Hello,

I wanted to post here about a few things:

1. I have been kind of a angry person as of late on here. I hope I don't have to be like this in the future.

2. A few weeks back I made a statement saying I wasn't a stream enterer. I said this for a couple of reasons:

a. I can't call up fruition at will.
b. I will never be certain if what I am calling a fruition (I do get them) is the same as what others have experienced (for example, I
have never had a fruition lasting anything longer than a split second).
c. a couple of other minor things relating to peoples stories and such that seemed much more awesome and life-changing than what I often think of with my experience

With this in mind, I do experience cycling and get some kind of discontinuities. This brings me to my next questiony thing:

3. I have been kind of confused at times because my experience at what might be called the middle paths has been very tricky in ways that really don't sound like a big deal.

a. I am afraid of having to execute some kind of death yoga procedure (think, going somewhere) in the most horrid of outside circumstances and the worst of feeling tones in some kind of do or be in hell forever situation (I am partially thinking of Sri Ramana Maharasi here)

b. I have been really miserable over the past several months because I have read other people's descriptions of getting third or second or whatever path and having to go through some hellish experience to get there. This has caused me to spend lots of time sitting and feeling very shitty because I was constantly thinking that this horrid experience is going to just get worse and worse and worse.

On this latter point:

4. Sometimes I wonder if having smoked DMT and gone through a kind of death experience that shattered my life right before I started meditating hard core was kind of an example of getting some kind of insight and then having to stabilize thing thing with concentration practice afterward. I say this because I have never really felt like my good practices have had anything to do with investigation. Its been like a long ride where I have just hung on as best I could.

5. On the topic of my current state of affairs, I feel confident enough to say that I am seeing cycling happening that is going from stages 1-11 with fruition. This process isn't completely effortless or vivid yet, but it seems to be moving in that direction.

a. I am having some trouble believing things are actually getting better, so I guess I am looking for encouragement or something. Its like when I feel fine and healthy there is this voice in the back of my head that is really worried and so I can't really enjoy being happy and healthy.

b. I don't want to go through any more difficult experiences, I just want to feel safe so I can stop feeling afraid and angry at people and get on with my life, because it ain't no fun leeching off your parents because you are afraid or unable to working a job, yet you can't really say this out loud to people because you have to pretend everything is fine or they will freak and things will be even worse.



Also, has anyone attempted to map up the maps with the five buddha families or perhaps the sutta on worshiping the six directions in the Pali Cannon? Just wondering, cause I know Daniel mentions it in his book.

Samtha meditation is helpful for all of this, particularly mastery of the jhanas.



For a few years I worked with the five elements/five dakinis in Ken McLeod's framework (9 such talks.) FWIW, there is no obvious correspondence, to me, from that perspective.

Jhana is a good suggestion. I can really help counterbalance the destabilizing and harsh aspects of vipassana.

If you are cycling, you can learn how to convert each phase of the cycle to its samatha or near-samatha equivalent just by smoothing things out, looking on the nice side of things, paying more attention to the stability of attention than to the fine points of the Three Characteristics of every little pulse or sensation.

How is the rest of your life?

Daniel

OK, I have some ideas on this matter but my brain is not really in the mood for ideas at the moment I guess. Maybe this will be something I can expound on later, or not...

OK, yeah this is what I have been doing I think. Thanks for the advice.

Rest of my life is ok, working on relationships (esp. to parents) and trying to be more productive as time and energy allow.

Sounds interesting. I remembered some more about it overnight. In Ken's framework (which I think is pretty traditional Karma Kagyu, see e.g. article on Trungpa's treatment of them), the five buddha families are elaborations on the five elements in the Pali canon, which there is no natural hierarchy to.

I think Ken mentions a hierarchy of increasing rarefication, earth -> water -> fire -> air -> space, which also corresponds to the ascending order of the corresponding chakras. In his talks at the Warrior's Solution retreat, he did have an ornate preliminary meditation involving successive visualization of each element breaking apart at its chakra and flowing into the next element in the sequence. However, I believe the intention of this meditation is to establish perception of the five elements in empty (Bahiya-style) terms.

If this is interesting to you, he is pretty responsive to email.

EDIT: This and the following posts were removed due to misinformation. Maybe I will post something about the elements/five buddha families later but probably not for a while until I can get my facts straight.