Seeker of Wisdom

^^^ Thanks S_J, I'd remembered seeing some of those articles. Oh, that's a lot simpler. And if there can be thinking and examination in the first jhana (albeit, presumably subtler than normal) that makes it even more approachable! Daaaymn.

That sounds interesting, can you explain further? I would think there has to be focus on one object during any sort of jhana [edit - not to ekagatta levels in the first], but that there is a role before that point for peripheral awareness to monitor and refine the practice.

I think in this case, Osho doesn't know what he's talking about. Those are completely different things. Vipassana is about observing all the little events occurring in experience, noticing their impermanence, how they are just processes (not a self or owned by a self), cause and effect between them, and stuff like that. If you're interested in that, I would recommend Buddhist sources as that's where the practice comes from. Daniel Ingram's MCTB is a decent guide IMHO, then you could move on to Ven. Analayo's Satipatthana - the direct path to awakening for more detail on what it is, how it works, and the wider context. If you're more interested in self-remembering sort of stuff, I'm not familiar with it, but people like Ramana Maharshi or Nisagadatta are probably the ones you want.

Personally I find that this term 'ego' leads to a lot of confusion and internal conflict. Because then there's 'real me' vs an 'ego', trying to shut it down. In my view - there are a whole bunch of tendencies in the mind. Some skilful, some unskilful. The unskillful ones are supported by deep-seated ignorance and grasping. So instead of trying to destroy the ego, try to cultivate skilful qualities (ones which benefit yourself and others), find out what views lie under the unskilful ones, and question them. Gradually shift your habits at the root. In effect it's the same thing, but it's a shift in perspective which you might find helpful.

Are you claiming complete gnosis of the fundamental nature of reality? I'm guessing not. If you don't have complete gnosis, by definition, you must have partial ignorance. To suggest anything else is cognitive dissonance, i.e simultaneously knowing you have ignorance and believing you don't. It's like trying to insist that every being has equal muscular strength. You seem to take the reality of ignorance as a value judgement, like original sin. But this comes inextricably along with the empowering recognition that you, and only you, can do anything about it. I take it as a challenge to achieve complete unbinding of mind.

Did anyone do that in this thread? Besides, it's not a fault unique to Buddhists. If some Taoists or Vedantists show flaws I don't go on their sections criticising their path and its practitioners as a whole because of it.

IMHO, no - equanimity (as a brahmavihara) is the attitude that all beings are equally important. Having this doesn't mean you'll automatically cut through all views and grasping - for example, the idea that you are a 'self' meditating on the equality of all 'selves' may still be there. So you see, these are really fundamental perspectives on reality we're dealing with here. To get that hardcore wisdom, you'd have to attend to impermanence, dukkha and non-self as they occur in your experience (i.e. practice vipashyana) until your mind really realises them, and lets go of all the stuff it's holding. Equanimity alone isn't that, although it's an extremely virtuous mental factor. But of course, the same as before applies about the potential to use equanimity in vipashyana!

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I meant when I said: If the practice is being approached in a way cultivating compassion AND wisdom - relative and absolute bodhichitta - that's enough for awakening. If it's just about compassion, that's still brilliant and shouldn't be devalued, but it's not the whole path. I'm currently working on realising no-self, so I might look into whether the various feelings and mental processes involved in the practice seem to involve a 'self' or not. Another person might focus on how all that stuff occurs in brief pulses, for impermanence. And so on.

For anyone confused by what Simple_Jack's been saying, I'll try to break it down. With the warning that I am also just some guy on the internet. Basically he's arguing that practices like loving-kindness (aka metta aka the first immeasurable [skt. brahmavihara]) aren't by themselves enough for awakening. First noble truth: unawakened beings are subject to dukkha (explained here!) Second: because of grasping onto things and views, due to ignorance. Third: dukkha can be ended. Fourth: by the 8fold path, which can be broken down into virtue, concentration, and wisdom. So - why is metta alone not enough? Because it doesn't have that wisdom in it to recognise the first noble truth, abandon the second, and achieve the third. It doesn't cut through the deep underlying views, grasping, etc that keep up dukkha, it gives you a refined but unawakened mind. It builds up virtue and concentration, but for awakening, this has to be combined with insight into stuff like impermanence, dukkha, not-self... which you can get through vipashyana (insight meditation - paying close attention to experience in the present moment, noticing the impermanence, etc). So, in closing: *If you're a Buddhist practising metta, either focus on that until you have some good stable samadhi, then take up vipashyana as well. Or take up vipashyana as well now, so they develop together. Unless your teacher teaches a clever approach to metta which dovetails neatly into vipashyana - in which case, don't worry about this post. *If you aren't a Buddhist, don't worry about this post.

What you're saying is 'I can only be confident and energetic if I really want to bang someone'. This is a perspective I struggle to understand, and it strikes me as unhealthy. Probably your libido occurs alongside other sources of passion and vitality, along comes classical conditioning, your mind puts two and two together, gets seventy-nine, and says 'aha! Libido is synonymous with passion and vitality!' If I were you, I would introspect hard on: *What am I passionate about? Why? *What forms of passion are there, excluding libido? *Have I been placing libido excessively above other possible forms of passion? *Might other forms of passion be more meaningful than libido? *If I lost all desire for sex, wouldn't there be many other things to live for and be excited about?

To be honest, I think you'd be better off getting some grounding and emotional stability, rather than trying to astral travel and work 'in a non-linear space' at the same time as trying to deal with divorce, while feeling like you're 'watching the world burn' with 'catastrophe on the horizon'. With genuine compassion: please, please get yourself some help for what seems to be something like depression + severe dissociation + borderline personality disorder, before trying to journey other planes and experience transcendental non-linear spiritual realities. I get the impression that you're trying desperately to run out of a world that frightens you. All of which only makes the way you speak like a teacher ('are you aware that... you will understand it when the time is right... most students and their teachers are getting stuck in the ego [as though you are not]...') more disturbing. Transcendence is absolutely the last thing you need. You need to come down to earth, and learn to handle life with emotional stability. I wish you the best for that.

Your problem isn't low libido, but low passion. If you feel flat and lethargic, find a good cause to devote yourself to or an aim to reach for.

From Damo Mitchell:

These seem the key points to me. Perhaps your baseline level of patience has increased, but it is still vulnerable to particular triggers? That still indicates a lot of progress, if on average you're more patient. Probably up until now you've been developing patience in a general sense, learning to ride through small irritations with mindfulness, breathing, etc. If there are still specific things that really push your buttons, you need to get to the root of what those buttons are, and why they can get pushed. If something makes you angry, ask why that makes you angry. Then ask why that makes you angry. And so on. In the end, you'll find whatever idea is really at the root of the thing, and you can work on that. Good luck - and don't forget to be patient with yourself!

Alternative medicine hasn't proven to be effective for treating severe things, but various herbs, exercise, meditation, lifestyle and so on can help alleviate symptoms and work as a preventative measure. I imagine trials would find a good reduced risk of cardiovascular issues if people practiced any sort of what we do. I think there's a lot of fluff, but definitely useful stuff as well. It all needs to be researched more vigorously, ideally with the traditions changing in light of evidence. If a herb used in TCM is found to be ineffective or poisonous (which I think has happened!), for example, TCM practitioners should remove it from their textbooks if they want to be taken seriously as medical practitioners. The reasons why people deny any value to alternative medicine at all may be: *Only see severe issues (like your surgeon) - underestimate impact of preventatives. *Associated with pure bull like homeopathy, Masuro Emoto's 'experiments', etc. *There is no objective evidence for qi, which a lot of alt med is based on - we know it's there because we experience it and because people tend to have similarities in experience across times and cultures, but nothing to convince scientists. *So many of the big claims get debunked that people dismiss the whole thing - if you taste one ocean you don't feel like checking the others before concluding they're all salty. *Too many advocates are crackpots. Also when something does show some value, it may get reclassified in a new form as mainstream medicine. Leeches are used in some surgery to thin blood and reduce infection. Salicylic acid from willow bark got made into aspirin. If these had been discovered now, they would be firmly on the alt med side, and seen as a bit weird. But as they're mainstream, nobody sees them as examples of holistic/natural treatments having serious value.

That sounds like depersonalisation, not realising no-self. You cannot identify with the idea of no-self, because there has to be an idea of self for identification to occur. In the former, there is still an idea of separate self but it watches the body-mind system with no control or reaction, and so you are dead to life. In the latter, there is no idea of a separate self gumming up the works, so the body-mind system is seen as a vivid set of processes not separate from the rest of an existence which is raw and alive. Perhaps it would help to find what you're still taking to be a separate self, and notice that it is just a process with no self behind it. Probably awareness/observation itself - try to see that awareness just happens, with no self that is aware. (Liberation Unleashed is a useful resource) Or switch focus to stuff like metta, until you can ask your teachers. That may be safer, you don't want to push too far.

You seem to know Taoist practice inside out. But I don't think what you're saying here applies to shamatha practices - I'm not at this level in shamatha yet myself though, so I may well be wrong. My understanding is that the body should be allowed to breath however, including seemingly not breathing at all, and that awareness of the body can be lost in deep concentration, the formless jhanas being the obvious examples.

I am being forceful here because these beliefs hold people back from facing reality, and having confidence in their ability to use their skills and intelligence to achieve things the only way anyone (lacking siddhis/magic, perhaps) can achieve anything - through action. You have the ability to succeed in this world through plain old cause and effect. You don't have to believe in a mystical solution, and it rouses my compassion to see you still struggling within a Christian matrix of blind faith in doctrines, although you don't realise that that is what this is. You have swapped one set of disempowering lies for another that may momentarily make you feel empowered, but that will ultimately leave you disappointed. Instead of faith in Jesus, you have faith in the LoA. Why not have faith in your skill, knowledge and intelligence? Perhaps you're clinging to the LoA because you feel intimidated by all the things in the real world that are in your way, and the LoA makes you feel capable. I implore you to have the courage to try to overcome your obstacles and see them as surmountable. Scrapping the LoA leads to the sad idea that people in severe poverty have little ability to change their situation. Unfortunately we ought to face the truth rather than cling to comfortable lies, have compassion for these people, and try to use the power we have to help.

I agree with the first two paragraphs. But I see their implication as being that the LoA only appears to work to someone thanks to cognitive biases, therefore it doesn't work, therefore it is false. If it doesn't work at a rate above chance, it doesn't work. Simple.

Clarification - I'm open to the idea that developed cultivators may have abilities (though will remain reasonably sceptical until I have experience myself, or there is good proof). So magicians here - I am not rubbishing your experiences or path. What I'm denying here is the idea that average people can manifest macroscopic stuff on the physical realm just by faith or will or whatever, as taught in the Secret and so on.

It's much easier for people to believe this manifestation shit when they live in a first world country with nothing threatening immediate survival. Seriously - would any sane person go to Darfur and teach how to manifest bread? This Law of Attraction stuff is self-indulgent claptrap that doesn't stand up to real life in the slightest. Would you actually try to teach it to someone in poverty? Seriously think about that. Imagine telling someone dying of AIDS, walking miles to a dirty well, whose family has died of starvation... that if they have faith in their abilities as a creator they can bring abundance into manifestation. Wouldn't you feel disgusted by yourself if you did that? What does that tell you about the reality of this doctrine? But nobody who believes in it can be convinced otherwise, because if it doesn't work it's just not being done right or with enough faith (i.e. blind faith of getting it right some day), confirmation bias (the many times it doesn't work you lacked faith or technique, the few times it 'works' you did it right), and other cognitive biases that let you half-believe things that are blatantly false. It's an unquestionable dogma for the New Age just like transubstantiation or original sin, and makes no more sense.

I've been thinking recently about the idea that any actual stage of awakening is this incredible, mystical exalted thing that takes years/decades/lifetimes to attain. I'm trying to stop thinking in terms of hopefully achieving stream-entry at some point before I die - i.e. not any time soon. Why should it take years to notice obvious things about existence? Judging by stuff like 'Gateless Gatecrashers' by Liberation Unleashed, a fairly normal person can realise no-self in a few weeks of sincere inquiry into plain direct experience. That's a good step that most people never reach. While I keep on developing virtue and samadhi as before, I'm trying to let go of beliefs that aren't based on anything, including expectations of what awakening results in and what it's like. I'm getting back to the direct focus of just seeing reality naked, without metaphysical ideas getting in the way. I'm doing that with the development of insight through vipashyana (flavoured by Liberation Unleashed inquiry), whenever I'm not practicing shamatha, asleep or distracted. The more I look into direct experience, the more it seems that there is thought, no thinker; action, no agent; awareness, no self that is aware - no central owner/controller/watcher of mental or physical processes, just the processes. It's possible I could realise no-self at any time. And from there, keep going. Awakening is accessible in the present, and from now on, I practice with that attitude.

That's really interesting. What sort of practice does Fetch mastery actually involve? Are there particular rituals, etc, which can be used? How can someone negotiate the difference between a Fetch mastery lifestyle and a 'I'm just gonna be decadant and selfish and not give a f***' lifestyle of instant gratification? I can imagine people getting that wrong. And then, what does letting the Daemonic Fire in actually involve, in terms of practices?

The exact opposite of jhana. Trance as defined here is the exact opposite of samadhi. Here is the first jhana described from the personal experience of Jay Michaelson (realitysandwich.com). How does that even remotely resemble being 'lost in a train of thought'? If you read any description of jhana/shamatha or vipashyana and compare it to 'lost in a train of thought' trance, they are absolutely different things. In the former there is high mindfulness, alertness, focus. In the latter, focus is dim and mindfulness is low. How can someone with high mindfulness be lost in a train of thought? Someone can't be mindfully vague about what's happening, or identifying with it, any more than someone can be a sober drunk. The Buddhist practice would be to mindfully observe thoughts as they come and go without identification, judgement or being lost in them. No. Jhana or absorption or something like that, categorically not trance. If you ignore how koans are used. They are used precisely at the right time to the right person to pierce a particular delusion or duality - inducing satori, not trance - or the practitioner is given a koan to focus on with great concentration until the Great Doubt builds, with the same result. It has nothing to do with trance, everything to do with cutting through habitual dualistic perceptions by attending to something that makes no conceptual sense until the mind gives up trying to conceptually process it, allowing gnosis. I fail to see how being 'lost in a train of thought' goes along with a penetrating, mindful awareness of the six senses (including proprioception, etc) as they truly are. Wouldn't samadhi be more helpful than an extra dose of mental dullness and distraction? Interesting - but two problems. Firstly, surely that is how the sense of physical location is constructed, not how the sense that the body is a self is constructed? Secondly, it completely ignores that people also take aspects of the mind to be self, not just the body. Plenty of people say words to the effect of 'awareness is self', 'the thinker is self', etc, which this hypothesis says nothing about. These ideas have no link to physical senses. Nor does it deal with 'body is self' because their theory only explains how the sense of the body's location is constructed, not the idea of its selfhood. In Ven Analayo's satipatthana book he refers to proprioception re: contemplation of the body. All experience is a great target for vipashyana. But that doesn't change the role of trance in Buddhist practice - there still isn't one. This is a straw man. Nobody has said anything about trance opening you up to demonic influence or being harmful or whatever. It can be a really good tool. But the fact remains that Buddhist practices are designed to reduce the factors of mind associated with trance, being 'lost in a train of thought', which isn't helpful for awakening, and replace them with the jhana factors, which are.

I don't think 'trance' is really the right word here, it suggests a zoned-out state between awake and asleep like someone under hypnosis, hypnagogic or concussed. Jhana is very superficially similar in that there's less conceptual activity, but actually I would see it as an opposite state - super-awake and super-focused. There is a world of difference between a zoned-out trance, in which a dominant feature is torpor, and jhana, in which the jhana factors are dominant. If you define trance differently, so that these count as trances while the earlier examples are either not trance or a different type of trance, that's fine. But I think many people will misunderstand your use of words, because you're using them differently from most people. Most people associate trance with qualities of mind that directly oppose jhana.