Just to keep this short, I'll explain briefly what I mean. I just spent the past several hours upon waking from a vaguely disturbing dream traveling through basically the entire bandwidth of normal mental states, i.e. not jhanas or things like that which I haven't attained to yet. I observe during the duration of this, from my initial hellish mindset of confusion and dis-ease, through to what I would call an almost heavenly mental state of normal consciousness in which I feel like everything in life and my perception of it not only has such elegance and beauty that I could weep at it when it occurs to me, and then proceeding to a base state on "earth", in which I return to my usual mood/clarity somewhere in the middle, how all of this is changing, how all of it is impermanent, and how my desire/aversion complex for the somewhat different states and gradations causes me suffering as they cannot be stopped from passing. On one hand I have quite a bit of thought during all of it, so one couldn't say that I'm exactly mentally calm or still - it's not like formal meditation. On the other hand though, what would you all call what I'm experiencing then? I'm curious to see what you think. Is this kind of occurrence to be discounted and simply forgotten, or does it have some significance in the greater pursuit of awakening?

It's your subconscious processing what you are learning while in the dream state. Whether or not it is "to be discounted and simply forgotten" depends upon YOU! Does it add to your awareness and understanding of the Buddhadhamma or not? Only you can answer that question.

Reflect upon those experiences and see what you come up with. And in doing so, learn to develop your discernment of phenomena, whether during meditation/contemplation or dreaming. It's all grist for the mill.

Here's what I've learned so far: statements like the quoted one sound very appealing and sort of create the idea that I'll eventually reach this state if I just try hard enough where I can just mechanically and methodically observe every sensation and take profundity from it in every breath, but so far my experience for a pretty long time now has demonstrated that 1) absolutely everything I try to do or construct collapses like a sandcastle in the tide and 2) that it just sucks. The End. Everything else sounds nice but right now at least it amounts to fireside hope stories and that's about it.

This is also probably why the oft-hated mainstream dogmatic stuff exists and flourishes, because people ultimately want comfort and refuge, and facing a 24/7 window into your own discontinuity and restless discontent is sorry to say pretty exhausting business most of the time. I wish sometimes I could be like that and find relatively easy/normal contentment, but I can't.

You might do better to drop for a while the overly technical MCTB approach to meditation and practice, and just read and ponder the discourses as a source for insight into the Dhamma. You can take these discourses as an object of meditation for further investigation. You need to be able to relate to them from an experiential basis in order to begin gaining insight from the various teachings that have been presented. In other words, the teaching needs to be related to something that you can grasp from your own personal experience in order to make it meaningful for you.

On another note, the trouble you are having with "being able to stay with it long enough" in terms of objects could have something to do with your general level of mindfulness (sati) and the development of concentration (samadhi). It sounds as though your sati and samadhi are at a low ebb. It may profit you to work on samatha type meditation for a while until you are able to sense a stronger hold on concentration states, which in turn will help you to "stay with it long enough...to really get something from it." When you are able to direct the mind toward an object of observation and the mind is able to stay there without much effort, then you will know that you have developed the requisite amount of concentration necessary for fruitful insight work.


That window into one's "own discontinuity and restless discontent" is mostly based on a sense of personal identity with the stuff or content of the mind doing the observation. Because the mind identifies so strongly with this "stuff" (this discontinuity, restlessness, and discontent) it lends credibility within the mind to the arising of an identification with the "name and form" (nama-rupa) of this stuff. In that sense, one becomes, however momentarily, the discontinuity, restlessness, and discontent that one is observing, thereby leading to the arising of the feeling (vedana) of personal identification with such.

By seeing these phenomena with appropriate attention (yoniso manasikara) you begin the slow process of dispassion for the phenomena which eventually results in your seeing it with clarity as: "This is not me; this I am not; this is not myself." You won't necessarily learn these alternative points of view from the way that the MCTB presents the practice, but only by reading the suttas and pondering them with respect to how they apply to your own experience. Then, your practice begins to take on an added dimension of meaning which before got lost in the shuffle of paying too close attention to the technical aspects of the practice.

You can find online access to the suttas at accesstoinsight.org (ATI). However, I prefer the published texts of translated discourses put out by Wisdom Publications. These published versions of the translated discourses are amply supplemented with copious footnotes which add invaluable information to the explication of the meaning of the particular discourse being read and pondered. But if worse comes to worse, you can always avail yourself of the translations available at ATI. They are better than nothing at all.

How's this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Middle-Length-Discourses-Buddha-Majjhima-Nikaya/dp/B003XRDC2K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296550232&sr=8-1

You've told me several times to get myself a copy of the Middle Discourses but I'm stubborn, hahaha.


I'd also like to thank you for your help and patience with my antics by the way. You and several others like Daniel and Florian and Tarin usually respond pretty promptly and with pretty remarkable tolerance to whatever I've posted, and in my saner moments I'm grateful for your very thorough advice. So, thank you.

Excellent! The Majjhima is a good place start. You should be amazed by the sheer amount of information about meditation that it contains.

Depending upon the issues that you are most concerned to address and since you are in the middle of establishing a practice in meditation, I would recommend obtaining the Samyutta Nikaya next. And when Bhikkhu Bodhi's long awaited translation of the Anguttara Nikaya comes out, snap that up as quick as you can. Both of these latter two volumes contain among the oldest suttas that were recorded in the Pali canon. They are pricelessly valuable for the straightforward approach to the training that Gotama expounded upon in as close as we can get to his actual words. Then later, when and if you have the further inclination for study and inquiry, pick up the Udana and the Itivuttaka along with the Sutta Nipata. The Sutta Nipata is a treasure trove of short, highly important passages essential to understanding the Dhamma in more depth. These last three are from the Khuddaka Nikaya, which contains some 15 or more volumes of lesser or shorter collections of discourses (or verse-like sayings, like the Dhammapada).

The Digha Nikaya is no less valuable a resource to several important suttas that it contains which can help to put the pieces of this puzzle together. I think that most of those suttas may be accessible on ATI. But having the volume itself is worth it for access to the footnotes it contains which can help to clarify subtle points of doctrine.

Trust me, you won't regret having read and studied all these. They will provide you with a solid grounding in what many consider to be the heart of what Gotama taught. Also, what you will learn is that the discourses lend themselves more readily to your actual life experiences whereby you will be able to confirm first hand their intent.


I was stubborn, too, when I was your age. I thought I knew everything, and was looking for some shortcuts to take, which got me involved with a study of Zen. (Zen turned out to be anything but comprehensible.) However, I slowly learned to take the advice of those older and wiser than myself, and eventually it paid off. What I discovered was: They knew what they were talking about! And were just trying to save me some time.


You're welcome.

Well I think I'm going to try to order it then. I can't find anything other than a hardcover version, which is annoying, especially given that I have to order it from the UK and so the money-side of it isn't as nice as I'd like...but it's either that or not read it at all the whole time I'm in Germany. I'm also hesitant because two books I just ordered a week ago were declared undeliverable and were sent back (I was luckily refunded by amazon.)

I'm a bit curious as to how much rolling uphill into Stream Entry really is like getting a boulder rolling. I meditate for usually a pretty long time, sometimes hours long now, but my body simply doesn't want to spend 4-6 hour stretches of continuously meditating, and I don't know if perhaps that is what is necessary to get the necessary momentum up to make it over the hill. I hope not, since I'd rather accomplish this more gently if possible, but I'd be interested to hear your perspective on how it's accomplished. Every time I sit down to meditate seriously, usually every or every other night right now, I reach a point that I'd call weak Equanimity, not shockingly calm but comparatively pretty calm, still, with a feeling like I really don't want to stop and I almost have to yank myself out of it sometimes when it's getting late and I really must do homework or somesuch...but it ends then until the next time I spend an hour or so doing insight meditation, though I feel better for the next day or two.

You say the body doesn't want to do 4-6 hour stretches of meditation... does that mean the problem is sitting still for 4-6 hours?

You could try alternating sitting meditation periods with walking meditation periods the way they do on retreats. And if you need to get a bite to eat, or a little water, or go to the bathroom... do it mindfully at the beginning or end of a walking period.

Yeah, there's no reason to sit still for 6 hours. If you want to meditate for long stretches, read The Reformed Slacker's Guide to Stream Entry and do that.

Hi Michael,

Believe me, you will appreciate having the hard cover. It's a 1400 page book. I'd hate to imagine that in soft cover. I wouldn't want anything other than a hard cover myself. It will last much longer.


I may not have the answers you're looking for. Reason? I didn't pursue Dhamma practice using the same criteria that Daniel and others here followed, meaning the Mahasi Sayadaw method of practice: the Progress of Insight. I read the suttas, read scholar monk's treatises, tried to get at the nuts and bolts of the practice by learning as much as I could by gaining insight into what was being taught (dependent arising, the five aggregates, the four noble truths, the noble eightfold path, the three characteristics of existence, the six sense bases, etcetera) in an effort to duplicate as closely as possible the original training as best we know it to be from the translated discourses of the Buddha that have been handed down to us.

So, while I appreciate Daniel's definition of stream entry (it has its merits), I don't allow my mind to be fit into that box. I'm more apt to use the attenuation and eventual cessation of the ten fetters list as a guidepost for my personal practice, not so much because it is recognized as Theravada doctrine or dogma (which I care little about), but because it is mentioned in the discourses, it makes sense in the context of what is taught, and it works.

As a result, it seems to me that my training has a more rounded quality to it, that things that were left out of other's pursuit of training were not left out in my case, and that therefore it is more complete. So, with that as my point of view, you may or may not wish to accept my thoughts on stream entry.

As far as I am concerned, Dhamma training is a strictly private and personal endeavor. From its description in the discourses, one gains the impression that it was meant to be that way. The ten fetter's guidepost gives the practitioner a way to gauge his own progress at any given moment during the course of that practice, provided he can be truthful and honest with himself according to whatever level of discernment he has reached.

Therefore, if one understands that the self that we identify with is essentially an illusion created within our own minds, that's enough for me to say that one clears that hurdle. Letting go of rites and rituals that have little to do with reconstituting the mind with right view and right thought or intention means clearing the second hurdle. Overcoming inner personal doubt about the Dhamma, the Buddha, and the sangha (such as it is, these days) constitutes clearing the third hurdle. I realize it's a rather simplistic outlook, but it worked well for me. And I'm the only person it needed to work for.

In my own case, it was only when I experienced a profound realization of the efficacy of following the noble eightfold path one day that I knew for certain that I was on the right path of pursuit, and that I would not give it up until I had completed that path, no matter what it took. That kind of certainty is difficult to come by these days. But it tells you more about a trainee's mental outlook toward the training than any thing else. I considered that stream entry at the time. The stream was the Buddha's stream of teaching, and I was fully committed to following that stream with complete unabated confidence.

So, pick your own stream. But, mind you, pick it well and be responsible for the consequences.


That's a good sign (the area highlighted, that is). It means that you are developing samadhi, which means that jhana cannot be far behind. If in fact it hasn't already been reached.

With regard to your mentioning "but my body simply doesn't want to spend 4-6 hour stretches of continuously meditating," that's perfectly understandable given your circumstance, which is, I gather, that of a student in school. Your education is important to you, otherwise you wouldn't be pursuing it. So, while that remains the main focus of your circumstance, you are right to pursue it. Yet, there is really no need to spend four to six hours at a time meditating given your situation. One only pursues that kind of intensity when one has the right conditions to do so. Two to three hours a day in one hour sits when it is convenient should be sufficient in your case to assist in the reconstituting of the mind.

When you are able to devote more time to the practice (after you have covered your commitment to your studies and once those endeavors come to a conclusion) then do so. I found in my own case that I needed to devote years at a time of undistracted focus to the practice in order to arrive at the place I'm currently in. You may find a similar need. I don't know; you'll have to feel that out for yourself. I spent a three year period and then a two year period on private retreat, reading, studying, and contemplating the Dhamma and its application to reconditioning my mind. What you do with your life is your call.

If you are not able to devote the time that you would like to the practice, be comfortable with the time you have at present. And remember that the object of the practice is to develop mindfulness, to be PRESENT in as much of your day as you are able to muster. That is something that you can have some direct control over and feel good about those moments when you are achieving it. It's a gradual path. Accept that and work within it.

All the best,
Ian

Well to update you briefly before I hit the hay, I finally did get the Majjhima Nikaya in the post last week, and I'm trying to soak up everything I can, about 50 pages into the Introduction so far, which is by itself quite fascinating...it's not that anything I'm reading in the Introduction's anything new per se, but rather that the way it's stated and so comprehensively unified is quite interesting and profound all the same. Haha, the amount of work I'll have to do just to manage to attain stream-entry seems staggering sometimes.