A Zen exploration of the Bahiya Sutta

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Also, I believe Kenneth Folk's seventh stage of enlightenment is the realization of anatta, his descriptions are very clear. Previously his insight of nondual (3rd gear) is more of substantialist nondual and therefore he has a greater appreciation of Advaita, but his more recent insight marks a major shift in understanding into anatta. I'm interested to hear more about the eighth stage, does anyone have info about it?

Lastly, Thusness reads this thread with great interest and I think he wants to give some of his comments and advise so I look forward to his input.
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Yes, listening again to Kenneth''s description of the 6th and 7th Stages of his model, it is a very accurate description of the realization of anatta, as well as of the emotional transformation that often seems to take place slightly before. His 8th Stage seems to be a deepening of the 7th, where the sense of agency drops completely. He doesn't seem to have spoken about emptiness of phenomena in relation with dependent origination yet.

I would of course love to see Thusness stepping in, as I missed his interventions on Daniel Ingram's DhO a while ago.

Xsurf, you are of course also right about Daniel Ingram who's [technical] 4th path implies the realization of 'anatta'.

What happens however in my case is that the sudden dip into the unmanifest, uncreated and empty source of awareness that triggered the permanent shift that our little sub-cuture came to call technical 4th path, was not suffficient to erradicacate a conscious or even unconscious belief in a subtle "True Self" in disguise apprehended as an unmanifest pure potential that, although beyond existence and non-existence, would still be apprehended as the unborn source and substance of all things, probably due to a lack of understanding of the radicality of the Buddha's teachings. Probably also, because the experience did match Huang-po's description of the 'One Mind'.

"I'm interested to hear more about the eighth stage, does anyone have info about it?

- xsurf"

The last time I talked with Kenneth about 8th Stage, he defined it as an end of developmental enlightenment, so after that point no further progress is possible. It means that the mental fluctuations have stopped completely and there is no unwanted discursive thinking arising at all.

'Through this process [recognizing your mind and resting loosely], our though involvement grows weaker and weaker. The gap between thoughts begins to last longer and longer. At a certain point, for half an hour there will be a stretch of no conceptual thought whatsoever, without having to suppress the thinking.
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By growing used to this natural, original emptiness again and again, we become accustomed to it. Then there will be a stretch throughout the whole day from morning to evening, which is only empty awareness untainted by notions of perceived objects or the perceiving mind. This corresponds to having attained the bodhisattva levels, the bhumis. When there is never a break throughout day and night, that is called buddhahood, true and complete enlightenment.'

- Tulku Urgyen Rinpoce, Quintessential Dzogchen p. 130

For anyone who is finding this thread useful, I urge you to check out AnEternalNow (xsurf)'s journal on his site as well. The sections on Nonduality/No-Self/and Emptiness are just full of useful stuff.

awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-e-booke-journal.html

Thanks for posting this stuff xsurf - It's really helping me in my own practice.

!

eyes open, are seeing; ears open, are hearing...

this is how Dzogchen master eats momos

Thanks, Roomy, for this short movie about the early days of the dzogchen community. Don't you think that Norbu looked like a Peruvian shaman?

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Thanks, Roomy, for this short movie about the early days of the dzogchen community. Don't you think that Norbu looked like a Peruvian shaman?

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Bingo! You nailed it.

I suspect that at his level of realization, the apparent form is inseparable from any other part of his teaching activity: there sits the indigenous soul, appreciating Reality, the ordinary functioning of the senses, momos, a hearty wine to go with them...

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"Accordingly, all that is experienced ... no super disembedded pristine [non-dual] awareness ..."
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Would you still note brightness, vividness, clarity even without a perspective or state of "pristine non dual awareness"?

"Would you still note brightness, vividness, clarity even without a perspective or state of "pristine non dual awareness"?"


As a matter of far, I am not familiar with noting vipassana. What I do is to hold on the 'sense of being' or 'sense of presence'.

This presence that first felt like "I am presence-awareness" now turns into the direct apprehension of the beingness, presence or actuality of seeing, hearing, sensing, etc. in the absence of a subject, knower, self or non-dual awareness-super-Self.

The sense of being (or feeling of existence) is not anymore the sense of my being as a sentient being or even as pure non-dual awareness, but is simply experienced as the beingness of 'what is' manifesting its presence.

Let me try to restate: Early experiences of a non-dual *identity* will tend to correlate with spaciousness, clarity, vividness, looseness, brightness, etc. As this identity is seen through does the spaciousness, clarity, vividness, etc. remain?

Right now my mind shifts back and forth between a bright, vivid, pristine, lucid experience and various vibrations and tensions that seem to *obscure* that experience. Those vibrations and tensions seem to be various process of selfing.

In your opinion, is my current perspective of tensions and harsh vibrations *obscuring* bright, vivid, pristine experience a useful perspective or a hindrance?

I just wanted to bring this thread to the forefront once again. It is a goldmine of wonderful information. Many of the links are also worth checking out. It's a shame these types of threads(practical, clear, yet challenging) no longer seem to appear here.

B.

Maybe you can continue the thread by posting something pertinent, B.Rice. What about this thread makes you miss it so much?

TYPES of threads(PRACTICAL, CLEAR, YET CHALLENGING). Not this particular thread.
I'd also invite you to add something pertinent...Or just add another silly comment. Your call!

This quote is from post 152 above:
"The last time I talked with Kenneth about 8th Stage, he defined it as an end of developmental enlightenment, so after that point no further progress is possible. It means that the mental fluctuations have stopped completely and there is no unwanted discursive thinking arising at all."
I'm curious if anyone has reached this point in there practice(or even know of anyone who claims it)?. And, if it is still an accurate representation of 8th stage?

Another pertinent question would be does anyone else recognize Kenneth's 8 stages? I believe they are original with Kenneth, so getting some validation, or not, would be interesting.

Although initially skeptical, I have experienced the hallmarks of Kenneth's stages in the chronological order he describes them. However, I can not honestly say I have reached any of these stages as the phenomena that is to be eradicated at each of the progressive stages following the fifth has reappeared in some form and I am not in a place where there are no unwanted mental fluctuations. Though there was a short period where I felt myself to be permanently in the space described by the 8th stage, conditions soon changed and I was once again disturbed to some extent. I hate to call them "unwanted fluctuations", but those thoughts that previously would have split me off from the present moment do seem to be progressively getting integrated into the open expanse of the non-conceptual. My own opinion is that these stages represent broad hallmarks and that there is an infinite degree of variability in the way they are received, interpreted and integrated within this community. Such a shame for people who like black and white categorization like me.

Yeah, I don't think it is accurate or desirable that a person of 'complete' enlightenment would be in a permanent condition free of thoughts.

Firstly there is no complete enlightenment, as I would content it to be an infinite continuum without end; and secondly, upon sufficient degree of enlightenment, thoughts are seen to be indivisible from the natural state of non-dual reality - none other than the nature of mind itself. In this way one is no longer disturbed by them, just as there is no 'person' to be disturbed by the perception of thoughts or events. Rather, there is the perfect display of reality as it is and has always been.

So the difference is the way one relates to the display - the absence of disturbing reactivity - that shifts along the continuum.

It would seem the compulsive need to construct conceptual categories and the presentation of rigid, black and white thinking perpetuating these categories, is what is overcome as one moves along this continuum of awakening to what-is. Thus, as the fixed rigidity is dissolved, all suffering and conceptual grasping relaxes, leaving simply what is - that which is beyond descriptive designation. So it appears to me, at this time.

In kind regards,

Adam.

Thanks for the input. It leaves me scratching my head though.
No one here has experienced 8th stage, or heard, or read of anyone who has. And although this is a fairly small group, you are certainly knowledgeable on such topics.
So...is 8th stage real or just a theoretical endpoint based on nothing?

No problem. My observations, based upon my own experience and that I know of others is that a yogi passes through the 6th and 7th stages and has the changes associated with those stages. From there for me the next thing that happened was that there was a sudden shift and I lost the sense that I had an internal space and for several days subject/object seemed to dissapear. When the sense of having an internal space dissapears the stories or mental fluctuations that come from this place have no power and feel bizarre, time disappears and there is the feeling of loss of agency. What happened for me, and what has happened to others I know, is that after a time the ego/personality seems to reemerge. Things have never been gone back to the way they were before that event for me, but since then it has been a process of integrating both the personal and non-personal since neither is strictly true. Kenneth's experience may be that he hit this point and stayed there, but I don't imagine so, as he has said himself that he imagines he will be "progressing" until he dies. In another post someone mentioned that at a group meditation meeting Kenneth said the 8th stage is the end of developmental enlightenment and the yogi, after reaching this point, gradually moves deeper and deeper into it as the years go by. It'd be interesting to hear his thoughts now. Or Antero's. That dudes cool.

Stage descriptions a quite arbitrary in my experience. It's better, I think, to avoid staking claims as we progress through a lifetime of practice because the experiences we have change over time - not today versus tomorrow time but this year versus next year, or even this decade versus that decade time frames. So creating a sort of artificial stage description may help in some ways but hurts in others. I personally believe it leads to a competitive, bar-setting exercise that is less than healthy. And then, after we've described stages 1 - 27, things change again and we re-invent the stages to suit this year's practice experiences.

Things are not discrete and classifiable, so letting go of that way of looking at the practice can be very, very helpful.

"Or Antero's. That dudes cool."
Yes he is!
"Stage descriptions a quite arbitrary in my experience"
Agree completely, yet it seems like so many people who decide to teach feel the need to create a "new" map. This is cynical, but it almost seems like a sales tool, not really designed to help, but to differentiate.

"Agree completely, yet it seems like so many people who decide to teach feel the need to create a "new" map. This is cynical, but it almost seems like a sales tool, not really designed to help, but to differentiate."

Initially, all that a teacher can ever really know is their own experience. Over time, if they see enough students progress, they can start to discern patterns. It make sense that those patterns would be clearer at the earlier stages and become more muddy in the later stages.

After Kenneth's 6th and 7th stages I experienced tens of small baseline shifts and several major ones. Shortly after I went through a Major Shift that made 6th and 7th stages seem insignificant in comparison. It is probalbly too early to talk about 8th stage before we have multiple reference points on the nature of development. Several yogis seem to get to this territory and although their descriptions share many common features, there are some interesting differences as well.

Now that some time has passed since those events, I have started to see that the development occurs on several axis that do not always progress at the same pace and some practice methods may develop some aspect faster than others. This could also explain why the emphasis of the descriptions of various advanced yogis differ.

My experience of all major shifts has been very much like WF566163 described: perfect honeymooning period with the fading of the afterglow, some of the processes of selfing are coming back online, but on a much more subtle level than before. Also as time passes and the understanding matures, there are always new previously unkown areas and aspects of development that are discovered just when one has thought to seen it all.

Some of my experiences with the interlinked axis of development:

Emotional aspect:
The emotions themselves do not seem to be affected by practice, but how those emotions are felt in the body. At the early stages negative feelings are reduced until they disappear completely. At the far end of the practice there is total absence of feelings, although at times it seems to be possible to feel other people's strong emotional reactions in one's own body. As mind states dissolve, what is left is some kind of benign unimpeded choiceless equanimity.

(cont.)

Mental aspect:
Thinking and all kind of mental fluctuation become increasingly more subtle. Narrative thinking is greatly reduced and at times stops completely. Mental processes become streamlined and single lighting fast mental images carry the same information that was previously constructed in words and sentences. The minds tendency to get attached to and follow random thoughts and ideas is dropped.

It seems to me that this process can deepen forever until the mind is so accustomed to stillness that it rarely if ever fluctuates so much to produce random thoughts.

Selfing aspect
The sense of self is very much based on the two previous aspects and as they get streamlined and even dissolve completely, selfhood-as-subjectivity disappears and what is left is selfhood-as-embodiement [1]. The last major shift that I experienced initally dissolved sense of self completely, but as time passed, the remaining sense of subjectivity seems to suface from time to time with the two previously mentioned aspects.

Luminosity / emptiness aspect:
All sensory information, feelings and thoughts are seen to be made of the same stuff: luminous and empty field pervading whole universe. Seeing this perspective clearly turns off all the previously mentioned aspects.

This way of seeing things has become automatic for me, but how clearly it is seen fluctuates. There does not seem to be any limits to how deeply this aspect can be realized.

All of these aspects can be developed separately, but there seems to be connections between them. In my experience a well balanced practice includes realization of them all. Although there seems to be some clearly definable tipping points, IME almost all those aspects can be developed indefinitely.

(cont.)

The deeper this process has got, the harder it has become for me to come up with a definition of the final stage. The point that previously seemed to be the end of the line turned out to be a starting point to something that seems to stretch far beyond the visible horizon. Nevertheless in my own experience and the feeling I get from discussing with other yogis, there does seem to be a point of no-return similar to 4th path (or Kenneth's 5th stage) that marks more complete dissolving of the sense of agency that takes place when the previously mentioned aspects have been developed far enough. Although this dissolving is not as complete as one initially imagines, from the point of view of a total beginner it would surely seem like a end of the line of developmental awakening.

[1]
According to Thomas Metzinger minimal self-consciousness makes control possible and it must include:
Image of the body in time and place
Identification with that image
Visual (or auditory) perspective originating within the body volume

It is the experience of agency that really enables the first person perspective or selfhood-as-subjectivity and it consists of emotional agency, cognitive agency, attentional agency (selecting what is included in the beam of attention) and autobiographical memory, all of which IME are greatly refined at the later stages of the process of awakening.

- see Thomas Metzinger, The Ego Tunnel