Issac of Syria= Desire for Deliverance (n9, DfD), 3rd
vipassana jhana

“Nothing is so strong as desperation. It knows no defeat at the hand of any, whether on the right hand or the left. When someone has cut off in his mind all hope of life, no one is more daring than he/she; no foe can face him/her, no rumors of affliction can weaken her/his pirpose, for every affliction which may come is less than death, for she/he has resolved to accept death for her/himself.”
St. Isaac of Syria (7th century)
 
Those who speak stages of insight will easily recognize Desire for Deliverance in this quote from a 7th century Syrian, from the silence of his reclusive monastic cell: 3rd vipassana jhana, ṅ9, DfD. This is a place that i think every tradition will recognize, the point of the zen story of the roshi holding the student’s dead under water after he asked about enlightenment (not until you want it as bad as you wanted to breath) (Roshi-san, I bow to your strong wisdom, but I am afraid you have given me meditation-related difficulties and spiritual PTSD).
 
I’ve sometimes thought this goes down to information theory--- nothing, nada, zip, zilch desire for anyfuckingthing, better zero than the shit i know and am and ever will be. 0 0 0 0 . . . and 1, somehow, something: something “noatble,” something noting, in spite of all that 0, as 1. That’s all it takes to make a universe: as much 0 as any sunyata junkie could want, and the occasional, every eon or so, say, 1 that a noting meditation will see or feel. So you generate a number of increasing precision, in DfD: 000000000010000000000000001000000001. . . There’s a snippet of the whole fucking code in one glorious universal binary number, the basis of physics, the solution to quantum gravity. Apply, lather into 1, rinse into 0, repeat. We don’t need your stinkin atom-crashers and your billion dollar budgets, we’re working here in the void from which arises the quantum foam, pre-Planck length, pre-Planck-constant intervals of “time.” All I want for Christmas is real zero. That 1, though, is just undeniable.
 
 

 Lamentations 3:19-20=Knowledge of Re-observation=(n10,
Re-obs), 3rd vipassana jhana
 
“Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.
“My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.”
Lamentations 3: 19-20
 
I mean, DUH! Humbled, motherfucker.
 
The Hebrew here is  שׁ֫וּחַ shuach, to sink, literally or figuratively, and so to bow down, incline, humble My soul is sunk, literally, and i know it, by the grace of God.

Cross=Equanimity=EQ=4th vipassana jhana, n11

 and this, from St. Bernadette Roberts, a contemporary
Christian contemplative and one ornery woman, who died just a few years ago,
God bless her, and who once, in a letter, tore me a giant new asshole on the
issue of meditation and medication, dark night and depression. But that’s
another story. This, from her Path to No-Self: When all aspects of the self are in silence, but before
reaching the full unitive state, we may come upon a mysterious plateau of
silence, a plateau that may be cause for aome concern. Once we have been lured
into silence by the infusion of joy and love, all such infusions come to an
end, and we are left in silence, wherein there seems to be No God, no self---
nothing but silence itself. After abandoning all to God, we seem abandoned by
God, and although there is no anxiety or pain, there is the temptation to move
out of this silence, which means moving back into our old frustrations. Right here
we seem to have come to a dead end,; we are trapped because we cannot go
backward and do not see the way forward. This is a crucial point in the unitive
movement. But it becomes a problem only if we make it one, which we can do from
sheer ignorance. I know, because I did. Nevertheless, we are standing at the
gateway to the very peak of the unitive life. . . . This plateau is actually our time of becoming rooted in
silence, rooted until this silence becomes the deeoest, most stable habit of
the soul, the deepest aspect of our existence. This plateau is the test of
passivity, abandonment, and trust, and it may be a helpful deterrent to look
back on the pain and frustration [[editor/translator’s note: cf.
Re-observation!]] we encountered when moving out of this silence. We have been
too burnt to move, learned too well the lesson: of ourselves, we can do nothing.
The only choice is to remain patient, silent, and to be resigned to this state
as long as God wills. and this, from John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love,
stanza 3, 33-37: [[FDA note: It has been determined that excessive doses of
John of the Cross may be harmful to pretty much anyway. The following passages
exceed the RDA by an amount that is beyond measure. DhO is not responsible for
any side effects, should anyone chose to read on beyond the first sentence,
which is a strong, but safe dose.]] 33. Hence persons at this time should be guided in a manner
entirely contrary to the former. If, prior to this, directors suggested matter
for meditation and these individuals meditated, now this matter should instead
be withheld and they should not meditate. For, as I say, they are unable to do
so even though they may want to; and were they to try they would be distracted
instead of recollected. If previously they sought satisfaction, love, and
devotion, and found it, now they should neither desire nor seek it; for not
only do they fail to procure it through their own diligence but, on the
contrary, they procure dryness. Through the activity they desire to carry on
with the senses, they divert themselves from the peaceful and quiet good
secretly being given to their spirit. In losing one good they do not gain the
other, for these goods are no longer accorded through the senses as before. Therefore directors should not impose meditation on persons in
this state, nor should they oblige them to make acts or strive for satisfaction
and fervor. Such activity would place an obstacle in the path of the principal
agent who, as I say, is God, who secretly and quietly inserts in the soul loving
wisdom and knowledge, without specified acts; although sometimes he makes
specific ones in the soul for a certain length of time. Thus individuals also
should proceed only with a loving attention to God, without making specific
acts. They should conduct themselves passively, as we have said, without
efforts of their own but with the simple, loving awareness, as when opening
one's eyes with loving attention. 34. Since God, then, as the giver communes with individuals
through a simple, loving knowledge, they also, as the receivers, commune with
God through a simple and loving knowledge or attention, so knowledge is thus
joined with knowledge and love with love. The receiver should act according to
the mode of what is received, and not otherwise, in order to receive and keep
it in the way it is given. For as the philosophers say: Whatever is received is
received according to the mode of the receiver.It is obvious that if persons do not lay aside their natural
active mode, they will not receive that good except in a natural mode; thus
they will not receive it, but will remain only with their natural act. For the
supernatural does not fit into the natural mode, nor does it have anything to
do with it. If individuals should, then, desire to act on their own through an
attitude different from the passive loving attention we mentioned, in which
they would remain very passive and tranquil without making any act unless God
would unite himself with them in some act, they would utterly hinder the goods
God communicates supernaturally to them in the loving knowledge. This loving
knowledge is communicated in the beginning through the exercise of interior
purgation, in which the individual suffers, as we said, and afterward in the
delight of love.If as I say - and it is true - this loving knowledge is
received passively in the soul according to the supernatural mode of God, and
not according to the natural mode of the soul, individuals, if they want to
receive it, should be very annihilated in their natural operations, unhampered,
idle, quiet, peaceful, and serene, according to the mode of God. The more the
air is cleansed of vapors and the quieter and more simple it is, the more the
sun illumines and warms it. A person should not bear attachment to anything,
neither to the practice of meditation nor to any savor, whether sensory or
spiritual, nor to any other apprehensions. Individuals should be very free and
annihilated regarding all things, because any thought or discursive reflection
or satisfaction on which they may want to lean would impede and disquiet them
and make noise in the profound silence of their senses and their spirit, which
they possess for the sake of this deep and delicate listening. God speaks to
the heart in this solitude, which he mentioned in Hosea [Hos. 2:14], in supreme
peace and tranquility while the soul listens, like David, to what the Lord God
speaks to it [Ps. 85:8], for he speaks this peace in this solitude. 35. When it happens, therefore, that souls are conscious in
this manner of being placed in solitude and in the state of listening, they
should even forget the practice of loving attentiveness I mentioned so as to
remain free for what the Lord then desires of them. They should make use of
that loving awareness only when they do not feel themselves placed in this
solitude or inner idleness or oblivion or spiritual listening. So they may
recognize it, it always comes to pass with a certain peace and calm and inward
absorption.36. Once individuals have begun to enter this simple and idle
state of contemplation that comes about when they can no longer meditate, they
should not at any time or season engage in meditations or look for support in
spiritual savor or satisfaction, but stand upright on their own feet with their
spirit completely detached from everything, as Habakkuk declared he was obliged
to do in order to hear what God spoke to him: I will stand on my watch and
fix my foot upon my fortress, and I will contemplate what is said to me
[Hb. 2:1]. This is like saying: I will raise my mind above all activity and
knowledge belonging to my senses and what they can retain, leaving all below,
and will fix the foot of the fortress (my faculties), not allowing these
faculties to advance a step as regards their own operation that they may
receive through contemplation what God communicates to me; for we have already
asserted that pure contemplation lies in receiving. 37. It is impossible for this highest wisdom and language of
God, which is contemplation, to be received in anything less than a spirit that
is silent and detached from discursive knowledge and gratification. Isaiah
speaks of it in these words: Whom will he teach knowledge and whom will God
make understand the hearing? And Isaiah replies: Those that are weaned
from the milk (that is from satisfaction) and drawn away from the
breasts

Conformity (n 12), Change of Lineage (n13), and Path (n14), 4th vipassana jhana 

Daniel says, in MCBT2, “Conformity means that we suddenly flash onto a way of perceiving the whole of our experiential reality
completely, directly, and perfectly clearly. This stage lasts only one moment
and never recurs until we attain the next stage of enlightenment. The same is
true of the following two stages. Stages 12 through fourteen (Conformity,
Change of Lineage, and Path) are the three moments of the first entrance to
transcendent ultimate reality (stage 15, or Fruition) through one of the three
doors.” 

Bernadette Roberts, in Path to No-self, is also very clear on
this moment, and she uses John of the Cross’s Spiritual Canticle to make her
points here. This phase here corresponds to stanzas 38-39, of which she says,
“Stanzas 38 and 39, which i have been referring to, are descriptions of
transient experiences. In part, their importance is to set off by sheer
contrast those elements in the unitive life that are still wanting and
imperfect; also, they act as indicators of a future state.”  

Roberts’s entire discussion of union is done, for the
map-happy among us, very nicely through a progression of the stanzas of John’s
poem “The Spiritual Canticle” and his exegesis of the stanzas, as his method
is. I’ve been working on mapping that poem into DoH vernacular for 9 years now

 cf. https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/16761328

and https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/19272318

 and never got farther than stanza 22, but Roberts takes it all the way. And then beyond, but that is also a story for another time. Anyway: She says, in Path to No-self:“This new direction is verified in stanza 38, where we are told that the soul’s two great desires at this time are: to receive “essential glory”--- that is, to see God face-to-face--- and to give love. He explains why, at this point, the desire to give is greater than the desire to receive: John X, here:Just as the untimate reason for everything is love (which is seated in the will), whose property is to give and not to receive, whereas the property of the intellect (which is the subject of the essential glory) lies in
receiving and not giving, the soul in the inebriation of love does not put first the glory she will receive from God, but rather puts first the surrender of herself to Him through true love, without concern for her own profit. Roberts goes on: Since the vision, which presupposes the
fullness of love, can be received only in the next life, the soul’s first desire is to give love. Thus giving, or love, takes precedence in the unitive state, just as vision or receiving takes precedence in the next state--- the state beyond union. 

So Bernadette says 2 stages/stanzas here, Daniel says three. I don’t know anything except that it took me three sits and a mania just to
transcribe the sheer minimum of the roughest draft of a correlation between these two spiritual masters, each the state of the art in their tradition, each using the scriptures they have digested into bodily reality and the new notes
of their personal styles, and so in turn becoming scripture for those after
them (I consider Bernadette Roberts and John of the CRoss, even more than the
Bible, which i only really went o because of them, to be my primary scriptures
for the past 35 years, and Daniel’s MCBT2 to be the scripture that has allowed
me a toe in the water of Buddhism and given me the courage to putter around with
these translations, renderings, attempts at cross-mapping, etc.

John X and B Roberts=Fruition, n15, 4th vipassana jhana 

Daniel, briefly: Fruition (phala in Pali) is the fruit of all the meditator’s hard work, the first attainment of ultimate reality, emptiness,
nirvana, nibbana, ultimate potential, or whatever extrapolative and relatively inaccurate name you wish to call something utterly non-sensate.

 Roberts’s discussion of what the John X lineage would call, speaking in perfect Orthodoxy “union with God by participation,” 

[parenthetical aside that threatened to get way out of hand:]
---“by participation” to avoid being imprisoned or killed for the “I am God”
heresy, which got any numbers of less cautious or more defiant or just plain
fucking nuts (think agnostic; think me, on a bad day) burned at the stake or
thrown into dungeons to die in the rat-infested dark. Hallaj, a sufi, is
revered by Islamic mystics for insisting “I am God,” and being executed for
heresy, but the Sufis who cite him---Rumi, frequently does--- do usually say it
in a finely nuanced way that will keep them just short of that, as Meister
Eckhart lived to argue his case for God’s nothingness before the heresy judges,
the canny SOB, while his contemporary Margreet Porete, a merely crazy Beguine
laywoman with more balls than the whole bunch, insisted on not just saying the
same damn thing, but publishing a book about it, and so had to be burned at the
stake in downtown Paris. But don’t get me started here on politics, w’re here
about Conformity--- where was i, oh yeah--- 

which I will risk the stake by usually using the shorthand of
“union,” in Judeo-Christian-Islamic language,  is in her remarks on stanza 40 of John X’s Spiritual Canticle.

She also points the way beyond John X here, at which every person on DhO would
go, Well, yeah, DUH, but SHE IS THE ONLY CREDIBLE (to me, obviously, goes
without saying) PERSON IN THE ENTIRE CHRISTIAN MYSTICAL TRADITION WHO HAS THE
BALLS, CHOPS, AND ACTUAL LIVED EXPERIENCE TO DO THIS.

 here’s her stuff, using my cut-precious-books-to-pieces-rather-than-type-all-that-shit siddi: 

So the fruit of the path lies lost in translation. Could St. John of the Cross have anticipated that his words would be taken outside of his culture and brought forth as a living tradition? Not likely. But then again who has enough stamina to compete with the written word?

Post the letter
Post the letter
Post the letter

I second this motion

Christian mystics as a whole are sort of insane about the body and breath. It's a wonder to me that any of them survived at all. If there is anything about coordinating prayer with breath, I would imagine it is in the Orthodox heyschasm traditions. I'm telling you, man, these Christians couldn't find their ass with a ten man working party, and most of them would have preferred to stop breathing entirely and just fucking be in heaven, already. If there is anything there with any of them, i think there might have been reasons they kept quiet about it. To me it has long been conspicuous by its absence. Hatha yoga? fuggedaboutit. We're lucky to have stopped using hair shirts, on the whole. I really think the body is such a sore point, literally and figuratively, in the Christian tradition that most of these guys just kept their mouths shut about it entirely.

It won't make you like or respect either her or me any better; i don't think either of us came off very well, looking back. But i'll dig around and see if i can come up with it, just for laughs.

it ain't pretty, T. But okay, if i can find it.

While the fruit of the path is lost, it is eaten.

Not lost in translation, I think, just there for the translators to do the work. That's how scripture lives--- look at daniel jamming an hypodermic needle full of adrenaline into the heart of some of those ancient texts, like John Travolta saving Uma Thurman (whose father is a great Buddhist scholar, but i digree within a digression) in Pulp Fiction. And damned if those goners ain't up and dancing now in an up-to-date vocabulary, and looking spry.

and once it is eaten, it is shit back out, and the shit is the fertilizer for the undigested seeds to start the next round.

By the sounds of things she didn't make a lot of friends here on earth and she's either in heaven or hell, so what's the worst that could happen?

Chris can tell you, she had at least one friend out there who was determined to protect her from my idle chatter once, and is still perfectly capable of kicking my ass.

Mike, fuck the saints, really. It does happen on the out breath. Otherwise, it would be too much work.