My best stab at arahatship

A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 4/10/14 5:05 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/10/14 5:05 PM

My best stab at arahatship

Posts: 881 Join Date: 12/4/11 Recent Posts
...is that it is like a bickering couple who don't have sex.
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 4/10/14 5:12 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/10/14 5:12 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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But they still manage to love each other, somehow.
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 9 Years ago at 4/11/14 4:02 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/11/14 4:02 AM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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A reasonable assessment of the tone and tenor of these things, I agree, except that the stakes for this particular argument are higher than those petty arguments often are, and there is some reality to all this, but exactly how to point to it, how to incline to it, how to figure out, that is worth debating, as plenty here really do care about the topic, and some here care about it about as much as they care about anything, and I can't blame them at all.
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 1:20 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 1:20 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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Mom and Dad are trying to violate each other, and unfortunately that means ever sentient being right there.
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Not Tao, modified 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 4:48 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 4:47 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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So then what's the point, exactly? I'd rather be single...
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 4:58 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 4:58 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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Not possible sir, to quote the late Thomas Merton, "no man is an island" hehe emoticon
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 4:59 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 4:59 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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But then again I don't know you so take that for what its worth.
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Not Tao, modified 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 7:47 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/29/14 7:47 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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I hear they can swap out your gender now.  No one said a woman couldn't be an island. emoticon
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 8/5/14 1:59 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/5/14 1:59 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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I had a couple of insights recently that I thought that I would share.

The 1st one A) is that cycles can function, using a directional metaphor, in either direction of time. Yes folks, backwards and forwards. You will just keep going round and round.

This first insight seemed promising for liberation, but on further inspection brought about a pretty unpleasant feeling tone. Everything seemed sucky.

And then I thought I might just have to change my attitude.

What is the purpose of life? If insights don't bring about healing, what does, if at all? There is really no hope of making anything of anything. 
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katy steger,thru11615 with thanks, modified 9 Years ago at 8/5/14 9:23 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/5/14 9:23 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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Hi Adam,
I had a couple of insights recently that I thought that I would share.

The 1st one A) is that cycles can function, using a directional metaphor, in either direction of time. Yes folks, backwards and forwards. You will just keep going round and round.

This first insight seemed promising for liberation, but on further inspection brought about a pretty unpleasant feeling tone. Everything seemed sucky.

And then I thought I might just have to change my attitude.

What is the purpose of life? If insights don't bring about healing, what does, if at all? There is really no hope of making anything of anything. 

What do you think about the role of causality in your immediate being? For example, "with my thoughts I create some of the world around me; to think or act with an annoyed/downer mind, annoyance and downer-ness follow me like the wheel that follows the ox that pulls the cart; think or act with curiosity, respect or gentle mind, curiosity, respect and gentleness are with me like my shadow; think or act with a combination of the aforementioned mental states and I have the continual mixed experience of these." Anyway, what do you think?
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/5/14 11:18 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/5/14 11:13 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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Adam Dietrich Ringle:
I had a couple of insights recently that I thought that I would share.

The 1st one A) is that cycles can function, using a directional metaphor, in either direction of time. Yes folks, backwards and forwards. You will just keep going round and round.

This first insight seemed promising for liberation, but on further inspection brought about a pretty unpleasant feeling tone. Everything seemed sucky.

And then I thought I might just have to change my attitude.

What is the purpose of life? If insights don't bring about healing, what does, if at all? There is really no hope of making anything of anything. 

So what if the world is meaningless?  Maybe it should be so then we can have the choice to create our own meanings instead of having one set of meanings for everyone.

There's lots of insights.  If you notice all of your thinking as sensations and see how much of your thoughts are conditioned thinking habits you can gradually decondition it by stopping them.  Nick's reminder to me of what's beyond equanimity helped.  "Why does it keep arising?"  When you interrupt your negative thoughts (and I mean empty your mind of all thoughts including Buddhist ones) you can cultivate more skillful ones.

Have you looked into Right Effort/Energy?
  • The effort to prevent unwholesome qualities -- especially greed, anger and ignorance -- from arising.
  • The effort to extinguish unwholesome qualities that already have arisen.
  • The effort to cultivate skillful, or wholesome, qualities -- especially generosity, loving kindness, and wisdom (the opposites of greed, anger and ignorance) -- that have not yet arisen.
  • The effort to strengthen the wholesome qualities that have already arisen.
When I do this practice I find that pretty quickly the despair decreases.  If I have to be forceful I'll relinquish the negative thoughts by interrupting them with a "why"?  When the mind clears of thoughts you can then implant positive thinking habits.  I find that letting go of preferences is a good way to get quick results in stress relief. After letting go of the negative stories you can notice what preferences caused the stress in the first place and not return to them so the relief lasts longer.  That would be a way of preventing unwholesome qualities from arising.  The preferences are already leaning into objects and partially reacting but once you see that you can learn to relax the skull tension.

I like that old Japanese movie Woman in the Dunes.  The character gets creative and develops ingenuity to make meaning and purpose in his life.  At first he's just complaining about his forced relationship with a woman and his trap seems daunting.  He develops something eventually that when he escapes he returns to the trap because it's not as much of a trap anymore after what he created.  The Japanese had to deal with the end of Facism and move into industrialization and it created a lot of chaos for people and I'm sure they were dismayed by life.

What I like to condition myself with in response to the negative is metta practices.  I still need them because any guilt for lost opportunities in the past derail development. At other times I don't cultivate metta because just letting go is enough.  The awareness operates fine on its own after letting go.

I don't know if this is what you're looking for but you have to use the practices to make YOUR OWN meaning. Looking back at my own depression it just looks now like an old bad habit from infancy when we had parents that would respond to our crying.  Now that we are adults they aren't there and we have to cope with ourselves.  

Metta
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 8/6/14 7:20 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/6/14 7:20 AM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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There are times when I have questioned my practice. Also I have worried about violating people.
I can set these aside if I stick to a goal that is decidedly pro awakening.

An example would be having to check out of normalcy in order to lie down and rest. Each time I lie down I can become more awake.

This is the best way I know how to respond to your question emoticon
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katy steger,thru11615 with thanks, modified 9 Years ago at 8/6/14 8:30 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/6/14 8:30 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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Adam Dietrich Ringle:
There are times when I have questioned my practice. Also I have worried about violating people.
I can set these aside if I stick to a goal that is decidedly pro awakening.

An example would be having to check out of normalcy in order to lie down and rest. Each time I lie down I can become more awake.

This is the best way I know how to respond to your question emoticon

Hi Adam, 

So what do you know from your personal and direct experience about a) the sensation of gratification, b) wholesome gratification, and c)unwholesome gratification?

Do you have experience with these directly or perhaps you call these experiences something else or you have no experience with these words and/or they do not make sense to you?
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 8/7/14 2:30 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/7/14 2:29 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

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Sometimes you will hear older people talking things along the lines of "I am old enough that it doesn't matter anymore" or "too old to care"

Making a statement such as this would be something that inspires a streak of fear in me.

Seeking gratification of any type is something I would assume to be controversial in spiritual circles. 


Edit: posting this creates in me a feeling of uncleanliness. I don't know but this stuff is just really hard to deal with.
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katy steger,thru11615 with thanks, modified 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 6:49 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 6:39 AM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

Posts: 1740 Join Date: 10/1/11 Recent Posts
Hi Adam,

You wrote: "Seeking gratification of any type is something I would assume to be controversial in spiritual circles." 

Yeah, a good point, I think : "gratification" is not the right word to use with "wholesome". In that case, there are wholesome pleasures, and ultimately not wholesome gratification in buddhist training (gratification defined: "pleasure gained from the satisfaction of a desire"); where for example breathing is a wholesome pleasurable sensation without accompanying gratification. What do you think?

You wrote: "I can set these aside if I stick to a goal that is decidedly pro awakening." Do you know what gratifications impede your making a decided goal here? What are your pro-awakening motivations and/or convictions or even gratifications in support of awakening?

Because it is normal and common to have gratifying experiences in the process of even this "pro awakening" training and its scope of training from newbie, to middling practitioner, to refined practitioner dealing finally just with subtle mental terrain/provocations/subtle conceit (so the models suggest, anyway). For example, if I have a desire to sit/study with a particular teacher, then I am pleased when that desire is met. So I am still dealing with gratification and I have to do this not forgetting the inherent harmfulness of gratification. For example, that desire to study with a specific teacher always arises with "desire not to study with a specific teacher" ~ aversion. E.g., If the specific teacher says things I don't like: "desire this teacher's teaching" toggles to its simmulatneous co-arising aspect: aversion, "desire not this teacher's teaching"). However, how else to work with where I actually am and work through my urges of gratification(and its co-arising apsect aversion) but through progressively modest, middling and finally refined, subtle, "high" scope of training in this? Your thoughts?

Again, may I ask, what has given you conviction in this process and to be decidedly pro-awakening? 


You wrote: "I don't know but this stuff is just really hard to deal with." This is why I study breathing meditation, anapanasati. I find it helpful, calm training in seeing mental content that can be hard to deal with.


A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 11:01 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 11:01 AM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

Posts: 881 Join Date: 12/4/11 Recent Posts
Thanks for replying. A lot of what you said I didn't understand. I think there are fundamental differences between how you understand different processes and how I program them.

What I have been exploring this morning is the idea that I can find justification in my actions either before or after the said action occurs, due to the fact that the dharma is not bound up by time, and that no sensation will bring me salvation in and of itself.
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 1:24 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 1:17 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

Posts: 881 Join Date: 12/4/11 Recent Posts
Right now I indulge this mental formation that has formed in my mind and body. Much like a stalagtite in a cave, it carries with it some kind of jhanic presence that I am currently, as I said, indulging.

It made me write this. haha.

Actually there is another mental formation that is showing itself that is acting like its related to the first one, except it is a luminous black versus the white.

This is not a troll post by the way if anybody dares question my sanity. emoticon
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 2:12 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 2:12 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

Posts: 881 Join Date: 12/4/11 Recent Posts
Trying to become buddha - practice update.

I noticed that I had mental formation loop that was associated with being asleep and having mastery over dharma teaching.

I noticed another loop associated with hunger/safety and having mastery over being awake in the conventional sense.

I noticed various levels of black and white in these mental formation loops.

I tried balance and moving the light from bottom to top and vice versa.

Then I tried redirecting all the light from the second loop into the first.

The result was tremendous confidence in the dharma and a beautiful feeling tone.


But then old master linji reminded me that when you aspire to become buddha, you lose buddha.


End of experiment.


Once again, not a troll post.
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katy steger,thru11615 with thanks, modified 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 4:24 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/8/14 3:34 PM

RE: My best stab at arahatship

Posts: 1740 Join Date: 10/1/11 Recent Posts
Adam Dietrich Ringle:
Thanks for replying. A lot of what you said I didn't understand. I think there are fundamental differences between how you understand different processes and how I program them.

What I have been exploring this morning is the idea that I can find justification in my actions either before or after the said action occurs, due to the fact that the dharma is not bound up by time, and that no sensation will bring me salvation in and of itself.


Hi Adam, 

I find my own posts hard to understand, even today's. It's ridiculous! So thanks for engaging the chat here anyways. I don't know how you program them, so I'm reading your posts and also trying to follow. I never thought you "trolled" but maybe I don't know what trolling is.

This kind of re-confirmation of actions ("What I have been exploring this morning is the idea that I can find justification in my actions") is very common. I admire that many, many people acknowledge this self-serving tendency and we try to end it or be aware of it. I think Internet helps self-awareness and reveal common experiences a lot actually.


Anywhooo I will exit for a bit. You wrote:
Trying to become buddha - practice update.
I've only met one other person who actually said that ~ it was at a retreat last year ~ an incredibly nice, quiet monk at a monastery. Anyway, reading your practice thread is interesting. Best wishes and thanks.


______________________
Oh, do you eat heathily? Are you able to eat healthily? A friend just made me ratatouille and what a mood lift, not to mention much needed health boost. And exercise? These are two great supports for life and this particular meditative practice.

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