I have been thinking about how Metta, Jhana, Insight and tension release relate to each other.   One working model of the mind (not sure if I ripped this off from someone else!) is to imagine a bright shinging SUN of love radiating from within.  We are facing away from the light and trying to organize the world in such a way that occasionally it becomes reflective and we see our own light for a moment.  This is like a video game and it is immersive and addictive. 

The process of becoming sane and content involves two elements.  We need to learn to turn around and let our own light bathe us directly and we need to overcome first our belief in and then our addiction to the video game.  I think that Metta and Jhana are both practices that teach the mind it can just turn around.  I think that vipassana shows us that video game is just a video game and a pretty banal and boring one if you can just turn around to be with love.  

I think Dark Nighty stuff comes from working too much on Vipassana and seeing through the game and not enough on just turning around.   

I think a strong system might start with only metta- both on the cushion and in the real world until one is deeply loving and happy and then concentration until one can let agency go and be in Jhana.  Only then would I send someone on the Vipassana journey.   Interested in others thoughts.   

Totally agree. Probably why most monasteries have compulsory metta sessions before any practice. The problem with beginners (myself when starting out) is that they have a goal to achieve something, whatever that is. Tendency to see Metta as a waste of time is there. It should be emphasized... After a certain stage, Metta becomes a natural state or reaction to sentient beings though, I cannot tell which practice it comes from though it is certainly the most important in the beginning. 

One oft overlooked, powerful Metta solution that is underused is when people meet with issues on/off-cushion and forget to use Metta to wish themselves - the love and compassion they deserve...

I'm curious -- are these really three entirely different practices such that they can be separated in this way? I don't know that there's a definitive answer but in my practice, even early on, vipassana led naturally to concentration experiences, as did metta. My suspicion is that these three practices reinforce each other when practiced simultaneously - in parallel as opposed to in series.

Just my personal observation.

I agree.  It just doesnt seem to work very well for most people.  Very few people make it very far even though it actually shouldnt be that hard. I think it is the fear of losing love that drives clinging in my mind and the more I am immersed in love the easier it is to let go because I am less scared of losing it.  The usual course of practice I have seen is to start with concentration and then add in vipassana while mixing in some metta along the way.  My hypothesis is that a metta only practice first will lay down a foundation of confidence that you cant accidently lose love and allow people to go much farther in both concentration and vipassana than they seem to do now.   Does that make any sense? 

Yes, that makes sense to me.

I think for most people the hardest part of starting a practice is finding the time and the motivation. The folks who get somewhere seem to have the most serious motivation. And with serious motivation the time to practice magically manifests.

Is it advisable to do Metta for a complete novice though? I always thought some degree of baseline concentration was required.

I'm slightly more advanced than a novice, but Metta still seems a bit strange compared to just watching the breath or random sensations.

Metta definately can't hurt! 

Since you are trapped in my nonsense space, can I ask you a personal question?  If you could push a button and discover that your entire life was not real.  That everyone you know and love and everything you care about are just figments of your imagination.  That you, yourself, are actuallly just a process with no point or meaning.  Would you press it?  Why or why not? 

Even many very serious practioners I meet seem stuck in a "self help" paradigm and most dharma talks on retreats are about dealing with pretty gross kinds of emotions and entanglements.   I wonder if there is a better way, but I kind of doubt it.  

Yes - that's what Daniel Ingram calls the "Mushroom Factor." Folks getting so wrapped up in their psychological "stuff" and not paying attention to sensory inputs and related phenomena.

I'd press it, out of curiosity more than anything. The same reason why I practice now I guess; so I can see something new, and something beyond myself.

This is half the truth

http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-wisdom-is-knowing-i-am-nothing-love-is-knowing-i-am-everything-and-between-the-two-my-sri-nisargadatta-maharaj-36-60-10.jpg

That is what i am getting at.  Knowing that dropping delusion leads to - and not away - from love would make it a more popular activity.   I think that the nihilistic solipsism that underlies vipassana is too scary for most to confront with out confidence in that truth.   

Yes. Gratitude is a super important factor also. A way has to be found so to be felt and cultivated easily and unobstructed with the first oportunity and  with all different situations. Its a very wholesome glue for varius positive qualities 

Thanks for the nitty gritty details.  In my mind, trying to get back A&P experiences feels like trying to get back to a state of grace or love.  Releasing into cessation feels like a terrifying abandonment of all the triggers which seem to make love arise in the mind.  I experience this, even though I know it isnt true by direct experience.  I can only imagine how frightening it is for someone who isnt sure what is real and important and what isnt. 

(these are just notes to myself) 

This is my current best operating model of (from an ordinary physics point of view) my mind and nervous system as it relates to love: 

What it is: A neural network that is set to maximize various signals in the brain with whatever signal love is being the most desirable signal to achieve. 
How it works:  my mind works mostly in narratives.  I have been telling myself stories with myself as the hero since birth (actually stories are what we call a particular neural network that arises due to cause and effect) and I store these stories in both memory and in my nervous tension system.  In each story I am trying to achieve some goal which can always be traced back to maximizing love.  In each story, the hero has a set of understandings about what the world is and what is important in it.  As stimuli changes and I feel that the story is going well for me or poorly my nervous system tenses or relaxes.  If a story is unresolved then the nervous tension created about that story remains part of my over all state of nervous tension.  New stimuli recalls old stories or spawns new ones.  All the stories are nonsense.  If I do not pay attention to the stories or the nervous tension associated with the stories, the love I am searching for is right there in the mind.

What is happening and what exists: Nothing is happening and there are no foundations upon which to distinguish between anything so existnce is one undifferntiated being - yet even the concept existence is empty since there is no isnt.  So I'll just go with  This. 

Why This matters: It doesnt.



What is love?:  This
What am I: This
What is God: This

Another way to think about it is that since there is no foundation for distinction, there is no foundation for aversion.  If I am even slightly averse to even the slightest sensation it is an irrational conditioned reaction.  This is true no matter what model one uses, e.g. dependent origination, true emptiness or just plain consensus reality.  While it is easier to let go if one switches to a more abstract model of reality, this is because the narratives that I am still hanging onto were created in the context of consensus reality so dropping the entire context releases the narrative, it leads to difficult paradoxes and requires switching models of reality frequently as one goes from the cushion to everyday life and back.  Seeing that consensus reality leads to both emptiness and love just as the more traditional buddhist models do, I have found that grounding my meditation in that context leads both to additional confidence in releasing (I have strong faith in consensus reality- never doubt gravity, etc) and eliminates the constant switching of operating models and so allows me to abide /access meditative states while participating in ordinary life. 

Thinking about Jhana and meaning and aversion. 

When I use Jhana I am refering to what seem like layers of the mind, each one with less fabrication of meaning and narrative than the one above it.  I am not sure if what i experience is the same as others.  What I am understanding now is that Jhana is actually a reduction in aversion and not a reduction in the fabrication of meaning.  The two usually go together as the less reality the mind fabricates the less it has to be averse to, but one can enter hard Jhanas while still fabricating anything at all as long as the mind is not averse to anything that arises.  The less averse the higher the jhana until nirvana.  I believe a buddha's mind is always in the nirvana "Jhana" even while doing ordinary stuff. 

One way of thinking about it is that a human mind, completely at ease, feels like it is existence itself.  Logically, it is right. 

Seth, I totally agree that it is an excellent way of living and your stuff have helped me a lot to overcome them when caught being incapable of practicing Dharma. Question is, do you think it leads to enlightenment as commonly understood or an enlightened way of living? Both very valuable and the former I agree is perhaps overly vaulted...

Much Love!

Sorry  - I didnt quite understand the question ? 

Sorry, I meant to ask if you think/know if simply living by your principles can lead to enlightenment (4th Path or more)? Or do you think that you arrived at knowing and being able to live these principles through practice?

The central insight that I have had is that there is no real self.   You can accept everything just as it seems to be and if you take out the idea of independent actors who can be judged then everything is perfect as it is.  This inisght is actually just common sense- I learned it in high school physics.  Being able to actually accept it even a lot of the time in the face of all of the billions of signals from my nervous system that seem to say otherwise has taken huge amounts of practice and I am not done.  

Reading this was like looking into a mirror and finding myself; thanks for being alive even if there's no real self. In some ways the sense of self is like a meditation object we all share and care about whether we know it or not; when people forget that it's possible to both feel loved and alive, we go a bit mad when we can't find ourselves. Solidarity is knowing that everyone can find themselves, and when we do it's never the end of the universe, it's never the end of our sense of self, and then we can feel loved and alive with a crazy vision of what's possible for everyone that's alive; there are many ways of looking at the same thing.

What I posted didn't quite feel right, so I'm left with 'create what you believe in everyone'

I find that accepting the apriori perfection of - lets call it existence - inclines the mind to total ease and freedom. 

Against this backdrop, the nervous system throws pain and thoughts to get us wrapped up in narrative.  Fucking evolution. 

I think I understand your method now Seth, correct me if I am wrong! 

You use this to build equanimity:

Then investigate, see and dispel illusions (Dependent Origination):
Contact-Feeling-Craving-Clinging-(Re)+Birth?

With Love & Mirth,
The Stupid Monk

Seth may well say something different, but I fairly certain he is saying:

Accept the conditions in this moment as perfected reality that needs no mental contrivance, with a relaxed and non-grasping/non-averse mind. This is liberation.

Watch as the mind continues to conjure thoughts and sensations that can bring us into conceptualized separateness, but maintain acceptance, and do not engage.

I am saying that it is all good dude.   All my neurotic worry and suffering and regret and fear and desire and and and and is just mud splattering on the windshield of my mind.  It doesnt matter, since I got nowhere and no reason to go. I know this to be true, despite all the effort I still seem to expend despertaely trying to wipe it clean. 

So - I think Stirling is pretty close, but when I am clear there is no agency in it.  I am not watching or accepting.  Here it is. 

Thank you Seth. Just to let you know that I have adopted your technique for walk-around mindfulness for awhile now and boy is it a happy life...

Love you really!

Right. Agree. Acceptance/watching is how this practice would look if there was a doer. Ultimately, there isn't - just another delusion.

That is nihilistic isn't it? Without mindfulness, how is it watched? Without having been watched, how can it be transcended? It would not be wrong to say that it is watched and accepted, just like in the seeing only the seen. Using exactly right grammar/vocabulary/semantics is problematic for communications and we can all start to stop using I/me/mine and try...

You say nihilism like it's a bad thing. Google gives me:

"the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless."

"extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence."

Seen from the perspective of nothing is separate/empty of separatness, life IS meaningless as a separate "self", as are religious and moral principles where agency and doership are seen to be illusory. Moreover, I'd say I'm quite sure that nothing has "real" existence in terms of any intrinsic nature. 

Guess I'm a nihilist?


As far as mindfulness:

Relative: "Self" witnesses/watches in mindfulness

Absolute: Frame of "self' as watcher is dropped and there is unity, or emptiness of self as separate.

As a "self", keep doing the watching. In the absolute, "you" have never been watching, and will never have transcended anything.

Even accepted is a thought, like there is a "you" to do the accepting. Just watch. 

This is a much better defintion of nihilism:

https://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/

That is vastly different than the Buddhist experience of compassion, not-self and emptiness.

More here on Quora about how Buddhism is not like nihilism:

https://www.quora.com/How-is-Buddhism-not-nihilism

What... you can't have fun with nihilism anymore? ;)

That WAS fun   

The big fly in the Nihilism ointment is This manifestness.  What else could you want? 

Exactly. Where there is ignorance of the nature of mind, there is nihilism. Where there is unity there is not.

A map for the progress of insight: 


1.  Shit I have all these problems
2.  If I just sit and suffer long enough, these problems will eventually go away. 
3.  These arent really my problems.  
4.  No problem

Maps are often tediously long, full of insular references, and not very pragmatic. This is short, funny, and to the point. We may disagree on semantics here and there, and I make no claim to your attainments, but that said nicely done.

Was the shift from 3 to 4 more of a gradual deepening of 3, or were there particular practises/experiments which helped it along?

I am just looking to get into the greeting card business. 

I aint claiming anything, but what has helped me most is to ground my experience in my physical body.   As my brain has adjusted from calling things "my feelings" to calling things "my nerves" it has been easier to move from a position in which the mind is fabricating a self that suffers to a position where the mind sees that it is just the product of meaningless ocurrence.   Hard to fabricate stories to worry about in that mode, but love is still there so it is a satisfying state of mind.   Nothing is happening and it is beautiful. 

*snip*

After a little more deliberation i'll just leave this alone, I don't mean to threadjack.  

Actually, I thought it was an interesting point and question.  I just havent had time to answer, went to see an amazing cuban singer. 

I use "my nerves" purposely as an alternative to just feelings because I can access that state from any state.  When I was trying to just let sensations be sensation with out an owner or meaning, I could get into those states deep in meditation, but couldnt access them with my walking around mind.  This lead me to a whiplash kind of existence where bliss would be followed by stress and it felt dark nighty and slow.  Once I settled on just labeling everything as my real physical nervous system, no matter what crazy stuff started playing in my mind, I could check in with my body and drain the swamp of meaning and am starting to be able to let go of the need for selves to experience stuff.  The goal, of course, is to always be rational and centered and happy and it turns out that if I accept that everything i experience is produced by this body, nothing can ever move me off center or force me to delusionally fabricate a character to play. 

I'm glad you didn't find it a distraction, sometimes the etiquette of posting in someone's journal thread can be a little murky. While you were listening to a cuban singer, I learned the intro to a song on the guitar. 

One of the main things I focused on a while back was translating on cushion skills to off cushion so that there would be less of that whiplash you mentioned. Since all is mind there's really no distinction between the two. I remember reading about a monk who thought he was completely enlightened for 20 years, but when he left his humble quiet mountain shack to speak with someone in the city he got flustered and emotional and realized his error. I don't want to be that guy lol, equanimity doesn't mean much if it falls apart when not sitting. Thanks for clarifying.

These are some thoughts I wrote recently in reply to someone else, please tell me whether they can fit in your perspective:

Until lately, I used to believe that there is an energetic source in the deepest part of our soul, that radiates love, like a bright Sun - people can experience it in certain states, and then they feel like everything is love. And I thought this is the reason why religions talk about all-loving God (they are describing this source). According to this model, every negative emotion is the result of contaminating this original love energy.

However, now I suspect something else. During the Dark night (or during mental illness), people have an equally convincing experience of everything being suffering, fear etc. And this is not a proof that there is some ultimate fear-center and that every positive feeling has its source in negative emotions.

So, wouldn’t it be much more accurate and scientific to say that there is an ultimate POTENTIAL to transform every emotion to love/happiness, etc.? Just as there is a potential to do the opposite. Psychological energy is, in its original state, neither positive nor negative. But, when a person eliminates certain unconscious psychological blockages (cravings), then all that suppressed energy comes to awareness and it automatically becomes transformed to love (emotional representation of craving-free and happy mind).

Would you agree?

I replied in the other thread.  My perspective has moved on some.  A better model, for me, is that love is what's left when the narratives of mind subside.  Since those narrative are just my imagination, love is all thats ever really here.  This is kind of a mystical new aging way of saying it, but it is strictly a rationalist point of view.  Call love being or mind or god or this, if you prefer. 

The process of enlightenment really is just the simple dropping of the delusion of a self.  It is that simple and it is not "supernatural" or a big achievement.  It is more like realizing the earth goes around the sun and not the other way around.  Nothing changes, but everything seems different. 

In the real world, when we look around we see bodies and brains doing things.  We imagine that there is a supernatural essence inside each body and in some kind of supernatural control of the brain.  Lets call these spirit drivers leprechauns.  We see and judge leprechauns inside of every other human and think we are leprechauns in control of our bodies and minds. 

The fundamental truth that upends everything is simply that leprechauns are not real.  We are actually just biological machines or bags of meat moving around for no particular reason.  That is the honest truth. 

All the stories and things of meaning that we as humans build our world out of are clearly based on the idea that leprechauns are real.  Dropping the delusion is insanely hard, both because we are so deeply conditioned to look at the world that way and because it feels like accepting the simple truth that leprechauns are fiction will somehow radically change us and we might lose some critically important posession like our minds, or love, or the path God wants us to follow or something. 

In reality, stuff has been happening just the way we understand it except absent the leprechaun bit.  Everything remains the same, but it is just occurring meaninglessly and no one is in control.  This world right here is just what it has always been and always will be and there is nothing in particular we have to do or change or be.  With out a leprechaun to believe in, the mind is ony left with This to identify with and so it does. 

All the nonsense about jewels and factors and maps and stuff, just boild down to this. 

It is interesting to see that as my mind lets go of stories about itself and others - I mean stops believing them to be true and important in some cosmic sense - the boundaries of the self naturally dissolve.  I really was just my anxiety. 

and all that anxiety was fear for the suffering of a leprechaun that never existed.  I am an idiot. 

If there are no leprechauns, why am I suffering?  That is the core problem because the experience of suffering requires a self.  Suffering being apparently manifest, a self must be as well.   In meditation I have been able to relax my grip on a particular reality enough to see how the system works and it feels like I could never believe in suffering again, but then facing a problem in day to day life - suffering is manifest again.  The key here has been that I have been hanging onto a self that loves my kids and my wife and has responsibilities.  I have known it was a character empty of real existence, but would not let go of identification with it because or the love I feel for my family.  Hanging onto this character has meant hanging on to the problems it faces - mostly nonsense about money. 

In meditation or on retreat I can let it go with no issue, but faced with all the triggers of its life the characters anxiety arises and if I am not mindful that anxiety is not read as a nervous system response but as ANXIETY and suddenly I am the character and am unable to concieve of not being it for some period of time.   I have been terrified that dropping identification with the character would drop my love for my family or my ability to be normal and present.  That turns out to be nonsense, there never has been a leprechaun in this system and the myth of Seth that I have held onto only serves to fuel anxiety.  

In order to do this project of letting go of self myths most folks go into isolation.  This is a good fucking idea.  Doing it in situ is really really hard, because everyone and everything is reiifying the myths all the time.  To try and solve this problem I have dropped the use of solipsitic practices - which provided direct experience of selflessness and what complete non aversion - or nirvana - feels like.   In its place I have used body mapping to identify all of my experience as nerves in the body rather than supernatural things like emotions and suffering.  This is infact how the physical system works so every experience of feeling can be mapped to the body - is the body. 

The big change lately has been that instead of calling what arises mind or nerves I have been able to start to call it meat.  Everything in life reiifies this concept if I am even a little mindful.  No matter what is happening, I am always meat.  A lion could eat what ever experience arises in the real world.  If everything that arises is really meat, there is nothing to be averse to.  So this path leads to complete awakening. It leads there because aversion and self myths are the samething.  No other, no problem.  No problem, no other. 

One useful tactic is to make sure I am not calling it my meat, thereby constructing a self.  Calling everything Peter's potroast seems to be effective. 

The hard part here (and believe me I TOTALLY get it) is the idea that "you" are going to let go of "your" selfing process with practices "you" do. All of this "you" and doing stuff are just story. There IS no story. There have to be separate people/things/etc. to have a story. So, are "you" (the story of self you perpetuate) in charge of what is happening if you are in a retreat, or surrounded by family, or meditating, or body mapping, or typing on the internet, or is there just witnessing these things - or one step further, no "self", no "witness" (a more subtle story) just "NOW" with no-one and no-thing happening? 

mu motherfucker. 


Thats my truest answer. 

In the 3-D world, this system is trying to really really let go all the way.  It knows with its entire mind that leprechauns are not real and that this is just happening meaninglessly.  As it is letting go of huge quantities of muscle tension all kinds deeply buried anxieties and states of mind emerge and the brain is building bridges for itself to drop delusional mind frames when it feels lost in one.  This is such a bridge. 

That is my rational answer.

I have all kinds of emotional and intuitive answers, but they are imagined and so I am just gonna let them go. 

Yeah! It's the shit!


I know it. For me it was just asking over and over, whenever I could feel that mental/physical tension, "what am "I" holding on to?" and letting it go. Over and over. It could be a lifetimes work - until time starts to break and become not-separate, but that's a whole other story.

Love your posts, as always. _/\_

I am gonna say Meat Motherfucker from now on.  Mu and meat are the same thing and it is hard to concieve of mu while riding the subway, but easy to be meat. 

Seems like I really am awakening.  The whole idea that I am a seperate soul with a mission and suffering is becoming so obviously not true that it doesnt arise that much anymore.  The field of experience that I used to call my "feelings" has been firmly fixed in the mind as "the body" and it just is quivering with out meaning.  As I start approaching really low levels of nervous tension, happiness is just the default mind state.  It is like being on the best vacation you have ever been on, kind of.   I can still get pulled in by things that trigger anxiety reactions, but the mind drops identification quicker and quicker.  I am not done, but I can see my house from hear. 

Life with the family is loving and spontaneous - the whole dropping of "me" has had no effect on my behavior other than making me relaxed and happy more of the time.  It really turns out that everything I have identified as Seth is really just a complex anxiety web and dropping the delusional belief in Seth the supernatural being has disengaged the gears on the nervous systems anxiety production algorythm.

We will see what happens.