Masauwu.:
Not sure if words can describe this experience accurately - for a brief moment (less than a half of a second), everything ceased to exist. There was nothing there, reality took a short break. There were no visible effects of any kind immediately after this occurred (that i can remember), at the time i registered it as a random unexplained experience and moved on without giving it a second thought until now.
Since one of the DhO posts made me aware that this was even a thing, i tried searching other topics to see if i can find a definite diagnostic but it seems opinions vary.
. . . So i`m wondering what was that blink in my case and - once i know what it is - how knowing about it helps me in managing my practice?
Hi Masauwu,
I think your comment about "opinions vary" sums this topic up. I'm not sure you will ever find any definitive accounting for the experience you underwent except within the acceptance of your own mind and of an explanation that makes sense to you. And in one sense of viewing this, this is the way it perhaps ought to be. Ultimately, one needs to have confidence in one's own discriminating perception and explanation of reality.
However, that said, it could also be the case that if you were under the tutelage of a specific teacher, that you might likely accept that person's version and explanation of the event. In which case you would be influence by their perception of reality.
So, if truth be told, "opinions vary" seems to sum this up nicely, without providing you with the certainty that you are seeking.
One thing that ought to be pointed out would be that the terms fruition and
magga-phala are essentially referring to pretty much the same thing.
Magga means "path" in Pali, and
phala means "fruit," or the fruit of the path. The term "fruition" as it was used in the DhO wiki post might be viewed as being a shorthand for saying "
magga-phala" event, with the idea of "path" being understood and therefore not needing mention.
It occurs to me that such fruitions (or
magga-phala events) are therefore quite subjective experiences, tied to the person who experiences them and therefore up to the person himself to make sense of.
This said, it seems reasonable to use other people's explanations (or opinions, if you will) to help us begin to make sense of these experiences when they occur to us. In that vein, then, I'm likely to be partial to Culadasa's explanation as I am able to confirm from first hand experience much if not all of what he had to write about this experience. I had to read through his explanation two times, the second time with a more discriminating memory of a similar event that occurred to me a few years ago, meaning that one needs to refer to their own first hand experience when reading such descriptions, which entails a concentrated mind and clear recollection.
The following quotation below is what I am referring to:
Culadasa:
Then, with regard to the so-called magga-phala event, which may or may not always herald Stream Entry:
1. My experience agrees with what Thanissaro says in that the mind is free of intention during the experience. But I also agree with other sources that it is a cessation of all mental formations, not just the volitional formations called intention.
2. Although designated separately in the classical formulation of the khandas, I find perceptions to be a kind of mental formation as well, and there is no perception as part of that experience. I'll get to what happens in place of perception in a moment.
These two taken together mean that the "discriminating mind", mano-vijnana, which is responsible for every of karma-producing and karma-resultant mental formation, either temporarily suspends its function, or at least it ceases to project any content into consciousness.
3. Sensation, which is actually rupa, not vedana, definitely ceases. This means that the other five "sensory minds" either suspend their functions, or else cease to project content into consciousness.
4. The vedana - feelings of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral - are a different kind of mental function. Physical vedana arise in the sensory minds in association with sense percepts - the mental representations formed in response to raw sensory input. Mental vedana arise in the discriminating mind in association with mental formations, including perceptions. Both mental and physical vedana are absent in magga and phala. The non-experience of vedana is either because there are no vedana because the sensory and discriminating minds have suspended all function, or the sensory and discriminating minds cease to project vedana into consciousness when they cease to project everything else.
5. Consciousness does not cease during magga-phala. Some methods of practice that put all the emphasis on tracking objects of consciousness lead to reports of "gaps" in consciousness, but practices that emphasize the mind observing itself do not. But the object of consciousness in magga-phala appears to be the simple fact of consciousness itself, which makes it into "consciousness without an object" - something more-or-less inconceivable to the ordinary mind, but shockingly real to the mind in magga-phala. This is the meaning of "consciousness taking the Void as its object." Consciousness has no other object but itself.
When magga-phala takes the form of a "pure consciousness experience" or a "consciousness without an object" that can be recalled afterwards, there is an apparent "perception" associated with it. But this perception is an after-the-fact mental formation derived from the imprint left on the mind by the experience. On the other hand, I think in the Mahasi practice consciousness is often in a "latent" state during magga-phala, in that it produces no imprint in the mind that can be recalled afterwards, and therefore no after-the-fact "perception" is generated. But the only way for the magga-phala experience to reprogram the mind's deep intuitive view of reality so that someone becomes a Stream Entrant is for there to be some kind of "consciousness" that conveys this profound experience to those deep unconscious parts of the mind. In the end, the main difference between these two kinds of magga-phala is just whether or not it leaves an imprint in the mind that can be processed afterwards. . . .
If all magga and phala are nibbana of a sort where sensations, feelings, perceptions, thoughts and every other sort mental formations cease to enter consciousness, but continue at some unconscious level to some degree or another, that would fit the description of a nibbana with remainder. That kind of nibbana is certainly an "extinguishing" of craving, of mental formations, and of suffering. And it is certainly enough to provide the mind with some dramatically different data upon which to base its intuitive worldview in the future. Therefore it is enough to account for the irreversible changes of Path attainment.
On the other hand, if nirodha is nibbana in which all mental function is suspended completely, that would explain why it is called "without remainder". The complete cessation of sensory mind function would explain why the yogi in nirodha is impossible to arouse. It would, indeed, resemble the nibbana following the death of the body in every way except that the body is not actually dead. And it could, perhaps, also help us to understand why this nirodha is said to be only achievable by arhats and anagamis. This last, by the way, is a also a very strong argument against equating any other experience with nirodha samapati.
This may be something that you wish to look back upon at some future point when you have a better grasp of the phenomena in questions (especially when you are able to recall with as much clarity as possible the exact experience you had along with its characteristics). This may entail having another of these experiences at some future point, so as to be closer in time to recollect it as fully as possible. This is not something easily done by casually "looking" at the experience from the perspective of distance in time and a mind that may not have been as sharply discriminating of the event and its recollection when it initially occurred.
As far as the question "how knowing about it helps me in managing my practice" goes, those realizations are pretty much left up to you to figure out. If it is possible to attain such a state of mind wherein mental formations cease along with volitional formations (and all manner of greed, aversion, and delusion), doesn't that indicate something special? Doesn't knowing that the mind can attain to such a condition give hint as to what is possible? I'd say that that's a pretty significant gift to have had the experience of, no matter how short in time.
In peace,
Ian
