The Sankhara thread

Hi Eran,
I used to suffer extreme baseless anxieties that would appear spontaneously, stay a while and then just leave. Also, sensations of being defensively violent associated with a general global fear was a standard diet for me too. Since attaining to third path recently these processes, which were dying rapidly over 1st and 2nd path, have ceased. Emotion still arises but passes almost immediately, like Nick said, if I want to let it go. Situational fear still arises and situational anxiety but don't stick. What is far more prevalent now however, weirdly, is the phenomenon of gratitude and compassion. I tend to let them stay a while. They nourish my soul.
Paul

Yes.

Choice.

Choice is the key difference. After a certain point one can see all phenomena arise and pass away freely and they appear on a level playing field. Repeat -- all phenomena can be seen to arise and pass away *on a level playing field.* After these objects arise (i.e.; love, hate, fear, anger, joy) one has the choice to experience them as one always has or to let them pass away with far less friction - waving bye bye to the object. The same objects still arise. To Joel's point, that part is biology and physics and cannot be eliminated.

Choice.

Talking about anxiety, last week my 9 years old son was in the hospital for a peritonitis. Combined with the stress at work before Summer break, I started to feel a form of anxiety that felt more like a physical sensation of grasping in the lower belly. Trying Adyashanti's method (awakening at the level of guts in 'The End of your World'), I started to listen to this sensation during sitting meditation, trying to understand what it was trying to tell me. And I got the answer. In a way it was sweet and innocent. What it told me is that I felt responsible for the happiness of others. Once all necessary steps have been taken, all we can do it to is surrender to the inevitable. Immediately, the anxiety and related symptoms stopped. I was amazed.

What I discovered is that transcending or witnessing is not always sufficient. In some cases, we need to enter in a form of silent dialogue with these symptoms (obsessive thought patterns, anxiety, fear, strong emotions) to hear what they are trying to tell us. They are like little kids trying to get our attention. When we understand them, they just stop their drama and leave us in peace.

YES! Choice! There is a choice to "run with" the phenomena that arises or let it arise and pass away.

So what if one lets that phenomena arise and pass away without ever "running with it"? Will sankharas (mental and physical formations i.e emotions, mind states, desires etc.) slowly lose momentum? Will sankharas dissipate and get weaker and weaker until one day they wont arise anymore or maybe be replaced by more positive ones? Will those habitual tendencies which are no longer attended to be completely exhausted over the years? Just like S.N. Goenka says will happen?

But where as he is saying in order to experience the "deathless"/4th path one must exhaust all sankharas, what if you bypass that, as many have done, achieve the "deathless"/4th path and now be able to passively observe sankharas arise and pass away and eventually exhaust or weaken themselves over time?

It "seems" like yogis after 4th path are in a better position than a pre-pather to allow certain sankharas to dissipate....hmmmm.....just thinking out loud. In no way am I saying you "eradicate" emotions. Perhaps anger for example may grow weaker and weaker over time from lack of use? A new habitual tendency will then replace it.

This reminds me of something Kenneth mentioned to me. We are constantly creating new memories concerning our own habitual tendencies. Each time a habitual tendency arises, if we are aware of them with wisdom and are able to let them be, we are creating a new memory of that habitual tendency every time it occurs. Thus over time, as we experience this habitual tendency, it will change with the way we react to it. Perhaps eventually being completely replaced by a very different memory from the original habitual tendency.

continued from above...

I mean, you can change any habitual tendency with enough effort. From my experience in the Goenka tradition , I found being equanimous particularly with sensations that were related to particular emotions, DID change certain habitual tendencies to react in a negative way. And that is a very common testimony in that tradition. So there is something to it. A 4th pather has the massive advantage of having no clinging there so negative habitual tendencies in particular can be let go of and over time PERHAPS disappear and/or change for positive ones. This is all speculation for now as I think decades of experience is needed to make this claim. And seeing as the majority if not all the 4th pathers here are "baby" 4th pathers including in a sense Kenneth as he has only 6 years if I remember correctly as an arhat, that claim is more speculation than anything. Maybe he is more of a pre-teen 4th pather. Hehe!

Time will tell!

Thoughts?

This thread has taken off. Nice! I'm learning a lot.

continued from above...


For example, someone jumps the queue in front of me to get on a bus. Immediately I sense the arising of a sankhara (mental and physical formation) of anger (perhaps heavy hot sensations at the chest and thoughts of "screw you, queue jumper!") But the clinging element is not there. That thought arises and quickly is let go of. The sensations of heat and heaviness associated with anger perhaps linger for several seconds more but quickly show their impermanent nature. The sankhara of anger has passed away, and I did not multiply it's power through clinging to it and allowing it to continue to grow in strength.

Previously the memory of that habitual tendency was to allow that sankhara to continue as a verbal action (Hey, queue jumper! Get to the back of the line, punk!!) and even a physical action (I shake my fist in the air at the queue jumper). But I just created a new memory of that habitual tendency due to the ability to not cling anymore. The next time a similar situation occurs, that sankhara of anger will arise, but the reaction to it will have changed in a positive way. I will just see it as nothing more than mental and physical transient phenomena. No biggie! I let the queue jumper jump the queue and I don't suffer. Over more occurrences of this situation over the years, that anger may just not have any fuel for it anymore and get weaker and weaker and just maybe stop arising in such a queue jumper situation. What was the fuel that multiplied the strength of that sankhara but the clinging, right? Although some things seem more hardwired in the brain like the fear - flight or fight response. Just speculating...

"What I discovered is that transcending or witnessing is not always sufficient. In some cases, we need to enter in a form of silent dialogue with these symptoms (obsessive thought patterns, anxiety, fear, strong emotions) to hear what they are trying to tell us. They are like little kids trying to get our attention. When we understand them, they just stop their drama and leave us in peace." -- Alex

Alex, this closely mirrors my experience. I hope your son is well now. My daughter's recent issues have caused similar feelings to arise and it's very obvious that they will always arise given the right causes and conditions. What I now have is a perspective that is at a distance compared to previously, which allows for me to be with these objects instead of reacting. Reacting is the second arrow. Being with is the skillful path. But folks -- do not, DO NOT -- expect these objects never to arise. If they didn't arise you would be dead, or very seriously ill. And we need to feel these things in order to maintain our compassion. We're not robots. We're human beings.

" Immediately I sense the arising of a sankhara (mental and physical formation) of anger (perhaps heavy hot sensations at the chest and thoughts of "screw you, queue jumper!") But the clinging element is not there. That thought arises and quickly is let go of. The sensations of heat and heaviness associated with anger perhaps linger for several seconds more but quickly show their impermanent nature. The sankhara of anger has passed away, and I did not multiply it's power through clinging to it and allowing it to continue to grow in strength." -- Nick

Excellent exposition on "What is the second arrow?"

Reading Alex and Chris's recent posts has made me re-asses my own experience. Sure there are phenomena that are easy to let go of effortlessly. But there has been on occasion recently where I had to sit down and become more intimate with something that had arisen. It was a worry for something that arose. It had very powerful sensations in the chest or solar plexus, if I remember correctly, associated with it. And it was causing a mass of negative thoughts to arise. It took a little sitting time to address what was going on in order to "let it be". It is going to be extremely interesting to see how in 10-20 years people turn out after 4th path. Never-ending indeed.

"Reading Alex and Chris's recent posts has made me re-asses my own experience. Sure there is phenomena that is easy to "let go of" effortlessly. but there has been on occasion recently where I had to sit down and become more intimate with something that had arisen. It was a worry for something that arose. It had very powerful sensations in the chest or solar plexus if I remember correctly associated with it. And it was causing a mass of negative thoughts to arise. It took a little sitting time to address what was going on in order to "let it be". It is going to be extremely interesting to see how in 10-20 years people turn out after 4th path. Never -ending indeed."

the way u describe it makes me think 4th pathers can even have deeply locked up stuff too, stuff from 'past lives' or say issues they havnt really looked at yet, stuff just like other people, that might take a lot of 'soul searching', just the same the sankharas never end.. I remember Buddha saying in a quote when he was asked something related to his enlightenment that "Theres more". If thats so, and Buddha was said to even be "fully enlightened", then perhaps he too Still has sankharas?

It would be nice if Goenka changed his discourses to change the words "eradicate sankharas" to "temporarily subdue sankharas" or something like that.

Thinking about this idea of past conditioning further, I think that it may really define how someone who is 4th path might represent their 4th pathness. A monk who has meditated and followed the monk rules all his life, and perhaps generated lots of metta and really conditioned himself to be very calm and happy, even pre-path, will have a much different experience at 4th path than one of us.

As householders and laymen with busy lives who have developed certain habitual tendencies, different than a life-time monk, will have quite a different take on what is happening to them at 4th path. A monk perhaps will deal with very different habitual tendencies. Those habitual tendencies also consist of "beliefs" and thought patterns on how arahatship is supposed to look like. So perhaps this is where all the discrepancies with the orthodox theravada fetter model of enlightenment come from. Why would arahat monks propagate something like this? Because of their past conditioning and perhaps because it really "feels" like they have eradicated certain emotions due to having already conditioned the mind to be non-reactory previously over many years. Or maybe they are just not wanting to tell the truth.

Western arahat laymen are going to have a very different experience as , my goodness, do they have some special habitual tendencies. Especially when one has responsibilities like taking care of a family and/or a partner, working, and living in a modern society with taxes and too much coffee. Hehe!

Kenneth mentioned to me that if past conditoning really influences how we represent 4th path and enlightenment even when you have attained such things, then who can we trust?

I'm afraid it would be easy to over-analyze this stuff. I suspect that what we read in some traditional accounts of attainment is more like what I'd call marketing -- making the benefits of meditation and path attainment sound really good. So words like "eliminate" and "eradicate" are used. Or... maybe the authors of some of these documents aren't awakened so they don't really know what it's like. This is human nature. I see it every day in business. The sales people oversell the benefits of a product and thus the customer buys the thing and implements it and then has that classic "WTF?" reaction of people who were.... oversold

Anyway, I say all that because I don't think what monks get is any different than what a householder gets. This is something endemic to being human. And what we all get is not psychology, so yes, we still have "issues" that transcend all path attainments. What changes with path attainment seems to me to be related primarily, if not entirely, to perceptual processes. Not psychology.

JMHO

How can you represent--i.e. abstract--anything without it being rooted in conceptualization, which is rooted in the past/conditioning? How would a Mayan arahat in the ancient world represent enlightenment? If a traditional Theravadan also had a robust sense of humor about any and all of the beliefs/concepts that formed his world-view--and held those concepts loosely rather than dogmatically--that would seem to be telling indeed. Whenever you encounter humorlessness around this stuff, that seems to be a major red flag--a sign of embeddedness.

" If a traditional Theravadan also had a robust sense of humor about any and all of the beliefs/concepts...."

Thai Forest Tradition

"Let me rephrase... I would be very surprised if someone at 4th path had generalized anxiety... of course as Joel points out they will have normal healthy fear responses... thats just part of being human..." ~Clayton

I'm not so willing to jump on board with the idea that 4th path will surely alleviate generalized anxiety for a person. There are members of my family who suffer from a variety of anxiety-related disorders, and based their descriptions of the experience I find it hard to believe that insight could cure it. A great deal of the problem is neurological.

For example, I have adult ADD. In general terms, ADD is the result of a lack of cortical stimulation. Without enough stimulation, the brain gets restless and needs something to pick things up a bit. This is why people like me bounce their legs, tap on desks and tables, and read incessantly. It brings the cortical stimulation back up to a comfortable level. I do not see how any amount of insight could "cure" my ADD.

In the same way, while getting 4th path or any other path may or may not cure one's anxiety or depression, I wouldn't count on it. Such expectations are bound to lead to unfulfilled expectations and bad map/model making. Anxiety and depression have myriad causes, and not all of those causes can be cured via insight attainments.

~Jackson

I used to have viscious anxiety. This time last year it was a daily reality. Now it is gone. Gone. Gone.
Now, while I know for sure it is gone because of this practice, I'm not assuming I'll never have it again. How could I possibly know that?
But, I also know that my anxiety must not have been "neurological" as Jackson puts it, I think it was directly related to fears about "me" and "me" getting something or not getting something and "me" afraid of certain humiliations or embarassments over issues of work and survival and debt and parenting, etc. And, for right now at least, that fear/anxiety-producing mechanism just isn't operating strong enough to produce anxiety like before.
I can still kind of see it humming along -- way way downstream somewhere.
And, again, I'm fully ready for all this to change back or into something else entirely -- "whatever is going on" is what I'm into these days.

Part of the issue here is that 4th path is often viewed in terms of "transcendence." But this often leads to spiritual bypassing. When we are taught to only examine the physical sensations of an emotion, we are cultivating a way to try and escape from that emotion. And although many ancient texts say that this can be done, when put into practice in the "real world," the compulsion to ends up leading to more suffering'¦ at least more often than not.

Discovering the transcendent is important. It's helpful to know who you are. But we can pathologically cling to this transcendent facet of our being while simultaneously cultivating a hell of a lot of aversion toward mundane, down and dirty, everyday human experience. Aversion never brings freedom, so we must let this go as well.

Folks, honor your feelings! Honor your emotions! Honor your habitual reactions! Do not block out the stories they tell. Do not block out or ignore the feelings they bring. Do not climb out of experience. Rather, let go "in" to experience. Do not grasp at the transcendent. Do not run away from the sting of human life. Do not remain aloof. Get in there and listen!

Well said, Jackson.

Mike,

Yes, anxiety can be caused by mental factors such as beliefs, fears, and unexamined habitual tendencies. These types of things can be cleared up if enough attention is paid to them, via meditation or therapy or whatever. But this isn't how anxiety works for all people. It isn't just about thinking, or unexamined fear. Some people, for whatever reason, are wired to be on edge. I think it does them a great disservice to suggest that if only they would meditate, they wouldn't be anxious anymore. The type of suffering I'm referring to, which some of my family members are more or less plagued with, needs to be met on its own terms. Meditation alone will not do.

"Mike,

Yes, anxiety can be caused by mental factors such as beliefs, fears, and unexamined habitual tendencies. These types of things can be cleared up if enough attention is paid to them, via meditation or therapy or whatever. But this isn't how anxiety works for all people. It isn't just about thinking, or unexamined fear. Some people, for whatever reason, are wired to be on edge. I think it does them a great disservice to suggest that if only they would meditate, they wouldn't be anxious anymore. The type of suffering I'm referring to, which some of my family members are more or less plagued with, needs to be met on its own terms. Meditation alone will not do."

Huh?
I said "my" anxiety wasn't neurolgoical. Mine. I don't really see where in my comments I suggested that if only "they" would meditate they wouldn't be anxious. I was very careful to just report my experience only.
Also, I hope it has been clear from all of my posts over time that I am NOT into escaping the "down and dirty" -- let it all come! More down, more dirty for me please.

One more thing (sorry to suddenly bombard the thread with my ideas...)...

We need to remember that the Buddha was primarily a forest meditator. He didn't set up the monastic community until quite a while after he awakened. As is common with any teaching that gets passed on via oral transmission in strict monastic contexts, the teachings often become very systematic, dry, and unrealistic (there, I said it). This isn't just the case for the Theravada only. The Mahayana tradition arose from forest dwelling practitioners as well, as was primarily a way of bringing the teachings back to being realization-based.

Of course, once the Mahayana became the norm, everything became very monastic and elitist once more. Thus, the Vajrayana/Tantric tradition depicts the Siddhas as being counter-monastic in almost every way, and yet being also the most realized people of their day.

This isn't a rant to bash monasticism. Rather, keep in mind that the forefront of Buddhist understanding in regards to practice in realization always comes from the fringe. In recent times, the Thai Forest tradition is a great example of how the established tradition wasn't doing it's job. Serious meditators retreated to the forest and discovered what the teachings REALLY mean.

Relying on the old, systematically produced texts is probably not the best way to go about describing one's realization. Look to those who are on the fringe, and who've put in the thousands of hours of practice needed to really master this stuff, and see if their descriptions match the academic translations of the suttas. They probably won't. Ajahn Maha Boowa is an excellent example of this, as is Ajaan Lee and Ajaan Fuang, all Thai Forest ("Forest" being a key word, here) monks.

Pay attention to insights that come from the fringe.

"Huh?
I said "my" anxiety wasn't neurolgoical. Mine. I don't really see where in my comments I suggested that if only "they" would meditate they wouldn't be anxious. I was very careful to just report my experience only.
Also, I hope it has been clear from all of my posts over time that I am NOT into escaping the "down and dirty" -- let it all come! More down, more dirty for me please. "

Sorry, Mike. My intent was not to put words in your mouth. I can be more careful with my responses in the future.

I know that you were referring to your experience of anxiety, and that's you should be free to express that here at the forum. Sometimes I worry that one person's account of what happened will lead others to think that this will also happen for them, or should also happen for others whom they know. I'm very passionate about psychology and sensitive to the suffering of those who are experiencing recurring (if not persistent) anxiety, and I would hate for anything - including meditation - to be seen as some kind of cure for all forms of anxiety. I feel that such a view would further stigmatize anxiety disorders as being something that can just be worked through, thus bringing a sense of guilt or shame on those who are unable to alleviate their suffering via the means in question.

This was not aimed at you, Mike. I'm sorry if it seemed to be so. I really should be more careful with my words.

~Jackson

"Sorry, Mike. My intent was not to put words in your mouth. I can be more careful with my responses in the future.

I know that you were referring to your experience of anxiety, and that's you should be free to express that here at the forum. Sometimes I worry that one person's account of what happened will lead others to think that this will also happen for them, or should also happen for others whom they know. I'm very passionate about psychology and sensitive to the suffering of those who are experiencing recurring (if not persistent) anxiety, and I would hate for anything - including meditation - to be seen as some kind of cure for all forms of anxiety. I feel that such a view would further stigmatize anxiety disorders as being something that can just be worked through, thus bringing a sense of guilt or shame on those who are unable to alleviate their suffering via the means in question.

This was not aimed at you, Mike. I'm sorry if it seemed to be so. I really should be more careful with my words.

~Jackson"

Cool, I probably overreacted though. I'm awful when I think I am being told somethning I already know

" I would hate for anything - including meditation - to be seen as some kind of cure for all forms of anxiety. I feel that such a view would further stigmatize anxiety disorders as being something that can just be worked through, thus bringing a sense of guilt or shame on those who are unable to alleviate their suffering via the means in question.
"

This is exactly how I've seen meditation--as a cure-all for anxiety--because I've always thought of anxiety as something that results from unhealthy thought patterns. It's important to be reminded that anxiety can stem from genetic/neurological stuff and can be unrelated to the content of a person's thoughts. Thanks, Jackson.

"What changes with path attainment seems to me to be related primarily, if not entirely, to perceptual processes. Not psychology.



"

Found this statement really useful.

Very thankful for these conversations.