It was so great to meet everyone and so great to talk about the human experience, and so great to be in NY. I'm glad I was able to join.

As I left the restaurant and walked to the subway, my mind was racing and my body was tense with anxiety. I stood on the subway platform and started to notice the anxiety and relax the tensions in my body.

I didn't speak much when during the dharma conversation.

It is so difficult for me to talk about these things these days. It has been for a long time. I guess that's why I haven't posted anything on these forums for so long either.

I try to speak or write or think of something to say about this stuff, and the thoughts just don't. They just don't. And, that's sorta how it goes.

Last night, Jesse asked about how to get out of the dark night, and answers started flying from the more experienced meditators at the table. I felt so excited, so intrigued and so desirous. It sounded so tempting, so good... the way it so often does. The golden egg... "stream entry".... oh like a shining beacon of glory. I don't even know if I need to get out of the dark night, or if this even applies to me... but I want it, whatever it is. They talk more, and then I'm convinced that I must have passed stream entry long ago without knowing it. I can totally relate to the feeling of cycling constantly through fractal like variations of all the nyanas (though never with any "fruitions" and rarely with any peaks/climaxes of any kind.) They talk more and I'm convinced again that I must not have passed stream entry.

I think about it more, and I know with certainty that I suffer. I suffer a lot, and fairly regularly. I also quite often feel great happiness, joy, peace, equanimity, love, freedom, relaxation, and occasionally some kinds of bliss as well. And, then I suffer again, with such great agony and torment.

When I suffer, I watch. That's my practice. I observe the experience, the sensate experience with calm abiding presence. If possible, I try to relax and still my body. Waves move through me like contractions of the tensing psyche. Things change. They always do. Sometimes I watch the suffering itself and just observe it from moment to moment to moment (perhaps a few times per second) and watch it ebb and flow. I watch it disappear and reappear. Say what you want about suffering, it is always so dynamic, so shifting, so changing, so unpredictable. It is hard to get too worked up about something which isn't even going to be the same one second later.

I got emotional when my old friend and housemate entered the conversation. It is still triggering different emotions inside me. I wanted so badly to get this golden egg... "stream entry"... and I worked so hard to get instruction from Kenneth, and followed his instructions with so much rigor, so much diligence, so much hard work... to the point of utter agony and exhaustion. Days and days of agony and exhaustion striving to implement the instructions from Kenneth exactly as I had been told. And I didn't get this magical stream entry. I got told to find another teacher. lol. Yet, my friend, with all his good fortune in life, finds Kenneth, brings him to our hometown, and gets the golden egg.

I left the dharma meetup last night wanting so much to continue with my practice. With great desire, I can't help thinking that if I knew what it would take to get stream entry, I would do that very thing and conquer the beast myself. Right now, I continue to practice with no certainty that it would ever get me stream entry (or maybe if I have already done it, which would be a good laugh.) Instead, I keep practicing because my mind is like a caveman... simple words: "meditate = good." I don't understand it or know why it is good. I just have done it enough to know that I should keep doing it.

I didn't learn much practical from the discussion to add to my practice. The tips for how to get stream entry were part and parcel of the instructions already on my palate. My practice sounds much like what was being described throughout the evening. Watch sensations arise and pass. Watch with clarity and discernment, with great detail and inclusiveness, watch the self arise and pass as mere sensations. Leave no bit out, and watch the watching too. Observe, allow, let go, relax, repeat.

Momentum was mentioned, but my thoughts break again. "I want this magical thing called momentum. Yes... momentum is the secret... if only i could get this elusive momentum thing." I go on long retreats - my mind gets very quiet, very still, very subtle and refined. My thoughts turn to the dharma and become filled with interest in the three characteristics, yet what is this elusive magic secret they call "momentum?"

So, now I have written some thoughts. I look and it seems funny. Thoughts doing their thing. I notice the self, the ego, the projecting of my being into reality. An endlessly striving self. So insistent, so quick, so mechanical.

I want to tear it all apart. Tear it all down. I feel violated by the illness of my brain. And happy.... at peace.

It's so weird. Am I weird? Surely, I must be weird.

Thanks for the meetup everyone. Perhaps I will be inspired to post here more again.

- Daniel J.

There are things I like a lot about the attainment-based approach. I like the openness and lack of pretense. I like the "can do" attitude. It's all very motivating, and until you become a very mature meditator, motivation can be very impermanent.

But occasionally (maybe often) folks really suffer because of it. Even the ones who do manage to "get stream-entry" become bewildered or depressed, not sure why their experiences don't match the descriptions given by other people, wondering why they're still suffering when they're supposed to be enlightened.

And then you have folks who get so discouraged, because they hang out in Equanimity forever, and for whatever reason they just can't "get it".

It's interesting ... I was talking with Dan Harris on the train after our dinner. He knows the author Sam Harris (no relation), and so I was asking him how serious Sam is about meditation, and Dan said "very", that he's probably achieved Mahasi fruition, but that he doesn't think the maps really match his experience.

It's an alternative way of looking at it, Daniel. Maybe the problem isn't that you haven't "gotten stream-entry". Maybe the issue is that these maps aren't perfect, and they don't describe everyone's experience. There are plenty of things in my own experience that haven't matched up, and there have been lots of times I tried to force my experience into a mold, just so I could say I was somewhere on the map. It's not really harmful to do that, but it accomplishes nothing.

Also, I'm a little concerned that a teacher would tell you to find another teacher just because your experience isn't managing to fit into a certain mold. There's so much more to this practice and to the terrain of life and experience than was written by Mahasi Sayadaw (awesome as he was). Maybe the point isn't to break your head open trying to "get stream entry" but instead to change the subject so that the practice is aimed more squarely at what it's meant to do: conquer suffering. I understand the frustration, but a good teacher should also be able to help bring you to a place that's more productive and not so singularly focused on something which in some respects is arbitrary anyway.

Anyway, I'm genuinely sorry to hear you've gone through this much headache over this. Rest assured that everyone here has gone through something similar, that suffering doesn't just magically disappear because you get a "blip" in your experience.

If you'd like to Skype some time, send me a PM. We can practice together a bit. I will make absolutely no attempt to guide you toward stream-entry. :-) But I'd be happy to try to help you develop a better relationship with it all, which is what seems like it might be missing here.

My experience with the technique here is that the mind and body, cause and effect, three characteristics, A&P, dissolution, fear, misery, disgust, desire or deliverance, reobservation, and equanimity stages were painfully obvious whenever I sat down to meditate for any significant length of time (in any style, not just noting). If the stages have never presented in a way that is obvious to you, no matter how much or how long you meditate, then you must approach the practice as if the stages did not exist, as they do not exist for you. There are plenty of traditions that practice as if the stages did not exist, and many will claim they do not exist for them yet they still claim moments of "kensho" or "satori" or whatnot, why not go sit with them instead?

However, you state:



Can you be more specific? Which of the above listed stages are obvious to you (if any) and which are not? What did they say that made you change your mind that you didn't pass stream-entry? Or is the problem more that the stages are obvious, but you can't seem to meditate past certain ones?



You seem to carry a sort of unhealthy bitterness toward the practitioners who had the stages present obviously and thus were able to get stream-entry (and above) from the obviousness of their presentation. Perhaps you should stop hanging out with these people and instead meditate with people who don't give a rats ass about the maps and the stages? Meditating with map-oriented people and then communicating with them in groups doesn't seem like its helping you in any way whatsoever except to make you jealous, sad, and angry.

Pick something else: Zen meditation, shambala meditation, various types of yoga, bhakti yoga or "actualism" may be more suited to eliminating your suffering... Pick one of these and dig a deep well with it. For example, tell yourself that you are exclusively committing to the the actualism method for two years and do nothing else but that. Just, For The Love of God, stop doing map-oriented theravada practice, as you just aren't getting results with it!!

You seemed to have milked the "pragmatic/hardcore" dharma scene dry without adequate result, as you state:



If there is nothing left for you to do or learn, it's time to try something else.

At the risk of advising something you already tried ad nauseam, and conveying thoughts that will sound to you like a broken record, this is a checklist of things that might be missing. They were certainly missing in my practice until I defused each of them one by one. It wasn't until I defused the last one that I found the golden egg.

• During your meditations, are you aware of this frustration at all? Frustration is a mind state, doubt is a mind state. Can you stay with those sensations in all their intensity? For how long? 1 minute? Try 2. Why not 10?
• What is the source of the frustration-themed thoughts? What thoughts occur immediately before them? This is just a prod to integrate more and more thoughts and mind states into your vipassana and see how they are anatta.
• Let go of the desire for stream entry! Getting "it" in this map-oriented tradition entails a balance between wanting it enough to motivate you but not enough so that the wanting gets in the way. You seem to be on the "too much striving" side of the balance. Why not try make a resolution at the beginning of your sits to not let the wanting get in the way?
• STOP looking for particular experiences. If they do come, and they do so consistently, you can use them as markers for stages in the path. If they don't, just note(/notice/whatever you do) what your experience is like right now. Do the notes repeat themselves endlessly? Look for what's in the edge of awareness! Add ONE word to your noting vocabulary this very sitting. And integrate this searching into the noting (as in: note "searching") when it is in the foreground of attention.
• Momentum is nothing more than continuity of attention. You can't get perfect momentum, even on retreat, but you can get better than you were yesterday. If you feel motivated by it, you can even score your momentum and track it. You can also obsess about it and beat yourself up for not living up to your standards. Good! That's what being a human is like. Even better if you are aware of those reactions as well.
• Give yourself a break from vipassana every now and then with a few days' of samatha or metta meditation, when you feel like it. Don't feel guilty that you're overlooking the other camp. And feel free to disregard this point if you feel that those meditations don't get you anywhere.
• Do you sometimes meditate up to a point where nothing happens? Does that feel like a dead end? Does that kill motivation? That's might just be the equanimity trap. You probably know about it, you know its theory, you know how to get out of it. No?
• Noting can cause burnout if you keep it going for long past the point where it feels right. There are gentler techniques that can bring about progress if that happens. Like choiceless awareness or noticing or anapanasati (vipassana style).
• Once you've got the right momentum, Stream Entry DOES NOT happen in that instant. You need to keep that momentum (read: continuity of attention) going for a few days or weeks or months before you can get it.

He has been wanting and desiring for stream-entry for so long that, at this point, just "letting go" of the desire for stream-entry is not possible. This is why I recommend that you (OP) sit, discuss, and do meditations/retreats with people who map the progress differently (or don't map it at all). Also, avoid and do not attend "hardcore dharma" group meetings. For example, take all the various levels that are offered at Shambhala centers: http://www.shambhala.org/shambhala-training.php and then start doing their advanced classes. Also, if you (OP), are unable to notice the nana stages when meditating, how are you supposed to notice the standard review cycling pattern post-stream-entry? You wouldn't, since you do not experience the stages when you meditate (or if you do experience them, they are so subtle that you are unable to identify them). So why bother even thinking about the stages or stream-entry?

Daniel,

One way to define ego is "that which struggles to get somewhere else".

Rather than me spell it out, what can you do with this?

If you were simply to say to yourself "This desire for this elusive golden egg, this desperation, this frustration, that is how I am. I do not need to alter that, or fix that. It is the reality what I am in this moment".

I finally got around to reading the responses here. I was inexplicably averse to coming and reading them until today.

I appreciate the care with which people responded, and the clear attempts made to relieve the suffering for this individual over here.

I can't explain any of this very well. It is so weird to be human. So endlessly subtle and complex.

But, I think much of my message may have been lost in the original post, so I'll say it again: I had a great time at the meetup and it was such a pleasure to meet all of you.

Thanks.

- Daniel

I can totally relate to stages not being "obvious" or not matching my experience very well. It sounds wonderful for those who experience "obvious" stages. I can only imagine how much clarity that must bring.

For me... what I can obviously see in my life is a pattern of insight-upheaval-resolution - the traditional spiritual awakening followed by a dark night and eventual integration. This pattern seems fractal-like in that it has happened in many ways at many levels of resolution, focus, and duration.

Keep in mind that the obviousness tends to become apparent either in retrospect or by meticulously reviewing the territory already recovered. What's described in MCTB was not perceived over night. There's still much of it I can't relate to, but I've only been down this road about a year and a half now.



This is my experience as well. I would describe it as a series of openings and closings. But sometimes they happen on different planes: sometimes on the physical and emotional level, other times on the abstract level of direct perception of the three characteristics, and other times at an obscure symbolic level. They mix in different ways for different individuals. There's also the effect of personality and what context you're doing it in (whether in a controlled monastic environment, in daily life, or something else entirely).

Anyway, it was a pleasure meeting you as well. The adventure continues...

And perhaps also important to keep in mind is that with such meticulous review, it is possible that one starts to see the thing they are looking for. The imagination is a deeply rooted and powerful force, and although I am not saying that people are imagining the paths and cycles, I'm saying that the possibility of imaginative interference must be considered with respect.



I like this description of yours.
physical, yes.
Emotional, yes.
Abstract level? hmm... maybe?
Obscure symbolic level? mostly while dreaming at night.

It's happening right now!