including even the cases where the "stuff" being purified is so intense that the process requires appropriate psycho-emotional therapy before it can be resolved through meditation (at least as long as the yogi is directed to get help, rather than being given the disastrous instruction to "keep on practicing and meditate through it! That advice only applies to the true dukkha nanas); and 2) the also completely normal bizarre sensations and involuntary movements corresponding to the 1st 4 grades of the development of piti as the mind unifies.
Culadasa: What that leaves us with are the variety of pathological states that arise as a result of:1) Not having undergone adequate purification of psychological and emotional trauma, internalized conflicting value systems, and other forms of unwholesome conditioning. Insight tends to bring these all up at once, so the yogi is working through these at the same time as the dukkha nanas are arising.
Culadasa: Triggering all of those buried neuroses at once, especially if some are quite severe, can look a lot like psychosis or even become a kind of psychosis.
Culadasa: 2) Not clearly understanding the illusoriness of the sense of being a separate self, and not having directly experienced the total lack of an independent "agent in charge" during the course of meditation practice leading up to Insight. Some practices are all about what You Do..., so this first hand experiential knowledge hasn't developed in a natural way. In someone so predisposed, Insight without practical experience of "no self in charge" can trigger episodes of depersonalization, dissociative disorder, nihilism, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks.
Culadasa: 3) Not having significantly reduced self-clinging and craving through consistently deep practice of sila, virtue. When Willoughby Britton asked the Dalai Lama why Westerners were having all these traumatic experiences of meditation, he was surprised and puzzled by what she was describing until he consulted with his attendants. Then he explained to her that this is an eight-fold path, and meditation shouldn't be practiced without the other five limbs. The practice of sila, performed properly, involves intentionally refraining from speaking and acting in response craving, and self-denial rather than self-clinging. The cumulative effect is to greatly diminish one's vulnerability to both craving and self-clinging. When this has not occurred prior to the arising of Insight, craving and self-clinging in the face of Insight knowledge can be so intense and create enough inner chaos to throw someone into a deep hell realm.
Culadasa: So any one or combination of the above are what I would describe as a "dark night" experience. I believe that answers your second question as well.
Culadasa: In response to your third question regarding students entering into "phases in their practice where their newfound realization of the nature of mind and the starkly honest view of "self"... can cause... negative effects," it depends upon what you mean by "negative effects." Can there be negative (i.e. unpleasant) vedana associated with those? Yes, of course, and I do see that in my students.
Culadasa: In samatha-vipassana practice, depending on where the yogi is in her progress through the Stages of samatha, the dukkha nanas (Buddhaghosa's definition that doesn't refer to actual emotions, not Mahasi's which emphasizes them)
Culadasa: may be accompanied by some feelings of anxiety, meaninglessness, restlessness, and ultimately a brief moment corresponding to the fear of death prior to a final surrender into Path attainment.
Culadasa: Sometimes there is chagrin and remorse that arises upon realizing how ego-centric and craving-driven their behavior has been.
Culadasa: However, knowing and understanding what these feelings represent, and being trained to allow emotions to arise and pass without identifying with them actually gives the experience a positive tone, even if the vedana of the emotions is negative.
Culadasa: Have I seen in my students anything remotely resembling a "dark night" as defined above? Absolutely not. Nor can I recall ever having seen the sorts of extreme experiences of the dukkha nanas that are appearing so frequently in these online discussions.
Culadasa: The nature of the Ten Stage samatha-vipassana practice pretty effectively precludes the kind of situations I described above as causes of a dark night, and weeds out those whose psychological vulnerability is so great as to give rise to some of Willoughby's extreme cases.
Culadasa: Farther along in the development of samatha, a yogi may pass through the entire sequence of dukkha nanas in a few minutes or even less, barely noticing them other than that final brief moment in which fear of death arises prior to surrender and Path attainment.
Culadasa: I hope this answers your questions and that you and others find the answers helpful.
Culadasa:Daniel, I have tried to respond in a spirit of friendship but with appropriate directness to your posts subsequent to the Vice article, and to ask for closure. However, upon comparing your response to the article with the Vice article itself, I notice yet another misleading discrepancy that has been introduced in your reply to the Vice article:In the Vice article it says:In your response you state
aniel M. Ingram: "it mentions MCTB in the first example of being a book that inspired the meditation in someone that went horribly wrong after they also picked up TMI." [bold and italics added for emphasis]
Daniel M. Ingram: Hey, glad there is already a thread on this, but before I saw this thread, here is what I wrote:”So this article came out in Vice on the 15th: https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-powerful-mental-tool-and-for-some-it-goes-terribly-wrong, and it mentions MCTB in the first example of being a book that inspired the meditation in someone that went horribly wrong after they also picked up TMI.
Vice: "He had begun meditating in August 2017. His gateway was a book, The Mind Illuminated by John Yates, and then Daniel Ingram's Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha." [bold and italics added for emphasis]
aniel M. Ingram: "it mentions MCTB in the first example of being a book that inspired the meditation in someone that went horribly wrong after they also picked up TMI." [bold and italics added for emphasis]Culadasa: It is not my place to say how this unfortunate reversal and subsequently misleading distortion occurred. However, for the sake of all of those sincere practitioners who are struggling to find clarity, I feel it necessary to point this out as well.Once again, my goal is clarification for the sake of all practitioners who follow these posts, not to debate or argue with you anyone else (I will not respond to such attempts).
Culadasa: I have simply made three points of clarification regarding 1) TMI students and "dark night" experiences during your month at Dharma Treasure,
Culadasa: 2) The actual extent of our interactions and my perception of your understanding of TMI and my "take" on things, and now
Culadasa: 3) the sequence of events leading to one unfortunate yogi's experience as described in the Vice article.None of the above are intended as points of argument, solely as clarification. I wish you well on your retreat, and once again ask that we have closure.
Culadasa: In joy,Culadasa
Ah, yes I had read that before. Good call. I think the explanation for the phenomenon goes beyond what's written on that Wiki, though.
Now remember what that other phenomenon is called
Now remember what that other phenomenon is called
That was intentional. It was the simplest way to bring the topic to the top of the "Recent Posts" list to make it obvious it was still here. I just inserted a blank space and submitted it.
This disagreement seems pretty simple to me, Matt. It's about whose version is the "right" one. The rest of the words exchanged were wrapped around that kernel of belief. Neither is "right" or "wrong" necessarily. Whichever most agrees with your experience, or who you feel more akin to, is probably how you line up if you feel the need to do that.