I've been trying to attain NS recently and would like some feedback on whether I've done it successfully.

Background: my self-assessment of my own level of insight is late 3rd path. This is based on my everyday, moment-to-moment appreciation of nonduality / luminosity / not-self nature of all phenomena, that I've given up on keeping track of the number of path-like moments I've had, and that I can attain the two pure land jhanas. (Some people claim that there are 5 such jhanas, but I have only ever found two.) Some days when I'm feeling cynical about arahatship I toy with the idea that this is 4th path, especially because I don't seem to be making progress anymore. Daniel writes:

[indent]"However, it [NS] has this nice/nasty habit of helping to precipitate a new progress cycle, as the level of clarity gained in its wake is impressive. Thus, one may go from the best highs of a Review phase and Nirodha’s glorious afterglow to the 3rd ñana, A&P and the Dark Night quickly. In fact, this seems to be a very natural part of many cycles of anagamis who also know the samatha jhanas and formless realms."[/indent]

which has been one of the reasons I have wanted to attain NS.

Anyway, here's what I do:

--begin by resolving to attain NS
--travel up through jhanas 1-8, aiming for a reasonable amount of absorption in each
--no overt attempt at vipassana (my experience is always broken up into vibrations without trying)
--try to stop after jhana 8 and hang around instead of going to PL-1
--if NS hasn't happened before PL-1 occurs, go to PL-2, PL-1 again, jhana 8 again, then hang around

There is something that occurs sometimes after jhana 8 which I think may be NS. The one time I observed it clearly, it was as if the entire phenomenal world fell away in a fraction of a second, albeit in an extremely low-key, non-impressive, unremarkable way. This "falling away" is unlike the way that cessation is entered upon when attained through vipassana. Then the phenomenal world re-arose (didn't observe how), then the thought "hmm, what was that?" arose, then I felt quite relaxed and positive, unable to continue with more jhana (mind felt uncollected), and reviewed that string of events from memory because I was not observing what lead up to those events and what they were like moment-to-moment as they occured.

Other times when I have tried to attain NS there comes a moment where the same aftereffects occured, but the experience that lead up to is was completely unclear. For example, meditating before sleep one night while somewhat tired, I went from jhana 1 to 8, hung out, nothing happened, went through the PL jhanas, back down to 8, then suddenly found myself in a happy / relaxed / tired state where I was content to lay in bed and not think or concentrate for about 30 minutes. Other times it's even more indistinct---I lay in bed before sleep, resolve to attain NS, float around between jhana and sleepiness for awhile, don't pay attention to the progression of jhanas, and then find myself in the same state without a good memory of what came before.

The typical outcome of being in the state that follows from the NS-like event is lassitude, slow reflexes / thinking, relaxation, equanimity / good mood, and a kind of pleasant "pulsating quality" to experience which is hard to describe. There is no real euphoric quality to it, which somehow I expected but didn't see. It lasts perhaps 1-3 hours, slowly fading away throughout. The most distinctive things that I can say about it is that it doesn't arise immediately after the NS-like event but perhaps 2-3 seconds later, and the whole thing interferes with my desire and ability to continue with jhana.

That's all the information I have to share regarding my experience; I hope it's enough for a diagnosis!

I'm also curious in general, for those who have experienced NS...

1) Is the entrance always clear, either at the time or in retrospect?
2) Is the entrance psychologically remarkable or unremarkable? (I expected it to be remarkable, e.g. I expected to think "wow, that was wild!" upon reviewing it, because its description seems quite impressive, but it's no more remarkable than cessation...which I also expected to be remarkable, but which never was. Hmm, a trend...)
3) What mental state arises upon exiting? If one enters with jhana-like concentration, does one exit with that level of concentration? Does one exit around jhana 8? Or is it, like my experience, indistinct?
4) How long can NS be expected to last for someone who has good but certainly not "visuddhimagga-jhana" levels of concentration? What is the shortest amount of time that one is likely to attain NS for? I cannot imagine that the NS-like event I'm wondering about lasts for more than a few minutes, judging by what the clock says.

My overall impression is that, if what I'm experiencing is NS, then the whole thing is very good and worth attaining. I am almost inclined to say that it has a healing, restorative quality to it. The aftereffects last a very long time and if their strength is directly related to the length of time in NS, then (say) 30 minutes of NS must be very powerful indeed. The few minutes of NS I believe I can get give aftereffects that are strong enough to be obvious but not strong enough to count as a "NS-hangover" that would interfere with daily functioning; but if their strength were doubled, it would probably be dangerous to drive a car.

Hi there,



As long as your samatha is strong enough to keep the jhana stable but unstable enough to allow "vipassanation" of your experience, then you're on the right track. I mention this only because, in my past experience, I did have to be "overt" with my intention to vipassanize while heading toward NS (but this could just be idiosyncratic or irrelevant in another way).



Your description reminds me of the first time I attained NS.



I remember experiences fitting these descriptions as well. I did not consider an event to have been NS unless I was sure that's what happened, though. I did so to hold myself at a relatively high standard so as to ensure mastery rather than settling for an experience that was "maybe, maybe not." I found the memory loss aspect of these experiences to be less pronounced if I was sitting upright, rather than laying down. I theorized that, by laying down, early sleep was beginning to creep in; which usually means short-term memory disturbances. This may be entirely normal for any attainment of NS though, which is why I think that NS is possibly an intentional, direct accessing of deep sleep (or something very similar). Again, tis only conjecture.



1) I don't think so; fruition can be experienced without clearly being aware of the blink-out as well and they are similar events.
2) I regarded it as being unremarkable, but that in and of itself was remarkable.
3) I experienced it as being some-what random. Sometimes I just opened my eyes afterward and sat around for a while, and sometimes it seemed as though I was in some kind of jhana afterward which I tinkered around with.
4) I don't know about others nor have I read much about it, but I used a watch to try to estimate the time I was "out" for and usually guessed it was around 4-9 minutes. Tough to say though, since I could not watch the clock while nearing the state, nor is there a sense of time passage while "out." I tried to counter that with a few clever methods, for example, I set a 1-beep alarm to go off every 5 minutes, and then counted the beeps during the session and used that to gauge when the event happened so as to estimate the "out" duration.



In my opinion, this is as big a sign as anything when diagnosing...I think NS is generally underrated and enjoyed attaining to it when I was able.

Best,
Trent

Interesting, I have experiences like what you describe but I never thought to classify them as NS. I have a question for people who are experienced with NS. Does it feel like *blink out* - *blink on*, or is there the sensation of time having passed?

At least for the experience I'm reporting, there is no sense of time passing, because there is no sense of anything.

I think of fruitions as "blinks", whereas the experience I'm reporting is almost-but-not-quite-instantaneous. It is a very quick falling away of all experience, but when looking closely it does seem to happen over a short period of time. Dan says 1/3 of a second, which sounds right to me.

Doesn't really help much, because who knows whether my experience is NS or not.

Thanks for the feedback, Trent.



I agree, but also think all the attainments requiring concentration (i.e. hard jhana) are underrated around here.

Last night I went from jhana 1 to jhana 7, and almost immediately upon attaining jhana 8, the NS-like event occured. Sort of like what the Visuddhimagga says:

[indent]"When he has thus entered the realm of nothingness, and risen from it and performed these preliminary duties, he enters the realm of neither perception nor yet non-perception; and having passed beyond one or two thoughts, he stops thinking and reaches cessation."[/indent]

This was unlike Daniel's advice for setting it up because it did not involve the post-8 state. WTF? Are there multiple ways to attain it? (I would love to find an entrance to it outside of jhana, so I could do it during everyday life.) Or perhaps in the post-8 state one attains jhana 8 again ever-so-briefly before NS...

One final reflection I have is that this NS-like thing always messes up my concentration. After attaining it I tried to do more jhana but couldn't even pull off jhana 1. I wonder if the Pali Canon doesn't explicitly include PL-1 and PL-2 because third path folks would always aim for NS and so get stopped before running into anything beyond jhana 8.

Hi Anon,

We have been talking about nirodha samapati over at Kenneth Folk's site. Chris Marti gives some good advice on how to enter it.

http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4010043/2nd+to+3rd

Nick

Thanks for the heads-up. Maybe I'll register and drop by soon. In that case I guess I should pick a real name, not "Anon". I figured originally that I'd just drop by the DhO and say a few things, but talking about dharma with people who are open and honest about it has been strangely addictive.

The advice Chris gave (at that link) didn't turn out to be too helpful for me. When I press down on the third-eye area I get an instant fruition (or a long string of them if I keep pressing) with a weird and somewhat blissful energy afterwards, but that is not at all like what comes after [the experience I think is] NS. The aftereffects of NS are more like a narcotic, almost delirious happiness: half-risen out of sleep after a beautiful dream while wrapped in blankets on a pristine winter day. Something like that.

EDIT: Just for clarity, the whole area "behind" my eyes---behind and up, behind and down, just behind---yields this effect.

Perhaps I have to learn to slide my way to NS in order to make use of his advice. The experience I have now is just cruising along in jhana, and then, suddenly, with no warning, NS.

The Path of Freedom, by the Arhat Upatissa

Okay, pasting this URL just deleted a post I spent 40 minutes working on and I'm too dark-nighted to retype it all. Here's the gist of it:

The Vimuttimagga's instructions might help. You get to the Equanimity insight stage of the last path you've attained, and then you go up through the first 7 jhanas with a non-domineering, non-agitating awareness of the three characteristics of each jhana. The jhana states need to be hard enough that at the 2nd, verbal thought ceases and at the 4th jhana, you shouldn't be aware of respirations anymore. At the 7th jhana, you notice (nonverbally) how perception itself is impermanent, never totally satisfying, and not-self. So you go to the 8th jhana, and then either during or after your emergence from the 8th, NS hits. If you come down from the 8th jhana without NS having hit, then you gently notice the 3 characteristics of the 8th jhana and of perception itself. If that doesn't make NS hit, then go back up into the 8th jhana.

If you're getting fruitions instead of NS from following that or other techniques, my money would be on having too much vipassana in the mix of vipassana and shamatha. You would need to increase the tranquility. The opposite problem should cause you to either spend more time in the 8th jhana, or go into pure-land territory. So balance the two techniques together and don't let either of them overwhelm the other.

Anything useful there? If not, you could also try the Visuddhimagga. I'll post the link here when I can find a copy online.

EDIT: Here's the Visuddhimagga's instructions for NS. Like it says, getting fruitions results from not doing the shamatha technique. Scroll to around page 785 or 786 and it talks about NS, but the actual instructions start on 788.

The Vimuttimagga in pdf, awesome!



The idea that one should start in the Equanimity nana is interesting and one that I never thought of or heard of before. It sounds like a great idea. Actually, it sounds like a great idea for beginning before one tries to enter into any jhana. Less restlessness, more passivity. Why not? I think I'll try it. Three cheers for J Adam G and Upatissa!



I'm getting fruitions from Chris' technique of "pushing down" behind the eyes, which is not a matter of vipassana or samatha, but just something that seems to follow from that mental act.

In the past when I was trying to attain something beyond jhana 8, I would hang out after jhana 8 and get a bunch of fruitions in the process of trying to figure out how to go from there to somewhere else. That was definitely caused by not enough samatha.

The technique I follow now is pretty much in line with what the Vimuttimagga recommends, minus checking to see what nana I'm in, and some of the formalities. There is an attainment of something that happens when NS is supposed to happen, in the way that Daniel (and Upatissa) say it's supposed to happen, except for some parts (the exit mostly) which are always unclear to me. My aim is to figure out whether that attainment is NS or something else. The best way, I think, has been to try to compare the entrance (an unremarkable falling away of all phenomena), possible duration (for me so far, probably short), and the typical aftereffects (for me, a quasi-narcotic mood shift completely unlike fruition). I found no reference for what the typical duration is, though Trent says it can be short. The typical aftereffects seem to be underdescribed. Daniel says one is "deeply peaceful and clear" and mentions an afterglow. Upatissa says the mind "inclines towards peace". As far as they go, those descriptions match mine, though I wish they went further. No one mentions what happens what the mind inclines towards when rising from NS and simultaneously being very sleepy. I'd call it "inclined towards staring at the wall like a happy stoned idiot". Hard to compare with Upatissa on that, but in his defense, I doubt there's a Pali phrase for "stoned idiot".

Upatissa seems correct to emphasize the level of absorption that you mention. The cleanest NS-like attainment I've had was when my absorption was like that. However, I have also had the same NS-like attainment with less concentration. In those cases, it occurs right outside of jhana 8 (as Daniel says), rather than inside of it (as Upatissa says). So a secondary point of interest is whether there are other entrances to NS beyond the canonical one. For example, the normal entrance to fruition is via the 11th nana, but I can attain it just by inclining towards attaining it, or doing the pushing-down-behind-the-eyes technique, or in a couple of other ways. An entrance to NS that was as easy as that would be REALLY COOL.

Have you attained NS? If so, can you share your experience with it?



I think the link didn't make it into your post. Good thing, too, because otherwise the post may have gotten deleted.

Hahaha, this is what I get for trying to make posts at 4 in the morning. Here's the link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/30119169/Buddhaghosa-Bhikkhu-Nanamoli-tr-Path-of-Purification-Visuddhimagga

For some reason, Scribd keeps showing the Visuddhimagga in slideshow form where you have to click page by page to get to where you want. I guess you could treat 788 clicks as a mindfulness exercise, but to the left of the search box at the bottom of the page, there's a button you can click to select the viewing mode. Just switch it to Scroll, which should be the bottom option. Or if you sign in to Scribd, you can just download the pdf and open it in Acrobat or Foxit Reader.

I haven't ever had NS, or any hard jhana for that matter. My concentration is exactly what would be expected from a 20 year old with ADHD, but I plan to do a LOT of concentration practice after stream entry.

But yeah, any time I give advice regarding something I haven't attained, it's usually just a rephrasing of the advice of someone who has that attainment and has explained how to do it. In this case, it was Upatissa's and Daniel's instructions. So, I hope their instructions are helpful to you!

The phenomenology of some forms of ADHD include 1) scattered attention, because every little thing draws the mind toward it, and 2) occasional hyperfocus, as distractions are gated out by virtue of interest in some immersive string of ideas, behavioral pattern, or whatever. Does that match your experience?

Not having attained hard jhana yet, you may not realize this, but if this is what your experience of ADHD is like then you may have an advantage in attaining hard jhana if you knew how to play to your strengths. If you're interested in exploring this, let me know.

Yep, both aspects are right on target. I can get into a groove of concentration practice that is working pretty well for a few moments, and I can even get verbal thought to shut up for a while. The problem is that whenever that happens, complacency settles in and the very next thought usually distracts me and it's at least a full minute before I realize I'm distracted.

Hyperfocus on the meditation object would be an excellent thing to have, if I had any clue how to cultivate that! But I've never learned how to cultivate hyperfocus on anything, on or off the cushion. It's wonderfully productive when hyperfocus arises with schoolwork or music as the object.

Now, as for the breath... well, I've kind of breathed for my whole life. I can get interested enough in it to do vipassana, and the rare occasions where I've shamatha-fied an insight stage into a jhana have given interesting results. If the meditation object is joy, bliss, or equanimity, that's usually more than immersive enough. But to take the breath or a colored circle as object long enough to get joy and bliss to arise, so I can take them as the object, is not something I know how to do at this time.

If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I'm all about turning apparent weaknesses into strengths. T

I think taking an exploration/experimentation approach to samatha meditation might well suit ADHD personalities. It's the method I use. I am of the opposite view of Anon, which is that I think hard jhanas are overrated. Soft jhana is a fantastic base of investigation. Hard jhana is... a trance. I hope Anon responds with why he thinks hard jhana is important.

There is a lot to be said about the value of hard jhana. It can be psychologically illuminating in a number of ways that most other experiences are unlikely to ever be. There are more kinds of insight into things than just insight into the three characteristics.

Any description of what this psychological illumination consists in is likely to be idiosyncratic. So, if you want to find out, you really ought to see for yourself (if you haven't already).

Let me also ask you, how much hard jhana have you experienced, and how hard? I would like to know on what vantage point you stand in rating the value of this kind of experience.

I have a lot of suggestions, but they're probably best given in a back-and-forth situation, not a static message board post. (I don't think I could write a post long enough to account for all the possible contingencies of your experiences with ADHD in life or in meditation.) I'll try to find you online on some future day and talk through the DhO chat function...

One more comment on the value of hard jhana: hard jhana, especially the lower ones, can just be awesome fun. That's about half of what I had in mind when I called them underrated. People on the DhO don't seem to discuss the extent of the kinds of enjoyment that are possible through jhana. I don't know if that's because of unfamiliarity or underrating the experience or just not talking about it.

Hi Anon

Well, there are Jhana discussions, they just tend to focus on the "how to" aspect, and part of that is that it's much easier to attain to hard jhana post stream-entry.
Then there's a slight undercurrent of suspicion here at DhO regarding the endless fascination and fun to be had playing with jhanas and the powers - something Kenneth Folk sometimes calls a "weird Burmese semblance of protestant guilt". His approach to Jhana pre-first-path is rather different than the predominant one here.
Go ahead and start a thread on the benefits of Jhana, there's an entire section devoted to that.

Cheers,
Florian

P.S. I remember reading that you wanted to change your screen name: you can do that on the Control Panel (which is accessible through the drop-down menu in the upper right hand corner of the DhO page, that dotted triangle thing next to your name ).

I don't find jhana to be particularly enjoyable. I don't like the pleasurable rapture that comes from body concentration. I meditate in a way that the rapture aspect is hardly noticeable (and also less distracting). This is probably why I don't care so much for hard jhana. If you want to continue this conversation, I agree with Florian that we should begin a new thread.