Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Soo Zanne, modified 12 Years ago at 8/13/12 11:11 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/13/12 11:11 PM

Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Post: 1 Join Date: 8/13/12 Recent Posts
Help me a bit here. I've only just discovered Daniel Ingram's book and this website. His approach is all a bit new to me and i know i have a lot to learn.

I'm reading the book but i've just been reading the chapters at the end of the models of enlightenment and now i don't know why i should seek enlightenment.

I think i was engaged somewhat on the model of enlightenment as taking one towards being a better person. If enlightenment was the overcoming of greed aversion and delusion, that seems to me one would have a better character. Now this seems to be the model of enlightenment - the emotional model according to what i've been reading. But now Daniel describes enlightenment as being able perceive impermanence dukkha and not-self in all experiences. This does not contradict what i understood before it just focuses more attention on impermanence dukkha and not-self than i've understood before and seems to make the all of enlightenment. I don't see where overcoming greed and aversion comes in anymore.

So i need someone to tell me what is the point. I mean why does it matter if one can perceive reality in this way. What difference does it make to my life or anyone else's? I'm confused.

How are these experiences translated into ordinary life?
End in Sight, modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 11:14 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 11:14 AM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 1251 Join Date: 7/6/11 Recent Posts
Soo Zanne,

Not everyone here agrees with the conception of what enlightenment is about that Dan Ingram wrote in MCTB. Many people here agree with you: that it's about overcoming greed and aversion (and delusion). (Perhaps Dan has warmed up to this view nowadays; I don't know.)

Some of us even think that practicing in the style of MCTB can help with those goals.

(Everyone else: Wouldn't it be great to have a sticky where we address some of these issues for the benefit of new DhO members?)
thumbnail
John P, modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 11:25 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 11:25 AM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 155 Join Date: 1/24/12 Recent Posts
As I understand, the purpose is to become free of suffering.
thumbnail
fivebells , modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 1:02 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 1:00 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 563 Join Date: 2/25/11 Recent Posts
Fully apprehending the dukkha, impermanence and not-self in an experience is enough to snuff out the greed, aversion and ignorance of that moment.

I think there is a section in MCTB which talks about how the three teachings support each other. In principle, going all the way with any one of them would get you the other two.
thumbnail
katy steger,thru11615 with thanks, modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 2:58 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 2:58 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 1740 Join Date: 10/1/11 Recent Posts
Hi Soo Zanne

I think i was engaged somewhat on the model of enlightenment as taking one towards being a better person. If enlightenment was the overcoming of greed aversion and delusion, that seems to me one would have a better character. Now this seems to be the model of enlightenment - the emotional model according to what i've been reading.

(...)

How are these experiences translated into ordinary life?



What is greed? Greed is being led and blinded by craving. If I eat the last of a sweet food in the house and ignore that anyone else may want some, then I would be led by greed.

How is a person made better by overcoming greed? Well, what problems arise with greed? Looking around, what happens when people are acting on cravings? What happens when craving becomes a normal way of living, suffusing all aspects of life? Do you want to contribute to craving, or do you want to know yourself as one free of craving? Do you want to meet craven people, or do you want to meet people free from acting of cravenness, even free from actual craving.

How is a person made better by overcoming their own greed?

What is aversion? Aversion is a strong dislike. What problems arise from disliking? Now, here it is common to think, "Well, I don't like bad things. I dislike badness. Is that right?" Very adept people can realize right away that some actions - like bad actions (think immoral actions) are not worth taking, are not worth valuing, are not worth perpetuating, and these immoral actions are not even worth disliking.

For example, on page 37 of Thich Nhat Han's Old Path, White Clouds, when Gotama saw children pulling a live crab apart he asked the children if they wanted their own legs and arms ripped off. No. He asked if they knew crabs feel pain. He explained that crabs, like them, want water and food, have relations. That all living beings want to be well alive. So Gotama had no aversion even in such a horrible circumstance. See also his dealings with Angulimala.

How is a person made better by overcoming their own aversion?

What is delusion? Permanence-belief and ego are sources of pervasive delusion. One day a breath will the last drawn by a living being. That living being's most fundamental instincts will be to draw another breath. Drawing another breath will not be possible. Every living being experiences death. Birth is the cause of death. It something arises, it passes away.

Everyone logically knows they will die. "Knowing" is not the same as realizing and taking action from a realized mind. Often, "knowing" one is going to die gives rise to greed and aversion...

How is a person made better by overcoming their own delusion?
Jinxed P, modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 5:12 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 5:12 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 347 Join Date: 8/29/11 Recent Posts
I'm confused as well.

I thought the entire PURPOSE of enlightenment was to free oneself from suffering. That was the purpose of buddhism. But after reading MCTB Ingram basically says this is nonsense, or at least that is not what happens.

Can someone clear this up for me?
thumbnail
Jake , modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 6:16 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 6:16 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 695 Join Date: 5/22/10 Recent Posts
End in Sight:
Soo Zanne,

Not everyone here agrees with the conception of what enlightenment is about that Dan Ingram wrote in MCTB. Many people here agree with you: that it's about overcoming greed and aversion (and delusion). (Perhaps Dan has warmed up to this view nowadays; I don't know.)

Some of us even think that practicing in the style of MCTB can help with those goals.

(Everyone else: Wouldn't it be great to have a sticky where we address some of these issues for the benefit of new DhO members?)


A sticky that gives a basic overview of the history of dominant viewpoints on practice and realization at DhO (and perhaps related sites) would be very helpful for new members. I suppose one possible difficulty is that different camps may have rather different ways of articulating that history lol!

But an interesting way around that political aspect of things might be to have Dan write the OP of the sticky as a summary of his own changing views, the changing practices connected with these changes, and his reflections on that process and what he's learning from it as his practice deepens and shifts.
Adam , modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 7:30 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 7:30 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 613 Join Date: 3/20/12 Recent Posts
Jinxed P:
I'm confused as well.

I thought the entire PURPOSE of enlightenment was to free oneself from suffering. That was the purpose of buddhism. But after reading MCTB Ingram basically says this is nonsense, or at least that is not what happens.

Can someone clear this up for me?


Different people have different ideas of what the buddha's enlightenment really is. If you look at MCTB you see one thing, if you look at the suttas you see something very different. The suttas are definitely pointing to an unconditional perfect happiness without any desire, anger, restlessness, conceit, doubt, etc. MCTB points to something far less profound, but still moving in that direction. The majority around here for a long time thought that the suttas were for whatever reason being dishonest, or maybe that the buddha had attained something totally different from other arahants. But lately people at the DhO have begun attaining things that are similar or very, very nearly the same as what is described in the suttas, a complete lack of desire and suffering. What you make of these facts is up to you, personally I think MCTB's enlightenment is an early stepping stone and that this community is slowly discovering what the buddha really taught.
Jinxed P, modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 7:41 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 7:41 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 347 Join Date: 8/29/11 Recent Posts
Adam . .:
Jinxed P:
I'm confused as well.

I thought the entire PURPOSE of enlightenment was to free oneself from suffering. That was the purpose of buddhism. But after reading MCTB Ingram basically says this is nonsense, or at least that is not what happens.

Can someone clear this up for me?


Different people have different ideas of what the buddha's enlightenment really is. If you look at MCTB you see one thing, if you look at the suttas you see something very different. The suttas are definitely pointing to an unconditional perfect happiness without any desire, anger, restlessness, conceit, doubt, etc. MCTB points to something far less profound, but still moving in that direction. The majority around here for a long time thought that the suttas were for whatever reason being dishonest, or maybe that the buddha had attained something totally different from other arahants. But lately people at the DhO have begun attaining things that are similar or very, very nearly the same as what is described in the suttas, a complete lack of desire and suffering. What you make of these facts is up to you, personally I think MCTB's enlightenment is an early stepping stone and that this community is slowly discovering what the buddha really taught.


Thanks this helps a lot.

So if I want to free myself from suffering would following the guidelines of MCTB still be advisable - before going on to some other practice? Or is there a different method I should be doing?

Also do you know of any posts on here where people describe there experience of what is described in the suttas?
Adam , modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 8:22 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 8:20 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 613 Join Date: 3/20/12 Recent Posts
Lots of this is purely based on my opinion...

The suttas, more often then talking about specific techniques, talk about maintaining a skillful mind as continuously as possible. What I do is use whatever technique is best suited to my moment to moment hindrances. If lust is strong I do contemplation of the body, if anger is there I do metta towards whoever I was angry at. If there is nothing specific going on, just constant moment to moment subtle changing unskillfulness, I do breath concentration with an emphasis on keeping a relaxed body. My practice is motivated by people who have gotten sutta-ish attainments in this community as well as people outside this community who have apparently gotten similar attainments. However, that said, every person I mention on this list did MCTBish techniques, and all but one of them had a clear stage that was equivalent to MCTB enlightenment. 4th path then is probably useful stepping stone but not a necessary one.

Now, the following examples I give are of people who I think are attaining sutta-type stuff.

Here is an article that seems to be oriented towards ending defilements and hindrances, http://dhammasukha.org/Study/Articles/simple-easy-mind.htm

Notice the difference:

dhammasukha:
Meditation (Bhavana) helps one let go of such difficult delusional states in life as fear, anger, tension, stress, anxiety, depression, sadness, sorrow, fatigue, condemnation, feelings of helplessness or whatever the catch (attachment) of the day happens to be.


MCTB:
Remember that these practices and teachings are not about becoming some kind of emotionally devoid, non-existent entity, but about clearly understanding the truth of our humanity and life. Becoming fluent in the true nature of all categories of sensations, including the sensations that make up all categories of emotions, is a particularly good idea and highly recommended.


Dhammasukha defines craving as the tension one feels in the body, and they focus on building up metta and relaxing that craving. Per their definition you can't have any such tension and be an arahant, though in MCTB definition, you definitely can, you just have to be recognizing that the tension is impermanent and not-self. I think it is interesting to note that the 3C's seem to be looked at in MCTB as a comfort, like - "that pain isn't so bad, it is impermanent" whereas in the suttas they are a tool to create dispassion rather than as a coping mechanism which is basically an end in and of itself.

Another source, from inside the pragmatic dharma community is the hamilton project blog, started by a DhO poster Nikolai Halay, he has been reporting some attainments which seem similar to sutta stuff.
http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com

Another prag-dharma person with sutta-ish stuff going on would be TJ Brocoli, here is a quote in which she describes her practice history:



my practice progress over a period of ten years after stream entry was very gradual, stable, and steady, and at the same time progress was obvious to me (each month something was slightly better or easier, and each year life was clearly better than the previous one.) there were periods of acceleration here and there due to more practice and/or stronger intent. i wasn't too affected by the symptoms of cycling, although those fluctuations of emotional energy and moods were obvious. the slow and steady change continued until the last months and weeks before the dissolution of the self-center and base of all passions. the last three years were nice, with the cycling having picked up a underlying current of equanimity. in the last six months leading up to the dissolution of identity, my day-to-day experience was excellent and very equanimous with good moods all the time. what seemed to have inspired that improvement was meeting up with Tarin for the first time after his becoming actually free. seeing the new peaceful Tarin seemed to nail into my head some stronger intent from the realization "damn, if this ex-pissy-moody dude can do it, then what am i waiting for?" we didn't discuss af much; we just hung out with other people who talked about normal everyday things. but it helped a lot to see the evidence for myself that ending all affective suffering was a very realistic goal, and also to see how Tarin hadn't at all turned into anything weird--not repressed or delusional and neither super-human nor non-human like people often imagine.

towards the end when i had had enough of the excellent-but-still-not-totally-clean experience for six months, i talked to Tarin a lot about what could possibly be left. it seemed like the identity was no longer "generating" trouble or making any problems arise, but its base remained as a constant tint of dullness and blockage to clearer sensing. it took a few weeks of this new momentum of intent and discussions with friends before i started to figure out what there was left to do. Tarin could not come up with any solutions for me either, but he often came up with the right questions. it seemed to me that all i needed was to see through every bit of the self (identity)--to see exactly what it was, where its edges were, exactly which bodily sensations related to it, etc. at that point it seemed like i had no trouble dropping/dissolving/letting go of something as long as i could see what it was, and my problem was that it wasn't fully seen. i did not have the benefit of recent or frequent pce memories to pin down this identity. so i just chipped at it from whichever direction i could, and took apart different aspects of the identity.

[...]

the way i practiced seemed like no-brainer vipassana, or the most obvious thing to do at the time, but i could not have come up with that practice a few weeks or months before it became necessary. and had someone explained it to me earlier, it probably wouldn't have made sense to me. when that vipassana stretch was done and no more control-freak sensations could be found, i had a full-on pce for the first time in eleven years, but i knew that it wasn't going to be an in-and-out shifty thing that would come and go because my baseline of experience had slowly been approaching it over the years and had finally moved into it. everything in its way had been cleared. i was in this pce for about a day, and also had a clean and clear experience-gap (fruition) with no afterglow or after-effect noticed, and no "entry moment" or "exit moment" noticed. (i only assumed that there must have been a gap because i was watching a commercial on tv with pce-alertness and all of a sudden the next commercial started before the first one even revealed what product it was advertising.) at that point i didn't know if that pce experience lined up with af or not, but it didn't matter anyway because perception had cleared up the way i had always wanted it to.

then, the next morning i woke up into a totally new experience, and my first thought-impression of it was "woe, it's like there's no puppet master". i literally said stuff like "woe" and "huh!" out loud a few times while moving my limbs back and forth: "wait, what's doing the moving?? woe...holy crap this is different." there was a new kind of clean and weightless quality to experience that wasn't there in the pce.

[...]
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/1917355

Another guy would be End In Sight, here is his old practice journal: http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4641050/first+ever+practice+journal%21

Another would be Antero, here is a practice journal of his which starts after he attained 4th path (MCTB enlightenment):http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4687982/Antero%27s+practice+journal+4
Jinxed P, modified 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 10:31 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/14/12 10:31 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 347 Join Date: 8/29/11 Recent Posts
Thanks Adam,

I appreciate it.
wylo , modified 12 Years ago at 8/26/12 3:16 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/26/12 3:15 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 166 Join Date: 11/18/11 Recent Posts
Whats the purpose in awakening?

Well tbh, I think there is a bit of a stigma around bigging up awakening, probably because people are either too afraid to trap and distract other people with self indulgence or are too afraid to trap themselves by claiming they are past certain things, or maybe it just gets boring talking about the good stuff after a while, because it normalizes so much that perceiving reality in any other way starts to seem nonsensical and a result the feeling of comparison falls away..

For me , on a purely practical level and getting away from philosophy, heres the point,

- knowing and understanding reality, life , experience, whatever, is actually something very pleasurable and enjoyable by nature and that it is just the added on distraction/suffering that takes away from that enjoyment, the degrees to how much this can be realized is simply a matter of practice.

- behaving and living from a place of peace, happiness, openness , joy, or dare I say it, love, rather than behaving from a place of fear , self consciousness and ego.

- not resisting things

- not making bad of a fine situation (which as time goes on seems to start being more and more situations)

- not feeling the effects, or at least a vast reduction in the effecst of the human conditioning, certain bullshit moral pressures, social stigmas, mass fear, mass self consciousness,generally the ugly side of many humans, but also surpassing the feeling of being above others too.

- feeling empty , clear, natural and realising you are much closer to seeing things the way they actually are than you were in the past, (both visually and in terms of concepts and beliefs) and this clarity offering a very relaxing peace.

- basically other than regular practical life headaches that need to be dealt with a healty way, there being no deep problems in your life, the word problem itself becomes something alot less personal and alot more practical.
thumbnail
Brian K, modified 12 Years ago at 8/26/12 8:17 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/26/12 8:17 PM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 142 Join Date: 4/18/12 Recent Posts
Freedom from suffering.
thumbnail
Daniel M Ingram, modified 12 Years ago at 8/28/12 1:42 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 8/28/12 1:42 AM

RE: Remind what the purpose of awakening is please.

Posts: 3279 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
Very briefly:

The naturally clear mind is much better than the unclear mind, the semi-clear mind and the intermittently clear mind.
The awake mind is much better than the less awake mind.
The timeless mind is much better than the mind caught in the illusion of time.
The mind without any artificial boundary is much better than the artificially bound mind.
The mind that knows there is no mind is much better than the mind that believes there is one.
The directly perceiving mind is much better than the mind that filters things through though and the sense that there is attention.
The mind that knows there is no perceiver is much better than the mind that believes it is perceiving.
The mind that is stainless is much better than the mind that is stained.
The mind that is the same as bare phenomena much better than the mind that is the same as bare phenomena but doesn't know it.
The mind that is without extraneous noise is better than the noisy mind.
The mind for which all the world arises effortlessly, naturally, lawfully, causally, this is much better than the mind that pretends it is creating effort, creating thought, creating anything.
That fluxing, shimmering field of bare experience that occurs on its own, knows itself directly where it is, as it is, is totally ephemeral, totally fresh, totally natural: this is so much better than the world perceived some other way.
In that mode: there is nothing to want anything.
In that mode: there is nothing to know anything.
In that mode: there is nothing to do anything.
And yet, wanting occurs, as there is an animal that has needs from an ordinary point of view, which is still a valid point of view, but this wanting is just a natural part of the field.
There are preferences, but they are just causality functioning, shimmering, fluxing, doing what it does and always has done.
There is knowledge, but nothing that knows it beyond the shimmering, dancing, flickering little tingling bursts that make up knowledge.

This is vastly, immeasurably better than the other ways of perceiving reality. To prefer something less is madness. ;)

Daniel

Breadcrumb