Hi Conal thank you for your reply, I'm sorry if my question sounded snarky, it wasn't my intention. I was genuenly curious why this phenomenon happens within that specific style of practice, as I heard about it in many podcasts.

First let me stress that I don't think there are any "supperior" paths, and I think there are multiplicity of approaches to asses the needs and the capacities of each.
I can't broadly speak about Mahayana, becayse there are too many variaties within it and I'm not a scholar.
I personally practice within Ati-yoga(Dzogchen) & Mahamudra traditions, I can give you my perspective withing those traditions.
But to elaborate I'd like to first understand what you mean by wet and dry ? By wet you mean much enthousiasm,comfort or bliss you have within a session ?
And dry would be the hard chore-like meditation ?

Sarva Mangalam

Hi Robert, thanks for clarifying your position. If you have the time to read "Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha", I think that would answer your questions well. I know it's a very long book however, so I'll try to explain as well as I can.  The core of the book relates to the stages of the "progress of insight" which are stages that meditators tend to go through as they progress towards enlightenment.  See: https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/

it's a bit of a rollercoaster ride and has pleasant and unpleasant stages to it.  I have to stress though that there is a great deal of variation to how or even if meditators experience these stages.   That may be because they haven't gone deep enough yet to encounter them or they may not have much karma to work through in the first place.   These stages are associated more with insight meditation (where you explore what's happening in your mind) than with concentration meditation (where you focus the mind on one thing to the exclusion of all others). Mantra meditation is the most common form of concentration meditation and noting or body scanning are the most common forms of insight meditation discussed in this forum. What complicates it is that all forms of meditation are actually a mixture of concentration and insight.  Concentration styles of meditation tend to lead towards blissful experiences (the jhanas) but don't progress you on the path to enlightenment as quickly as the more insight based practices. Does this answer your question?

​​​​​​​Conal

Hi Conal, 
Yeah I see what you ment, thank you, it's a commong held theory within all Buddhist schools that only Shamatha will not lead you to Awakening, it's the support of Vipassanna, which is the main way to Nirvana.
To illustrate how these two are done in my tradition, you start the same as in Therevada, you do Anapanasati to train your concentration skills and you do body scanning by paying attention to feelings and thoughts and how they are interconnected, and in parallel you meditate on Vajrasattva's 100 sylable mantra, it's a common preliminary called Ngondro in Tibetan. Traditionally you have to repeat it 100 000 times and it takes 2-3 years, but I didn't do it for so long. Whenever you're ready you get "Pointing out Instructions", which are intended to reveal you the Nature of your Mind(Rigpa in tibetan, Vidya in sanskrit, Knowing in english).
When the pointing out instruction worked for me, I lost the feeling of the center(ego/atman) inside my head, I was no more, and there's a big freaking out with it, what is interesting that it's a repeatable experience, you can disolve the ego with intention. From this point things unfold differently, concentration becomes more effortless and there's a non-dual insight which is becoming more and more clear with direct insight into emptyness.
With a differct experience of pratitya samupada/shunyata, you understand that subject object duality is created artificially by ego-identification.
So within this practice any insight into non-duality of experience is the vipassana, and how fast, often and loger you can go into that insight is the shamatha.

I have daily no-self/non dual insights for a year now and I never felt these kind of experiences, and it intriguied me when I heard it first time in an interview on Waking Up called "Dark Side of Meditation" with The Willoughby Britton & Jared Lindahl, as it scared me I talked about it with one of my teachers, and he told me that it's rare and mostly happens within dualistic practices and he mentioned Theravada specifically.
So that's why I'm deeply curious to understand and learn about this phenomenon.

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the explanation. The Goenka tradition also does anapanasati and body scanning but doesn't have any mantra work. Perhaps the mantra work smoothes out the the rougher aspects of vipassana. It's hard to say for definite because we are all different and you can't test it scientifically (as yet) because you can't replicate both proceedures on the same student, because he/she will have been changed by what has gone before. It's also difficult to know whether the "end product" is the same for both traditions. There is also the effects of variability of teachers.  Another factor is that it doesn't make very good PR to discuss the more difficult aspects of the meditation path. It's only in forums such as this that such things can be openly discussed. 

My feeling is that if you are having no-self/non dual insights as you describe them, then you have progressed beyond the kundalini stages that are being described above.  I do wonder however if some traditions just by-pass the rougher stuff. I'm reading the mahayana author Ken Mc Leod at the moment, for example, and he describes very complicated techniques that seem to be addressing areas that are more directly addressed by simply using vipassana techniques.

Would you say that you have experienced fruition, as described here:

https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/15-fruition/

Conal

Hi Conal,

I completely agree with you that comparing these traditions is pretty impossible. That's why I adopted a non sectarian approach.
And yes it seems very close to that Fruition description, there are just a few words that I don't really understand as their meaning vary from tradition to another "no experience, no mind, no consciousness, no awareness" this part seems a bit incomprehensive.
I must clarify that in Mahamudra and Dzogchen you meditate with open eyes, none of the senses are shut down, as it’s not very common within every tradition.
This allows you to integrate every sense experience within your samadhi, so I can access Awake Awareness (the non dual nature of mind) when I drive my car, take a walk or work out. It's much harder while talking to people or working, but apparently it's a matter of training. When you achieve mastery it's a day and night constant flow even during deep dreamless sleep.
It’s also one of the reasons I was attracted to these traditions because you can easily include your practice in your daily activities.

You might be right on the bypassing part, as some schools of Vajrayana which are not considered direct paths achieve the same Fruition, but through indirect techniques, and when the non-dual nature of mind is realized it's a constant flow accompanied with explosion of Kundalini etc.

I think in the end, it depends on your psychological type. I'm a skeptical person and I needed the small taste of the end goal through a direct approach to know toward what I am progressing. But there's a big chunk of the Path left to follow until Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi, I am nowhere near it. 

In my understanding the direct approaches give you the taste of it and your practice is to get more clarity, more frequently and more often, you can theoretically access the nature of your mind at any time as it's always there as a ground condition.
The non direct approaches gradually peel off layers of mind while dissipating Avidiya, when in the end the nature of mind is realized it's a full and uninterrupted Awakening as all the samskaras are already purified.
​​​​​​
Sarva Mangalam

Hi Robert,

A fruition is where the mind actually shuts down. You therefore have no real memory of it as such, so it seems that we're speaking of different things. You can tell you've had one from the "afterglow" and from having a much better understanding of dependent origination in particular. They're pretty special as they mark the attainment of a path. A somewhat related phenomenon is nirodha samapatti. See:
https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-v-awakening/37-models-of-the-stages-of-awakening/the-cessation-of-perception-and-feeling-nirodha-samapatti/

There's a guruviking interview with Delson Armstrong too that relates to the same thing.  He also claims that he retains awareness when asleep. 

Thanks for the explanations of your tradition. I am reading Christopher Wallis' books on tantra and they seem to cover similar ground.  I think I'm getting a feeling for the non-dual headspace but like you I've a long way to go. 

I'm also a bit of a skeptic and like a secular or pragmatic approach, as do most people on this list actually, so we've got a lot in common.

with metta,

Conal

 
Hi Conel, 
I read the link again, and I missed that part. I didn't have  such a complete shutdown and never heard of them happening within my tradition. When you progress the opposite happens you get more and more into an unceasing continuous flow of Awake Awareness, and basically you never leave it.
I was aware about Nirodha Samapatti and I find it an interesting attainment which opens many many questions for me, including doubts about the absolute continuity of the mind stream without the brain.

 Christopher Wallis is into Kashmiri Shaiva tradition which is very similar to Tibetan tantra in many ways, but for my taste it has that baggage of theism and language which uses too much Self/Atman concepts, which is natural for every hindu tradition. This is why I have hard time reading "The Recognition Sutras".
Btw initial awakening happened doing meditations of a shaiva teacher Stephen Bodian, but I find the emphasis on Shunyata and Anatman within Buddhism more close to my experience of this Non-Dual Awake Awareness, and also more accurate to what natural sciences tell us about the world.

I’m happy to find more like minded people my friend, and thank you for engaging into the conversation.
 

Hi Robert,

Actually I think that they probably relate to the same thing (not the niroda samapatti, that's clearly a different phenomenon). The problem with describing these experiences is that you are using a dualistic medium (language) to describe a non-dual experience so it can only serve as a "finger pointing at the moon", so it's no wonder that different traditions describe it differently.  Fruition is sometimes described as the first taste of nirvana and I would class nirvana as a non dual experience, despite what you wrote earlier about Theravada being a dualistic tradition!  What is clear to me is that vipassana is very good at weakening the working of the craving/aversion/indifference workings of the mind (the three poisons) and there comes a point where there's a step change to that mechanism and you suddenly get a glimpse of a simpler and more intuitive mode of thought and perception. As you advance further that mode of thought/perception becomes more and more the norm.

 I've found your explanations of awake awareness and mahamudra very interesting. Can you suggest some authors or books to me to read further about it?

Conal

Hi Conal, The dualism in buddhism is describing the path, and the skillful means of the path, I agree that every description of Nirvana is "nondual" and in absolute "inexpressible" in every Buddhist tradition. 
What you mean by artificial ?
ure my friend, here are few suggestions.
 - The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: A Revolutionary Guide for Living an Awakened Life by Loch Kelly (this is a very secular approach, but it's rooted in Sutra Mahamudra tradition, it's a good book to start, Loch also gives pointing out instructions(glimpses) to reveal awake awareness).
 - POINTING OUT THE GREAT WAY THE STAGES OF MEDITATION IN THE MAHAMUDRA TRADITION  by Daniel P. Brown, Ph.D. (It's very Complete but heavy reading)
- Moonbeams of Mahamudra by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal, translated by Elizabth M.Callahan (This might be a bit complex, but it's a complete guide through all the stages until complete Buddhahood, I'd not start with this though but this is one of the most complete traditional tibetan guides for Mahamudra)

Ok, great, thanks. Loch Kelly has been referenced a few times on this forum actually. Is the book you have listed better than his "shift into freedom" one?

Conal

Hi Conal, both are good, but The Way of Effortless Mindfulness  is easier to read.
​​​​​​​Cheers

Hi Robert,

I have been doing some of the Loch Kelly glimpses and they are really excellent. Thank you so much for leading me to this.

 I had a look at some of the practices from his website first and they were interesting but I didn't really get it. This morning though I did the "no problem" one for 20 minutes and I really grokked it.  It's such a simple technique to enter a no-ego state. I think it's the simplicity that makes it difficult in a way. Just asking yourself "what is here now if there is no problem to solve" takes you to a much wider and more expansive awareness. I see what he means when he says that one of the glimpses will work better than others and this one hit the nail on the head for me! I also understand better where you were coming from with your first question in this thread!

I'm keen to see where this takes me. It's actually fairly similar to the pure mind practice that I have been doing in TWIM (Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation) but it is easier to access and feels more natural.

with metta,

Conal

Hey Conal,
So happy it worked for you, these glimpses(pointing out instructions) are the expression of skillful means of the teacher, in my opinion more he can accomodate the needs of different people better he is as a teacher.
It makes me happy that you understand me better my friend, I noticed that when the ego drops many issues resolve by themselves, it's just a matter of time. It seems when the mind stop creating subject and objects, things unfold by themselves and the mind rides the waves of emptyness without attachment.
I find Lochs clarification of the Awake Awareness very detailed and clear, check the podcasts with him if it interests you. 
Cheers

Hey guys!(Robert PASHAYAN and Conal) just a little thing, the topic of this post is -
Body initiating movements by itself (kinda feels and looks like exorcism)
So I'm so glad that you are talking to whoever about whatnot,but this is an example of hijacking a thread.
Please in the future, if so inclined, notice when you are off topic and start a new thread. This time I'll be happy to do so for you.
Thanks!
~D

bump

Hey ~D,
Thank you for moving our conversation here, I was feeling uncomfortable that we derailed from the topic.
​​​​​​​Cheers