Hello all,

First post here and thanks for being such a special and interesting community. I'm a relatively novice in the meditaiton circles, but I was listening to a podcast with Shinzen Young on BATGAP where he said that the gap between 'not enlightened' and 'enlightened' is much smaller than the gap between various 'enlightened' persons. I remember hearing this years ago and it just struck me as powerful in some way. 

Does anyone else have a similar reaction, and what do you make of this? Is there some never-ending exploration of the mind? Some unfathomable vastness? I'm quite new to these circles and so I was just curious what people thought? I really like Shinzen Young's story of a master suggesting that today's enlightenment is tomorrow's mistake. Thank you all. 

I agree.

DId you see I said I agree. I originally thought you were saying the gap between enlightened persons was smaller than between an "enlightened" person and a "non-enlightened" person. Much different sentiment. And it made my reply look ridiculous.

What Shinzen has said, is the comparison between zerto-to-stream_entry and stream_entry-to-arhatship. Which he says the second one is a much much longer way to go.

He uses a different definition for arhatship, not the one that Daniel uses, and he says that it's a very very rare thing. He has said that he has only seen 2-3 people in his entire career that could be arhats. I haven't heard him define the term.

I think Shinzens uses "complete disidentification with body-mind" to refer to what Daniel calls arhatship/ 4th path. He said it clearly in one video that: "There is a sameness to everything. I see but there is no one there that is seeing".

This makes more sense.

I would say that 10th fetter is the ignorance regarding all these ideas about enlightenment. That it is somehow being about self, no-self, duality, non-duality, identification, non-identification, etc. Removing this fetter is equal to actually knowing what creates suffering on the level of physical body.

State of persistent non-dual perception imho falls inside boundaries of limited emotional range model. That is if we assume that both duality and non-duality are a kind of emotions/feelings.
I agree with Daniel on bullshitness of this model and I extended it to mind states for completeness just like I extended definition of 3rd fetter from just rituals to also meditative practices. From time to time I go through all emotional and mind state ranges to verify my brain can still do them and that my idea about suffering based on abusing neurons actually work

It is kinda hard to suffer with "dual" sense of self based perception if you change which parts of the brain participate in generating this perception before they are allowed to generate suffering. Billions of people do it that way and they mostly do just fine even without being fully enlightened and relying only on natural processes and distractions... then even in most refined jhanic based non-dual mind states even single neuron is used for longer than it can be used then there will be suffering and it does not matter if you identify with this pain or not. Identification itself is only something which can prevent being able to shut down something you identify with but is itself neither the general cause for the suffering nor not-identifying is the general solution for ending suffering.

These things can however be rather hard to get your head around and I guess investing years in some thinking makes it harder to just drop it and look at things from different angle. This is why people who get to pleasant/good enough mind states will rather keep them and claim that these mind states are the essence enlightenment rather than spend even more time disproving any such notion just to make everything they said in the past invalid...

I remember listening to a podcast in which SHinzen said something like the test for a fully enlightened being would be whether or not they're able to withstand bad physical torture with perfect equanimity.

Today when they need to torture you some they give you anesthetics so it is pretty pointless skill.

I guess it would be enough for normal lay arhat to get rid of low intensity suffering, at least so that when they show themselves to other people they do not look like they are actually suffering more than them and are just too high on artificial mind states to realize that. But I guess all this non-dual mind states and investigating 3C put quite a toll on their bodies/minds for them to just appear like normal relaxed people

I was reading this and I thought it was along the lines of the previous comments. 


https://www.adyashanti.org/teachings/library/writing#the-immensity-of-self

Any thoughts about this?