While mindfulness is an ever-present word in mainstream Buddhist teachings, and is of unimpeachable import in the suttas, I find myself rarely invoking it. I'd like to get this community's takes on the pedagogical pros and cons of the word.

While saying "Be mindful of everything, and eventually you'll awaken" is, in one sense, true, I think it carries a few practical problems.

Problem 1: Effort and investigation
When people hear "mindfulness," they may think of an effortful sense of investigation. However, clinging onto effortfulness and active investigation can become a dead-end in later stages of practice. To fully perceive the three characteristics, one may eventually need to stop manipulating experience, and more particularly, stop conjuring the sensations of effort and investigation.

Problem 2: The observer trap
When people hear "mindfulness," they may assume it involves a dualistic split between investigator and investigated. If there isn't a sense of 'looking at' or 'holding onto' a sensation, they assume they're not mindful. This is perfectly backwards. In the highest, most sophisticated levels of mindfulness, there is no subject-object split at all, there is no thing that could hold on, and there is no thing that could be held onto. There's ultimately no need to enforce a subject-object split, or concoct a watcher-investigator-controller separate from the observed sensations, or hold onto anything, whether it's a sensation, or a view, or a meditative stance.

Problem 3: Attention over awareness
When people hear "mindfulness," they may assume that attention is all-important, and that awareness without attention is worthless. This is another dead-end. I define "attention" as a particularized focus on a sensation. And I define "awareness" as perception of a sensation, with or without a particularized focus on it.

Meditation isn't about bringing attention to all things in awareness. In fact, that's impossible, because attention is inherently focused.

In intermediate practice, we must learn how to recognize clearly when we're aware of something despite not having attention on it. This broadens our view of the world, because we are freed from the tunnel-vision of attention and open up into the vast all-inclusiveness of awareness. At this point, we can understand how relaxation practices, like do nothing and dropping the ball, can lead to progress, even though they emphasize awareness over attention. We may begin to deepen our practice without compulsively bringing attention to what arises. Our skill as a phenomenologist advances, because we can comprehend subtle, peripheral sensations through our fluency in awareness-without-attention.

Instead of somehow bringing attention to all things, we recognize that all things are already made of awareness. Since everything is inherently awareness, we see that we cannot become more or less aware. Distraction no longer makes sense.

Thoughts? 

I use to get frustrated with myself as my understanding of the term mindfulness constantly changed. Now i am more at ease with this process as it feels like my mind just working through misconceptions and the intellectual part trying to reapply a different combination of concepts to the overall term after some space has freed up. I believe eventually i will see Right Mindfulness clearly. When that will be, idk, but that is okay
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As of now, to me, Right Mindfulness feels more like a map and Right Concentration the oar. 


In regards to: "While saying "Be mindful of everything, and eventually you'll awaken" is, in one sense, true, I think it carries a few practical problems." --- being mindful is only one part of Right Mindfulness so i agree that there is cause for concern here. In terms of teaching and using the term, i feel it should be utilized, but utilized appropriately to capture the dharma as read in the suttas, and not through a misconceived lense. But then you get into term wars and those ignorant of their misconception (like possibly me right now!) and so forth. 

I'm not sure if I have any 'pros and cons', by my 2 cents is, I think 'mindfulness' is just one of those overused buzzwords that means different things to different people.  To me, being 'mindful' in formal practice would be something like a light noting practice.  Where any thought, sensation, emotion, sound, etc, would just be labelled and recognized. 

Although there could also be more of a "big picture", moralistic, perhaps socialogical aspect to it.  As in, analyzing and being self-conscious of one's behavior and the effect they might have on others.

But I think it's a million different things. It's a magazine, it's a playlist, it's an app, it's a room in a gym, etc. It's just become the trendy secular(-ish) Western word for "meditation" I guess.

In a lot of cases, it's a word that's used to make money.  It kind of reminds me of the word "cloud-based" in the tech world.  For the most part, a scam designed by billionaires to make more money, imho.

It's hard to fault the word though, blame the billionaires.




Also - this might be a good place to agree on a definition of "awareness", as that is often linked to the term "mindfulness".  "Being mindful is being aware", etc.

While I agree with you on your definition of "attention", I'm not sure about your definition here:


My definition, I guess, would be more like, the totality of the internal space of consciousness that holds all sensations. ***This is a space that "knows", that "perceives"***, and that receives input through one of the six sense doors. Maybe I'm wrong on that.


Edit: ***What I should have said instead I guess is, 'the space within which the mental processes of knowing, recognizing, and perceiving occur' ***

The Pro of mindfulness gives the beginning meditator a sense of agency and allows the chance to "see" things that were overlooked. Our basic psychological defense mechanisms tend to dominate early in practice and it takes some investigating to see what is actually occuring in experience. It takes a long time to see sensations as sensations, emotions as emotions, thoughts as thoughts. It take a long time to notice greed, aversion, and indifference. Without seeing these components of mind, there is no way meditation can proceed.

The Con is that the identification with mindfulness-as-me can obscure how attention itself moves itself -- this latter point is really the thing that most people miss in their attempt to acheive stream entry. Attention must be allowed to move itself and find objects on its own. As more and more trust can be given to the mind's inherent intelligence, the effort of mindfulness needs to be nearly completely dropped.  This can't happen too soon, but (I believe) it needs to happen in EQ for SE to occur.

"And I define "awareness" as perception of a sensation, with or without a particularized focus on it."

I define awareness as the experience of objects and background as one field.

One way to play with the distinction of attention and awareness is to spend sometime looking out of a window at objects. Maybe even say "looking" "looking" as you feel that experience of looking strongly. Do this for just a half minute or so. Then widen the view to include the frame of the window itself along with the outside view. Maybe even say "I AM" or "I AM aware of all of this." The "view" is much more open yet it isn't about objects anymore, it is about the entire visual field. You can play switching between the two views. 

It's very interesting, when we look at objects, the sense of self seems to go away. When we are aware, the sense of self feels more present and the sense of discrete individual objects seems to go away.  This can be done with emotions and thoughts, too. When we are emotional, we are in the flow of emotions very vividly and "being" the emotion.  When we are aware of emotions, we still feel the energy of emotion but also the background context and the experience is of "having" the emotion.  When we "think" that's like attention, we are with the mind object of thought as "thinking". When we are aware of thoughts, we are with thoughts and the background of thoughts as "the knower". 

The problem with reifying awareness is that it is just another mistaken sense of identity. When people get too identified with awareness, they lose the precision of attention and become vaguely identified with the knower. True, they don't identify as "The Witness" but they identify as "The Knower". We are neither specifically attention nor awareness. Neither specifically Witness nor Knower. 

This is all very simple and endlessly nuanced. ...And maybe that's the point: calling it mindfulness is very simplistic.  

Well said, fellas. 

I have come to view "mindfulness" as an extra layer of processing. It's an addition to what's naturally, or already, happening. It's useful because it enables us to see what the mind is capable of, allowing us to observe the unfolding of events from a dualistic perspective (mindfulness assumes that "I" am seeing something "other" as it occurs). It's more effort (it's thus unsatisfactory, dukkha if you will), and I don't view being mindful as a long-term objective.

Shhhh - don't tell Jim Smith!

+1 for what Chris said. A good way to see this if you haven’t, is to start by listening to some boring audio like a bland news cast, or very dry audio version of something you’re not interested in, like a technical manual or something. Listen as though it was just sound and try to not understand what is being communicated. I’m not sure how to describe it clearly, but just hear mouth noises and try not understand what’s being said. You find a few things, one is that you can do it, but it takes effort to sort of push the meaning away, or not let the words become sentences.If you do it a bunch you start to see what you add to listening constantly, and that if you DON’T add what is automatically being added out of habit, you can still understand what is being said just fine. You can do this with the other senses too, vision, thoughts, touch, taste, smell. When you really see what is being added to everything you can see how mindfullness as a practice is adding, and can reinforce duality. 

"Shhhh - don't tell Jim Smith!"

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The man has a right to his opinion though, right? 

​​​​​​​Seems a bit mean.

It was a joke, certainly not meant to be mean. EDIT: But on a second, third, fourth, and fifth reads of my post, it was mean.

I'm truly sorry, Jim Smith.

Thank you, Shargrol, for calling this out.

Oh cmon lads! Kyosaku is what Kyosaku does!!! 

I like to use "orientation" instead of mindfulness (context- and audience-dependent): the opposite of confusion, lack of perspective, narrow mind. "Clarity" would come close to that as well. Unlike mindfulness, orientation/clarity does not evoke duality (observer), does not feel like effort but more like something acquired, being familiar with a terrain (with lots of repetition and mistakes), familiarity through paying attention; and through that also implies one feels, in some way, more at ease.

Show me duality?!

As in "one feels at ease"

It was meant the other way than you read it (the sentence was convoluted, I admit):

1. the word "mindfulness": might suggest duality (see "Problem 2: The observer trap", John L), something resulting from effort/striving (Problem 1 there).
2. the word "orientation" or "clarity": no duality, no effort (= ease), coming about through familiarity, brings in context (not just "momentary" but wider, and with perspective)

Dang, this is  awkward: for me, "non-orientation" signifies a nondual or near-nondual state.  

That's interesting. Where does that term then come from to mean what you take it to mean? I mean, how does "non-orientation" signify nondual (or nearly so). 

The way I personally hear it, if you're oriented to an experience, you're separate from it, which is dualistic. So non-orientation implies non-separateness. No concoction of subject or objects.

"Absolute absorption" is probably not even right because it implies something being absorbed and something to be absorbed into.

(Not invalidating Eudoxos's way of talking, plus I'm not a non-dual guy so take me with some salt.)

So, my two cents worth ... we naturally tend to import all kinds of other things into the original concept of mindfulness, and the application of mindfulness varies along the path, so the meaning of the term flows and changes.  So here is some right view. :-)

It seems almost forgotten that in the Suttas, mindfulness and concentration were two separate things - Sati versus Samadhi, or right mindfulness versus right concentration. Mindfulness is, at first, simply the noticing of what things arise, and reflection on them. Then, it becomes seeing these things as temporarily arising and fading, as just happening rather than being part of an enduring self, and as a source of unsatisfactoriness only you cling on to them or push them away. The satipatthana sutta lists the things that might arise, and options for being mindful of them. This knowledge is so incredibly powerful that there are still communities that keep it alive via oral tradition through annual chanting of the sutta.

If you are seeking stream entry, the suttas would recommend:
1. Understanding the dharma
2. Being resolved to pursue it
3. Guarding your speech to minimise negativity and reactive tendencies
4. Guarding your conduct to minimise negativity and reactive tendencies
5. Working in a job that is consistent with your positive intentions
6. Developing your skllls in Jhana (first and second Jhana is enough)
7. Being mindful as I described (two or three times a day is enough)
8. Making consistent efforts to do all this

That is it. Originally, noting practices would come a bit later, but due to their effectiveness the modern Burmese style brings them in early. That does take real dedication though. For clarity, noting is 100% definitely a form of mindfulness, not a form of jhana.

Later, there can be complex interplays between jhana, mindfulness, and investigation, including noting the components of a jhana, and so the stream entry instructions would mature into something else. This is not laid out very clearly in the suttas as the audience was mainly those on the road to first or second path. However, it is hinted at the highly summarized and stylised information in the anapansati sutta, and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, either to accompnay your noting practice, or as a warm up, or as the final training for Arhats, the simple act of clearly noticing what is arising three times each day, and then seeing it clearly as impermanent, not self, and a source of dukkha (if bound on to), is phenomenally powerful!!!

Pun intended.

Offered with love 

Malcolm

That makes sense. Ultimately any "thing" could be dualistic I suppose. Reminds me of hearing somewhere that enlightenment was the process of turning from a noun into a verb. I thought that was clever. 

What I meant was "orientation in" (such as: I go for a hike in Yellowstone and have the sense of being oriented there, like having compass), *not* "orientation towards" (as in goal-orientation or focus).

One extra advantage of "orientation" (as in: having compass) is that it clearly does not absolve one from experiencing difficulty, though it contributes to skillfully dealing with them. Sometimes in the secular mindfuless circles people hope that mindfulness turns everything difficult into the bliss of being in the present.

Yeah, that’s how I think of it. Non-duality certainly doesn’t turn everything blissful permanently, but orients you in a way to reality, such that you live IN it skillfully.

Brian Patrick --


Can you please explain this in more detail? I'm not sure I agree, but before I say more, I'd like to understand better what you're saying above. I walk around all day long with a map in my head of where I am, who I am, the local context of the present moment (place names, etc.), who the other people in my surroundings are or might be, and so on. To me, that's what eudoxos meant by "orientation." But it's not a non-dual state.

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This will be interesting

Sure. Non-duality isn’t a “state” as in a state or aspect of some reality that one can “get into” or attain. I simply meant that enlightenment doesn’t create perpetual bliss, which IS a state, or you could say the state of bliss is one possible side effect of enlightenment. If you were generous and poetic you could say bliss was one of an infinite number of fruits in the garden of Eden. Really though, the whole idea of duality being negative and non-duality being positive is a false dichotomy. There is no thing called “enlightenment” (in the same way there is no thing called “wave” on the ocean—there is just water) or any of the rest of the words we use for that concept. We like to talk about these things, communicate them, and understand them—nothing wrong with that—but words which are symbols for concepts, which are ideas ABOUT something are never the thing itself, as it actually is. More skillfully moving through reality is another benefit of what we call enlightenment, but again, the possibilities are infinite. You can look at skillful movement through reality from divine providence, through “manifestation”, all the way to just paying more attention, and making wiser decisions because you do so. Or you could not think of it in any way at all. Whatever framework you like to use as explanation is never IT, including no framework. I might have rambled a bit too much. Oh well.

Also, some food for thought:

For me, nondual glimpses often feel alarming and disturbing — the opposite of mundane orientation. If I'm alone, I can end up saying something like "No!" or "Where am I?!", or doing a primitive squeal. Practicing can have an ambient unsettlingness to it, like being "fed into the cosmic woodchipper." (Edit: quote from Sascha Chapin.) It feels less like learning a terrain and building confidence, and more like being violated at deeper and deeper levels and building a tolerance to that kind of freaky openness.

"fed into the cosmic woodchipper" - love it.

John L, can I ask, what do sankhara mean to you?

Brian, how does viewing the world from a non-dual perspective (orientation, if you will) help a person live more skillfully?

I won't generally concede "orientation" actually. I use the word non-dual interchangeably with enlightenment, as well as the phrase "the kingdom of heaven" and many others. I understand people have parsed out different meanings and concepts for these terms, but I don't find any of those useful. The only way I would is if someone whom I knew to be oriented toward some tradition or other asked me a question.
Then I might use a term that they were comfortable with. Not because it's the "right" term, but because it might make them more comfortable. As for an answer to the question, how does enlightenment contribute to more skillful navigation of reality? My answer would be, when you pay more attention to reality, you see it more clearly. Or maybe when you become enlightened, it's divine providence. Could be that too. 

Brian, you didn't answer my question: how does viewing the world from a non-dual perspective help a person live more skillfully?

Is non-dual a perspective to you? 

Maybe I don't understand your question. Try it another way.

For sure, Malcolm. I know the term has a few meanings, but what resonates most is understanding it as a pointer to how all things are concoctions of mind. Lately, my experience has emphasized how all things are made of awareness.

The past year has brought a relaxation of the sense of “I’m really in this situation, this is really happening,” and I reckon that’ll continue, perhaps to a complete degree. There’s some relationship between (a) transient clumps of dense awareness in the form of greed/hatred/indifference, and (b) the feeling of realness/solidity/heft in time, space, situations, the world, self and other, which I don’t fully understand. Maybe sankhara points to that relationship.

My guess is the relationship is something like “we interpret craving and clinging as self… this intensifies craving/clinging, since we think we can use craving/clinging to control stuff… so we end up with a sense of a solid/real observer-controller… but craving doesn’t just solidify the self, it also solidifies the object of craving … thus imbuing experience with heft, weightiness, realness, drama, pain, because we believe things are ‘really happening to us’, and that we need to act within this ‘really real’ situation… so, in sum, we concoct not only subject but also objects… the answer to the problem is not to end craving, which can’t be done, but rather to slowly relax craving, and to see, through repeat experience, that the remiaining craving is not self… and once craving is attenuated and not-self, you stop believing in the hefty realness of these situations and objects and concoctions… you see them as transparent appearances of mind…” Sorry, that’s probably a mess.

Yes. I've said that multiple times now. You could also call it a view, or a perspective.



Maybe you don't understand what the term "non-dual" means. You seem to think it's synonymous with the word "enlightenment."

Non-duality is the view/perspective that there is an absence of separation, that things are interconnected and lack a separate identity or existing, have no distinctness or permanence; all objects are never static, but are ever-changing.

So, assuming we can agree on that as a working definition of "non-dual", when you say, "viewing the world from a non-dual perspective helps a person live more skillfully," how does it do that?

To answer the question you pose, in and of itself it wouldn't help or hinder anything. But, given the definition I have of the concept of non-duality it does. As I said, to me, non-duality=enlightenment=the kingdom of heaven=Nirvana etc etc.
I'm not talking about a nondual "perspective," and we may disagree about definitions, but almost none of this spiritual, religious, dogmatic (pragmatic or not) Dharma, makes much sense. I can see what people perceive as value in it, and have no problem with agreeing on definitions for the sake of clear or clearer communication, but ultimately none of that is what gets one to THIS. 

not two, not one:

"For clarity, noting is 100% definitely a form of mindfulness"

Out of curiosity, how would you describe the difference between noting (vipassana) and mindfulness?
Is there one?

 is mindfulness 'just' a form of noting or is there some additional context to sati/right mindfulness that distinguishes it from vipassana / the path of seeing?

Re: 'non-dual':

bit off topic perhaps but, oh well.

I may admittedly have been / am misunderstanding this word, not that it's a term I throw around often, because of that. I'm still kind of working it out myself.

Using Chris's definition- which is more or less also how Google defines it:

'Non-duality is the view/perspective that there is an absence of separation, that things are interconnected and lack a separate identity or existing, have no distinctness or permanence; all objects are never static, but are ever-changing.'

or from Google:

"Non-dual is a term for an experience or belief system that reality is not divided into separate parts, but is a single, unified, indivisible whole."


I'm not sure this aligns with my understanding/definition of non-duality, (and I may very well be misinterpreting).  To me, open to interpretation, but there is still a subtle duality implicit here- if things things are interconnected and truly lacking of separateness, that implies a 'oneness'. If there is 'oneness' it implies 'otherness' -- subject/object. How can there be 'oneness' without 'none-ness'?

what is more non-dual in my mind is  a mental state wherein both the separateness, and the non-separateness, or maybe "neither" separateness nor non-separateness is grokked at the same time. So I guess 8th jhana/ neither-nor territory or beyond? Can be a very trippy state the few 'glimpses' I've had, but not really a sense of 'oneness' or 'universality' there that I can recall,
​​​​​​​ there was however a very experiential quality to it- as in, this is not just a view, not just a perspective, it actually IS. 

Oh sure this is a matter of definition I guess. Depends whether you see this next (mindfulness) practice as equivalent to vipassana. 

'And further, monks, as if a monk sees a body dead one, two, or three days; swollen, blue and festering, thrown in the charnel ground, he then applies this perception to his own body thus: "Verily, also my own body is of the same nature; such it will become and will not escape it." '

Personally, I prefer to see mindfulness as a superset of vipassana as it is practiced today, as I don't think many modern noting practitioners would regard imaging their body dead, swollen, and festering as part of their regime.  Memento Mori!   :-)

Thanks John L, so what do you think causes the recoiling from non-dual experiences?  :-)

So you are saying it is not two, and yet not one?  

John, you wrote that for you " nondual glimpses often feel alarming and disturbing — the opposite of mundane orientation" and that they are "unsettling".

If I understand what you mean, I'd say it's the same with me. Nondual moments have a tendency of breaking the boundaries of safe and known forms of perception, identity and so on. Also they tend to break the habitual boundary of states of consciousness, like sleep-dream-wakefulness, imagining-perceiving... It may be tempting, it may be frightening, blissful, both at the same time, it may become "new normal" of sorts, it may make one angry (like any violation of personal space should), it may feel dull ("not again"), and it will be different than expected...? So the usefulness of nondual states is not a given? But they may help to build capacity for useful relation (well "relation" that's not nondual, is it?) with many things / selves / all. (And perhaps you meant something else, but here's what it brought up in me.)

Great discussion overall, with many angles, thanks for all. And Malcolm, your guide for wannabe stream entereres is one of the most clear expositions of basic practice I remember coming across.

" Sorry, that’s probably a mess."
For me, it wasn't a mess. It was one possible unravelling in language of unwholesome relation between an imagined self and imagined object.  And that gives space to the possiblity of encountering these selves and objects and relations with more openess, asking, what it really is, who really is here with what for what and how... [I thought I would rarely write here anything, but the object of DhO unravelled, and here I'm flooding the thread.]

Weeeell ... I would say the dharma makes perfect sense.  It just can't be expressed in normal linguistic discourse because the information content of language is too low.  This is not unusual.  Advanced mathematics is the same right?  So to get it you have to learn with something other than elaborated cognition.  And you have to practice enough to start to get the whole system, and the network it operates within.  No unlike driving a car, actually.  But maybe taking four years rather than 20 hours to learn.

And what you seem to be pointing to is an expansive absorption the sensory world with diminished of self.  This comes in lots of flavours, with lots of degrees of permanence. And there is more beyond that. And before it. For one who fully understands the dharma, it is possible to explain what this state is and is not, what makes it enduring or temporary.  But whether somebody can grok that depends on their own frame of reference and knowledge of the dharma. So teachers often resort to poetry, metaphor, and pointing out - because it has higher information content.

​​​​​​​So I might just ask you to ask yourself, does this expansive state ever vary?  Can you investigate what makes it vary?  Can you learn to see the system that produces it?  These would be interesting questions to answer! :-)

Thanks Kettu - I stole it from uncle Sid!  (aka Siddharta, Shakyamani, Tathagata, the Buddha).  Well, maybe adapted it a little to modern contexts. 

We forget too easily to add mindfulness throughout the day. Sure also do it through formal practice, but seeing the three characteristics in things that arise in daily life is a superpower. It will have rapid and transformative effects if done consistently. Three times a day every day for a year, and your money back if don't get stream entry.

Hmm... I'm sort of hearing you say that the intellect isn't helpful in the pursuit of enlightenment(?) That can be an easy position to take and there are certainly traditions that emphasize that (zen comes to mind in particular)... but all of this dharma stuff actually does make sense for sure.  I agree that words or intellect on their own will just make someone a scholar of spirituality, but it is clear what the words point to. There's a saying "The priests might argue, but the monks agree".

The key thing is having a consistent, daily, non-heroic meditation practice and ideally periodic retreats... if this stuff is of interest. Teachers or mentors or spiritual friends help a lot too.

I only say that as someone who spent his twenties and thirties trying to figure this all out. In my defense, there wasn't good quality information out there and man-oh-man were there a lot of culty groups! My intellect finally reached a level of critical mass after reading MCTB in 2007, it put all the pieces together. And then I really started sitting and making time for retreats.

Brian, so then what gets us to THIS?
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I see what you did there!

For me when the mechanism itself sees completely how it itself works, it’s done. Doesn’t matter what you call it. Once the mechanism, the whole entire system of thoughts, sensations, emotions, all of it, sees what it itself is doing, it stops doing that. You can even say it stops “doing.” You can say it a hundred different ways, but eventually they are all the same thing. Defining terms, following systems, learning methods, practicing, all of that is seen through. The thing doing the practice, the learning, the becoming, the advancing, the attainments, are all the self mechanism, slowly or quickly, chipping away at itself, and for most of the process unaware of the reality of what it is actually doing. Not because it hasn’t read the suttas, or studied spirituality, or whatever, but because it cannot truly understand them other than intellectually, and at its core, enlightenment isn’t intellectual. At various points it sees parts of what is always there, and yeah that can be “trippy” as JW said. It’s trippy because we are unaccustomed to it, and when we are unaccustomed to or surprised by something it creates a reaction. The reaction is what feels trippy. What the self mechanism eventually realizes, in some form or other, is that it was never a “thing” at all. It sees this and it sees that it itself doesn’t exist and never did. In the same way a wave (if it were conscious) would eventually realize it was never actually a wave, but a part of the ocean. You are still the same person, with the same name, who lives in the same place, and probably has the same job they go to the same amount of time. You can change any of these things, but you always could have. To be honest, there is nothing wrong with duality itself, it’s just the beliefs that duality brings when you are identified as a separate self that’s the issue. Like the turtles metaphor, it’s beliefs all the way down. The best way to free yourself is the way you are freeing yourself right now. We are all doing that in some way. That doesn’t mean that practice isn’t important or valuable, it is. All the methods that people have devised to enable a self structure to see itself in action are and can be important. The intellect is important, because a persons individual intellect is intimately entwined with the self structure, but for me, specific intellectual information is only valuable when it becomes so to the individual. I’m also not saying that it’s unimportant to have people like Daniel Ingram document the process as it unfolded, and end up with the book he wrote. I would guess that if writing had been available to the Buddha he would have done the same thing. You can see this effort as much a compassionate gift to those that come after, as well as an intellectual working-through of Daniel’s own enlightenment process as it happened. I think the greatest factor in the enlightenment process is individual readiness.From there a person needs fuel in the form of desire and curiosity which can come from and look like many different things. The “good news” is everywhere, all around you. It can come from any system or no system at all. 

When the self-structure sees that it is itself the problem—I mean truly sees this as a lived experience—it's done. This is going on with everyone all the time. It's what's going on here and everywhere. Your path may be easy and joyful, or horrifically brutal, or somewhere in between. It may involve a system or no system. It may have what feel like detours, or false starts, or setbacks, or things that impede your progress, but none of that is actually happening. 

I think intellect is important in that the individual self structure is intimately intertwined with it. I think your path is your path. 

Could you say more? I mean, this is obviously a truism, but what are you trying to say?

What do you mean by "none of this is actually happening?"

Brian, where our definitions may differ on 'non-dual' vs. 'enlightenment' - I guess to me 'non-dual' is more an aspect of reality, i.e. the way things are, whereas 'enlightenment', if I had to define it, is a knowledge into or knowledge of, which I would actually describe as 'intellectual' in the sense that knowing is precisely what the intellect is/does - not to say it's "just" intellectual, it is also experential.  That knowledge into includes, but is not limited to, the non-dual nature of reality.

Re: trippiness, the first time I got into such a state, yeah it was trippy, but subsequent times, less so, and later times it's been actually more the 'thisness' and obviousness that was more apparent than the non-duality aspect. 

I feel an urge to say this:

Non-dual and dual are ways we see things, not how things are. We place labels on what we perceive, not the other way around. Things you have observed during the life of your meditation practice tell you this, right? With enough practice, you can actually decide which lens to use to view your environment and the things in it.

Sure...
​​​​​​​I look at it as part of the paradoxical nature of this whole process. I heard someone somewhere say part of enlightenment is embracing the paradox, or being okay with the paradox, such that it’s not a problem. So, let’s use your experience as the example (in as much of I know about it.) You studied spiritual stuff and learned a bunch of intellectual knowledge, presumably learned to meditate, etc etc. you were at least curious. Then Daniels book came along and it connected a whole bunch of dots, which prompted you (gave you the fuel) to start a consistent practice which you attribute to getting you where you are now. I mean, that may be over simplifying, or I may have some of it wrong, but generally that’s what I understand you saying. In that example Shargrol then believes that the reason he advanced in spirituality is because he did A, B, and C. Meditated consistently, went to retreats, etc etc, and that is true, but that was Shargrol’s path. It was always going to happen that way. the specifics of the path aren’t really objectively true for everyone everywhere. The truths he discovered are just the truths, and became available to him, in the only way they could have to him individually. Yes, they are truisms, and they are universally true in and of themselves, but the means by which any particular individual will get to enlightenment may vary greatly—even as the truth at the end is the same truth. Different traditions, means, and methods, ending at the same place. Always going to happen the way they happened, but not effectively deterministic because any individual cannot not see what will happen in the future. Or I should say not predictively deterministic. Maybe there is a universal entity somewhere who predetermined everything, who knows, but that’s not the important question. Different individual paths lead individuals through drastically different circumstances, and even the things perceived as stalling, roadblocks, stumbling blocks, or things seen to be helpful or unhelpful are part of that individual path. It had to happen that way, because it did. That idea seems to imply there is some kind of creative energy at work, and that may be true, but whether or not you believe that, the lived experience of it is unmistakeable, paradox or not. 

I take this to mean that non-duality, and duality both arise from "how things are" and with that, I agree. The degree to which one can practice using them as lenses to look through doesn't land with me. Could just be me, or I may be misunderstanding your point. We DO use both as lenses. I see that. 

You are not speeding it up or slowing it down, your path is unfolding exactly the only way it could. 

Yeah, that’s the spot. For me there was a brief period where there was “no-self.” Or as I looked back there was nothing. In the seeing only the seeing, in the hearing, only the hearing, etc etc, but there was still something that was noticing this. What was it that was noticing? It wanted something, what did it want? It was so extremely subtle, but it still wanted something. What did it want? It wanted: to know. It wanted: the answer. The realization came in a dream. I wrote about it in my spontaneous awakenings thread, but I haven’t been back to reread it since. Something about the cosmic joke. lol.

Tough… I think the feeling of separation makes us feel like we can protect ourselves, even though separation is also inherently insecure. It puts "me" here and "the world" over there, so I have some distance from the world, and I can act independently of it. The non-dual glimpse is like a momentary lapse in our protective efforts, which is really scary. It's also a momentary death of the "me" that's over here — and so we recoil from that taste of annihilation. 

Early in third path, I had a clean non-dual glimpse that lasted for a moment. I was sliding on my socks during a retreat. I was awed by just how minimal and eternal that moment felt. There was barely perception; really, there was no thing. In retrospect, it felt so incredibly awesome, but in the moment, it wasn't much at all. As the glimpse ended, I saw all my self-protective tensions reassemble. I felt solemn and heartbroken, because I saw firsthand just how far I have to go, and just how much I'll need to relax. 

To be a little funny: it reminds me of when Paulie saw the Virgin Mary, just without a change in sights or sounds.

Well, true, in the sense that all what we have are our senses, limited as they are.  So are you saying that 'the way things are' is not something that is/can be observed and/or described?
 
Or, how would you describe 'the way things are' and how is that description different than 'non-dual'?  
 

Hmm... I'm hearing a lot of general statements here that seem to negate the value of maps, methods, consistent practice, and sequential progress. I'll respectfully bow out here. Thanks for your reply.

The insight that the unfolding is happening in the only way it could took the “burden” of finding the right path, technique, system, practice, and strategy away. Before that I was “doing” it, and therefore was “responsible” for it, and the effects of my choices (or non-choices.) This was just another cage. That was (for me) when the seeking energy diminished greatly. I wasn’t “doing” it, which gave a freedom, or cleared up space, to look at who or what had thought they were doing it. It broadened mindfullness because “I” was no longer the central character taking up space, or blocking the view. Simultaneously I started to see all the ways in which whatever WAS doing this, was doing it. It felt a bit more woo-woo for a while, but that led to more insights about THAT feeling, and eventually the woo-woo feeling faded into not knowing things as I had felt I had known them before. 

I get that. I know that maps,  consistent practice and sequential progress are the hallmarks of this forum, and I would still tell people that's the way to go if asked. 

Not that Chris needs me to jump in ... but duality and non-duality is still a <dualistic> construct of the human mind. If you get completely beyond the clinging, the concept eventually doesn't apply. It's like saying is the ocean dual or non-dual. It is neither. It just is. Sure it can be described in detailed terms, and causes and conditions outlined for currents, ecosystems, weather, but these depend on particular transitory frames of reference.  Similarly, the ocean of our perceptual reality just is. We apply frames of reference to understand and organise it, but these do not represent a fundamentally true structure, just an impermanent perspective. There is a very pleasant feeling associated with see the world as it actually is - impermanent, not-self, and a source of unsatisfactoriness if clung to (including clinging to non-dual perspectives!!), but it takes a lot of work to get all the way there.  And the pleasant feeling isn't actually the point - the point is the cessation of unsatisfatoriness.  Still, non-duality is very wonderful and worthwhile and important along the way. It's just not the underlying truth of anything.

Yeah, I get that, and I don’t disagree.  It’s easy to fall into a semantics rabbit hole with this one but I’ll do my best not to.  
What I’m getting at has to do with the verbiage “way of seeing things” and “non-dual”.

To me, a “way of seeing things” is an observation, or perhaps a perspective - a combination of sensations and their contact, and the mental processing (filtering, understanding, knowing) that occurs in response to those sensations.  You may have the experience of an arhat, where there is no craving or clinging associated with those sensations, an ‘unfiltered’ experience, you might say.  That is still a “way of seeing things”.  It might be 'right view' - it's still a view.

When you say perceptual reality “just is”, or you say the world is impermanent, not-self, and a source of unsatisfactoriness - these are also “ways of seeing things”.

Secondly, around the term “non-dual”- there have been a few definitions thrown around here, and I’m not sure my definition is the same one that you and Chris are using.  To me the Google definition of ‘non-dual’ is very surface level and inaccurate.  To me ‘non-dual’ explicitly points to something that is by definition *not* dualistic.  Of course, language, and the mind itself, is dualistic in nature - so any words we use to attempt to describe something that is explicitly *not* that will ultimately fail.  
​​​​​​​
So, rather than burrow further down the rabbit hole- how would you describe something that is not dualistic, if not by using the word “non-dual”?  I'm not sure that describing reality as impermanent and not-self is that much different than describing it as non-dual, although perhaps there are different emphases there.

When you say 'the point is the cessation of unsatisfatoriness' - well, in large part it's the fundamental misunderstanding that results from the subject/object split, the dualistic self-grasping, that causes the unsatisfactoriness, is it not?  

Let me pop me some pop-corn and open a can of ice-cold lager!  

Mindfulness is always too late! Just give it a rest! Cheers! 

JW --

 
If by "the way things are" you mean something other than what I perceive, then I can't do that. No one can because, as you said, we don't have anything but gthat which our senses and mind produce. Otherwise, I'd say this existence is an almost magical parade of experiences. Always changing, a source of delight, sadness, boredom, anger, enchantment, and love. "Being human" is a nice shorthand way to label it.
​​​​​​​


That's the thing - it's impossible to escape our limitations. To describe something that can't be seen, felt, smelled, heard, tasted, or imagined may be what the mind desires, but it's the ultimate frustration. I say relax into the uncertainty and chaos. As Kenneth Folk told me once, "Get used to this. There's no place to land."

Save me some of that Papa Che!

Great questions J W.  Let me say first I prefer not to make any claims to attaintments, except to be human. In fact I have been trying hard to get rid of all attainments  

Yes, it is still a view, and you can't exist without views. The trick is not being bound to any of those views, so you can give them up at the drop of ar hat, rather than incorporating them into your sense of something stable and enduring. It's turtles all the way down!  So the ignorance at the base of suffering is not the ignorance of the non-dualistic structure of reality (which is just a view), but rather the belief in a seperate enduring self or separate enduring perceptual reality, the ignorance that suffering arises because we grasp after things that are simply changeable constructs of our own mind, so we can never actually posses them - the mere act of grasping is self defeating.  Once you see clearly how your perceptual reality, sense of self, and reactive tendencies are constructed, you can give up the unskilfull aspects of the whole process that are the root cause of the pervading sense of unsatisfactoriness.  Having taken the cure, you can just allow yourself to be human, with joy, rather than with suffering.

So to me non-dualism is the cessation of divided knowing or vinnana, not the cessation of avija (ignorance). The later stages of the path involve the unravelling of the whole chain of dependent originiation, with practices that are antidotes to every stage of that process.  For example, emptiness contradicts name and form, nondualism contradicts divided knowing, rigpa is the result of unwinding aspects of the default processing of the sensory cortices. To some extent this is progressive, in that you normally have to achieve unwinding of some things to enable progress on other things. But you can also just let go progressively, as an alternative practice.  Or dwell in deepening love and faith. The trick is making it stick.  Permanently unwinding ignorance at a truly felt, deep, neurobiological level is hardest of all. And many people get stuck with fetters of clinging to somatic blissful states, or expansive godlike states, or conceit in their attainments, or restlessness. These are the palace gaurd of ignorance, and the letting go of these is hardest of all, but necessary to complete the path.  After that, you can just be human again, which is the best state. But human without the mosquitos of reactive tendencies constantly biting at you, or the trauma from biology and history subtly poisoning the joy of simple existence.

With love

Malcolm

 Thank you Malcolm- this is fun!  FYI, I did not mean to imply attainment of any individual here, I was simply using the experience of an arhat as a hypothetical to demonstrate how that is still a view.

Here I go splitting hairs again
Anything can be reified, "non-dual" included.  But if something is truly non-dual, how could one be bound to it or unbound from it?  In my mind, if you're attached to it, then there's an object, and there is a subject -  By the same logic, if you free from something, you are on some level separated from it, again, subject/object.  That's why up to this point, I've thought of it more in terms of neither/nor, 'just is'='non-dual'.  Which you seem to be defining as something different, and I think your definition makes sense.

(EDIT: to answer my own question - I think using the below definition, one can still be bound below the level of consciousness -- IF that's the definition we're going with)

"non-dualism is the cessation of divided knowing or vinnana, not the cessation of avija (ignorance)"

I think I can get on board with this definition.  So with 'non-dual' you're putting the emphases on the non-duality on the level of consciousness  - ( I guess that's how it's defined in the Buddhist texts? )   
With 'emptiness' that's talking about (what I think could be described as) a sort of non-duality at the material level.  
Below the level of consciousness is where words really fail.  But the concept avijja ("not-seeing") I would also describe as dualistic in the sense that it heavily depends on the concept of self and its inherent dualistic nature. So, there's an argument there (I won't make it).

​​​​​​​If I’m understanding correctly, the perspective that comes from the seeing through of the first 1 (or 2?) links - that’s ‘just is’.  The ultimate goal, if you will.  There’s an emphasis here on the collapsing of the most subtle, sub-conscious processes, i.e. ‘cessation event’.  That event (if you can call it that) has a distinct flavor or leading up to it, as does the ‘result’ of that event, if you will.  The flavor I associate here is the knowingness, obviousness, self-evidence that I associate with what I call ‘thisness’ which I think is what you are calling “just is-ness”.  There is indeed an emphasis here that I think is distinct from ‘non-dual’, in my mind at least.  Admittedly, I may have been conflating 'non-dual awareness/consciousness' with this knowingness flavor, as in my experience both were present at the same time.

Right, 'the way things are' as in, not something other than what you perceive.  I like your description!  And, I can see how that's different from "non-dual".

Wow, this is a really interesting take on dependent origination. Is it original? If I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying that the first four links of dependent origination serve as a map for late-stage practice, when taken in reverse order.

Practice sequentially focuses on…

1. Nāma-rūpa (Name-and-Form) – Culminates in / addressed by emptiness
2. Viññāṇa (Divided Consciousness) – Culminates in / addressed by nondualism
3. Saṅkhāra (Mental Concoctions) – Culminates in / addressed by rigpa
4. Avijjā (Ignorance) — Culminates in / addressed by being human without clinging

Question: what does rigpa mean here, as distinct from nondualism or non-clinging? 

Also interested in this! I read his explanation of rigpa a bit differently.

"Wow, this is a really interesting take on dependent origination. Is it original? If I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying that the first four links of dependent origination serve as a map for late-stage practice, when taken in reverse order.

Practice sequentially focuses on…

1. Nāma-rūpa (Name-and-Form) – Culminates in / addressed by emptiness
2. Viññāṇa (Divided Consciousness) – Culminates in / addressed by nondualism
3. Saṅkhāra (Mental Concoctions) – Culminates in / addressed by rigpa
4. Avijjā (Ignorance) — Culminates in / addressed by being human without clinging

Question: what does rigpa mean here, as distinct from nondualism or non-clinging?"

Nothing is original in the dharma, but this is my interpretation (or view ) developed through study and practice. And yes your interpretation is almost correct, with minor caveats of inevitable complications and omissions in simplistic maps, and of things being not quite linear but interdependent, and of one of your components (Sankhara - Rigpa) being a misinterpretation of my view.  So here we go ...
 
1. Avijjā - The delusional interpretation of perceptual data as representing separate and enduring things. Aim to give this up.

2. Saṅkhāra - The volitional tendencies that arise from habitual patterns of bodily action, thought and perception (mental activity, and also perceptual formations). So sankhara occur at multiple levels - including perceptual processing, subconscious reaction, and conscious volition. All of these reinforce ignorance by pulling your strings, so you need the calming of these autonomic processes to gain control of dependent origination and dive deeper into the process. This means work on morality, cessation of grasping, but also seeing clearly how the perceptual processes operate to construct the perceptual frames or formations  presented to the mind. Perceptual sankharas are a bit different to volitional sankharas as they operate at such a deep level of pre-processing we hardly even know they exist. For a demonstration, do the finger blind spot test to see how your visual field is in part hallucinated (or at least lazily updated). This kind of construction-according-to-prior expectations (ie. operation of perceptual Saṅkhāra) goes on in all sense bases, and could be regarded as a form of Active Inference if you are into that. Many advanced practitioners report upgrades to visual colour and contrast as they progress through the dharma (but not the lens of the eye, unfortunately). Fire kasina is a useful practice for seeing perceptual sankhara construct our 'reality'.

3. Salayatana - Consciousness of perceptual data, including the six sense bases and six consciousnesses. This is obviously closely interdependent with Saṅkhāra at both the level of the construction of formations (perceptual frames) and in the reaction to those formations. My view of Rigpa is that it is principally an absorption in Salaytana, but with emptiness and nonduality as pre-requisites. This is only possible after a long period of purification (ie. unwinding other aspects of dependent origination including Saṅkhāra). So Rigpa is dwelling in the ground of being (ie. the senses) while  emptiness and non-duality at the same time. Probably the 'highest' preliminary attainment, if you can stabilise it (or maybe that is Nirodha Sampatti?). We can all get glimpses though, at any stage of progress - a damp yet pleasant night, as you walk alone in solitude, water trickles in the stream, lights shine through the trees, and BOOM! you are in some otherwordly place of absolute wonder.  Rigpa. For a moment. A glimpse. A demonstration of possibility. Imagine stabilising that dwelling place for a month.  

4. Nāma-rūpa - Yes, emptiness. 'There are no elephants here, Anada. No chariots. And no people either'. See the Heart sutta or the Bahiya sutta for precise descriptions. This is the dropping (cessation) of the perceptual process that leads to overlay of concepts (name) on perceptual frames (form). What a relief to drop all that unnecessary processing!  I don't need to conceptualise everything with a name. It just is, and the conceptualisation is arbitrary and I am in control of whether to apply it.  Feels really good to release yourself from conceptual slavery.

5. Viññāṇa - Yes, nonduality. The cessation of biographical separation. Tough to obtain. Practice moving your consciousness around your body, around your environment. Practice moving your consciousness into other objects. Feel the complete lack of separation from something else. See glimpses of partial non-separation 'hey, that next room is part of me' ... 'hey, my hand is no different to the cat, or the fridge'.  Then get the full absorption. Mind blowing.  Maybe you get an out of body experience? That may be the mind defending itself from nonduality by processing relocated sensory data in a way that maintains the illusion of separateness.

A lot of the practices at this point are intertwined. So deep mindfulness takes the gas out of the creation and reinforcement of sankhara, allowing them to unwind, thereby granting access to other experiences. You can move your consciousness around your body (e.g. sore bum from sitting v concentrated forehead v warm hands) to start to free things up. Then move your consciousness it into the senses - into the plane as it lands, into the music you hear, into the smell of freshly baked bread  - is it in the nose? In the bread itself? In the scent particles?  In the mind?  Shift your cognizing of the smell back and forth between these places. Shift your consciousness into other objects (fireworks, party lights, the wind). Be the wind (or be the hat for fans of Groundhog Day). Release the sense of separation by releasing the centre. You may sense other entities at this stage, glimpses of non-separation. 'Hey, if there is a consciousness in the wardrobe, it can't be a person because nobody is there, it certainly cant be me, so it must be a ghost!'  But of course it is you. It is all you. Even this is you. 

You need at times to dwell very deeply in emptiness, non-duality, rigpa, to burn in new types of neural processing. To squeeze the honey out of it. To enable abandonment of the default mode that used to operate on you. But eventually all of these wonderous things should become less interesting, and you can move on. If they don't become less interesting, you are feeding them with some subtle grasping, storing up trouble, being fettered from further progress. They are stages, not destinations. But don't go on too soon!  Squeeze the honey out of it first. Let the wonder, absorption, and compulsion to dwell in these spaces fade naturally.  Then they will still be there whenever you want, they just won't be a demanding absorption that distracts you from the next stage.

There is more, but that is maybe enough for now. Or perhaps, I can say, next comes dispassion, cessation of  fabrications, and a very very deep letting go.

But you can't do any of this without completing preliminary practices. You must first unwind the grossest sankhara, build your concentration, and gain control over your nervous system. Hence, it is a progressive practice.  



Malcolm

{Edit: Cleaned up some typos. And I should probably also mention the natual mind - the arising of sensory data without defilment, related to Rigpa but only one half of it, that base of Rigpa without the absorption in and subtle reflection of it. It's not really an attainment so much as a non-attainment, a non-absorption. The release of all defilements that had operated on the sensory processes, leaving the world completely naked and immediately present. Just. Right. There. The sign that your mind is finally ready for the big (little) reset. The reason you must go beyond Rigpa. Hopefully Shargrol will clean up any misconceptions I may still retain on this stuff :-) }

"Below the level of consciousness is where words really fail.  But the concept avijja ("not-seeing") I would also describe as dualistic in the sense that it heavily depends on the concept of self and its inherent dualistic nature. So, there's an argument there (I won't make it)."

I know what you are saying JW, but I would characterise this apparent construction as an artefact of language. Language struggles due to its low information density. If you instead think without language, this artificial contradiction doesn't arise.  So.  Can you think without language?  All the other mammals can!

Actually, I sometimes wonder if all dukkha is a side effect of language, as there is an inherent permanence, concretisation and separation built into sentence construction. Yet these things do not reflect what we know about the world, either for the sensory data in which we dwell, or for the scientific inference we have been able to make. And by the way, the scientific inferences about the structure of the world are COMPLETELY different from what we delusionally perceive.  :-) 

"Can you think without language?"
Such a question is music to my ears!

Thanks again for your responses Malcolm. I really like the precision of your nondual def. Lots of gold here in this thread,

hey, we should start a Wiki or something ;)

Awesome. Thank you, Malcolm. 

He no worries, glad it is interesting.  Just for a final point of clarity, none of this means you don't have to do other practices, like metta, vipassana, more generic mindfulness, and contemplation of the five aggregates of clinging. Metta not only unwinds sankhara, but also helps the mind learn to be expansive and centreless. And you have to vipassinize the shit out of reality, and deconstruct abstract concepts such as objects, time, motion, colour, pain, pleasure and so on. Not all of them, just enough of them that dependent origination more or less gives up. But this is advanced so not suitable for beginners, due to the risk of freaking out (and the likelihood they simply don't have the skills).  It is quite hard to ask yourself how your mind assembles perceptual data, concepts, and reactions to make contact with the idea of a flying bird, or an approaching siren. But it is all part of the programme.

If you do this and do freak out, well recognise it is just one part of your mind resisting what another part already knows. Be kind to yourself. Accept yourself.  Forgive yourself. Be patient with yourself.  Cultivate wonder instead of resistance.  It's like you have a vintage jeep, and disassemble it and spread the parts over the floor and then go 'Holy shit what happened to my jeep? I want my jeep back!'.  Well, you just broke it down for cleaning.  So now clean it, and put it back together again the way you want it, and enjoy the improved handling and the purr of the motor.  Maybe decorate it too with a few harmless siddhis or two-day cessations of consciousness. And enjoy the total fading and cessation of the reactive fabrications that used to constantly pull your strings. 

As a companion to your post, I've created a chart of the map. Sorry in advance for the inevitable misrepresentations; it includes a couple guesses, and I'm a little sleepy. Downloadable here.



Edit: Updated with Malcolm's suggestions

Malcolm, yes, of course your post was another call on the broken phone of a certain tradition, but something in your language gets through to me, also in other posts: complex stuff gets clarifyingly interconnected. The way you stress mindful moments outside formal practice is something I've needed to try for years, so for that reason also I was an open reader.

Thanks John L. I'm humbled by your interest and engagement. :-). I would just suggest instead of "knowing the sense doors separate from the sense doors" something like "Perception of a boundary between the organism and the environment".  You could say something like self and other instead, but there is a very basic biological mechanism at play here (as you refer to in your attainment description), as well modern psychology's description of biographical overlays on episodic memory, so my suggestion is fractionally more generalisable.

If you wanted to be really prissy, you could also modify the top right corner to read "The end of separate and enduring things. Attainments are  now recognised as views."  And to be even more prissy, maybe "Cognizing of perceptual data" rather than "Consciousness of perceptual data" as they are very slightly different things.  :-)

As an aside, once you reach the end, the good things feel REALLY good. :-) No defilments dragging down the experience, similar to the natural mind but far more noticeable.  And along the path you can experience extraordinary beauty in things like fear and disgust when the mind occasionally presents them without any of the defilments of aversion. They are extraordinary when seen in their true purity. 

Malcolm

Amen!