Question to Daniel: Formless Jhanas, NS & DO

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PP, modified 9 Years ago at 6/13/15 11:24 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/11/14 10:39 AM

Question to Daniel: Formless Jhanas, NS & DO

Posts: 376 Join Date: 3/21/12 Recent Posts
Hi Daniel,

In MCTB you highly praised attaining Fruitions in the Formless realms, but actually talked little about it: "Without doubt, the clearest and most illuminating experiencies of the Three Doors come from attaining Fruition in the formless realms or in the realms of the 'psychic powers', though these are not necessary, just very interesting, memorable and educational". Hope you expand that section in MCTB2.

I think that it's a very interesting topic, as to map/compare how other schools attain enlightenment, specially as you have include them recently in one of your new charts. e.g.1: Bhante Vimalaramsi teaches to go up to Neither Perception nor Non-Perception and upon its exit see Dependent Origination in display. e.g.2: Shinzen Young seems to imply the 5th-to-7th Jhanas "all arisings coalesce into a single arising, all passings coalesce into a single passing", which corralates well with your mentioning of reality strobing in and out in those realms. 

The thing is that though your chart matches High Equanimity with NP-nor-NP as a last step before Fruition, but B.Vimalaramsi says that there is where Dependent Origination is displayed, while you say that that happens at the entrance and exit of Nirodha Samapatti. Actually, you never mentioned DO in your whole book, though it's implied in a couple of lines in the last two pages of the book. May I ask why? Regarding BV, I can only guess. May be he has found another way to see DO, or simply he doesn't want to shy away his students setting NS as the big prerequisite to Enlightment, and instead talks about NP-nor-NP. There's a hint about it,  he says something like "If you see DO you can see the 3C's, but if you see the 3C's  you don't necessarily see DO".

One final question: is it possible to do vipassana at the exit of Pure Land 1 and 2? Added: There's some hints in Bernadette Roberts' "What is Self?" book about a second-to-last stage in her progress of insight map where it seems that she's talking about a PureLand ("Ascension") dwelling for around two months, to then gradually get back to Full Emptiness ("Resurrection": Self is empty, Form is empty too) and then thrown 'down' into Nirodha Samapatti ("Hell") which after 9 months she could gradually get back to being ("Incarnation").

EDIT JUNE-2015: I have finally found a Bhante V's book where he explicitly say "Nirodha Samapatti" as the required step before seeing clearly Dependent Origination. Also, one of his disciples wrote a book dedicating a whole chapter about that last insight stage. 

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