Darrell:
Meanwhile, I've realized I'm more or less rudderless. I feel lost. I meditate for an hour each night before bed. An hour as well, in the morning, when my daughter is in school. Otherwise, my reading - I have yet to finish a single text I've bought or downloaded. I listen to a fair amount of dhamma talks, although that has slowed down lately due to having less time alone.
Begin where you are. Do not allow past performance or future expectation to influence you. Start with the here and now of your practice and learn to just simply stay in the present moment. Pick out something that you started to read that you have some interest in, and read it to the end without any expectation of gain, yet only seeking to learn or to see more insightfully into the material. Stay focused on one thing until you finish it.
By taking small steps along the path, you begin to sense momentum toward accomplishing your ultimate goal. Be content with taking small steps at first. After you have finished one self-assigned project, then you can look back and see what you have accomplished and have a moment of reflection about how far you have come.
Darrell:
The mindfulness and present moment attention, on their good days (which are less, rather than more) is that I can "get in front of my thoughts and reactions", which I think is the first layer of fabrication that Thanissaro Bhikkhu talks of. My hope is that if I kept at it, the number of days would increase, and the understanding and insight would deepen. Whether or not this is the case remains to be seen.
Getting "in front of your thoughts and reactions" can take time because it requires the development (cultivation) of mindfulness. Mindfulness can take some time to fully develop. Do not let your failures at this endeavor become a discouragement. Just keep taking one step after another, and realize that this, at times, can become mundane, but that it doesn't need to be if you bring mindfulness to the fore. Pretty soon you will be able to turn around and look back at the distance you have travelled down the path. Be grateful for small victories! The path for many people (if not all) is a gradual path. Rejoice in that knowledge and do not relent in the pursuit of your goal.
Darrell:
Whereas I started off with MCTB, I've left that aside instead because I was drawn first to the Eightfold Path, than, to the very start of this with the Four Noble Truths. It seems there's a consensus that believes that's the ticket right there. Even Mahasi Sayadaw has a writing about the EFP as the path to liberation (he used the word nibanna). So I've started digging in from that place.
Aahh. This is a good place to begin. At the beginning. Find out what the Master said and taught. Do you agree or disagree with what he said. If you agree, seek to understand that in greater detail so that you can begin to see instances of this within your own life's experience. This will provide you with the confidence to continue on down the path. It will begin to remove doubt from your mind. A small victory is considered progress. Rejoice in that knowledge.
Darrell:
Meanwhile, I feel like I'm stumbling around, never quite landing on any one thing, never being sure what is the right way to proceed. Every time I think I know what's right, something comes along to create doubt about what I thought was the right direction. I blame this, at least in part, to ignorance of the facts. Ignorance isn't bliss.
I know everyone has a more or less different practice, but is there such thing as a common reliable framework for practice, serious practice, to at least get a person into and through the insight knowledges? And from there, hopefully to stream entry?
The right way to proceed is from wherever your are in this moment. Nothing more nor nothing less can be expected of a man but to begin where he is at in any given moment. There is no "right way"; there is only
your way, the way that works for you personally. Pursue one thing at a time and eventually you will conquer all things. The way to be is to do that which is in front of you, consuming your interest to its utmost.
As for a framework for practice, you may wish to begin by reading a sutta (discourse of the Buddha) each day or to focus on one for several days until you come to understand what it is teaching. If you can commit yourself to this, it will provide you with a structure to your daily practice. If you do this once a day for thirty (30) days, you will be able to look back at the end of that time and reflect on the journey you have travelled down the path. Also, it will instill a sense of accomplishment in you which will assist you in continuing down the path, providing momentum. Not to mention sitting at the feet of the Master, endeavoring to understand everything he taught through his recorded discourses. You will eventually begin to see his teaching in a whole new light. This is when things can become exciting. Because you are beginning to connect the dots to the puzzle that is yourself!
Darrell:
Every time I think I know what's what, something comes along to dig the hole deeper. The Eightfold Path? Even just understanding Right View is dense. Then I find there are realizations/insights of the Four Noble Truths that need to be gained. Four Noble Truths, EFP, the Three characteristics, five or more lay precepts. I understand this is not easy, that doesn't slow me down, ...
Aahh. The entrance of Maya. The deceiver! You must learn to ignore the Deceiver, and to persist in pursuit of the path. Right View is a good place to start in your discovery of the path that Gotama taught. It is not so dense as you may perceive, however it can be challenging to maintain.
There is an interview in the now defunct magazine "What Is Enlightenment" that interviewer Simeon Alev was once conducted with Buddhist scholar Peter Masefield about his book
Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism in which he talks about the relevancy of Right View to the whole of the path. It was quite extraordinary when I first read it over a decade ago, containing may insights that I used to guide my own practice at that time. It appears that a link to the interview is not to be found as the magazine that hosted it is no longer being published. But here is a paragraph from the interview (which I saved in hard copy printing it out) that I will type out for you. You may be able to find the whole interview if you do an Internet search for it, preserved on someone else's website.
WIE: In your book you also discuss at great length the significance of "right view." What is the role of right view in your understanding of the Eightfold Path of the Buddha's teaching, and how exactly does one acquire it?
PM: As I understand it, and according to all of the textual definitions of right view, it's seeing things as they really are, seeing nibbana, seeing the Four Noble Truths -- not just understanding them as a set of logical propositions but actually experiencing them, and also experiencing and witnessing the fact of impermanence. All of these things are subsumed under the one item of right view.
And right view seems to be a prerequisite for the second step on the path, which is sometimes translated as "right thought" or "right resolve," but which is properly defined as "right renunciation." As a result of achieving right view, you renounce those things to which you were hitherto attached because you've seen through the myth, the sham, of worldly life. And once you've renounced these former attachments and attractions, then of course it's much easier to go on to perform right speech, action and livelihood. Then, having consolidated your morality, you can go on to perfect right effort, mindfulness and concentration; otherwise, there are a lot of hindrances to meditation caused by various aspects of immorality due to which the mind won't settle down because it's agitated by either conscience or by desires. So this seems to be a logical progression, and the Buddha always does enumerate the path in that order as a causal chain, each successive step being dependent upon the prior one.
Now there's a very big problem in this for most people, because if it is really the case that right view is the beginning of the path, then how do you get it? It's a pretty tall order, and it couldn't be acquired via the path itself because it's the entrance to the path. This was a problem that had occurred to me, so I was looking in the texts for possible solutions to it. And I found that in the instances of people getting right view that are recorded in the texts, it's always as the result of a special teaching that they received from the Buddha.
The Buddha himself, in order to explain how this works, gives the simile of a mountain, in which he describes two friends walking through the jungle, which is a Buddhist metaphor for sense-pleasures. They come upon a mountain slope, and one friend climbs to the top of the mountain and then shouts down to the other that from his new vantage point he can see delightful stretches of level ground and lotus ponds -- a metaphor for nibbana. But the one at the bottom of the mountain, still in the jungle, doesn't believe him. And what the Buddha says is that he could, like the one at the top, go on adamantly claiming that what he says is true, or he can come down to the foot of the mountain, take his listener by the arm and gradually lead him to the top, where it is possible for him to see things for himself. And this is what I think the Buddha does. When he's causing someone to gain right view, he comes down to their level and gradually leads them to a position where they themselves have sight of things as they really are. This is why he is spoken of as the "good physician who gives men back their sight."
Darrell:
I'm tired of doubt and uncertainty, although I don't know how that can be avoided entirely, at least in the early stages. If there's a way to end it, I'm all for it. I'm tired of feeling lost and uncertain of what I'm doing.
The way to end doubt is to replace it with first hand knowledge. And the way to gain first hand knowledge is to practice, paying attention to the lessons learned along the way.
One way to sweep away doubt is to notice the positive things taught by the Dhamma that have helped you overcome obstacles in your life or have helped to alleviate
dukkha (unsatisfactoriness). Another is to have an epiphany about the training (the Noble Eightfold Path) and to see that in this training lies the source of one's salvation from
dukkha. The training is all about becoming cognizant of the unseen movements of the mind, having them become seen and known to the observer. The more one learns about the way in which the mind works, the more control one can eventually gain over those mechanisms, and thus gradually release (let go of) the mental fermentations (underlying determinants) which cause
dukkha.
In peace,
Ian
