I have been working on figuring out what is effective in getting rid of the "shadow-being" I currently experience. The instructions in Khemaka sutta are probably spot-on (discern the rise and fall of the aggregates), but my personality prefers faster results. It has been suggested to me that the 7th jhana would be helpful in this regard, as would sanna-vedayita-nirodha...I am not sure to what extent these have been more helpful than Khemaka's advice. However, I discovered a potentially useful method; it applies to everyone (pre- and post-affect), so I would like to share it here.

The motivation for this goes back to something I always used to notice in the past; if I were to attain NS, on the one hand, I would feel quite good, but on the other hand, I would feel as if I had regressed in my meditation practice somehow. Back then, I was confused about why this should be; right now, it's quite obvious (the better 'I' felt, the more 'I' there was to feel it). So I had a rather ambivalent relationship with NS.

When I was in out-from-control VF, I attained NS a few times, and this dynamic (and the reason for it) was *really* obvious to me. It seemed as if all my past work raising my baseline level of sensuousness had just vanished (as 'being' became extremely pronounced)...on the other hand, if I kept paying attention, the excess 'being' would eventually go away and it would be clear that significant progress was made compared to how things were prior to attaining NS. I played around with cultivating it a bit, and it always seemed that the overarching result was good...but 'I' was wary of proceeding with this, because 'I' found the excess of 'me' that it kicked up to be deeply disturbing, and so 'I' preferred to continue on without NS (the "safe route").

I had a chat with someone recently regarding NS (vs. sanna-vedayita-nirodha) and it occurred to me that I should check to see if I could still attain NS in my current mode of perception. Of course, I could. And its effect is broadly analogous to what happened before (it kicks up "shadow-being"). The difference is, my discernment is so much stronger in this current mode of perception that I can do away with whatever it kicks up rather quickly...and, as there is no 'I' left to be disconcerted by anything that happens, I can simply choose to do whatever is maximally effective.

My best guess as to what is happening is this: NS dredges up some 'being' or shadow-being, it becomes extremely clear (= the attention wave is more pronounced than usual), and discernment eventually destroys it, leaving less 'being' or shadow-being than before.

This suggests that a very powerful strategy, for any yogi who can attain NS, is:

1) Attain NS.
2) Pull out your best efforts at discernment, and utterly destroy whatever 'being' or shadow-being NS brings up.
3) Repeat as soon as there is clearly less 'being' or shadow-being than there was when you started.

Unlike straight-up dry insight, this will likely be a very pleasant way for 'you' to go...the fact that NS dredges up 'being' is simply a new way to describe the NS narcotic aftereffects (which are invariably pleasant).

If you're working on shadow-being, the benefit of this method would be that it makes all the vague shadow-being clearer (the basic problem I have is that I can't really see whatever shadow-being there is).

Just like sanna-vedayita-nirodha, I found it was simple to attain NS in this mode of perception, and it requires no jhana / concentration. I simply remembered how I attained it before and simply inclined to attain it again. It seems possible to attain it many times sequentially, but I have no idea if this is useful or not.

(For what it's worth, I always used the traditional NS instructions, never the "NS-spot", so I cannot say anything about how the NS-spot works, whether it works the same way, or whatever else. I am talking about NS attained by going through 8 jhanas.)

In any case, if anyone tries this method out, please let me know how it goes (post about it here), as it is experimental.

Do you mean the NS which is like a fruition? Can you describe how you attain that now that you cannot enter absorption anymore? To me it seems like that one depends on being absorbed pretty fully in either 8th jhana or 5th PL jhana. How is the experience of the non-event different?

Yes, non-sutta NS.

I simply think, "I attained NS before; I did it in such a way; let me incline my mind to attaining NS right now."

After doing that for awhile, I've shortened it to "Let me attain NS right now."

It seems to work very often, but not 100% of the time.



"Absorption" only happens when there is someone to be absorbed. However, that doesn't appear to be the fundamental thing about jhana. The fundamental thing is, how developed are the jhana factors? In my current experience, they appear to always be highly-developed...so all it takes is an inclination towards NS (no need to build concentration in order to further promote the jhana factors).

Arahants can experience jhana according to the suttas, and they have neither 'being' nor shadow-being. Also, the suttas never talk about absorption (as far as I know), they only talk about concentration and jhana factors. And I see no reason that an arahant (or an anagami) should somehow not have access to concentration or the jhana factors. I tried to explain how this works in my practice journal, as there has been a lot of (terminological?) confusion about it.

My working theory is that various attainments raise one's default level of concentration, sometimes in bits, sometimes in jumps. For example, stream-entry raises it so much that jhana becomes very easy compared to pre-path. Similarly, it appears that this mode of experience has extraordinarily high baseline concentration compared to what came before.

As I said on KFD, in some ways it's as if I'm always in a somewhat hard arupa jhana.

Out of curiosity, do you experience absorption as exaggerating 'being', or ameliorating 'being'? I wonder if there are two different styles of jhana corresponding to this difference. I was familiar with the latter from my previous practice, and it's in this sense that I'm making a comparison with my experience now.



It appears to be the same, but I haven't analyzed it deeply. Somehow I recognize when it happens just fine.

it transforms 'being' into the particular jhana. the deeper the jhana, the more total the transformation. in a sense it exaggerates it to be far more obvious (which makes it easier to pick apart and see through). in another sense it ameliorates it to be far more tame and pleasant (which also makes it easier to pick apart and see through).

I meant 'ameliorate' in the sense of reducing the attention wave. No? Hmm.

In any case, let me know if you try out this NS strategy, and what happens. (It probably takes a day or so to deal with the extra 'being' that NS kicks up.)