Hello everyone,

So I recently attained to 2nd Path and made a resolution to spend one month simply experiencing life as a 2nd pather (I've been wanting to write a lot of my experiences, not to mention wanting to get a hold of many aspects of my life that were neglected somehow during the foot race of path attainment). One of the main things I want to do is to have a very constructive Review stage where I can go and re-visit all the insight stages in order to do further study of them, specially the fruition state. When I attained to 1st path I was so pumped that I decided to skip the Review stage and plunge into cycling again, so I don't have experience reviewing stages after attainment. One of my concerns is that I'm hesitant to do Vipassana because I do not want to accidentally start up a cycle and get the "ride" going full force again. I have simply been doing Samatha meditation since path attainment. Any type of advice would be greatly appreciated!

Metta!
JF

Hiya,



Congrats...though I'm not sure what kind of advice you're seeking, as you did not mention any sort of problem?

Trent

Congratz!!

Well, I read in MTCTB and around these forums that you should try to review and get familiar with the stages.. I didnt really try to analyze the review phase, I was more focused on progressing as fast as I could. The review phases of 1st and 2nd path have been really good with me, like tidal waves of pleasant chi as an aftershock of the fruitons and paths. They both lasted about a week each.

I do get what you mean when you say you dowanna progress. They do feel good. As time passed for me, my psyche just felt that it was time. Take your time but there should be no reason for you to Panic. (if thats why ur doing samatha only). You'll eventually wake up one day and feel that you've had it with reviewing. It felt for me like with each new cycle of reviewing, the cycles felt thinner and thinner, and you gain more and more confidence in the way you feel to start a new path.

I've just finished (i think) 2nd path, from Aug last year, to June this year, and its been a trip. I'd be glad to tell you about how 2nd path was for me if you are interested.

Mudita!

Dark Night Yogi is right: you will move on when it is time to move on, and possibly before you want to, and that is just fine.

Assuming you are not some sort of a basket case, which you probably aren't if you have gotten second path, then do as you like, you will probably be fine.

There is no particular way to predict who will have a hard time where, but these days with all the good information and support, people coming up are having, in general, an easier time than we did back in the day, as the maps are better and the community is more conducive to real conversations about real practice. There was simply nothing like this when I was going through this stuff.

Anyway, don't worry about it: review if you like so you will know the stages well, or move on. One way or the other, that dharma will only wait so long.

Daniel

Hey Trent,

Thanks for the congrats. Basically my asking for advice was based on how to review stages without starting up the whole new cycle (at least not yet).

Metta,
Jorge F

Dark night yogi and Daniel,

Thanks much for your input. I guess there are are a few nuances between some things I have read and heard in terms of the practice and my actual experiences that have confussed me a bit.

Daniel:




So it seems that I have no control whatsoever over the cycles, and all I can control is how I practice insight while going through the cycles. Up until now, my noticing during practice seemed confined to the particular stage of the cycle at that time (during the dhukka stages I could only notice the end of the sensations but not the beginning, nor could I reach equanimity). I know people going through all the insight stages in a single seating, which I have only been able to do shortly after attaining to 1st path (but I was not able to replicate fruition) and after reaching the stage of equanimity. Worst case scenario I could say “forget this reviewing stuff” and continue full force ahead. Being a bit of a overachiever (and hoping to maybe teach some of this stuff to others) I wanted to get gain as much knowledge on the stages as possible (which may unavoidably happen later in the future).

Thanks again guys for your time and expert opinion!

Metta
Jorge F

I would definitely try to repeat what you think was a Fruition for educational, recreational, insight-related, and verification purposes.

About 99% of people who say to me that they got a Fruition actually got the A&P or some such thing.

Anyway,

Enjoy,

Daniel

About 99% of people who say to me that they got a Fruition actually got the A&P or some such thing.


I'm certainly a member of the "Skeptics of Attainment Society" to put it humorously. I have many fellow practitioners that continue to be "in love" with the idea that A&P is the most spiritual of events and that enlightenment is a step away from it, regardless of how many times myself and many others remind them of the 10 corruptions of insight. I'm pretty glad to have read many books, and talk to enough knowledgeable people, but most importantly, to have experienced enough things in my practice to have the ability to distinguish A&P from non A&P. Of course, one shall never say never!
:-)

I would love to share some of the details with the wonderful Dharma Overground community.
Let's talk a bit about my practice. I started practicing meditation about 20 years ago with my parents (doing a lot of visualization, white light, chakra cleansing, etc) but my practice had been very scattered and rare, despite a very strong natural concentration ability. About 6 years ago I experienced a typical A&P phenomenon during a sitting. Of course without having a single clue as to this representing a stage of insight (probably because I was totally unaware of such practice at that time) after feeling my body vibrate strongly, getting crazy rapture, feeling overjoyed, etc., I thought I had touched God and that I had reached the highest spiritual point, and that blah blah blah....basically felt into the 10 corruptions and thought "this is it". After that, I did not feel the need to meditate anymore. Interestingly enough, I started to enter in depressive stages a few weeks after this experience. School, family, friends, girlfriends, etc., did not seem to give me any sense of fulfillment. the situation worsened year after year, to the point of actually becoming suicidal around 2 years ago. All I could think of was how unfair and miserable life and the world are, and how worthless I had become (at least I felt that way). Somehow I gathered up some strength and decided to stick around until "life" or "God" or whatever it was that created me decided to "uncreate" me. My depression continued however, until one day when I said to myself "enough! this is it! I'm done living this life! in this world of human rules and laws, of suffering and impermanent happiness. I became fascinated with a book by Chopra called "How to know God" and his definition of the perfect God (unmanifest, unchanging, etc) resonated with me, so I went ahead and decided to follow Buddhist insight practices head on. First I started doing Samatha because that's what I understood (within my ignorance at that time) to be the way to reach enlightenment (by reaching Nirodha). I was able to access the first 4 Samatha Jhanas with incredible ease (perhaps a couple of weeks after starting to practice them) and then started to be able to enter into the formless Jhanas (I would enter them quite softy but it was certain of their manifestation.

At this time, I had been having some “migraine-like” headaches ever since the dark nite days, and even though the pain was absurdly strong, I felt ok about it (I guess strong equanimity?). One day during meditation I felt 2 small “pops” followed by another 2 more, they were barely noticeable, so I did not make a big deal about it. I don’t really remember if my headache went away right after that, or during the meditation of a few hours after that but it was certainly gone the same day. Another session later the same day I noticed myself hitting Jhanas in an uncannily strong way, and was jumping within them at will. Certainly my already strong concentration was feeling even stronger and refined, entering the 7-8 Jhana in a stable way for once. All I kept telling myself was “well, if I have reached stream entry, congrats Jorge, but we are continuing to push forward regardless”. Later that night, I said I would try to see if I can go higher than the 8th Jhana (I went ahead and remember your story about reaching the Pure Land Jhanas) I figured my concentration is so strong, why not give it a shot. I hit the PL1, (quite stable to my surprise) and as I tried to reach higher I entered a very cloudy and foggy unstable state, and then after that I had the most amazing A&P experience I could imagine (I’d be glad to expand on it if anyone cares to hear about it, it was A&P nevertheless). I noticed day after day a very small and subtle, yet profound changed in my perception of myself and the world around me afterwards, change that was very hard to notice when I found myself going thru another dark nite (this is really when my wish for further investigation and review of the cycle started to be born).

About a week after that I found myself back in equanimity, and this time, I could differentiate almost perfectly different maturity levels of equanimity seen on Ingram’s map. Again the gut feeling of something special about to happen was present, yet to be totally honest, I felt like I was missing something, and the idea of repeating the cycle without attaining new path was not sitting well with me. I don’t know if the cycle repeated or if I “slipped back” but I lost equanimity after a short A&P event. I remember the whole “practice at this time shall be about constancy, and not heroics) so I decided to make my practice all-dry (all Vipassana). This time my noticing became a lot more detailed, and my awareness when observing the 3 characteristics was keen and precise (I found myself falling asleep during meditation, but I would continue to note: thought, thought, sensation, image, “oh crap” dream, oh, thought, thought; and would wake up and continue without interruption. It was during these days when I was meditating and as I was observing the sensation vibrate, as it started to disappear I felt like I had sort of “penetrated” its nature and I felt it diminish with ALL my awareness, as if falling down a cliff then nothing happened and almost instantly afterwards I felt this gargantuan pops!, 4 in total. I had no doubt of my experience of fruition and my attaining to 2nd path at that time.

Now I have noticed a pretty substantial shift in my perception, like a weight taken off my shoulders. I often now wonder how I was able to live under so much “weight”. I’m finding to have a “teflon mind” (using Nikolai’s terms here!) for a few things, and how things that used to really affect me have lost considerable grip into what is left of the ”self”. There is a sense of the ride being partially done, like what was done is done and never again to be needed to be done, and that equally whatever is left to be done will be certainly done and over with in the near future.
Now I’m taking about a month “off” in order to examine the place I’m at right now (I’ve been meaning to write a lot of my experiences and I just haven’t gotten the time, I would like to pay a lot of attention into those things that have fundamentally changed in me, and go over the stages, particularly investigate fruition. I just don’t want to have an “oopsie” and continue riding before I go ahead and do some of these things mentioned above.

Metta!

Jorge Freddy