Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

Martin Potter, modified 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 6:13 AM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 6:13 AM

Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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Forum: Dharma Overground Discussion Forum


In the thread 'What is an Arahat', Kenneth said that "Experientially, [there is] not much [of a relationship between primordial awareness and fruition]. Fruition is total cessation of the mind/body process. Subjectively, it's very much like being asleep. Primordial awareness is pure awakeness."

In the Revised Four Path Model in Daniel's book, he says that Third Path is when the practitioner is able to see emptiness in real-time, is he talking about primordial awareness here? Is Daniel using the word emptiness to refer to both cessation and primordial awareness (as they are both empty of a seperate self, but different states?)

Thanks
- Martin
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 12:40 PM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 12:40 PM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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I can only speak to my interpretation, but I do believe that primordial awareness as they speak of it is different from fruition or emptiness. One thing that complicates this is that emptiness is sometimes used synonymously with fruition and in other rather ambiguous ways. I get the feeling that primordial awareness is a pointer at the stage of "being as being" that only the arahat has access to, whereas fruition is attainable by anyone stream entry or above, and "emptiness in real time" is somewhere late in the path.

That said, primordial awareness and "seeing emptiness" are most likely different in this context, as I "see emptiness" quite easily but Daniel has implicitly alluded that I am not able to see "primordial wareness/the ground of being."

Hope that helps.
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tarin greco, modified 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 3:59 PM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 3:59 PM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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i agree with yabaxoule, primordial awareness is clearly different from seeing emptiness. i dont think that arahants have exclusive access to primordial awareness however (nor even that only path-winners do). but unlike yabaxoule, i think that primordial awareness is 'being as being' itself.. unless by that term he means some kind of 'non-being as non-being' (haha), which i can only conceptualise as maybe being possible in some bizarre way but have never experienced for myself.

(cont.)
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tarin greco, modified 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 4:01 PM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 4:01 PM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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but i say that i know what primordial awareness is even though im not an arahant (im a sakadagami), and furthermore, i have known what this is since before getting first path*. but it was getting first path, and the few days after, that made it clear to me that that's what it is, and that i should no-dog (kenneth's term for really seeing emptiness in an increasingly inclusive way) my way there as much as i can. primordial awareness (or no-stick as i'd like to call it), as i understand it, is different from seeing emptiness because of the total absence of the this-that split, and with that, the witnesser or the 'i am'.. the total absence of which is only implied (however clearly) in seeing emptiness (or no-dog). i also know a couple pre-stream-entry people that have experienced no-stick and it has left a tremendous impact on them as well. both of them seem to have this crazy deep understanding of emptiness in real-time too, like it's been deeply integrated into their lives, without having gotten path.

i think arahants probably have better access to no-dog and probably way better access to no-stick (primordial awareness) than anyone else because they have less obfuscating shit to deal with and get sidetracked by. its easier for them to get in and stay in no-dog (because nothing else left to be fooled by), and easier for them to shift from no-dog to no-stick and not shift back so soon (because a lot less habitual, residual clinging left).

i want to make a further distinction here, between seeing emptiness and no-dog.. qualifying that sometimes there doesnt seem to be a difference to me, sometimes there seems to be a world of difference. anyway, i would say no-dog is seeing emptiness in the heart too (straight through the centre), if that makes sense to anyone else.

any arahants wanna jump in?

(*but not before crossing the a&p for the first time, i dont think.. actually i dont know)
Trent S H, modified 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 4:55 PM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 4:55 PM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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Hmm, well, if the case is that Tarin is correct on what the term implies, then I would agree with him. I suppose it all comes down to shared concepts, which was the aim of the post in the first place; so you'll probably need the two writers' comments to really hit at what they are getting at!
Eric Calhoun, modified 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 5:37 PM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 5:37 PM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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I would split off emptiness from Fruition vs Primordial Awareness (non-dual). I really liked Kenneth's analogy that Fruition has an "asleep" quality, and Primordial Awareness has an "awake" quality. I think they both express different aspects of emptiness.
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 8:05 PM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/25/09 8:05 PM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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Aight, I'll jump in.

I do use the word "emptiness" loosely to refer to both Fruition and seeing things as they are, and this probably needs some revision. I fall into the same basic trap as the original dudes did with Nirvana, where they used it both to describe Fruition and to describe Arahatship. It is the same basic categorical ambiguity. The relationship between these is an age-old question, and is basically just one of categorization.

As to seeing "emptiness" in real-time, this is what anagamis do particularly well, especially those who have been them for a while, and what is means is that they can notice that sensations are just where they are, doing just what they do, on their own, not observed, not as object, but simply as manifesting transience. This comes as much from having clearly penetrated and understood the sensations that seemed to make up "subject" as it does about anything to do with "object". However, there are still processes that are somewhat artificially dualistic, distorted, subject-objecty, or however you want to put it.

As to primordial awareness, it actually becomes something of an extraneous concept at the end, as finally there is "in the seeing just the seen, in the hearing just the heard, in the feeling just the felt, etc.", and things being that simple, that direct, that untangled, is what makes the difference, and you can call it what you like.

Fruition is when reality vanishes in very specifically complete way and and then reappears. Primordial awareness is realized when one realizes there is no such thing as primordial awareness that is different from the field of transient manifestation, though there are various aspects of that understanding that can become the focus of attention, which is to say present themselves, and various linguistic ways to talk about this, some of which are clearly more ambiguous than others.
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triple think, modified 15 Years ago at 2/26/09 1:08 AM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/26/09 1:08 AM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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I'm going to toss my two cents in because the final prize eludes me or else I would call it a buck and just go for that cup of coffee. As I see this the primordial awareness is one and the same as the neither percipient nor non-percipient state, fully aware with no identifier. The unboundedness of this quality or condition is revealed in its negation of identifiers in the next proximate state as nothingness, and then in innumerable identifiers in both infinite consciousness and infinite space. Cessation is the absence of that primordial consciousness and all else. The two are proximate not vs.. Unmanifest and Emergent. Emptiness is...out from there...

Cessation...Awareness...Emptiness
Or perhaps
Cessation. .Awareness...Nothingness.Emptiness. And in that emptiness maybe the 10,000 things, as Lao Tzu might say.

Would love to be corrected if I'm wrong. Anyone?
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triple think, modified 15 Years ago at 2/26/09 1:53 AM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/26/09 1:53 AM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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I like that too but asleep doesn't really capture it, sleep is more like nothingness but that is a great way to sleep like a rock, not the same effect though. I would think long nonabiding in absolute rest would be very unique.

Would anyone consider Full Filled or max contentment instead of asleep?
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 15 Years ago at 2/26/09 3:53 AM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/26/09 3:53 AM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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Beware the seduction of the formless realms. They are very enticing. It is not that they do not convey something important, it is not that they don't write something very good and useful on the mind, and it is not that they don't provide some hints about things, but in the end they are conditioned. I actually highly recommend them to anagamis who are working on finishing things up, but not because they contain some truth that more ordinary mind states do not, as in the end, one has to find some aspect of things that is present at all times, in the most ordinary places and objects, something that was always true, something unconditioned, and, as all is transient, it ends up being something that is not bound up in the specific qualities.

The anagami is easily lead astray in various directions. They long for various artificial relationships between the ultimate and relative, with some of these being along the lines of:
-they want emptiness to be some transcendent superspace in which they rest untouched by phenomena
-they want emptiness to be something like the transcendence of the formless realms
-they want emptiness to be the complete disappearance of experience that somehow happens in realtime
-they want emptiness to be like some subtle other dimension that gives them a break from reality
-they want to go into Fruition and never come out
-they want emptiness to be some extra light or radiance or quality that gets added onto phenomena that somehow makes them better or more pleasant

These are all subtle or gross forms of aversion, desire, and ignorance. In the end, this is it, but there is some very real, straightforward, untangling of subject-object at its core that reveals why the dreams that the formless realms create and the paradoxical escape dreams that anagamis can fall into are not a realistic refuge, and also reveals something very simple about why the Buddha talked a lot about suffering.
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triple think, modified 15 Years ago at 2/26/09 4:35 AM
Created 15 Years ago at 2/26/09 4:35 AM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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Yes thank you, excellent, more circular alleyways, an educated ignorance, very, very well put. It is at best a lesser suffering but suffering no less so. I can better track the desires driving such views when I note the suffering therein.

This appears key "one has to find some aspect of things that is present at all times".

It can take some time to distinguish the desirability of cessation from the desire for cessation and so on. Much appreciated. Might one in some cases sense such an ignorance as 'alien' and the suffering as, I don't know, a result of a desire to know an otherness? An otherness than this? In these sorts of subtle non-accepting delusions or compulsive illusions?

If there is one overall consistency so far in both life and on the path for me there is an ironic quality of continually encountering new ways in which to be deceived. Would it be a safe bet to hope that for the Arahat this searching within the many senses of 'somehow' being blinded is no longer arising or persisting in any way?
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Wet Paint, modified 14 Years ago at 6/14/09 12:13 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/14/09 12:13 PM

RE: Fruition, emptiness and primordial awareness

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Author: bboyYen

Wait so is fruition the equivalent of being unconscious or dead at least in the mind?

Kind of like the way an atheist would think about someone at dying, is fruition the equivalent of being dead?

Or the equivalent of those unconscious devas in the brahma or form realm?

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