Best way to 2nd Path?

J C, modified 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 1:33 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 1:33 AM

Best way to 2nd Path?

Posts: 644 Join Date: 4/24/13 Recent Posts
Just curious what people found to be the best way to 2nd path. Is it more of the same, noting through the stages, getting to EQ, and finally just letting go? Is it, as Tarin described SE in the "Slacker's Guide," a random shot in the dark that takes many repeated attempts until it just happens to click in the right way?

What are the major differences between getting SE and getting 2nd path?
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-- Timus --, modified 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 11:56 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 6:57 AM

RE: Best way to 2nd Path?

Posts: 47 Join Date: 5/17/10 Recent Posts
You'll probably get a whole bunch of different answers. emoticon My experience: 2. path is rather straightforward, linear, and fun, especially compared to the more effort-heavy ups and downs of 1. path, and the perplexing and muddled way through the higher paths. I'd recommend to "chill out," let things enfold on their own, but to maintain a regular and solid practice. Open awareness instead of noting turned out to be the best fit for me during this phase.
Banned For waht?, modified 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 7:12 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 7:11 AM

RE: Best way to 2nd Path?

Posts: 500 Join Date: 7/14/13 Recent Posts
J C:
Just curious what people found to be the best way to 2nd path. Is it more of the same, noting through the stages, getting to EQ, and finally just letting go? Is it, as Tarin described SE in the "Slacker's Guide," a random shot in the dark that takes many repeated attempts until it just happens to click in the right way?

What are the major differences between getting SE and getting 2nd path?

I am not stream entry. I don't have destroyed identity few and doubt nor i have no idea what means rites and rituals.

Sutra and fetters model stream entry, also all skandhas overcomed, 4th jhana attained, well...very hard challenge

it can take years to enter 1st jhana and not many will attain it. Watching kasina or breath and then getting into trance is not correct jhana. Nimitta rises on both cases. But one is negative or illusion other is real.
Also its not correct that one is entering jhanas one by one in one sitting and then come down. No nimitta is reported rising by practioners doing it, at least i haven't seen someone mentioning it.

At first you need access concentration, what itself is hard to realise from there you enter it then start working with the 1st jhana and the nimitta rises after months of succesful effort it can take lot more time.

Working with the second jhana, there are so many different stages that it will make you think you are enlightened and will get caught easy.
These different stages within 2nd jhana are hard to go through, takes months or weeks at least each one.

Stream entry in other words means Saint.
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katy steger,thru11615 with thanks, modified 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 9:16 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 9:16 AM

RE: Best way to 2nd Path?

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

I agree: you are going to get a lot of answers emoticon

So here's my contribution and then I hope you'll keep contributing yours and to keep reading other experiences recounted here:

Metta (friendliness), friendly receptivity
(this is not being willfully trounced/laying in traffic and being run over by emotional highspeed, blind and/or aggressive vehicles, etc : )


For some, especially those that read the training through the fetter model lens, this can be an area where dealing with emotional aversion/hostility/own-ideas possessiveness/policing own-ideas and sensate addictions come up. So there's learning suffusive friendly receptivity, metta. 
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Dream Walker, modified 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 1:48 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 1:46 PM

RE: Best way to 2nd Path?

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
J C:
Is it more of the same, noting through the stages, getting to EQ, and finally just letting go?
Pretty much yes...it's as linear and stage based as the first path.

J C:
What are the major differences between getting SE and getting 2nd path?
Analogy from my experience -The differences between the practice is that where you were noticing the 6 senses in first path they were life size...in second path they are like an inch high. I tend to believe that first path you are dealing directly with the 5 senses and the second path work you are dealing with thoughts and the mental echo of the 5 physical senses. I tell people it's like climbing a pole...first path is hard but pretty straight forward and second path is climbing the pole again using the same skills from last time....but the pole is thiner and some joker greased it.
In both paths you are shutting down the selfing process that owns or possesses these things. Once the selfing process shuts down reality is clearer from both paths. I noticed my thoughts were much less sticky second path and less defensive of thoughts. All paths tend to have a permanent stress reduction associated.
Just my experiences,
~D
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Jenny, modified 9 Years ago at 11/4/14 3:17 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/4/14 3:17 PM

RE: Best way to 2nd Path?

Posts: 566 Join Date: 7/28/13 Recent Posts
JC:
Is it more of the same, noting through the stages, getting to EQ, and finally just letting go?
DW:
Pretty much yes...it's as linear and stage based as the first path.

Linear? Hrmmm, so far not really. First path stages for me were distinct, long, and in MCTB order, very straight up. Now I'm making a bunch of diagnostic errors and oversight about "where I am" on the map. My jhana states are so compelling, that I literally fall into them whether practicing or just going about my daily life, which further confuses me with regard to stages. For example, I'm tending to go to 4th and 5th jhana by default, but was in pretty intense desire for deliverance the other night when I misdiagnosed that I was in EQ but couldn't figure out how to surrender. 

I'm not sure what to think about the extent to which the fetter model clarifies anything, but what Katy says is in the foreground on this path in a way that it was not during first. So there are intense, turbulent emotional movements between attraction (intense longing) and aversion, crying spontaneously, praying spontaneously--just generally whacked out emotions and obsessions and energies. Didn't experience irritation in first path (Fear, Misery, and Disgust, but not anger/irritation). So just very hard to map, very hard to practice insight somehow, very hard to know what to do, except not do, which I cannot figure out how to "do." And so on. Lots of focus on the paradox of effort and surrender. 

Now, DW, if you are right, and it really is linear, but I'm too Dark Nighted or too D for D to see it right now, that's good to know, reassuring. Because this feels like a crisis of faith somehow, although more likely a crisis of wisdom, really. I wouldn't have expected to deal with all this confusion until later paths, but, on the other hand, I hear second is just pretty much confusing the whole way through. 

This said, the turbulence of this path feels fake somehow. Huge melodramatic biting movements, but, at bottom, toothless and known to be so. Maybe that's because I seem to be high on jhanas nearly 24/7.
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Bill F, modified 9 Years ago at 11/4/14 4:11 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/4/14 4:11 PM

RE: Best way to 2nd Path?

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
I just noted as much as possible, in practice and daily life. 1st to 2nd path happened very quickly, as did 2nd to 3rd. 3rd to 4th not so fast.
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katy steger,thru11615 with thanks, modified 9 Years ago at 11/4/14 4:17 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/4/14 4:17 PM

RE: Best way to 2nd Path?

Posts: 1740 Join Date: 10/1/11 Recent Posts
Jenny
This said, the turbulence of this path feels fake somehow. Huge melodramatic biting movements, but, at bottom, toothless and known to be so.
Yeah, I relate to this. To me what is called the "stream-entry" event undermines defense of fabricated "I". So apologies can now happen, laughing at oneself, crying at oneself, watching oneself/seeing a well-timed gratification monster moving through the day from gratification point to gratification point (foods, snacks, sensual arousals, feeling of intellectual cleverness/conceit/creating advantageous heirarchies, winning moves in car/train/subway/bikelane traffic, privately correcting or private aversion to just about everything one hears out of the mouths of other, on and on). 

Here in the fetter model I used to wonder, "Why isn't tackling conceit paired with the remedy of metta?" It is, but the sort of conceit that exists obviously in this area called "2nd path" is forms of ill-will based in desire to control and limits of control and pure aversion to what nearly anyone has to say; and this quagmire is augmented by the underlying conceit of, the huge specialness that exists in "I am". Anyway, what I've learned is that developing metta does not at all undermine my ability to engage in debated topics, it changes how I engage and I'm no master here.

I saw a giant bumper sticker the other day. It said, "Kindness is everything." Now, I'm not going to defend this or evangelize this point, but to me, in view of dependent origination and being a human being, this has become conviction, though not neuroligically suffusive.
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Jenny, modified 9 Years ago at 11/6/14 11:40 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/6/14 11:03 PM

RE: Best way to 2nd Path?

Posts: 566 Join Date: 7/28/13 Recent Posts
The ill will seems to be some kind of perverse form of longing, attraction. Anyway, it seems to me, that the longing for communion is what is primal, but it is a kind of codependent (in the AA, not DO, sense) longing, so it won't solve the primary problem even if met with what I want, maybe especially if met that way, temporarily.

I read somewhere recently, "Generosity is a kind of surrender." And this arises too, much more spontaneously and thoroughly than before. Which brings me to the other point of why emotional turbulence feels somehow fake on this path: The dharma is happening spontaneously now, extremely clearly so. And it seems important somehow to notice that I'm not in control of it, either.
x x, modified 9 Years ago at 11/8/14 6:03 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/8/14 6:03 AM

RE: Best way to 2nd Path?

Posts: 122 Join Date: 8/18/13 Recent Posts
katy steger:
...the sort of conceit that exists obviously in this area called "2nd path" is forms of ill-will based in desire to control and limits of control and pure aversion to what nearly anyone has to say; and this quagmire is augmented by the underlying conceit of, the huge specialness that exists in "I am".


Wow, well said. Second path seems to be about letting meditation present what needs to be presented, while refraining from manipulating experience. Aversion and attraction become pronounced, making it easier to recognize and let go... or locking us up in old habits of control, in whatever form. Really well said!