Mahasi and Chah

As I understand Richards experience post AF:

1) At some point he started experiencing irritating vibrations which lasted a couple of years or so.
(the dopamine issue: As far as I can determine from his site there was never any clinical evidence that this was the cause - it was just a suggestion from a friend and in any event, western medicine was no real help and eventually they went away on their own)

2) So the vibrations tapered off and then at some point he becomes aware of a sense of underlying completeness, unity, purity, perfection.

3) He describes his experience often in terms like 'I am this universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood body'.

4) He has also said that now days when he is with someone his attention and thoughts are focused on them and he does not experience lots of random thoughts. (I don't have the exact quote but I believe what I have written - though not his exact words - conveys the essence of what he is saying).

Bernadette Roberts:
She describes a period - the most intense part ~ 4 months that she calls 'the passage' but lasted several years.

At a certain point through this she had an experience "a smile emerges, and out of nothingness arises the greatest of great realities, more real than anything that can be seen or known - yet, explicable only in such terms. The smile itself, "that" which smiled, and that at which it smiled were identical. This was the great reality. The relative mind cannot hold, grasp, convey, see, or even believe, that which has revealed itself. ...The Eye - which is not of the mind - alone sees and knows itself as all that exists; it is Oneness, and it is itself all that remains when there is no self." (The Experience of No Self pg.81-82)

"Where before, thought [was] ever colored with personal feelings and biases - now thought arises spontaneously off the top of the head, and what is more, it arises in the now-moment which is concerned with the immediate present, making it invariably practical." (The Experience of No Self pg.86)

And for the 'there are no emotions or feelings experienced in AF' folks: "a sure sign that the self is gone is the absence of these affective symptoms [feelings]. ...We're afraid that without feelings we will be inhuman, cold, insensitive, robot like creatures, so detached from this world that we might as well be dead. Needless to say, there is no truth in this view at all...Nevertheless, to explain what life is like without this system is not easy because it must be lived to be understood, and any description of it only gives rise to an unending chain of philosophical arguments [Bernadette !!!]. All that need be said here is that it is a dynamic, intense state of caring; caring for whatever arises in the now-moment." (The Experience of No Self pg.189)

"Conversely, the completely consistent and completely at ease nature of that unconditional phenomena 'behind the scenes' seems like the only reality in the universe worth merging with. Given the options of the fleeting conditions or the incomparable peace, it's just no contest. And then, it's like over time, even that deepest kind of inclination to polarities just looses it's grip and the whole works, conditional and unconditional, has no hold any more."

That's better than any summary I could come up with so that's it for me. Thanks Nathan. And thanks Richard, Bernadette, Kenneth and everybody else for making this possible.
-Chuck

"I have a few questions to you Chuck: are you still able to 'know/see' this 'deathless'? A thought: I once asked you if you felt emotion, and you wrote (something along the lines of) emotion is felt as physical stuff happening in the body; in answer to the same question, Tarin answers he feels no emotion whatsoever. Could you please address this apparent difference at some point in your post?"

Hi Bruno,
Sorry, I didn't get to some of your questions. Am I still able to 'know/see' this 'deathless'? Nathan in his post #43 sums up my experience quite well though I feel he is more deeply aware of this than I. Obviously, I relate to many of the qualities that Richard describes.

I can't settle with respect to Tarin. I don't know what his experience is. With reference to Richard: when he speaks of the irritating vibrations - that is how the underlying energy that others identify with as emotions now appear to me and have since the time of 4th path. I originally described this to Tarin as a 'somatic charge'. He added his own experience onto this term when he insisted that it had an affective quality and no doubt for him it did. But for me that is completely absent. Tarin says, I believe, that he does not experience irritating vibrations so in this sense he has not - nor does now - experience a somatic charge - as I used the term. Richard did for several years. That is a longer description of why I don't know what Tarins experience is.

Bruno (cont)
Contractive states tend to bring up the vibrations and I associate them with fear - a kind of tightening around my experience. To anticipate your next question - no, I don't feel fear - I feel vibrations. This is why I think that so many going through this experience from many traditions seek out the wilderness and solitude to avoid these things. All I have to do is head outside for a park say and they are gone instantly. I hear the Tibetans used to come out of their caves once a month to raise a ruckus in the local village so they could have something to work with for a while.
Which gets me into the value of working with the contractive energies that come up - this is how we grow, this is how we let go of our fear - and it is fear that keeps us small.
The vibrations are much less now than before. Working with them is much easier. In working with them is a deep sense of healing. I know it is the right thing for me to be doing.

Kenneths direct mode seems to address this very issue and seems accessible to people coming from the Mahasi tradition where as I have had great difficulty explaining my own practices - because I don't understand that tradition well. The rigidity I have encountered with AF folks and their seeming resistance to investigating their experience as well as the long pretty nasty ways that Richard relates to people he doesn't agree with say to me: need to work on your fear, need to work in your body. I think everyone figures this out in their own time and in their own way. This process has a way of it's own.

Last year when Tarin, Daniel, Constance, Trent, myself and others got together we had a great time and explored many things. Direct contact and interaction is the way to explore this stuff. Forums are probably not! So, we will see - good suggestion.

Some additional footnotes:

In my own understanding of the 'stations of consciousness' available to those who have fully awakened by means of discernment I've equated the PCE of the AF mode with the third emancipation of eight listed here:
www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.15.0.than.html

Eight Emancipations

"Ananda, there are these eight emancipations. Which eight?

"Possessed of form, one sees forms. This is the first emancipation.

"Not percipient of form internally, one sees forms externally. This is the second emancipation.

"One is intent only on the beautiful. This is the third emancipation.

There are five more awareness emancipations listed followed by the statement that mastery of the eight (in a manner very reminiscent of the Vism. approach to mastery of the eight jhana) in conjunction with the completion of the insight process (discernment-release) results in the most sublime available manner of emancipation.

"With the complete transcending of perceptions of [physical] form, with the disappearance of perceptions of resistance, and not heeding perceptions of diversity, [perceiving,] 'Infinite space,' one enters and remains in the dimension of the infinitude of space. This is the fourth emancipation.

"With the complete transcending of the dimension of the infinitude of space, [perceiving,] 'Infinite consciousness,' one enters and remains in the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness. This is the fifth emancipation.

"With the complete transcending of the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, [perceiving,] 'There is nothing,' one enters and remains in the dimension of nothingness. This is the sixth emancipation.
cont. ->

"With the complete transcending of the dimension of nothingness, one enters and remains in the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception. This is the seventh emancipation.

"With the complete transcending of the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, one enters and remains in the cessation of perception and feeling. This is the eighth emancipation.

"Now, when a monk attains these eight emancipations in forward order, in reverse order, in forward and reverse order, when he attains them and emerges from them wherever he wants, however he wants, and for as long as he wants, when through the ending of the mental fermentations he enters and remains in the fermentation-free awareness-release and discernment-release, having directly known it and realized it in the here and now, he is said to be a monk released in both ways. And as for another release in both ways, higher or more sublime than this, there is none."

Cont.->

In my ongoing private discussions with Tarin he has consistently restated his incapacity for and disinterest in revisiting jhana to any degree and his ongoing affinity for only the maintenance of the PCE. Similarly he recently mentioned that he is neither interested nor does he understand the nature of these eight emancipations nor have any interest in their place in the natural strata of consciousness. I find the disinterest from the AF standpoint understandable but the complete incapacity for jhana somewhat unusual. Those who prefer the PCE do appear to be somewhat overly concerned with persuading anyone who will give ear of the superiority of the PCE which seems somehow out of step with the nature of it otherwise but then I suppose there isn't much else they can sincerely take much interest in from that perspective. I have no quarrel with the PCE or with AF, particularly in the case of those like Tarin, Trent and Daniel who are confident that they have arrived at the full emancipation by way of discernment which, I think there is a wide consensus, here and elsewhere, to be of the paramount concern for those who have yet to complete that process. As I see it, whatever kind or kinds of conditions or absence of conditions anyone prefers to concern themselves with beyond that are simply a question of either particular circumstances and or individual preferences.

Everything that has been said about the PCE appears to me to be equatable to the third emancipation listed above. As I understand this, it is simply the absence of identification with conditions in all five aggregates and the maintenance of the awareness of the emptiness of all forms both internally and externally. This emancipation, 'intent on the beautiful', as I see it, is simply the ongoing maintenance of a kind of form jhana, likely an extension or expansion of the fourth jhana.
Cont. ->

However based on the rhetoric so far I think AF advocates are probably going to disagree about this analysis.

As I understand the PCE 'mindset', if you will, there is at the least an ongoing subtle awareness of the unconditioned view or in other words the classical buddhist 'right view' which proceeds from the affinity for the unconditioned view of conditions which, after the emancipation by discernment (completion of the vipassana process), is ever-present. The emancipation by discernment in itself does not typically seem to result in direct prolonged exposure to the unconditioned as it appears in the complete absence of any and all arising conditions. In the discernment emancipation, which is the 'end of the ride' in terms of conditional identifications, the unconditional or cessation/nibbana usually seems to remain 'veiled by conditions' except for those for whom there has been a direct exposure via a prolonged period in the cessation of feeling and perception.

What, in my thinking, removes that veil entirely for either a sufficient moment to expose it or for some longer interval is further penetration of the strata of consciousness by means of deep absorption in the subsequent and increasingly subtle five awareness emancipations. The veil is only completely removed by abiding absorbed in the 'cessation of perception and feeling' which I have elsewhere referred to as cessation/nibbana. Classical Theravada theory defines this absorption in the cessation of feeling and perception variously as nibbana here and now and/or parinibbana. Parinibbana is more commonly taken to mean nibbana following death of an arahat but it also refers to nibbana in the context of an arahat's absorption in the cessation of feeling and perception.
Cont. ->

The difficulty that may arise from such a complete unveiling earlier on in the course of the vipassana process is the potential for a craving for or a clinging to abiding in that unconditional absorption. This was the kind of situation I found myself in for a lengthly period of time (probably about 25 years) until eventually that inclination was increasingly further attenuated and neutralized to the point where there was no longer any preference or inclination to cling to either conditions or to the unconditioned.

It may or may not be that the vibrations and so forth that Chuck and others describe are related to this kind of ongoing attenuation and or integration or perhaps not. In my case I've encountered a lot of odd phenomena, some of it odd enough that vibrations and perceptual shifts have taken up less of my attention than these otherwise may have done. I don't particularly concern myself with any attempts to modify the inflows of sense impressions, feelings or thoughts but rather have worked at remaining equanimous in my responses to the range of experience. In a sense this is similar to Chah's approach but in another way, for me, this has been more akin to some of the methodology of the iddhi padda or the paths to power which involves such techniques as noting the pleasant in the unpleasant, the unpleasant in the pleasant and so on. The iddhi padda methods were a part of my approach before ever turning to any study of traditional buddhist theories and techniques but which again found it's correlates in the sutta literature. Most everything in my yogi toolkit has correlates in the suttas but the extent to which the moment to moment work correlates to Mahasi methods and interpretations or Chah methods and interpretations hasn't been something I have given much attention.
Cont.->

I've found with most of the vipassana techniques that I've already been inclined to this sort of analysis by default and have been seeing all conditions in terms of the 3Cs for so long that concern about specific differences in techniques is unnecessary and redundant.

Again, in terms of the PCE or AF, it is understandable to me how compelled or committed people may be to maintaining that state of mind. The emancipation that the Buddha describes above as 'intent on the beautiful' and which AFers describe in terms of 'naivete and wonder' certainly is both consistently pleasant and free of the arising and passing of the wider ranges of pleasant and unpleasant affective feelings. In the complete absence of ignorance regarding the aggregates and of the suffering that arises from identifications with conditions there is quite a range of freedom and, as I see it, a spectrum of possible default mindsets, mind states and the like. This was so for the early Sangha and continued to be represented in various ways by many meditative practitioners throughout the subsequent centuries of buddhist history. I think the variety of experience outside of the buddhist schools and traditions is similarly reflective of a significant range of possible arrangements of the conditions left to those who have awakened to the true nature of being and becoming.

As I see it, the only aspect of this range of possibilities that is problematic are assertions and counter assertions that one way of living and being, for a consciousness that is already free of existential ignorance and suffering, is superior or inferior to another. In my mind it is similar to arguing about something like whether all houses should be painted brown or white. A world with houses of only one color, to my mind, would be at a disadvantage compared to a world with houses of many colors.
Cont. ->

That all houses provide shelter from the weather is what is of significance and the preference of the occupants for a pigment of one kind or another isn't worth the effort to argue over.

Something that Chuck and I have in common is experience with Tai Chi, Qi Gong and Taoist approaches to these processes and I think there is a lot of overlap in those approaches with attending to the body in the satipatthana manner although in the former there is more attention and emphasis on energetic flows in the body and this typically opens practitioners up to vibrational phenomena in some very intimate ways. One variance that seems apparent between the Taoist perspective and the Buddhist one is that in Taoist approaches there is a balance between viewing change (in terms of not self, momentary temporality and unsatisfactoriness) not only in negative terms but also in positive terms and in that sense there is, I think, a more balanced acceptance of the 3Cs from the Taoist vantage point. It should be noted however that this does not imply that a more balanced acceptance of the 3Cs is somehow representative of a more correct view of the 3Cs.

I should also again mention that my experience with jhana in the context of these eight emancipations is in the form of much harder or deeper absorptions than are the eight or thirteen jhana that Kenneth and others here generally work with. Again, this is not to say that the deeper, more Vism.-like, jhana absorptions are in any way superior or preferable to the eight or thirteen strata that Kenneth describes and teaches. This is simply another aspect of the spectrum of what is possible for consciousness and a question of personal inclinations, practice, and so on.
Cont. ->

Like Chuck, I have experienced the discernment emancipation or awakening processes in a way that is probably more broadly based in the body/senses/feelings/mind/consciousness complex as a kind of organic whole than is typical for those who work solely with the Mahasi, Chah and other strictly vipassana methodologies. I think both of us can see the merit of these techniques and the efficacy of employing them in a disciplined manner. Seen from the vantage point of having taken a somewhat different approach the two appear much more similar than in any ways dissimilar. In the same way, having arrived at much the same insights and understandings by means of, to some extent, other methods, we can see that while the processes and the paths of development and the range of outcomes are remarkably common for all human beings, there is some latitude for a range of methodologies, techniques and approaches. Ultimately, I think this is a vote in favor of, as Kenneth would say, a well stocked yogi's toolkit, and as most of us would say, perseverance in developing skillfulness and in due course mastery of those tools. There is room all along the way for some diversity in methodological approaches and in the processes of development and there is also much that indicates a common and shared underlying reality, all of which can serve for the development of insight and understanding into universal and liberating truths.

I have been and continue to be an open minded explorer of the terrain of consciousness much more than a cartographer of it. In practice I use any and all available methods whenever and however they seem useful. I don't consider myself any sort of a comprehensive authority or guide on any one of the specific methods that are more common these days. I'm a student of the history of this aspect of the human experience and in particular of the Theravada tradition.
Cont.->

I haven't been interested in sharing the minutia of my day to day practice but I hope my general observations and my attempts here to equate an overview of some of the terrain I have covered with the Theravada textual tradition and with Theravada methods is appropriate to this thread and will perhaps be of some general interest.

I think it is most noteworthy that; despite the range of ways of living and being available to individuals who have achieved freedom from the suffering bound up with conditional identifications, despite the individual preferences for one mindset or another, despite the preferences for one method or another, despite the preferences for one kind of conditional arrangement or another, despite individual strengths and weakness in conditional qualities of one kind or another, that despite all of this diversity, there is very widespread consensus that the consistent foundation for all of these varieties of living and being in freedom from ignorance and suffering have seeing through identifications, first with all forms of conditionality and ultimately with unconditionality as well as their common basis and support.

upekkha
nathan

Very interesting Nathan,
Your list of the emancipations brings up something I have been pondering for a while now. Tucked away in the Suttas is some discussion of mundane jhana vs transcendent jhana. These days I view them something like this: mundane jhana is what we start with. It is like the electric starter motor of a car. Stream entry is like when the engine starts up and Transcendent jhana kicks in.

Now a key factor in jhana - as discussed in the suttas - is the focus on emancipation or letting go of the factors of jhana so as to release to increasingly more subtle aspects until one drops the whole thing entirely.

What I have noticed post 4th is just this very process - but it unfolds slowly over time quite naturally - I see for example a subtle tension in identifying with the beauty or pleasant qualities that I have been speaking of here - the tension of the attention if you will - and the natural thing is to drop it and it is like another layer that drops away. This kind of shedding of layers has happened several times now. If you lack the big picture of the emancipations, then I think it would be easy to kind of latch onto these pleasant qualities. I think once self identity falls away it becomes fairly easy to see the tension but prior to that all the clinging and aversion built into the self-identity just drives us to latch onto that pleasant experience. But if you investigate them, then the subtle tension - the clinging to them - can be seen and you just release that - and keep going.

"Tucked away in the Suttas is some discussion of mundane jhana vs transcendent jhana. These days I view them something like this: mundane jhana is what we start with. It is like the electric starter motor of a car. Stream entry is like when the engine starts up and Transcendent jhana kicks in.

Now a key factor in jhana - as discussed in the suttas - is the focus on emancipation or letting go of the factors of jhana so as to release to increasingly more subtle aspects until one drops the whole thing entirely."

Bhante Gunaratana is a life long Theravada monastic who has spent considerable time in his study and development of Jhana. In a recent article he appears to be somewhat revising his earlier more classical and Pali Tipitiaka based understanding to include what appears to be a relatively new found capacity he has for practicing vipassana while still absorbed in jhana. This is interesting because this capacity to develop insight while in quite hard jhana is something that some of us have also been reporting for a while now.

www.bhavanasociety.org/resource/should_w..._practice_vipassana/

The Venerable has written two larger scholarly works on Jhana, also available as pdfs online:
-The Jhanas in Theravada Buddhist Meditation
-A Critical Analysis of the Jhanas in Theravada Buddhist Meditation

I see transcendent jhana in the same way as Chuck has mentioned, as something that comes naturally after stream entry and is increasingly natural as the other paths are completed. In my experience it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between being in jhana and not unless one is in so deep that sense impressions are absent and mental qualities are so rarified and simplified that there can be no doubt about being in hard or deep absorption jhana.

It seems to me, as Chuck has said, that in conjunction with path development jhanic mental qualities become somewhat normative mental qualities and start to affect our sense impressions, feeling states and thought processes most of the time.

This has much to do with what I have said in relation to my interpretation of the PCE favored by AF practitioners. Once the inclination to favor the qualities supportive of 'intent on the beautiful' or in other words the pleasant empty qualities of internal and external forms becomes consistently normative the affective feeling states level right out and disruptive thought and opposing mental qualities are also almost entirely suppressed. So it is, as they say, a wonderful, naive and clear minded way to experience the remaining sense impressions. Remaining steadily in this state would also explain why other kinds of jhana would not typically arise as the specific supportive mental qualities are continually being reinforced.

Moving on intentionally from this kind of a state to work with the subtler emancipatory jhanas listed in the sutta quoted earlier requires consciously letting go of sense impressions and some of the mental qualities to facilitate moving deeper into jhana. I think the transcendent/post path aspect is why the deep jhana the Buddha is speaking about here are called emancipations instead of simply jhana. I still think it is largely a question of circumstance and personal preference for people once the insight process is complete and full emancipation by discernment has been accomplished. So I don't see it as a question of better or worse ways of maintaining the mental climate, simply a question of preferences and or necessities. I tend to favor Kenneth's thinking, which I would render as compassionate and equanimous regardless of the nature of the given momentary mental qualities, thought objects, feeling states, sense impressions and bodily conditions.

"What I have noticed post 4th is just this very process - but it unfolds slowly over time quite naturally - I see for example a subtle tension in identifying with the beauty or pleasant qualities that I have been speaking of here - the tension of the attention if you will - and the natural thing is to drop it and it is like another layer that drops away. This kind of shedding of layers has happened several times now. If you lack the big picture of the emancipations, then I think it would be easy to kind of latch onto these pleasant qualities. I think once self identity falls away it becomes fairly easy to see the tension but prior to that all the clinging and aversion built into the self-identity just drives us to latch onto that pleasant experience. But if you investigate them, then the subtle tension - the clinging to them - can be seen and you just release that - and keep going. "

Yes it does seem odd in some ways but over the long term I have seen similar subtle changes. It seems that with the insight process the shift from mundane jhana pre-stream entry to transcendent jhana post stream entry is quite dramatic. As the insight process continues jhana becomes less and less the sense that "I am in jhana" and increasingly the sense that 'jhana is occurring" when the insight process is more or less complete it initiates another even more subtle and much longer term process where personal preferences slowly continue to break down altogether. It is as if the last remnants of the individuated consciousness are eroding away. Early on in this process the emptiness aspect of internal and external form is prominent and then, for some of us at least, for some considerable time, very level feeling states and very pleasant mental qualities predominate. It seems to be a process often taking years to unfold but eventually even the preference for pleasant mental qualities and level feeling states starts to break down.

Wow! This is a very insightful thread. Thanks guys! Very good timing!



Nick

Another new essay on Jhana with some key comparisons of contemporary orthodox Theravada thinking on Jhana.

dharmafarer.org/wordpress/wp-content/upl...ers-dhyana.-piya.pdf

You may note, mainstream Theravada Jhana practitioners, particularly monastics, tend to view hard or fully absorbed jhana as the only jhana that really legitimately qualifies as Jhana. That kind of thinking seems to be loosening up a little, slowly, but it is still quite rare to find a take on Jhana that views it as something accessible in as soft or open a way as Kenneth and some others do.

I don't take a firm position of any sort on Jhana, partly because I think the qualities that are overwhelming in hard jhana can also arise and persist at length outside of deep absorption and partly because I've experienced a range of jhana-like and other states that don't seem to fit into any known theories or maps. I consider many of those to be jhana side effects.

I can't say I've really tried Kenneth's approach because, sort of like the Buddha, I had some deep jhana experiences all of a sudden at a very young age. To be honest, it messed me up for a long time because I had nowhere to turn in those days for information on what it was that had happened to me.

Later, when I did found the Theravada texts, the discourses that spoke about the 4NT, 3Cs, right view, nibbana, etc. it seemed like direct affirmations of ongoing perceptions ever since those early experiences had shattered the sense of self and opened me up to processes beyond my control. The problem I had with accurately relating my experience to discourses describing jhana were a byproduct of the frequently really crappy english translations that were most all we've had until Bhikkhu Bodhi and others began to improve on the work that was done by the victorian era humanists in the PTS who got the translation ball rolling.

Thank you triplethink and CheleK for this precious thread!

I have a question: is there any connection between the expansive practices (see CheleK's explanation in this thread kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/44...%28PCE+Related%3F%29 ) and (one of) the first two formless jhana?

I'm kind of stuck with this question and I think this is the right place to ask!

I should clarify here that when I use the term Mahasi - I am just using it to represent 'an underlying view and approach to awakening that is found in the Theravada tradition as described in the Visudhimagga but also can be found in the Suttas when they are looked at in a certain way'. And for using 'Chah' I don't mean his specific views or practices but it is a nice short term for something like: 'an underlying view and approach to awakening that is found in the Thai Forest Tradition but also can be found in the Suttas when they are looked at in a certain way'

My interest is in seeing if there is a sort of meta-view or model that will allow us to benefit from both traditions and also hopefully to understand some of the differences.

Nick mentioned earlier here that his experience of stream entry was like being sucked in, then a blip, then spat out. This sounded very similar to mine except I did not experience a blip but rather 'the unconditioned'. So this is what I've got:

A model:
I have seen our experience described with this analogy before somewhere: A square wave (alternates regularly and instantaneously between two levels) where the lower phase represents the ground or unconditioned and the upper part conditioned experience or self-identity view.

The average person lives their life only paying attention to phenomena that 'catches their eye'- where there is clinging or aversion. So what they notice is an occasional upper phase and none of the lower.

OK, so that is the model.

Stream Entry with model:

The Mahasi training focuses on noting perceivable phenomena very quickly. At some point this leads to an attention so trained and continuous that it catches a complete cycle. As it is trained on perceivable phenomena, what it 'sees' is the beginning of the trailing edge of an upper phase (sensed as being sucked in), a blip (the unconditioned is not perceivable), then the rising edge of the next upper phase (sensed as being spat out).

The Chah training, directs attention away from perceivable phenomena by inclining toward subtler and subtler levels of phenomena, eventually reaching a point where they catch a complete lower phase. What is experienced is the trailing edge of an upper phase (being sucked in), the lower phase (the unconditioned), and the rising edge of the next upper phase (spat out).

Both traditions make the breakthrough which here is defined as present for a cycle. After this, Mahasi folks become aware of fruitions and the sort of afterglow of the unconditioned which is now present but in a sense not noticed. From my experience, I never noticed fruitions but rather after stream entry, whenever I chose to direct my attention toward it, there was the sense of a vast stillness at the edge of my experience - and this steadily deepened over time.

The beauty of the Mahasi tradition is that it starts with whatever phenomena is present - the nuts and bolts of samsara - and uses them to construct a path. I think this is why people can make rapid progress with this technique. It also develops some important concentration skills. The beauty of the Chah tradition is that it brings qualities of the deathless into everyday life from early on (plus stream entry is really cool) and at 4th path leaves one more attuned to these. The down side is that training the mind to maintain awareness at increasingly subtler levels goes completely against our culture and normal experience of day to day life and as a result can be difficult for people to develop.

Jhana and Jhana:
Both these practices use the term jhana.

The Mahasi jhana solidifies around phenomena and uses them to develop concentration. Noting practice (vipasana) is separate from jhana because you can't solidify and note at the same time.

Chah jhana (in truth I have no idea if he taught jhana but this is common in Thai Forest tradition) does not solidify around certain phenomena but rather chooses a very diffuse or open quality to rest attention on in order to gain stability and then inclines to subtler and subtler jhanic states - allowing the denser one to drop away on its own. The insight aspect is simply to note the tension involved in holding any particular level which aids in allowing it to drop away. In this way insight and jhana form one integrated practice.

Both traditions have essentially their own toolbox designed based on their needs. Some of the tools share a common name.

What happens when a Chah style awakening gets the attention of people with a Mahasi 'tool box'? The natural response would be to go after it as an attainment using hard concentration and noting (the tools of the trade). But the model suggests that although this will yield powerful results - the unconditioned will remain unseen.

Triplethink: "This has much to do with what I have said in relation to my interpretation of the PCE favored by AF practitioners. Once the inclination to favor the qualities supportive of 'intent on the beautiful' or in other words the pleasant empty qualities of internal and external forms becomes consistently normative the affective feeling states level right out and disruptive thought and opposing mental qualities are also almost entirely suppressed. So it is, as they say, a wonderful, naive and clear minded way to experience the remaining sense impressions. Remaining steadily in this state would also explain why other kinds of jhana would not typically arise as the specific supportive mental qualities are continually being reinforced."

These differences need to be kept in mind when working with these two different approaches.