Hello folks.

Living in an unstable part of the world with a criminal environment, at times a war zone, I've been having trouble for some time now to get rid of a certain notion that I caught reading the Actual Freedom website.

Hoping not to trouble you much with my thoughts, maybe you would be able to shine on my thought process / sincerity here.

This is a paragraph from the website:



I've been having trouble for sometime to get this out of my system. I don't see how instinctual passions were ever essential in an adult human being regardless of prosperity. Cognitive/aware brain is superior. That's what I see, anyway, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Why is this group of people (backed by Richard) said otherwise? Why do I care about what they said?

Because they are more experienced then I am, and not just said it without giving any thought to it, and I take this as some kind of warning, not to allow myself to let investigate deeper. My belief is that letting this body be without passions and not being able to get back into that animal/passionate state of the brain, is dependent on a certain prerequisite, that I might not have. This is making me stuck, being afraid to let PCE or any further deeper investigation.

Hi Mikha -



I am not sure "instinctual passions" necessarily result in "prosperity" - but it appears that the ability to hunt/pilfer/hoard/dominate without distraction has its own swift intelligence, competitive edge. An old, stable apex species (one that hasn't much changed in a long time), like an alligator, has a job to do - hunt, hoard, survive, breed.

We are no so different despite the modern era. The classic human example of instinctual passions: animals have population cycles and resources have resource cycles (lotka-volterra). Lacking war and disease, to reduce population in humans, females are reduced (because one male X 100 women = possible 100 babies::one woman x 100 men = possible 1 baby). Populations that equally took the hit for overpopulation and starvation are less likely to promulgate the species than those that practiced infanticide, geronticide, violent repression of the child bearers. Kindler gentler traits (like men not insemeniating women when populations are booming) just may not have been as competitive as, say, the Genghis Khan method.

I am of the opposite approach here: investigate ad nauseum, find the ludicrous far-points so that the thought naturally releases. This counteracts a tendency for numbness (which you may not have) and can exhaust a feeling or locate a strong source of identity that benefits from exploring.

While the cognitive brain might be superior, it wasn't always here, and evolution is a very gradual metamorphisis.



Beware of self-fulfiling prophecies. If believing you might not have what it takes to do the thing causes you not to take the required steps, and establish the appropriate conditions, for the thing to happen, then presto, voilá, it'll never happen.

There is absolutely nothing that shouldn't be investigated, but investigation is usually done on the thing that most prominently presents itself. If you are afraid to investigate, then investigate fear (and if you are bored, investigate boredom, etc).

A pointer that was useful to me was: If the only thing that passions have to say for themselves, the only thing they have to present in their own defense, is fear... well, then, good riddance!

What is the prerequisite? Or do you mean a general "I don't think I can do this" without a specific reason?

The prerequisite is to be safe, secure and being able to provide my basic needs without fighting with other humans for them.

Ah these might be interesting reading:





and there are other instances of AF or people in PCE handling 'dangerous' situations just fine, e.g.:


more from richard:

Here's my (game theoretically colored) perspective on this. It's really quite simple: This body is a tool my genes use to maximize their reproductive success. They do this by causing pleasant or unpleasant feelings in response to stimuli. That is their strategy and the reason our bodies are the way they are as a result of evolution.

The players are genes, not individuals.
The payout is reproductive success of the genes, not individuals.
The body is a tool created and used by the genes to implement their strategies.

A wise person realizes that the mechanisms that produce pleasant feelings in response to stimuli have the sole "intended" purpose of enforcing / carrying out the strategies of genes. Any happiness "we" may be experiencing that way is a side effect.

It's just like slaughtering cows in a factory farm. You get paid money, which creates a pleasant feeling in you, which is the mechanism by which your body is motivated to carry out your employer's agenda. No more, no less.

Just like you can walk away from the job in the factory farm to find greater happiness elsewhere, you can walk away from the existence of living a life geared solely toward gratification of sense pleasures (which some call "sleeping while awake"). It's not trivial or easy, and the path is often unpleasant, but once you get to fruition of stream entry, I don't think it's possible to still doubt it's well worth it.

I should also clearly state that, while it is indeed neither easy nor trivial, it is very possible and requires no more than basic ethics, good technique (a good teacher), and a few months of daily or twice-daily half-hour meditation sessions; no special talents or hocus pocus.

(Obviously my personal point of view in the last paragraph and a half is Theravāda, not AF, about which I admittedly know very little.)

This is a good pointer for me, ludicrous far-points, huh? Very nice.



Do you think an investigation of fear itself is possible, or is it always an investigation of a belief that creates an effect of fear? (Example to a belief - I need to belong to this group) To me at this point the second option seems correct. But if it's really possible to investigate the raw fear, then boy, do I still have a long way to go.



Nicely put.
Is this something that is easily understood in stream entry?

This is quite fascinating. I wish I could understand the goal of Theravada path.

A good actual teacher or a good book?

Both can happen, the only way I can do it, really, is to investigate whatever is at the surface. Usually this means the fear first (it usually manifests for me without an obvious cause), and if it then becomes visible, the underlying belief. "Raw fear" is usually fear of death; the belief underlying it, I guess, is that "I as an entity" actually exist.

My investigation can reveal several forms of fear. 1) fear of not investigating the actualism way or having not done the investigation at all 2).finding a belief that is fearful to let go of ( like group acceptance or morality ) 3). raw instinctual fear - like as in suddenly a vehicle zooming by and I'm caught unaware. I'm finding that just by simply knowing that in whatever fearful situation I am or will be - I can do all the calculations by seeing the parameters of the situation at that time and act accordingly and so I don't need to be afraid now.

Honestly I don't know if stream entry will make this part any easier to understand, because for me personally it happened the other way round: After attending a couple of game theory lectures in school, I understood the above statements very well, on an intellectual level, before I ever started meditating. This understanding made me really sad. If anything, stream entry has helped me "move beyond the sadness" once and for all. I still believe (obviously) that individuals are mere tools/slaves to their genes, from a biological point of view, but my point of view is no longer purely biological. Even when I started meditating, I already understood that the mere understanding of game theory / biology won't make me happy or even ameliorate my suffering. That's why I started to meditate. After a few months of good (as in consistent and with the right guidance, not necessarily always pleasant) meditation, I am happy to report meditation does indeed take away a lot of suffering and moreover it actually causes a surprising amount of happiness.

From talking to other people, I understand that not everyone puts an experience like stream entry into the same words, so in all honesty I should probably just say the following: I believe stream entry will not necessarily answer the questions you (or any of us) ask before stream entry, and it will not necessarily help you understand exactly what you want to understand, but it will make you realize that the answers to your questions are not as important as the insight you have actually attained through stream entry. It's sort of like this: Before stream entry, you may want to know exactly what you are because you believe this knowledge could make life easier and better for yourself and the people you have contact with. Stream entry won't show you exactly what you are (so it won't actually answer your question), but it will show you some things you are not, and (possibly to your surprise) you will find that this insight makes life a lot easier and better; so you have not really found an answer to the question you were asking, but you have solved the problem you were trying to solve by asking the question.



I'm not sure how you meant this. If in fact you know about the goal of the Theravāda path, but simply meant to say that you disagree with that goal or path, then you should just ignore the rest of this post.

The goal is very simply the end of all suffering. The theory behind it is that all suffering is caused by greed, hatred, and delusion, and that you can get rid of all greed, hatred, and delusion through basic morality, regular concentration practice, and honest investigation of what your experience is in this life. If you meditate with this goal and use the right techniques, you will go through several stages of insight, but the four major landmarks are:

1. Stream entry, which gets rid of a lot of delusion, specifically shows you that you don't exist in the way you thought you did.
2. Once-returner, which significantly weakens your greed and hatred and, according to the people I have talked to, can make you feel very much like you are completely done, fully enlightened.
3. None-returner (anāgāmi), which totally gets rid of all your greed and hatred.
4. Arahat, which totally gets rid of all your delusion, including what they call "conceit."

This "getting rid" happens literally from one second to the next, once you get to that point in your cultivation (meditation), but it usually takes a few weeks for you to fully understand what has happened. For example, it is not uncommon to experience several weeks without the greed and hatred you were used to, so you begin to think you might have attained to one of the higher stages of enlightenment, and there is really no way of ever confirming that. However, what usually happens after a few weeks is you take another honest look and realize there are still some greed and hatred left, so you conclude you can't be an anāgāmi yet. There is apparently also the contrasting view that anyone who can achieve nirodha samāpatti (the sustained cessation of all feeling and perception) has to be at least an anāgāmi, so some people consider themselves that or an arahat, even though by the other definition, they would be considered a once-returner at best. The people I spend time with are among the most conservative ones, so if they can still detect any level of greed or hatred within themselves, they will insist they have not yet reached anāgāmi.

Stream entry, on the other hand, is a different story. We have several people here who have reached it and have compared our understanding to pretty much anything we can find about it, and we are pretty sure if anyone would be considered a stream enterer, we would. Again, it usually took a couple of weeks to fully understand and accept that a major shift in how we relate to life had occurred and that this shift was indeed stream entry, but once this has become clear, doubt regarding stream entry never returns again. Even a few years later, you can remember, "Yes, when I started meditating, I had this intuitive notion of the inner observer as a separate entity from the sense impressions it was observing. Then I had the insight that this inner observer consists entirely of the same kind of fundamental phenomena that all the other things I can observe consist of. Ever since then, I have known this, and it has colored my experience, and never since then have I seen things the way I used to."



I was really referring to a good actual teacher, because that is definitely the fastest way to make progress. I know two people in this area (Tampa, FL), either one of whom would be an excellent choice to provide instructions and answer pretty much any questions you may have about Theravāda, although neither has reached what they would consider Anāgāmi, which by their definition would involve the total eradication of all greed and hatred, but they are actually both getting close; and getting people to stream entry is something they do a lot. They don't charge any money, and one of them gives lessons through Skype. If you would like to PM me your e-mail address, I will be happy to ask him to contact you.

oh neat. could you give more info about them? like what techniques they teach/use, what their current practice is, do they have a blog, etc? i'm curious cause i only really know about DhO and KFD as places/methods that successfully get people stream entry

Their backgrounds are different, but their methods are not all that different from what I have seen on DhO and KFD.

One of them is a European who spent 3 years as a monk in Sri Lanka, where he was taught in the Ñāṇārāma/Ñāṇananda system, which itself is an offshoot of the Mahāsi system. The way he teaches right now is about 6 months of pure concentration practice with development of the first 4 jhānas, then noting according to the 6 sense bases. He has very strong faith in the Pāli canon and is best with people who were born Buddhist and have strong faith in the word of the Buddha themselves.

The other is an American who broke away from Southern Baptist indoctrination to atheism, then tried to prove Buddhism wrong, but found that the Buddha was a genius. He was first taught by a monk and someone else (I can't recall the details now), then by Kenneth, and now he is in the process of translating the Mahāsi technique and related Buddhist doctrine into Christian terms in order to get Christians to meditate and see the truth for themselves. He likes to experiment and employs lots of different techniques, depending on what works for the individual meditator. His strategy is to get people to access concentration as quickly as possible through focus on the breath, metta, body scanning, or noting, or whichever combination works best for the individual. Then he guides them toward different noting categories (4 foundations of mindfulness, 6 sense bases) and encourages them to experiment, keeping in mind that the important thing is to be aware of anything that happens, "because if you are not aware of it, you will become it." After stream entry, he recommends to "zoom out" and focus on feeling (positive/negative/neutral) and the processes that lead up to it.

So you see it's not that they have some revolutionary new technique other than what Kenneth and Daniel used to get to stream entry. I just mentioned them because they are willing to teach people one-on-one, which is arguably even more important than the right technique.

hehe that is an awesome bio! i'd be really interested in seeing the Christian-oriented techniques.


aye.. i guess any successful technique will basically involve stabilizing the mind (concentration) and then looking at stuff (insight).

He's planning to open up a website with videos and possibly even going to accept donations from Christians, since according to him, that's what Christians are used to. From what I understand, it's going to go online at samvega.org in a few weeks. (Don't pay too much attention to what's on there right now; he is just using it as a testing ground.)

Is it Brian Ananda? I tried joining that site a while back but was never accepted. Quite an interesting direction to take it. Goodluck to them!



Nick

Indeed it is Brian. The reason the site never worked all that well is that he has been using it mainly for testing purposes. He is just now getting around to actually taking it "online" for real.