Author: Abe_Dunkelheit
Forum: Dharma Overground Discussion Forum

Very interesting talk!

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-352976025435271169

Here, in this excellent talk, Venerable Bhante Vimalaramsi talks about the differences between Vipassana practice and his more recent discovery of what the Suttas teach directly with no interpretation. In 1999 he ended 20 years of Vipassana and decided that he still had not found "it". This after 22 hr/day retreats of up to 2 yrs in length with the most famous meditation teachers in the world. In Sri Lanka, a monk said throw out everything he has learned and go back and read the Suttas (Majjhima Nikaya, Samyutta Nikaya) and follow them exactly. There you will find what the Buddha taught, but you must read them with no preconceptions. In this talk to at the Indonesian Temple he explains what he found and his subsequent meditation practice.

Author: Abe_Dunkelheit

Notice especially at 47:40min

“When I was practicing vipassana the big thing they wanted me to understand was that everything is impermanent, everything is suffering, and everything is not self. When I started looking at the experience they said was Nibbana it was seeing impermanence, suffering, and not self three or four times in a row very very quickly and then you have this blackout. When you get out of this state then you have the reviewing of all the insight knowledges. When I started looking in the Suttas it only talked about attaining Nibbana through the understanding of Dependent Origination. So the end result is not the same.”

*

What Bhante Vimalaramsi suggests is that seeing The Three Characteristics does not lead to Nibbana (or only to a fake kind of Nibbana);

after 20 years studying vipassana meditation with Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw, U Pandita and many other Burmese monks, he was still unsatisfied and turned to the Suttas;

according to the Suttas only understanding the process of Dependent Origination leads to Nibbana!

I am not experienced enough yet; so this is somewhat above my head, but it is obvious that Bhante Vimalaramsi' faults the entire tradition & enlightenment understanding Daniel's book is based upon: "To really understand the Three Characteristics is to be enlightened." [Notice: the term 'dependent origination' does not appear in Daniels book; 'dependent arising' appears once (p. 309)]

So, what do the experts say?!

What does ultimately lead to Nibbana? Seeing the Three Characteristics or understanding Dependent Origination?!

It's the same thing, Abe, the very same thing from a different perspective.

Please keep it simple.

Abe,
Since I've actually read through the Majjhima Nikaya, and am about 70% into the Samyutta Nikaya, I feel qualified to offer the following comments:

1. The Buddha taught the Dhamma to many people of various backgrounds, levels of attainment, and interests. So the teachings come in several frameworks, each suited, I assume, for a class of recipients of the teaching. What we have in the suttas is a collection of ancient dhamma talks. And while the Buddha did not teach "with a closed fist", as the Theravadins like to say, neither did he have a "one size fits all" policy.

2. In the Samyutta Nikaya, the sections about dependent origination and the five clinging aggregates (where I've found the most detailed teachings on the three characteristics yer) are adjacent. The second discourse the Buddha ever held is traditionally believed to be the discourse on not-self, SN 22.59 (three translation on accesstoinsight, plus an audio version).

3. Abhidhamma is cool - it's the information from all the dhamma talks in the sutta pitaka, in tabular form, a huge map: I love maps. But the Abhidhamma also sucks for the same reason: all the contextual information is lost, and the form suggests a primarily intellectual approach. The Dhamma, in whatever form it's expressed, goes to your heart, not to your head. Maybe that's what the Venerable Vimalaramsi was expressing: the teachings on dependent origination touched his heart better than the teaching on the three characteristics: but I don't presume to speak for him.

Finally, I find Hokai's advice excellent: Keep it simple. I've found it best to pick one exposition of the Dhamma, and stick with it, explore it, practice it. (There's the fetter of sceptical doubt - the dithering attitude of "am I right? is this teacher right? what about that other school, are they right? what does that book say? ...")

Cheers,
Florian

Good points, Florian. I'm sorry for the too brief reply yesterday.

There's an old rivalry between yogic ("forest-dwelling") practitioners and scholastic ("city-dwelling") professionals, not unlike the tension between mystics and theologians in European history. Each have had extreme representatives in their midst, and surely still have, those that make their business to deny the teachings of the other school as unorthodox. Even if orthodoxy (along with orthopraxis) was the only measure of validity in spiritual teachings - which is, fortunately, not the case - to concentrate on the faults of what you're NOT teaching and/or practicing, says a lot in itself. Now, surely there is no such thing as a Buddhism without Dependent Origination/Arising (whether worldly/laukika, or transcendent/lokuttara), nor is there a Buddhism without an application of the Three Characteristics - plus "Nirvana is peace" as the fourth seal of Dharma - in this or that way (including their opposites of Self, Bliss, Permanence, and Purity as features of Nirvana according to Mahayana).

Dependent origination/arising/co-arising belongs to View, while Three Characteristics belong to Meditation, and these two should be practiced together. So, both are right, but only when applied together, and the same goes for patticca-samutpada and tilakkhana in the Theravada tradition.

Four seals of the View
All compounded things are impermanent.
All phenomena lack self-nature.
All dualistic experience is intrinsically painful.
Nirvana alone is peace, and is beyond concept.

Resource:
Mahanidana Sutta (on relation of three characteristics to dependent co-arising)
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.15.0.than.html

Author: Abe_Dunkelheit

Florian & Hokai,

many thanks for sharing your view & advice;

yet Hokai’s statement ["it is the very same thing from a different perspective"] does not ring true;

Bhante Vimalaramsi [BV] explicitly states Mindfulness the way the Buddha taught "is a bit different than 99% of the teachings found now."

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-628726703199491936

And of course, this implies that he teaches Mindfulness the way the Buddha taught, which would set him in opposition to 99% of the other Buddhist teachings found today!

*

As to the advice to keep things simple --- BV keeps it very simple indeed:

“With just this video instruction [Abe: 38min duration] you can attain all of the stages of practice. There is nothing else to know. Its that simple. The Buddha said that this practice is immediately effective. That means ‚weeks’ not years.“

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=6142842850607581601

*

Of course, one could easily dismiss what BV has to say *IF* he was not such an experienced & accomplished monk!

Author: Abe_Dunkelheit

As to BVs meditation based on the Satipatthana Sutta, it actually works quite well;

I can tell because I had already been doing something similar, when I started Taoist Yoga meditation some time ago;

the important step which BV claims has been lost on “99% of the [Buddhist] teachings found today” is the complete RELAXATION of the body during the in and out breath (rather than the focus on it);

so it is not an absorption meditation,

it therefore seems there is a difference, probably even a very fundamental difference,

the one b/w “body-centered” vs. “mind-centered” meditation;

compare with Esoteric Buddhism and Taoist Master Nan Huai-chin in Tao & Longevity (excellent book, by the way!), p. 22:

“The only way one can heal oneself is to RELAX mind and body as much as possible;”

yet

“Buddhist meditation methods generally suppose mental cultivation is sufficient; Taoist meditation methods, on the other hand, place great emphasis on physical changes.”

Taoists criticize Buddhists methods of showing only the cultivation of the mind and not of the body; and insists that cultivation of both mind and body is the genuine Tao.

“Whether one is Buddhist or Taoist, there is one question regarding meditation that should be asked: ‘Is there any method that neglects or abandons the physical body, the sensations, emotions, mental states or thoughts associated with it’”?

With the emphasis on the RELAXATION of the body, it may just be that BV rediscovered in the Satipatthana Sutta the missing link b/w Buddhist & Taoist meditation?!

As to Florian's remark ["The Buddha taught the Dhamma to many people of various backgrounds, levels of attainment, and interests."] --- Let’s assume the Buddha taught “body-centered” AND “mind-centered” meditations to different audiences; this would be fine IF the results were the same, but BV claims “the end result is not the same.”

Abe, your generalizations come across as a rather liberal exercise in logic. If BV indeed says, something "is a bit different than 99% of the teachings found now" how would that, as you say, "set him in opposition to 99% of the other Buddhist teachings found today"? Relaxation of the body, and I mean deep relaxation, is taught and preserved in most Buddhist schools of meditation. All Tibetan schools, most Ch'an, Son, and Zen lineages, Japanese esoteric Buddhist lineages, for sure. Others please fill in on Theravadin methods used today.

Again, your original question, which is right - vipassana vs the suttas - is quite off mark. There is no "vs", really, in this case as it concerns dependent origination and the three characteristics, though there is a "vs" in some other cases, like the meaning of mindfulness (p. sati), the importance of ordination, the fundamentalist approach to the "words of the Buddha himself", the orthodoxy of other Buddhist schools, methods, and teachings etc. etc.

Dear Abe,

Since you insist on the endless dogmas, theoretical debates, quotes of authorities and the like, then perhaps you should go back to the source material. I would check out the following Suttas and notice that they say very different things about practice: MN #1, 9, 10, 11, 22, 111, 112, 119, and 121. These should give you a sampling of various practices, emphases, and takes on meditation that the Buddha put forth. Even this very limited selection denotes a wide range of teachings, as has been noted above.

Having also slogged through the MN, I can tell you that it is a highly mixed bag on many fronts, of varying quality and clearly aimed at a wide range of audiences.

I can also tell you that the 3-4 moments of lucid comprehension ending with reality vanishing and re-appearing with review following is an accurate model of the moments around stream entry.

Abe: you are all over the place, and while you claim that you are not just a theoretician but also an avid practitioner, post after post screams otherwise. Thoughts on getting back to basic practices?

personally speaking, i dont think it would be useful to me to emphasise physical relaxation while sitting, since doing so it comes pretty naturally. in fact, i find that i get more out of doing quite the object - paying more attention to that (suffering) which i instinctively 'relax through' or 'relax into'.

concentration meditation isnt defined by the object used, but the way in which awareness is applied to the object. as such, 'the complete relaxation of the body' can be used as an object for gaining concentration.. and speaking from experience, its a great one, and is a natural gateway into experiencing the 3 characteristics.

some people tend to develop insight into the 3 characteristics before getting a taste of serious tranquility. other people get the tranquility first. really, i think BV found something that worked for him whereas what he was doing before didn't. his claim that 99% of buddhist teachings dont deliver what he's got - exactly what does he have that is different? and who else does he consider to be part of the correct 1%? mahasi? ajahn mun, ajahn cha? and if not them, nor any other, what is the result of his meditation that is different from - and superior to - theirs?

Abe,

Since you take critique well, I figured I would throw this at you and see if it is helpful.

Right now you seem to be putting one philosophy "against" another and letting them engage in a battle royale to see which "wins". You are also doing this with individual philosophical points and seeing which is "more true". And you are doing a lot of it!

It's worth considering an approach that allows for all of these approaches to have some degree of truth and some extent of application --- and seeing how that works for you in practice. If you can put all the pieces together in a way, you'll see a lot of the conflicts just aren't there.

Here's an example. (I don't know if it right, but maybe it will give you an idea about what I'm thinking about.)

When I read your post and the quote:

"seeing impermanence, suffering, and not self three or four times in a row very very quickly and then you have this blackout. When you get out of this state then you have the reviewing of all the insight knowledges. "

I immediately figured he was describing the dissatisfaction a pre-arhat would have with stages of enlightenment past stream entry. He's describing what Daniel and Mahasi Sayadaw talk about as the chain of experience that first occurs at the moment Stream Entry and continues to occur at fruition from that point onward.

So what Venerable Bhante Vimalaramsi is talking about is his dissatisfaction that the practice was not able to lead him to complete enlightement. But it's obvious that he is also periodically experiencing nothingness... Which is what many of us are still working toward!

...continued...

From Daniel's writing it's clear that the successive post- stream entry stages each have their own flavor of practice. At the end, there is a lot of giving up control that needs to occur. In contrast, the early stages seem to benefit from a degree of effort and diligence. So for example, one could hypothesize that BV was kicking ass in the early stages and experiencing Fruitions without a problem, but there continued to be a knot to untie that lead to becoming an arhat -- and that's what he could be talking about. Or something like that. If you think about what stage of enlightenment a teach might have, it also helps reconcile those that emphasize effort to their students, or isolated retreats, or awareness in everyday matters, etc. etc.

I'm not saying all of this from personal experience. It's all there in Daniel's wonderful book.

I can tell you are a smart guy Abe, so I'm saying all of this because I think you can do it. I'm hoping you have the a ha! moment where philosophically you can see how all of these views must play out as true at some time, based on an individuals experience and hang ups and combined with their stage of understanding. Once you get that, have a bit of FAITH in that and don't get distracted by red herrings. Then all that is left is practice, which is a harsh teacher but really the only one.

In good faith,

B.

Almost forgot:

My whole point in this is suggesting that you really use Daniels book as your base document -- not necessarily for your life, but for your discussions here. I think of it as the lingua franca of this realm. The price of admission is having spent the time really knowing that book well.

Again, it's worth taking everything you are reading "outside" and first cross walk it with what's in "Mastering...". Then post the sections which might still seem in conflict or the ones you have questions with.

Again, I'm saying this because you seem like a smart guy Abe, and I would have thought you wouldn't have been thrown off by the details of what BV was saying after you really read Daniel's book.

Please, would you expand on that?

That is, please expand on how one ought (not) to apply awareness.

Abe – the first link you posted does not work for me so I have not seen the actual talk you are referring to (video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-352976025435271169).

I spent some time last year with B.V. What I recall from the talks he gave is that he found that at the centers in Burma where he studied he found that there was a sense of irritability and tension among the practitioners there. After he left and started practicing based on his understanding of the Suttas, he came to feel that the tension he saw was the result of how the practice was being taught there (at the Burmese centers). Specifically, the intense concentration practices that he saw being taught created tension headaches and irritability. His approach has been to bring a sense of joy and openness back into the practice. This is my sense of what he is getting at – apologies if I have it wrong.

I have found his suggestions very helpful in my own practice. I think his approach is a good one. I disagree that 99% of Buddhism as it is taught now does not follow this approach. I believe that the problem is more in how westerners tend to have an intense almost frenetic approach to doing and achieving something and we bring this to the practice. So when a teacher tells us to relax into the practice we just don't pay attention. What B.V. is doing is making it very explicit by reminding people over and over to relax, release, be joyful, etc.

You might find the talks by Thanissaro Bhikkhu helpful:
http://www.dhammatalks.org/

“What does ultimately lead to Nibbana? Seeing the Three Characteristics or understanding Dependent Origination?”

It is quite possible to see the 3 Characteristics without understanding Dependent Origination. It is similar to seeing that 'my home' is built out of nothing but nails, rebar, cement, pieces of wood, etc. but not understanding clearly the process of how it is all coming together to create 'my home'. Or a software example: being able to see that the windows, images, programs on my computer are composed of nothing but 1's and 0's but not understanding the process of how all that comes together to form the seemingly 'real' objects that I see on the screen.

Seems to me that for awakening to occur one needs to see the 3 characteristics - but one does not need to understand D.O. (but one will benefit greatly by doing so)

“...arahants don't need to know much. They simply have to develop their minds to be clear about the five aggregates and to penetrate dependent co-arising (paticca samuppada). That's when they can stop fabricating, stop searching, stop all motions of the mind. Right there is where everything ends. All that remains is pure, clean, bright — great emptiness, enormously empty." - Ajaan Dune Atulo
(http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/dune/giftsheleft.html)

sorry joriki, im not sure i understand your question clearly. i'll try to answer anyway:

concentration meditation for its own sake becomes stronger if i ignore the 3 characteristics and have as solid a focus on the object as possible, with the key word here being 'solid'. solid like fixed, directed, one-pointed, fused, unwavering, etc. its got a really different feel from when i do insight practice, which is usually highly unstable, flickering, uncertain, often with a variety of objects, etc.

so often when i use the bodily relaxation as a kind of jumpstart for insight practice, i'm sort of doing a combination of the two until my mind becomes calm and the 3 characteristics become really prominent then i forget about the relaxation and just go with the characteristics.

hope that helps..