Hello Kim,
It's interesting that you bring this up, as I have been getting some good perspective on how things were 6 months or so ago for me. I would describe my experience of life as "dry" with infrequent moments of joy, and occasional mild suffering. I knew I was still experiencing self, but couldn't manage to get out of what I was thinking was "3rd path". With this was a real determination to maximize the depth of seeing emptiness and maximizing and deepening it. At one point my teacher (and a few DHO denizens) started to point out that I really needed to "return to the market" (oxherding picture reference) - stop thinking I needed to, or could, contrive my experience.
I realized that this is what was really messing me up - I had built a non-dual "self that I thought was best qualified to help others, and that could deepen emptiness with "practices", etc. I realized that like all contrived things, this too was illusory. It was only days after this realization that what I think of as 4th path dawned.
While, for a week or two, things continued to be a little dry emotionally, as the last bit of selfing process dropped away my simple joy in just being really returned, and suffering has entirely dropped away... or at least it isn't "mine" but something that arises and passes of its own accord. The "joy" is probably most like a blissful contentment - the feeling that there isn't anywhere to go, or anything to be done, or anyone to do it - of belonging exactly where there is being. Tritely, small things like steam from car exhausts, or trees in the wind create a soft, comforted bliss... are simple, clean and beautiful, but entirely empty and meaningless in the best possible way. It is this return to a "unity" that has precipitated this - the dropping away of there being a person who has maps to complete, things to accomplish, people to liberate, but also with the deepening inclusiveness of being witness to this moment, increasingly sharing it with the unity that is the 10,000 things.
Over the last few days I have been reading and listening to commentary on the Five Ranks of Donshan, a post awakening Zen map you may already be familiar with. While I had read it previously, it is now clear that I didn't understand it at all. I now see that it perfectly describes where I was lost:
2nd Rank — The Real (emptiness) within the Apparent (form)
At dawn the old women finds the ancient mirror
Immediate and intimate
But nothing particular
There is no need to search for your own face.
This corresponds to the 9th ox-herding picture — seeing form, completely freshly and vividly, with intimacy and immediacy, as our minds come back into focus after experiencing “no-thing.” It is a rush of consciousness and seeing the world completely anew. We see all forms through the eyes of emptiness and exacting clarity. Form is seen in equality with no differentiation.
The shadow of the 1st and 2nd ranks is the very green, immature, enlightened person with the stink of Zen. Zen sickness, sometimes this is called. Because our insights are all so new and intoxicating, people with new insight may come off as arrogant, judgmental and self-righteous. We need to mature our understanding at this point. As Dogen points out: “You are playing in the entranceway, but you are still short of the vital path of emancipation.”
In the first two ranks, the practitioner is still quite focused on their individualized self and still compartmentalizing in duality; sometimes being in form, sometimes being in emptiness.
http://www.judithragir.org/2012/06/dongshans-five-ranks/
I'm not affiliated with this teacher but I also liked her podcasts on this topic. Her folksy American Midwest speaking voice makes me smile.
https://www.judithragir.org/podcast/2012-06-19-the-first-three-ranks-dharma-talk-by-judith-ragir-june-2012-sesshin-hokyoji-zen-practice-community/
Or:
https://www.lionsroar.com/becoming-the-mountains-and-rivers/
Your experience sounds uncomfortable. Here is hoping something in this thread might be helpful to you.
