Retreat Experiences vs. Hard-Core Dharma

"Hi Laurel,

A great post. I have to confess I have had some advice regarding this path which has made me pull back for a bit. I was advised that the path of insight can be dangerous to ones mental stabiltiy, without first building a sufficient base of samatha, through practices such as metta and mindfulness of breathing. Almost all my buddhist friends have agreed on this point. That is not to say this path is bad, but that depending on your general state of mind more or less preperation might be nescersary.

"

Ed, I'm offering this link:

www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...#_19_message_2070468

to a marvelous post on DhO (thanks, Claudiu) that addresses this very issue. Keep up the good work! I'm glad to hear you're going on retreat soon.

Very interesting post, Laurel.

Hi Laurel,

Great link......although some of the subtleties escape me, I think he makes a good case for building up samatha practice.

Joel: A good point, in fact I was probably over stating my point a little. However this inclusive message would be quite hard to pick up for someone new to the site or material. I havent read it, but I have heard the the Visshudimagga itself present many practices for people of different dispositions. As one of the aims of this site was to provide a comprehensive view to contemplative practice and to place practices in context...more could be done to either broaden the scope, or clearly position these practices and maps against the backdrop of Buddhist thought.

Orasis, raises an interesting point. The place of narrative or 'stuff' and its place in the spiritual journey.

I have personally been swayed by the thoughts Sangharaksh-ita, The founder of the Triratna order. who suggests that, by reflecting on your life story and unfolding narrative, you can actually use it a source of strength in you spiritual unfolding. By having a coherent narrative, it is easier to unify your energies and sense of purpose with which to commit to and follow the dharma.

This is obviously not in the context of meditation practice, but as an additional support to your practice.

Another point that is worth considering, that has been mentioned a bit but not focused on, is that there are LOTS of maps out there. It really does seem like every tradition or at least most of them have a map, but I find it just so strange that people have this knee-jerk reaction to not use them. They were made for a reason by people who knew what they were talking about, so why not use them?

Part of the reason why this has such a resonance for me personally was that I was hanging out with monks and meditating in a Vihara in DC for a long time and no one bothered to tell about any of the maps, even the jhanas. I kept practicing for years and became stuck, and wasn't able to get unstuck until I found out that there were maps and got someone to lead me through them. It irks me a bit now that I wasn't clued in for all that time. It must have been clear to them that I was suffering and was searching for something. I also realize now that this is standard operating procedure at a lot of western viharas, temples and centers: teach technique and don't talk in specifics about the path.

How on Earth did it ever get this way?

I've thought a bit about that Ron, and sometimes I think what has happened is that we in the west have taken the good/evil dualism of christianity and superimposed it onto buddhism and the resultant is that 'ego is BAD' , 'self is BAD' , and so anything at all that might support a self structure is seen as something to get rid of, instead of possibly being useful.

"How on Earth did it ever get this way?"

My pet theory: Survivorship Bias.

Long lived institutions exist because the structure of the institution is such that an enormous amount of energy is spent perpetuating the institution. Thus most energy and resources go towards training the future teachers/administrators of the institution. Lay members of the institution are simply there to provide resources/justification for the institution to exist.

Compare this to a fictitious savant teacher from 500 years ago who is effectively getting students enlightened. So the students spend some years with him/her, get enlightened and go off and live out their days. After the teacher dies, that institution dies - end of that story.

This is clearly the case in traditional Asian martial arts (and the reason their efficacy is shockingly pathetic compared to modern practices such as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu). Perhaps Buddhist institutions have parallels.

I think its useful to consider the reasons why, maps and claims to attainment have been left out of most traditional dharma cultures. It could be for negative reasons, such as, simple ignorance of the territory, a desire to keep the 'secrets' to themselves and as a way of maintaining power.

However, there a few more positve reasons that spring to mind. Given peoples different dispositions and inclanations, unified maps of a subjective process will always be limited. There is a real danger that the map could influence the expreiment. A good example would be a documentary shown here in the UK this year. It invloved a group of people, with no experince going on a slient retreat. The retreat was set in christian context and run by an order of monks. At the end of the retreat all participants reported semi religious expreinces with a chirsitan emphasis, including one chap who felt he had been talking to jesus.

Expectation, suggestability and a desire to progress create a dangerous combination, in which people can easlily start to fool themselves and then fool others and create a vicious cycle of re-enforcement. In the context of medetation, where the mind become very powerful these factors become even more likely.

So ron is right. There are many differnt maps, in many differnt religions. Your context will undoubtably affect your expreince. Whether its visions of the virgin mary or padmasambhava depend on your expectation and conditoning. Because these forces are so strong and the resulting expreinces so real, its easy to see why most systems make claims to being objective and real. However it would seem more pragmatic to take that with a pinch of salt.

I would admit that it has crossed my mind that some of these dynamics will be at play on this forum. Thats not to doubt peoples expreince, but the dynamics and process at work may not be what they seem to be..

Well, there are maps and then there are maps. The so-called 'hardcore' maps are actually meta-maps, they allow for a lot of variation within them. So whether you see jesus or buddha or buddha-consort images, etc. doesn't matter much and it doesn't directly map to a fixed stage could be A&P, could be high-EQ, could be higher path visions, etc. But on the whole, a detailed reporting of experiences over time is likely to be mapped out pretty accurately and probably cross-religions/methods.

The problem with maps is many of us, including myself, will "look for" the next set of experiences that are at the stage higher than where we think we are. This messed me up several years ago. If I was feeling Fear, I would look for Misery. If I was feeling Misery, I would look for Disgust. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

As we know, any given sit -- heck, any given minute or two -- will have a symphony or experiences, that pretty much cover the whole spectrum of experience, at least for a moment or two. It is a mis-use of maps to say, ooh I felt some fear therefore I am at Fear. A teacher and our peers can help us from making that totally normal mistake.

The best is to let a teacher do the mapping for us and for us to just note what IS during meditation/retreat -- ultimately that's true. Because our only job is to note.

... but if we feel very stuck, the maps probably need to be consulted and it does make sense to be able to talk about maps with a teacher if that's the case, rather than pretending that the maps don't exist.

"

The problem with maps is many of us, including myself, will "look for" the next set of experiences that are at the stage higher than where we think we are. This messed me up several years ago. If I was feeling Fear, I would look for Misery. If I was feeling Misery, I would look for Disgust. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

As we know, any given sit -- heck, any given minute or two -- will have a symphony or experiences, that pretty much cover the whole spectrum of experience, at least for a moment or two. It is a mis-use of maps to say, ooh I felt some fear therefore I am at Fear. A teacher and our peers can help us from making that totally normal mistake.

The best is to let a teacher do the mapping for us and for us to just note what IS during meditation/retreat -- ultimately that's true. Because our only job is to note.

... but if we feel very stuck, the maps probably need to be consulted and it does make sense to be able to talk about maps with a teacher if that's the case, rather than pretending that the maps don't exist.
"

This seems like a sensible approach. Being in dialog with a teacher or advanced student who knows the maps can be helpful at various stages. As some have pointed out, for example, complacency is like the shadow side of equanimity. People stop practicing because they feel OK. Seems like a perfect example of a situation where having at least SOMEBODY in the mix who knows the map can be important.

Hi Betawave, you point to a few of the real pitfalls. I experienced some massive discomfort in a few sits, now on the one hand this could be because I was accessing a specific strata of mind, 3 nana, or it could be an underlying posture issue or due to what I have been doing in the day. The more I invest in the map the more this might err me towards the first interpretation.

There is an underlying given regarding the stages of insight map. Both Kenneth and Daniel assert that, it has been confimed over thousands of years by hundreds of thousands of yogis. I have even heard daniel assert that its predicabilty and unversality make it more reliable than many recent scientfic assumptions, or something to that affect.

Yogis are amazed how accurately it describes and charts their expreinces prior to finding the map. As the map contains both very pleaurable sensations and very unpleasant experinces and even episodes of deep equanimity, this dosent strike me as by any means conclusive to the truth of the map. These crop up in most people expreince anyway, even non meditators to some degree.

I feel that it is unscientific to take these assertions without some more thorugh research or investigation. If it is a meta map that transcends culture, then where is the evidence? Im not sure if St.Johns dark night, is in its self enough to confim angst, fear, misery etc as an inevitable aspect of spirtual development.

As you point out betawave, fear, disgust and misery are common expreinces for all sorts of people. I have expreinced many different emotions this morning, pleaasant and unpleasant and even some equanimity. Using these states as a basis for assesing spiritual atainmenment seems like a very difficult business.
(cont)

Here are few tips from access to insight, regarding methods for assessing spiritual development:

In the suttas, the Buddha speaks again and again of the many rewards awaiting those who follow the Path, long before they reach nibbana: the happiness that comes from developing generosity; the happiness that comes from living according to principles of virtue; the happiness that comes from developing loving-kindness (metta); the happiness that comes from practicing meditation and discovering the exquisite bliss of a quiet mind; the happiness that comes from abandoning painful states of mind; and so on. These can be tasted for yourself, to varying degrees, through Dhamma practice

It interesting to look through different lenses of assessment. Am I happier, Am I kinder and more compassionate?, am I calmer?........are these simply red herrings before the real work of phisio-energetic re-wiring takes place? My guess is not.

Ed,

I really do understand your misgivings, because during the retreat I felt the same way: maps are a distraction, they keep us from being open to new experiences, we experience or find what we are led to expect to experience or find. But I reminded myself that without the training I've gotten from Daniel and Kenneth, I would have been absolutely out of my mind with some of the stuff that happened on retreat, and beforehand as well.

I have experienced disgust in daily life, frequently. I have never had the strange, impersonal combination of nausea and a metallic taste in the mouth, that doesn't seem to have anything to do with indigestion, that I have come to understand marks the disgust nana. I have had itches aplenty in my life. I never had anything like the shimmering monster itches I got in meditation, and would have had no idea what they were without people telling me they are typical of the Third nana. I had specific expectations for what A&P would be like; what happened was completely outside of those expectations. Stuff has happened on the path for which I had no preparation, even with all the reading I've done.

What I was, and continue to be, prepared for was to understand that it's part of the path and not me having some psychological melt-down. I'm also prepared to keep on practicing, and to regard bad or unsatisfying experiences with the same impartiality as good or so-so experiences. I suppose I could have understood this last bit without the maps. But knowing about the maps hasn't hurt, and isn't the reason for what I've experienced.

"what happened was completely outside of those expectations"

Well said! I don't know how I would integrate half the experiences I've had on retreat without having the maps.

Not only did it warn me that wild stuff might happen... it also kept me humble, because I know that many many people have had similar experiences and more --- so no big deal, just part of the territory, part of being a human meditator.

This is a great thread, which will likely become a resource for yogis asking similar questions.

Since really getting into hardcore dharma, I have been on two retreats at the UK equivalent of IMS/Spirit Rock, Gaia House. The first time, I was quite open about the fact that I had been inspired by MCTB. Fortunately the teacher, Leigh Brasington, is a very pragmatic guy, with a nicely technical approach to dharma, so it wasn't much of an issue. Leigh said that he'd read Daniel's book, agree with many parts - such as the jhanas and the progress of insight - but not the whole thing. I didn't press him on which.

The most recent retreat I went on there was with an English Buddhist monk trained in the Mahasi tradition. I figured I'd have less in common with him, since I tend to be somewhat allergic to rituals, chanting and dogma. I tried to stick to the nuts and bolts. But it disturbed me that he didn't really try to gauge where I was on the progress of insight. Or, if he did he wasn't sharing his diagnosis with me. Whereas Leigh had a very clear idea of the steps I'd need to take to attain first jhana, the monk on the second retreat wasn't really that vocal about what we were trying to achieve. Whenever he spoke of liberation, it was either so couched in dogma or treated with in such a humourous way, that it appeared nigh unreachable. And yet, I'm probably going to find myself on one of his retreats again. Why? Because there aren't really any other strict Mahasi retreats going where I live.

It's frustrating, but since I came to meditation with a very strong suspicion of Buddhist dogma, I have always felt myself alienated from the teachings to some degree. Kenneth and Daniel's teachings are the only place I've found where I'm able to get deep practice advice without dogma and doctrine, and for that I am very very grateful indeed.

To retain a map can give you some power over other people but teaching it even a bit more, because it creates a hierarchy in the mind. the enlightened is higher than the novice, the teacher higher than the student, 4th path higher than 3rd etc, etc. so suddenly we have higher individuals and lower. this of course creates first a gap and out of it power. we normally first think and then live the hierarchy.

In our case I don't think that is a big problem because there is not much secrets in these maps. I mean the secret advice/solution that you can get out of them is rather unsophisticated. If you feel good do more of the same (meditation), if feel bad do more of the same, if you feel union with god, do more of the same, if you feel terrible, do more of the same. This is rather simple isn't it.

It doesn't say if you feel disgust you probably have suppressed your aggressions too long being a peaceful buddhist, what caused an increase in gastric acid and the metal taste comes from the free Fe-Ions cause your gastric mucosa is sore and there is some blood in your digestion system. Here is the gastroscopy, here the laboratory results, here the scientific studies, here the medication, here the therapy. they have proofed to work for x% of x patients. Sorry for that I am joking But I could go on of course '¦

cont

I mean one can not compare these maps with a scientific interdisciplinary system. But this is exactly why the work we are doing here is so important. This maps that we have are rather woodcut-like but they are still the best on the market. I mean one must imagine that! Thousands of years wasted. Result: 3 A4 pages of generalized descriptions. Against ten thousands of how to treat athlete's foot.

We are living in a fantastic time guys and what we are part of is even more fantastic. i would choose no other place in time and space. we see the very beginning of a science of contemplation. what we need are teachers like Kenneth who have gone the way and students who make journals. I mean it is surprising how good it already works. You have an experience, type in a few words and get somebody's journal with nearly the same experience and how it developed. But the most stupid thing one could do of course is to make your experiences fit into the already existing old map! you are destroying the scientific value of your own path. Maybe you were 1mm away from discovering a new jhana. In 100 years there will be more states and techniques and worlds than we can imagine. The development in connected times will be exponential compared to ancient times.

individuality over ideology (in case one has to decide) and trust in your own experience.

p.s.

1) My practice gained several gears when I discovered the maps for the first time.

2) I was excessively, but justifiably, angry when I discovered the maps for the first time.

3) I wanted to sue every teacher I had ever met for incompetence, for not mentioning the maps, when i discovered the maps for the first time.

4) My practice has improved again, since I have let go of the maps a bit.

5) Knowing that many of the stories are, against all the odds, actually true and attainable right now, is often comfort enough.

6) And in any case if the next mile stone pops for me today, what will I do tomorrow? Practice as usual probably. Like loco sez, practice makes my day better.

I had to smile - I think we had about the same experience, Howard! - although Im behind you somewhere on #4...

"I had to smile - I think we had about the same experience, Howard! - although Im behind you somewhere on #4..."

Yes. No. 4 is very interesting. When I started getting interested in the pragmatic dharma approach, I had an outright disdain for shikantaza type of practices. "They're just staring into space, with no investigation of experience. They get stuck for decades!"
That wasn't fair. In my case, I believe I used Krishnamurti-inspired choiceless awareness practice to good effect, crossed the A&P and then hit the dark night. At a certain point, I blamed the dark night situation on shikantaza. (I also think at certain times what I regarded as choiceless practice was really more of a shamatha practice along the lines of Shinzen's "focus out" meditation.) But now that I've used noting to build more of a scaffolding, do more investigation of and disembedding from sensate experience, my guess is that it's now time for No. 4!

" "They're just staring into space, with no investigation of experience. They get stuck for decades!""

The number of (in some clinical circles so called) Zen-Zombies proofs you have a good feeling for these risks. I'd also rather choose the mapcompulsion than 2 be stuck with the meditating dead.

(A part of their right thalamus (responsible for regulation of relaxation and sleep) is overactivated when they are awake. Means your body goes in a heavy sleeplike state while you are awake, aka Depression. Which of course calms your fears and makes you feel relaxed, but they are basically teaching their brains to act depressive. Neurons that fire together wire together and if you train enough, you can teach yourself to be severely depressed and deactivate the parts of yourself that are responsible for decisionmaking and motoric activation (like in sleep). means you will not get out again. congratulations. you are lost now. but one day maybe god has mercy and you are even to depressed to meditate )

This is probably the reason why meditation had such a bad reputation in clinical environments in the last decades. If you have every week three people coming to your hospital telling you they are on the way to enlightenment but u c that they can not get up in the morning, have lost all emotions, lust and humor and are in fact dysfunctional in every part of their life, you are not getting enthusiastic.

But besides the worst case of course exists this wide range of fruitful alternatives we all know about. Meditation is a sharp knife, but one can use it to cut the (forbidden) fruits from the tree. winning a paradise in free falling from grace.

OMG! I really have no idea what you guys are talking about sometimes. Being a lone(ly) book yogi, I've never had to explain anything to anyone. I do need to start getting a usable vocabulary together. These last two posts are a real eye opener and a bit scary. My proccess is do sometihng that works, keep going it until it dosn't any more, carry on until I go "Aaaaaggggg," then change to something else. This may explain my frankly chaotic progress up untill now. This is exactly what happened with me and the maps. Just aching to get to 2nd path, being in equanimity and hanging around for somthing to pop, torture. Then Kenneth hooked me up to the vajriana waggon and it all feels fresh again. I have had so many bad experiecees with Tibetan practice that I never thought I'd ever go near it again. So much for that.

I had some excelent advice from Lama Yeshe at Samye Ling in Scotland. He told me to "go away and give more," refusing to answer any of my quesitons and shooing me out the door, repeating that sentence all the while. So I did, I did all kinds of charity work and eventually found a job doing just that. There is something immensly grounding about dealing with people who have very immediatie physical and emotional needs; and this is what I think has dragged me out of the ooze so many times in the past.

Oh, he also said "and stop thinking about sex all the time, that's all you westerners think about sex, sex, sex." Pure Monty Python.

Howard: I doubt that most of us understand half of what anyone else is saying.

"Oh, he also said "and stop thinking about sex all the time, that's all you westerners think about sex, sex, sex." Pure Monty Python.
"

Isn't that a bit like saying "Don't think of elephants" after which all one can think about is elephants?

'Isn't that a bit like saying "Don't think of elephants" after which all one can think about is elephants?'

Yeah, I don't think he was joking, but then again I can never tell with the Tibetans. They do a very good "inscrutable oriental" thing.

"Howard: I doubt that most of us understand half of what anyone else is saying. "

We do seem to have to invent our own personal language to make sense of it. But i do feel the need to at least get some understanding of the basic Pali/vedanta stuff, it is well overdue.