Relating Buddhism and the PCE

"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."

This article explains it: awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/search/l...20the%20Dalai%20Lama

I'm trying to have a discussion with you. If you're still interested, please answer my questions directly, on the forum, by typing your answers. Otherwise, take care.

"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."

And what does affective mean? What does feeling even mean? In Buddhism, we talk about feelings as pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant sensations. I don't think this is what AF meant. I don't think we should suppress (not that it is even possible) bodily sensations as whatever 'unpleasant' bodily sensations of the emotional experience (tensing, etc) are merely byproducts and not the main cause of the affliction.

I see faults only with clinging - for example, if a person is angry, it is not bodily sensations that is at fault (they are the byproducts of a deeper cause which is ignorance), rather it is because there is an an underlying clinging to the notion 'there is' with regards to a 'me', and 'mine'. Without such mental constructs or conceived identity, or sense of self, there cannot be anger.

If there is anything at fault, it is simply any remaining subtle trace of clinging, of conceiving and reifying an identity.

"I'm trying to have a discussion with you. If you're still interested, please answer my questions directly, on the forum, by typing your answers. Otherwise, take care."

Mind is manifestation. Non-conceptual thought is one of the manifestations of mind. (But it is not like it is 'manifesting FROM mind' as if mind is an underlying entity, but rather, that is simply a moment/manifesation of mind)

Actually, I do mean vedana. I floated the idea that PCE = sanna-vedayita-nirodha earlier in this thread after all.

My direct experience is that vedana can be gone (even neutral vedana) even as body sensations remain.

What has vedana in your experience right now?

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

Emotions are a mix of bodily and mental manifestations.

First there must be the mental reification of a self, a me, a mine, which actually is simply mentally conceived to be.

With this condition, and other situations which are mentally perceived to be negative, due to self-clinging there is a chain of thoughts, and those thoughts that are strong and blatant, any form of attachment, anger, craving, fear, pride, envy, etc... is not merely a thought but triggers an entire bodily reaction, so emotion is not just one thing but an entire process 'pervading' the entire body-mind.

The bodily sensations are not at fault, or are not the root cause of emotional afflictions... it is ignorance.

"Actually, I do mean vedana. I floated the idea that PCE = sanna-vedayita-nirodha earlier in this thread after all.

My direct experience is that vedana can be gone (even neutral vedana) even as body sensations remain.

What has vedana in your experience right now?"

Vedana = sensations as far as I know.

Sensations can be neutral, pleasant or unpleasant.

The reactivity, the judging of them as 'good' or 'bad', to craving and aversion... is not the pure sensations itself.

Of course even without emotions or identity I can still discern something as unpleasant, something as pleasant, or something as neutral - it is simply a bare naked awareness of pain, of pleasure, etc.

Otherwise I would step on molten rocks and not know how to move away.

Vedana and sense faculties are the only 'aggregates' left in an Arhant prior to his death.


'Bhikkhus, there are these two Nibbana-elements. What are the two? The Nibbana-element with residue left and the Nibbana-element with no residue left.

'What, bhikkhus, is the Nibbana-element with residue left? Here a bhikkhu is an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed, the holy life fulfilled, who has done what had to be done, laid down the burden, attained the goal, destroyed the fetters of being, completely released through final knowledge. However, his five sense faculties remain unimpaired, by which he still experiences what is agreeable and disagreeable and feels pleasure and pain. It is the extinction of attachment, hate, and delusion in him that is called the Nibbana-element with residue left.

'Now what, bhikkhus, is the Nibbana-element with no residue left? Here a bhikkhu is an arahant'¦ completely released through final knowledge. For him, here in this very life, all that is experienced, not being delighted in, will be extinguished. That, bhikkhus, is called the Nibbana-element with no residue left.

I think there is some disagreement in the suttas about this point. Compare AN 9.34 where Sariputta (an arahant, fully conscious, not in cessation) says that his experience is pleasant and the pleasantness is the lack of feeling. www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an09/an09.034.than.html

But, forget the suttas. We're talking about descriptions of experience. Do you have emotions ever? What if you focus your attention on an emotion that you have for a long time? Have you tried that? I would request that you try that, since I have done it and the results were illuminating.

Does vision have vedana? Does hearing have vedana? Is it just body sensations that have vedana?

I'll be away for the rest of the weekend, but I'd like to continue this (in another thread). If you would, find some experience that you call "mental" that isn't a conventional thought, and focus your attention on it. Give it a few hours if you must. Let me know what you discover, if anything. I only suggest doing this practice because I myself benefited immensely from it, and it's critical for the rest of this discussion.

"
Back to the Pali suttas, as far as I know there is nothing called NS in it. NS is in the commentaries. "

www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn41/sn41.006.than.html

" www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn41/sn41.006.than.html "

Interesting. Perhaps sanna-vedayita-nirodha isn't the PCE then. Thanks for the reference. However, NS and sanna-vedayita-nirodha may still be different. Do you have a reference for anything called NS in the suttas?

"Mind is manifestation. Non-conceptual thought is one of the manifestations of mind. (But it is not like it is 'manifesting FROM mind' as if mind is an underlying entity, but rather, that is simply a moment/manifesation of mind)"

Forgot to respond to this one. What is the mind-object? Are all non-conceptual thoughts the same? Are there varieties of non-conceptual thoughts? What qualities do they have? In what way can you tell that they're mind objects and not the objects of another sense (since they sound as if they have no properties in common with other mind objects, i.e. being conceptual / about something)? Do they have vedana?

EIS, here is an excerpt from an essay by a person named Terry Magness. I don't know anything about Magness, but this passage speaks directly to your hypothesis that the PCE is equivalent to Sanna vedayita nirodha. First, Magness lists the four material and the four immaterial jhanas. Then...

"To which a ninth state is added, namely: Sanna vedayita nirodha: a state wherein all perception and feeling are absent. Now the records show that the yogis of ancient India practiced these jhanas long before Buddha's time, and he himself practiced and attained them under two teachers of yoga. Dissatisfied by finding in them nothing ultimate, however, he abandoned them in disgust and turned his attention to severe austerities of mind and flesh."

www.mkds.org/vistas1.html

This is clearly Magness' interpretation of the texts as opposed to some kind of absolute authority (of which none exists), but it is interesting and relevant to this thread.

Also interesting is the description, "a state wherein all perception and feeling are absent." Whatever else one may say about the PCE, it's hard to imagine anyone making the case that perception is absent.

Kenneth, as far as I know, the suttas describe all the jhanas up to 8 as being practiced prior to Buddha's time, 7 and 8 being taught to him by his two previous teachers, but sanna-vedayita-nirodha is never included in that list.

About the description, that would seem like a strange thing to say about a PCE, but it depends on exactly what "sanna" means (which is a technical term in the Abhidharma and probably in the suttas). I can envision meanings that would be literally true about the PCE, as well as false. We need a scholarly opinion.

On the other hand, An Eternal Now's reference says many things about sanna-vedayita-nirodha that make it sound very much not like a PCE and more like NS, so my theory may just be wrong.

From the reference:

""In the case of a monk who has died & passed away, his bodily fabrication has ceased & subsided, verbal fabrication has ceased & subsided, mental fabrication has ceased & subsided, his life force is totally ended, his heat is dissipated, and his faculties are shut down. But in the case of a monk who has attained the cessation of perception & feeling, his bodily fabrication has ceased & subsided, verbal fabrication has ceased & subsided, mental fabrication has ceased & subsided, his life force is not ended, his heat is not dissipated, and his faculties are bright & clear. This is the difference between a monk who has died & passed away and a monk who has attained the cessation of perception & feeling."

It sounds like sanna-vedayita-nirodha is NS or cessation...until we get to "his faculties are bright & clear," which sounds like something absolutely other than NS / cessation, and other than the absolute absence of "perception" in our non-technical sense of the word. What is this state? WTF?

NS stands for nirodha-samapatti, which means "attainment of cessation". my understanding was that it was just shorthand for the longer-form sanna-vedayita-nirodha (cessation of perception and feeling). i think the terms are synonyms, though it is possible (and probably quite likely) that there has been misunderstanding of what the state actually is.

whatever it was in the suttas, it's a state which, if one enters + exits it with mindfulness, can lead to full release right there:

"Furthermore, with the complete transcending of the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, Sariputta entered & remained in the cessation of feeling & perception. Seeing with discernment, his fermentations were totally ended." ( www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.111.than.html ).

EndInSight: "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."

the end of becoming. ( www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/TheParadoxOfBecoming.pdf ). buddha equated becoming with stress. no becoming, no stress. i find that to be quite a striking similarity between suttic buddhism and actualism.

the suttas also indicate that the path is not endless or infinite:

""Finished is birth, lived is the holy life, done is what had to be done, there is no more of this state." And the Venerable Nanda became one of the arahats." ( www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.3.02.irel.html )

finished is birth (no more becoming), lived is the holy life (past tense, not continuous present).

though, it's true, i haven't heard much about what suttic arahants did after they were released... we don't have their practice notes =P.

EDIT: more about ending becoming: www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.010.than.html .

This might derail things a little but I think it is an important point that needs to be made: are we really all that concerned with whether the Buddha taught this? Are we really Buddhists?

I know the Buddha is to our practice what the founding fathers are to legal practice, but I think we sometimes get so wrapped up in what the Buddha supposedly said or didn't say that we can ignore what we are actually experiencing or not experiencing for ourselves. What is so amazing about this community is that people are not afraid to say "I did X and Y happened." Let's not go all commentarial and make whether the Buddha said it our focus. Direct experience should be our authority here.

EndInSight, I appreciate it when you try to bring it all back to what you are actually experiencing. Thanks. It is really helpful (especially for us folks who are totally baffled by what a PCE is actually like).

My observation is that discussions on dharma message boards tend toward citing authorities like the Buddha to the extent that those commenting are unsure of their comments. I think it's okay to speculate about what the Buddha said, or meant, by this or that, but the Pali Canon is from an oral tradition (just look at the structure of it, for cryin' out loud) and who the heck knows if it's actually what the historical Buddha said?

This thread exploded a bit since I last posted

The thing that caught me the most on that thread is AEN's description of experiencing everything as 18 dhatus:

" There is what I call the transformation from five skandhas into eighteen dhatus. When initial insight into Anatta arises, one realizes that the term 'self' is merely a label collating the five skandhas, and that there is in seeing just the seen, no seer, etc. This is also the phase of 'only feelings, no feeler'. There is a next phase which is the transformation of five skandhas into eighteen dhatus. At this phase it is as Richard puts it: 'no visualising, no forming images, no picturing, no '˜seeing in my mind's eye', no intuiting, no feeling, no envisioning, no falling into a reverie, no daydreaming, no conceptualising, no envisaging in any way, shape or form.' Only eighteen dhatus: pure sensory functioning. As I said earlier: 'With regards to what you said regarding you experience no feelings and passions, I understand. Only simple pure experience in the 6 entries and exits. Just the 18 dhatus.' I have first heard of the process (but have also personally experienced this) after anatta of 'transforming 5 skandhas into 18 dhatus' from Thusness many years ago, and my Taiwanese teacher have basically something very similar years ago (he basically says transforming five skandhas into pure sensory awareness void of emotions, karmic volition, craving, etc). To Thusness, realizing anatta in five skandhas is first step but fully transformed 18 dhatus is like Arahantship (that said Arahantship is not the final goal in Thusness's view)."

Source: www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...#_19_message_1715482

Based on what little I know of PCEs, this state seems the closest I've heard to PCE from a Buddhist perspective.

You know, everything regrading my practice has, over time, become simpler and simpler. and simpler This has been a slow sloughing off of old habits of mind so when I see complicated stuff that purports to "explain" the dharma I get... well, I get bored. And suspicious. Bored because I'm old and just not wired to get through all that detail any more (honestly, I just don't care). Suspicious because my experience has been that the deeper one goes the less complicated things become.

I'm not trying to anger or upset anyone. I am saying that at some point all the words just lose their meaning, especially in comparison to the real point of it all.

Very quick comments. I think it's worth talking about what's in the suttas and how our various experiences may or may not match up because the suttas are a pretty damn good record of what past people's experiences were. These are VERY devoted, VERY hardcore people. People who gave up on having regular lives to figure this stuff out. So I have a basic expectation that whatever I've figured out, they've probably figured out too, and if so, there's probably some good advice in the records about how to figure out stuff that they did and I haven't yet. Ron is right that in principle we ought to be willing to forget about what the suttas say or what Buddha taught if we discover something that seems to supersede those things. So appealing to the authority of scripture *because it's scripture* is a bad idea. But recognizing that it can be useful in a very commonsensical, down to earth way is another thing. And if we look at it that way, there's every reason to think it can be valuable to figure out what the hell it's talking about when trying to make sense of our own experiences.

Eran, whatever AEN is talking about, he thinks that it isn't pain or pleasure that's the problem, but the reaction to or judgment of them that is. From the perspective of the PCE, pain is the same as the reaction to it is the same as the judgment of it (and the same for pleasure). Further, he doesn't seem to recognize "being" as referring to anything, but the clearest way I found to understand what it refers to is to see what is suddenly absent in a PCE and let "being" be the label for it. So unless he uses language in a very different way, he's not talking about a PCE. Now, maybe he does use language differently, so it's worth talking about it, but my opinion is that the what he describes isn't a PCE, but may be on the way to it or related to it (as a EE distorted by affect).

This thread seems to have gone off the original subject, but I'm willing to accept that.

AEN, I claim that any sense experience that isn't a conceptual thought isn't a mental experience but is something else masquerading as it. This is what I found in my contemplative practice. This is also what Kenneth has found, and what a couple of other post-4th people here have found. I don't buy that there is a "PCE in non-conceptual thought" because I've had that kind of experience (I believe) and can recognize now that all the things I would mean by "non-conceptual thought" are things that are precisely the marks of an affective body sensation masquerading as a mental sensation. So I see this experience as some kind of affective distortion, as well as the experience of that with other senses functioning.

It's surely possible that I'm wrong. But there are a lot of people here who have found that a lot of "mental" stuff turns out to reduce to body sensations. So I would ask you to do our practice in a very serious way ( a few hours minimum, ideally a day or two) and let us know what you find in your contemplative practice. What worked for me is to find any emotion, leave my attention solidly on it, and ask "where is this located?" and look for a physical place in the body that it might be. The question seems nonsensical at first but I found that it becomes completely sensical very quickly (which is the beginning of the attainment I'm talking about). You seem to be a high-level practitioner so I expect you to see some results quite fast. Note that "emotion" for you probably means "the feeling or sensation, without any judgment or reaction to it."

Looking forward to hearing your experience.

"
You know, everything regrading my practice has, over time, become simpler and simpler. and simpler This has been a slow sloughing off of old habits of mind so when I see complicated stuff that purports to "explain" the dharma I get... well, I get bored. And suspicious. Bored because I'm old and just not wired to get through all that detail any more (honestly, I just don't care). Suspicious because my experience has been that the deeper one goes the less complicated things become.

I'm not trying to anger or upset anyone. I am saying that at some point all the words just lose their meaning, especially in comparison to the real point of it all.

"

Yes. Words try to clarify but only serve to obfuscate. I get bored with the unending attempts to conceptualize what cannot be conceptualized.

Rather than add more words ... I second what Chris posted.

AugustLeo

edited for typos

I find that when I have energy, and am fascinated, then detailed consideration of such things can be quite beneficial. However, when I am bored and/or don't care, detailed consideration of such things seems useless and annoying.