Relating Buddhism and the PCE

Let me preface this by saying that, if this kind of thing isn't welcome here, I will be happy not to post about it anymore.

Here are some general thoughts. I think that, whatever Buddha meant by Arahantship in the Pali Canon, it was either technical 4th path, or AF (permanent PCE). If he meant technical 4th path, he's probably a liar and bullsh*t artist, because all the good stuff that's claimed about Arahantship doesn't actually happen at technical 4th path. Not even remotely close. It's also possible that, due to 2500 years of cultural change, he genuinely did think that all his claims about Arahantship were a good description of technical 4th path. In that case, if he learned about the PCE, he would have changed his tune, because that is the end of suffering.

Supposing that Buddha really was trying to point towards the state of permanent-PCE, it seems like what happened through the ages is that he was grossly misinterpreted. The Theravada commentary does seem to think that the technical 4-path model is what Buddha meant by stream entry, sakadagami, anagami, and arahant. One can do the commentary's practice and find that at the end of it lies 4th path. Again, 4th path doesn't match any of the claims that are made about it, but I'd never put it past doctrinal correctness to get people to gloss over that fact.

In that case, all the Mayahana polemics about the ignorant sravakas, all the sutras where Avalokitesvara and Vimalakirti and Buddha himself and etc. talk down to Sariputra and Mahakasyapa and the Pali cast of monks, probably stems from the genuine recognition that what the Theravada commentary is talking about and what the Theravada practice leads to isn't the last word. The Theravadins got to keep their terminology (Arahant, nirvana) and the Mahayana writers said: "well, Arahants don't know what emptiness is and nirvana is actually the same as samsara!" (cont)

In other words, they found new ways to talk about the old realizations, since the Theravadins had dibs on the old terminology but couldn't recognize that they weren't getting the old attainments.

In Mahayana circles, there was probably some kind of gross confusion between the PCE and rigpa (3rd gear outside of direct mode). A lot of the descriptions of the two will sound the same if you couch them in pre-existing Buddhist / religious language, even though the experiences themselves are radically different. I imagine that some people attained perma-PCE and some people attained perma-rigpa and no group as a whole recognized that there were different phenomena at hand.

Of interest along these lines, a friend sent me a NYTimes article about a well-known American Zen practitioner whose teacher told him "to follow this path you must reject all human feelings." He disagreed, thinking it was just asian cultural baggage, and spent a lot of time working on some kind of integration of feelings with his practice, talked about the issue at conferences, etc. Sounds like he rejected instructions for how to attain a PCE, which his teacher may have been intimately familiar with. Probably the same thing happened lots of times all through the history of Buddhism.

Back to the Pali suttas, as far as I know there is nothing called NS in it. NS is in the commentaries. The Pali suttas talk about Arahantship and the end of the mental fermentations being caused by a state called sanna-vedayita-nirodha (cessation of feeling and perception). This may actually be the PCE. Why?

* It's a stupid thing to give it that name if it's the cessation of all experience, not just feeling and perception.

* Feeling ceases in the PCE, and if "perception" refers to some kind of conceptualizing / distorting faculty of perception then that ceases too. (Any Pali scholars want to weigh in on what sanna means?) (cont)

I think the suttas also say that it's off-limits to pre-anagamis (attaining sanna-vedayita-nirodha makes one an anagami at least), so this suggests the following correspondance:

Commentarial stream entry = Sutta stream entry
Commentarial arahant = Sutta sakadagami
Enough work in direct mode to get a PCE = Kenneth's 6th stage? = Sutta anagami
AF "actually free" = Sutta arahant

An anagami-via-PCE may not be the same attainment as someone who did vipassana first and then got a PCE, but perhaps in a way it's true to say that they have abandoned all the same fetters (?). Discussing this is hard because it seems like people throw around the word "PCE" in an imprecise way, referring to all kinds of EE experiences that may be at varying distances from an actual PCE.

NS, by contrast, is probably exactly what we've thought it is all along, some special fruition that you can get after technical 3rd path, not related to sanna-vedayita-nirodha.

Thoughts or comments welcome. And again, if this kind of discussion is not welcome here, no problem, I'll refrain in the future.



It turns out this post was a little more ambitious than relating Buddhism and the PCE, but I can't change it's name at this point, sorry!

And one final note. The suttas do say that Arahants come out of sanna-vedayita-nirodha after their attainment, which seems to be a problem for my position. On the other hand, AF people insist that being AF is not the same as being in an endless PCE, though similar, so this may actually shore up my position after all. A person comes out of the PCE when they attain AF.

I lied. One more note. More support for sanna-vedayita-nirodha = PCE is this. Whatever cessation (in our sense) that one gets at 4th path is not different than the cessation that heralds stream entry. The path moment may be different, the entry may be different, but cessation is cessation is cessation. I've wondered so many times why the suttas seem to say that one only gets cessation (which I assumed was what sanna-vedayita-nirodha referred to) at the stages of anagami or arahant. Why is it such a big deal that Sariputta sees sanna-vedayita-nirodha and that ends the fermentations in Anupada Sutta? Hasn't he seen that many times before, starting at stream entry? Why didn't it end the fermentations before? ( www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.111.than.html )

Now, there seems to be an answer. Cessation is irrelevant, at best some kind of developmental marker, and is certainly not nibbana (as Mahasi Sayadaw and other Theravadins think). Sanna-vedayita-nirodha is not cessation, but may be the PCE (which has the power to destroy the fermentations and end suffering). The suttas never talk about stream enters attaining it upon stream entry simply because they don't. And the suttas never talk about stream enterers attaining cessation upon stream entry because cessation is a rather uninteresting and easy-to-miss occurence. Mystery solved, perhaps.

Very interesting and creative commentary, EIS. As to whether it is "true" in any grand sense of the word, I don't know. I wonder if anyone does. We are trying to synthesize an enormous body of literature and personal experience with thousands of strands and perhaps thousands of authors and interpreters. Still, the effort is worthwhile, I think, as long as we don't cling too firmly to conclusions. Finally, each of us has to dig around in his or her mind to find out what satisfies. Is it a particular kind of experience, like the PCE? Or is it an orientation that allows one to be free within an almost infinitely broad range of experience including but not limited to the PCE? Although I don't rule out anything, my current interest is in the latter; my hunch is that awakening is an infinite process and that the final chapter is not written for anyone as long they continue to breathe. Let's all do the experiment and see what we see.

You are welcome to post this kind of exploration here and as long as it doesn't attract a lot of folks who are more interested in arguing their opinions than in encountering their own minds, we can continue the discussion.

I have no stake in this other than to say that awakening doesn't appear to me to have and "end." It seems to be an open process. But hey, what do I know? Only what I experience. I do seem to be missing some gene that calls others to the intricate mapping of this experience to that experience. God bless those who do that as it probably helps some folks. To me, however, it just seems confusing. And, ultimately, I want not to "get" this intellectually but rather like a towel soaks up water on a misty day - I want to feel this in my bones and gut. I want to be awake

There are many roads...

Kenneth, I agree with your perspective completely. The really great thing about communities like this is that we are all doing the experiment, sharing what we find, and helping each other attain whatever we're aiming at, in a way that is hopefully more efficient and effective than what happened in the past.

There is so many correspondences drawn between the technical 4-path model and the suttas (correspondences which were taken as dogma by some...or at least, *I* took them as dogma) that I hoped that others would find some value in seeing a different but plausible way that correspondences can be drawn, relating what we know about the suttas and the history of Buddhism to this relatively new PCE stuff. It would probably have made me less dogmatic about my own beliefs in the past to read something like this.

"The Theravadins got to keep their terminology (Arahant, nirvana) and the Mahayana writers said: "well, Arahants don't know what emptiness is and nirvana is actually the same as samsara!" (cont)"

I've often wondered why 4th pathers on the Dho do not tend to speak in a way that sounds consistent with Nagarjuna's "emptiness of emptiness". It's almost like 4th path sounds like a simulation of enlightenment, with no paradigmatic shift to mirror the perceptual one, at least in the way they speak about it. How do you think 4th path relates to Nagarjuna's work, or even to the Heart SÅ«tra's 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form'? Is your own contention (that Maha 'gets' this and Thera doesn't) mirrored in your own experience of 4th path?

"I do seem to be missing some gene that calls others to the intricate mapping of this experience to that experience."

It is a pretty geeky thing to do, huh?

"I've often wondered why 4th pathers on the Dho do not tend to speak in a way that sounds consistent with Nagarjuna's "emptiness of emptiness". It's almost like 4th path sounds like a simulation of enlightenment, with no paradigmatic shift to mirror the perceptual one, at least in the way they speak about it. How do you think 4th path relates to Nagarjuna's work, or even to the Heart SÅ«tra's 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form'? Is your own contention (that Maha 'gets' this and Thera doesn't) mirrored in your own experience of 4th path?"

I've never read Nagarjuna, but by coincidence I re-read the heart sutra earlier today and recognized that I have a very different interpretation of it than I did in the past (newly-minted 4th path). In the past, I thought I knew what it meant, but I also recognized at the time that I had to read it in a twisted way to understand it, so I wasn't a big fan of it. Now, I'm a big fan of it.

My personal experience is, 4th path is like a purely cognitive understanding of what enlightenment (which I now believe is what AFers are talking about) is about. It's not a bad attainment. It gave me immense clarity about what's going on with experience. And the cognitive understanding is pretty accurate, as far as it goes.

"Simulation of enlightenment" is a really fantastic way to put it. I wouldn't have thought of that. Thanks for sharing.

As for your last question, when I got 4th path (when I assumed 4th path was the end or practically the end), I thought that the Theravada and Mahayana forms of Buddhism were both going on about the same thing, in really different terms, and that everyone was stupid for not having recognized that it's the same. Now I see some Mahayana forms as agreeing with the Pali suttas in intent, and Theravada as the result of some kind of historical confusion that never got corrected.

I'm not sure 4th path is purely cognitive but it is not, quite clearly, the full on realization that emptiness and form are ultimately one and the same and that we live in both the relative and absolute worlds simultaneously. There is much more to awakening than the recognition of "not self."

JMHO

By cognitive I just mean that the noticing faculty of mind (part of cognition) is so developed that one can't help but see that every experience is just what it is, freestanding, perspectiveless, all that. I'd venture that we mean the same thing in talking about 4th path. And as you might say, it doesn't mean that we've "soaked it up" beyond that purely cognitive level. Sorry for the confusion.

"Kenneth, I agree with your perspective completely."

Just to clarify this...the take-home message is not to be tied down to any view and to be willing to change what one thinks when there's reason to and to be open to the possibility that there is always something better further out on the horizon. Agree 100%. Also, who knows what the suttas meant for sure. I don't. All I have is a best guess. All anyone has is the same.

At least for now, I have dug around in my own mind and figured out what satisfies. It's the PCE. Maybe I'll have a different view in the future. But probably not; my past PCE-like experiences have so completely dominated my views on what it means to be happy, beginning long before I had ever heard of the PCE, AF, Buddhism, or had even tried meditating, that I can't imagine what would change that. My new perspective comes only from recognizing what those past experiences were. But I'm open to the possibility of changing my mind.

Even if I attain what I intend to attain, there's always another chapter in life, whether or not that chapter is about spiritual development...

Have you seen this thread onnthe DhO regarding No Dog and PCE - www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...ards/message/1631786

There's some interesting discussion between An Eternal Now and Tarin that seems relevant to this topic.

"Have you seen this thread onnthe DhO regarding No Dog and PCE - www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...ards/message/1631786

There's some interesting discussion between An Eternal Now and Tarin that seems relevant to this topic. "

Thanks for the link, Eran_G. I just looked it over; I hadn't read it before. A couple of impressions:

The interplay between AnEternalNow and Tarin Greco was fascinating not only because of the intricacy of the discussion, but also because of the attitude each seemed to manifest. Of the two, it seemed that AnEternalNow was the freer, i.e., less attached to how others would perceive the exchange, an irony I could not fail to appreciate. Other than that, the two seemingly opposing worldviews were equally appealing or unappealing, depending on the reader's orientation.

Secondly, I found this passage from Daniel Ingram striking:

"When I fist ran into what later came to be called the No-Dog, assuming that someone else experienced the same thing, which is semi-questionable, I had these impressions..." -Daniel Ingram

The "no-dog" is a word I coined in 2004 to describe an aspect of my own experience and to share it with others. It had nothing to do with anything Daniel may or may not have experienced. I began to use the word publicly and Daniel picked up on it along with everyone else. It's never been clear to me whether Daniel and I were describing the same phenomenon when he later began to use the same word. In any case, his phrase, "what later came to be called the No-Dog" makes no sense at all and could even be interpreted as an attempt to take credit for someone else's work. "Some Dog," on the other hand, is Daniel's creation, riffing off of "no-dog."

I just read the thread, but I'm not sure what you had in mind. No Dog is kind of mysterious to me unless it means the Witness. That I get, but it's not very interesting compared to the PCE, though it does involve less suffering than regular experience.

An Eternal Now and Thusness are more mysterious to me. They seem to have some kind of eclectic syncretistic Mahayana sort of thing going. I don't get it.

Is that the connection you're thinking of, the Mahayana outlook that clearly isn't aiming at a PCE / the end of suffering? In that case...just today I discovered that strong EEs can get contorted by affect into really weird experiences that have properties of both. Fantastic but distorted at the same time. The key to not having that happen seems to be to reject the affect, which one may or may not think to do without the conviction or faith or confidence that it's a good idea. One may or may not even recognize the affective component because it doesn't resemble normal feelings and seems especially glorious. (That's how I discovered this, recognizing the affect only in retrospect.) That's a third possibility I could envision, beyond perma-PCE and perma-rigpa, for Mahayanists; some kind of distorted but powerful ongoing EE. Maybe that explains what An Eternal Now is experiencing and talking about. Relevant to what you had in mind?

Of course the end of suffering and the eradication of defilements are part of the bodhisattva path. But like I said to some, bodhisattvas and buddhas are arhat++.

The problem with Actualism is that there is often a neglect on realization (even though Richard talks about it, it is not emphasized enough). Actualist path cultivates PCE until it is stable... but without realization, there can never be effortless, seamless, natural PCEs. Buddhism stresses more on realization than experience. I don't know of what 'weird experiences' you are talking about, but I generally do not pay much concern to 'weird experiences' as all such experiences are generally ephemeral and unsatisfying. I am only interested in the uncontrived natural state of reality (or actuality), which means... this sound, this sight, this thought, just as it is - self-luminous, vividly appearing yet nothing graspable or locatable. For every realization, there will come certain experiences that is natural and effortless... but having those experiences does not mean one has the realization (it might just be a peak experience like most people had PCEs before but generally forgotten about them). Having realization of the absence of agent is essential to effortless, natural pces, but doesn't mean that alone will dissolve all sense of self - by sheer habitual tendencies, affective emotions and sense of self may still arise for some time, but in my experience they gradually lessen and can eventually be overcome. To me, the realization of anatta is like stream entry where self-view (the view of inherent self) is removed, then the rest of the fetters are generally removed by 'transforming five skandhas into eighteen dhatus'.

Here is an excerpt from a Buddhist glossary site on the definition of twofold Emptiness (the realization that leads to first bhumi, stream entry, etc):

Two emptinesses (二空) include (1) emptiness of self, the ātman, the soul, in a person composed of the five aggregates, constantly changing with causes and conditions; and (2) emptiness of selves in all dharmas'”each of the five aggregates, each of the twelve fields, and each of the eighteen spheres, as well as everything else with no independent existence. No-self in any dharma implies no-self in a person, but the latter is separated out in the first category. Realization of the emptiness of self in a person will lead to attainment of Arhatship or Pratyekabuddhahood. Bodhisattvas who have realized both emptinesses ascend to the First Ground on their Way to Buddhahood.

.......

As for 'rigpa', in my understanding it is not exactly just a state of experience (like a peak experience), or some independent ultimate reality. It is not some independent substance of awareness like substantial non-dualism. Like Loppon Namdrol says, "In my opinion, translating rigpa as "awareness" is simply wrong. Intelligence is also not good, again IMO. In this case, knowledge is best. Why? Because rigpa is opposite to ma rig pa. Knowledge is the opposite of ignorance."

So it comes down to the question, what is knowledge? I don't know how they define it, but to me, knowledge is the knowledge of the twofold emptinesses. If that is the case, Rigpa is not simply third gear.

Hey,

First off, I should make clear that I'm not in a position to offer any opinion on your practice and experiences with confidence. I don't know you, don't know your practice, and admitted that I don't understand your model. So take this conversation as a friendly, theoretical first stab at trying to relate some seemingly-disparate stuff.

A "PCE in non-conceptual thought" is one example of a weird experience. I believe I know what it is and have had it many times. It lasts only momentarily and can then be distorted in memory into something else. Thing is, I don't recognize anything in my experience ever that can be called a non-conceptual thought. I do recognize something that I can label "being" which masquerades as an experience coming through the mind sense-door, but without anything it's "about" (thus presenting as a non-conceptual mind experience), but is actually just a body sensation, and as far as I can see, this experience of a "non-conceptual thought PCE" is some kind of momentary one-pointedness on that body sensation dressed up as a thought. The important further point here is that the body sensation in question is affective (albeit absolutely neutral) so the whole experience is distorted.

I also recognize the same kind of experience without the one-pointedness (senses function normally) which is harder to describe, which has some of the qualities of the PCE but also has the distorting qualities of the affect running through it (making those affective qualities appear to be identical with the PCE-esque richness, subtlety, and freshness).

Let me know what you think of these examples and perhaps we'll go further.

As far as what Buddhism stresses, my reading of the Pali suttas sez that what's stressed is dispassion, renunciation, and rejection of the defilements. One form of Buddhism among many.

PCE in non-conceptual thought is not a weird experience. It is simply what mind is at the moment when conceptualizing fades. It is not a being - being implies identity, implies that one identifies an inherent, independent, permanent entity. That would be a misconstrueing of the nature of quiescent mind, which is empty and luminous - empty in the sense that it lacks an inherent self or identity.

But mind is nothing like that - non-conceptual thought is simply a state of mind in its queiscent state. It is not a being, not an identity.

You have not realized what non-conceptual thought is, it is not what you said, it is not a bodily sensation.

Mind is a modality, or sense-door. When there are no mind-objects, there is no mind-experience; the sense-door has no experiential qualities. Same as with anything else. No visual objects, no visual experience. Agree?

What kind of mind-object is a "non-conceptual thought"? If you say that it is the experience of mind being quiescent, but you agree with the above, tell me what object appears to mind in that state? And how do you know it appears to mind?

The tricky thing about perception is that it's grossly distorted in all kinds of ways. Lots of things that appear to be mind-objects are actually body sensations, as far as I have seen. For example, every emotion. Not that they have body sensation components, not that they can be seen in such a way that everything about them is pushed out of experience other than the body sensation components, but everything about it is a body sensation. The "mental" aspect is a mis-located body sensation.

The experience of "being," too, is a body sensation masquerading as a mind-object. This sensation is affective (often neutral). If you're not in a PCE right now, you should be able to look in your experience, find "being" or something that seems like what another person with another conceptual scheme would label "being," and say whether you think it's a mind-object or a body-sensation or something else. So let me know what you think.

You said: "I do recognize something that I can label "being" ", actually, there is no such thing as a "being" element in experience. It is not a thing, it is simply a process of conceiving something to grasp.

"Being" is simply the notion that there is a self, which leads to the reifying/conceiving something to cling to, which is unchanging and separate from the flow of reality. Basically it is the notion that 'there is'. That 'is' or 'is not' applies to a real entity called self, where in reality 'self' is simply an empty label like 'weather' - it doesn't refer to a graspable subject or object, apart from the flow of phenomenality. The realization of anatta (in seeing just the seen, in hearing just the heard) allows one to relinquish such clinging by seeing how 'there is' or 'is not' does not apply to reality. The clinging to 'me' is the source of all other clinging/attachments, emotions, etc.

In reality, it is not the case that there is a being, and then now I banished that being... as Richard says, 'My' demise was as fictitious as 'my' apparent presence.

See nickdowntherabbithole.blogspot.com/2011/...eakthrough.html#more

and sgforums.com/forums/1728/topics/434067

Also, "being" does not imply anything like you say in my usage. I'm trying to meet you halfway by talking about stuff you describe that I find mysterious. You have to meet me halfway, too. By "being" I mean some kind of everpresent (outside of a PCE) affective experience. It may imply identity to someone pre-path, but that's a special case.

I want to keep the rest of this conversation restricted to descriptions of experience.

What is in your experience right now, if anything, that is affective?

Also, please let me know what you think about my other questions regarding the mind-object that presents when the mind is quiescent.

And, do you recognize what I'm describing regarding emotions appearing as mind-objects, or not?