Hi, my name is Dan.

I started meditating in 2007.  I reached Sotapannahood in 2009, Arahanthood in 2011 and then an event took place that seemed to connect to something further.  My only guess is that it began the Bodisattva paths but I do not know.  Eitherway, I have traveled significantly since thenn.  Progress after Arahanthood it is just more paths.  I stopped noticing but the last I did a path took about a week.  Obviously they go faster as you progress because you become purer which speeds up future ones.  I'd have to guess I'm about 20-30 times as far as an Arahant.

My metta is strong and I think the best way I can help spread dhamma is doing large online meditations.  I don't speak humbly because there's no reason to waste time.  I am extremely strong at purifying people.  

My mind/system has been optimized to travel down the path, however, I am done now and am going to go help people.  This will be the first time I am intentionally doing it so I do not know how it will work. In my daily life my mind just purifies people on it's own and I have never controlled it.  However, so as to not waste time, I jumped into a online meditation group anonymously to briefly check that it works. It seems what happens is my mind goes from person to person and spends about 15-20 seconds to purifying them.  In a group meditation I don't know if it will happen just once, or if I keep repeating it, or if I do it once and then I settle into some general meditation purifying the group as a whole.  This is what I want to test.  

If you are interested in testing feel free to post below.  Just put down a time you are available today/tomorrow and I can post a zoom link. 

I am excited, I worked very hard to get to the point.
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The meditation is what is important but I am happy to answer a couple questions

Hi Dan, welcome to the forum. I'm curious: why do you believe you are enlightened, and what do you mean by purifying people? 

To be honest, I'm skeptical. I doubt that meditating in a zoom meeting with an arhat would have any particular benefit. It sounds like you are proposing magic. 

Hi Dan, I am assuming that you are being sincere, I too am being very sincere in responding to you.

The meditation and awakening thingy does not work in magical ways of 'transmission' and 'reception'. of one person meditating and purifying somebody else's mind. This is a fantasy. For some people these are intentional promotional positions where they want to cheat/dupe other people. For some people these are their own fascinations, wrong views that they are trapped in. For some other people this might be trolling on an internet forum.

If you truly and genuinely believe what you are saying then there are two possibilities

1. These views are harmless to you and to others around you, in which case its no big deal
2. These views are harmful to you and others around you, they cause dysfunctionality in social situations, in which case you need to meet a therapist.

I hope I have not come across as too agressive. I wish you well.

So what's it like way up there, in the spiritual stratosphere? 20-30 times! That's just unbelievable!

Hi John, thank you for the welcome

"why do you believe you are enlightened" 

I have been around since Nikolai and understand that if someone sneezes hard enough they will make a post asking if it was Magga or Phalla, so I will answer the question.  Knowing you're an Arahant and knowing you are a Sotapanna are very different.  People can meditate for a while and have a wierd experience and wonder if they are a Sotapanna.  However, getting to Arahanthood involves going through all the Nanas 4 times.  The process is very long and is the same each time so it is very distinguishable.  Each Nana feels similiar each path.  In addition, by Arahanthood the mind is much clearer than Sotapannahood and the details of how things work are clearer.  

I will spit out a fast answer

-I started meditating
-I saw the underlying mechanism of how meditation worked
-I progressively became purer and purer, while simultaneously becoming a stronger and stronger meditator, strengthening the idea that what the Buddha taught is true.  I experienced the 'Jhanas' and had many other spiritual experiences
-I volunteered at a meditation retreat and found a book in their library which introduced the Nanas.  It described in detail what I had already experienced, and what I would soon experience.  I located that I was at Sankharupekkha Nana.  Several weeks after I went home I dipped and experienced the Maga/Phalla Nana.
-When you dip you experience Nirvana for a moment.  It is very distinguishable as it is different than normal reality
-After you dip you have a buzz for a while and there is a permenent shift in your experience of reality.  However, the shift is not large. The benefits from becoming enlightened accrue along the whole way walking through the Nanas. It is not work work work I am 99% there, now I hit  Nirvana, 100%, and now I get the benefit.  You are accruing it the entire time (instantaneous enlightenment is an exception).   The main jump in benefit (peace) is from Sankharupekkha Nana 
-This whole process happens 3 more times until Arahanthood and it is very long.  The experience of the Nana's each time is very similiar and after having experienced them so many times it is not really possible to miss it 
-My experience of reality is drastically different than when I started meditating, as it is drastically different than when I was a Sotapanna as it was drastically different than when I was an Arahant.  Though it is drastic the change happens slowly and linearly
-I have siddhis and experience what people would call supramundane dozens of times a day

"what do you mean by purifying people?"

I will respond to this one later.  I am tired and want to give a good answer.

Hey Dan, thanks for typing that out. In the definition of arhatship this forum tends to use, going through the ñanas four times is not enough. Rather, arhatship is about a total and lasting shift into non-dual realization that typically occurs after many ñana cycles, possibly dozens or hundreds. For a joke on this, check out Daniel Ingram's discussion of "Twelfth Path." 

Like you, I've had many trips through the ñanas. But I don't think I'm an arhat, since I still feel an obscure intimation of identification and control. You may well be an arhat, and I'd love if you were, but nothing from your post indicates to me that you're an arhat as opposed to a veteran anagami. While the benefits of the path accrue gradually as you say, realized practitioners also report a night-and-day binary improvement in wellbeing when they finally realize non-duality.

Dan S, I'm tired too, but mainly of folks showing up on DhO claiming all kinds of meditative and spiritual glory but not backing up any of what they claim with meaningful, detailed explanations. Call me crabby, an asshole, or whatever you feel is appropriate, but you need to provide us with more information. What I'm reading in your comments sounds like regurgitated material from various sources, but there are no genuine phenomenological descriptions of the concepts and terms you're presenting.

Let's start here, with the basics - just what is "the underlying mechanism of how meditation works"? And how and why was that your breakthrough?

This is interesting.  I am reluctant but I will investigate it.

I'm not sure how many times I've been through the nana's, I didn't count, but it's a bunch. If I had to guess 10-12 in the last two years. They always feel complete. The only thing that has kept me from declaring "I'm done" is that sense that John L mentions: a vague sense of "me" still left. 

I'm curious where you get the numbers four, and why THAT number? Maybe that has been how many times it took you? I've met people who have been there a hundred or more times, and at least one person who never went through them because as far as he can remember he was always the way he is. 

anyway, I have no idea why it takes some people a lifetime, and others (comparatively) no time at all. It's a fascinating question though. 

This puts me in mind of the Khemaka sutta:

...
​​​​​​​“In the same way, reverends, I don’t say ‘I am’ with reference to form, or apart from form. I don’t say ‘I am’ with reference to feeling … perception … choices … consciousness, or apart from consciousness. For when it comes to the five grasping aggregates I’m not rid of the conceit ‘I am’. But I don’t regard anything as ‘I am this’.Although a noble disciple has given up the five lower fetters, they still have a lingering residue of the conceit ‘I am’, the desire ‘I am’, and the underlying tendency ‘I am’ which has not been eradicated. After some time they meditate observing rise and fall in the five grasping aggregates. ‘Such is form, such is the origin of form, such is the ending of form. Such is feeling … Such is perception … Such are choices … Such is consciousness, such is the origin of consciousness, such is the ending of consciousness.’ As they do so, that lingering residue is eradicated.Suppose there was a cloth that was dirty and soiled, so the owners give it to a launderer. The launderer kneads it thoroughly with salt, lye, and cow dung, and rinses it in clear water. Although that cloth is clean and bright, it still has a lingering scent of salt, lye, or cow dung that had not been eradicated. The launderer returns it to its owners, who store it in a fragrant casket. And that lingering scent would be eradicated.In the same way, although a noble disciple has given up the five lower fetters, they still have a lingering residue of the conceit ‘I am’, the desire ‘I am’, and the underlying tendency ‘I am’ which has not been eradicated. After some time they meditate observing rise and fall in the five grasping aggregates. ‘Such is form, such is the origin of form, such is the ending of form. Such is feeling … Such is perception … Such are choices … Such is consciousness, such is the origin of consciousness, such is the ending of consciousness.’ As they do so, that lingering residue is eradicated.”

Pointing this out once again because, for some reason, folks are reluctant to push back meaningfully and realistically on Dan S. - but Dan hasn't actually said anything here that validates the claims he made in his original post. And yet it appears to be assumed he's at least an anigami? The guy who says he's "... 20-30 times as far as an Arahant." Really? It's just not serious, folks.

Great stuff, Martin. Maybe I need to wash my mind in cow dung first. 

Dan, you said you "worked very hard to get to this point." If you're not fully cooked, and you're an anagami, then thankfully the path ahead is the opposite of work. It's about relaxing, letting go, and seeing how easy and free this life can be, to the point that it's no thing at all. 

I think it would be very edifying for everyone involved if you reported what practices and attitudes have brought you to your level of progress and how you reckon you want to move forward. 

Edit: To agree with Chris, an unadorned claim of "many trips through the ñanas" can mean many different things; I didn't intend to confirm any dharma diagnosis here. Thanks for your disagreeableness, Chris.  

John, I love you. I really do. But...

Standards matter. If we let this silly, obviously nonsensical stuff slide, then others may assume we don't hold a critical lens up to it. They might even think it's got merit. I miss Dreamwalker for this very reason. When I saw the OP of this topic, it was egregiously off the charts. It's jargon. It's the manufactured appearance of dharma without any of the requisite evidence.

Those who truly know the path have a responsibility not to perpetuate, even under the guise of being nice, the misinformation that occasionally appears on this message board. Call it what it is!

Furthermore, I note that Dan S. is ignoring my comments. All he needs to do to make me look like a misguided fool is produce phenomenological descriptions of his claims that are based on his actual practice. He can start with my question about the underlying mechanism of meditation and how that spurred his practice on to 20 or maybe 30 times an arhat.

I'm guessing the 20-30 times thing was deleted, which I why I can't see it other than in your mentions. That does sounds silly, and I would have like to read it. The claim to be able to "purify" people at a distance already raises questions about how seriously the OP should be taken. Dan is at least not opening in the tradition of this forum. 

I don't worry about other people mistaking level-headed questioning for acceptance. I think taking people at their word and asking them to explain what they are saying in light of what is generally known gives everyone a chance to investigate the mechanics of how things do and do not happen. That, for example, is the approach taken on retreats and in sangha discussions. I have never seen a teacher, or a fellow yogi, dismiss a yogi when they think they are mistaken, but I have never been in doubt as to whether the mistaken view was accepted. 

Many of the folks who come through DhO aren't mistaken, Martin, they're posing, or they're trolling. I'm not certain what Dan S. is doing, of course, but my long experience here and elsewhere says this is suspicious behavior. In a retreat or face-to-face setting, it's easier to determine what's going on. Here in ascii text it's not, but it is certainly easier to pose as something you aren't. You probably know the famous quote about extraordinary claims.

BTW - the comment about being 20 to 30 times an arahat is still in the OP. It has not been deleted. You can see it if I can see it:

True enough!

Also, I must be blind :-) Thanks for bolding that for me!

I will reply in a little bit.  Understand that the main thing my mind/body/energetic system has been doing for the past 17 years is traveling down the path and so it is optimized for that.

I have not tried to help people in dhamma during that period because it was made clear many times that it would be better to travel first and then help people rather than do both at the same time. So in the manner of Dhamma, I have no experience helping people.  The post above was the first action that started the transition and now it is clear a thing or two needs to be worked out to make things run smoother. The volition/energy that your system creates and releases through your actions is much more important than the actual action itself.  It is clear I am going to be under a microscope, so please respect the fact that when I do act I want to be effective.  It shouldn't take long.

Chris, I love you too!! Thanks for causing me to reflect on the weight of my words. While I think it's fine to engage people on the assumption that their reasonable descriptions are true, my original post was too confirmatory for my taste. Your posts helped me realize that. 

I thought Dan's claim that he's 20x further along than an arhat wasn't cause for me to dismiss him outright, since he was equating arhatship with having had four insight cycles, and since he claims 16 years since stream entry, him having undergone 80 insight cycles since then seemed reasonable. 

I don't tend to play the role of insisting on phenomenological details, but I'm grateful for those who do; it's important for the community.

It should then be very easy for you to post some of the details of your practice. Not claims of attainments, but the inner workings and phenomenology of your experiences as you learned about the workings of your mind.

John, I tend to prefer quality over quantity  

Do you want my journey/practice or do you want how the mind works

I want some popcorn! 

I have an issue that you guys can help with

Being effective at things is an energy game and I have a small clog right now with a limiting belief.

I understands resolutions to it, counters to it ects, but a small part of my ego knows/believes the following and to be most effective you want everything to be clean/congruent:  

-Samsara very much resembles a game, a very elaborate one.  You can do an infinite number of things and it has high highs and lows lows.  The rule of the game being karma.  Do good things, good things happen.  Do bad things bad things happen to you.

-It seems to be clear we are all the same person/being 

It doesn't seem like a malevolent being made Samsara and Super Buddha came to our rescue and is sneaking us out.  It seems more like us (universal us) created samsara and put ourselves in the most elaborate game possible to keep ourselves entertained for eternity.

This is very concerning. You can see why this might put a damper on being able to generate motivation

They're intertwined so don't you have to talk about them together? Just start at the beginning. Why did you begin to meditate, and what was that mind mechanism revelation that caused your practice to take off? How does your mind really work, and  why was that realization so compelling?

This is the kind of information we discuss here. And yes, it may seem intrusive but you're talking to some very experienced practitioners here on DhO.

Let's do this!

Dan,

​​​​​​​You don't appear to be at the point in your practice that you told us you were in your first post. That's fine. It's actually good to drop the pretense. You are now here, in a place where there are a lot of people who can offer you advice and assistance.

If you have this view, then maybe you might want to check out Kashmir Shaivism (book). The 'game' in sanskrit is called lila or divine play.
They also have the concepts you are looking for like shaktipata where folks can energetically influence each other. Not quite what you said about remote purification but a similar idea.

I don't know what you mean by that but I am going to update the title as it is deceptive and misclaiming things in Dhamma is serious.

As I said in my post I had a post-arahanthood event which made it clear something more was happening and then things did happen for 14 years (I may even still be traveling).  I am not positive it is Boddhisatvahood and I have no clue how I would know.

update: Apparently I can't edit the title anymore, if someone who can will change it to "potential boddisatva" that would be better

Have you read Mahayana texts like the Lotus sutra? They are a lot less about attainments. For example, if you even retain one verse of the lotus sutra you are already on the path. The diamond sutra is kinda similar. Bodhisattvas are from the Mahayana vehicle, but you are approaching it from a different tradition. The whole outlook is rather different. e.g. diamon sutra verse 17

Dan, you aren't replying to my requests for more detailed information about your practice and the claims you've made. Could you please reply to my previous questions? Your veracity and trustworthiness are questionable in my mind until you do that.

Thank you.

Also - I'm a moderator. I can change the title of this topic, but I think your claim to be an arahat, based on what little you've posted about your practice, is in question, too. Again, please post more details about your practice.
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"..I miss Dreamwalker.."

Symptom of attachment.

Yep.

Oh well I'm sorry to hear you're still suffering. If you take up buddhist meditation I've heard you can be relieved of such pain and attachments. Make sure to take up a path which actually does relieve the suffering though, you don't want to waste your time.

Hi Dan

I am responding to your post where you mentioned that you had a sticky issue. You have made a few statements regarding what you believe samsara is or isn't and who made it or didnt. I am sharing my opinion on the topic to see if we can spark an interesting conversation.

Unlike most people who come to the awakening/meditation journey, I was very very steadfastedly true to my original motivation. I was suffering and I felt horrible most of the time. In order to address this I had tried many things individually and in parallel. I had tried psychiatric medications, I tried making more money and becoming more successful, I tried drinking myself into a stupor, I tried therapy. Nothing worked.

It was a chance meeting with a cousin of mine who is a practicing psychiatrist, a therapist who uses mindfulness interventions and also has a very strong decades long meditation practice. My cousin after listening to my trials and tribulations adviced me in the brief time we had together to properly learn mindfulness meditation. I looked at various options/teachers/guides/reference material that I found and nothing really appealed to me. I stumbled across the youtube channel of an Australian teacher and listened to just one of his brief 20 minute talks .... and I knew that this man 'knew' something! I did not know what he knew, but I knew that he knew ... yes I know how funny that sounds

Once I got started the depression and anxiety got addressed in a matter of months. Then I kept going because I wanted to get at the root cause. It felt to me that I had been bullied by something embedded in my own mind and I dont like being bullied

Streamentry eventually happened and with some time sakrdagami, anagami, and arhat attainments also happened.

I have always seen conceptual models as conceptual models that attempt to model the human condition. So when you say samsara ... I understand that word as a way that my mind relates to the world and myself within it. Once that relationship changed permanently at the arhat attainment, within the conceptual model of samsara, I dont consider myself to be part of samsara anymore. I consider myself to be in 'tathata' ... or suchness.  This is not a different physical world, its the same world, the same people, the same interpersonal relationships .. but at the meta level my mind relates to 'all of this' and its components in a remarkably different way.

Its a way that does not involve cognitive friction, affective entanglement. I dont perceive anything differently. The world is exactly the way it always was. I am exactly the way I always was. My relationship to this world and myself within it is totally different. It doesnt involve cognitive friction and affective entanglement. The world does what it does, I do what I do, together the world and I we do what we do. This does not  mean that the world or elements of the world and me always get along with each other. I keep trying to change the  world, the world keeps trying to change me. but its all good! its all ok. Its a part of life, a part of being a living breathing human being.

You mention:

a. something is very concerning
b. something puts a damper on your motivation

My questions:

1. What exactly is concerning?
2. What puts a damper on your motivations?
3. Motivation to do what exactly?

Some additional questions about your practice in case you might want to share.

4. Could you please describe your practice journey
5. What does arhatship mean to you?
6. What do you think lies beyond arhatship? could you describe that please

P.S. - I am not trying to pull you down, or pull you into a comparison battle or to challenge your attainments or to give you a hard time. I am genuinely trying to understand you. Personally I like it when people talk about their attainments. I believe it is a learning opportunity for other people listening and in case in the process of discussing attainments the person in question understands that they are misguided then its a win, or if they understand that they are in fact not misguided ... even better!

It makes me happy that you care, Stickman 3  

I started meditating in 2007 with the Goenka tradition.  A combination of things made it clear that what the Buddha taught was true and that the technique they were teaching was sound.  Because of this two weeks after my first course I devoted myself to dhamma.  I started sitting eyes closed many hours a day but the main thing was that I started meditating at all times, meaning even when my eyes were open part of my awareness was on body sensations.  I had just gotten out of college and had the luxury of not having a job so a lot of the time I was able to give priority to maintaining awareness on the body over the actual activity I was doing.  It is very taxing at first but once you progress far enough progress happens on it's own and is happening at all times.  This is why there is a cap on the number of life times sotapannas/sakadagami/anagami ect.  have.

In those first 2 years I sat a bunch of meditation courses and served a bunch.   It became clear if I continued what I was doing I would burn out so I quit eyes closed meditation completely. The limiting factor in how fast progress would happen was how much I could take and not how hard I tried.   Each Nana brings up things and when they are cleared out you proceed to the next Nana.  The more peaceful/equanimous you are the faster they clear.  I have not meditated with eye closed with the intention of progress since then.

The thing I was to emphasize the most

"I made the choice to start meditating at all times.  Meaning I was with body sensation at all times. "

I honestly believe if anyone does this with sincere effort you can reached enlightenment in less than than a decade, most likely much shorter.  The Buddha seemed to hold the same opinion.  If you are meditating eyes open at all times you will be going faster than the monk in the cave meditating 10 hours a day but not doing so during his breaks.  It also does not need to be body sensation.  It could be any proper technique, body, breathe, noting

“The limiting factor in how fast progress would happen was how much I could take and not how hard I tried.”
Same intuition for me. Eyes closed meditation was only so that I could “take more” so to speak, or to manage symptoms and conditions that came up during the process. I say only, but after some time it became enjoyable, and a way to explore things in a way that wasn’t always possible with eyes open. 
I didn’t come at this whole thing from any tradition or system, and was always ambivalent about any particular tradition or system. When I read Daniel Ingram’s book I was fascinated how he mathed it all out. Many of the stages and insights I had gone through really made more sense (especially after the second reading), although I didn’t use the same words to describe them. I don’t feel that knowing the words of a particular system beforehand would have been helpful. In fact, I found that, when I did learn something about “what I would be going through later…” it was kind of a hinderance. It made me anticipate something I had no way of understanding, which gave it a conceptual framework, and that was precisely what I was trying to avoid. It’s fun to go back later and read about it, though. 
From the beginning it was 24/7 practice, in every situation as it came. There was never a distinction between life and practice. Everything that was part of life was part of practice. 

Adi Vader said "It doesnt involve cognitive friction and affective entanglement."
So you still suffer but it's smoother suffering.

Suffering is cognitive friction and affective entanglement

Nope. Suffering is suffering - being unhappy - friction or no friction.

Ok my dude. We dont use terminology in the same way. Whatever works for you

That sounds good. I think most dedicated practitioners reach the point where they start meditating at all times fairly early on in practice. As you say, it really is a game changer. At the same time, there is no need to give up formal seated (eyes closed) meditation. The standard practice is to do both, as they reinforce each other. 

I make a habit of noting how people describe their attainments, and in particular, arahantship. I find that there is a lot of variation in the descriptions. That said, what you have described so far doesn't really fit with any of the descriptions I have heard other people report. It may be this is because you do not have that kind of arhantship. If that is the case, it would be good news because the one things that is constant in reports of arahntship is that they feel done. They may feel that they can continue to develop insight but they don't expect any further significant reduction in suffering. They have come to the end, whatever that means for them. As you mentioned samsara, it sounds like you may be suffering and, if that's the case, it would be good if there is progress that is available to you, which is to say, it would be good news if you are not an arhat. 

You might want to consider returning to formal, seated, eyes-closed meditation and see what happens. In particular, you haven't mentioned samadhi, and so that might be something that you want to explore.