Stages on the Way to Cessation

The point in the above post, is that it seems to me that you have provided the answers. It's all a process whereby the progress in meditation is not separate from our everyday activities. What is attained on the cushion then flows into all that we do, and vice-versa. As we work with the mind, we are altering our perspective... the view (in our everyday living) becomes more equanimous and we discover a new reaction - that which is not actively reactive. I think as these changes occur in our everyday living (the dissolving of self/me/I), it is reflected in our meditation practice, hence the seemingly chaotic, random, and unfocused presentation. It's kinda like what happens when we change the resolution of a digital image... the pixels that make up the image need to breakdown and then reform the image in accordance to the adjusted resolution.

Well, Khara, you must be right because tonight sees the returm of a much higher level of equanimity. I sat in the same place - my front porch - but for much,much longer. I walked up the stages for a while and relaxed there, then walked back down and then paid attention just to whatever presented itself. I had a lot of pain in my legs and they eventually went to sleep but that didn't bother much and didn't make me restless like it sometimes does. A "no dog" kind of perspective took over and I spent a long time watching mind grasping at objects as they arose. This is always fascinating because I could see it trying to create separateness and permanence where neither exists. It's that tugging, wanting feeling being exposed for what it is and as a source of the I/me/mine. It's also the seeing of the subject-object duality that we live in, the cause of so much unhappiness, desire, pain. And in the seeing of it comes the equanimity (or is it the other way around?). A veryy counter-intuitive kind of thing - a sheeply surprise wrapped in wolves' clothing, so to speak

Now I'm feeling mellow, not anticipating, not remembering, just hanging out here and now as I type.

David, I will look up those authors this weekend. Thanks.

More tingling sensations on my neck and down my back this morning while sitting. Very energetic. More purple haze, too

I've also discovered that when I sleep I still have some small, residiual awareness going on all the time. I woke up with that realiztion this morning very early and had so much energy that I went outside and sat on the porch.

The words "phase transition" stick with me these days. That's what the jhanas and nanas remind me of. Like regular old water when it turns to ice, or to steam. The mind appears to be doing a similar thing. It would be really cool to see a combination EKG and fMRI of someome going up and down the jhanas.

"It would be really cool to see a combination EKG and fMRI of someome going up and down the jhanas. - Chris"

Hi Chris,
You might be interested in this: video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5474604744218568426#
Gozen originally posted this link sometime ago on DhO; it's a video/lecture of Todd Murphy, a neuroscience researcher describes the brain's role in enlightenment as understood in Buddhism.
It's a video definitely well worth taking the time to watch.

Thank you , Khara. I remember watching that when Gozen posted it. Very apt. And speaking of Gozen, he who told me to get used to uncertainty, boy oh boy, was he ever right on the money!

Practice both on and off the cushion continues. I'm seeing things differently and that's progress, though it seems to be nerve wracking progress in many respects because things I used to rely on are no longer reliable. Things like, oh, awareness itself. But Kenneth reassures me (thank you again, Kenneth) that I will integrate these views and all of this will seem more or less normal. For now, though, I have fallen off a cliff of epistemology, existence and philosophy, to name but a few of the effects

My plan, as coached by Kenneth, is to let this play out at its own pace and to try not to grasp at things that I think I need to grasp in order to break the "fall." I have to do that, as I am not in control anyway. Relax and let go.

Energy abounds, especially up and down the spine.

Hi Everyone,

I though it would be nice to supply some more context, so here is an excerpt from an email exchange Chris and I had yesterday:

Kenneth wrote:

"You are moving really fast now. In fact, you are in free fall. You are getting enlightened faster than your ability to come to terms with it emotionally and rationally. This is normal. Everything will eventually feel right again once you have time to integrate your insight.

When you first realize you are in free fall, it's scary because you are used to thinking that whenever you fall you eventually hit the ground. But in this case there is no ground. You'll just keep falling and you'll never hit the ground because there's no ground. You'll get used to living in free fall and it will be wonderful.

If there is a trick to integration, it's to avoid drawing conclusions. Every conclusion you draw just creates pain when it turns out not be true and your world is wrenched away again. When things seem empty, just behave as though they were real. This will prevent you from doing things that come back to bite you later. The truth is probably closer to "things are neither real nor not-real." But karma will continue to operate no matter what we think, so it's important to pretend that things are real.

As for awareness, it's a never-ending exploration. If you look for it, it disappears. If you allow yourself to be it, it will never abandon you. And it's always empty. It doesn't care what we think about it, anyway.

The fact that your sleep is changing shows how deep you are going, so it's no surprise that you are having some trouble coming to terms with your new understanding. See if you can cultivate patience on a geological time scale and let this unfold at its own pace."

Chris, it's also valuable to see this from a developmental perspective. What you are describing is dissolution, as experienced in the "dukkha ñanas," numbers 6-10. In this phase, thoughts and sensations disappear as soon as they appear. It's extremely unsettling, to say the least, and the experience is very real. It feels as though it will always be this way (it won't) and the yogi in this phase is likely to feel convinced that this way of seeing things is more accurate or true than what he has previously seen. In fact, this perspective is phase-specific and lasts only until the yogi moves out of this phase and into the next, which is equanimity.

The energy shooting up your spine is related to the 4th ñana, the Arising and Passing Away of Phenomena. You have to pass through the 4th ñana each day (or many times a day) on your way to the 6th-10th ñanas, so it's normal to experience both the energy surges and the dissolution on any given day.

What this means is that you have completed the review phase of the previous Path (probably 1st) and are well into a new Progress of Insight (probably the 2nd). Interestingly, this kind of mechanistic talk is exactly what a yogi in dissolution does not want to hear, as it is so clear to him that there is nothing predictable about enlightenment. This too is predictable, however annoying.

Practical tip: Spend a few minutes each day swinging and twisting your body gently from side to side while standing upright. This helps the energy to align itself within the body and develop the new "psychic circuitry" that is part and parcel of attaining the next Path. Hatha yoga, brisk walking, and stretching are also good.

Mudita,

Kenneth

Thanks!

Wait - there's more I should say --

Kenneth, first, it's marvelous to have access to someone like you who is willing to spend so much time helping others. Second, it's marvelous to have someone who knows this territory so well put what seems like chaos into perspective. It's comforting and smoothes the path. Finally, I need the exercise

"Practical tip: Spend a few minutes each day swinging and twisting your body gently from side to side while standing upright. This helps the energy to align itself within the body and develop the new "psychic circuitry" that is part and parcel of attaining the next Path. Hatha yoga, brisk walking, and stretching are also good."

Kenneth made an excellent point regarding working with the energy flow.
In addition to his suggestions, Tai Chi or Qigong can be beneficial in aligning the energy. There's some qigong methods that are easy to learn and do not require much practice time.
Also, breath work is really helpful (yoga - Pranayama).
Here's a few websites that offer some good info:

www.kundaliniyoga.org/pranayam.html
www.yogapranayama.net/


The above youtube video is demonstrated by Jesse Tsao. He has a wonderful selection of Tai Chi & Qigong videos on his profile page:
www.youtube.com/user/taichitsao

Here's written instructions for The Eight Brocades exercise: www.taichiandqigong.com/qigong_8sectionbrocade.php

Although, there's more advanced Qigong exercises beneficial for circulating energy, the Eight Brocades is easy to learn and practice... great for beginners.

Khara, thanks for the links!

Yes, thanks very much, Khara!

You're very welcome! I hope you find the info to be helpful and useful. Let me know if you have any questions regarding any of the referred to practices.

Thanks Khara. When I was in Beijing, we also practice a form of sitting eight brocades qi gong before and after sitting meditation.

Beside Harada Roshi, Japanese Zen masters don't speak much about kundalini events, even less about stages on the way to cessation. However, this subject has always been addressed by Chinese teachers.

Here is a link where you may dowload Master Hua's "Chan Handbook" (Master Hua was a student of the famous Xu Yun):

www.mediafire.com/?io5oe1nmmzo

As you will see (pages 48-50), Asanga's "Heat - Summit - Patience - First in the World" model is still used to explain the energy process taking place during Zen practice.

This model also matches that stages of insight:

Heat (1-3 ñanas) - Summit (A&P) - Patience (Dark Night) - First in the World (Fruition phase)

Those who have been told that Jhanas are seductive and dangerous will be surprised to see (page 86) that the frist four Jhanas (in solid form here) have always been an integral part of Ch'an training.

Thanks, Alex. That looks very interesting. I'll be on several long plane flights for the remainder of this week so I'll download that and some of the material Khara linked. Then, I will read it all after I meditate while sitting in my window seat.

"

Beside Harada Roshi, Japanese Zen masters don't speak much about kundalini events, even less about stages on the way to cessation. However, this subject has always been addressed by Chinese teachers.

"

Thanks for the download. Interesting all the bit about demons - that has a bit of personal relevance and is helpful for understanding my own early experiences which had elements of kundalini and an encounter with a malevolent entity. "Better to postpone enlightenment for a thousand lifetimes than to be possessed by a demon for a single day." Interestingly this happened with Buddha and Jesus as well.

Yes, I have head many similar stories. It seems to be related to the awakening of the Svadhisthana Chakra, at least according to Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama (the parapsychologist and kundanlini yoga expert. I see it as the excessive bleeding of raw sexual energy attracting starving malevolent entities. Things get even worse when the yogi also develops astral vision and is able to see and hear these spirits. My Indian yoga teacher told me that he saw a few cases of scary possessions and poltergeists taking place as a result of kundalini practice. The shatkarmas (yoga purification) is normally sufficient to solve these problems. In China and Japan I was surprised to see that Zen priests use banishing rituals in the form of mudras, mantras and visualizations apparently borrowed from Shingon. Not surprising considering that their main source of income is funeral ceremonies.

"Yes, I have head many similar stories. It seems to be related to the awakening of the Svadhisthana Chakra, at least according to Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama (the parapsychologist and kundanlini yoga expert. I see it as the excessive bleeding of raw sexual energy attracting starving malevolent entities. Things get even worse when the yogi also develops astral vision and is able to see and hear these spirits. My Indian yoga teacher told me that he saw a few cases of scary possessions and poltergeists taking place as a result of kundalini practice. The shatkarmas (yoga purification) is normally sufficient to solve these problems. In China and Japan I was surprised to see that Zen priests use banishing rituals in the form of mudras, mantras and visualizations apparently borrowed from Shingon. Not surprising considering that their main source of income is funeral ceremonies.





"

I'm going to create another thread to discuss this, as no one has been able to talk about that with me before.

Update, long overdue: I have a lot to say and it will take more than one post. I don't want to bore people, so I'll do my best to be brief.

1) I've been having a rough time lately, and in several ways. My practice has seemed chaotic, purposeless, directionless. I seemed to be getting nowhere, and fast. My outlook has been sour, and my demeanor to those around me less than stellar. I took this up with Kenneth, who has told me to develop patience, get used to the hell I seem to be in and practice samatha above all else. I have been doing all those things this week as I traveled, and I remain very high on the practice of practicing while riding on airplanes.

2) I've been experiencing a much more active sleep. I can recall every damned thing that goes on while sleeping, and I seem to have an odd "sleep but not asleep" thing happening. I have extraordinarily vivid dreams and in most of them I'm able to alter the appearance of things and change the flow of events. When I dream I'm almost always lucid. I wake up a lot at night, which now means I get up out of bed with a lot of energy. A stretch, a walk, petting the cats and the dog, looking in on the kids, all of that helps me slow down and get back to bed.

3) I now have a view that mind is like those huge multi-channel processors astronomers use to listen for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Mind seems to be a vast number of simultaneous channels within which stuff/life takes place. Awareness is the bringing of any one channel to the foreground. This does not chage the background. It all goes on, in parallel, all the time, involuntarily. Waking or sleeping. Aware or not aware. Each channel is it's own awareness and has it's own consciousness. The appearance of being in a theater and having these things taking place on a central stage still exists, but the mechanism is now very clear to me.

(cont'd)

4) Practice itself is different. Intent has become a major part of it. When I sit I make a little pact with myself about where I a want to "go" and damned if that doesn't make that thing happen. That said, and somehow related, it has become obvious to me that I don't make decisions. I never have. If I try to find that place, that time, at which a decision was actually made by "someone," it cannot be found. I can't find a decision maker and I can't find the decision point. So much for free will. It's a vast cosmic joke that I ever thought I actually did make decisions. How these two things relate remains a mystery. I may never figure it out.

After by chance listening to the entire set of Hurricane Ranch Discussions yesterday I feel much better about my practice. The descriptions I heard of second path I could have written almost word for word from recent experience - so I feel really good about having that place marker. That's critical all of a sudden and helps relieve the feelings of chaos and plain old "lost-ness" I've had of late. So these things, Kenneth's website especially, are extremely valuable. I can only hope that by posting my screed the next person might be able to read this and relate to it and maybe even be a tiny bit less dispairing, confused, upset and just plain lost as a result.

Much of what I just said might change tomorrow, and that would be fine. I'm learning to take absolutely everything with a grain of salt. I still love my family deeply and I still get worried about work and other things, but those thoughts do not have the bite they used to have.

Bye for now...

"How these two things relate remains a mystery. I may never figure it out.
"

Hi Chris.

This will get figured out just not by you . I laughed when I read "I'm learning to take absolutely everything with a grain of salt."; oh really!
The mind makes things "real" by referencing the self. As the self referencing becomes known the mind reorganizes. At the moment for me self referencing is the king pin from which duality compounds.
Previously you have said you knew there to be no self, now the truth of this is hitting home. When you are being stressed by the truth of observation, rejoice, it is the mechanism of change .

No self always meant; no choice, no freewill and no one to take anything with a grain of salt and now you know it, but you will never deny existence it is ever present.
So where are you? Maybe the answer will be in your next report.

Regards
Gary

Had a very restless night last night. Lay fully awake for hours just seeing and feeling things going on: the brain seems to get faster and faster such that the feel of the bed, thoughts, sounds and any other experiences are just pure vibration happening at an amazing pace and that get shifted from one to the other, to another, to another, and so on. It's feels sort of like being a living jelly bowl of sensitivities. Weird.

Sometimes the mind wants to show off and at those times it will show me a series of complicated images in extremely quick succession, as if to say, "See what I can do? Are you getting this?" These images appear inside a square and are composed of very complex geometric patterns. I have no idea what invokes them. They do their thing for about five seconds and then stop.

At one point early this morning I drifted off and was awakened by two blips. Cessations, I believe. The blips occurred about a second apart and were not very noticeable except that I could tell there was a rebooting afterward. The same thing happened a few days ago during one of my plane rides. I was meditating, jhanas, sort of dozed off and "blip... blip." That time I kind of startled awake. This time I didn't startle but had an, "Oh, there's that again" kind of reaction.

It's a carnival ride I got on and now can't get off. I lay in bed thinking, "Why me? Why now? Why did I ever start this?" It is so clearly and completely an involuntary process now and the universe is just going to do its thing no matter what I do or don't do. This is all both fascinating and terrifying, the source of a lot of curiosity and some torment. A vast sea of contradictions, it is. I'm getting pretty tired (weary?), too.

Though I am still pre "path," I've been mediating a lot more than usual lately and integrating it more into my non-cushion life - and I too am pretty impressed with what my brain does all the time with no invitation from "me." Stuff just goes on all the time: dreams, fantasies, music, images, stories, sensations. It comes from no where and is going no where. I don't like it or hate it, I'm just impressed by how continuous and relentless it is.

I have a lot of energy today. It's collecting in my head, down my back and in my butt. Makes me feel sort of like I'm walking around in a cool, mild jhana all the time. Giddy is the best word I can think of for this feeling. It's a bit of an ethereal, unreal feeling. Hard to describe.

Also... I need some feedback: Am I boring you with this update stuff? Am I posting too much of it? Overdoing it? It seems like I am, but that's to me. Please let me know.

For me: NOT boring. Please keep posting.

On your most recent post (#73): I wonder if part of the development of enlightenment is to eventually become relatively unphased by changes in mood, experience, etc. -- Things just happen and they can be blissful or agonizing and anywhere in between and one knows that there is nothing one can do about it so there is little or no resistance to or identifying with all the stuff.