Transforming delusion into wisdom

Another thing that I think is worth clarifying about my position here—and is relevant to the no-self discussion upthread—is that every assertion that I've made (and probably will continue to make for a very long time) is practice-true, not necessarily true-true. I have no position on the nature of self or on emptiness. All I can possibly assert is the phenomenological truth of the self—the way my mind, whatever the fuck that is, operates within the made-up rules that define the objects of my life. So in a world of emptiness and no-self, it might be totally silly and beside-the-point to talk at such length about such apparently black and white terms like skillful and unskillful, wholesome behaviors and unwholesome behaviors. But in terms of the direction of my practice it is very very clear to me that such distinctions are terribly important. They might only be provisionally important, but I am right now nothing if not a provisional being. That's also why, unsurprisingly, my answer to the OP question would lie somewhere in between Methods 1 and 2, as crass and unsubtle as it might seem.

I can dig that, and I won't gainsay it for others. But for me—we don't have to talk about foibles. I know very intimately the feeling of compulsive behavior, followed immediately by the toxic hangover of dukkha. I know for myself, on that basic intuitive level we talk about, the sensation of unsatisfactoriness and stress, writ both large and small. Theres the stuff you sit with—pain, grief, boredom, torpor, you name it, negative sensations that arise and cease—and then there's the stuff you fight like a motherfucker: dukkha.

Lately I've been wondering if there is any skill more important to my happiness than learning how to deal with each brand new moment with open intimacy. Now ... and ... now ... and, again ... now. What else is there to do, really?

I can, but the short version is that dukkha isn't a sensation in/from the world, it's a quality of our interaction with it.

I can, but the short version is that dukkha isn't a sensation in/from the world, it's a quality of our interaction with it.

-cruxdestruct

Love your input on this topic Zach. On this particular point though I think that it is the fighting that leads to dukkha. I may be missing your meaning a bit, but what I hear and I'll respond to is this:

From my experience, the worst kinds of suffering - whether daily inner turmoil or the worst of "dark night" periods, arises from resistance. Every time a sequence of feelings or emotions arises and you say "no, I will not accept that" you are resisting. And resistance makes the most awful, painful suffering you can imagine.

It takes a lot of practice and a good bit of grace, too, imho, to be able to be open, accepting and embracing of absolutely everything. Every shit, every corpse, every demon, every lust or "sin" or "bad thought" or hateful feeling is part of us, is part of everything, and ultimately is included with equanimity. I think one of the hardest things to grok is that radical acceptance of the shit of the universe does not mean that genocide is okay, that hurting people is okay, that destructive self-harm is okay, and so on. It doesn't mean you become a smiling zombie walking past injustice without a care. You care deeply. But you understand that all of "that" is not something "else" apart from the good stuff, apart from you. Everything has buddha nature, so to speak, if that metaphor works for you. That includes the dog shit on the sidewalk and mean, ugly people, too, not just pretty sunsets and flowers and kindness.

We work so hard to put the shit in one box and the good stuff in another box. There are no boxes.

Thoughts?

I can, but the short version is that dukkha isn't a sensation in/from the world, it's a quality of our interaction with it.

-cruxdestruct

The issues raised in this thread are very, very important, very subtle. My only contribution at this point is to say that, in my experience, while aversion and clinging are indeed experiences like any other, they are also different in an important respect: they arise as a response to experiences within experience.

So yes, once they've arisen, they are "just more experiences". If one then applies a standard that says "oh no, that shouldn't be happening" then where does that lead but in a futile circle (rejecting rejection? lol!)?

But that's not all that's true about them in my experience. The very fact that aversion and clinging to aversion and clinging rotates in a whirling circle of dukha is itself the point. Rewind to the initial arising of aversion, for example. In initially arising, aversion (in my experience) is always a reaction to other experiences which carries the message "this should not be happening". In higher phenomenological resolution, aversion arises as a current time rejection of current time experience, and is itself a "distortion" of what is happening, even if once it arises, it too is part of "what's happening" and thus aversion to the aversion is simply pointless.

The default modes of dealing with disturbances (aversion, clinging) seem to be to either express/accept them (in word, deed, or by proliferating thoughts internally) or suppress/reject them (internally via denial). Good practice is predicated in my experience on finding a third option, one valid mode of which seems to be your #2 above Jackson.

I find that by practicing well as defined in the preceding paragraph, experience becomes more streamlined and less "psychological"-- by which I mean, thoughts and feelings folding back on themselves internally generating a sense of a "layered" self with hidden corners and strange dimensions-- and the "inner" thoughts and feelings become more equalized with "outer" perceptions (in terms of their prominence in experience), like a teeter totter shifting into a more even balance. They (the internal stuff) also become more translucent and vibrant and flexible, and less solid and chunky and rigid.

Instead of living in thoughts and feelings, and investigating layers of thoughts and feelings with reflective thoughts and feelings, "I" become more simple and direct. Less hidden corners, more authenticity, more directness about "my" reactions, less layers, and generally more immediacy and a greater and steadier appreciation for body, vitality, breath, and environment-- including other sentients around me-- as concern for "my" thoughts and feelings lessens.

But this streamlining process only makes it more clear as I proceed that reactivity-- aversion and clinging-- is purely resistance-to-experience. So the practice of opening to my experience and letting everything be naturally leads to moments of cessation of resistance, which means in that moment cessation of clinging and aversion and therefore of anything I could ever call suffering. This cessation is profound, and reveals what was always there, over which "my" reactions were being superimposed.

Is this position really that controversial? If so, why?

Do you guys think this position is incompatible with transmutation and self-liberation methods? If so, why?

It's interesting to frame this issue in terms of sutra, tantra and dzogchen, in the ways these modes approach "defilements" (the poisons) in terms of eradicating, transforming, and self-liberating (these poisons) respectively. I like the way you set this up, Jackson!

I don't know if this is a failure on my part or just the way I am and what I have to work with -- but, in practice, once the vocabulary and choices and methods and techniques start piling on, I can't keep up, I lose interest and I simplify.

Practice is to get as good as possible at looking at things brand new right now with bare non-identified attention to sensations. Do that, again and again, and the choices of how to deal with things will get clearer and clearer while also constantly changing.

Of course, with that said, my urge now is to write and write and write about details of methods and techniques. But I won't -- this time.

Instead of living in thoughts and feelings, and investigating layers of thoughts and feelings with reflective thoughts and feelings, "I" become more simple and direct. Less hidden corners, more authenticity, more directness about "my" reactions, less layers, and generally more immediacy and a greater and steadier appreciation for body, vitality, breath, and environment-- including other sentients around me-- as concern for "my" thoughts and feelings lessens.
But this streamlining process only makes it more clear as I proceed that reactivity-- aversion and clinging-- is purely resistance-to-experience. So the practice of opening to my experience and letting everything be naturally leads to moments of cessation of resistance, which means in that moment cessation of clinging and aversion and therefore of anything I could ever call suffering. This cessation is profound, and reveals what was always there, over which "my" reactions were being superimposed.
Is this position really that controversial? If so, why?
Do you guys think this position is incompatible with transmutation and self-liberation methods? If so, why?



-jake

This doesn't seem controversial to me. But it does seem to strike at a more subtle level of experience than everyone has. That is, depending on ones experience with practice, one might be dealing with a lot of fairly chunky layered stuff, and peeling away the outer layers of the onion, as it were. So taking as an example a friend who has been meditating only a few months, when she feels overwhelmed by grief about something, to her that experience is at a very surface level - grief about a specific incident or regret, for example. For her, to focus on allowing that grief to simply flow and be, not trying to analyze the reasons for it or pick it apart in any way, may be all she is currently capable of. It is trying to release resistance at a macro level. It might help her to try to talk about making the effort of having equanimity, saying something like "This grief is also okay" or "I include this grief".

When someone has meditated for longer, and sees the more micro-sequences of say, grief, arising as streams of physical sensations, mental imagery, thought responses and so on, then one can "allow" at a different level, noticing how the thing called "grief" is composed of these streams and pulses that arise and pass away by themselves and how clinging or aversion is likewise a pulse of mental activity that arises and passes away. To point this out to the less experienced meditator in the previous paragraph wouldn't make any sense to them.

I think the specific approach that helps a person's practice most depends on their level of experience and the thing(s) they can "see" at that time.

Does that make sense, or do I miss your point?

[1] Isn't the most obvious problem with [...] ending self-referencing the
fact that it clearly can't be done, that it is just a fantasy of the
same self that doesn't want itself to be referenced?

[2] Practice is to get as good as possible at looking at things brand new right now with bare non-identified attention to sensations. Do that, again and again, and the choices of how to deal with things will get clearer and clearer while also constantly changing.




-michaelmonson

Mike, a) what is "self-referencing" to you? I ask because it's a broad descriptive term that could refer to a range of experiences some of which I would categorize as suffering and some not. What's the difference between self-referencing and the self that's "referenced"? What's the connection (if any) between what you call self-referencing, self, and suffering?

The way I read the terms depends on the definition of "self". I'm interested in how you define these terms experientially so that I can understand quote one above properly.

and b) How do quotes number one and two relate to each other? If suffering, self-referencing or self (whether these are synonymous, related, or unrelated to each other) are arising in one moment, and then in the very next moment you practice bare attention to sensations, what happens to the suffering, self-referencing or self? In other words, quote one seems (depending entirely on what you mean by self-referencing as per my clarifying questions) very fixed and conceptual. It seems like a belief, not an experience. If so, upon what is it based? If you are claiming that you actually know that ending self-referencing is impossible, then it seems even more important that you clarify what you mean by the term, so that hopefully the basis for believing or knowing it is impossible to end it will become clear to me.

And although I addressed these questions specifically to Mike, guys, feel free to chime in with your thoughts. Before anyone starts to worry, suffice it to say I'm open minded on all of this, and am trying to stick to experiential knowledge and insight, and stay away from contention.

Note-- I edited the first quote to remover the reference to actualism, as I'm not sure what you mean by actualism/AF Mike, and think it's better to stick to phenomenological descriptions of our own experience and be careful about how we reference practices which we don't engage ourselves as talking about something I don't know in experience seems to lead to a lot of dharma drama, know what I mean? It's too easy to get an impression of something from a distance and fixate on one's interpretations, becoming more entrenched in one's certainty in regards to... a topic one has after all but glimpsed from a distance.

It's similar to how, coming up in a Vajrayana context, I became biased against Theravada (hinayana!) without even knowing what it was on its own terms, or like how some strict theravadins will go on and on about how misguided the buddhanature teachings are, when they haven't identified and examined the experience in question in a practical way. The more I practice these various approaches, the more I come to a similar conclusion as you do in quote two: essential practice, which leads to insight, is very simple and direct attention to what's happening within and around me Right. Now.

1 -- I confess that this wasn't and won't be very thought out. It was just an impulsive discussion point that I don't have any stake in defending, you know? Anyway, I think some of the actual freedom pracitioners believe they are able to no longer act in the world as a separate self. I don't understand it and I'm not very interested in it. It seems impossible to me because our small, temporary self is based upon this body and brain and those things can't be gotten away from until we die. And, I think that small self loves the idea of ending it's mischief once and for all and it is that same small self that looks around and says to itself and everyone else -- "look ma, I'm not here anymore!"

Still, I don't feel any drama about the whole AF thing. I think I'm one of the few people here who think it is mostly a simple and effective practice to be happy. I'm just not interested in it for myself.

So number one above wasn't fixed, it was just a throwaway thought okay?

@ Ona--
hey, just saw your post! Okay, I like your examples and think they make sense. But once a practitioner's default mode is to see the flickering images, sensation patterns, and reactivity which constitute "grief" (for ex), and to see that within that conglomerate there is no "experiencer" but only experiences which arise and dissolve, what happens to the reactivity? See what I mean? Isn't there a cessation of resistance which occurs at a deeper level when the formation is seen-through?

In other words, the layers (of thoughts and feelings) are always layers of resistance (or else, why the layers? why not just think and feel what I think and feel right now?-- right?)

While clear seeing reveals the impermanent, causal, and empty-of-self nature of the formation (grief, anger, etc), my experience is that there is a second element which is complete relaxation of the tension in experience that IS resistance and thus suffering. The resistance is at the heart of formations like anger and despair and fear. Sans resistance, no reactive emotion.

When the clear seeing opens things up enough, relaxing layer after layer of resistance till we come to the core, fresh reactivity that is actually presencing here-and-now (beneath the layers of avoidance/control), then we can relax that primal tension. This results in (at least for an instant) the complete, unequivocal, cessation of suffering. It's the latter point which I thought might be controversial, since it seems to imply the possibility of a more lasting freedom from suffering, as well as an explanation for why people who are more deeply practiced/awake report "less" suffering now than when they were less awake-- because there is less resistance happening in experience.

So, no resistance = no suffering. So, discovering the causes and conditions of resistance leads to general reduction of suffering, greater authenticity, more simplicity and flexibility as well as more confidence and directness, and seems to lead in the direction of... the end of suffering. So is that actually controversial?

1 -- I confess that this wasn't and won't be very thought out. It was just an impulsive discussion point that I don't have any stake in defending, you know? Anyway, I think some of the actual freedom pracitioners believe they are able to no longer act in the world as a separate self. I don't understand it and I'm not very interested in it. It seems impossible to me because our small, temporary self is based upon this body and brain and those things can't be gotten away from until we die. And, I think that small self loves the idea of ending it's mischief once and for all and it is that same small self that looks around and says to itself and everyone else -- "look ma, I'm not here anymore!"
Still, I don't feel any drama about the whole AF thing. I think I'm one of the few people here who think it is mostly a simple and effective practice to be happy. I'm just not interested in it for myself.
So number one above wasn't fixed, it was just a throwaway thought okay?




-michaelmonson

Nice, thanks for the clarification! By the way, I've incorporated some of the practice elements of actualism in my path and find them interesting in many ways and quite related to dharma practice. I think what you are talking about in terms of the ego appropriating enlightenment is an important point.

@ Ona--
hey, just saw your post! Okay, I like your examples and think they make sense. But once a practitioner's default mode is to see the flickering images, sensation patterns, and reactivity which constitute "grief" (for ex), and to see that within that conglomerate there is no "experiencer" but only experiences which arise and dissolve, what happens to the reactivity? See what I mean? Isn't there a cessation of resistance which occurs at a deeper level when the formation is seen-through?
In other words, the layers (of thoughts and feelings) are always layers of resistance (or else, why the layers? why not just think and feel what I think and feel right now?-- right?) ...

This results in (at least for an instant) the complete, unequivocal, cessation of suffering. It's the latter point which I thought might be controversial, since it seems to imply the possibility of a more lasting freedom from suffering, as well as an explanation for why people who are more deeply practiced/awake report "less" suffering now than when they were less awake-- because there is less resistance happening in experience.
So, no resistance = no suffering. So, discovering the causes and conditions of resistance leads to general reduction of suffering, greater authenticity, more simplicity and flexibility as well as more confidence and directness, and seems to lead in the direction of... the end of suffering. So is that actually controversial?


-jake

It doesn't seem controversial to me, though perhaps I'm overlooking some really touchy dogmatic point from one tradition or another that would make it so. It does seem to be true to me that no resistance means no suffering. It seems to be that less resistance also produces less suffering, but not nearly to the degree that no resistance produces no suffering.

Is it commonly thought (in certain traditions for example) that this is not true?

In what way might it be controversial (except in that if one has not experienced it, at least to some degree, it does not seem possible it can be true)?

It seemed to me the possibility of completely outgrowing suffering, via dropping the causal factor (resistance) in a decisive way was considered controversial, but I must have been mistaken! I guess the issue is touchy because of the related question of what/whether anything (besides an illusion) must be given up in order to or along with accomplishing this.

This actually relates to you O.P. Jackson, in my tangential way. I find the question of a comparative phenomenology of the methods of eradicating, transforming and self-liberating quite interesting. For instance, are these three methods, or three "views" or conceptual orientations to a single method-- bare attention to sensations? Or are they three different methods leading to different results, as the standard Tibetan line has it?

Or perhaps it's more true to say that view, in this sense (of an interpretive context attributed to practice, such as "transformation" or "eradication" or "self-liberation") is itself a method just as the corresponding meditation techniques are? I don't know. I'm probably just spinning in my own befuddlement!

You may be very right. I am not well versed in the details of various dogmas. Perhaps we need to back up and identify "kinds of suffering" to explore more deeply. I might be overlooking some.

If I think about the kind of emotional suffering that comes from resistance you could think of examples ranging from burning your hand or breaking your leg to making a social blunder or mistake, or hurting someone's feelings as instances where typically we suffer. But I would not say pain and suffering are the same. But if you add to it layers self criticism, shame, or even just hating the pain, loathing it, wishing it would stop, then you are suffering. Suffering as that quality of resistance and aversion and sometimes fear in it, no?

In the case of making a mistake (social blunder, not living up to expectations, etc) again there is a) what you did and b) your self-loathing, fear, embarrassment, shame, etc layered on top. a) does not have suffering. b) does. no?

Thoughts?

But I would not say pain and suffering are the same. But if you add to it layers self criticism, shame, or even just hating the pain, loathing it, wishing it would stop, then you are suffering. Suffering as that quality of resistance and aversion and sometimes fear in it, no?
In the case of making a mistake (social blunder, not living up to expectations, etc) again there is a) what you did and b) your self-loathing, fear, embarrassment, shame, etc layered on top. a) does not have suffering. b) does. no?
Thoughts?




-ona

quite-- even what seems to be simply physical pain can reveal a very subtle element of resistance/suffering. But yes, I absolutely agree with what you say above.