Hi,

I had a question about an experience I had during my first Zen retreat in 1989. Here's how I describe it in my forthcoming memoir:
During the next month, I had occasional experiences, usually around some change in the ongoing events, like the fruition described in MCTB, where sensory input would disappear briefly, usually by dissolving into emptiness, then quickly reappear. There seemed to be no separation between my mind and body and the world. There were various other unusual sensory and cognitive changes, both during and after the retreat. After about a month, it disappeared.

About 15 years before that, I had a clear A&P experience, described here:
This seems consistent with the description of an A&P experience, i.e. an experience of radical impermanence but where the self is still viewed as existing and in the center of things. But I can't place the retreat experience. There was no sense of a self while it was occuring, in fact, there was no sense of anything at all. While it has some aspects of jhana, I gave up jhana practice several years ago, more than 20 years after the experience described above, after trying for about 5 years to achieve it and not succeeding.

I'd appreciate any opinions about what this experience might have been. Thanx.

A brilliant white light is very A&P. The disappearing sensory input is interesting, but the fact that it faded after a month means that it wasn't stream-entry. The shift in perspective that comes with attaining a path does not fade, not even a little bit. Also, A&P can mimick fruitions, so it may be related to the bright light.

Your description of the whole world dissolving before your eyes sounds like A&P as well, but it also had a Dark Night tone to it.

Five years of trying for jhana and not succeeding could be the result of being in the Dark Night. How are you sits now?

Eric,

Thanx. Well, the dailies are up and down. On some days, I can barely track my experience; on others, I'm right up against it. If I try to develop a little concentration at the beginning, it usually goes better. I sometimes try to track during the day as well. I use Shinzen Young's Basic Mindfulness system, since it doesn't require the meditator to make a judgement about what the particular sensation/feeling/thought is but just classify whether it is see/hear/feel, inside/outside, or static/flow/gone.

The reason I gave up jhana was that I was constantly getting so much sensory flow that I couldn't concentrate on a single sensation. I got to the point where the nimitta appeared but I couldn't stabilize it. The sensory flow actually happens now when I get a strong sit. I get sensory flow in feel space, like electricity but not strong, and sometimes when I'm not sitting. Lately I also get it in see space, when the world kind of gets a brocade overlay, like it is trying to disappear but can't quite get there. The brocade overlay seems to happen around some sort of change in events, like getting into the car. After a recent retreat, I did get the breaking up and blackness again, once right after the retreat and once a month later. After the retreat, it was associated with equanimity. A month later, it was associated with happiness.

Isn't DN usually associated with depression like symptoms and cutting off your friends like Daniel talks about in MCTB? I don't think I have any of that. Actually, I feel pretty much equanimity around my practice right now.

                

Read the link to the formless jhanas 5-7 and see if it relates -

• MCTB Boundless Space, The Fifth Jhana
• MCTB Boundless Consciousness, The Sixth Jhana
• MCTB Nothingness, The Seventh Jhana

Then you shifted into

• MCTB 4. The Arising and Passing Away

And saw the lights

MCTB 5. Dissolution, Entrance to the Dark Night
MCTB 5. Dissolution, Entrance to the Dark Night

These are just guesses but they tend to line up pretty good. If you were having cessations your descriptions might be a bit different...
Happy reading and good luck,
~D

Hmmm...that is pretty absolute...Can you describe exactly what this "shift in perspective" is?

The problem is the definition of the "perspective". The honeymoon phase/energetics/concentration faded in about a month for me and I also got familiar with the shift so it no longer was this crazy noticeable thing as you tend to forget how life was like before. (evaluate how much stress you were holding last week compared to right now) So if you include all this into the definition of "perspective" you might convince someone they never got what they got since it changed as all things do. The fundamental element of awakening to SE does not change but there are additional layers that confuse things....especially nailing down exactly what the hell a "fundamental element of awakening to SE" is. <--(insert fetter model here to make things easy)
My two cents
~D

The reduced sense of self doesn't fade or change, though it may become more "normal" and less noticeable as time goes on

I tend to agree with you...generally. Trying to describe exactly what aspect of self got rewired at each step along the 4 path moments is not universal. How much of the self? compared to what? How was it perceived before? What if the reduction of self starts at 25% (arbitrary) and slowly settles in to 20% over a month or so? Would someone notice? Might different people have different arbitrary numbers? Might some notice things better? Might some people want to believe certain things even contrary to evidence....I'm totally splitting hairs here as my geekiness kicks in so please forgive me...I'm not trying to get up in your grill or anything. I also can not speak about the long term 4th path shifts....so perhaps at that level the absoluteness may be very very absolute.
Thanks for listening to my long winded ramblings...
~D

I'm speaking mostly from what the traditional Theravadins say about the three trainings. Morality leads to a happy life but all things are still impermanent. Concentration leads to blissful altered states and some degree of mental silence, but these states fade. But ultimate wisdom, when you really "get it" at a path moment, is here to stay.

As for how this is experienced, is a whole different ball-game. Is stream entry 25% enlightenment? Or 20% for Jack and 27% for Jill? Who knows.... 

Hi DreamWalker and Eric,

Interesting discussion. From my reading of MCTB, first path seems to be "ditching the split", in other words, dropping the sense of a difference between the inside/subjective and an outside/objective, and from what Eric said in his response to my original post, this feeling of the lack of a split didn't fade over time. Did you find that to be the case? Perhaps higher paths lead to more of the split being ditched, or of it being ditched in different areas? I don't find MCTB very clear about the difference between first path and second, though the distinction between third and first/second is clear. Similarly, the distinction between third and fourth isn't clear either. Daniel talks about "subtle" vestiges of self in third path that disappear in the fourth but he doesn't go into detail.

From my experience in 1989, afterward it seemed as if my mind and the outside world were actually the same, that is, there seemed to be no split or separation. Like for example, I walked up to a redwood tree and put my hands on it and I could feel its life like I could feel my own body. I think the difference was that I was viewing the outside world as being part of my mind rather than simply that my mind was part of the outside world, i.e. a kind of ego inflation. But it did disappear, and it was followed by a pretty long and unproductive DN period. So I agree with Eric that it was probably a pretty spectacular A&P event.

                    jak

Well if you want my take on it here it is.
A&P - elimination of ownership/possession of rules of external reality (wall hard, mud squishy etc)
1st path - elimination of ownership/possession of 5 senses
2nd path - elimination of ownership/possesion of thoughts and mental echo 5 senses
3rd path - elimination of ownership/possession of proprioception- Center point, outside boarder and personal bubble
4th path- elimination of ownership/possession spatial relationships/agency/uneven priority around internal vs external sensations
None of these shifts cause any change in cognitive understanding of the sensations but eliminates "selfing" subroutines that creates the perceived "self" associated to each.
As you can see the distinction between first and second path would be hard as you are working on the same stuff. Third is different and requires different objects to be seen thru than the 6 senses. 3rd and 4th have some similarities in spatial rewiring.
I also have seen a marked release of stress at each path. Like the subroutines of self are wired thru the dukkha/fight or flight area of the brain and that center has somehow became a switchboard of prioritizing sensations----only stressful ones reach the critical threshold to get thru to consciousness and the system then adds stress to everything.
These are my current thoughts subject to change due to experience.
~D

Hi DreamWalker,

Thanx for the list. I guess by "ownership" you mean a sense that there is some agency there responsible for the doing? Makes sense that the different stages would result in increasing relinquisment of ownership as the self begins to dissolve.

It is interesting what you say about the A&P, that it results in the elimination of ownership for external reality. From my experience in 1989 (if it was indeed an A&P event as seems likely), it was rather the opposite. I ended up taking responsibility for external reality. Part of the DN period that followed resulted in my imagining that there was some kind of "other world" and that the A&P event had given me a portal into it. That "other world" was responsible in some fashion for events in this world. In the immediate aftermath, as I mentioned, it was as if my mind and external reality were one and I could influence events, but afterward, when that deteriorated, I still felt an obligation to find the portal again so I could influence events for the better. I guess you can use the analogy of an operating system in a computer. If you can get at the operating system code and modify it, you can make life much better for your users. I tried for many years to get access to that code because I wanted to make it better, of course without success because it doesn't exist. My practice was really twisted by this belief for many years.

I think this might be due to the difference between Theravada practice and a Mahayana practice like Zen. In Zen, there is a lot of emphasis on the Bodhisattva Vow: to save all beings. You chant it every week at the weekly sittings and once a day during retreats so it kind of works its way deeply into your unconsciousness mind. If you really take this literally, and in particular during an A&P event when your mind is really in a somewhat strange state anyway I think you can, it can result in very strange experiences.

I'm also wondering about something Mahsi Saydaw says in his book "The Seven Stages of Purification and The Insight Knowledges". This book goes through a traditional treatment of the stages of insight, which Daniel updates with a more modern treatment in MCTB. On pg. 52 he says:
Have you heard any cases where this has happened to someone? Or is this a set of beliefs, like the traditional "elimination of defilements" at each path which Daniel indicates from his experience and that of lots of others is more a kind of wishful thinking? I guess in the absence of a belief in the rebirth, whether or not one made an aspiration for Buddhahood and the rest is kind of moot. Maybe like Brahmavihara practice, just a technique to improve one's character/psychological state? Within the logic/context/belief structure of rebirth over a hundred thousand lifetimes, stopping short of elimination of the self sort of makes sense. If you are trying to save all beings, a sense of agency might come in handy. But, on the other hand, it also might get in the way if it gets too strong.