I have taken some time off from writing to dig deeper into the practice of meditation. I have found it better at times to absorb and reflect than to play the role of the disseminator of truth. I am glad to be back at the keyboard though, as I was overflowing with inspiration this morning.
My practice as of late has taken steps toward an effective blend of both Samatha (concentration) and Vipassana (insight) meditation techniques as described by the Buddha himself. In doing so, there have been some major realizations about the differences between a solely intellectual knowledge and a truly experiential knowledge, referred to as Direct Knowing.
In our culture we place high value on “education”, where the system pumps a massive amount of information into us throughout twelve years of primary school and beyond. Unfortunately if we investigate the actual expression and practice of this form of education, we find that most students have little to no relationship to the information, and relate more to the “proof of learning” that comes from a written test by incorporating many unskillful practices.
If only LIFE were able to be navigated by taking written tests and passing.
In actuality this method of “learning” has reinforced the delusion that memorization of facts and mere comprehension of higher knowledge is identical to actual attainment.
Let’s take an example of a characteristic of reality to draw out the differences between these forms of understanding. One cannot do much studying of the Buddha’s teaching of the path before you find him expounding the point that all phenomenon that can be experienced are “not-self”. “”Bhikkhus, form is not-self. Were form self, then this form would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of form: ‘Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus.’ And since form is not-self, so it leads to affliction, and none can have it of form: ‘Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus.’
“Bhikkhus, feeling is not-self…
“Bhikkhus, perception is not-self…
“Bhikkhus, determinations are not-self…
“Bhikkhus, consciousness is not self.”
This is a portion of the Anatta-lakkhana Sutta, which can be found here: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.nymo.html
The standard Western model of knowledge goes like this:
One may read this, become interested, and research all that is written on the subject. Intellectually this is not hard to understand,and at this point can even be expounded to others to make one sound like they have “arrived”. One can even try to work this intellectual understanding into their own world-view after grasping the concept. At this point one would become delusionally confident that they have attained the true essence of the teaching, and move on to the next thing to learn; consuming each concept as mental food.
In reality, this teaching of “not-self” is to be used as a tool to classify one’s experiences while establishing a path in meditation and daily life that leads to Unbinding. Vipassana practice will bring all the forces of reality to your experience (pleasure, bliss, tranquility, as well as pain, disgust, and fear). It is here that one will utilize what has been taught when a concentrated reality challenges every aspect of your mind and body. Once you have overcome, or rather absorbed and learned the lesson of these realities in their concentrated forms, the path literally breaks off the lifelong confusion of what is “self”. You will then Directly Know this reality in its’ fullness.
Consequently, the Noble Eight-fold Path is the recognition that while either meditating or just living, Life will provide the circumstances for you to address the realities of the teaching. Meditation serves to not only prepare one for the lesson, but bring the full power of the lesson directly to you.
May You be Successful in Directly Knowing Reality and Relieving the Suffering of Those Around You.
Peace
Loren
Entering the Stream 
I’m new to meditation. Was wondering where I can get more information on the type of meditation taught by Buddha.
Hello Charla,
Welcome and thanks for the great question. I had the same question a little over a year ago. Although there are certainly many types of meditation and disciplines out there I was interested in what the Buddha taught as well.
There are really two ways to get this information. The first is quite exhaustive, and that is to just start reading the Pali canon. This can be found here: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/index.html
This method is also very hard to find the things that will directly effect where you are at in the journey.
For this reason, I would suggest a concise synopsis of the Buddha’s teachings, such as The Wings to Awakening by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, or Noble Strategy by the same author. They, along with many other very helpful meditation and dharma subjects, can be found here: http://www.dhammatalks.org/ebook_index.html. These books are all offered for free. I also really enjoyed The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings by Thic Nhat Hanh.
I hope these are some helpful places to start. You will find that eventually you will come to match your tastes with certain teachings more than others. The two teacher that I mentioned have very different methods and forms of teaching. Thanissaro Bhikkhu is highly analytical, while Thic Nhat Hanh is much more poetic.
Feel Free to update me with your own findings from investigation as well.
Peace
Loren
the last one … consciousness is not self … is not yet clear to me. Could you bring clarity from experience? I only see that during deep sleep and narcosis or coma consciousness is reduced, but still there.
Love and Light
Hello Bert,
Thanks for the question. I have struggled with this one as well. In the traditional experience of Stream Entry, there is a stage of Insight (Vipassana) called Fruition. This stage is the practitioner’s first glimpse of the “Deathless” or Nibbana. Here is how it is described in Daniel Ingram’s book “Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. “This is the fruit of all the meditator’s hard work, the first attainment of ultimate reality, emptiness, Nirvana, God or whatever you wish to call it. In this non-state, there is absolutely no time, no space, no reference point, no experience, no mind, no consciousness, no nothingness, no somethingness, no body, no this, no that, no unity, no duality, and no anything else. Reality stops cold and then reappears. Thus, this is impossible to comprehend, as it goes completely and utterly beyond the rational mind and the sensate universe. To “external time” (if someone were observing the meditator from the outside) this lasts only an instant. It is like an utter discontinuity of the space-time continuum with nothing in the unfindable gap.”
There are a few stages tied together at this moment that, the first time traveled through, are called Stream Entry.
I want to put this experience into light of the actual concepts leading up to this and the value of this experience by reposting a writing by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. From the book entitled “Selves and Not-Self” :
NOT-SELF FOR TRANSCENDENT HAPPINESS
Last night we talked about the teaching on not-self on the mundane level as it
relates to the issue of rebirth and kamma. On this level, you apply the perception
of not-self in a selective way. You look at the skills you can take with you, you
figure out what things would prevent you from taking good skills with you, and
you try to perceive the second set of things as not-self. In this way you can
develop the conditions for a good rebirth and the ability to deal with whatever
you may encounter as you go through the cycle of death and rebirth.
But as you contemplate the issue of rebirth, you begin to see that even if you
develop good mental qualities, the whole process is still very risky and uncertain.
When things get comfortable, it’s very easy to get complacent, and to forget to 44
keep working at developing good qualities. And even the best life in the cosmos
has to end in separation and death. You’ve experienced these sufferings
countless times in the past, and if you don’t gain release from the process of
rebirth you’ll have to endure the same sufferings countless times in the future.
When this realization goes deeply into the heart, you’re ready for the
transcendent teaching on not-self.
That’s the topic for tonight’s talk.
The transcendent teaching on not-self derives from transcendent right view,
and transcendent right view comes in two stages.
The first stage sees experience in terms of the four noble truths of suffering,
its origination, its cessation, and the path of practice leading to its cessation. As
you may remember, each of these truths carries a duty: If you want to put an
end to suffering, suffering should be comprehended, its cause should be
abandoned, its cessation should be realized, and the path to its cessation should
be developed as a skill [§7]. The purpose of the transcendent teaching on not-self
is to help you perform each of these duties.
In the first noble truth, the Buddha identifies suffering with the five clinging aggregates. Notice that the aggregates themselves are not suffering. The mind
suffers because it clings to them. As I’ve already mentioned, clinging is also
similar to the process of feeding. We keep doing something again and again—
that’s the clinging—as a means of finding happiness: That’s the feeding.
A good example of this is an experiment some neuro-biologists once did with
mice. They located the pleasure center in each mouse’s brain and planted a little
electrode in there. When the mice pushed their heads against a little bar, the bar
would give a mild electric stimulation to the pleasure center. They got so
addicted to pressing their heads against the bar—doing it again and again and
again—that they forgot to eat and they died. They were “feeding” on a pleasure
that was very immediate and intense, but provided no nourishment. That’s why
they died.
The same principle applies to the human mind. We usually feed on the
aggregates in a way that provides no real nourishment, and so our goodness
dies.
On the transcendent level of right view, the Buddha has us use the perception
of not-self as a means for comprehending this clinging and feeding to the point
where we feel no more passion for it [§32]. But his approach is a little indirect. As
we’ve already seen, instead of telling you simply to stop feeding on the
aggregates, he has you turn them into a path: the health food that gives strength
to the mind to the point where it no longer needs to feed.
The primary example of this is the practice of right concentration. As we’ve
already said, right concentration is composed of the five aggregates, and the
feelings of ease, rapture, and refreshment that come from right concentration
are health food for the mind. You learn through this practice that you can find a
sense of happiness that comes from within, and you no longer need to go
looking for nourishment outside.
To develop this sort of concentration, you have to apply the perception of
not-self in a selective way. You hold on to your concentration, and apply the 45
perception of not-self to any distracting thoughts that would pull you away from
the object of your concentration. As you gain skill and maturity in applying this
perception in this way, it can enable you to let go of many attachments to other,
lesser forms of happiness that you now realize you no longer need: in particular,
the pleasures of sensuality. When you realize you no longer need them, you find
that there was nothing really there.
One of my favorite cartoons shows a group of cows in a pasture. One of the
cows is jerking its head up in a sudden state of surprise and realization, saying,
“Hey, wait a minute! This is grass! We’ve been eating grass!!”
The Canon has a similar story. A blind man has been given an old dirty rag
and told that it’s a clean, white cloth. He’s very protective of his clean white cloth.
But then his relatives take him to a doctor and the doctor cures his blindness. He
looks at the cloth and realizes that he was fooled: It’s just a dirty old rag.
The Dhamma point both in the cartoon and in the story is that we often
blindly look for pleasure in things that—when we come to our senses—we
realize were never all that satisfying to begin with. In some cases, the pleasure is
actually unhealthy, causing you to do things you later regret.
The practice of jhana provides the perspective that allows you to step back
from your sensual passions and all your other unskillful ways of looking for
pleasure to see that they weren’t worth the effort put into gaining them. This
forces you to step back from the unskillful committee members that push for
those ways of looking for pleasure, and to ask whether you want to continue
associating and identifying with them or not.
This process isn’t always easy. You tend to identify with those unskillful
committee members because you associate them with pleasure. But the practice
of jh›na helps make this process of dis-identification possible. When you can see
that—in comparison to the blameless pleasure of jhana—these other committee
members also bring you stress and pain, you can more easily regard them as
not-self. You can let them go.
As the practice of jhana matures, there eventually comes a point when you
realize that only one attachment remains blocking unconditioned happiness, and
that’s attachment to the path itself: in particular, to the practice of concentration
and the development of discernment. This is where the Buddha starts having
you apply the transcendent teaching on not-self all around, and not just
selectively. In other words, you apply the perception of not-self to every instance
of clinging to the aggregates, even to the aggregates that go into jhana and
discernment. This is how the not-self teaching helps you with the duties of
comprehending stress and abandoning every form of craving, clinging, passion,
or delight that would give rise to stress.
The following passage shows the main stages in this process. First you master
the state of jhana. Then you try to develop perceptions that give rise to a sense
of dispassion for the jhana. Once you’ve developed that sense of dispassion, you
develop the perception in which you see all-around dispassion and cessation as
desirable. Then you learn how to drop even that perception and stay right there.
That, the Buddha says, is where full awakening can occur.46
“Suppose that an archer or archer’s apprentice were to practice on a
straw man or mound of clay, so that after a while he would become able
to shoot long distances, to fire accurate shots in rapid succession, and to
pierce great masses. In the same way, there is the case where a monk…
enters & remains in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born of seclusion,
accompanied by directed thought & evaluation.
“He regards whatever phenomena there that are connected with
form, feeling, perception, fabrications, & consciousness, as inconstant,
stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a
disintegration, an emptiness, not-self.
“He turns his mind away from those phenomena, and having done so,
inclines his mind to the property of deathlessness: ‘This is peace, this is
exquisite—the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all
acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.’
“Staying right there, he reaches the ending of the fermentations. Or, if
not, then—through this very Dhamma-passion, this Dhamma-delight, and
from the total wasting away of the first five fetters [self-identity views,
grasping at habits & practices, uncertainty, sensual passion, and
irritation]—he is due to be reborn [in the Pure Abodes], there to be totally
unbound, never again to return from that world….
“[Similarly with the second, third, and fourth jhana [§22].]” — AN 9:36
A couple of points in this passage need to be explained. First: When the
Buddha talks about the ending of fermentation, he’s talking about awakening.
The fermentations are the defilements that come bubbling up in the mind.
Second—with regard to the second stage where the Buddha says to perceive
the aggregates in the jh›na as inconstant, stressful, etc.—there are other passages
in the Canon that expand on this point. In these passages the Buddha
recommends that you apply three questions derived from the original question
that he said was the basis of discernment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my
long-term welfare and happiness?” At this point in the practice, he recommends
looking more closely at the idea of long-term happiness. Focus on the word
“long-term.” You know that jhana is a long-term happiness, but now you realize
that long-term is no longer good enough. It’s inconstant.
The Pali term here, anicca, is sometimes translated as “impermanent,” but
that’s not what it really means. Its opposite, nicca, describes something that’s
done constantly and reliably. You can depend on it. But if something is anicca, it’s
unreliable. It wavers. If you try to base your happiness on it, you have to keep
tensing up around it—like trying to find some rest while sitting on a chair with
wobbly, uneven legs.
So when you see that even the long-term happiness of jhana is inconstant—
unreliable and wavering—you realize that it’s not really all that pleasant. Even in
what pleasure it does offer, there is stress. And because there’s stress, why would
you want to claim it as yours?
This line of thinking corresponds to the three questions that the Buddha has
you ask at this stage in the practice [§19]. The first is, “Is this constant?” And the 47
answer is No. That leads to the next question: “If it’s inconstant, is it pleasant?”
Again the answer is No. That leads to the third question: “If something is
inconstant and stressful, is it fitting to say that ‘This is me, this is myself, this is
what I am?’” In other words, “Is it skillful to lay claim to this?” And the answer
again is No.
Now, notice that the Buddha is not asking you to come to the conclusion that
there is no self. He’s simply asking you to see if this way of creating a sense of
self is skillful. His method of analysis, when it’s consistently applied to all of the
aggregates, gives rise to a sense of disenchantment and dispassion for any
possible type of clinging. But notice: You’re not doing this out of pessimism.
You’re doing this for the sake of your own true happiness, but now it’s better
than long-term, longer than long-term. You want something totally timeless and
reliable [§20].
As that passage just now indicated, sometimes this series of questions leads to
full awakening, but sometimes it doesn’t. It leads instead to the state of non-return. Now, the level of awakening at non-return is not bad. A group of people
once came to see my teacher, Ajaan Fuang. They had been studying Buddhist
philosophy and had heard that he was a good teacher, but they didn’t know
what he taught. So they came and asked him to teach them. He said, “OK, close
your eyes and focus on your breath.” And they said, “No, no, no, we can’t do
that.” He asked, “Why?” And they said, “If we focus on the breath, we’ll get
stuck on jhana and then we’ll be reborn as brahm›s.” And Ajaan Fuang
responded, “What’s wrong with being reborn as a brahm›? Even non-returners
are born as brahm›s. And being reborn as a brahm› is better than being reborn
as a dog.”
In other words, if you haven’t attained jhana, it’s hard to let go of sensual
passions. And people stuck on sensual passions—even if they’ve studied
Buddhist philosophy—can easily be reborn as dogs. So the dangers of jhana and
non-return are much slighter than the dangers of not reaching those
attainments.
Still, if possible, the Buddha does encourage you to try to go beyond the level
of non-return and gain full awakening. This is where he brings in another
teaching, another perception. In Pali, the phrase is, “Sabbe dhamm› anatt›,” which
means, “All phenomena are not-self [§33].” This applies both to fabricated
phenomena and unfabricated phenomena. And it’s important to note here that
this perception is part of the path, not the goal. In other words, it’s not the
conclusion you come to when you arrive at awakening; it’s a perception you use
to get beyond your last attachments.
As the above passage states, what keeps a non-returner from gaining total
awakening is a type of passion and delight: passion for the deathless and delight
in the deathless. “Passion-and-delight” is another term for clinging. Even when
the mind lets go of its clinging and passion for the aggregates, there still is
something it may cling to: the experience of the deathless that follows after
letting go of the aggregates. The mind can regard its experience of the deathless
as a phenomenon, as an object of the mind. Where there is an object, there is a
subject—the knowing self, the sense of “I am” [§34]—and this provides a 48
foothold for passion and delight to arise: You instinctively want to control
whatever you like, and so you try to control the experience of the deathless,
even though the idea of “control” here is superfluous—the deathless isn’t going
to change on you—and counterproductive: The self created around this desire
for control actually gets in the way of total freedom. To counter this tendency
toward control, the Buddha here has you apply the perception that all
phenomena are not-self, even to the experience of the deathless. This is what
gets rid of the “I” in “I am.”
There’s another passage relevant to this point where the Buddha says that
when you see all phenomena arising and passing away—and this includes
everything, including the path and your clinging to the deathless—when you
watch everything arising, arising, arising, all the time, the idea of non-existence
doesn’t occur to the mind. When you see these things passing away, passing
away, passing away, the idea of existence doesn’t occur to the mind. At that
point, the ideas of existence and non-existence are irrelevant to your experience.
All you see is stress arising, stress passing away [§35].
This has several ramifications. If ideas of existence and non-existence don’t
occur to you, then the question of whether the self exists or doesn’t exist
wouldn’t occur to you, either. This gets rid of the “am” in “I am.” This also does
away with your fear of going out of existence if things are let go, because the
mind isn’t thinking in those terms.
At the same time, you’re reaching the higher stage of transcendent right
view, with a higher and more refined level of duty. As you remember with the
four noble truths, each of the truths has a duty, but in this case—when you see
everything arising and passing away simply as stress—all the duties are reduced
to one: You comprehend things to the point of dispassion. This means that you
let go, let go, let go even of concentration, even of discernment, even of the act
of clinging to the deathless. In the words of Ajaan Mun, all four noble truths are
turned into one. They all carry the same duty, which is to let go of everything.
This allows the mind to experience nibbana not as a phenomenon, but as a
total experience. At this point, you’ve found total happiness, which no longer
needs any protection, no longer needs to be maintained. There’s no longer any
issue of control or non-control. There’s no need for the strategy of self to create
this happiness, and no need for a sense of self to consume or experience it.
Where you don’t draw a line to define self, there’s no line to define not-self.
Where there’s no clinging, there’s no need for the strategy of not-self. So
strategies of self or not-self are all put aside. Even the strategy of dispassion itself
gets put aside. At this point, the mind no longer has need for any strategies at all
because it has found a happiness that’s truly solid. It’s not a phenomenon, it’s a
happiness. The Buddha calls it a special form of consciousness that doesn’t need
to be experienced through the six senses, or what he calls “the all” [§36]. It’s
directly experienced as total freedom. And at the moment of awakening, there’s
no experience of the six senses.
However, after the moment of awakening, when the mind returns to the
experience of the senses, this sense of freedom stays. The Canon illustrates this
with an image—not a pretty image, but very memorable. The image is this: 49
Suppose there’s a dead cow. You take a knife and remove the skin, cutting all of
the tendons and tissues that connect the skin to the cow. Then you put the skin
back on. The question is: Is the skin still attached to the cow as it was before?
And the answer is No. Even though it’s right next to the cow, it’s no longer
attached. In the same way, the practice of discernment is like a knife. It cuts
through all of the attachments between the senses and their objects [§37-38].
Once the attachments are gone, then even if you put the knife away, you cannot
connect things in the way they were before. The eye still sees forms, the ear
hears sounds, but there’s a sense that these things are no longer joined [§39].
As I said, the image isn’t pretty, but it conveys the point that once total
freedom is found, it’s never lost.
One final point. As we said in one of the earlier talks, you are limited by what
you are obsessed with. You define yourself by your obsessions and attachments,
and that sort of definition places limitations on you. When there are no longer
any attachments or obsessions, you are no longer defined [§40-43]. And because
you are no longer defined, you can’t be described as existing, not existing,
neither, or both. In other words, ideas of the existence of the self and the
nonexistence of the self no longer apply. As for perceptions of self and not-self, those
are like the knife that has been used to cut things through but now has been put
aside.
I personally have not Experienced this “blip” of Consciousness as it is described, but I did want to put it into some more foundational context. As I began to investigate the Aggregates, it became clear the dynamics of consciousness as described are always connected with sense media. This may allude to how this final experience plays out in “Unbinding” of “Letting Go”.
I will let you know when I get there though.
Peace
Loren
Right !!! – I copy-pasted the 5 pages into a document, that I will give a thorough read the next couple of days … 🙂 Right now my mind is only clear enough to glance through.
This is also interesting material:
Stephan: How did you discover the further stage, which you call the experience of no-self?
Bernadette: That occurred unexpectedly some 25 years after the transforming process. The divine center – the coin, or “true self” – suddenly disappeared, and without center or circumference there is no self, and no divine. Our subjective life of experience is over – the passage is finished. I had never heard of such a possibility or happening. Obviously there is far more to the elusive experience we call self than just the ego. The paradox of our passage is that we really do not know what self or consciousness is, so long as we are living it, or are it. The true nature of self can only be fully disclosed when it is gone, when there is no self.
One outcome, then, of the no-self experience is the disclosure of the true nature of self or consciousness. As it turns out, self is the entire system of consciousness, from the unconscious to God-consciousness, the entire dimension of human knowledge and feeling-experience. Because the terms “self” and “consciousness” express the same experiences (nothing can be said of one that cannot be said of the other), they are only definable in the terms of “experience”. Every other definition is conjecture and speculation. No-self, then, means no-consciousness. If this is shocking to some people, it is only because they do not know the true nature of consciousness. Sometimes we get so caught up in the content of consciousness, we forget that consciousness is also a somatic function of the physical body, and, like every such function, it is not eternal. Perhaps we would do better searching for the divine in our bodies than amid the content and experience of consciousness.
Yes!! That was awesome. What a great description. This seems to confirm my observation that most references to conscioussness by the Buddha are in regards to the relationship between awareness and the temporal senses. Thank you for this wonderful input Bert!!
Can I just like this discussion? 🙂 Heart = warmed.
Hello Entering the Stream. You have a very nice blog. You seem to be writing from the heart. Well done! 🙂 I would like to kindly thank you for following my blog. That is very kind of you. It is my mission to serve humanity through the written word. I write inspirational poetry and short stories every Thursday to start this dream, so please feel free to visit if you feel like inspiration. Take care and may the Light of Love perpetually shine in your heart, my friend ♥