Ingram's Essay on Experiments with Actualism

I agree, Chris. Just exploring around the subject a bit (motivations and causes and all that!)

I would be interested to hear the old guards (goldstein, salzberg, kornfield, etc) perspective on this topic (meaning the development of the PD movement). I read recently (perhaps here, not sure) that there was a huge focus on enlightenment way back when those folks started teaching but things changed. I just wonder if history is repeating itself in some way. Movements, similar to people, develop and mature I suppose. There has always seemed like a "rebellious teen" feel to the movement from my limited perspective. Would be curious to know if folks have knowledge of those early days and what it was like? I imagine them having similar feelings as myself when talking to folks like Dipa Ma or Munindra, "holy crap!, real progress is possible!". Hope this is not too off topic. I am really interested in the development aspect of movements. I do wonder, from reading this article, whether other models will be put back on the table as well?

In a way, Daniel put them back on the table himself. His talk at Buddhist geeks last year talked about dimensions of meditative/spiritual skills. Basically admitting that there isn't a single dimension of development.

So the new dogma is that there is no dogma? Welcome to the twisty maze of little neo-postmodernist concepts, all alike.

It's my experience that attainments / permanent shifts / whatever are real, and that what we end up calling them is not real.

But that doesn't mean that there is no goal at all to be reached, that the road is the goal, or any of the endless variations of such fooling-my-selfery.

That would be a very limited view, limited to the one trying to reach goals and travel roads and fool themselves.

I'm done with that.

There are all these beings, myself included, which merit attention, benevolence, compassion, and just plain having fun with in harmless ways.

I'm not done with that yet. I'm not dead yet.

I'll repeat that this does in fact mean that I am done with certain things, having in a sense attained them, or rendered them irrelevant in another sense.

Maybe it's this sense of irrelevance, which to me is the same as the sense of attainment, which makes the neo-postmodernist arbitrariness so appealing as a mode of expression.

But for the sake of those spinning in the depths of seeking, let's not use it. To them, it's a cruel joke. To me, postmodernist expressions used to be a callous jeer, and I can remember how it used to be.

I'll end this rant here.

Be well, all of you. Cheers,
Florian

Worth keeping in mind-- before "dogma" was just a high-falutin', general purpose intellectual insult, it had specific reference to institutional (particularly religious) official opinion.

From Wikipedia-- "Dogma is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.[1] It serves as part of the primary basis of an ideology or belief system, and it cannot be changed or discarded without affecting the very system's paradigm, or the ideology itself. They can refer to acceptable opinions of philosophers or philosophical schools, public decrees, religion, or issued decisions of political authorities.[2]

The term derives from Greek δόγμα "that which seems to one, opinion or belief"[3] and that from δοκέω (dokeo), "to think, to suppose, to imagine".[4] Dogma came to signify laws or ordinances adjudged and imposed upon others by the First Century. The plural is either dogmas or dogmata, from Greek δόγματα. The term "dogmatics" is used as a synonym for systematic theology, as in Karl Barth's defining textbook of neo-orthodoxy, the 14-volume Church Dogmatics."

Thinking about this makes me really appreciate the genius of some of those Zen slapstick stories; clearly, they just catapult the conversation beyond any reach of dogmatics. The one that comes to mind is the teacher being confronted by a less-senior master by the corpse of that teacher's master:
--"Alive or dead?"
--"I won't say! I won't say!"

Thanks for remembering what it's like to be spinning in the depths of seeking, Florian!

Florian Weps wrote: So the new dogma is that there is no dogma? Welcome to the twisty maze of little neo-postmodernist concepts, all alike.

It's my experience that attainments / permanent shifts / whatever are real, and that what we end up calling them is not real.

But that doesn't mean that there is no goal at all to be reached, that the road is the goal, or any of the endless variations of such fooling-my-selfery.

I think no one is denying the effects of these practices. What's new is the recognition that there are many potential directions for the development of consciousness. A linear, one-dimensional model can't deal with that complexity. "Road" and "goal" in the singular are out.

Daniel has added some extra questions and answers to the essay:

Update and Responses to Questions:

I got asked two important questions by email after I published this and so to clarify some things and avoid having to answer them again, here are my slightly edited responses to those somewhat paraphrased questions:

Question #1: How would you summarize the basic instructions you followed, realizing that I find the jargon and promotional aspects of Actualism off-putting?

Ok, my very best attempt to present something non-actualism-branded and helpful. Realize this is ATF-related stuff translated through Tarin, Trent, Stef and Jill and then modified to suit my own inclinations and leanings and filtered through my own way of seeing the world and background, just so there is full disclosure of the path this all came through.

1) Really pay attention all day long to just what its going on, particularly in the wide visual field and in the body. This sounds like the typical mindfulness advice and is, but that sort of attention forms the basis of so much that is good that it is very worth repeating.

2) Notice the beauty and niceness in ordinary and beautiful things, sounds, tastes, textures, feelings, the body, visuals, smells and the like. Really take time to smell the proverbial roses of the ordinary sensate world you find yourself in. Appreciate the feel of air on your skin, of the fingers hitting the keys, of characters showing up on computer screens, of your car going down the road, of the legs moving in space and balance shifting as you walk, of the taste of the food you eat, of the sound of your footfalls echoing off of the walls, of the quality of the light in the room, etc. It is very cliche advice again, but really do it all day long for a year or two and see what it is does to you: taken to that dose and degree of dedication, you would be surprised at what can occur.

3) Pay attention to feelings, meaning what you actually are feeling, whenever you notice you are feeling something. It is easy, given the ATF rhetoric, to do this in a somewhat aversive way: avoid that mentality like the plague. Instead, take a real honest approach to noticing feelings in the body, right here, and notice how they arise (causality), what thoughts go along with them, and what the stories in those thoughts are. Try to gently, honestly, humanly and kindly tease apart the stories and assumptions of those feelings, and notice when they change and what they change into as time progresses. If you go into this with the mentality that these practices will be designed to totally eliminate your emotions, it is nearly impossible to really be honest about them. Tarin, Trent, Stef and Jill all finally and in their own ways warned against this, so avoid denial and avoid scripting yourself into some zombie-state: it is a trap. Instead, just be honestly human, ordinary, and feel what you feel: not in some exaggerated way, and not in some reactive way, just straightforwardly and clearly. This doesn't need to translate to any particular action or non-action, and regarding morality, that is yours to decide and experiment with and live with the consequences of, but internally you can at least get used to really being clear about the feelings that drive it all and get more naturally fluent in that through practice and repeated attention.

4) Try to remember anything that might meet the description of a PCE and try to incline to that way of perceiving things: a flash onto a truly remarkably wondrous way of feeling, seeing, hearing, etc. in which the beauty of the world suddenly comes shining through in a very direct way. The cliche's are that you might have noticed this mind state when watching a sunset or light on water or a beautiful rainbow, or some great music performance, or whatever: remember that, as you almost certainly have had some moment like that at some time in your life. Once you have found something like that, remember it and see how that way of seeing things applies to your ordinary consciousness when it returns, and try to incline back that way. You may find your own set of triggers to get into that mindset that are unique to you: work with those. Honestly assess for yourself the value of those experiences and try to see what they might be telling you about what is possible. I realize that the term "PCE" is politically loaded, but it is not unique to the ATF kids, and I am sorry that has some branding element to it, but using it will allow you to interact with the rest of what you find written about it, so it may have value in that regard. Don't worry if your PCE is the same as anyone else's PCE, just appreciate them if and when they do arise. If you can't get PCEs to arise or this makes no sense to you: totally don't worry about it, and just proceed with the others.

5) Settle into this moment. Gently relax into it when laying down, when just sitting. Learn the basic, simple art of just being able to be at ease. It is more profound and not necessarily as easy as it sounds. Notice how there are tensions in the joints and muscles that seem to be bracing against life itself even when there is no threat: gently feel into those tensions, allowing gentle mindful attention and gentle reassurance to slowly relax them such that you learn to sit at ease, just here, appreciating this moment in a very ordinary, quiet, easy, simple, straightforward way. It is probably one of the most useful skills you could learn and practice. If you do formal sitting practice, try eyes open and eyes closed and get good at both. For this stuff, I generally prefer eyes open, but for doing this when reclining before sleep or before getting up in the morning, I like eyes closed. See what works for you.

6) Commit totally to this sense field, this rich and vibrant and colorful volume of human experience, as a volume with thoughts and body and memory and all of that as qualities of this integrated space, and really be with that all day long whenever you can remember to. Be obsessive about this but in a light-hearted, adventurous way rather than a drudgery sort of way. Drudgery won't help at all. Inspiration and anything you can do to be inspired helps. I listened to my favorite music on fantastic headphones, ate my favorite foods and relished them, really payed attention when watching my favorite movies (particularly to how they made me feel and how cool the visuals were), really enjoyed the feel of driving down the road with my hand on the wheel, my foot on the gas, and the wind in my rapidly vanishing hair, really listened to myself when I played guitar, really listened to people and looked at them when they talked, really listened to the sound of my own voice when I spoke, really felt what it felt to just be a feeling Daniel in this body. Recommit again and again and again and again and again. Make it a way of life. It is your life, so you might as well be here for it. In the face of terrible pain, such as kidney stones, all bets were off for me, and I did whatever I had to to get through it, but for ordinary life that doesn't totally suck, really be with it.

7) I mean these next points in the most lighthearted and jovial of ways:

Screw anything to do with all of the complexities of ATF politics and bullshit. Enjoy this moment instead.

Screw anything to do with the various ATF-related cults of personality. Enjoy being where you are and who you are instead and value the truth of this moment for its own sake.

Screw the fanaticism of the die-hard Actualism-is-the-only-true-way converts. Enjoy the empowerment, experiences and insights that come from just experimenting with being present and tuning in to this wondrous world instead.

Screw what any of these practices have to do (or not do) with anything else, including "Buddhism" and "Actualism", and finally

Screw anyone who says these basic practices are a bad idea, as points 1) to 6) above all make perfect sense and are based on sound meditative principles, and it is your journey, your life and your attention to it that finally will make the difference.

All of that except #7 simply rings totally cheese-puff and fluffy to me as I re-read it, and yet that is what finally really did something good, though it took a few years of doing it. I also have no idea how this will effect someone not coming from my practice background, which is unusual, so you will have to do the experiment yourself and let us all know, if you wish, as data on this is woefully lacking, and it would be good to know what everyone learns and discovers as they do these sorts of things.

I hope that is of some value to you.

Question #2: Why do you call yourself an arahat if you still are developing and changing?

After lots of practice and changes and shifts, in late April of 2003 I finally got to something that was totally independent of all the states and stages and the like that rolled through and continue to roll through, something very simple, very direct, very straightforward that had the following qualities:

1) It was abundantly clear that everything happened on its own.

2) It was abundantly clear that everything was known where it was, by itself, and not by any separate watcher, Subject or Self.

3) It was abundantly clear that all of the sensations that once appeared to be Self, Doer, Awareness, Consciousness, Controller, Watcher and the like were themselves just more qualities, more textures, more aspects of this empty, causal, transient, fluxing, ephemeral, rich, interdependent field of manifestation.

When that essential insight held up after all sorts of other things continued to change, that was truly something, as nothing had withstood so many changes like that.

Then we get into the various models of awakening...

There are many criteria for arahatship if you look around in the texts. I have poured through them and I believe I have found them all.

The one that is the most relevant for my practice and why I use the term is one of the classic ones, that being "in the seeing just the seen, in the hearing just the heard, in the thinking just the thought," etc. It is a perfect fit.

Then we have the criteria that don't fit: that being the total elimination of certain emotions.

All of the emotions still arise, but there is something very different about the perception of them and regarding things in the triggers for them (some of which are the same, some of which aren't), and the duration of them (how long they last after the stimuli that triggered them is gone), and something in the quality of them (as the emptiness and compassion aspects are very clear), as well as the spacial perspective on them, meaning that before they would tend to fill most of attention if they were strong, and now even the strongest emotions are still just a part of this wide field of experience and can't get any bigger and they are in the body as a percentage of its volume.

The divergence started after second path. Everything was straightforward up until then. I was practicing and got stream entry, and everything checked out just fine. I got second path after more practice and another insight cycle and everything checked out fine also. Then the split occurred, where suddenly I was experiencing things very differently, but the models began to not quite fit like they did before.

What happened in late 1996 was that I went through another standard insight cycle, but after I finished it, luminosity began to be a large part of my waking experience, and by that I mean that the awareness of things was in them, not on this side (well, none of it ever was on this side, but it had really seemed to be before, and now it just seemed to be a very tiny, frustrating bit).

The literature that began to make the most sense to me was the vajrayana literature, the
Five Sky Dancers or Buddha Families, the fact that all the emotions were just part of the luminous, aware, manifest, natural, causal, centerless fabric of the endless dance of compassion and emptiness, just more qualities and textures of space, with all of its resonance, heart, gut, pleasure, pain, energy, power, tragedy and richness.

So things progressed, cycle after cycle after cycle for 6 years, until that retreat in April, 2003 when suddenly the last little warp in space, that last little, hyper-elusive knot of distorted perception was untangled and didn't re-tangle and the thing was now so straightforward, so simple, so obvious, with such a definitive sense, "Ah! Finally! That makes sense! That is it! That is the answer that I have been looking for!" I still have that feeling 10 years later, which is a long time in this business.

Emotions still occur. However, with no center-point, to say that there are things like Attraction and Aversion in the same way as before wouldn't make any sense, as there is no longer that sense of a This Side that either wants to try to get over to That Side or get away from That Side, or tune out to That Side all together, meaning that the classic dualistic action of Greed, Hatred and Delusion can't functionally happen anymore in that way. That said, from an ordinary and very realistic point of view this Daniel is still a very much a mammal. An animal was born, albeit a relatively smart one, but still an animal, with chemical transmitters, instincts, and the like, and they still function in many ways as they did before. This is to be expected. If we look at Dependent Origination, clearly Birth conditions Life, which leads to Old Age, Sickness, Pain and Death. I am very much alive in a very full, clear, direct, but in many ways ordinary way.

It would seem a paradox, but only if one holds very high, unrealistic models of what realization will transform. Some aspects of life just seem to be life. It is a very intimate thing, much more so than before, as it is so directly where it is, and not filtered through the odd and illusory logic of the dualistic split. Strangely, that makes things like pain a much more intimate and direct experience, but pleasure also, and peace as well. It is very realistic, this way of perceiving things.

That said, there are lots of aspects of things to develop, lots of ways to continue to grow, lots of things to work on, as that is just one axis of development, albeit a very fundamental one, perhaps the most fundamental one.

And so I have continued to grow and learn and this brain has continued to change and learn new things. None have changed anything about that fundamental insight in April 2003, and that is truly remarkable, given how much has gone on since then.

It is not surprising that one would continue to grow and learn and explore and master new skills and explore new avenues of perception and ability and transformation, nor is it odd that a fundamental insight like that would transform old patterns, old habits, things that are relative, conditioned, and ordinary, as it touches them and illuminates unseen aspects of them, puts things in their proper perceptual perspective, and the years of that maturation go on.

If we look at the story of the Buddha, he continued to learn things after his realization, figure things out, mature, grow, and develop. This is totally expected and normal. If we look at so many teachers, they also continue to grow, transform, explore, learn new things, and the like, so the trend obviously continues today as it did then.

How does it relate to your own practice? What useful thing will you do with this information? How is your practice going these days? What models do you hold of all of this and how do they relate to your experience and the experience of those you hopefully know who have progressed in insight?

I myself noticed that in the Theravada everyone I know seems to stop at what they think of as Second Path, Sakadagami, Once Returner, as, in their models, by Third Path, one should have no Anger, no Lust, no Desire for anything but the jhanas (as those specific desires are eliminated at Arahatship in the 10 Fetter Model). That is interesting, isn't it, given that I know lots of senior teachers, teachers who have been practicing well for decades. Why is that? Are the Emotional Elimination models unrealistic? I think so, but then opinions clearly vary. Why is it that even the few people I do know who claim to have eliminated the internal feeling of all emotions (e.g. Gary Weber, a Vedanta practitioner, who I have just met briefly, and he seemed to be a very nice guy with an interesting message), still totally seem to manifest emotions externally? It is a mystery that I haven't sorted out yet.

I have met no living examples that I can confirm for myself who have totally eliminated all bad emotions, as the Theravadan model promises, including their external manifestations, and I have been going this long enough and run in enough circles of highly accomplished meditators that you would think I would have at least met one or heard enough reliable second-hand reports of one, but perhaps they exist and are either just hiding or being very clever to not let out what they have accomplished or somehow I have just totally missed them due to whatever factors.

You might find it interesting that I was just talking to a heavy Vajrayana practitioner about all of this at Buddhist Geeks, and she made the comment that I had attained to Vajrayana results with Theravadan methods: this it the best fit for the models I can come up with, but then again, "in the thinking just the thought", meaning no observer, no thinker, no knower, just the perceived, still applies as well as it did 10 years ago, which would seem to me to be sufficient cause to use the term you ask about.

Anyway, I hope that is of some value to you, and practically I would examine the various models you use and how they do or don't help you be present to what is happening right here, as that is the foundation of insight, and if you find your models drive a wedge between you and your experience or you find yourself wanting something out there or in the future, try to settle back into right here and work with that as best you can in an honest and down-to-earth way.

This is what I was looking for. Practice specifics.

To me this is really no different than what Kenneth, Abre, etc teach after 4th path and what sort of comes naturally, to me at least.

Cool stuff.