Enlightenment enshitenment

Ona, I didn't realize you were approaching these things from such a syncretic position. I think that above I used too much technical terminology. I apologize.

(I am finding it very difficult to not make that sound kind of passive-aggressive and dismissive, but I really mean it)

Actually all I want to know is:In Buddhist teaching, is commonly stated that nibbana is the extinguishing of greed, aversion, delusion for ever, or just temporarily?Or, in Buddhist teaching, is "nibbana" more like a temporary "cessation" moment in which, perhaps, such things are only extinguished for a short time?

-michaelmonson

I believe it is a permanent extinguishing. In the Pali Canon, at least, it's generally understood that arahants are incapable of impure motivations (which is not to say that they don't fuck up; they don't always do the right thing). But that should be a matter of record that someone could correct me on.

Lordy that was long. Sorry about that.

-ona

Long is good, no need to apologize.

But, I don't think you answered my question, unless you were equating my terminology of being "moved" and "having profound experiences" with the word(s) you then used in your answer "mysticism" and "mystical experiences." Is that correct?

I think if one isn't relentless at trying to distinguish the bare truth in the words they hear, it isn't very likely they will be able to distinguish what is really going on in their own experience versus the stories that their mind will constantly come up with as an explanation.

I think one of the challenges is to be able to set aside expectations and "just look" while at the same time keeping the ability to live a life that is intellectually engaged on a level of high scrutiny. While difficult, I think it is quite possible to do.

-michaelmonson

You're actually uncovering something very important here, Mike. Again, it's a context issue.



We post-Enlightenment Westerners (and I mean the "Western" enlightenment, including the Scientific Revolution) use very different criteria than other cultures in discerning "bare truth". I think that the author(s) of the Heart Sutra and other spiritual text were writing what they knew as "bare truth", in the best way they knew how. So then, from a post-Enlightenment Western perspective (which is rapidly becoming a Global perspective), we first need to determine the genre of the text. Then, we need to read it on its own terms, keeping in mind the particular audience it was written for. And THEN we can attempt to translate the meaning into terms that makes sense to others in the present day.



It's a shame that it's all jumbled up. You're right - people will go to religious services of all kinds, hear the words, and treat it as though they are reading/hearing a scientific text. It isn't so. If Zen students are trying to derive a literal meaning from an English translation of an ancient, non-English text written hundreds - if not thousands - of years ago, by simply showing up and reciting the thing... GOOD LUCK.



And yet, somehow the more insight we get from practice, the more clear the meaning is. My guess is that it was written from a place of true realization, which makes it hard to understand when insight isn't, well, there yet.

I believe it is a permanent extinguishing. In the Pali Canon, at least, it's generally understood that arahants are incapable of impure motivations

-cruxdestruct

totally not real

I believe it is a permanent extinguishing. In the Pali Canon, at least, it's generally understood that arahants are incapable of impure motivations (which is not to say that they don't fuck up; they don't always do the right thing). But that should be a matter of record that someone could correct me on.

-cruxdestruct

I'm not at a place in my understanding where I find the Pali Canon all that authoritative.

And, I certainly haven't extinguished greed, aversion, and delusion from my experience.

So, I have no idea.

Now, if you asked me whether or not initial glimpses of awakening have something deeply in common with a more abiding realization that comes through further practice... I'd say yes.

EDIT: I don't mean to say that I don't find the Pali canon authoritative at all. There's a lot of great stuff in there. But I'm sure there's lots of B.S. in there, too, as with any religious text kept alive via oral tradition for hundreds of years prior to being written down by the authorities of the established version of the religion. Things get muddied up in their transition from cutting-edge to dogmatic.

This is entertaining, because while I write ten pages, meanwhile there are other replies, so all out of order here goes another:

@ cruxdestruct, I am not easily dismayed, fear not. I enjoy your postings.

@ michael " It isn't just poetry as it is used -- it is a
teaching, a teaching that the faithful I think often do take literally
as something they should be aspiring to -- and something, to the
detriment of their practices I think, that they compare their reality to
and constantly find lacking -- which brings us back, I think, to the
paragraph that I like so much. The reason that we often have so many
wrong ideas about what fruition will look like is from so many
unexamined texts, poems, teachings, stories."

How about this. How about if the teaching is not that you need to understand the text intellectually, but that you need to surrender to it, not understanding it, but just being with it. What if that was the teaching? In other words, that *was* the teaching when we used the Heart Sutra at the Tendai center. Like with koans or something, sometimes it's not the point to 'understand' it in the way we are used to understanding things, but rather to submit to it, to let it be, to let it fill you, to not understand and accept not understanding. It is not the only thing one can do with texts, but it is a very interesting exercise with very interesting results. It is actually a very challenging meditation practice.

I would likewise argue it doesn't matter in the least if you know what fruition looks/feels like. It comes when it comes, it arises when it arises. There will be no question in your mind when you have had an opening, fruition or whatever you call it. Any insights or shifts that come from meditation are unmistakable. I've never known anyone to say "well, maybe I kinda get it or I think I sorta felt something" if they really realized something or had an opening, at any level. They just knew, experienced, profoundly, without doubt. Again, you really can't make it happen by intellectual analysis. I'm not sure it is counterproductive either, but it's not useful in terms of practice itself, imo.

But, I don't think you answered my question, unless you were equating my
terminology of being "moved" and "having profound experiences" with the
word(s) you then used in your answer "mysticism" and "mystical
experiences." Is that correct?

Yes. Did you mean something else? (eta: cuz then I have to write ten more pages. )

I'm not at a place in my understanding where I find the Pali Canon all that authoritative.And, I certainly haven't extinguished greed, aversion, and delusion from my experience.So, I have no idea.Now, if you asked me whether or not initial glimpses of awakening have something deeply in common with a more abiding realization that comes through further practice... I'd say yes.

-awouldbehipster

I certainly wouldn't contend that because it says so in the Pali Canon, it is so. I was just trying to answer the question of how it is taught—in other words, what the consensus is, or what the scriptures say. Personally I'm agnostic on the matter. I'm not quite far along enough on the path to be fantasizing on just what kind of spiritual badass I'll be once I reach enlightenment

But, I don't think you answered my question, unless you were equating my terminology of being "moved" and "having profound experiences" with the word(s) you then used in your answer "mysticism" and "mystical experiences." Is that correct?
Yes. Did you mean something else?

-ona

I wasnt' sure, until you answered just now.

Okay, correct me if I still don't get it -- you are interested in being moved and having profound experiences through mysticism and mystical experiences of one kind or another, right?

Why isn't that a sort of indulgence in dualism? I'm asking that because I think you will have an answer, because I think you talk a lot about the "non dual," right?

To answer your question, I prefer and am inclined toward what I think is true, that "having experiences" (as opposed to "experience") mystical or otherwise, are a product of one's individual brain and are actually empty. I really have no interest in having mystical experiences (though I admit to be fascinated when I hear about them).

My passion is for intimacy, with insight into the most bare facts of things, of life. Things arise, they do something, they end, instant by instant, and there is no one there doing any of it that isn't also an instant by instant arising and passing creation of our brains. This is so awesome and wonderful to see.

R.e. cessation as permanent or temporary--- isn't it possible that we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves when, after a few decades for this meditation thing to percolate around in our culture, we reject the traditional reports of the outcome of practice? What about contemporary teachers' reports of drastically reduced or even straight-up no-more-suffering?

Look, I'm all for critical thinking, and bringing everything we have to offer as modern and post-modern westerners to the table, especially as far as deconstructing exploitive social structures in spiritual.contemplative groups, which are often reinforced by idealizations of gurus, just as non-spiritual groups are often controlled with propaganda and so on. And we can bring our knowledge of the subtleties of psychological processes like repression, denial, projection and so on to bear in this arena, as well as neuroscience and so forth.

BUT... when I boil it down to my practice, my life, my experience, everything since my first taste of awakening has pointed to the possibility of radical and I mean radical transformation. It's only been a few years since I started to re-orient and take that possibility seriously, following up with dedicated practice, and I've already transformed to a surprising degree. We acclimatize to these changes, but if the me from three years ago popped into the typical mode of function I find myself in generally nowadays, he would literally have his mind blown. I'm not cutting out any possibilities for deeper transformation in light of all that. In the wake of that early A&P/flash of awakening-- in the months and years that followed-- the insight that kept coming back in simpler and less dramatic ways was that effort is a sign of illusion, and all suffering is effort. Reality is effortless, thus suffering free, and includes everything-- including me. I would be walking around and realize I could "just let walking walk" or "just let talking talk" and everything functioned fine without "me". So while I still suffer, rather than making assumptions about what is possible in this regard, ultimately, or not-- it seems better to admit that I am suffering, by my nature. Not as a human being, with a body and mind, but as a sub-program in that mind which is always looking for a solid separate self who could stop "bad" experiences and keep "good" ones.

Mike, (being not an entirely mystical person myself) what about the distinction between knowing what is true, in an intellectual sense, and the sort of intuitive body knowledge of dhamma that is often best or exclusively conveyed by mystical experiences? I don't see much of a difference between the sort of intuitive, experiential knowledge one derives from mystical experience and the sort of intuitive, experiential knowledge—understanding, in other words—that one derives from sitting and observing the cognitive and perceptual apparatus.

"I wasnt' sure, until you answered just now.

Okay, correct me if I still don't get it -- you are interested in being
moved and having profound experiences through mysticism and mystical
experiences of one kind or another, right? "

Sort of. I simply have those experiences (and have had, for a long time). Thus I "am interested" in them in the same way that someone who has always played music "is interested" in playing music or an artist "is interested" in painting. Given my natural inclination, it just is part of how I interact with and experience the (perceived/manifest) world. I could try to suppress it, I suppose. That seems as strange as for a musician to smash his instrument because he has taken up meditation.

"Why isn't that a sort of indulgence in dualism? I'm asking
that because I think you will have an answer, because I
think you talk a lot about the "non dual," right?"

Is it more of an indulgence in dualism than brushing your teeth, buying groceries or driving your car? I don't think they seem contradictory to me. The manifest world exists, even if only as an agglomeration of perceptions. My body needs food, I count the money to hand to cashier, I take the groceries home and cook them. I express creativity through writing or magick. I go to movies and laugh at them (or shriek if they are scary). At the same time, all of those sensations, activities, experiences etc. are they not, as you describe a bit later: "a product of one's individual brain and are
actually empty.... Things arise, they do something, they end, instant by
instant, and there is no one there doing any of it that isn't also an
instant by instant arising and passing creation of our brains."

Somehow both are true, it seems, and not in opposition.

Though I tend to believe you Jake, I have no doubt that I've transformed very little, if at all.

Yes, I can see where I've grown up in a way and I know more stuff about how to live effectively on different levels but those things are just normal things humans do with or without dharma practice.

But, basically, I detect no fundamental change or transformation here. Seriously, I'm just as weak, small-minded, dishonest, deceitful and agressive and fearful and judgmental of myself and others, and full of awesome insatiable desire as ever. It's VERY disappointing.

"I
Is it more of an indulgence in dualism than brushing your teeth, buying groceries or driving your car? I don't think they seem contradictory to me. The manifest world exists, even if only as an agglomeration of perceptions. My body needs food, I count the money to hand to cashier, I take the groceries home and cook them. I express creativity through writing or magick. I go to movies and laugh at them (or shriek if they are scary). At the same time, all of those sensations, activities, experiences etc. are they not, as you describe a bit later: "a product of one's individual brain and are actually empty.... Things arise, they do something, they end, instant by instant, and there is no one there doing any of it that isn't also an instant by instant arising and passing creation of our brains."

Somehow both are true, it seems, and not in opposition.

-ona

However, and this is what I'm wondering, is your practice about having mystical experiences? Is that what you are after in your spiritual practice? I agree with you, enjoying mystical experiences is essentially the same kind of dualistic self activity as brushing one's teeth, driving, etc. No contradiction.

"is your practice about
having mystical experiences? Is that what you are after in your
spiritual practice? I agree with you, enjoying mystical experiences is
essentially the same kind of dualistic self activity as brushing one's
teeth, driving, etc. No contradiction."

Ah, I see. Hm. (I wrote, no, sort, of, not really, depends...) (I'll try again!)

I actually do keep them a little separate though there is some bleedover. That is, I usually begin a meditation with some kind of prayer, but then I do either just sitting or noting practice for 30 minutes. If weird stuff happens during that meditation, I treat it as any other thought arising, etc and just keep sitting/noting. Separately from that I usually do other practices each day that are more purely about union with divine energies, visions, devotional offerings, etc. I have applied "meditative" attitude towards things in that context - for example noting is a very useful way to de-escalate scary things or painful energy experiences. (So to say, mystical experiences are not always enjoyable, either!)

Does that help?

ahahahaha alright Mike. But let me cut the point even finer: we need to differentiate between behavioral, experiential, and phenomenological transformation. Behavioral criteria for transformation might be any sort of activity or habit: is it changed? Gone? Are there "better" ones there? And notice that this is an external judgment, whether applied by another actual person to my behavior or applied by myself in an imaginary mode of self-objectification.

The same for experiential transformation-- are you having better experiences, from the inside out? Or worse? Or the same? And by which criteria would you judge? Or who is the "you" that makes those judgments?

But the third category is what I'm pointing towards. Phenomenological transformation, as I'm coining the phrase in this context to make this point, is about a shift in the basic "sense" of what is happening, altogether, here and now. So that the way things appear, the way things come to show themselves, is decreasingly filtered through a system of judgments which pertain to an imaginary "subject" with its imaginary agendas and criteria. Just the scene I'm in, and what's happening within as feelings, images, stories. Everything's the same, but it's all completely different. And while there is a range of oscillation between more illusory experiencing and more clear, even perfectly clear, moments of experiencing, there seems to be a limit to how far I can re-enact an earlier degree of ignorance. Like some lines have been crossed, and in crossing them, they disappeared- so there's no way back.

So phenomenological transformation then seems to dispel, at however a superficial or deep level depending on how far one's carried out the experiment, the illusion that there could even be the kind of "self" that would hold up a standard against which experiences and behaviors could be judged as "good" or "bad" and exert control over experience and behavior (of self AND others). And yet, in some strange way, I find what the old Taoists say to be completely accurate: the less the Tao is filtered by this illusory self, the more it just functions naturally. (In the absence of Tao, virtue and morality arises.) People in general don't need me to correct them so much as give them space to find there own most wholesome behaviors and experiences-- sometimes some encouragement or a nudge in the right direction. Same for me.

So paradoxically to the extent that phenomenological transformation has occurred, subtle and not so subtle changes seem to occur "down stream" in experience and behavior and relationships. In fact I'd say this is where the heart of practice is for me: seeing what is blocking that expression, what is blocking life living itself to its fullest through this living body and mind in whatever circumstances, and letting go of whatever blocks this. That means letting go of greed, hatred and delusion, which is different from seeing that greed, hatred and delusion are merely ephemeral phenomena. But without this phenomenological insight, I'd still be going around in circles trying to correct the correcter, control the controller, just download better behavioral programs, or think good thoughts, or have special experiences, or otherwise trying to change myself without actually seeing that myself is an illusion.

Letting go comes from grasping completely, that's been my koan the past few months

Jake.
I don't know. Really.
Just from dharma practice, yes, my experience is different. Good different or bad different or in between, I'm not sure.
Just from dharma practice, I'm not sure if my behavior is different. I don't think so.
Just from dharma practice, yes, as you have described it, there is a phenomological change. Definitely. This change, changes of course. But certainly my sense of what is going on is not the same as it used to be.

On the other tact -- does anyone else experience what I was talking about? Are you amazed at what an ass you are and continue to be, no matter what much you meditate, how much you practice?

What I hate the most (and this is probably more true about me than most of you) is that my relative "self esteem" seems to be barely or at all effected by dharma pratice. Now, I enjoy many moments where my self esteem or lack of self esteem just isn't an issue (more of that phenomological stuff) but as soon as Mike Monson is in the world of people and social interactions the dude still feels like a piece of shit. Seriously. For real.


Edit: I feel weird about "piece of shit" maybe just still have "low self esteem" is a good enough description. Anyway, I think one of the disapointments Mike Monson has had with dharma practice is that it hasn't seemed to fix him on that level.

Ah, I see what you mean. That's a tough raisin to chew

Chewy indeed. But that's kind of an interesting observation, Michael - I mean, most of the time when we practice we turn our intention inward. Even if we are on the train or in a conference room, not in a quiet place, we are kind of alone in our heads to some degree. Which means when we are interacting socially, it's really hard to maintain that kind of inner awareness because we are having conversations, taking orders, giving orders, anticipating other people's reactions, dealing with stressed out bosses, clients, etc...

So in those contexts its easiest for our "animal instincts" of self-defense or fear or whatever to run loose, and harder to apply our practice methods to those feelings as they arise.

There's a really interesting meditation I've tried and read about where you deliberately think of a stressful or emotional scenario when you first sit, and let the emotion (fear, anxiety, anger, joy, whatever) just grow to fill you up, so its as bad (or good) as if you were in that situation for real. And then you look at it, and just watch and feel the sensations and thoughts that it consists of, and watch them come and go, and see how the thoughts and physical sensations trigger each other, and so on. Has anyone else tried that kind of thing? I read about it in a Mahamudra book ("Mind at Ease" was the book, if I recall).

I can't easily evoke emotional states deliberately by "calling them up" as such texts recommend (no metta practice for the same reason), but I do try to practice that way with social anxiety and low self-esteem in real time. I have such extreme bad feelings in school due to some weird ptsd stuff and wouldn't be able to stay with it and succeed without my practice. Seriously... feelings of worthlessnes, crazy thoughts, the whole deal. It's all fodder. It's all the same shit, whether alone or with others. It's all my shit, in my head. It's all my responsibility (all my reactions, habitual interpretations). This is what makes it workable. If thoughts and feelings were invariably linked with the circumstances which tend to trigger them, there's be no use to it! But it isn't so. They have no absolute link to circumstances, and by changing my relationship to them (not buying in yet not denying them either) over time, they lose their spin, they begin to fade.

Mike, the feeling I get is that a lot of your practice is concerned with direct felt experience and other Zen things. Have you tried working with more directly social practices like the four divine abodes (of which metta is one), sila, dana, that sort of thing? If your problem is dealing with other people it might behoove you to take a slight detour from the sort of general Zen practice, which often seems to concern itself with a direct experience of the present moment, and experiment with cultivating certain social patterns at the expense, maybe, of your natural ones.

Thanks Zach, don't worry, Mike Monson is doing just fine.



(I like zen and am fascinated by it and have practiced it formally and may again soon, but, I'm really a vipassana guy)

What do you like about it?

I have such extreme bad feelings in school due to some weird ptsd stuff and wouldn't be able to stay with it and succeed without my practice. Seriously... feelings of worthlessnes, crazy thoughts, the whole deal. It's all fodder. It's all the same shit, whether alone or with others. It's all my shit, in my head. It's all my responsibility (all my reactions, habitual interpretations). This is what makes it workable. If thoughts and feelings were invariably linked with the circumstances which tend to trigger them, there's be no use to it! But it isn't so. They have no absolute link to circumstances, and by changing my relationship to them (not buying in yet not denying them either) over time, they lose their spin, they begin to fade.

-jake

Thank you for writing this, Jake. It's a very important topic. There seem to be a lot of folks, both in the realm of psychology and the realm of dharma practice, who think that there is some kind of direct causal relationship between thoughts and actions. As if training one's self to say, "I'm happy," instead of, "I'm sad," will snap them out of their depressive or anxious funk.

More and more studies are being done on this very issue, and the results are not surprising to some of us meditative types. As you wrote, it is possible to change one's relationship to private events (thoughts, feelings, overt behaviors) so that one's overall experience is less distressing. The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) people call this cognitive defusion.

What's great about this is that trying to control the content of one's thoughts, or even the feelings in one's body, is by and large a fruitless endeavor. The attempt to control, in fact, makes things WORSE. Thanks to some brave researchers, we now have empirical support for this (which means it can be used as "evidence-based psychotherapy". Nice, right?).

Jake, practicing in this way (the way you described) is really what allows humans to become emotional grown-ups. It is but one aspect of the kind of gradual transformation made possible through contemplative practice. I'm glad you shared it with us.

Also, I should mention that I have anxiety issues as well. I encountered many difficulties last year that left me with some kind of panic disorder for a few months. At first I felt stupid for being a relatively experienced meditation practitioner and counseling psychology student (i.e. future therapist) with an anxiety disorder. Shouldn't I know how to deal with this? Shouldn't I have NOT developed the problem in the first place? I had to let that go pretty quick if I was going to get any better. It can happen to any of us. Thankfully, with support from friends, family, a wise therapist, and the continued application of mindfulness and acceptance, the symptoms greatly subsided. I still drop into panic episodes here and there, but it's not like it was. And I know that it's possible for a new series of episodes to return. I have experience going through it now, though, which will help both my future clients and myself work through it skillfully if and when it does.

This is but one of the areas where practice really, truly makes a difference.