A&P Criteria too Broad?

masa, modified 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 12:14 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 12:14 AM

A&P Criteria too Broad?

Posts: 6 Join Date: 10/24/12 Recent Posts
Given the possible breadth of symptoms, it seems you would be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't have some kind of strange experience that would qualify, especially anyone who ever took a psychedelic. You couple that with some generic emotional problems (depression/anxiety) which are increasingly symptomatic in society, it seems to me that you're dealing with a pretty big chunk of the normal human population, and maybe that's the point, but is anyone who fits this profile a dark night yogi?
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Not Tao, modified 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 2:01 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 2:01 AM

RE: A&P Criteria too Broad?

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
I don't think so, personally.  Maybe the key is in the name.  If a person can see everything arising and passing away - as in, they have an insight about the nature of experience - and then that insight begins to eat away at their sense of "being" - as in they begin to see their very core arising and passing away - then I think that is the A&P which results in the dark night.  It's an existential crisis.  The mind starts to believe it doesn't actually exist the way it thought it did, so it goes through stages of greiving and fear as it lets go.

I think a lot of people here, specifically, have depression and axiety issues, so these things get conflaited and compounded and the whole thing is very messy as everyone tries to explain the path from their own experience.  A good question to ask is, is the fear or sadness coming from a focus on the self (why me) or a focus on experience (what is happening to me?)  In the end, it's about the insight in Buddhism - how do you see the world, or what perspective are you looking from?  It's about coming into a viewpoint about the nature of experience.
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 8:45 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 8:45 AM

RE: A&P Criteria too Broad?

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
Your point about sorting this out is a good one, given that it is not always easy. Definitely not all psychedelic experiences include the A&P, but some definitely do, as plenty here will attest, and teasing that out is complex and could benefit from more research dollars from people who know science, that territory, and the insight maps well, which obviously is a hard combination of things to have align often.
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dat Buddha-field, modified 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 12:34 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 12:34 PM

RE: A&P Criteria too Broad?

Posts: 43 Join Date: 4/1/14 Recent Posts
Daniel M. Ingram:
Your point about sorting this out is a good one, given that it is not always easy. Definitely not all psychedelic experiences include the A&P, but some definitely do, as plenty here will attest, and teasing that out is complex and could benefit from more research dollars from people who know science, that territory, and the insight maps well, which obviously is a hard combination of things to have align often.

I feel it's important to recall that the map layed out by the Visuddhimagga regards knowledges of formations; insight into the nature of experience.  

People have weird energetic sensations.  People get depressed.  These are normal human things.

If we have some "A&P phenomena" but we remain lost in content and identified with our experience, then there is nothing gained, nothing known, and nothing purified.  If there is no insight into the nature of reality, then what has been attained?  Where does the wisdom come?  

This tendency to build conceptual mountains out of every blip and twitch is a failure to recognize the nature of wisdom.  
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 12:39 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/14/14 12:39 PM

RE: A&P Criteria too Broad?

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
true dat