Stages, Part the Third

Hey even, thought I'd chime in.

1) I notice a cycle taking about 2 days. They seem to get more obvious when I'm doing a lot of concentration practice.
2) So far, no. But I notice that I care a lot less about where I am in the cycle since I quit resisting experience.
3) Yep, 10th nana is 10th nana. Only now the negativity has no place to stick.
4) I have everything I ever wanted right now. This is what I've been looking for my entire life. People around me are actually kinda spooked over how happy I am. I was a curmudgeonly bastard before, now I get to be profoundly happy and relaxed. I almost fell asleep getting dental work done. Big shift.

It is misleading to portray awakening as a constant state of happiness. Put simply, it's just not that. There is a time immediately after awakening and other periods thereafter when it seems to be the case but that euphoria is an effect of the insights conferred by awakening, not a happy state that one abides in forever. Awakening is not a state, folks. Do not be fooled into thinking it is. Nor does awakening change a person's underlying personality. The tendencies you had going in will be the tendencies you have going forward. When you have sad things happen you will be sad. When you have happy things happen, you will be happy. When you have terrifying things happen, you will be terrified. You can fall asleep in the dentist's chair - and I've actually done that , too - but I sure as hell wouldn't ask them to fill a cavity without novocaine because.... when painful things happen you will feel pain.

In the interest of accuracy.

So yes,there is a Big Shift that occurs, but that is a shift in the relationship mind has to all these phenomena. They will not be perceived as part of you, as defining you, as "you." So you see, what I'm describing is not a state. It's insight and wisdom.

Hey Chris,
Thanks for the quality control. Didn't want to give the impression that it is a cosmic bliss out. That's actually one of the disappointing things about this, since it is what I always imagined it to be. I was actually shocked last week while dealing with a death in the family as to how much pain I could be in. In some ways it is more intense than before. But, that being said, my relationship to it was changed. It wasn't a problem, it was just what was happening. I could relax into it and let it do its thing and go. A lot of the relief comes from knowing that there isn't anyone in particular to protect from that pain.

"
It is misleading to portray awakening as a constant state of happiness. Put simply, it's just not that. There is a time immediately after awakening and other periods thereafter when it seems to be the case but that euphoria is an effect of the insights conferred by awakening, not a happy state that one abides in forever. Awakening is not a state, folks. Do not be fooled into thinking it is. Nor does awakening change a person's underlying personality. The tendencies you had going in will be the tendencies you have going forward. When you have sad things happen you will be sad. When you have happy things happen, you will be happy. When you have terrifying things happen, you will be terrified. You can fall asleep in the dentist's chair - and I've actually done that , too - but I sure as hell wouldn't ask them to fill a cavity without novocaine because.... when painful things happen you will feel pain.

In the interest of accuracy.



"

YES! Please, everyone, take note of what Chris says here. Much though we might like it to be otherwise, Awakening is NOT the end of problems and the beginning of endless bliss. Experience continues to arise EXACTLY as before Awakening. As Chris says (in a subsequent message) with Awakening there is "a shift in the relationship mind has to all these phenomena." That's it and all of it. Mostly. ;}

One technique I use to practice that I think I made up myself that I'm not sure is even a legitimate method is this:
I'll use my imagination to see what it would be like to live if I KNEW I was all done. if I was completely enlightened and had no more insights to gain and nothing else to do. As if the journey was COMPLETELY over.
I'll get this into my head and then kind of leap into the mindstate I've imagined.
What happens next? Everything is exactly the same except that all sensations, thoughts, feelings, everything just flows in does its thing and leaves with no interference from a central discriminating prejudicial self. So there can be great pain and anxiety and awful thoughts and they just barely matter and just barely last and while there are all kinds of feelings -- there is no suffering.
I'm not really sure what this is all about or if it is a good idea but I like doing it and it especially helps when I'm just all twisted up.

It's no doubt just my own bias but it seems there a lots and lots of threads here about the details of vipassana/Mahasi style noting practice but not very much by contrast about what to do with it as you live your life. This makes sense to me as most folks here are interested in furthering their practice. I get that. I was that. Still, though, it's an interesting disparity. I used to think folks who talked about life-stuff were wasting their time worrying about that when they should actually be sitting quietly and noting. I was right in some ways but now I think I was wrong in other important ways.

But the practice has helped me so much this year with life-stuff that it's way ridiculous valuable (to coin a phrase). I can no longer not talk about this and I want to be as accurate as possible in describing the fruits of practice. As was said earlier this week here, it is NOT about being happy or elated all the time. It is about finding the wisdom (read that as experiential perspective) to BE WITH everything you encounter or that arises in your life. This way of being (not a state, not a stage) is far more powerful and enlightened (!) than being reactive to your experience.

Maybe, sometimes, in the practical dharma world we have here the idea that practice is not about "stuff" (what I'm now calling life-stuff) gets over played just a little bit.

What do you think?

"
It's no doubt just my own bias but it seems there a lots and lots of threads here about the details of vipassana/Mahasi style noting practice but not very much by contrast about what to do with it as you live your life. This makes sense to me as most folks here are interested in furthering their practice. I get that. I was that. Still, though, it's an interesting disparity. I used to think folks who talked about life-stuff were wasting their time worrying about that when they should actually be sitting quietly and noting. I was right in some ways but now I think I was wrong in other important ways.

But the practice has helped me so much this year with life-stuff that it's way ridiculous valuable (to coin a phrase). I can no longer not talk about this and I want to be as accurate as possible in describing the fruits of practice. As was said earlier this week here, it is NOT about being happy or elated all the time. It is about finding the wisdom (read that as experiential perspective) to BE WITH everything you encounter or that arises in your life. This way of being (not a state, not a stage) is far more powerful and enlightened (!) than being reactive to your experience.

Maybe, sometimes, in the practical dharma world we have here the idea that practice is not about "stuff" (what I'm now calling life-stuff) gets over played just a little bit.

What do you think?

"

I think it reflects the relative proportions of early pathers to arhats on the site. Our interests will no doubt evolve as our practice does.

JMHO.

Hi Chris,

I totally agree with you that it's really about living our lives the best we can, having meaningful contact with loved ones and those we come in contact with. But it is really easy to realise that from this place we find ourselves in now. I think back to when the whole insight disease drive was pushing me to fuss and obsess over the details of the path. It was like that was what was making certain things take prominence in my life. It may very well be stage specific, all this fussing and obsessing, or just strong interest.

When we expereince something so strange and unique to the norm such as frutions, we want to know how it is for other people. We want to know if it's the same. We want to know if we are crazy or not. You said it yoursefl that us humans have this obsessive need "to know" what is going on. So thus we have those threads on the specifics of meditation pop up. It helps those passing through those phases when their interests are affected. It helps in feeling like they aren't the only ones going through this weird and wonderful development.

But from here, where the push and pull of feeling out-of-synch is no longer, no insight disease,no feeling like something "needs" to be done, it is so very much now all about "life stuff", at least for me now it is. So, yeh, like Tom said, I think interests in phenomena of the awakenig process can be influenced very much from where we find ourselves on the path. But it is good to keep in mind what you said on the Frutions thread and I agree we shouldn't lose ourselves in the details of meditation. However, talking about them makes them less "special" and more the norm. And when things are more the norm, then people may stop "wondering" and fussing over them.

My follow-up question is this -- why among those in the throes of the path - but especially among those NOT in those throes - is there less interest in the nature of the objective, in the fruits of the thing? Realizing that it is completely possible, maybe probable, that I'm full of crap and just not seeing those discussions, or not accounting for them, or what have you.

Please be aware that I'm not criticizing anyone. I'm really just curious to hear what folks think. Remember, I was just like that at one time, too, and I can recall how focused I was on the process to the exclusion of anything else. So this is about the relationship of that process orientation to goal orientation. In my case I innately assumed the goal was worth the effort, but I was not fully aware of the nature of the goal. This is not the way I typically engage in multi-year, time-intensive projects. When I got my degrees I had a very clear picture of the objective and knew far more clearly the benefits.

I'm also making some distinctions between the "movement" we seem to represent (practical dharma, I guess) and other spiritual traditions. We seem to be very process oriented and focused on the details. Well beyond what other traditions have going on. Is this because we're more open to the possibility of awakening? Is it because of MCTB and the extreme focus on process and that's our DNA?

I don't know.

I'm gonna go sit now

Well, I'm not doing this so I can be good at vipassana.
I'm trying to be good at vipassana so life will get better. I'm serious.
I'll never believe those who say this practice has nothing to do with the rest of your life, or who say to not do it with the hopes that life will get better.
My life has gotten better from the first in breath I noted.
I want more intimacy with life and I want to suffer less. I want to be a more effective loving helpful happy and happiness-creating human being. And I'm getting all that.
I want to FEEL everything all the way and that happens more and mroe every day. Because of this practice.
And, I'd love to share details. I told a story recently about how a visit from my father was greatly inhanced because of this practice but I felt like it may have been seen as too much information about my personal life.
But, I'd love to be able to discuss more real life examples of how practice is enhancing my life in real everyday ways and I'd love to hear more about this from the rest of you.
And if you try and tell me that this practice doesn't help with my stuff I won't believe you.

"I'm also making some distinctions between the "movement" we seem to represent (practical dharma, I guess) and other spiritual traditions. We seem to be very process oriented and focused on the details. Well beyond what other traditions have going on. Is this because we're more open to the possibility of awakening? Is it because of MCTB and the extreme focus on process and that's our DNA?

I don't know.

"

Thanks for opening this conversation, Chris-- I hope you'll get lots of answers, representing lots of engagement, because I think this is a crucial line of enquiry. I'm in the peculiar position of being neither an 'adherent' nor an 'adversary' of the 'movement'-- had I encountered this approach when I was all about the process and its associated phenomena, it would have been helpful to have the affirmation and support. I don't know how I'd have felt about the attempt to make objective assessments of subjective phenomena. It's a conundrum I still turn over in my mind.

I have approached the forum as an interesting conversation about matters that greatly interest me-- but among a group of teachers and students from a specific school of which I'm not a part. So my comments are mostly around the edges, where your expertise in the minutiae segues into the common life-- and my developed capacity for intent observation has some relevance.

There HAS seemed to me to be a very strongly held insistence on 'sticking to the program', and describing oneself and one's practice in its very specific terms-- and, beyond that, a reactivity to discussions of view, inspiration, philosophy, social considerations. And that's rather odd, since I'll bet that most of the motivations to take up the practice fall into these categories.

yes, i no longer believe in a permanent, separate "self." (thank god)
there isn't one, it just doesn't exist and once one sees through that so much suffering is just gone
at the same time though, I do believe in a moment to moment ever changing temporary entity (the one typing this right now) that is connected to all things all the time(s) who is playing out life on this earth in multiple patterns.
cool, huh? I'd have to be blind to miss that
one of the myths about the buddha is that he touched the earth upon being enlightened and i really like that story because I think it shows that he was affirming that he existed that he was .... RIGHT HERE

It's funny, I recently went on retreat at IMS. I didn't really know what to expect but I had these half-formed notions of how it might be too touchy-feely or airy-fairy based on I don't know what exactly, just the ambiance of discussion I've been around. (I am a practical dharma child, I never had any experience with practice outside of this community and MCTB.)

What I found was that the environment was a bit more relaxed and gentle and heart-centered than what I'm used to being around. i.e. the sort of things that could be cynically called touchy-feely or airy-fairy. But it was 90% concentration and vipassana stuff and obviously very serious and no-nonsense, being non-stop all day meditation for a week with no talking etc. I picked up several useful insight-related things that had eluded me til then. And more importantly, the more heart-centered aspects were not intrusions that watered things down, but really welcome additions that brought everything together. I even had a big realization about the nature of a recurring experience I kept having that was deeply connected to this sense of recognizing being or existence, but I couldn't quite place it on any experiences or maps I had read about. Well duh, the experience was a deep kind of metta for existence itself. I never made the connection because I never bothered to do metta meditation.

It's really interesting. I think a lot of the practical dharma thing is a reaction to some of the flaws of popular Western Buddhism that people keep running into related to imprecision in technique, no clear practice goals, psychologizing of practice etc. Of course I value that ethic, or else I wouldn't be here. But also for me, too much of the heart part of the path had been ignored. As with all other things, there is a middle way I guess. The direction of the movements you make to approach the middle way depend on where you start out.

A related thing is how much I used to stress out over practice, try to get to certain states or stages, etc in the name of progress. I still have some of those habits but not to the same degree. It's kind of absurd if you think about it. Bottom line, why are we doing this practice? To be happy. Yes, we need to be diligent and serious about practice. But it's kind of a perverse joke when a yogi lines his path to happiness with so much unnecessary worry and doubt and stress and suffering.

Right now I'm of the mind that the supreme practice is to learn to make one's self at home in the present moment, no matter what is going on. A lot of times that will automatically bring about plenty of mindfulness and concentration and disembedding, etc. Sometimes the present moment will be about something totally different; just a fact of life. So why not learn to be with that too, in a very flexible notion of the term 'being with', instead of trying to shoehorn everything into some kind of grand vipassana practice and feeling that something is wrong or unsatisfactory when that is just too impractical to happen?

" Bottom line, why are we doing this practice? To be happy. Yes, we need to be diligent and serious about practice. But it's kind of a perverse joke when a yogi lines his path to happiness with so much unnecessary worry and doubt and stress and suffering.

Right now I'm of the mind that the supreme practice is to learn to make one's self at home in the present moment, no matter what is going on. A lot of times that will automatically bring about plenty of mindfulness and concentration and disembedding, etc. Sometimes the present moment will be about something totally different; just a fact of life. So why not learn to be with that too, in a very flexible notion of the term 'being with', instead of trying to shoehorn everything into some kind of grand vipassana practice and feeling that something is wrong or unsatisfactory when that is just too impractical to happen? "

palabra!
I love everything you just wrote and I like what you said about your IMS retreat. I'd like to hear more about that experience.

Fascinating and important discussion. I like what everyone has been saying Kate, Mike, Brian, Chris, Nik et al.

I would go so far as to say, in the interest of being provocative I suppose, that if there's anything going on in your "practice" which isn't immediately relevant in your "life", then I have no idea what that "practice" even is, other than self obsession. Even if you can easily enter states of peace and clarity and insight while sitting, yet are still generally agitated and reactive and confused in daily life-- I really, really don't see the point. Actually, I'm sort of talking to the "me" of three years ago here
The fact is, "it takes what it takes". Whatever it takes to bring someone to the point of taking responsibility for mind's relationship to phenomena in everyday life, is what it takes. If that means self-obsessed pleasure and safety seeking has to be turned into self-obsessed awakening seeking for a time, so be it.
But I think it's important to emphasise that wisdom is discovered and expressed in "life". Life is all we've got. If we set aside a little corner of life, in which to delve deeply into the underlying dyamics of this issue of taking responsibility for how mind relates to inner and outer events, then all the better. All the better for our lives as a whole. All the better for all beings, when one takes some time to carefully examine their own life in this light, thereby giving themselves a chance to grow into a way of existing which is less compressed, more relaxed, less closed, more open, less reactive, more responsive, less self-obsessed, more compassionate, less compulsive, more free. And in all other ways exactly the same as before, of course.

Hey Chris,
I think the disparity might come from the fact that, at different points in our practice, our practice needs to have different focuses if we want to make progress. For me at least, at first it was all I could do just to sit. It was excruciating, my mind was a mess and I was, for the first time, learning to deal with that.
Later, it became about gaining insights into how my mind worked, what reality really was like and how I fit into it all. This was when mastering vipassana became critical so I could end the horrors of insight disease.
Now that insight disease is done for me, my practice is slowly coming back to reengaging with my life and progressing along the moral axis. But at each stage it felt different, and I needed different things.

My 2 cents.
Much love,
-o

Regarding process vs goal, from my perspective, while I am very much aware of the goal, and read with a tinge of envy some of the more goal-specific discussions, it seems very far away to me. Using your degree analogy, the goal of getting my degree did not prevent me from worrying about the next lab report or mid-term exam. For better or worse, we have a more well-defined practice here than other sanghas, and it seems only natural to be concerned about how one is doing on it while doing it. Once you have reached the end, it seems easy to look back and say "relax, don't worry, it's all good". It may be, but not to me...right now.

i think it is a give that we are all really into practicing and want and need and appreciate as much practice oriented talk and advice and instruction that we can get.
it's true for me anyway
I think that what chris is asking about is if, in addition to that, there can also be some talk and appreciation for the interaction of practice with life. about the fruits of practice

One of my biggest reasons for practicing has been my daily life. I've heard several people (Owen Becker and Alan Chapman come to mind) say that awakening helped them to actually live an ordinary human life. I feel that perhaps I've been suffering from insight disease for a long time, and not known what was causing my unhappiness nor how to go about fixing it. If anything, I want to finish this thing so that I can intimately know "just this" and understand that I am acting based on reality, and not on some misguided attempt to cover over a gaping (ultimately non-existent) insight wound.

And to that end, I've found practice to be very helpful. The more I learn to disembedd from phenomenon, letting things arise and pass as they do, the more I find that I've been looking for satisfaction in places that will not, ultimately, provide satisfaction.

Seeing this, I can let those things be as-they-are, rather than trying to perfect them, because I know that my ultimate satisfaction (happiness not relying on conditions) isn't in them, it's in me. So things AND me begin to settle down and be what they already are, and through this, I hope to eventually "graduate" and enter the "real world".

That's the plan, anyway. : )

"One of my biggest reasons for practicing has been my daily life. I've heard several people (Owen Becker and Alan Chapman come to mind) say that awakening helped them to actually live an ordinary human life. I feel that perhaps I've been suffering from insight disease for a long time, and not known what was causing my unhappiness nor how to go about fixing it. If anything, I want to finish this thing so that I can intimately know "just this" and understand that I am acting based on reality, and not on some misguided attempt to cover over a gaping (ultimately non-existent) insight wound.

And to that end, I've found practice to be very helpful. The more I learn to disembedd from phenomenon, letting things arise and pass as they do, the more I find that I've been looking for satisfaction in places that will not, ultimately, provide satisfaction.

Seeing this, I can let those things be as-they-are, rather than trying to perfect them, because I know that my ultimate satisfaction (happiness not relying on conditions) isn't in them, it's in me. So things AND me begin to settle down and be what they already are, and through this, I hope to eventually "graduate" and enter the "real world".

That's the plan, anyway. : )"

word!

And here's a different perspective on the issue: why wait to "become" awake to have your full human life? Why not learn to appreciate the fact that your whole human existence is made possible by nothing but awareness? Intrinsic wakefulness is the most basic thing about us. It is always letting everything be exactly as it is. And it is always the actual heart of each moment of experience. You don't actually need to wait till some other point in time to live your life with total awareness. Discovering and learning to trust your basic default condition of aware presence In Life is a practice.
-Jake

Maybe the distinction between aspiring to 'awaken' and 'being awake' is one of those peculiarly paradoxical useful fictions: what defines 'being awake' -- to me-- is recognizing that while you, or anyone else, can be confused, can misunderstand, no one can be in some alternate state or reality called 'not-awake' or 'asleep'-- ever. Practice can set you up to notice this-- methodical vipassana sitting practice, more free-form inquiry practice, or the spontaneity of Dzogchen 'when am I NOT practicing?' total-immersion practice. And the random opportunities that life provides can make noticing unavoidable-- the birthing or dying bed, illness, accident, falling in love are the classics. But there are also honking horns, bizarre behavior, unexpected encounters... endless dharmas.

Lately I am considering that formal meditation practice is a means of developing a skill-- just as we all once concentrated on mastering walking, and for some months that was a BIG deal. But, if it didn't simply become our taken-for-granted means of moving around in the world, something would have gone awry. That the result of that stage of practice is not any experience that signaled mastery at the time, that we can sit down and re-experience for nostalgia's sake. The result is that we are sane, balanced, responsive-- 'insightful' in the absolutely ordinary sense of the word-- human beings. This is apparent to ourselves and to others who interact with us; and to interject 'issues' about how we define ourselves confuses rather than clarifies things.