A Zen exploration of the Bahiya Sutta

"What do you think about this in relation to Kenneth's model? It makes me think of stage 6, but perhaps you believe you have attained that previously, and this is something different."


As a matter of fact, I only believe that I have attained Kenneth's 6th stage a few weeks ago, when I have noticed that even in conflictual situations, negative emotions such as anger, fear or anxiety had ceased to manifest as such.

Last week, I went back to Kenneth's YouTube video describing the 6th and 7th stages and I must say that his description of these stages is a very accurate description of my present state.

With respect to the 7th however, I am not sure that it has been attained yet. I would tend to answer by the negative, since I did not experience a clear shift with a before and an after. As a matter of fact, I don't know how the shift should take place, nor do I know what is supposed to happen exactly, due to the fact that Kenneth did not explain much, publicly at least.

What I note is the inability to make anything into a self. What was felt as a "me", sense of existence, sense of being, presence-awareness, primordial awareness or True Self, is now seen [by no one] as nothing more than a flow of impermanent thoughts, sensations and perceptions.

Although familiar with the sense of life flowing on its own, without the sense of a doer/agent, this has clearly not become a permanent state (yet). It is something that is experienced during sitting meditation on a daily basis, at least for brief moments on a daily basis.

Is the sense of agency supposed to drop permanently at Kenneth's 7th stage? Can you (or anyone else reading these lines) relate to what I am describing as a stage that you have experienced a few months ago?

About the 6th, the reason that I mentioned it is that, if you perceive many experiences previously considered "mental" to be body states, you will likely perceive any impression of an Observer as a body state, which would lead you to say that you only experience the perception of a self as something related to one of the six senses.

As you say that you believe you attained the 6th stage prior to this, I would ask, do you (or did you) believe that the perception of an Observer apart from the senses was an experience that was other than an emotion? (Antero has claimed that the experience of duality is just tension in the body, which I am more-or-less inclined to agree with...tension in the body can be perceived as a free-floating emotion, or it can be perceived as the body experience that it is.)

With respect to the 7th stage, perhaps the following will help you: if duality is tension in the body, and tension in the body is fixated upon less, the duality of here-inside-my-body vs. there-outside-of-my-body will be reduced, and the sense of the body being yours, or a thing you inhabit, or a bounded thing that forces you to look at the world in terms of inside vs. outside, will also be reduced. In other words, tension itself produces the perception of sharp outlines that are equivalent to the experience of seeing the body as 'you' or seeing 'you' inside of it, and if the tension is reduced or fixated upon less, the experience of this duality will be reduced. This (the experience of sharp outlines) is what I understand to be the proprioceptive sense, and it (retrospectively) matches what gets abandoned at 7th stage. However, Kenneth may explain it differently (or perhaps he will state that he has something else in mind).

Alex, thanks for your careful response. Everything you say I find verified by my own experience, except for the formulation "self-aware phenomena." I think my difficulty is just with the formulation, because it could give rise to misconceptions -- for instance the notion of a single self-aware phenomenon, say a self-aware doorknob. That would be absurd, wouldn't it? But "phenomena," meaning the endless flux of comings and goings, being identical with awareness itself -- i.e. awareness/appearances being indistinguishable -- that sounds right and true to me as a description.

I'm finding this whole thread extraordinarily clarifying and inspiring. Thank you!

@EndinSight - what may be specific with my case, it that my recent practice has been exclusively focused on the practice of the Bahiya sutta with an emphasis on direct insight into things as they are. Seeing it again and again, it becomes impossible to see things as I used to a few months or even weeks ago.

Accordingly, all that is experienced is impermanent streams of sense-experience. A stream of seeing, a stream of hearing, a stream of thoughts, a stream of sensations and feelings, etc. No thinker, no seer, no feeler, no super disembedded pristine [non-dual] awareness, no body, no solid objects out there, jus these ongoing flow of pure experience without an experiencer.

"Accordingly, all that is experienced is impermanent streams of sense-experience. A stream of seeing, a stream of hearing, a stream of thoughts, a stream of sensations and feelings, etc. No thinker, no seer, no feeler, no super disembedded pristine [non-dual] awareness, no body, no solid objects out there, jus these ongoing flow of pure experience without an experiencer."

Alex, that is exactly how it appears to me, too. It's all empty, and that's what we awaken to -- abiding non-dual awareness.

"Is the sense of agency supposed to drop permanently at Kenneth's 7th stage? Can you (or anyone else reading these lines) relate to what I am describing as a stage that you have experienced a few months ago?

- Alex"

The sense of agency is not completely lost at 7th stage. It becomes a lot more diffuse, so at first one may think that it is lost for good. It turns out that that what was lost was a localized sense of self that for me was experienced behind the eyes. What do you get if you try to do pure Witness?

What you described some weeks ago sounds very much like Kenneth's 6th stage of disembedding from emotions.

"Alex, thanks for your careful response. Everything you say I find verified by my own experience, except for the formulation "self-aware phenomena." I think my difficulty is just with the formulation, because it could give rise to misconceptions -- for instance the notion of a single self-aware phenomenon, say a self-aware doorknob. That would be absurd, wouldn't it? But "phenomena," meaning the endless flux of comings and goings, being identical with awareness itself -- i.e. awareness/appearances being indistinguishable -- that sounds right and true to me as a description.

I'm finding this whole thread extraordinarily clarifying and inspiring. Thank you!"


Thank you, Zyklops. Yes of course, I agree. Let's say that it is a poetical way of saying that there is no awareness separated from the objects arising and passing away within awareness. The mirror, its reflective nature and the reflected images cannot be separated. And therefore [poetically], the reflected images are the mirror. In the sense, although illusory, they reveal, manifest and/or actualize awareness or whatever we want to call it.

This is why Zen masters could say that "the meaning of Zen" is "the cypress tree in the court yard", simply because at this very moment, the appearence (the cypress tree in Bailin temple) revealed the Buddha-nature, just like the reflected images manifest and in a way are [one with] the mirror. Furthermore, the expression of the world "cypress tree" made manifest the *function* of the mind, just like Buddhidharma walking towards China.

Hi Alex,

With the Bahiya instructions how are you 'paying attention'? Is it some how a 'controlled' paying attention?

This might be helpful: thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/10/...ent-riding-wave.html

"Accordingly, all that is experienced is impermanent streams of sense-experience. A stream of seeing, a stream of hearing, a stream of thoughts, a stream of sensations and feelings, etc. No thinker, no seer, no feeler, no super disembedded pristine [non-dual] awareness, no body, no solid objects out there, jus these ongoing flow of pure experience without an experiencer.

"

In that case, what are the sensations, thoughts, or perceptions that you used to mistake for a self? You described them thus:

"I realize that I have become unable to feel a sense of self that doesn't fall into one of the six sense doors. It is not that the sense of self is erradicated, but only that what used to be experienced as the sense of self is now only revealed as sensations, thoughts or perceptions."

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you in some way.

"
"Accordingly, all that is experienced is impermanent streams of sense-experience. A stream of seeing, a stream of hearing, a stream of thoughts, a stream of sensations and feelings, etc. No thinker, no seer, no feeler, no super disembedded pristine [non-dual] awareness, no body, no solid objects out there, jus these ongoing flow of pure experience without an experiencer."

Alex, that is exactly how it appears to me, too. It's all empty, and that's what we awaken to -- abiding non-dual awareness.

"


Yes, but this non-dual awareness is more non-dual now that awareness is not anymore apprehended as exiting somehow beyond phenomena. In other words, there is no more duality between awareness on one side, and phenomena arising and passing away within awareness on the other side. There is just experiencing. No objects experienced out there. No experiencer here. Buddha-nature is not anymore static (as I used to apprehend it), but has become empty and dynamic (as seen now).

"The sense of agency is not completely lost at 7th stage. It becomes a lot more diffuse, so at first one may think that it is lost for good. It turns out that that what was lost was a localized sense of self that for me was experienced behind the eyes. What do you get if you try to do pure Witness?

What you described some weeks ago sounds very much like Kenneth's 6th stage of disembedding from emotions.

"


The sense of being localized somewhere in the head vanished in May 2010. But there was lingering sense of existence, somehow associated to feelings experienced within the body (chest, gut, etc.) together with the sense of being a pure presence-awareness beyond manifestation. I could actually zoom in an out between the two.

Now I can't find a sense of being, a sense of existence or a sense of being that is not clearly seen as the functioning of the six senses manifesting their presence.

And yes, before it was exactly what Kenneth described as his 6th stage.

"Hi Alex,

With the Bahiya instructions how are you 'paying attention'? Is it some how a 'controlled' paying attention?

This might be helpful: thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/10/...ent-riding-wave.html "


Hi Nick,
I have not finished reading your interesting article, but on the outset I would say that I don't really concentrate or focus with the intention to trigger a special state. There is just a passive attention to what is, the seen, the heard, the sensed, the tasted, the smelled and the cognized, seeing how they interact with each other, seeing how they created the illusion of a self, seeing how they create the illusion of a body in a world of solid objects. Soon, it turns into pure shikantaza, allowing everything to be as it is.

If we compare this to watching a movie, it would not be concentrating on the flickering of the images at high speed (like Daniel Ingram's vipassana), but only paying attention (more like Kenneth's direct mode and/or 3rd gear) to the sound track, the flow of images and the interaction between the two. Effortlessly, the apparent reality of the movie gives way to what it is really, namely images in motion coordinated with sounds and voices.

"In that case, what are the sensations, thoughts, or perceptions that you used to mistake for a self? You described them thus:

"I realize that I have become unable to feel a sense of self that doesn't fall into one of the six sense doors. It is not that the sense of self is erradicated, but only that what used to be experienced as the sense of self is now only revealed as sensations, thoughts or perceptions."

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you in some way."


What I meant is that the sense of self was experienced as a kind of fragrance, a vague sense of presence often associated with sensations and feelings giving the impression of being localized somewhere in or around the body.

Now when I ask "who am I?" or "do I exist? how do I know that I exist?", nothing is experienced as a "me", big Self, small self, non-dual self, etc. There is only the seen, the heard, the sensed or the thought.

What I meant also is that nothing is really gone, beside an illusion.

"
Thank you, Zyklops. Yes of course, I agree. Let's say that it is a poetical way of saying that there is no awareness separated from the objects arising and passing away within awareness. The mirror, its reflective nature and the reflected images cannot be separated. And therefore [poetically], the reflected images are the mirror. In the sense, although illusory, they reveal, manifest and/or actualize awareness or whatever we want to call it.

This is why Zen masters could say that "the meaning of Zen" is "the cypress tree in the court yard", simply because at this very moment, the appearence (the cypress tree in Bailin temple) revealed the Buddha-nature, just like the reflected images manifest and in a way are [one with] the mirror. Furthermore, the expression of the world "cypress tree" made manifest the *function* of the mind, just like Buddhidharma walking towards China.

"

Yes, Alex -- that's very clear and good, thank you.

Since it seems that some practitioners are still puzzled, if not shocked, by the idea that self-referencing feelings and the very sense of self may eventually cease to arise at certain stages described by Kenneth Folk in one of his videos, I would like to insist on the fact that if a special [selfless and emotionless] altered state of consciousness is cultivated and eventually turned into a permanent state, the so-called permanent state will never become truly permanent. It will only seem to have become permanent, but only as long as one maintains a certain level of concentration required to suppress the arising. We can uproot bad weeds, but they always come back.

What is required to reach any permanent state is always to gain deep insight into things as they truly are, and not as they appear to be. Eventually, what was seen as a *snake* in darkness turns out to be a *rope* in plain light of day.

Was the rope suppressed, erradicated, uprooted, extinguished? No.
Was the snake suppressed, erradicated, uprooted, extinguished? Yes, but only in the sense that one has clearly seen that there never was a snake in the first place.

The functioning of the six senses is a *rope*, while the ego, the sense of self, the belief in a super primordial non-dual inherent awareness standing beyond the five aggregates while containing them within its boundless numinous nature, self-referencing passions, kleshas and other fetters are *snakes*, reason why they can be extinguished through deep insights into impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, selflessness, emptiness, suchness and dependent origination. The more insights, the deeper the insights, the lesser fetters remain.

When all fetters have been erradicated, one may eventualy become an Arahat. At this stage, or earlier in some cases, one may also vow to renounce entering into Nirvana to come back again and again in order to "save all beings" and become a Bodhisattva.

"Hi Alex,

With the Bahiya instructions how are you 'paying attention'? Is it some how a 'controlled' paying attention?

This might be helpful: thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/10/...ent-riding-wave.html "


@Nick - in your above mentioned blog post, you wrote: "just realize that awareness is happening by itself without any effort right now. Watch how it takes no effort to be able 'to see' with the eyes. No effort to be aware of 'seeing'."

This is what I meant. One way to feel that is to keep our eyes open and pretend that we are dead to see that "seeing" goes on on its own. Same with the other senses, as well as with thinking. No effort needed, no special concentration.

Taking the example of "in seeing only the seen", one can witnesses the fact that there is just a flow of "seeing". No seer. No solid objects seen beside colors, lights, shades and parterns in our direct experience of thinks as they are. This is also what I mean by the luminous clarity of sense consciousness. One does not need to project awareness on the seen, nor even to presuppose an Awareness in the background in which everything arises.

"
The sense of being localized somewhere in the head vanished in May 2010. But there was lingering sense of existence, somehow associated to feelings experienced within the body (chest, gut, etc.) together with the sense of being a pure presence-awareness beyond manifestation. I could actually zoom in an out between the two.

Now I can't find a sense of being, a sense of existence or a sense of being that is not clearly seen as the functioning of the six senses manifesting their presence."

Hi Alex,

Out of curiosity, did you loose your localized sense of self when you (as I assume) got 4th path (the event in May 2010)? Have you tried taking the Witness as an object (pure Witness) after that event? For me clearest sign of 7th Stage was that it was on longer possible lock onto the Witness or to locate the sense of self in the body the same way as before. Gross self contraction went away and self referencing thoughts lost their power for good and I even though and at first that the sense of self was completely gone. It turned out that it had just been refined into a more subtle field of mental tension. Owen reported getting 7th Stage before 6th, so it would be interesting to get more data points on this.

If there was a Kfd Thread of the Year Award, I would no doubt vote for this one. )

Hi Antero,

Thank you for your interesting post. Yes, May 2010 was 4th path. After that the sense of self became rather diffuse, more like formless cloud expending and contracting (or, on the contrary, a formless non-dual awareness that would get more or less embedded in its own dreamlike creations).

Now reading your lines, I am trying to abide as "the Witness" and -guess what-, it has become impossible, if not very difficult. What is difficult is actually to feel or apprehend any sense of pure consciousness beyond phenomena. All that is experienced naturally falls within one of the six senses. Not only the sense of being a pure Witness within the background of consciousness, the sense of being a non-dual pure awareness somehow detached from appearences, but also the sense of existing as anything separated from, or located within, any of these 6 senses.

Nevertheless, I insist on the fact that there is a still a sense of agency, location and time. There are clearly not gone, at least not for the time being. Therefore I am in no way talking about what the very advanced practitioners [who have completely lost any sense of self] have been reporting.

What is gone, to sum it up, is only the ability to feel one's sense of existence as either:

- a pure witnessing awareness untouched by phenomena
- a pure non-dual awareness that would be the source and substance of all phenomena
- a contracted subject located somewhere within the body (head, chest, gut)
- formless cloud around the body

Nothing really feels like "me" or "mine". There is awareness [non-dual by nature], but this awareness is apprehended as the natural clarity of the 6 senses. Nothing beyond these 6 senses. No sense of self that is not quickly seen as a momentary clinging to one or more of these 6 senses.

Alex, that is an excellent description of 7th Stage as it happened to me!

In my experience selfing is a manifestation of the fluctuations of the mind and once the current level is objectified and disembedded from, one soon becomes aware of the next more subtle level that prevents one from experiencing the stillness.

I see these levels of fluctuations from gross to more subtle more of less like this:

Experience of self as a solid entity (disembedded at 5th Stage aka 4th path)
Unwholesome mind states (disembedded from at 6th Stage)
Self contraction and a localized sense of self (disembedded from at 7th Stage)

After 7th Stage:
Narrative thoughts and daydreaming
Aversion and greed felt as a mental push/pull or change in the field of vibration
Rest of the mind states (Brahmaviharas or wholesome mind states)
Oscillation of the attention between subject and object (Sense of being)

When the fluctuations cease, there is just empty cognisant nature of the mind.

(Edited for clarity)

"Oscillation of the attention between subject and object (Sense of being)

When the fluctuations cease, there is just empty cognisant nature of the mind.

(Edited for clarity)"

Hi Antero, i have just tried experimenting with 'oscillating between subject/object, perceiver/perceived, and found that i could do it for a few seconds before the mind was not able to go there any more. This continues to be my experience ( last 5 mins ) This seems very similar to seventh stage when the mind could not form the ' witness ' as described above. Does this mirror your experience of post 7th stage?

Thanks a lot, Antero, this is not only clear but also extremely helpful.

This inability to abide as 'the witness' is really strange I must say.

It has become clear that subtle clinging to self-referencing thoughts, narrative thoughts and daydreams are now preventing a more complete dissolution of the sense of self. In relation with the Bahiya Sutta, the focus should gradually shift towards "in thinking, only the thought", allowing streams of thoughts to flow freely on their own in the absence of a thinker, unsupported and empty, ...like flashes of lightning, drops of dew or flickering lamps.

When Yaoshan was sitting in meditation a monk asked,
'What do you think about, sitting in steadfast composure?'
Yaoshan said, 'I think not thinking.'
The monk said, 'How do you think not thinking?'
Yaoshan said, 'Non-thinking.'

'Once you have adjusted your posture, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale, rock your body right and left and settle into a steady, immobile sitting position. Think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen.' (Dogen, Fukanzazengi)

...still desperatly trying to abide at 'the witness'. As strange as it may seem, it feel like streching a rubber band that bounces back, triggering a kind of physical jerk. How strange!

"To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening" (Dogen, Genjokoan)

How accurate is this statement!