So, while I was at BG12, I got to hang out with Minda, who has a remarkably brilliant mind and is also a very interesting practitioner, and she was very much into mind maps and introduced me to yEd, a cool, free mind mapping program, and I came up with a few mind maps of the mind that I thought I would post here, so these are in some ways Minda mind mind maps, which in addition to the obvious triple-repetition of mind in it, also points to very interesting things about our vowels, but I digress...

One is a general, incomplete, somewhat simplistic map of some stages of insight and some more advanced things and some subjhanas and the like, basically a crude, working map that shows some of the jhanic aspects also.

One is my first attempt at real mind mind mapping, done of the A&P, as it is such fun!

One is a cleaned up version that simplifies the connections greatly, but also loses some of the nuances of those connection that are found in the other one, though is vastly easier to read, and still conveys the general sense of the thing.

They are still works in progress, and something like them may appear in MCTB 2 if I can get a big enough format for things like that.

Enjoy and let me know what you think of them.

:o dear jesus

Colors

I think they help a lot. Hopefully this is some improvement over those above, emphasizes some of the associations a bit better.

this seemed like a new topic and related to the recent mini Dark Night thread so I split it off

Christ on a bike!

Cool though...

Very interesting.

I followed along all the lines in the colored one and there's something there. I dunno quite how to put it into words. It's like a recognition, like I know what you're talking about, it makes sense to me, like I've been there before. It's vague, possibly because I haven't had such clarity about these aspects but still experienced them.

Some technical feedback: the connections one, aka. chaotic, is pretty much unreadable by me. I'm sure it all makes sense to you - I have mind maps just like these and people think I'm an alien when they see me reading them. I think you'd need to provide a guide/walkthrough/tutorial for others to be able to read the chaotic one.

Also, the colors help tremendously. They convey exactly the kind of information that would probably be the first that you pointed out to anyone reading the mind map with you: "Here's where all the systematic, detail-oriented, obsessive, mapping tendencies of the whole thing is - kinda in this area *points, circles finger*".

Thanks for this effort

Daniel,

What do you mean by Nirodha "lite"? Is this when you get the sinking/darkening but don't pass the 'event horizon'? Just curious.

Thanks

pathways.jpg is a nice way of showing where you can and can't go both within a sit and as part of the larger cycle of "where am i" on the map.

Sorry what does NPNYNP stand for?

A few thoughts for our respected teacher.
I greatly appreciated the term mini dark night for late mastery. My last retreat was a bitch in that I couldn't get through to the pleasant areas of late mastery and experienced continual cycle in and out of the intensity of the fast flowing phenomena, often for a lot of the afternoon. It would be a kind of respite to fall back into early mastery or to peak in late mastery for short period before I fell back down into the Mini Dark Night of Equanimity.
Mostly just wanted to say its very gratifying hearing late mastery described in those words.

Gratefully Neem.

ps Amindmapbuscolor, is awesome, I appreciate that it isn't linear, as the topic is a non-linear one and it helps to be able to frame the AP in a more diverse manner. The first version lacked any priorities but the colours in the second seems offer some priorities and therefore clarity. It must be difficult trying to balance out, the linear clarity of progression through AP and the Mini Cycles that pervade it as you peak and trough in it.
ps Was curious about the blends of nana & sub nana stages etc, would be good to hear more about those notions. About stages not being as delineated and about the spaces in between stages. But in a tithe way that is pertinent to most practitioners, especially those traversing the map for the first time.

Neither Perception Nor Yet Non-Perception

Still downloading here....

Hi Daniel,
I wanted to just make a bridging comment about this excerpted point you made in Liam's "Equanimity Mini Dark night thread"and the "OOB and/or paralysis" area on these maps for anybody who's in the fear of death/madness area: that the area of fearing death or madness is not the area of experiencing "paralysis" (without OOB ). The latter area is the experiential the former area is conceptual, but they are not disconnected [edit: and I am sure everyone knows this conceptually!]. Practice can show a progressive connection. Once equanimous awareness (pure awareness) comes back online, up from non-awareness, this awareness has the ability to observe aspects of mind arising ("coming back on-line"). Going into the deep calm and even non-awareness, by the time the mind has calmed so much that the body is steady and ccomfortable, then enters "paralysis" and respiration changes there, strong saṅkhāra skhanda (like fear) are not arising. However, on the exit, when equanimous awareness comes back up, there's just awareness of what is, then skhanda of saññā (recognition) comes up and recognizes what is "not breathing", then maybe there's knowledge of the body going through physiological "breathing triggers" and the saṅkhāra skhanda may come up ("crikey, not breathing!") and equanimous awareness can see that "fear of death" aspect of mind coming up. Then, for me, everything comes back on-online quickly and there's some understanding of the potency of saṅkhāra to destabilize calmness and how the body's motions for life and mental fear of death are distinct. It's interesting.



[edit: added two sentences to add clarity, me thinks]

Nirodha "Lite"

There were debates here perhaps last year or earlier about Nirodha.

I am actually in no mood at all to restart those, but to answer the question and hopefully not cause too much chaos:

There is Nirodha in which the whole thing totally vanishes, totally gone, like a total mental power outage, the ultimate off switch, with the standard entrance and exit, and a massive, very long-tailed, heavy afterglow, and no perception of anything during the outage, nothing at all, and especially not of time.

Then there were people here who were proposing something they were calling Nirodha but had a sense of time passing. I have gotten into something that was ultra-stripped-down and was entered into using the Nirodha setup, but happened when I was really obsessed with duration of Nirodha, and it would last exactly as long as I had specified in my resolution, almost with a counter in the background going, and then end, but would not be nearly the ultra-complete, ultra-heavy-afterglow-producing thing that Nirodha in its full and incomprehensible glory is, and there definitely was some sense of time passing.

Really the two are so different as to be hardly comparable, and yet they can result from similar set ups. To say they share certain elements would be misleading, as Nirodha proper has no elements and the other thing clearly does.

Thus, I term that other thing, which is clearly not the same thing as full Nirodha, Nirodha "Lite", realizing that this is certainly my own classification for that other thing and not necessarily anyone else's usage.

Helpful?

I've gotten into something that has no sense of 'time' flowing at all, no sense of forming mental concepts at all, no mental objects (thus no time flow), including the arupa jhana aspects, but it was not the same as the complete shutting down of all the senses that you call nirodha. It has the same set up and occurs after the 8th. It leaves the mind even stiller, thought free, very PCE like for a longer period than anything I've experienced. The nirodha after glow was more a spacing out super relaxing mental overlay with the body super relaxed, buzzing from the afterglow like a warm fuzzy blanket, whereas the other experience that was no complete shutdown left the mind still and unmoving for quite some time after it ends. This one is not a complete shut down of all the senses as there is memory of what drops while it has dropped. There is knowing in hindsight that doesn't seem to drop. Not sure how to describe it well though.

Interesting.

So, if you say it wasn't t total power-down, but it wasn't formless realms either, what elements remain? Any other delineating details?

Desire keeping knowing there?

Thanks Daniel. Very interesting. What usually happens to me is that once my mind goes to the spot where things start to power down (right behind the 3rd eye) it is like I become that spot and get pulled down into it. The sinking is followed by physical senses shutting down, like if there are any background noises, they stop, then the thought process shuts down and then it comes back online. I don't seem to recall the complete blip out. It must only last for less than a second. I cannot extend it. But when I come out I am almost shuddering with calm afterglow. I usually do not even want to be bothered or spoken to for a while afterwards.

The reason I asked the question is because there was a period time when I first started experiencing it where I could get the sinking but either got freaked out (perception would get very wobbly) or couldn't get passed the full blip out. I thought this was what you were calling nirodha lite.

Nirodha comes on suddenly, without warning, and is totally encompassing, so it is not the sort of thing you could pull back from or anything like that, as it is like a sudden total pulling of the plug.

However, what you are describing is interesting. What is the setup? In what context of attainment or ability or daily practice or retreat or what?

Then maybe I was blipping out without realizing it, because even though I thought I wasn't passing the event horizon (total blip out), it would still chill me out big time.

I have never been on retreat. I got stream entry in Feb, 2nd in May, 3rd around beginning to mid last month.

When it first happened, I was in 8th jhana and perception was wobbling in and out (hard to explain) my teacher (Ron Crouch) told me to look for a spot in my head where the sinking would occur, but I never had to do this, it happened without trying, my mind went right to it. The spot is about an inch back from the 3rd eye chakra. The first time it happened I was really freaked out, but very chilled out afterwards.

Nowadays I am cycling like crazy and it doesn't always show up and I don't try to force it. Every sit is different it seems, sometimes I have partial cycle, full cycles, sometimes NS happens on its own, sometimes I go up to the tippy top of the PL jhanas. My sits consist of absolutely no intention to do anything at this point other than let things be an observe. Daily life feels very paradoxical. Like I know what the answer is, and I already have it, but I don't have the keys to unlock it yet. Can't quite figure out what it is that is left, if you know what i mean.