Self-Reported Attainments

@kate - maybe it's like circumcision of the heart?

Circumcision of the heart has got to be one of my all-time favorite phrases.

I would add to Ona's excellent posts above, that it's worth being cautious of taking one system (e.g. Daniel's MCTB) as 'true' and others open to falsification. Which is what occurs if for example we say that MCTB-style practice falsifies the idea that third-pathers have no sexual desire or arahants must ordain - you would have to ask whether other Buddhist Theravada systems would recognise MCTB arahantship as arahantship.

All we can really say is that MCTB-style arahantship does not automatically lead to this, while recognising that in saying that MCTB is not the same as the model that one finds in the suttas or that monastics outline and practice.

Similarly, chosen celibacy, which is clearly right for some people and is a decision that occurs at a certain time in relation to their path and practice, is not at all the same thing as 'castration.' So there are various value judgements underlying those paradigms that are worth making visible.

I don't want to sound unsympathetic but on a personal level I never understood people's fear of losing this or that as a result of practice - it tends to make me think that they're probably not ready to throw themselves in yet, but also my general response would be, OK, don't do practice, and see if you're satisfied

I think the answer lies in the humble postage stamp.

I recall that years ago, when men complained of an inability to obtain a state of engorged dangly bit, the family doctor would tell the man to buy a roll of stamps from the post office. The worried man was supposed to take a strip of several stamps, lick them, and wrap them around the floppy cylinder in question... and then go to sleep. Inevitably, a man will become engorged several times during sleep and the perforations will rip apart and demonstrate the evidence of his ability to indeed become engorged. Thus, proving for the 99% of men who worry about such things, that it was all in his head. Yes, there are medical problems, but these are very small fraction of the population.

In the effort to promote the dawning of the age of Aquarius, I think men of all religions, all meditation traditions, all chi cultivators should do the same thing. We need to all buy a roll of postage stamps, apply them, then go to sleep. Whoever doesn't have the perforations broken after a fortnight will be allowed to cut a hole in his underwear and pants, and thus display said saintly postage stamps. And we will all worship and obey accordingly.

In the name of the dawning global consciousness, of course.

I leave it to the women of the board to figure out how we find third-path-ers that are inapplicable to the postage stamp test.

Edit: sheesh, I can't believe I just bothered to write all of that.

You can't be serious!

Ona Kiser wrote: You can't be serious!

My golly, what a world we live in... I googled and lo and behold:

WIKI! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamp_test

But the key question is being overlooked. It's not "will the dangly bits function" it's "will I even care?"

Can dangly bits do their little cyclical daily thing and the person to whom they belong simply not care nor react in any way?

In classical Christianity there's a distinction between "temptation" (the spontaneous/conditioned arising of some thought, feeling, etc) and "sin" (intentionally indulging in the opportunity presented by the temptation). Temptation is said to be a natural feature of being a human being. Sin is slightly more optional since with grace and effort one can be less reactive to stuff that arises.

I'm not sure that subtlety gets taught widely. It sounds like a lot of Buddhist teaching I've heard, about observing the arising of phenomena so that one can learn not to react in a habitual way or something like that.

Yes, exactly.

I guess it all gets complex because one man's (I guess I can use man in this context?) temptation is another man's sin.

It sounds lame, but I just wish for people to do the best they can. Even though it is against the Buddhist monastic rules to have sex with a skull (supposedly part of the monastic vinaya (rules)), if that's what's needed to keep you from having sex with a sheep, there is a certain amount of wisdom in that I can't begrudge. Biology doesn't make things easy.

This HAS to be the oddest conversation we've ever had.

"This HAS to be the oddest conversation we've ever had. "

The relationship of the content of the convo to the titular subject-- "attainments"-- is particularly strange! More especially since the designated weird thread on drunk posts is all about tradition vs eclecticism at the moment. I think we are officially both off the map and all over it.

Wow! Look at all the edifying and enlightening discussion I've missed!

So I don't feel left out, I'm adding the following:
For interesting research about dangly bits, postage stamps, and much, much more, check out Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers .

I can personally attest to the excellence of both books.

every3rdthought wrote: ...
I don't want to sound unsympathetic but on a personal level I never understood people's fear of losing this or that as a result of practice - it tends to make me think that they're probably not ready to throw themselves in yet, but also my general response would be, OK, don't do practice, and see if you're satisfied

I meet a lot of people who are in that place of having a constant nagging interest in practice or an erratic dabbling practice but a real aversion to committed practice. It's a rather shitty place to be, but seems to be one of the many stages one can linger in for years and years until the balance of courage (or desperation) to fear tips enough in the courage/desperation direction - in other words, one becomes at least willing to give up that initial resistance to committed practice, at least temporarily.

Ok this is a pretty funny topic but it is also making me think of a few things I have heard since I have recently transitioned from a "teachings of the buddha only!" style of meditation to more pragmatic dharma, and it seems like the former has much more clear, rigid (no pun intended!) rules than the latter- which seems to speak more to the true nature of the way things really are (again, no pun intended:)).

the first thing it makes me think of is when I was serving a course, we had evening metta with the assistant teachers and afterwards the servers were able to ask questions about their practice in a group format, and this one younger guy kept asking, "hypothetically" what the repercussions of having multiple sexual partners would be, and the teacher would reply that it was not conducive to practice, and it went on and on because this younger guy kept trying to elicit the response from the teacher that promiscuity was okay until the teacher eventually said- and I'm paraphrasing here- "look, we know you're talking about yourself. This practice is not just a thing you do on the side. It is changing the way you live your life. Once you become established and move further along the path (by this I think he was referring to higher path attainments, but they never explicitly talked about it so i'm not sure) you will find that the need for sex drops away, and you can experience a loving relationship with someone without that being a central need or focus of the relationship."

I consider this teacher to know what he is talking about- and what he said impacted me because he did not say "your ability to have sex will disappear!" or that "to have sex is wrong and will prevent you from ever reaching enlightenment!" but rather he eloquently pointed out that a meditation practice does indeed come with a lifestyle change change to some degree, which I agree with.

I do think, however, that different people have to make different lifestyle changes, depending on their tendencies. For example, talking with my husband after we sat retreats, it was really interesting to hear the issues from the men's side vs what I heard from the women...
most of the men complained that their meditation was disrupted by (and this is a generalization) being angry and/or horny to the point where they could not meditate. From the women, I heard things like this a couple of times over 9 months of sitting and serving courses, but what I heard more of was lots of anxiety about not meeting expectations and societal roles, and depression for the same reasons.

So maybe we have different things to work on as we continue on our path. It's things like this that make me grateful for a community where we can openly talk with people who do have attainments right now in this time, because the teachings from the time of the buddha, while excellent, are written mainly for young men, whose issues don't relate to everyone, and don't relate to our lifestyle now.

Sorry if this "serious-ed up" a light topic! That wasn't my intention to begin with:)

This sort of tangentially touches on something I was thinking about recently. Well, two things now that I think about it.

1) for a while now I've had the question of celibacy in the back of my head, and my intuition with it is that if I were to do it, it would benefit my practice in a pretty tangible way. There would be more things happening, more things to work with, more 'wow' experiences - a more tangible, active and convincing, maybe cutting, experience. The catch with this is the longer I'm celibate the more pleasurable sex becomes. So I would really be torturing myself spiritually if I chose to do this, as in I'd probably have a tumultuous path, with a lot of practice momentum going on with tantalizing and disorienting things happening. But maybe the practice momentum is worth it.

and 2) this is the one I thought of primarily when reading your post, about how over a couple weeks a month or so ago, I noticed how common it was/still is for a little bit for me to note things like "rage" "disgust" "revolt" and "fury". This has been the way it's been for a long time, I'd say a year or more, and evolved from when I was doing some serious striving in my practice that this type of note would most often be "disappointment". They're connected, and perhaps they're more like an opinion than a note. The "disappointment" note was about sadness and disgust and loathing. But that is different than "rage, fury, disgust". Those ones entail a pushing and a sort of denial or contempt towards the general feeling I'm experiencing. So I am sort of building these notes on top of the general amorphous tone of my emotions.

So now, that was building up to say I've developed a slight curiosity about the element of choice in this regard, using a different pallet of notes that similarly approximate the sensation, but maybe take it in a different direction.

You could try designating a certain length of time for celibacy and seeing how it alters practice. I don't really know that it would lead to more big-wow type experiences, though. What's been interesting for me is noticing that when I get home from retreat, my desire for intimacy seems to spike for a couple of weeks, then return to the usual, which at my age is much less than it was pre-menopause. My husband would probably like to see me go on retreat more often!

Femtosecond wrote:
So now, that was building up to say I've developed a slight curiosity about the element of choice in this regard, using a different pallet of notes that similarly approximate the sensation, but maybe take it in a different direction.

Actually-- this is a trail of breadcrumbs that can lead to deep insight! One dimension of 'emptiness' is the way in which any experience arises partially dependent on designation, how we label, name and construct narratives around sensations/experiences. This is potentially a vein of gold of powerful and liberating insights!! To see how a single moment can be made to mean so many things depending on how we describe it...

About the celibacy and having more energetic insight experiences, it's just sort of an intuition based on how there is a tighter energetic experience to just sitting around when abstaining, that that might scale upwards when classical insights start occurring. Not sure by any means though about that

Andy wrote: Wow! Look at all the edifying and enlightening discussion I've missed!

So I don't feel left out, I'm adding the following:
For interesting research about dangly bits, postage stamps, and much, much more, check out Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers .

I can personally attest to the excellence of both books.

Mary Roach is the best. I think I've read all of them EXCEPT Bonk, but Stiff was by far my favourite. Spook is great too and touches upon some 'mysticism' stuff not to mention the body. And Stiff is also probably useful for analytic 'reflection upon death and decay' practice.