Arhat Marga Arhat Phal - Notes for a friend - Part 1 - Discussion
Note: I have copy pasted this from a reddit post I wrote today, the formatting as well as links might have gone for a toss. I will check it and correct it later
Introduction
Anagami!! Congratulations
The day you attained to Shrotapanna was the day that you were enlightened. You saw the entire elephant on that day. What remained after that was basically a clean up job. Your house was messy and there was darkness and you were bumbling around your house stubbing your toe everywhere. On that fortuitous day the lights were turned on for a brief moment and you saw all the mess in its full glory. Had you the depth of attentional stability and unification of mind, that day all of the mess could have potentially gotten cleaned up, all 10 fetters ... gone! But that was not to be. But fortunately you kept practicing. So the lights stayed on.You could have reached out to poets, philosophers, magicians, wizards, priests, the religious, the mystical, the spiritualists ..... but you reached out to me. You reached out to someone who takes the view of a home appliance repairman, technician, watchmaker, architect, engineer when it comes to awakening practice. You could have reached out to a sage, a supportive figure whispering ancient wisdom in your ears. But you reached out to me. A wartime consiglieri . A Genco Abbandando instead of a Neem Karoli Baba And personally I think you made a good decision.Now for the duration of reading this post, you will have to set aside any 'ism' and stop being any kind of an 'ist'. Hinduism, Daoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity, Judaism, Jainism ..... just chuck it all out. There is no need to prostrate or genuflect in front of an image of the cowherd from Dwarka, the carpenter from Nazareth, or the crown prince of the shakyans. Because you see, the day when you started meditating ... you declared war!! War on the defilements!!!!! And that brings you in the ambit of 'Dharma' and not in the ambit of religion or philosophy. This war isn't fought on the back of faith, its fought on the back of skill, technique, knowledge, wisdom and sheer cussedness.
A broad discussion of the project so far and what lies ahead
The day you tasted nibbana for the first time, was the day you were fully awakened ... momentarily. 'The mind' experientially understood everything it needs to understand in order to completely finish this project. You basically understood the entire subject and now that understanding has to be deepened.
The attainment of 4th path: 1st is all about understanding that experience is unreliable - so we drop the very expectation of reliability 3rd (and 2nd) is all about understanding that experience if lusted after or hated upon - to compulsively chase sukha vedana or avoid dukkha vedana - leads to dukkha (and thus dukkha vedana) - So we drop our crusade of creating sukha for ourselves - stop being greedy and hateful. 4th is all about understanding that the claim of ownership leads to the creation of the owner. As long as there is a owner, the owner will have nads and can be kicked in the nads - so we drop our claim of ownership on everything and thus we fully embrace anatmaOn 4th path we work in the way using the rubrics I will explain in the post to follow. In my experience 4th path is a fuckton of work. But the work is towards - 'not doing' we have to keep working on withdrawing the claim of ownership. Letting it get established again. Seeing the consequences. Ownership, drop ownership, ownership, drop ownership, ownership, drop ownership. Familiarize with ownership. Familiarize with dropping ownership. Juxtapose ownership with dropping ownership. See the precents and consequents of ownership and the dropping of ownership. Again, and again, and again, and again, and again ...... and again.This is a lot of work for the perceptual mind - the perceptual mind has to scrutinize conscious experience and how it is constructed and we have to learn to soothe the heart completely - to completely stop affective investment in what we see in perception - thus the 5 higher fetters drop away - because they are deprived the fuel they need to survive - it is hard work. The Yang and the Yin working together. Grab hold of objects ... penetrate them ... if you must ... but soothe the heart, relax the heart, withdraw the claim of ownership while 'penetrating'. This is supposed to be vipashyana its not supposed to be a viking raid. Conversely there's a lot of technique based doing to be done in order to learn how to 'not do'. This is supposed to be vipashyana its not a slumber party. Middle way baby.
Some necessary theory
Smriti
Smriti in Sanskrit (Sati in Magadhi Prakrit) is often translated as mindfulness. Its application in practice is better represented by translating it as memory/ short term working memory/ remembrance/ recollection. Smriti has multiple roles to play in meditation practice.
Smriti as short term working memory
In some ways we use the faculty of memory in order to hold ongoing direct experience of our meditation object in memory - as it happens. We 'remember' our meditation object. In case our meditation object is specifically defined, like the breath then we establish smriti or mindfulness using the breath as a device. Keeping the breath in mind would mean to keep the breath as it is happening in short term working memory. We continuously remember the breath, the experience of the breath ... now ... and now ... and now ... and now ... and now ... and now ... and now ....If we were to think of a model of conscious experience involving and supported by a mode of receiving data - which is broad and undirected - as awareness, within which we can take an increased interest in a particular aspect of conscious experience thus creating a subset of the overall experience which is attended to in greater granularity and detail .... then we can call it attention. That which we pay attention to if we remember it as it happens, hold and release from short term working memory that subset of experience, releasing the moment gone by and holding the moment as it is happening then we can say that we have established mindfulness on that subset of experience. Mindfulness once established thus is not confined to the subset of experience you used as a device to warm up the engine.And it isn't as simple as being aware - we are aware all the time. We receive data from our sensory environment all the time. But we aren't intentionally mindful all the time. This project requires us to be intentionally mindful.
Smriti as memory
It is not enough to be mindful of our meditation object. In our memory has to be available the very purpose of why we are meditating, why we are doing this practice. What is the objective of this practice, what is the goal of this practice. What is the technique we are following or the algorithm that we are executing. In this application smriti serves us in the form of the memory of our meditation instructions memorized and made available on demand. This project also involves the memory of the outcomes of executing the algorithm itself. Formal practice done in specified planned durations has to spill over on to daily life.A point has to come where our entire life becomes our practice. What we learn on the cushion, what we learn in daily life has to become available to us as we go about living moment to moment in our lives. To give an illustration - we cultivated calmness yesterday, we have to remember what calmness is and what it feels like, we get into a road rage incident, where we objectified our opponent as 'the enemy' and we suffered the consequences in our minds as well as the real world consequences of social friction, legality, making an enemy rather than a friend and adversary. This entire scenario right from how calmness comes about, how it is evaporates when mental positions of adversariness get created and how it feels shitty to make enemies where a smile and a polite word could have resulted in better outcomes - social as well as mental. All of this needs to be remembered. This is also smriti in action. And in this sense we are now in the domain of Sila or ethics - which is a topic for a separate discussion
Samprajanya
The best explanation of what samprajanya is comes from a brilliant book by an absolutely outstandingly brilliant meditation teacher - whose name we cannot mention because he got a bit naughty teehee .... Sheer Utter Genius! Sadhu! Sage!Think of the flow of conscious experience as carrying data packets. Some of those data packets are a narration of the story as it unfolds - or binding moments of consciousness. In daily life binding moments of consciousness works in attention creating a narrative of what we see - an oblong shape, flappy flappy flappy, blue blue blue all around - becomes a kingfisher bird flying across a clear blue sky. In practice we train ourself to recognize and encourage binding moments of consciousness in awareness, particular introspective awareness. Its not that they don't exist, we just want more of them. This leads to the creation of the meaning based non verbal narration of a fictitious but very convenient entity called 'the mind' .... 'I' am paying attention to the breath and 'the mind' is agitated, 'the mind' is excited, 'the mind' is relaxed, 'the mind' is horny, 'the mind' wants to smash some dakinis. This is Metacognitive Introspective Awareness - this comes about through deliberate intentional training. This is Samprajanya.Smriti-Samprajanya - Memory/short term working memory coupled with metacognitive introspective awareness as we meditate .... is the name of the game!!
The Dharma (singular)
The technique and the hypothesis that the technique is trying to prove together is the Dharma.
Hypothesis: I feel like shit because of something called Dukkha. And it isn't what I think it is.
Technique: Place my attention on my left butt cheek, and very very carefully observe my left butt cheek for a defined duration - lets say 1.5 hours, simply refusing to stop. ..... Yes ... I can now see what dukkha is!! .. I have developed Dharma Drishti.
Hypothesis: Dukkha exists because of ignorance of anatma. With ignorance of anatma dispelled .... NO MORE DUKKHAAAAA!!!! .... Arrrrrrggggghhh Kundaliniiiiii .... lets get started shall we?
Technique: Place my attention on my left butt cheek and very very carefully observe that attention moves ... on its own and when it stabilizes clarity of knowing increases and one can see the very very subtle wobble of attention. Perfectly stable attention is a myth. Attentional control is a myth. It isn't my attention and it isn't my butt cheek either lol ... also ... it isn't 'my' dukkha.
This is the Dharma or a small representative sample of it. For some people I speculate that its enough and those hypothetical 'some people' are very very talented and can actually go all the way and get to Anuttara Samyak Sam-Bodhi. But for the rest of us, we need more Dhamma ... otherwise we end up in Anuttara Samyak Sam-Stupidity. The Dharma whether in its concise form or its detailed form is basically a hypothesis (or a set of hypotheses) and very simple (or elaborate) techniques that have to be executed with military precision in order to test those hypotheses. In the absence of a hypothesis and in the absence of techniques .... one might just lazily languish getting absolutely nowhere.We establish mindfulness on the Dharma. We remember the hypothesis and we remember the technique.
The dharmas (plural)
If I were to sit under an apple tree and an apple were to land on my noggin, I would probably curse under my breath and move. But maybe I wont move because I am too lazy and I have a sense of the improbability of the event. But some geniuses ... they immediately grok the dharma of gravity. If multiple apples were to land on my head, day in and day out and if I were tremendously interested in what was happening, its possible ... though not likely that I too may understand 'gravity'. Now what is gravity really - can you touch it, can you feel it, can you smell it, can you taste it, can you intuit it in the absence of the tree and the apple ... it has no existence of its own. It has no phenomenology. It is basically pattern recognition to which we give the name gravity as a cognitive shortcut. This 'pattern recognition' is also an object and with smriti-samprajanya is now accessible. We can pay attention to the dhamma or gravity, we can be mindful of it, learn it, and then plan how to lob a missile into the air so that it lands with great precision on the capital of an enemy nation. An understanding of the dharma of gravity helps us get shit done!Anityata, Dukkha, Anatma, Shunyata, Idampratyata, Pratitya Samutpada, Pancha Upadana Skandha, etc etc etc .... these are all dharmas .... Patterns that can be seen, we learn to see them, we learn to recognize them, we name them, we build familiarity with them ...... so that we bring about transformation. We learn about gravity so that we dodge apples falling out of trees and pianos falling out of windows. We learn about the dharmas so that .... No More Dukkha!!!For that to happen as the dharmas arise in our awareness, we establish mindfulness of them. We remember the patterns. Remember them as they arise in the mind. With objects from the 3 foundations of mindfulness bumping into each other or tumbling around on their own arises pattern recognition. We hold this recognition of patterns in short term working memory so that they get encoded and burnt into the mind.
The importance of Dharma - The hypotheses and the techniques
About Bahiya Darucariya:
Bahiya in many interpretations has an origin story that is very weird. A guy who got ship wrecked, wrapped himself with the bark of a tree and just randomly yeeted himself into the awakening project. It is an incorrect origin story. The cult / sect of the bark cloth used to be a small but pretty established and socially supported group of spiritual practitioners based on the western coast of India. somewhere around modern day Nalasopara in the outskirts of Mumbai. The operating practice of this sect was: In the seeing there is an unseen seer - locate him. In the hearing there is an unheard hearer - find him. In the thinking there is an uncognized thinker - hunt him out. In doing so you will find your true self. This is the foundational principle of the Brihadaranyak Upanishad.When Bahiya went to meet Sid. One good hard look at him and the trappings of his sect in terms of his garb, his hair, his introduction of who he was, was enough to tell Sid what precisely Bahiya's working hypothesis was. This has nothing to do with some magical intuition but in fact speaks volumes about Sid and his exposure to spirituality and the various working hypotheses that existed regarding soteriology in the Indian subcontinent. The man wasn't just familiar with Bahiya's sect but was also conversant with their practices. Bahiya was essentially working with a particular kind of practice that involved a positive hypothesis regarding finding a 'self'. Despite every evidence to the contrary that Bahiya must have collected in his study of the mechanisms of perception and apperception, Bahiya was simply adamantly refusing to accept the absence of proof as proof of absence. Which by the way is a very good thing to do if you are a scientist. If you were an astrophysicist and through extending existing theories and building mathematical models around them, you predict the presence of black holes - and then for decades there is no evidence to be found - It is a good idea to persevere in your search. It gets you a Nobel!But if in soteriology one's hypothesis is that one should shove a thumb in one's mouth and shove the other one in one's rear and jump up and down in the air 1000 times everyday - one would find Santa Claus and by his grace, one would be free! Chances are one would spend an entire life time looking for Santa Claus and not find him and perhaps even refuse to give up this data collection because ... Hey ... Black holes!Sid took one look at this guy and essentially flipped his hypothesis. From a positive hypothesis he flipped it to a negative hypothesis. Bahiya had basically spent his entire adult life looking, closely scrutinizing, deep diving into each and every aspect of conscious experience. A quick rapid scrutiny - once more - using a flipped hypothesis and all the blocks came together in Bahiya's mind. Like a game of tetris where we play patiently till that one particular perfectly shaped block comes along - and we win! For Bahiya that tetris block was one single elegant flipping of the hypothesis by The Blessed One.This scrutiny of conscious experience requires a deconstruction from which we learn that absolutely nothing that we deconstructed .... absolutely nothing ... contains a little green man pulling the levers! Once done, once this becomes knowledge and the tube light of the mind blinks slowly and lights up ... we drop the effort so that the mind can construct the self ..... again. Without having a solid sense of self you will not be able to navigate your living room ... let alone type on a laptop and write a message on social media. Any notions that float around people's noggins - there is no self - I am forever dissolved .... aaaaahhhhhh ... are just simply notions. That lighting of the tube light is so fucking dramatic that it has forever changed deeply held mental models that condition the way we experience our lives. This radical changing of mental models has only and only one symptom ..... one that lasts ... one we get to keep ... The end of suffering!!This! Right here! in the story of Bahiya the practitioner of the Brihadaranyak Upanishad ... lies the importance of having a really really sexy hypothesis !!! And this hypothesis cannot be verified unless one has even sexier techniques at their disposal.
Sanyojana
Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed.
3 fell off and bumped their head.
Mama called the Arhat and the Arhat said ... No more monkeys jumping on the bed
Seven little monkeys jumping on the bed.
2 fell off and bumped their head.
Mama called the Arhat and the Arhat said .... No more monkeys jumping on the bed
Now Capo ... there are 5 left and they are really really strong adversaries. You have fought and won against the Tattaglias now its as if you are going to go up against Hyman Roth. 5 Hyman Roths! Fuck even thinking about it makes me weary.
You will need a dossier on each one of them before you go to the mats. Please refer to this.
Prerequisites
There's a whole host of techniques that you need in your arsenal. Everything that you have practiced in order to get to anagami needs to be very very current. You have to refresh your smriti. Now you haven't practiced in accordance with The Awakening Project. The Awakening Project is deeply inspired by Steven Procter (MIDL) and by John Yates (The Mind Illuminated). It is is also deeply inspired by Uncle Sid (selected works) and Uncle Shariputra (selected works) . Here below I am writing about the protocols of the Awakening Project that one would typically work with to get to Anagami. Keep all these skills alive
Sankalpa
Form a deep desire, a pure and true wish that you do not want any of the Dnyans/nanas from the previous path particularly the fruitions from the previous paths. I am assuming of course that you have experienced those fruitions many times now and are satisfied with those experiences in the past and have now started noticing that they show up as distractions. That traversing of the same territory is a mix of conceptual knowledge and experiential habit. You absolutely have to break that habit! The Tattaglias are already dealt with, there is no need to keep reliving your glory .... move on Capo! Every time you practice, form this sankalpa hold it deeply in the Citta. Program the mind. When the mind starts to traverse the same territory, you will know and you will straight up reject it.
Techniques for Shrotapanna Marg Shrotapanna Phal
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Techniques for Anagami Marg Anagami Phal
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Using a meditation log
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Sila
My view regarding sila is that that sila is not 'rules', the practice of sila is as experiential as the practice of Shamatha Bhavana or of Vipashyana Bhavana. And if one approaches it as a rigorous practice of learning about the mind then it becomes an insight practice as well as a Sila Bhavana practice. towards that objective in my own practice I have approached it in the following way and often recommend it to people while knowing that such an approach may not appeal to everyone. Build some samadhi using meditation techniques and the objective is not just to build samadhi but to fully experience it and fuckin ... remember what it means to have samadhi. This doesn't have to be a very high grade of samadhi, but needs to have enough of a difference so that the mind remembers what it means to be calm, collected, tranquil, centered, clear, energetic. Induce this using concentration practice. As you go about your day, your week, your month .... just simply use that samadhi as a canary in a coal mine, or as a barometer ... to see the value of your own views, attitudes, thoughts, speech and actions. Once you frame the practice of sila like this then vichikitsa (or perverted problem solving) does not arise. One doesn't spend too much time hassling one's self about silly things like eating meat or drinking alcohol or killing mosquitos. Do what you have always done and let the practice make the adjustments to behavior (internal and external)
Brahmaviharas
Link
Pratyavekhshana
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Doing the Jhanas and using them for vipashyana bhavana
Link, Link, Link
The theoretical paradigm and the techniques / algorithms that take one to Arhatship will follow in the second part to this post. Link (to be updated).
Introduction
Anagami!! Congratulations
The day you attained to Shrotapanna was the day that you were enlightened. You saw the entire elephant on that day. What remained after that was basically a clean up job. Your house was messy and there was darkness and you were bumbling around your house stubbing your toe everywhere. On that fortuitous day the lights were turned on for a brief moment and you saw all the mess in its full glory. Had you the depth of attentional stability and unification of mind, that day all of the mess could have potentially gotten cleaned up, all 10 fetters ... gone! But that was not to be. But fortunately you kept practicing. So the lights stayed on.You could have reached out to poets, philosophers, magicians, wizards, priests, the religious, the mystical, the spiritualists ..... but you reached out to me. You reached out to someone who takes the view of a home appliance repairman, technician, watchmaker, architect, engineer when it comes to awakening practice. You could have reached out to a sage, a supportive figure whispering ancient wisdom in your ears. But you reached out to me. A wartime consiglieri . A Genco Abbandando instead of a Neem Karoli Baba And personally I think you made a good decision.Now for the duration of reading this post, you will have to set aside any 'ism' and stop being any kind of an 'ist'. Hinduism, Daoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity, Judaism, Jainism ..... just chuck it all out. There is no need to prostrate or genuflect in front of an image of the cowherd from Dwarka, the carpenter from Nazareth, or the crown prince of the shakyans. Because you see, the day when you started meditating ... you declared war!! War on the defilements!!!!! And that brings you in the ambit of 'Dharma' and not in the ambit of religion or philosophy. This war isn't fought on the back of faith, its fought on the back of skill, technique, knowledge, wisdom and sheer cussedness.A broad discussion of the project so far and what lies ahead
The day you tasted nibbana for the first time, was the day you were fully awakened ... momentarily. 'The mind' experientially understood everything it needs to understand in order to completely finish this project. You basically understood the entire subject and now that understanding has to be deepened.
- Shunyata / Emptiness - This is the correction of a perceptive distortion. That which is perceived is distorted and largely abstracted to build a world of things and meaning attached to those things - to live within - a construct. Everything experienced is a construct, which in turn come about through prior 'learnt' constructs that work with the raw material that comes in through the 6 senses on an ongoing basis. Ordinarily, we perceive solidity, we perceive meaning existing in and as part of objects - but actually objects are constructs of the mind, so are meanings that are imputed into the objects - they are also constructs of the mind. This correction of perception comes about through tracking change - things change, things aren't permanent, they come into existence and dive back into non existence. Things as experienced have a life cycle. The tree in the forest - does it exist - we don't know - but the tree comes into existence as far as 'we' are concerned only when form strikes eye consciousness and multiple layers of abstraction and meaning is layered on top of it. A perturbation in awareness thus finally becomes a 'tree'. A tree isn't really a tree until the mind turns it into a tree. A realization of this is Shunyata. This realization does not come through mentally masturbating about chairs or chariots. It comes about through tracking change, impermanence. This tracking requires Upasana or being an upasak. This has nothing whatsoever to do with how many women you sleep with ... or don't ... or how many animals you slaughter in the abattoir you work in ... or don't. Upasana means to 'track' or to 'be with'. To do kayanupassana, vedananupassana, cittanupassana and dhammanupassana. On gaining the insight into Shunyata one gets a lot of temporary but fake relief from suffering. One feels WOW!! .. my experience is constructed, including the horribleness that I feel. But you see dukkha hasn't gone anywhere. Within your constructed experience lies constructed dukkha and simply seeing/knowing/understanding that it is constructed, standalone, is neither here nor there. Your experience was always constructed, but because now you know it, you know that there is some say and some play in this construct. Some 'rules' of this construct and construction process can be bent, others can be broken.
- Anityata / Unreliability - This is the illumination of an affective distortion. The stuffing of the heart where it doesn't belong. The heart-mind or citta seeks reliability, it is nowhere to be found in conscious experience - which as far as the mind is concerned is the entirety of the universe. This is an expression of the movement of the Citta - the heart-mind - and it comes about through tracking vedana. . The insight into Anityata is about seeing/knowing/understanding this affective distortion. Affect deeply entangled with the expectation of reliability. On encountering Anityata, basically your nuts leap into your mouth
Anityata is often mistranslated as impermanence. Contextually, it means unreliability. We cannot rely on anything because things have a lifecycle, they are constructed and they have no inherent meaning. I love my children and want them to succeed in life. 'I' is a construct, 'children' is a construct, 'love' is a construct, 'success' is a construct, 'life' is a construct. To stuff the heart into this construct is a result of not seeing/knowing/understanding that this is a very abstract construct. Not seeing/knowing/understanding that this construct cannot be relied upon. All of its elements as well as the construct as a whole is put together, assembled, collapses, assembled again, collapses, assembled again, collapses, assembled again, collapses, assembled again, collapses, assembled again .... ad infinitum. It is totally unreliable. Sabbe sankhara anicca. All constructs are unreliable. The insight into Anityata brilliantly illuminates this affective distortion - Dukkha / suffering - This is the correction of the affective distortion illuminated above. unreliability of conscious experience meets some very specific ways in which the mind meets its objects - the grips of the mind - expectation, dislike, rejection, separation - this is how dukkha comes about . An expression of these grips of the mind is the affective results of Fear, Misery, Disgust and Desperation ... to get out! This insight is all about developing an understanding in specific conditionality. We learn to let go of expectations, dislike, rejection, separation. Cognitive models that are an expression of the inherent claims of ownership of conscious experience have to be loosened, relaxed, put down ... and its a bit like struggling to straighten a dog's tail. It keeps popping back into its twisted shape.
- Anatma / Not-self - This is a correction of a cognitive distortion. when expectations, dislike, rejection, separation are given up, relaxed, put down, de-powered - the mind realizes that the sense of self is actually hollow, its cover is made of these grips of the mind and there is really nothing inside. These grips of the mind are a claim of ownership - this claim of ownership necessitates the construction of an 'owner'. Usually we feel that we exist therefore we hold expectations and the right to dislike, reject, create separation from experience. But it is the other way around - The mind holds these grips and therefore in order to reconcile these positions it keeps ascribing it to a fictitious constructed entity. This is understood as when the grips of the mind that cause suffering are relaxed, the entity is seen as just one more object in awareness, rather than a subject that is experiencing other objects. Anatma - This is a correction of a cognitive distortion. We believe that we exist therefore we lay a claim of ownership on existence. But in fact there is a claim of ownership and to reconcile consistency with the logic of the relative world, the mind constructs a self. Due to the ignorance of this chain of dependence the mind mistakenly invests affect in this fake fictitious sense of self. The heart is stuffed into a conceptual cage. Once it is realized how this works, the cognitive distortion is corrected, the affective investment is reduced and finally nullified and all passion cools down. And then .... your lineage changes.
- First path - The ignorance of unreliability is dispelled in first path - Anityata is deeply understood (relative to the other Cs) The fetters dropped at first path represent the mind's ignorance of Anityata. The mind seeks reliability thus the fetters exist and are nurtured and powered and nourished by the ignorant search for reliability. This nurturing, this powering, this nourishing of the fetters cannot be stopped by just simply accepting a conceptual explanation. Its stopped by seeing/knowing/understanding. Its stopped by being an upasak doing
Upasana on kaya, vedana, citta, dhamma.
Personality view - is a sense of reliability of who and what we are in a very superficial sense - I am an Indian, I am an American, I am an Eskimo, I am an Atheist, I am a Buddhist, I am a Jew etc etc. This view is invested into by the affective mind. Same for the other two fetters - we want to feel safe and secure and our world and experience to be predictable - thus we engage blindly in rites and rituals to keep us safe - could be keeping a rabbit's foot in our pocket at all times for example, or never leaving home without taking blessings from Lord Krishna. We want to be free of problems, we don't want to experience unplanned, surprises thus we obsess over petty things and try to solve problems that cannot be solved, or aren't even problems - vichikitsa - perverted dysfunctional problem solving - anything to ensure security and safety of 'us' - Third path (and second) - Dukkha is fully understood in second/third path. The fetters of kama-raga and vyapad are both two sides of the same coin - Addiction to vedana - The compulsive affect driven chasing after positive vedana and compulsive affect driven avoidance of negative vedana. Third path (and second) is all about dropping the addiction to vedana. We are no longer compelled to possess positive vedana and no longer compelled to push away negative vedana. This does not mean that we are indifferent - the preference comes from the nature of vedana itself - but the push, the compulsion to take birth as the guy who wants to chase that particular skirt, or the guy who wants to avoid needle jabs and thus experiences dukkha is gone
- 4th path - The ignorance of Anatma is dispelled. Each fetter here represents the mind's need to create the hollow shell entity and stuff the heart into the hollow shell thereby giving it solidity
The attainment of 4th path: 1st is all about understanding that experience is unreliable - so we drop the very expectation of reliability 3rd (and 2nd) is all about understanding that experience if lusted after or hated upon - to compulsively chase sukha vedana or avoid dukkha vedana - leads to dukkha (and thus dukkha vedana) - So we drop our crusade of creating sukha for ourselves - stop being greedy and hateful. 4th is all about understanding that the claim of ownership leads to the creation of the owner. As long as there is a owner, the owner will have nads and can be kicked in the nads - so we drop our claim of ownership on everything and thus we fully embrace anatmaOn 4th path we work in the way using the rubrics I will explain in the post to follow. In my experience 4th path is a fuckton of work. But the work is towards - 'not doing' we have to keep working on withdrawing the claim of ownership. Letting it get established again. Seeing the consequences. Ownership, drop ownership, ownership, drop ownership, ownership, drop ownership. Familiarize with ownership. Familiarize with dropping ownership. Juxtapose ownership with dropping ownership. See the precents and consequents of ownership and the dropping of ownership. Again, and again, and again, and again, and again ...... and again.This is a lot of work for the perceptual mind - the perceptual mind has to scrutinize conscious experience and how it is constructed and we have to learn to soothe the heart completely - to completely stop affective investment in what we see in perception - thus the 5 higher fetters drop away - because they are deprived the fuel they need to survive - it is hard work. The Yang and the Yin working together. Grab hold of objects ... penetrate them ... if you must ... but soothe the heart, relax the heart, withdraw the claim of ownership while 'penetrating'. This is supposed to be vipashyana its not supposed to be a viking raid. Conversely there's a lot of technique based doing to be done in order to learn how to 'not do'. This is supposed to be vipashyana its not a slumber party. Middle way baby
.Some necessary theory
Smriti
Smriti in Sanskrit (Sati in Magadhi Prakrit) is often translated as mindfulness. Its application in practice is better represented by translating it as memory/ short term working memory/ remembrance/ recollection. Smriti has multiple roles to play in meditation practice.
Smriti as short term working memory
In some ways we use the faculty of memory in order to hold ongoing direct experience of our meditation object in memory - as it happens. We 'remember' our meditation object. In case our meditation object is specifically defined, like the breath then we establish smriti or mindfulness using the breath as a device. Keeping the breath in mind would mean to keep the breath as it is happening in short term working memory. We continuously remember the breath, the experience of the breath ... now ... and now ... and now ... and now ... and now ... and now ... and now ....If we were to think of a model of conscious experience involving and supported by a mode of receiving data - which is broad and undirected - as awareness, within which we can take an increased interest in a particular aspect of conscious experience thus creating a subset of the overall experience which is attended to in greater granularity and detail .... then we can call it attention. That which we pay attention to if we remember it as it happens, hold and release from short term working memory that subset of experience, releasing the moment gone by and holding the moment as it is happening then we can say that we have established mindfulness on that subset of experience. Mindfulness once established thus is not confined to the subset of experience you used as a device to warm up the engine.And it isn't as simple as being aware - we are aware all the time. We receive data from our sensory environment all the time. But we aren't intentionally mindful all the time. This project requires us to be intentionally mindful.
Smriti as memory
It is not enough to be mindful of our meditation object. In our memory has to be available the very purpose of why we are meditating, why we are doing this practice. What is the objective of this practice, what is the goal of this practice. What is the technique we are following or the algorithm that we are executing. In this application smriti serves us in the form of the memory of our meditation instructions memorized and made available on demand. This project also involves the memory of the outcomes of executing the algorithm itself. Formal practice done in specified planned durations has to spill over on to daily life.A point has to come where our entire life becomes our practice. What we learn on the cushion, what we learn in daily life has to become available to us as we go about living moment to moment in our lives. To give an illustration - we cultivated calmness yesterday, we have to remember what calmness is and what it feels like, we get into a road rage incident, where we objectified our opponent as 'the enemy' and we suffered the consequences in our minds as well as the real world consequences of social friction, legality, making an enemy rather than a friend and adversary. This entire scenario right from how calmness comes about, how it is evaporates when mental positions of adversariness get created and how it feels shitty to make enemies where a smile and a polite word could have resulted in better outcomes - social as well as mental. All of this needs to be remembered. This is also smriti in action. And in this sense we are now in the domain of Sila or ethics - which is a topic for a separate discussion
Samprajanya
The best explanation of what samprajanya is comes from a brilliant book by an absolutely outstandingly brilliant meditation teacher - whose name we cannot mention because he got a bit naughty
teehee .... Sheer Utter Genius! Sadhu! Sage!Think of the flow of conscious experience as carrying data packets. Some of those data packets are a narration of the story as it unfolds - or binding moments of consciousness. In daily life binding moments of consciousness works in attention creating a narrative of what we see - an oblong shape, flappy flappy flappy, blue blue blue all around - becomes a kingfisher bird flying across a clear blue sky. In practice we train ourself to recognize and encourage binding moments of consciousness in awareness, particular introspective awareness. Its not that they don't exist, we just want more of them. This leads to the creation of the meaning based non verbal narration of a fictitious but very convenient entity called 'the mind' .... 'I' am paying attention to the breath and 'the mind' is agitated, 'the mind' is excited, 'the mind' is relaxed, 'the mind' is horny, 'the mind' wants to smash some dakinis. This is Metacognitive Introspective Awareness - this comes about through deliberate intentional training. This is Samprajanya.Smriti-Samprajanya - Memory/short term working memory coupled with metacognitive introspective awareness as we meditate .... is the name of the game!!The Dharma (singular)
The technique and the hypothesis that the technique is trying to prove together is the Dharma.
Hypothesis: I feel like shit because of something called Dukkha. And it isn't what I think it is.
Technique: Place my attention on my left butt cheek, and very very carefully observe my left butt cheek for a defined duration - lets say 1.5 hours, simply refusing to stop. ..... Yes ... I can now see what dukkha is!! .. I have developed Dharma Drishti.
Hypothesis: Dukkha exists because of ignorance of anatma. With ignorance of anatma dispelled .... NO MORE DUKKHAAAAA!!!! .... Arrrrrrggggghhh Kundaliniiiiii .... lets get started shall we?
Technique: Place my attention on my left butt cheek and very very carefully observe that attention moves ... on its own and when it stabilizes clarity of knowing increases and one can see the very very subtle wobble of attention. Perfectly stable attention is a myth. Attentional control is a myth. It isn't my attention and it isn't my butt cheek either
lol ... also ... it isn't 'my' dukkha.This is the Dharma or a small representative sample of it. For some people I speculate that its enough and those hypothetical 'some people' are very very talented and can actually go all the way and get to Anuttara Samyak Sam-Bodhi. But for the rest of us, we need more Dhamma ... otherwise we end up in Anuttara Samyak Sam-Stupidity. The Dharma whether in its concise form or its detailed form is basically a hypothesis (or a set of hypotheses) and very simple (or elaborate) techniques that have to be executed with military precision in order to test those hypotheses. In the absence of a hypothesis and in the absence of techniques .... one might just lazily languish getting absolutely nowhere.We establish mindfulness on the Dharma. We remember the hypothesis and we remember the technique.
The dharmas (plural)
If I were to sit under an apple tree and an apple were to land on my noggin, I would probably curse under my breath and move. But maybe I wont move because I am too lazy and I have a sense of the improbability of the event. But some geniuses ... they immediately grok the dharma of gravity. If multiple apples were to land on my head, day in and day out and if I were tremendously interested in what was happening, its possible ... though not likely that I too may understand 'gravity'. Now what is gravity really - can you touch it, can you feel it, can you smell it, can you taste it, can you intuit it in the absence of the tree and the apple ... it has no existence of its own. It has no phenomenology. It is basically pattern recognition to which we give the name gravity as a cognitive shortcut. This 'pattern recognition' is also an object and with smriti-samprajanya is now accessible. We can pay attention to the dhamma or gravity, we can be mindful of it, learn it, and then plan how to lob a missile into the air so that it lands with great precision on the capital of an enemy nation. An understanding of the dharma of gravity helps us get shit done!Anityata, Dukkha, Anatma, Shunyata, Idampratyata, Pratitya Samutpada, Pancha Upadana Skandha, etc etc etc .... these are all dharmas .... Patterns that can be seen, we learn to see them, we learn to recognize them, we name them, we build familiarity with them ...... so that we bring about transformation. We learn about gravity so that we dodge apples falling out of trees and pianos falling out of windows. We learn about the dharmas so that .... No More Dukkha!!!For that to happen as the dharmas arise in our awareness, we establish mindfulness of them. We remember the patterns. Remember them as they arise in the mind. With objects from the 3 foundations of mindfulness bumping into each other or tumbling around on their own arises pattern recognition. We hold this recognition of patterns in short term working memory so that they get encoded and burnt into the mind.
The importance of Dharma - The hypotheses and the techniques
About Bahiya Darucariya:
Bahiya in many interpretations has an origin story that is very weird. A guy who got ship wrecked, wrapped himself with the bark of a tree and just randomly yeeted himself into the awakening project. It is an incorrect origin story. The cult / sect of the bark cloth used to be a small but pretty established and socially supported group of spiritual practitioners based on the western coast of India. somewhere around modern day Nalasopara in the outskirts of Mumbai. The operating practice of this sect was: In the seeing there is an unseen seer - locate him. In the hearing there is an unheard hearer - find him. In the thinking there is an uncognized thinker - hunt him out. In doing so you will find your true self. This is the foundational principle of the Brihadaranyak Upanishad.When Bahiya went to meet Sid. One good hard look at him and the trappings of his sect in terms of his garb, his hair, his introduction of who he was, was enough to tell Sid what precisely Bahiya's working hypothesis was. This has nothing to do with some magical intuition but in fact speaks volumes about Sid and his exposure to spirituality and the various working hypotheses that existed regarding soteriology in the Indian subcontinent. The man wasn't just familiar with Bahiya's sect but was also conversant with their practices. Bahiya was essentially working with a particular kind of practice that involved a positive hypothesis regarding finding a 'self'. Despite every evidence to the contrary that Bahiya must have collected in his study of the mechanisms of perception and apperception, Bahiya was simply adamantly refusing to accept the absence of proof as proof of absence. Which by the way is a very good thing to do if you are a scientist. If you were an astrophysicist and through extending existing theories and building mathematical models around them, you predict the presence of black holes - and then for decades there is no evidence to be found - It is a good idea to persevere in your search. It gets you a Nobel!But if in soteriology one's hypothesis is that one should shove a thumb in one's mouth and shove the other one in one's rear and jump up and down in the air 1000 times everyday - one would find Santa Claus and by his grace, one would be free! Chances are one would spend an entire life time looking for Santa Claus and not find him and perhaps even refuse to give up this data collection because ... Hey ... Black holes!Sid took one look at this guy and essentially flipped his hypothesis. From a positive hypothesis he flipped it to a negative hypothesis. Bahiya had basically spent his entire adult life looking, closely scrutinizing, deep diving into each and every aspect of conscious experience. A quick rapid scrutiny - once more - using a flipped hypothesis and all the blocks came together in Bahiya's mind. Like a game of tetris where we play patiently till that one particular perfectly shaped block comes along - and we win! For Bahiya that tetris block was one single elegant flipping of the hypothesis by The Blessed One.This scrutiny of conscious experience requires a deconstruction from which we learn that absolutely nothing that we deconstructed .... absolutely nothing ... contains a little green man pulling the levers! Once done, once this becomes knowledge and the tube light of the mind blinks slowly and lights up ... we drop the effort so that the mind can construct the self ..... again. Without having a solid sense of self you will not be able to navigate your living room ... let alone type on a laptop and write a message on social media. Any notions that float around people's noggins - there is no self - I am forever dissolved .... aaaaahhhhhh ... are just simply notions. That lighting of the tube light is so fucking dramatic that it has forever changed deeply held mental models that condition the way we experience our lives. This radical changing of mental models has only and only one symptom ..... one that lasts ... one we get to keep ... The end of suffering!!This! Right here! in the story of Bahiya the practitioner of the Brihadaranyak Upanishad ... lies the importance of having a really really sexy hypothesis !!! And this hypothesis cannot be verified unless one has even sexier techniques at their disposal.
Sanyojana
Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed.
3 fell off and bumped their head.
Mama called the Arhat and the Arhat said ... No more monkeys jumping on the bed
Seven little monkeys jumping on the bed.
2 fell off and bumped their head.
Mama called the Arhat and the Arhat said .... No more monkeys jumping on the bed
Now Capo ... there are 5 left and they are really really strong adversaries. You have fought and won against the Tattaglias now its as if you are going to go up against Hyman Roth. 5 Hyman Roths! Fuck even thinking about it makes me weary.
You will need a dossier on each one of them before you go to the mats. Please refer to this.
Prerequisites
There's a whole host of techniques that you need in your arsenal. Everything that you have practiced in order to get to anagami needs to be very very current. You have to refresh your smriti. Now you haven't practiced in accordance with The Awakening Project. The Awakening Project is deeply inspired by Steven Procter (MIDL) and by John Yates (The Mind Illuminated). It is is also deeply inspired by Uncle Sid (selected works) and Uncle Shariputra (selected works) . Here below I am writing about the protocols of the Awakening Project that one would typically work with to get to Anagami. Keep all these skills alive
Sankalpa
Form a deep desire, a pure and true wish that you do not want any of the Dnyans/nanas from the previous path particularly the fruitions from the previous paths. I am assuming of course that you have experienced those fruitions many times now and are satisfied with those experiences in the past and have now started noticing that they show up as distractions. That traversing of the same territory is a mix of conceptual knowledge and experiential habit. You absolutely have to break that habit! The Tattaglias are already dealt with, there is no need to keep reliving your glory .... move on Capo! Every time you practice, form this sankalpa hold it deeply in the Citta. Program the mind. When the mind starts to traverse the same territory, you will know and you will straight up reject it.
Techniques for Shrotapanna Marg Shrotapanna Phal
Link
Techniques for Anagami Marg Anagami Phal
Link
Using a meditation log
Link
Sila
My view regarding sila is that that sila is not 'rules', the practice of sila is as experiential as the practice of Shamatha Bhavana or of Vipashyana Bhavana. And if one approaches it as a rigorous practice of learning about the mind then it becomes an insight practice as well as a Sila Bhavana practice. towards that objective in my own practice I have approached it in the following way and often recommend it to people while knowing that such an approach may not appeal to everyone. Build some samadhi using meditation techniques and the objective is not just to build samadhi but to fully experience it and fuckin ... remember what it means to have samadhi. This doesn't have to be a very high grade of samadhi, but needs to have enough of a difference so that the mind remembers what it means to be calm, collected, tranquil, centered, clear, energetic. Induce this using concentration practice. As you go about your day, your week, your month .... just simply use that samadhi as a canary in a coal mine, or as a barometer ... to see the value of your own views, attitudes, thoughts, speech and actions. Once you frame the practice of sila like this then vichikitsa (or perverted problem solving) does not arise. One doesn't spend too much time hassling one's self about silly things like eating meat or drinking alcohol or killing mosquitos. Do what you have always done and let the practice make the adjustments to behavior (internal and external)
Brahmaviharas
Link
Pratyavekhshana
Link
Doing the Jhanas and using them for vipashyana bhavana
Link, Link, Link
The theoretical paradigm and the techniques / algorithms that take one to Arhatship will follow in the second part to this post. Link (to be updated).
Thanks for writing to me Dream Walker.
Pragmaticism lies in Ehipashyika - come and see for yourself! Take the protocols for a spin ... yourself! To try and gauge other people's attainments is a waste of time. Such is my understanding and I get that other people don't share it. Which is OK. Some do though!
Those words arent foreign for me. They are archaic, sure. On taking the effort to create this content, I expect the reader to put in the effort to simply ask
Take Care.
Pragmaticism lies in Ehipashyika - come and see for yourself! Take the protocols for a spin ... yourself! To try and gauge other people's attainments is a waste of time. Such is my understanding and I get that other people don't share it. Which is OK. Some do though!
Those words arent foreign for me. They are archaic, sure. On taking the effort to create this content, I expect the reader to put in the effort to simply ask
Take Care.