Alex's experiment with the grounding of emotions

Alex,

After reading your post, I used each of these in order as a scaffolded practice. Starting with a basic mindfulness exercise, you eventually switch to shikantaza as you describe here. As various emotions/energy eruptions begin to become apparent in the body, you switch to direct mode. Lastly, you eventually ask "who am I" and then ground the self-associated feelings (while the wider focus of 6th jhana seems to stick on it's own). I then began looking around and "seeing as an artist"

Seems like a worthwhile way of doing this as each subsequent step incorporates and builds on the previous one.

Thank you Alex, very useful.

I found a combination of the "Who am I" and HAIETMOBA pretty effective. The witness brings the stability/freshness in and the HAIETMOBA the profundity/mystic/natural qualitys.

I go into the witness and ask HAIETMOBA. Feels a bit like becoming airborn and from there dropping the bomb precisely into the target

@Mumuwu - great! It is interesting to see how these various methods can reinforce each other.

If AF was a just a modernized version of traditional Chinese Zen/Ch'an?

Check the descriptions of *apperception* and the *PCE* from the book 'Illuminating Silence" by Master Sheng Yen, Ed. Watkins 2002 (quotes from pages 90 and 114):

"The essential idea (of *Direct Perception*) is to regard whatever arises directly with no thought, interpretation, examination, or questioning whatever. Just look at it, or listen to it, exactly as it is in an immediate apperception of whatever appears before you. In this activity there should be no self-reference or involvement of the self in judgment or intention".

Of interest, the fact that the Chinese Zen master uses the word "apperception" and insists on the fact that "there should be no self-referencing". And here comes the description of what sounds pretty much like a PCE, from the same author:

"an enlightenment experience (jinxing in the Chinese; kensho, satori in the Japanese) is a discrete event in which all self-concern falls away and the practitioner 'sees the nature' without any filtering by egoistic interests or dualistic conceptualization." (...) "It is a life-changing moment, opening the practitioner to a mysterious selfless world of great brilliance, vividness and depth".

"Thank you Alex, very useful.

I found a combination of the "Who am I" and HAIETMOBA pretty effective. The witness brings the stability/freshness in and the HAIETMOBA the profundity/mystic/natural qualitys.

I go into the witness and ask HAIETMOBA. Feels a bit like becoming airborn and from there dropping the bomb precisely into the target
"


Great! I seems that this combination can actually lead one to awakening and eventually to the further stages (namely Kenneth's 5th, 6th and 7th stages of enlightenment).

Why? Because this combination is essentially what triggered my awakening (or technical 4th path) more than a year ago. To sum it up, I was transcending everything locked in the witness for more than 3 days as the result of intense concentration of the fundamental koan, when my teacher asked me "what are you trying to run away from! What is wrong with right now?" - these words brought me back to earth focusing on the material world here and now... and bang! the witness collapsed. It felt like waking up from a long amnesia to realize that I was never born and would never die, that nothing ever happened and that paradoxically this world of illusory appearances is the only existing realty, perfect as it is. The whole spiritual path felt like a cosmic joke and I couldn't believe how stupid I had been to miss the obvious all these years.

"an enlightenment experience (jinxing in the Chinese; kensho, satori in the Japanese) is a discrete event in which all self-concern falls away and the practitioner 'sees the nature' without any filtering by egoistic interests or dualistic conceptualization." (...) "It is a life-changing moment, opening the practitioner to a mysterious selfless world of great brilliance, vividness and depth".

Sounds awfully a lot like the full blown PCE to me.

"Sounds awfully like the fullbloan PCEs to me. "


It does! Back home after 2 weeks in China, I was sorting books and fell on this great description of a PCE. I knew that the Japanese word *kensho* meant "seeing nature", but had never realized that "seeing nature" literally meant seeing nature as it really is when not filtered by self-referencing.

Wonderful guys - we have now gone full circle. So glad!

Adam.

All this confusion around the direct mode vs '˜cycling mode', '˜technical 4 paths model' vs '˜10 fetters 4 paths model', etc. seems to have been generated by the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition's exclusive reliance on the Vishuddhimagga and its stages of insight, as well as on the use of mental notes. Fact is that I cannot find any of that in the Pali canon. Even the term Vipassana should not be identified with Satipatthana. Vipassana refers to deep insight, not to the practice of mindfulness (sati). And apperception is simply mindfulness (without mental notes), proof of it the fact that Richard from AF copied entire paragraphs of Bhante Hepola Gunartarana's 'Mindfulness in Plain English', replacing mindfulness by apperception.

Another absurd controversy has been the Buddha-Nature vs No-Self debate. Fact is that when the sense of self drops, what remains is non-dual awareness, pure consciousness or nature at is really is (when not filtered by self-referencing). Since a 'No-Self' cannot be seen or perceived as an object or even as a suject, various traditions chose to speak more about what remains when the sense of self vanishes. Commentators saw the emergence of a new Buddhist self, while the founding fathers of these traditions only tried to name what they had experienced when self-referencing stopped momentarily -or permanently- as the result of the practice of right mindfulness. We also start to understand why the Buddha insisted so much on co-dependent origination, simply because this is the key to understand why mindfulness -or apperception- works, stopping short the wheel of becoming at the level bare perception to prevent the arising of grasping at phenomena to infuse them with an illusory sense of a 'me' or 'mine' leading to birth, death and suffering.

Thanks Alex-- your contributions to this topic seem spot on to me!
-Jake

Far from bringing confusion, I am convinced that the 10 fetters model is very practical and pragmatic, especially when dealing with practitioners who are not familiar with the noting satipatthana method promoted by the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition.

Why I dare to say that? Simply because I have seen too many examples of wrong diagnostics where people who had obviously experienced partial (non-abiding) awakening have been told: 'oh, this must be A&P, or to the most high equanimity'.

Fact is that emptiness is not the momentary cessation of consciousness. Partial awakening is the experienced as the vanishing of the sense of self (deep insight into the emptiness of self), leading to the paradoxical realization 'I am nothing, everything is me'. After that, we realize that the sense of self arises but is as such an illusion and that the house (body and mind) is fundamentally empty. As a result, we cease to believe in a self, have faith in the Buddhist teachings and do not rely on rituals for our salvation.

This is stream-entry, regardless where it takes place on the technical Vishuddhimagga map. Theravadin experience it. Zen Buddhists experience it. Pure Land Buddhists experience it. Vajrayana Buddhists experience it. Hindus, Christian, Muslim and Jewish mystics experience it, even if they do not necessarily interpret the event in the same way.

This is also the reason why I personally side with traditional South Asian monks like Bhante Gunaratana'smodel, equating:

- Sotapanna with the first partial or non-abiding opening of the dharma eye (path) leading to overcoming the belief in a self, attachment to ritual and skeptical doubt (fruit) - [which may arise at technical 1st path]

- Sakadagami with an abiding opening of the dharma eye (path) leading to the weakening of lust, hate, and delusion to a greater degree (fruit) - [this would be technical 4th path or Adhyashanti's abiding awakening].

This is en comes the process of embodiment leading to an emotional transformation and a gradual weakening of the remaining grapsing tendencies of the mind, leading to:

- Anagami: emotional transformation (path), leading to (fruit) overcoming the remaining lower fetters (sensual desire and ill will)

- Arhat: experienced the complete vanishing of the sense of self (path) and has overcome the higher fetters (fruit), has totally extinguished the seeds of becoming and will therefore never take birth again on this earth, or even in the highest abodes.

I may be stubborn, but in my dictionary '˜dukkha' is not psychological suffering. In Pali, dukkha includes physical pain, reason why the Buddha said that birth is dukkha, illness is dukkha, old age is dukkha and death is dukkha. The end of dukkha is the end of samsara, birth and death. The Arhat is free from dukkha, not only because he is free from grasping at unpleasant feelings, but because for him death means final liberation from embodiment, pain and suffering.

If we equate once-returner (anagami) with someone who can see emptiness in real-time and can access higher jhanas, does it mean that this person has necessarily extinguished the seeds of sensual desire and ill will that lead to rebirth on this earth? No. Then, why say that he will only return once. Returning where? To a new cycle?

I therefore consider myself to be a Sakadagami and the present thread is aimed at exporing practical and pragmatic means to eventually become an Anagami one day. From what I can tell, there is still a long way to go...

@Jake - thanks, Jake. Feel free to jump in anytime to comment or share.

"Engender the mind with no place to abide" (Diamond Sutra)

Yesterday night, I used Nick's following instructions (found on his blog) to clearly identify the difference between *apperception* and ordinary sense perception:

"Apperception is being with sensations without the filter of "feeling" or "me" or 'being' overlaying them. Ask yourself: How am I experiencing this moment of being alive? When you ask it, right at "this moment" where does the mind's focus fall? On the sensations within the body somewhere? If so, watch how a sense of presence or being or feeling 'me', will then, a few seconds after, overlay those sensations and filter them through an affective feeling, either subtle or gross, aversion, craving or maybe dullness. Asking that question once per 5-10 seconds, it should starts to become obvious how the feeling overlays the bare sensation. If you get a good idea of what apperception is like, then you can direct the mind to stay with that quality of apperception and in a sense push back that tendency to glom or to conceive of a feeling of self temporarily. At least, enough to trigger a PCE which feels less like pushing the mind to be attentive and towards perceiving apperceptively, but feels more natural and effortless."

And guess what? It works! Once clearly identified during formal sitting meditation, we soon become able to call back the *apperceptive mode* during the course of everyday life, until it becomes a habit. This *apperceptive mode* is what we could also call *right mindfulness* (Pali. samma-sati). This is the non-abiding mind.

"
Far from bringing confusion, I am convinced that the 10 fetters model is very practical and pragmatic, especially when dealing with practitioners who are not familiar with the noting satipatthana method promoted by the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition.

Why I dare to say that? Simply because I have seen too many examples of wrong diagnostics where people who had obviously experienced partial (non-abiding) awakening have been told: 'oh, this must be A&P, or to the most high equanimity'.

Fact is that emptiness is not the momentary cessation of consciousness. Partial awakening is the experienced as the vanishing of the sense of self (deep insight into the emptiness of self), leading to the paradoxical realization 'I am nothing, everything is me'. After that, we realize that the sense of self arises but is as such an illusion and that the house (body and mind) is fundamentally empty. As a result, we cease to believe in a self, have faith in the Buddhist teachings and do not rely on rituals for our salvation.

This is stream-entry, regardless where it takes place on the technical Vishuddhimagga map. Theravadin experience it. Zen Buddhists experience it. Pure Land Buddhists experience it. Vajrayana Buddhists experience it. Hindus, Christian, Muslim and Jewish mystics experience it, even if they do not necessarily interpret the event in the same way.

"

Thank you for this Alex - this lines up with my own experience - I can clearly manifest the witness, drop it by seeing the seer, and all is perfect - but I have never had an experience that lines up with "momentary cessation of consciousness" other than the sense of waking up into existence after being lost.

"Thank you for this Alex - this lines up with my own experience - I can clearly manifest the witness, drop it by seeing the seer, and all is perfect - but I have never had an experience that lines up with "momentary cessation of consciousness" other than the sense of waking up into existence after being lost.
"


Yes - and did you experience the dropping of the sense of self, where it feels like "where the hell am I?" I think that this is more convincing than a few seconds of cessation to realize that the sense of self is a construct, a mirrage, an illusion. These momentary experiences of cessation are commonly experienced by advanced meditators, but most of them are not trained to recognize them and thefore ignore them.

"All this confusion .... seems to have been generated by the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition's exclusive reliance on the Vishuddhimagga and its stages of insight, as well as on the use of mental notes"

It makes total sense to me that the practice/path generates the map. Different maps may not line up well to different practices.

Yes, this is not to say that the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition is not good. It is brilliant. But the practice leads to specific experiences. and it then becomes difficult to relate to other traditions.

(Alex I am again rather impressed by your knowledge and your powers of comprehension)

"
I therefore consider myself to be a Sakadagami and the present thread is aimed at exporing practical and pragmatic means to eventually become an Anagami one day. From what I can tell, there is still a long way to go...



"

Love that humility. For too long there have been too many big claims of great accomplishment, and yet suffering and lack of clarity continued. In my opinion the bar has been lowered too far in the other direction, doing no one a service. Human psychology being what it is, a lot of self-deception took place, while also noticing that something's not quite right, so people had to look else where to explain that, making room for repackaged distortions like AF.

Thanks Loco and Adam.

On another thread, Nikolai highlighted something very interesting, namely my conscious -or unconscious- belief in the need to get rid of the sense of self. Using the 5th and 6th jhanas to observe this sense of self and highlight it as a cluster of feelings and physical sensations, it becomes clear that there is nothing to alter or erradicate. All that it needed is to see clearly through an illusion.

In other words, the task is not to transform emotions and erase the sense of self, but only to see -in real time- that what we still take for a subject during the course of everyday life (no anymore the ego or self-center after "technical 4th path" or awakening, but the remaining diffuse sense of existence) is in reality an impermanent cluster of objects amongst other objects. When subject and objects are seen as objects, the sense of self dissapears. simply because there are no more subjects but only objects, transcending the subject-object duality), yet the feelings and sensations that used to host an illusory sense of self are left untouched. What dissapears is only the illusion that these feelings are "me" or "mine".

The correct strategy seems to be to go back and forth between the arupa jhanas and the sense of self during the day as well as during sitting meditation, to make apperception into a default state. Then, to avoid turning this into a hard practice oridented towards a goal to be achieved by "me" in some remote future, apperception, or seeing clearly the subject as a cluster of feelings and sensations amongst other sensual objects, should be the only goal, moment by moment, here and now. This alone should logically weaken the deeply rooted habits that keep turning objects (feelings and sensations) into a subject.

"In other words, the task is not to transform emotions and erase the sense of self, but only to see -in real time- that what we still take for a subject during the course of everyday life (no anymore the ego or self-center after "technical 4th path" or awakening, but the remaining diffuse sense of existence) is in reality an impermanent cluster of objects amongst other objects."

This is very intuitive, at least for me. And the notion that one must "rid" or "suppress" or otherwise "get rid of" the self. or sense of self, is a source of much of the brouhaha* over Actual Freedom and other practices that involved anything like it. It's just a semantic issue (how we describe these things), but as we all know semantic issues drive concepts, which drives thoughts, which drives philosophy and world view which all, in turn, drives understanding, which drives practice objectives and then finally actual practice.

* Note -- I was a major perpetrator of brouhaha, so I know from where I speak!

Yes, Chris, I am convinced that this whole resistance against AF and its goal is due to its unskilful use of language (or to my unwillingness to take the time to really understand what their thing was about). I still dislike their way of presenting it, but thank them for opening my eyes on subtler aspects of Theravada Buddhism.

What I am doing now is basically the 2nd and 4th part of Satipatthana, namely mindfulness of feelings and mindfulness of dhammas focused on co-dependent origination and its relation with the 5 aggregates of clinging. I realize that Theravada Buddhism is very precise and practical when it comes to seeing subtle things, especially for dharma invetigators and mad scientists.