Owen's Practice Journal, Part II

"What path are you?"

First.

They started showing up much more clearly (at least for me) at second path.

Please get second path and confirm this phenomena for me.

it certainly seems to vary
I think for nik while he was on retreat and just getting to first path he found out he could access 1-4 samatha jhanas and then he's just gone from there

Hi Mike,

I cant remember where I heard or read this but the jhanas are connected to the physio-energetic development ..ah yes, now I remember, it was at the Open Enlightenment website where they talked about having access to jhanas perhaps being somehow connected to how much a yogi has cut out that physio-energetic path in the body. I had been doing the sweeping method of vipassana focused on the subtlest of vibrations on and in the body for many years before stream entry was got. I had been cutting out a path up the body for over 9 years before this last course i did. I think that got my concentration levels to very high heights. But I always had really good concentration. Plus I used a kasina on and off for a year or so. So I was kind of primed to get instant access to jhanas. I think that had a lot to do with how i got access pretty quickly.

"it certainly seems to vary
I think for nik while he was on retreat and just getting to first path he found out he could access 1-4 samatha jhanas and then he's just gone from there

"

I was a zennie at the time, so it was all makyo.

I would say if you really want a clear experience of jhana get your concentration up. You are post 1st path. You can build massive concentration with vipassana. It's annica samadhi, Kenneth and I were talking about it last night. You don't have to do all the hardcore samatha stuff to get this done.

Just to encourage you, I got 2nd and 3rd in about a month. It's possible. I'm convinced it was because I was devoting almost every waking moment to watching and noting what was happening in daily experience.

The cushion time was just the formal part. Momentum! All the fun stuff will be there post 4th path, and it will be safe to play with. Get it finished!

I think it's appropriate to exhort folks to buckle down and put more effort into their practice. But just to be a bit of a contrarian we can't discount what appears to be biology and the fact that we're all just different in many respects, including how things show up at various stages. Easy access to the jhanas just showed up for me at a certain point and it's not clear that it was because I was doing anything in particular to bring it on. We like to attribute changes in our practice to our level of effort but is that really the sole cause? I don't think so. I can remember vividly during 1st, 2nd and 3rd path that I was on a ride, clearly not driving. I was not in control in any meaningful way at all. Stuff would show up almost at random during the day, during meditation, while i was laying awake at night and even while I was sleeping. Sh*t happens and it's not always because we're making it so

"Please get second path and confirm this phenomena for me."

Consider it confirmed, at least in my case, too.

"
I think it's appropriate to exhort folks to buckle down and put more effort into their practice. But just to be a bit of a contrarian we can't discount what appears to be biology and the fact that we're all just different in many respects, including how things show up at various stages. Easy access to the jhanas just showed up for me at a certain point and it's not clear that it was because I was doing anything in particular to bring it on. We like to attribute changes in our practice to our level of effort but is that really the sole cause? I don't think so. I can remember vividly during 1st, 2nd and 3rd path that I was on a ride, clearly not driving. I was not in control in any meaningful way at all. Stuff would show up almost at random during the day, during meditation, while i was laying awake at night and even while I was sleeping. Sh*t happens and it's not always because we're making it so

"

No, contrarian is good. It makes me examine my assumptions. I like debate.

At heart though I'm an engineer. I want to understand the necessary and sufficient conditions for enlightenment. We know the suttas have a lot of junk in them along with a lot of gold. The more data the better. Sorry to be so unromantic about it.

"... the necessary and sufficient conditions for enlightenment."

I get that. I think it'll be possible, too, at some future time. But the word "data" implies a precision we don't yet have, especially since we're dealing with the human mind and trying to solve an equation with millions of independent variables

Thinking more along the lines of statistics. If we get a big enough sample size of people who get paths, we could start confirming or refuting a bunch the old dogmatic assumptions.
Right now mostly what we have to work with is our own experience and that of teachers having a feel for what works - but the missing bit seems to be a large pool of people who are going through it to see what lines up against the maps.

One of the insights of western psychology was that internal subjective phenomena can be studied in a systematic and reproducible way when you get a big enough population thats willing to talk about it.

If scientists worked the way folks in the Buddhist traditions have historically done, we would still be in the middle ages.

"If scientists worked the way folks in the Buddhist traditions have historically done, we would still be in the middle ages. "

Scientific enthusiasm and methodology applied to the subjective experience. I like it.

Though I hate to out myself as a bit of an esotericist, there's a saying from Gurdjieff that comes to mind here: "Take the understanding of the East and the knowledge of the West and then seek.". That's been an underlying theme for me for a long time. The buddhist tradition knows what to do, and we have a pretty good idea of how to do things. Time to put the two together...

I blame on this on spending way too much time reading Ken Wilbur. It has infected my fragile little brain.

Hadn't read this in a while, seems about right.

---

The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real, because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round and it has thrills and chills and it's very brightly colored and it's very loud. And it's fun, for a while.

Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: 'Is this real? Or is this just a ride?' And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and they say 'Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid - ever - because... this is just a ride.' And we kill those people.

'Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride! Shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry; look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real.'

It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that - ever notice that? - and we let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because... it's just a ride, and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort. No worry. No job. No savings and money. Just a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy bigger guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.

Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, into a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and, instead, spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would do many times over - not one human being excluded - and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever. In peace.
--Bill Hicks

I love bill Hicks!

It's so true.

Last nights sit:
20 minutes of candle kasina practice and then rode the arc up to J13.

My concentration with the candle has been a bit weak. Thinking it is because of two factors.

1. I'm not used to the candle yet. I've done so much breath work that I can get concentrated very quickly. Haven't done that with the candle. It seems as though I need to add more factors of observation so I can ramp up the difficulty and use 95-100% of my mental processing power. I'm getting convinced that's the trick. Having spare cycles encourages stray thoughts and other mental wandering.

2. Annica samadhi. During vipassana I get my concentration deeply charged by what it takes to track the beehive of ever changing sensations. With the candle, I don't get that. I didn't realize how much that ramps up absorption.

Also, samatha practice seems to play hell with my sleep cycle.

About the candle, one of the things I found helped a bit was including the sensation of warmth I was getting from the candle.

I'm also getting used to it. I still find the Kasina discs to be a bit more dramatic.

That Bill Hicks quote is awesome! Reminds me dead on of this piece I read by Kerouac today: bit.ly/9Ax9dw

Good luck with the candles.

Had a lovely time last night on a skype chat with Nick and Clayton. We went through the 20 strata of mind together up to high equanimity. It was so good to get feedback as to what each nana and jhana felt like subjectively. Funny though, I find that I can't talk so well during a annica fruition. I - kept - - talking -- a -- hey -- --- Nick -- am I -- dropping - out? They thought it was a skype issue.

It was a lot of fun, it really helped me to focus on the Dukka nanas in a way that I hadn't for a long time...

For my sit this morning, I just went up the jhanic arc up to 13. It seems like this is the foundation of my practice, and I notice when I get lazy and inconsistent with it for a while. It really does clean out the system in a way that nothing else does.

Anyhow, Nick, I tried the 4 realms trick you were talking about in J13. I can confirm your results, but I do suspect some scripting going on. The hell realm is interesting. It has a flavor.

Yes so do I. It was like i had a preconcieved idea of what such supposed jhanas are supposed to be like. BUT!!!....worthy of more exploration. Could be a siddhi thing too. Careful there...hehe! Please do keep us posted with some juicy descriptions.

First sit in a few days. Lately, the regularity of my practice has been lacking a bit, and I've lost some momentum in my concentration. Went up the arc and down again. Sat in the 7th jhana for a long while. Nothing special.

The high and rarified states have lost some luster for me lately. Don't get me wrong, they are a lovely recharge, and I really dug doing the group sit with the guys, but the need to escape into them as a refuge is just gone. My refuge has become the present. When the walls come down, it gets easier to do that.

I was talking with Ian today about motivation and identity and it came up that my practice has shifted in a big way. Instead of needing to practice because my identity as a seeker made that mandatory, now I just want to practice. But my mind is so non-stick that keeping momentum is sorta tough. I feel a bit spacy sometimes, as if my natural inclination is to dwell as the witness.
If something is not in front of me, it is simply not there. On the flip side, if something is in front of me, it is all that's there. This can cause problems with scheduling. Google calendar is getting used with greater frequency.

Anyway, I'm just so grateful. All the externals are the same as they were a year ago, and I've never had it this good.

Pragmayana. The vehicle that works.

I hate to question the wonderfully idealistic Bill Hicks quote, but...

Really? Sure, it would be nice if everyone in the world, particularly the powers that be, to jump on board with the idea that we don't' need guns, or money, or power, etc. Will we ever live in such a world, or is it just another utopian fantasy?

And we can't force it. We've seen what happens when these ideals are translated into foreign and domestic policy without taking gradual growth into consideration. We human beings can, and will, corrupt just about anything we get our hands on.

This is where I think Ken Wilber's insistence on developmental models is crucial. The funny thing about development, though, is that each stage must be lived before it can be grown out of. And a lot of the reasons why guns, and money, and laws, and domestic and foreign policies are the way the are is due to a reactionary stance toward the developmentally immature facets of human nature that are not dispelled by a simple decision to do so.

Our task, should we choose to accept it, is one of discovering the ways we develop, and also how to best facilitate that development. Uncovering road blocks and catalysts is a part of the game. This isn't utopian, but in a sense pragmatic and genuinely progressive, rather than utopian fantasy.

We can all sit around and sing John Lennon's "Imagine" all day long if we want, but it will probably do little to actually help the situation we find ourselves in.

::end rant::

I could be dead wrong about all of this, but it's just how I feel about it at this point in time. Thanks for putting up with it

~Jackson

Hey Jackson,
Yeah, no bother. I'm partial to the "Fear or Love" bit myself. The rest just seems like a nice idea.