Dukkhas

Hi, folks, I have a question and would appreciate some input here. We've all either been in the dukkha nyanas, or are anticipating being there. I would like to know the difference between misery, desire for deliverance, and then how all these things manifest in reobservation. I think I've got a handle on dissolution, fear, and disgust. But these others get smooshed together in my mind. What is the "flavor" of misery as opposed to desire for deliverance? And how can a person tell that she's in reobservation rather than in any of the others? Thanks!

This will be a interesting discussion. I'll bet it's different for different folks...I know that compared to others, I still have difficulty teasing out nanas as discrete events.

My hypothesis is that Misery coincides with a frowning, weepy kind of feeling in my face. Sometimes actual weeping

Similarly, Desire for Delieverance is when the thoughts about practice and the fruit of practices dominates my thoughts. Sometimes a long thought chain about practice, retreats, the nature of nibbana, etc.

When these manifest within Reobservation, there is an emotional overlay that feels like "your life depends on the truth of these things". (There's a element in truth (emotional and factual) in all of the nanas, truths that we sometimes avoid. In reobservation it seems like we need to somehow fix or resolve these truths once and for all. With more concentration, reobservation can just feel like wild or turbulant or desparate vibrations.

I'm erroring on the side of saying all of this with more certainty that I actually feel -- just to get those ideas out there for discussion/feedback.

Hope this helps!

I too am pretty curious about how the dukkna nyanas manifest for others, Laurel.

My experience of them seems to be very strongly slanted to physical effects, with little psychological reaction to them. For many years, I've had (and continue to have) psychoanalysis and I'm curious if there is any link between the subjective experience of Dark Night symptoms on and off the cushion and the length and quality of psychotherapy. I'm not claiming that my therapy eased Dark Night, but still I'm curious if any relationship exists.

On the cushion, I've rarely ever seen clear differences between the nyanas. For me, there's this vague, blurry, hard-to-focus-on time between dissolution and equanimity. Occasionally, I'll get a bit of nausea, or, I'll feel like I'm not getting enough air, and will take deeper breaths. Rarely, I've had serial yawning, which seems for some reason to correlate to Desire for Deliverance.

If I'm very concentrated when I start, I'll sometimes feel my heartbeat strongly, and will feel very shaky, slow, heavy vibrations in my chest at around 5-10Hz when I pass the dukkhas.

Sometimes, if I meditate reclining, and the dukkha nyanas are the cutting edge of my practice, I'll get a very strong feeling like I must move my legs or my body. If I move, then it breaks the flow of meditation. If I don't move, then the feeling to move keeps stronger and stronger, and I end up moving anyway. This effect passes in a few days or a week. I suspect this is part of Reobservervation.


Does anyone else have similar experiences?

Here's a couple of entries on the dukkha nanas from my journal.

"Counting breaths until 1st Jhana,
Feeling of wandering mind (2nd insight)
Itchiness, tingling, grimacing (3rd insight)
Rise in warm energy, pleasure, light (2nd Jhana - A&P)
Cooling off, mellowing out, buzz (3rd Jhana - Dissolution)
feel somewhat normal but anxious (fear)
begin to feel tension and movements in mouth and face (misery)
gets more and more intense especially the tension in the face - often queasy (disgust)
eventually feel somewhat sad, want it to end (desire for deliverance)
everything seems ok for a second
repeat through the same cycle repeatedly (maybe 2 or 3 times) brighter I think (reobservation?)"

"Seem to experience KOF as very slight anxiety, mainly noticeable because it is a period of no facial twitching or pressure at the beginning of each of these dukkha cycles. Move on to feeling moving blobs of pressure in and around my face, tingling around lips, twitching lips and cheeks. This is accompanied by more pronounced aching feelings or slight pains in legs or back. The pressure in the face gets more intense, less of a focus on pain more grimacing. This gets fairly solid and intense and eventually breaks into a loser sense of grief, occasionally accompanied by moisture in the eyes and sighing. This cycle repeated twice more, the second time stronger the third time milder. The last time I went from desire for deliverance to a sense of open brightness with equanimity and awareness of much of the background noise in the house."

In general the move from A&P to dissolution is marked by a dropoff in energetic phenomenon and vibrations. I feel cool, relaxed and spaced out.

At some point I feel energy rising again - this time, however, it has a feel of generalized anxiety. It can be accompanied by fearful images and paranoia. I feel very closed in on myself and find it hard to bring myself to do anything (because I feel too anxious).

Eventually there's a shift in the feel from one of anxiety to something more solid and heavy. There's often something akin to achiness (these nasty pressure points) and the energetic feel is just miserable. There's often pressure at the eyes (associated with grief). Sadness tends to be the emotional undercurrent for me.

Disgust has more facial stuff going on (grimacing) though I do see some of that in the previous nana as well. The tension can be quite intense at this point. There's usually some at the throat (maybe even extending down the esophagus). This brings with it feelings of queasiness (and often gagging/nausea). The ********** you feel makes it really difficult to get any sort of joy out of normal things. This can often lead to unjustified annoyance and anger directed at others.

Desire for deliverance is often accompanied by thoughts of practice (as betawave mentioned above) or jealousy of other's with "easier lives" or pursuits. I've had plenty of religious thoughts (salvation and things like that) with this one. It's just a "GET ME OUT OF HERE" type of thing - you've had enough and you feel pretty sad that it won't end. I often find myself feeling totally overwhelmed at this point.

Then there's a little pause. It feels like you're done and ready to move to equanimity. But then, just as post dissolution transitioned to anxiety, the reprieve transitions to anxiety and if I look closely I see the same pattern repeat itself.

Hmm - Misery I think is the sadness associated with the mouth puckering up, I have had that alot, whereas Desire for deliverance the tension for me seems to be higher up in the head, maybe between and behind the eyes, and its more like a despair than a sadness, a despair and a desire to escape something, a sort of vague 'no I dont want this, make it stop' feeling. Re-Ob lately for me has been cycling through all 4 DN's over and over, with the intensity seeming to increase each cycle - its not always clear but it seems like that is what happens. Interestingly though the fear nana seems to be almost gone for me, sometimes I notice it but it comes and goes very quickly, and oddly sometimes I think I feel nausea with it, confusing it with disgust. While I am not sure of the details the overall pattern is fairly clear.

I will say that clarity and current strength of concentration can change how intense they are - and I'm not sure what causes this but I have had dukkhaville that was, harsh, energetic, extremely vibratory and jarring, and at times had dukkhaville that was more emotional and less physical. Over time it had trended towards a more even mix of the two. Back when I was crossing A&P it was extremely intense and harsh, energetic, vibratory and less emotional.

"Hmm - Misery I think is the sadness associated with the mouth puckering up, I have had that alot, whereas Desire for deliverance the tension for me seems to be higher up in the head, maybe between and behind the eyes, and its more like a despair than a sadness, a despair and a desire to escape something, a sort of vague 'no I dont want this, make it stop' feeling. Re-Ob lately for me has been cycling through all 4 DN's over and over, with the intensity seeming to increase each cycle - its not always clear but it seems like that is what happens. Interestingly though the fear nana seems to be almost gone for me, sometimes I notice it but it comes and goes very quickly, and oddly sometimes I think I feel nausea with it, confusing it with disgust. While I am not sure of the details the overall pattern is fairly clear.

I will say that clarity and current strength of concentration can change how intense they are - and I'm not sure what causes this but I have had dukkhaville that was, harsh, energetic, extremely vibratory and jarring, and at times had dukkhaville that was more emotional and less physical. Over time it had trended towards a more even mix of the two. Back when I was crossing A&P it was extremely intense and harsh, energetic, vibratory and less emotional."

Yes - that's clearer than what I wrote (in terms of the difference between misery/desire for deliverance).

I've also noticed variations in the intensity.

I've never really felt re-observation as being the repeat of the other DN phenomena- I think of it as a drilling, grinding, gut tension with a quality all its own!

I have had reobservations that I must not have noticed because I somehow just found myself in equinimity. Other times I noticed the ping-pong itching and mashup of other dukkas. In my most recent stroll into reobservation it was an intense, crawling of the skin, omg this has got to stop someone get me out of here nightmare that finally ended will absolute surrender type of thing.

Before stream entry, I really had no clue. No discrete state shifts or anything. Just a mass of suffering. What helped was to look at exactly _why_ that suffering _was_ suffering. Why does suffering suck so much? I don't think delineating state shifts would have been helpful to practice too much, except maybe dividing it into roughly three categories: entry into DN (Dissolution), middle DN (Fear -> Desire for Deliverance), late DN (reobservation). If it _really really_ sucks, then it's probably re-obs.

Right after stream entry, I realized I had been using the body as an object. There were remarkably clear state shifts when reviewing: Dissolution was the A&P stuff just suddenly STOPping. Fear was a glimmer of something I couldn't quite see in the middle that felt fearful. Misery was a somewhat thick layering on top of that fear, like a circle surrounding it, making it worse in some way. Disgust was a thin layering around the Misery, just a gah - why this, too? Desire for deliverance was an even thinner layering on top of the Fear-Disgust-Misery blob, so thin that it almost wasn't there. Re-observation was quite literally seeing phenomenon from Dissolution up to Desire for Deliverance not all at once, but phasing through each other, out of order, just a horrible mess (though it was not horrible at all when reviewing it). Equanimity was somehow no longer feeding the horrible mess, which would then slowly start to fade.

I don't think it happens so clearly unless you're in Review, though.

If you haven't seen it already, Cheetah House is working on The Dark Night Project:

cheetahhouse.wordpress.com/the-dark-night-project/

From the Dark Night Project home page:

'ADVERSE EFFECTS AND DIFFICULT STAGES OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE PATH' RESEARCH PROJECT

The Adverse Effects and Difficult Stages of the Contemplative Path Research Project (a.k.a. The Dark Night Project) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary project researching the difficult stages that can arise from meditation. Most contemplative traditions explicitly recognize a difficult period of spiritual training that is part and parcel of the path, and given increasing interest in meditation in a variety of new cultural contexts and in non-traditional, non-monastic settings, there has been a pressing need for empirical research on this phenomenon.

Hi Laurel. Here's my take on it: After A&P, this whole thing of letting go seems really fun so I continued disembedding. This sets the stage for dissolution and, in my experience, this felt like losing ground. This is the first time we feel we have nothing to hold on to. I felt that myself, my house, my room, etc. were all the same (hollow). This is very very confusing. Naturally, we get scared (Knowledge of fear). I immediately thought about not being here anymore and that made me feel very sad and scared. Deep down, one wishes: "no, no, no, I don't want this anymore" and this sets the stage for Misery. Fear is a very strong desire, so strong that we generate a lot of energy and, of course, it becomes unpleasant. Misery to me felt very unpleasant, I felt anxiety and that put me in a very bad mood (it still does sometimes but not as strong as the first time). I felt very "edgy" and sensitive to many things, I'd easily get annoyed (perhaps similar to PMS?). This ñana is still imbued with rejection and, as you might have guessed, this aversion causes the next ñana: disgust. In my experience, there are to versions of this: 1st version: nothing feels satisfactory, everything is worthless, 2nd version: real disgust, real nausea. The second version was awful for me and this awfulness caused a very strong desire to be free from all this (deliverance). At this point I felt helpless and sad. Seeing that feeling helpless didn't change anything I went back to face the whole mess (re-observation). How does this feel? well, since I never was equanimous enough, all the previous ñanas are still there. From there I had two paths: 1) either give up trying to do anything because I'd see I had no power over these stages or 2) remember that grasping and desire are the cause of suffering and that I had to REALLY give up any sense of control (which takes me back to the first option). Then we discover equanimity.

The previous description of the cycle changes. It becomes more subtle. Knowledge of fear eventually disappeared but the ones that remained ( because I was being picky with sensations) are the rest of the dukkha ñanas. Misery manifests as pain in my jaw, sometimes in my back. Dispassion manifests as pain behind my eyes or at the top of my head. 1st gear helps, walking helps, giving up my urge to control helps.

All of this has been extremely helpful so far--I think the response that most resembles me is Beoman's "Before stream entry I had no clue." I have no clue; there's a lot of suffering that makes little sense. But I will continue to observe and compare and learn as I go along.

Hi JLaurelC,

Here are my two cents, if I may. nanas are different manifesting mind states that arise naturally during vipassana meditation (when cycling). It is perfectly normal to feel a certain level of fascination with them during the pre-stream entry process, and the 2nd path process (many of us felt kind of "jipped" when we didn't get to revisit the nanas during the review state right before plunging into the cycle/path). That said, I also know that all of us lost most, if not all fascination for them after 3rd path (specially after cycling over and over again). As you practice progresses you start to become quite good at pin pointing nanas both during meditation and during your every day (a while back ago, I spent some significant practice time investigating insight stages one by one, and I noticed subnanas within nanas (as if each nana was comprised of a cycle of smaller nanas). I know Daniel Ingram, Kenneth, and Nikolai have also noticed this "fractal-like" nature of the nanas. The Hamilton Project blog has a pretty cool podcast in which Nick, Owen, and Clayton go over all the nanas in order and give pretty good physical (a some mental/psychological ones) descriptions of them as they arise. Later, you will see that in a given cycle, you may get a visceral sensation in a given dukkha nana, while the next time it is noticed more as a psychological state (for example, desire for deliverance always seems to manifest for me as a restlessness both physical and mentally).
In the end, you will realize that the nanas themselves have little importance. The KEY to insight practice is to be able to investigate all the nanas and realize the 3 characteristics in every single one of them (regardless of whatever nana is arising).
Best of luck!
-J

"In the end, you will realize that the nanas themselves have little importance. The KEY to insight practice is to be able to investigate all the nanas and realize the 3 characteristics in every single one of them (regardless of whatever nana is arising).
Best of luck!
-J"

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