I've been catching up on the Jhana Insight yahoo group. Here's something FrankT wrote in response to a Dark Night yogi that I think some of you will find interesting. I certainly did...

This is essentially the direction I've been taking, and it's been paying dividends. You need shamatha to stay calm as the vipassana cuts into you.

Yes. I've found myself repeatedly drawn to this type of practice. It pulls at me constantly. It seems a little more intuitive than my own training in body sweeping or the mahasi noting most others do on DhO.

My major concern is whether people are getting stream entry dong this?

Hi BtG:
BtG


I think this is what happened to me:
FrankT
and this causes what is summed up in the phrase "stream entry". I want to be clear with caution here: sotapanna is the change, to me, that marks the beginning of precision work, wherein the expenditure of energy and skillful objective (including and integrating sila) are aligned. Before this, expenditure of energy may be skillful or unskillful, often energy is given to mental and/or physical distractions/cravings.

Say, some people are standing by a stream on the banks and some are swimming/floating in the stream, and some are standing in the shallows of the stream able to wade in the shallows. On the banks, the conversation may ideate about any number of topics including speculating wholesomely or unwholesomely about the waders and swimmers in the stream. In the shallows of the stream, there are people experiencing fears and delights about the sensations of wading in the water and unfamiliar aquatic life/patterns. Some waders may return to the banks and live with the limiting memories of the wading - some pleasant, some fearful, some may wade deeper. Then there are the swimmers: there are the new swimmers who trust their limited new skills and know they can get better with practice and time in: they concentrate on learning and improving skills at every chance. Then, there are those swimmers who are extremely adept, swimming despite any number of challenges perceived by others, dying in the stream, coming and going from the banks on occasion, visiting with some skillful residents of the banks, encouraging the waders and new swimmers.

A stream enterer, to me, is having gone deep enough in the wading that one can no longer wade, but - because the mind is now accustomed to being concentrated on swimming/floating, it trusts the practice and going deeper. It loses alliances with distractions, it sees a little more clearly for itself and can take up advice (or reject it) with fewer distracting influences. Still, this swimmer has only basic skills which amount to fewer distractions - because the mind has seen what it can do in sila-based concentration. Unsila concentration generates distractions.

edits: clarity

I like the analogy for stream entry katy! I've always thought of it in terms of what I read in MCTB though, as the experiential understanding of anatta...

The two approaches I know of that explicitly teach samatha-vipassana are TWIM / Dhamma Sukkha and Culadasa's Dharma Treasure. Seems that between the two sites there's enough info and support to get cracking. Right now I find myself pulled into this practice any way so it may be a good time to explore it more methodically...

Well, I agree with this, too.

If a person is in the wading section for a time and sincerely practicing, then the brillance of equanimity will start to occur.

Then, there will be the dissatisfaction of equanimity: is this it? Is this all there is?

Then, there may be a new practice to deal with the dissatisfaction of equanimity. Or a person can deepen mindfulness...and, in my case, take up sitting in pleasantly-sensate places, aware of the senses triggering without noting or claiming or possessing. One listens to others and oneself during audible conversation without thinking, "their voice/my voice" for example. One hones in on equanimity practices.

Then, in my case, there are surprising and pleasant events in this period, such as naturally arising single-point concentration all of a sudden. This subdues the dissatisfaction of the stage "equanimity". Then, there is high equanimity: the mind has learned is good to let go. It stops perseverating on "Is this it? What next? Is this it? Is this all there is? What next..."

In that fine moment of, for examples, attentive mindfulness without expectation, attentive anapanasati without expectation, the mind is loosened. There are no expectations and the mind - by experiencing pleasant and unusual phenomena, gives itself to the practices more and more, open-heartedly, without expectation. Here, the mind can show itself cessation, show the aggregates one by one and then none.

BTG, I know what you mean; my practice has gone in this direction as well. Dharma Treasure is quite the gold mine (there's got to be a better pun...)

Eric

Katy can you describe "spontaneous one pointedness" please?

I've been having some odd experiences off the cushion since my last retreat that may relate to what you're experiencing.

sure.

Context: ego-centricism cannot generate or "have" this experience or its benefits. I say this for any readers who are in a place wherein stories about how meditation will promote them are still fabricating. Un-egoic practices (which are sometimes preceded by de-egoic practices like journaling, HAIETMOBA, therapy, etc) suffuse and stabilise mental receptivity - which receptivity is akin to excellent listening (but that now more senses than listening are engaged) - and this habit of being in an un-egoic receptivity allows for stress-less, beneficial single-pointed concentration to occur. (Because Oppenheimer and others have openly shared about their lives, I infer that there is strong mental concentration which causes stress and suffering and imports the antithesis of beneficial consequences).

Physically, single-pointedness (as "I" have experienced it) feels like being magnetized to the object of attention; vision becomes narrow and strongly connected to the object as a center of the visual field, and mental perception seems boundless, absolutely without an awareness of any "this or that" definition, yet there is focus on a single object within a boundless perception. This has, in my existence, so far only occurred when listening and interacting with a few people. Undoubtedly, this is because a) I do not give un-sentient objects fully sensate receptivity, and b) I am probably using this time with un-sentient objects as a slacking-off-practice time, time in which egoic perseverations are welcome to return because "surely, this egoic "me" is more interesting/worthy than an object". b) is a wasteful, harmful, egoic patter which delays developing adept skills, and I will say that "stream-entry" can bring on quite a wreck without the enterers constant attendance to cultivating skills and displacing egoic arisings. It is like getting it truly over one's head and the need to swim (practice) well, and constantly, only gets more important.

Mentally, single-point concentration has attributes that are unlike my normal mental processes: the words boundless, connected and caring come to mind. However, these words are approximations for something that has no basis in words; again, that something has nothing to do with me. I have to get out of the way for it to occur. My ego return only bars its suffusion. That these experiences have occurred but a few times attests to my personal willingness to remain egoically habitual versus intently filling each moment in mindfulness of actuality, shunned ego.

[Edit: this sort of concentration is profoundly relaxing, as if no energy is exerted at all. Everything seems fully restful, in equilibrium, in a soft, subtle, completely connected state (as if any other way has no existence)...again, this is trying to express something in printed word that has no basis there. And again, it has nothing to do with me, it is not a personal talent, it is anyone's ability in open receptivity. To have conditions that allow for this cultivation is a great opportunity to experience something about being alive and fostering the same for others.]

[Edit 2: I also want to caution against romanticizing this. This is a basic mental attribute, nothing special. When I consider that Gotama died with dysentary, I am able to drop romantic, gradiose ideation. The world has had great masters and they were not preserved from old age/sickness/death, just the personal suffering of them.]

With this conversation aren't we missing a deeper and more meaningful divide in these types of practices? It seems that one set of practices aims for the ending of the fetters, dispassion, the end of craving, the end of 'tension,' while the other aims at the insight knowledges, penetrating the feeling of observer, and the completing of the 'energy circuit' etc.

Bhante Vimalaramsi, the creator of 'TWIM' certainly recognizes this as a major divide, he says that people reach fundamentally different 'end points' in their practice if they are aiming for penetrating the 3Cs vs. aiming for understanding the interactions of the 5 khandas, understanding the 4NTs etc. He claims that "emotional habitual tendencies" must be ended for true completion (with the brahmaviharas becoming immeasurable only when they transcend their emotional/feeling form)

There are some other than Vimalaramsi who have similar opinions, i am most aware of those from the thai forest tradition - Lee, Mun, Chah, Fuang, Geoff, Amaro, Sumedho, Passano... They are talking about something fundamentally different from someone like shinzen young, jack kornfield, mahasi sayadaw or dan ingram.

So there might be some slight teaching divides in comparing wet and dry approaches to penetrating the 3C's but there is a much clearer and more significant divide between these two ideas of what suffering is. Here is some supporting stuff:

ingram (not sure about his current opinion, but this demonstrates what alot of people think about enlightenment):


http://www.interactivebuddha.com/arahats.shtml

young - demonstrates that he thinks that the only issue regarding emotion is how to express it here:http://www.shinzen.org/Articles/artExpressEmo.pdf

compared to:

vimalaramsi from his essential TWIM instruction on the 6R's:


http://dhammasukha.org/Study/Articles/simple-easy-mind.htm

Ajaan geoff/thanissaro bhikku:





note: thanissaro bikkhu often talks about tension as a way of breathing

Ajaan Lee:


I think you get the point, is there any question that these two groups are talking about radically different ideals of enlightenment? One group is constantly focusing on defilements, unskillful thoughts aren't to be tolerated, they are talking about the literal fetter model of the suttas, they do practices of staring at dead bodies to diminish lust... they aren't doing the 3C penetration thing.

I only mention this bigger divide because if you are going to use Vimalaramsi's method as something with a similar goal as MCTB, you should know that he really disagrees with this take on things, he specifically says in his dhammatalks that noting the 3 characteristics doesn't get you the real deal attainments.

from his book 'the breath of love':


You might have guessed by my lopsided knowledge and presentation that i strongly agree with the second group, i don't really know why so many people seem to be going against what is clearly stated in the suttas. The suttas define suffering as:

eh ill cut myself off here, this has gone on for a while =o i think you get my point by now... there may be a wet/dry teaching philosophy divide, but there is a deeper fundamental divide about what suffering is, what its cause is, what its cessation is, and what the path leading to the cessation is.

Ah. That sounds very cool. Not what's happening to me at all though. I'll post about that separately. Thanks Katy.



I do indeed get your point. It's well made as well. Im not sure what the answers are, but Im glad the question has been raised. Just how do you reconcile dry vs wet? (and should you even try?)

Oddly (or not) as I lean more into anapana I am still going through the classic progress of insight. I seem unable to stop it/change it. I've been through DN into EQ 3x since I last posted!



Awesome.

My impression is that dry is practices based in insight and power (upekkha and mudita) while wet is practices based in metta and compassion. You need both, and they bleed into each other if you let them. E.g., compassion will lead to rest without ignorance (very close to insight, and fuels the capability for it) in the experience of even phenomena which are usually seen as extremely unpleasant (very close to power, and fuels the capability for it.)

ha. It is really just something else - like having new alertness after coffee (which is an exaggerated experience the first time and an effect thereafter), truly not special, but actually useful and not me nor mine. This single-point concentration is important to me in that it naturally reinforces the relaxedness of training away from feral mentation (the steady flood of desire, unease, and related restlessness that arises) and causes me to be keen on re-placing the mind back in mindfulness.

So, yes, I think this point you've excerpted of "forget about the first jhana and so on..." worked well for me and continues to be good training. My "job" is still to keep the feral mind placed back at the senses, empty of owner/center (and its various story spin-offs); this is equanimous, receptive, specific attention...not unlike the equanimous, theistic reverence of god-in-all-things without trying to name or place them. It is acute listening/observation/sensing, because everything is "worthy" of this.


From this mindfulness has come concentrated states and their related.

OK. The variety of accounts is interesting, and can help expand understanding, build this site's wiki, etc.


An aside: it was nice to read about changes in pain sensation in your other thread. I hope to learn more about that from you.

[edits]

This is an important statement, and very useful. I've used this reverence before, and was reminded last week about it, very powerful way to use christian conditioning to fuel mindfulness.

thanks Katy for another great explanation of 'the way' in this thread.