Anyone feel like an arahant yet would never ever mention it in person?
I would fear imminent death and in all honesty I do indulge in viewing sensual forms. I had not practiced any proper meditation for seven months until today, when following my train of thought I found it would be wrong to not test myself. I sat for an hour and a half and it was the most fruitless (in the figure of speech sense) sit I have had ever I believe. For years, through very very happy times to very very disturbing times there has always been a pull forward, you know. But I cannot find it anymore. I do not walk around mentally masturbating with the thoughts 'I am fully realised' or anything like that. I have infact only reminded myself of the concept of arahantship once or twice since last december. I have not had any dark periods or fantastic episodes that have lasted more than a second or two since then.
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MY POINT while once and for some time the concept of realms of rebirth and noble attainment was something I used to mentally lust over, as If I could win a lottery, it strikes me from my point of view now as if the whole thing was non existent and a dream.
I paraphrase the turn-of-phrase 'leave the boat you rowed in on the sand on the other side of the river once you get out, and dont carry it with you after'. I admit back then it seemed that part of the massive pull of meditation was that at the end you would become a super-man. Whenever I consider personal attainment or personal religion, my mind more or less concieves obliteration. That is my attainment according to my experience and my, admittedly slightly selective but with reason, readings of holy theravada buddhist texts.
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As an aside, it is extremely easy to pick out those have had not experienced even the 'foreword' of jhanic experience, let alone a taste of fruition. Even among the general populace it is rather well understood that when one is impelled to do something, it is a different scenario to deciding between two different sodas. Years of meditation or anti-psychotics?? yada yada. IF I SAW a video of me right now saying I was an arahant, Back before I tried proper meditation, I would have been in two minds about beginning in the first place! But such is the way this business turns out
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OBLITERATION AS AN OBJECT ONLY ARAHANTS can consider. I have partaken in the states of minds of the eight jhanas and also the two extras. The extras being the special fruit, analogous to petals of flowers gliding from the sky, or a holy waterfall of glory, and the second extra, which is the profound rearranging of perspective and space in the field of experience.
ARAHANTS among you, we know nirvana 'only takes place' after the death of one who is enlightened fully, and that during life jhanic mastery is an acceptable substitute, entertainment-wise (this is in the suttas), yet there is an other experience alluded to, for which nibana is too contentious to repeatedly incur its use in any case, an experience which arahants only can partake in which is inclining towards this obliteration, even though it is not a particulary pleasurable experience and I do not indulge for more than two or three seconds at a time.
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Closest thing to provenence: I have done four hours a day of intensive concentration based meditation and for much the rest of each day considered intellectually various buddhist concepts the three years prior to last december 2013. And my whole life prior I have tasted the first jhana at many intervals of stillness, including when I was a toddler, an experience which always haunted me until it all came together.
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This living experience of nirvana cannot be phenomenologically carried over in speech. It is the only 'gift' in human life which has come from the end of the path. I consider obliteration genuinely, and typically close my eyes, and I can only incline towards it for a few seconds only and must open my eyes and turn away. It is an absurd scenario that means nothing to the human mind.
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I will return to answer a question or reply to any possible discussion with the understanding personal attacks will not be made.
Metta
Joshua
