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?

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?)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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