Ayya Khema - Gampo Abbey

I first heard of Ayya Khema in Boulder, when Rod mentioned a Buddhist nun on YouTube that talked about the jhanas. He may have said her name at the time, but all I remembered was "some nun on YouTube". Then, randomly, I saw another reference to AK on DhO a week or so ago, again as a nun who does/did jhana work, and made the connection between the two references. As I mentioned on my practice thread, I have been listening to the following series of talks, at Gampo Abbey:

dharmaseed.org/teacher/334/?search=trans...al+dependent+arising

Note that the precise series are the ones labelled "Retreat @ Gampo".

Anyhow, I started listening to these purely for her descriptions of jhana, which aligned so closely with the work I have been doing with Abre that I was kind of stunned. But as I listened more to the subsequent ones (and I am still only part way through, so this is kind of a half-cocked recommendation), I am also stunned by her description of the Progress of Insight. Here is a recording made 20 years before MCTB, and yet describes the same stuff with similar clarity but minus the more extreme aspects of MCTB. Now, I know that MCTB was not the originator of the Progress of Insight, but I always felt that it was implied that prior to that it was not really well known outside of Burma. Maybe I read too much into it.

But regardless, if you are interested in another take on a familiar topic, give these a listen and please feed back. For me, aside from what I noted above, the other major takeaway for me was further validation of the process that, currently, seems to work for me best. And that is to get well grounded in "meditative absorptions", or jhanas, before moving to insight. At one point she explicitly discusses this, vs. a pure vipassana approach and notes that, in her opinion, doing insight work from an absorbed/calm state is easier than doing pure vipassana. The latter may be "faster", but is also more jarring and not for everyone. That the former was also the approach used by Buddha also doesn't hurt.

For me, starting with a concentration run that may, or may not, get me to full equanimity positions me much better for noting -- things slow down so much that it is no longer "shooting aliens" but something much more relaxed. I find it interesting that she also says, many times, that you can get insights from the concentration practice alone, and her examples seem obvious in a "duh" sort of way. So for me, these talks are an interesting and unexpected convergence of various aspects of my practice.

One interesting AK comment that is sticking with me: the cessation from a Path moment is a jhanic absorption. To me (from my inexperienced perspective, obviously) that makes total sense. Does that ring true?

Tom Otvos wrote: One interesting AK comment that is sticking with me: the cessation from a Path moment is a jhanic absorption. To me (from my inexperienced perspective, obviously) that makes total sense. Does that ring true?

Hmmm. Maybe. The cessation during my first path moment was a full stop, no consciousness phenomena for me. Jhanic absorption may be very deeply hung up in the absorption part but it's not a total blackout. Subsequent path moments were more similar to jhanic territory, but I'm not convinced because there was always an element of black out.

Chris and Andy, my take is that it might be referring to a higher jhana...NS for example? Again, without experience I cannot say more, but it is intriguing to me that a cessation might be described as a momentary glimpse of, say, NS, and that as you progress to higher paths you extend your ability to reside there. Does that make more sense?

Tom, this is my experience, but I would never use the phrase "abide there" in relation to a path cessation or fruition. There is simply nothing there, and no one to witness it. No subject, no object, no experience. Not both. Neither. It is not a known entity. It is the definition of nothing. If I was a computer to would be like having the plug pulled. Not hibernation, not sleep. No power, no processing, nothing.

Maybe I should read these Ayya Khema passages because I'm just not relating cessation to any jhana experience.

I need to re-listen to get the precise wording, but I believe it is on this track:

dharmaseed.org/teacher/334/talk/7669/

For context, in previous tracks she has been describing the jhanas, and then the progress of insight. This track starts at equanimity.

ETA: She first mentions it at 11:15

Okay, I get it now. She's describing two aspects of the path "process":

1. Path - cessation - she calls this non-being/non-abiding or something similar (at about a minute or so before 11:15, Tom) and describes this as similar to what I described about cessation here earlier
2. Fruit - what happens in the moments after the path cessation, when the lights come back on and the system reboots, which can indeed be jhana like and blissful as all get out.

I'm in agreement with her now that I've heard the talk.



I describe my experience of this and post Kenneth Folk's reply (similar to Ayya Khema's comments, actually) in the very first part of my meditation journal posted here on AN:

awakenetwork.org/magazine/cmarti/70#more-70

Here is a written essay of her take on "Path and Fruit" .

The key passage from that essay:

The path moment doesn't have any thinking or feeling in it. It is not comparable to the meditative absorptions (jhana). Although it is based upon them because only the concentrated mind can enter into a path moment, it does not have the same qualities. the meditative absorptions have -in their initial stages - the ingredients of rapture, happiness and peacefulness. Later on, the mind experiences expansion, nothingness and a change of perception. The path moment does not contain any of these states of mind.

It has a quality of non-being. This is such a relief and changes one's world view so totally that it is quite understandable that the Buddha made such a distinction between a worldling and a Noble One. While the meditative absorptions bring with them a feeling of oneness, of unity, the path moment does not even contain that. The moment of fruition, subsequent to the path moment, is the understood experience and results in a turned-around vision of existence.

She very effectively separates the path moment (cessation) from the subsequent moments (fruit). Very nice. Thanks, Tom.

That's very relevant because it quotes the same Ayya Khema talk