I just had this hour long conversation with a meditator who went to MBMC for 3.5 months and had a very hard time with the Dark Night, partially due to bad communication issues with the teacher there, and perhaps for other reasons, but it got me thinking about the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and what differentiates Re-Observation from Equanimity and how one might counterbalance certain tendencies.

This particular meditator had strong determination, very strong intentions to practice well, a lot of investigation, lots of energy, very good mindfulness and analysis, got into the A&P territory very early on, but due to not having a clear A&P Event, which can sometimes not happen as a distinct peak experience, didn't know where they were, weren't told, and thus, when they slammed into the Dark Night with all the narrow focus and intensity of the early vipassana practice instructions, had a really hard time and failed to get to Equanimity despite a few months of that. A particularly long period of poor instructions that lead to marked fixation only on the worst sensations and attempts to exclude thought from awareness made things worse.

That they could slog it out for so long with things being that bad says they have more than enough tolerance for pain and dedication to get stream entry, and so in this particular case, the problem was a lack of the 5th and 7th factors: tranquility and equanimity. Particularly, they associated moment to moment practice with a high level of tension, which is not necessary to achieve that sort of investigation and mindfulness, but often occurs in gung-ho meditators.

In this particular case, I found myself sounding very different from how I usually do with the typical slacker meditators who lack good development of the first three factors. As this meditator had them in spades, I found myself talking about how space, awareness and phenomena are one, and how one should try to realize that these are already synchronized as the same thing by gently noticing the motion of a combined attention/space/phenomena thing until this caused the formations to synchronize and stream entry to occur.

Thus, this would be a practice that was wider, more inclusive, less focused on things like pain, neurotic thoughts, difficulties, and doubts, but instead an open moving attention that noticed that it was space and it was phenomena and that all those things arise together by definition.

There is no sense of space in which there are phenomena without sensations (phenomena) that imply space, as space is implied by sensations. Sensations can't arise without some awareness of them by definition, as the one of the core assumptions of insight practice is that whatever sensations arise comprise the whole of that moment's reality. There can't be awareness without sensations that imply awareness, as awareness is actually implied by the manifesting of sensations.

In short, there are sensations that imply space and imply awareness, and imply subject and object, but by just letting attention move around and taking those swaths of space/sensations/awareness as object, this is essentially formations, which are the hallmark of the 11th ñana, Equanimity, and so this was what he was lacking and needed to find.

Essentially, this is what I do these days most of the time in my own practice. I sit and let awareness do whatever it wants, move however it moves, which is to say I let whatever manifests manifest, which is to say that reality does its thing naturally, and things synchronize more and more, stages of insight and jhanas arise, and Fruitions occur, all on their own, nicely, easily, no struggle, no problems. It is that spirit that this meditator needed more of, I believe, coupled with their already well developed talents, in order to get Equanimity and land Stream Entry, though I can think of multiple other focuses that might do the same thing, and I thought that I would post this to counterbalance my usual tone and focus and help those who also have strong early factors and weaker later ones.

Hi Daniel,

Luckily I just stumbled across this old thread. After having been in dark night now for a while, having had my share of long and what I felt were unneccesarily unpleasant and unproductive sits I took a break from noting, spent a few months reading about AF and doing some AF-related practices, but then after being told repeatedly by people who know what they are talking about that getting stream entry was the thing I should be doing, I sat down a week ago or so really resolving to note my way to stream entry. Something really strange happened though. Intead of the usual bashing-my-head-against-a-brick-wall approach that I associated with noting with, I started feeling the sensations as objects, seeing how they related to each other; like how that sound out there was a form that felt a certain distance away from the other form that were my feelings about practice and hearing that sound. Everything became very interesting and almost solid but flowing at the same time. Forms just melted naturally into other forms. It's difficult to discribe but this perspective made even Dark Night feel almost relaxing and fun.
I think it might have had something to do with the break from noting that I took, and gaining a slightly new perspective and approach through whatever AF stuff I was doing was, but what every it was it worked and I landed squarely in what I am pretty sure is equanimity.
Woke up today in familiar, strong dark.night, but I'm determined to sit this thing out, knowing now that it's definetely possible, and not at all unpleasant when you get the hang of it.

Anyway, this is the part of your post that jumped out at me. If this is what I experienced then I feel it has definetely been really key to navigating dark night and reaching equanimity!

"I found myself talking about how space, awareness and phenomena are one, and how one should try to realize that these are already synchronized as the same thing by gently noticing the motion of a combined attention/space/phenomena thing until this caused the formations to synchronize and stream entry to occur.
Thus, this would be a practice that was wider, more inclusive, less focused on things like pain, neurotic thoughts, difficulties, and doubts, but instead an open moving attention that noticed that it was space and it was phenomena and that all those things arise together by definition."

Thanks for the post.

And thank you, Carolin, for unearthing this post! Indeed it does sound distinctly unlike the normal Dharma Dan, but it sounds a lot like advice that I've been getting from my own teacher, Beth Resnick-Folk, and many others to chill out and let be.

Daniel - if you still stand by the post above, what's the surefire way of knowing whether we have the other factors enough to chill out and let tranquility and equanimity come to the fore? For example, is it necessary to be able to reliably and easily enter jhana (let's say at the level described by Leigh Brasington rather than any of the more extreme examples)?

Cheers
Andy