New Kenneth Folk interview on Batgap

Excellent: "pernicious convergence."

There is one dislike we must kill it!

Interesting. Does anyone know precisely where Dan and Ken's take on awakening diverge? I see some differences but I'm not confident that I can capture it precisely. Also, I wonder what Ken's experience and take on the powers is

Really liked this, thanks for posting.

Was it just me, but did the interviewer's idealism actually highlight the greater likelihood of Kenneth's contention of "no ultimate reality"? I'm pretty biased, so I'm doubting my perception...

My wife and I just watched this interview and enjoyed it very much. It was interesting to hear Kenneth describe his current perspective, and contrast it with his perspective from just a few years ago. Kenneth was and still is one of my favorite teachers. I hope he does more interviews and dharma talks like this. I would love to know more about Kenneth's current perspective in greater depth than was given in this interview.

Chris Marti wrote:

Was it just me, but did the interviewer's idealism actually highlight the greater likelihood of Kenneth's contention of "no ultimate reality"? I'm pretty biased, so I'm doubting my perception...

The interviewer is missing the experience that Kenneth describes - that of a leveled playing field of experience where the itch sensation is the same as the "me" sensation - so he's talking in concepts and confusing things bit. It's very clear that in the beginning of the interview Kenneth confirms that his experience had validated his "belief" in the historical accounts of awakening/enlightenment in Buddhist scripture are the same as his experience, but the interviewer hasn't tuned in to Kenneth's deeper frequency

That is a problem with jumping straight to the end of the line and trying to explain it all from that point of view. Those who are not already there do not understand what you are trying to point to. That was why I liked his 8/9 stages of enlightenment....it was a framework that allowed you to look at the different aspects of awakening in a stage by stage approach until you went past the level of your understanding.
The analogy of turning up up the sliders on experience such that you come up with "no ultimate reality" is interesting....lets see....
Turn up the equanimity slider
Turn up the non hierarchical slider
Turn up the emptiness slider
turn up the normalcy slider so that it all seems obvious....
and voilà --- "reality" no longer has an ultimate part to it because nothing is specialer
but because the sliders are adjusted just so, does this way of looking at reality make it true? Truer? Ultimate?....

It seems like the most dangerous slider of all is the Normalcy/Obviousness/'Believe what I am experiencing' slider. Noticing where this is set to might be important....
Or not....
~D

Well, if there's one thing I've discovered as a result of listening to this interview, it's that I am not a secular Buddhist. I'm not saying that I swallow ancient cosmology hook, line, and sinker, and I also think I should listen to this again, but my first impression leaves me wanting to bow three times to the Buddha nature in myself and all sentient beings, and practice the Brahmaviharas.

Chris Marti wrote: The following is purely my personal view to DW's comment:

That is a problem with jumping straight to the end of the line and trying to explain it all from that point of view. Those who are not already there do not understand what you are trying to point to.

I'd call that "education and experience" I never understand anything very well until I put in the time and effort required to learn it. That doesn't mean that after I learn it, or after I have enough experience of it, that I can't describe to from that perspective, especially if, as in the case of this interview, I'm asked about my perspective directly, right up front. I think Kenneth is being very straightforward in that interview.

If I have misunderstood your comment, DW, please clarify.

Kenneth is being very straight forward. It would be like asking one of the most advanced math professors in the world their viewpoint on math, most of us would not understand the answer. I find that the Batgap host consistently asks questionable questions that leads into the thicket but never seems to be able to prune the conversation to a comprehensive structure or goal. He has some amazing guests but not the ability to formulate a way to gain clarity in his meanderings. This disappoints me over and over. The guests don't seem to be able to overcome his shortcomings. Sigh...
~D

Okay, watched it again, this time able to focus better (the first time I was half asleep ). What I'm noticing is that he seems to be dissolving the distinction between samatha and vipassana. In the middle of the interview he takes time out to describe the difference very carefully, but then he speaks of some of the experiences that have come out of insight practice as "just experiences." And I don't have a problem with that on the face of it, because some experiences doing insight (high equanimity comes to mind) are very jhana-like. I'm totally on board with saying that experience is just that--experience--and that insight is not about cultivating nice experiences.

But then, what is insight actually about? I hear him saying that it's about knowing that you are looking through a particular window, even seeing the window for what it is. There is, however, also the way he acknowledges that everyone's awakening is going to be distinct. Some athletes play tennis, others play basketball. But is everyone's insight still, ultimately, seeing some sort of window or another? I'm having trouble pulling together the first half of the interview with the second half.

BTW, I loved what Rick says about birds being possibly able to see magnetic fields .

Sidenote - Kenneth Folk says "Happy to answer questions or discuss." @ DHO,
some interesting Q&As already posted:

www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...ards/message/5660045

In the DHO discussion Kenneth says,
"I'm suggesting that there is no experience of awareness. Awareness is always inferred. The experiences you are calling "awareness," however subtle, exquisite, profound, and self-validating, are just experiences, with no more or less claim to Ultimate Reality than an itch, or a thought, or gas pain. I'm suggesting that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else, past or present has ever perceived or apperceived, quasi-perceived, or otherwise-perceived awareness, either personally or impersonally. What people (understandably) mislabel "Awareness" is, in fact, a mental construct, a composite of physical and mental phenomena. I'm suggesting that the next step for you (and anyone who is talking about Awareness) is to grieve the death of your projection. With this understanding, this process of awakening takes a sharp turn into territory we never bargained for and couldn't have anticipated in advance. This is why it's hard, and rare. Most people will not take this step. They will park themselves in their mental constructs, surround themselves with people who believe the same thing, and fail to move beyond their current understanding."

My former teacher Toni Packer commented maybe 20 years ago that the notion of (big) Mind as the container for experience is comparable to the idea of light requiring an Ether to travel thru space. I wonder if this is getting at the same thing. More pragmatically, I wonder if this suggests that after one learns how to practice with perspectives of the witness and primordial awareness, you would then be prepared for the subtlety of recognizing that the idea of awareness is an unexamined and mistaken inference. Or would it be better, or a viable option, to start critically investigating that inference as soon as possible?

In his most recent talks on Dharma Seed, Rob Burbea says something that seems like it could be similar to what Kenneth is saying, that it's difficult to come to terms with that there is no Reality on which to base the correct view. So that means (if there is any hope that I'm paraphrasing adequately) that adopting different practice perspectives - rather than getting it right - is more of an art form, even art for art's sake.

I'm not exactly sure what Kenneth is saying, whether there is finally something to get right or stop getting wrong, or if there is nothing in particular and so you're free to try different expedient practices and views? This has importance for me because I've been noticing for awhile now that for a long time I've been wanting to have confidence that a practice is based on or leads to the right view before I could feel mobilized to do it. But as I've been experiencing how different practices result in or go with different views, that's been perplexing.

As everyone knows, I like hypothesizing about this stuff. Take it for what it's worth: not much.

It seems like the general thing "not to get wrong" is found by a developmental trajectory of insights...

First mountains are mountains, then mountains are not mountains, then mountains are mountains. Or another way to say it: form is form, then form is empty, then emptiness is form. Notice that in both cases you start off with normal experience (mountains/form) and wind up in the "same" place. But the insight into form and mountains and the orientation to form and mountains is fundamentally simpler, less ego-owned, more open as a result of the process.

The interesting thing to me is this basic idea was presented in a previous BATGAP interview that was within the interviewers own tradition (I'm trying to remember... I remember Kate and I had an online conversation... ah, Igor Kufayev!) where the mystic returns to basic life which is mundane reality, but with a kind of respect for the mundane which wasn't there before, but is basically no different than mundane life. Unfortunately, the interviewer never quite was changed by hearing that and he still believes in a kind of new age god/awareness/mover that is behind the scenes which is more true than mundane existence.

Lately I've been thinking about what is after so-called fourth path and I think it's a blend of psychological/inquiry... there are always pockets of ego-fixation that are not fully awakened, whether due to ignorance, past trauma, organic biology and those are not magically cured by 4th path. One's developmental "identity" (a funny word to use in this context, but oh well) can be post 4th path, but there can be many aspects of life that are still have their meaning created by a more primitive view. So post fourth path, it's a matter of continuing to apply "right view" to all aspects of experience, continuing to refine, etc. But this is all done with a new kind of appreciation for the mundane facts of life, without the tendency for spiritual bypassing which is possible when we believe in a "thing" called emptiness/awareness or that mountains aren't really mountains. It's also more and more "automatic" because the sense of do-er or pre-ordained path isn't there, so indeed it is like art.

The "spiritual athlete" is someone who has moved through the four paths of insight and continues with this art.

I was talking with a theravadin teacher during 3rd path and struggling to figure out fourth. I asked what an arhat was. He answered in two ways: "someone with no greed, hatred or delusion" and "remember the middle path". It took me a while to understand, but being on retreat he talked about the fetter of pride (and I think was kind of talking to me during the dharma talk, but who knows!) and it boils down to two things: actions which are free from greed, hatred, and delusion... and the middle path between "owning" and "not owning" an spiritual identity.

One could see that the arhat experience could be anyone's experience for brief moments in time -- all of us have moments of acting free from greed, hatred, and delusion. That's our fundamental good nature that allows for awakening in the first place. Perhaps the bigger problem is the "spiritual identity". It makes almost no sense to claim arhatship as a "reality", that would be contrary to the insight of the arhat. It only makes sense as an act of compassion, creating a "idea/symbol" for the more primitively oriented people to strive for and, in the process, see through. It's the same as saying there is a big mind for new meditators --- it's absolutely true, there is a mind that seems to be removed from experience and an abode of peace (e.g., "the watcher") it's also true that that big mind can become a big prison if it is clinged to for too long, there is greater freedom beyond big mind.

I really don't know any other way to avoid all the pitfalls of self/ego without going through adult psychological development and having meditative insights... and it seems like the art is endless, even though aspects of it can be "done". The done that is done in 4th path is a paradox, the attainment of a loss, which is a gain, but nothing changes.

And all of this might just be blah, blah, blah. I'm not claiming any authority or attainment, but just reporting what seems to make sense to me right now.

p.s. one interesting thing I read recently is that in order to get people to progress through stages of adult psychological development, you have to create a context which is several stages above their center of identity. Teaching just one level up doesn't seem to have much influence. I was thinking about that in terms of meditative insights and it suggest that indeed mushroom culture (where information is provided just when one needs it, but otherwise kept in the dark) is as bad an idea as Daniel and Kenneth suggest. Kind of like over protective parenting which doesn't want to overwhelm the child with too many new experiences. But perhaps being exposed to ideas from higher nanas and higher paths is exactly what provides the kind of cognitive dissonance to motivate practice. It sure seemed to be doing so for me, including the idea of "arhat" or mountains becoming mountains again or no such "thing" as awareness.

I have listened to only a little of the interview, so take it for what it's worth-- but I think experience IS different, and that registering the difference is what we call 'waking up.'

Articulating the difference took longer than its occurrence; the first, startled thing I said was "Everything is more dimensional!" As a short statement, I still can't really do better: perception is more inclusive and vivid-- in ways I had been incapable of even imagining. The analogy would be having my 20/200 right eye's vision corrected-- but not merely for eyesight of physical objects, it extends to all modes of perception/cognition and response. Call it insight-compassion, maybe: that seems traditional. The compassion part means "identity" is too trivial a consideration to allow to encumber the exploration.

also-- what Chris said!

I was thinking about that the other day while sitting in a car - if the experience of awakening makes that really cool, going through space at 60 miles per hour.....

I wonder if that could be a practice, if you could transmit an idea of what sensory experience is like in awakening and then have people incline their mind towards that.

Femtosecond wrote: I wonder if that could be a practice, if you could transmit an idea of what sensory experience is like in awakening and then have people incline their mind towards that.

If I understand you correctly, the Big Mind process seems akin to this. http://bigmind.org/

The process is derived from a therapeutic method called Voice Dialogue developed in the 1970s. In Voice Dialogue, a practitioner works with disowned "voices," such as the Inner Child, the Critic, etc. The Big Mind extends these to "awakening voices," such as Big Mind and Big Heart, that most people do not know that they can access. Apparently, doing Big Mind meditation is most effective with a facilitator, according to Gary Weber and what I have read previously. I have not practiced it myself extensively.

Big Mind- type techniques are potentially a good way to experience Equanimity, which is the next closest thing to awakening.

( But I'm not endorsing Big Mind tm! )

My problem with all such "guided meditation-y" pursuits is the "over-determination factor." The transformative power of the experience, what is different than some drug-mediated altered state, is in its total surprise, "not what I was expecting, or could have imagined!!" If you know what you're "going for," at best you will realize your expectations. That's hardly transformative. It lacks the infinitely intimate particularity of the thing, that separates those who have realized from the glib talkers that abound.

Chris Marti wrote: The done that is done in 4th path is a paradox, the attainment of a loss, which is a gain, but nothing changes.

Thinking about this comment by shargrol -- I hypothesize that what is "done" at 4th path is the automatic belief in a hierarchy of phenomena.

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I was thinking about what I kate said and realized that while nothing changes... the very fact of luminous experience exists is somewhat more remarkable than ever -- wow, experience is this! -- that it isn't totally true that nothing changes, but it's so subtle, no wonder no one has really explained awakening, no wonder buddha debated even trying to be a teacher.