May 21, 2014 Wednesday, Teacher Training Class
Teaching on the Progression of Insights and Knowledges
This transcript comes from the Deep Spring Teacher Training class, and is based on a similar talk from Aaron about seven years ago. This is not a usual talk but may be supportive to the reader with interest in the topic, so we will post it. The transcript has only been lightly reviewed for errors. The transcriber could not always tell which statements were being read.
p. 9 talks of DSC and non-duality and may be of use to DSC readers.
Barbara had started speaking to the class; we decided to record when Aaron came in, so the first parts are missing. Barbara had been talking about the distinction between conditions and causes.
Aaron: We’re talking about conditions and causes. Good morning to you all. My love to you.
Conditions are constantly spreading out, touching other conditions, impacting other conditions. Intention is a primary condition. Intention to be present, intention to do no harm. If a driver has that strong intention, when the cellphone rings, he will not answer it. Then that condition will not come to fruition, and the accident won’t happen.
Certain conditions are broader and certain more specific. How many cars you have, what the weather is like, what the road condition is like right there, even the cellphone ringing. But this intention, this willingness to be distracted or not to be distracted, this deep holding of presence, the lack of presence, then becomes the primary cause for the accident, which is a pretty simplistic statement. The accident happens because people are not paying attention. And if you have other conditions present, it’s more likely to happen.
Going back to Barbara’s example, Barbara is envisioning a garden here in her boxes on the deck. She has in her mind the impatiens plants she plants there every year, as it’s a generally shady area. She has in mind the groundhog, who was browsing on the weeds that are there this morning, and being sure that she plants some things that will inhibit the groundhog along with the impatiens, to make it a little less of a salad bar for him. She has good soil there, adequate sunshine, adequate rain. She can go to the store and buy the plants. These are all conditions that add up to the possibility of flowers growing there. But until she brings her free will intention to bear and actually buys the plants and plants them into the ground, it won’t happen. If she had that strong intention and planted the plants in very heavy clay soil, very wet and too hot for impatiens, they could not thrive. They would die. These would be the conditions or lack of conditions for them to flourish.
What’s important here, what I want you to take out of this is to watch the accumulation of conditions for everything, and ask yourself frequently, what is my highest intention here? Here you are in a room, perhaps, with a lot of angry people. Tempers are escalating. People are starting to throw anger at each other. You see all the conditions gathered there, but there is not yet cause for somebody to punch somebody, or to walk out and destroy what could possibly be a meeting where people would come together and learn to hear each other.
Your anger at what is happening is one condition; your frustration, a similar condition. You can’t do a lot with the other conditions in the room, but you can do a lot with yourself. When you attend to the conditions for anger in yourself, the conditions for fear, the conditions for frustration, and hold space, you are no longer contributing that condition into the mess. Instead you are shifting and offering not just a condition but a cause for harmony. So cause is very related to intention. Condition is related to a great assortment of things. Is that clear?
Let us go on. I’ll stay here and keep talking about this. We’re using here July 2008 Teacher Training Intensive Weekend on the Insights and Knowledges.
Knowledge of Comprehension… You can read more of this here… (pause related to Skype)
Let’s stay with this discernment of cause and conditions. Purification of View is what I was just talking about. Coming from the place of, “My view, I’m right,” to releasing so much of the ego in the view, and coming to that place of purification, of sila, non-harm. I’m going to skip through a bit…I’m skipping down here to past purification, these various purifications. We’ll come back to that. Knowledge by Comprehension. Some of this is quoted from Visuddhi Magga.
“A deeper understanding of the three characteristics of all conditioned experience. Comprehension of these.” What are the characteristics of conditioned experience?
Q: Impermanence, suffering, and not self.
Aaron: Anatta, anicca, and dukkha, the characteristics of conditioned experienced.
“This knowledge follows Purification by Overcoming Doubt. It is a fruit of Purification by Overcoming Doubt and serves as a ground for arising and passing away.”
This is very technical. Visuddhi Magga is written in a very technical way. I want you to understand this in your hearts and not the specific articulation of it.
Understanding the three characteristics of conditioned experience serves as a ground for truly understanding how everything arises and passes away, is impermanent, and our clinging to it creates suffering. It’s as simple as that.
At this point, for Knowledge of Comprehension we have to understand that everything is impermanent. Everything is not of the nature of a self. Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease. And to understand from our own experience how the dukkha arises when we want it to be other than it is. That doesn’t mean we don’t work in skillful ways. Barbara can say, “Well, I don’t have a garden out there. I don’t have flowers.” Well of course—she has to go to the store and buy them and plant them. She’ll suffer if she’s attached to there being flowers there. She’ll suffer if she thinks somehow magically they should come because she imagines them. On your heavy density realm, you’ve got to plant them.
Then we have B, the Undeveloped Phase of Arising and Passing Away. That should be an F…
“In this phase, phenomena called the Ten Imperfections of Insights may arise. These are experiences and mind states that may lead us to stray from a mindful path.”
These are some of the reasons we don’t practice janna. It’s wonderful to have this rapturous delight, bliss, calmness, faith, energy, attachment. I’m reading from my own words here.
“Some of these are wonderful experiences in themselves. The point is not to become lost in them, attached to them, nor take them for signs that we’re enlightened. That which is aware of these objects is not lost in them. Here is where the practice of resting in awareness, taking awareness or nada or light as primary, becomes valuable. The practitioner can then begin to know the< >objects, beautiful though they may be, are still of the conditioned realm. They are not the Unconditioned itself but they may be expressions of the Unconditioned. This purification regards these imperfections and sees they are not path. Attachment to them is not path. Continued mental noting is path, noting attaching, liking, disliking, aversion. Just noting it.”
Going back to the beginning, here.
The 16 Stages, #4. Contemplation of Arising and Passing Away. Everything I’ve said so far is background. Here we are coming to… (pausing to open the window)
I’m not going to read so much here, but to talk.
Immature Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away.
Purification by Knowledge and Vision of the Way.
Mature Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away.
We have different experiences here. First we simply note that everything is arising and passing away, but it’s not yet a mature knowledge because there is still aversion to some things arising, or attachment to them arising, aversion to them passing, or attachment, wanting them to stay. But there’s a sense of this is good and that’s bad. So, the student/practitioner is very aware at this point in their practice that objects do arise into their experience—contact, consciousness, etc, pleasant and unpleasant, grasping and aversion. These are all physical and mental objects arising and passing away, but you’re still rocking back and forth with them.
This is really the reason we teach vipassana the way that we teach it. This phase is the place where most of your students are going to be. First there is consciousness that objects are coming into the experience, to the mind and body, and the interrelation between nama and rupa. At first the student holds on to some objects and pushes away other objects, such as physical body pain. They don’t pay attention to the aversion experience, which is happening also in the mind and body, they’re just there with the pain—throbbing, throbbing—as if to try to control the pain in some way. Or they bring attention to the aversion as if to try to push the pain away, the physical sensation. There’s no balance.
Purification by Knowledge and Vision of the Way follows Immature Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away, and this immature knowledge can last for years. It’s perhaps the longest phase. It depends on the practitioner how quickly they get the fact that when an object becomes predominant they move to it. So there is the throbbing and then the aversion. Knowing the aversion. As the aversion fades, the throbbing again. Pain. Aversion to the pain. Back and forth, really seeing how each one is arising from conditions and passing away. This is where they start to see there’s no self in whom this is happening, it’s just the flow of conditions. This is, let’s call it an awakening moment.
In terms of our Visuddhi Magga map, Purification by Knowledge and Vision of the Way. As we know what is path, we develop certainty about what is path. These Knowledges may be passed through slowly or in a flash, just a few moments. There’s no right way. It’s important, though, to persevere at this stage, to give a lot of time to sitting with the whole process.
And then, Mature Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away. We begin to see how everything in the conditioned realm arises and passes. Not only do sensations and thoughts pass but the consciousness which notes these arising and passing also passes. So we start to see that none of it is of the nature of a separate self. It’s all arising and passing from conditions. And we start to see how easily we’re rocked from one side to the other.
We may use those balls that you have in your car in class, not only for the dodgeball game we decided on, but also to sit people on a ball, ask them to feel balanced. Lift one leg and feel the rock, slightly. Feel the unbalanced contraction. Coming back into balance. To watch how one can stay centered even as one is unbalanced. To feel that center, which for our class here is completely related to resting in the akashic field. So I’d like to do that as an akashic field exercise. Sitting balanced and unbalanced at the same time.
Anyhow, these three– Immature Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away, Purification by Knowledge and Vision of the Way, Mature Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away, –these are a core preliminary. For most of your students, this is what they’re going to be working on, many of them for years. Coming to a place where, first with simple things– just sitting. Itch, itch. Ah, just arising out of conditions. Don’t make stories about it. Unpleasant, wanting to scratch. Keeping that flow. Allowing oneself to be present with what is predominant without getting caught up in the story. So the sensation is predominant. The aversion is predominant. The thought, “Is there a mosquito in the room?” may for a moment be predominant as a thought. But then we’re getting completely off track to get up and try to find the mosquito.
You understand this, all of you. This is the core of practice. This is where I introduced the practice of Proper Object, Proper Attitude, POPA. Being present with the predominant object with an attitude of spaciousness, emptiness, no self, no contraction, open heart. Not trying to control objects.
It’s only at this stage, Mature Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away, reading here:
“We begin to see how everything in the conditioned realm arises and passes. Not only do sensations and thoughts pass, but the consciousness which notes these arising and passing also passes.”
When your student is stable at this phase, usually with access concentration but not necessarily yet with access concentration, we invite the student to shift attention from objects arising in their experience to dissolution of objects. Deeply to focus on objects as they dissolve. To be aware of any going out to the object, any grasping after the object. And that that also is just inclination and a thought dissolving.
Now, as the student watches dissolution, they may move into a phase of terror. Terror has two parts to it. One is the terror, “I cannot hold onto everything.” Everything is disappearing. There can also be terror– well, it’s all part of the same terror, but, “I am disappearing. Everything else in the world is disappearing; I am disappearing. Will I annihilate myself?”
We find students at this phase often become very restless in their sitting. Students who have had strong attention, strong presence, suddenly cannot sit still. Their minds are all over the place. Their bodies are very restless. They say, “I just can’t meditate anymore.” The work here is to draw their attention to the feelings of fear. That it’s okay that there’s fear.
We talk a lot in spiritual practice about light. Seeking the light, avoiding the darkness. “Let’s not have fear. Let’s come back to those blissful states.” Ah, but right here as everything is dissolving, there’s fear. One has to be willing also to sit with that fear. The only way back into the light is through the darkness. And the darkness and light are not dual with each other.
We’ll talk more about this. I’m just going over the map quickly, now.
Knowledge of Contemplation of a Pure< >Terror. Terror about dissolution, nothing to hold onto. Knowledge of Contemplation of Danger is a different step. It’s not the danger that you might annihilate yourself. It’s that suddenly the student sees how they can move back into the whole idea of a self as something to hold onto. “I need an anchor. Quick, give me my ego back!” We see the danger of taking anything as solid. And because we sense that we’re moving through something vital, it seems more dangerous to go back to the old mode of holding onto the self than to be willing to move ahead.
This phase, Contemplation of Danger, is an important one because it’s something that people can catch pretty easily. They catch themselves trying to solidify themselves again. Just watching that. If they have the map from you—they don’t have to see the whole map, just, ah, this is the Contemplation of Danger. The whole idea of wanting to hold onto something and knowing you can’t do that. It’s a normal stage. So you normalize it in that way, and it gives them the strength to go through.
This next phase, #8 Knowledge of Contemplation of Disenchantment. My wording here is simply taken directly from Visuddhi Magga. Here is disenchantment with the entire conditioned realm, with practice. People at this stage often have a feeling nothing matters in my life anymore. I used to be so excited about things and now nothing really excites me. I love my family but I can’t really get enthused about them. I like my work but I can’t get enthused. Everything seems meaningless.
You have to be careful with this phase. Some of your students will have emotional issues. Your students are going to have deepened considerably to have reached this stage. It’s important that you know your student who has reached this stage and can help discern whether this is truly Contemplation of Disenchantment or whether it’s depression and something coming up on the emotional level.
At times you may want to direct them back to any unfinished business in their lives. If they say my marriage just doesn’t matter, my children don’t matter, my work doesn’t matter, well, is there anger about any of these things? What’s happening in your workplace? What’s happening in your family? Is there some anger that’s not fully, I won’t use the term resolved but acknowledged, and with space held for it, so that it’s pushing you into this imitation of Contemplation of Disenchantment? Can you feel the difference? So we watch carefully.
But this phase, “nothing matters anymore,” is a very normal phase, and people will move through it.
Then, Desire for Deliverance. Deep aspiration arises to continue the path and find freedom. Knowledge of Contemplation of Reflection is a long one. Reflections on many things. We do not guide the student to reflect on all of these. There are 18 Reflections: Contemplation of Impermanence, of Suffering, of Non-Self, Fading Away, Cessation. Then there are 40 modes of reflection, about impermanence, about suffering, about non-self.
Basically the Reflections will follow… At this stage of Desire for Deliverance, the path will take one of the three pieces: impermanence, not self, or suffering. The Reflections will revolve more around one or the other of those, differing for each person. For one person, a lot of reflection about the physical body and the changes of the physical body, the aging of the physical body. For one, about ego. For one, about holding on, having one’s own way, being in control. Seeing deeply into where holding on is creating suffering.
This is a very unique stage to each person. One does not need to go through the long list of reflections as a list. You as the teacher, I want you to familiarize yourselves with the list and to get a sense of what questions you might ask a student at that phase, at that strong Desire for Deliverance.
Within Knowledge of Reflection we contemplate some of these. Some meditators will follow more the path of impermanence, some the path of suffering, some of not self. The reflection opens out to equanimity.
This is the place where we finally reach access concentration. Things are seen clearly to be arising and passing away, impermanent and not self. The cause of suffering is seen. All the conditions are in place for awakening: the deep desire for awakening, the non-attachment to the conditioned realm, the non-aversion, also, to the conditioned realm. And perhaps the hallmark of access concentration is that there is complete presence with objects arising and passing away, but no attachment or aversion to any of them. They are simply arising and passing away. Nothing to fear, nothing to grasp. We see that fear and grasping are also conditioned objects.
Have you all experienced access concentration to the point that you understand what I mean by it? I’m not asking are you stable in it, but do you understand the experience of it? So you know for yourselves that outside of a long deep retreat, it’s not something that you can keep running in a half-hour morning sitting. You might experience a few moments of it, then it falls apart. But when you sit in a longer retreat and stay very focused, access concentration will stabilize if the ten steps before have been brought to fruition. In other words, they are the causes and conditions, both, for access concentration.
With access concentration we have #11 Knowledge of Equanimity About Formations. At this stage we must have a supramundane primary object. We can no longer use a mundane primary object. This is one of the reasons why from the beginning I teach people, and at Deep Spring I’ve taught people, to work both with the mundane object like the breath and gradually to shift into a supramundane object like luminosity, nada, space, energy, and so forth. Because you can understand, when there’s no longer any importance given to mundane objects arising and passing away, the breath is seen clearly as impermanent. It can no longer be the predominant anchor that holds you.
Equanimity About Formations. There is no longer terror about formations or about seeming groundlessness, since we have seen into the voidness of everything on the conditioned realm.
So, this again can become a stopping place for people. They establish access concentration. They become stable in access concentration, and truly with equanimity about formations. But they have no idea where to take it from there. They think, “Oh, that was a lovely, spacious meditation. Wow! I enjoyed that.” But they don’t take the next step to freedom.
So this is a place where people become trapped, sometimes for years. This becomes a trap for people because they ask, is this all there is? They either think that they’re having some kind of deep realization experience, and mistake access concentration for realization experience, or they feel frustrated because they think there must be more. But they’re stuck there in access concentration.
I’m reading this from Visuddhi Magga, Simile of the Crow.
“When sailors board a ship, it seems they take with them what is known as a land-finding crow. When the ship gets blown off-course by gales and goes adrift, with no land in sight, they release the land-finding crow. It takes off from the masthead, and after exploring all quarters, if it sees land it flies straight in the direction of it. If not, it returns and alights on the masthead.
So to if Knowledge of Equanimity of Formations sees nirvana, the state of peace, as peaceful, it rejects all formations and enters only into nirvana. If it does not see it, Equanimity with Formation occurs again and again with formations as its object.”
Questions about that?
Q: Huh?!
Aaron: Basically as you’re watching objects arising and passing away, impermanent and not of the nature of a self, deep in access concentration, if you are still using a mundane object, it keeps you back grounded to the mast of the ship. If you’re using a supramundane object such as nada, luminosity, space, etc, then it opens the doorway into the Unconditioned. That does not yet mean there will be a direct experience of the Unconditioned but the doorway is open. Otherwise you’re just running in circles.
#12 Knowledge in Conformity with Truth. This is a coming together of all that preceded it. One keeps coming back again and again to equanimity. At this point, one of the gates becomes predominant, anatta, anicca, or dukkha. There is a shift in view. One has investigated all compounded things and found them all to be impediments to freedom. No matter how lovely, they’re still impediments to full liberation. Everything compounded rests in suffering. Nirvana is free from suffering. Seeing that freedom is not here, it must be there, like looking for something inside a room until one is absolutely certain it doesn’t exist in the room. Only then will one look elsewhere. When we see it’s not here, we go elsewhere.
So as long as we’re there in access concentration and thinking, “What I seek must be here in the conditioned realm,” we don’t let go of the conditioned realm. When we come to the point where we know it’s not here, this is the point where the lokuttara citta open, in that moment, suddenly. The conditioned consciousness is still present, although it may fade very much to the background. And this awake mind, the lokuttara citta, perceives objects and makes contact with unconditioned objects, including luminosity, nada, and finally the Unconditioned itself, nirvana.
Up until now one has investigated all three characteristics of conditioned experience. Now one becomes predominant, and we stay with it. The predominant characteristic depends on our spiritual inclination and which characteristic predominates: faith, concentration, or wisdom.
Value of Pure Awareness are easier to find if we have some clue what we’re looking for or opening to. At this point, with your student, it’s very helpful to be able to help guide them into one of these paths. I don’t speak here at length about the connection between faith, concentration, and wisdom and the impermanence, no self, and suffering. But if you explore, I’d like you to do some exploration of that on your own. Let’s make that an assignment. How do anatta, anicca, and dukkha connect with faith, concentration, and wisdom? I’m not saying there’s a one on one parallel, but how do they connect?
[they spell it “nicca” for Juju; I know the a in front of something roughly means “not” and both are Pali words; I can’t hear the difference between nicca and anicca or natta and anatta in regular speech so I might have it wrong throughout. My apologies, if so.]
Purification by Knowledge and Vision. Change of Lineage Knowledge. With Change of Lineage Knowledge, the mind lets go of formations as object and takes nirvana or the signs of nirvana, the direct expressions like luminosity or energy, as nirvana. At this stage there may have arisen a sign, namitta (spelling?). (Aaron suggests the word may be misspelled in the text he is reading.) Consciousness abandons the sign and turns to the silence. Mind as this. Noting must continue. This is the, “It’s not here, go elsewhere.”
Change of Lineage Knowledge is that moment when you say, what I am seeking is not here in the conditioned realm. This is the opening of the lokuttara citta. I’ve explained before that this is not kuttara on one side and lokuttara on the other, but like this. You’ve been up here with the kuttara, conditioned citta. You look past it. What I’m seeking isn’t there. Just keep looking. So it’s not, “Get rid of that, we only need this.” It’s one complete whole, and this is the core of the non-dual teachings that are so much part of my focus for Deep Spring Center.
We’re creating a completely dualistic world for you when we say the conditioned realm, the conditioned citta, that’s over there and finally we don’t need them anymore, we only need this. We do need both. If we take it as a long horizontal line, we lose half of it. We’re either out here, or we’re out here. Or balanced in the middle but not fully extended to either side. But when we take it as simultaneous we understand and are increasingly able to be present in the conditioned realm, and to hold and rest in the Unconditioned. This is what we’ve been doing in class with the akashic field exercise.
In class, the idea of people in a still sea in little boats, resting, relaxing. But suddenly the wind starts to blow and the sea is tossing. People start screaming, “Help me! Help me!” The conditioned realm, here is a wild sea, here are people in danger. Here is the ego saying, how am I going to save them? But I cannot save them. I’m being tossed, too. “I” cannot save them.
We drop down to the bottom of the sea. We don’t abandon them, we know we’re coming back to them. We drop down until we come to a still place. Opening to nirvana, coming to the place where, if not fully into nirvana, into a grounded pure awareness that’s at least at the doorway of the Unconditioned. Then we extend ourselves up. From down there, reaching up. The feet stay down there, grounded. The hands come up and lift the people in boats. Here’s a big Coast Guard Cutter. We lift them up into the Coast Guard Cutter. There’s no me doing it, there’s only love and attention doing it.
Two things here. This is where I am at variance with the traditional teachings, which put it on a horizontal scale. Abandon the conditioned, move into the unconditioned. You can do that, yes. And after you’ve discovered, opened fully into the Unconditioned, you still have to come back and integrate, and bring the condition back. It’s harder to do it that way. People can have profound experiences of the Unconditioned and still be a wreck in the world, not know how to live their lives skillfully.
So in doing it this way we hold both together, deeply knowing the conditioned and the Unconditioned and the simultaneity. And we help our students to understand that simultaneity. Helping to lead them gently into an ever-deepening insight into the Unconditioned, but never so far that they lose track with the conditioned. So we keep that doorway, we have compassion and wisdom open together. Does this make sense to you all?
Change of Lineage Knowledge. The simile of a man swimming across a stream on a rope. You let go of one shore and climb toward the other. Here one inclines toward nirvana. But as I’ve just said, even though you let go of one shore and incline toward the other, you don’t really let go of the rope. You need to be able to swing back, because you need to be able to include the other shore. If you swing across and let go of the rope, you’re saying, “All the suffering back there, it’s up to them. I’m out of it.” And as I said, this is my dispute with traditional Theravada teaching and with Visuddhi Magga, and Barbara’s dispute.
Here I would take a pause. Path Knowledge, we’ll come up to this in a minute.
(tape paused)
This is why the mission statement for Deep Spring reads focused on non-duality. We are not aiming just to support awakening, but to support the kind of awakening that can be of service in the world, can be active in the world, not just leaping off onto the other shore. Now certainly there are many who have gone this path and come back to help. The whole bodhisattva tradition, however, was built upon the fact that for this ancient book and this ancient path, the idea was you leap off onto the other shore. Then the Mahayana tradition came in and said, no, we can’t abandon people on the suffering shore. So, how to integrate it?
Now we don’t have to enter into the specific, let’s say Zen, that’s the heart of the Mahayana practices or Tibetan practices. We can find it within this tradition, but we have to see where the leaping off place, letting go of the rope, seeking nirvana, and turning your back on the suffering shore, where that creates a duality.
So we have a deep experience of the Unconditioned. The first step is stream entry. It’s a step of deeply seeing into the nature of the Unconditioned. Resting there briefly. When you come out of that experience, there’s often confusion. What was that? What did I just experience? Stream entry is not as uncommon as you might think, because many of your students are very old souls who have practiced this in many lifetimes. If they’re practicing, they may suddenly have this direct experience of the Unconditioned and come back out of it saying, what happened to me?
It’s not your job to interpret it. Don’t try to tell them, “Oh, this was a stream entry,” or some other specific experience, only, “It sounds like you had a very powerful experience. What did it teach you? Where do you take it from there?” People want labels. Not just for the ego to say, “Oh, I had a stream entry.” But also, it gives them some sense of security. But they don’t need labels. Just, here is an experience. What did it teach you? Where do you take it from there?
Traditionally stream entry breaks down these defilements and it does break them down, but they still come. It simply lessens them, it
The stream entry experience will generally be a quick immersion. What happened? What did I just experience? The second level, there’s more ability to look around within the experience. This is written as if each happens just once, but each can happen many times. So the first stream entry experience, it’s as if you were in a dark room and somebody opened a window like that. You look out and suddenly the window shuts again. “Wow! What was out there? What did I see? There’s a vast world out there.” Suddenly there’s knowing, not trust but knowing, there is this space beyond.
The second stream entry experience, one is generally more stable and able to look around a bit. As one becomes more stable, one moves into this once returner. And please take that with a grain of salt. Once-returner does not promise you will only return once more to human life. It promises that you are approaching the edge. You’ve crossed a vast desert, and suddenly in the distance you see some greenery. You’re approaching the edge, whether it’s going to be one lifetime or five or twenty lifetimes.
The once-returner experiences, as I say here, reduces the roots of greed, hatred, and delusion, because there is such clear seeing about what those roots are. And there is such strong intention to move past it. This is why sila is such a strong ground for all of this work.
The non-returner, again, non-returner is: you can come back, you can not come back. You’re no longer caught by the karma. But you can get re-caught by the karma if you don’t pay attention. It’s not a guarantee. You still have work to do.
It’s as if you had a thousand heavy ropes around you. With stream entry, suddenly most of them are dropped away, but you’re still tied with a couple hundred threads. The threads start to unravel. Then the non-returner experience, the threats have unraveled but you’re still swimming through them. As there’s anything that’s not fully purified, you can tangle yourself up in the threads again. It’s not punishment. It’s simply saying to you, “Whoops, here’s a place that still needs some work. Pay attention.”
And finally the arahant experience. I’m going to give you back to Barbara in a few minutes and let her talk about her personal experiences here, and also to hear from you what experiences you may have had.
Then the different levels of knowledge that come with each of these. It doesn’t come just with arahant, it comes with stream entry, with each of them. Fruition Knowledge—understand the freedom that has been opened to you.
Path Knowledge opens only at the moment of the experience. We see the path. Suddenly there’s clarity about the path. And then Fruition Knowledge. What has been learned here? Reviewing Knowledge reviews the path: fruition, defilements abandoned and those remaining, and reviews nirvana.
When it happened, cognizing mind was absent. This is important. When you had the experience, the mind that can understand it from a conscious, mundane level was absent. Now we come back, and this is another reason for that pole of non-duality. If you’ve got to shift from out there to over here, it’s much harder than if you just move up and down on the pole and see how they come together. Now that mind comes back and reviews the process again.
We’ll have Barbara talk about it. I will ask you between now and the next class to read this material from Matthew Flickstein’s bookSwallowing the River Ganges. There are 5 pages here where he talks very clearly about these. It will help our discussion next time if you’ve read those pages. He’s really talking about what I’ve just spoken of.
I’m going to give the body back to Barbara for a bit so that she can talk to you. I want to emphasize that although this is put forth as Buddha dharma, related to the Buddha’s teachings, similarly one has enlightenment experiences in many traditions. These phases are very well phrased in Visuddhi Magga, very well articulated.
Many different traditions articulate the same stages with different words, because of course there’s not a Buddhist path of enlightenment, there is simply a path of awakening. And Buddhism has a very wonderful articulation of it. But it would be valuable for each of you to take this back into your own experiences, which may not be based on the Buddhist articulation.
Next class I would like you each to try to articulate whatever forms your own path of awakening has taken. What has best supported it? What in there would you most want to pass on to your students? And you can phrase it in Buddhist terms, you can phrase it in Native tradition terms, in Hebrew or Moslem or Sufi or so many variety of terms, or no terms at all. Just find your own termless vocabulary for it. Okay?
(Barbara reincorporates)
Barbara: Thank you, Aaron.
Some of you have heard me talk about an experience when I was sitting in my living room, back in maybe 1990, 1991. John Orr was here and we were going to lead a retreat together, or had just led a retreat. It was a 5am. I was meditating and access concentration was very stable. John got up and went into another room to practice yoga.
With my eyes closed, meditating, I had the experience like I was floating down a river. My family, my husband, my children, parents, everything I loved, was on the banks and was going past. There was a strong wanting to reach out, wanting to grab hold of it. There was almost access concentration, but as I look back, it was not full access concentration because there was still attachment and grasping, to some degree. As I relaxed, it deepened into this Equanimity with Formations, Equanimity with Arising and Dissolution. Watching it all pass away, but first there was a false equanimity, because I had the thought, “It’s still there. I can reach back and get it. It hasn’t really dissolved.”
Then I began to see everything, like my children’s faces, the way when you burn a log in a fire, the whole log burns, but it may have the shape of the log and if you touch it, the whole thing just crumbles. So all the faces of everyone dear to me were coming toward me in slow motion on the bank. And Aaron said, “Touch them. They must crumble.” It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, very, very frightening, and I said, “I can’t do this. I can’t do it without help.” And at that moment John came back in. He sat down. I just held out a hand. I could feel his coming into the room and sitting beside me. Just that touch of something, some stability.
Crumbling everything. Really seeing everything is constantly dissolving, there’s nothing to hold onto. And there was a very quick movement through the faces dissolving, me dissolving, no self. Complete emptiness, everything dissolving. As it all dissolved there was a sense of radiant light everywhere. I was not at that point working with luminosity as a primary object, but suddenly the luminosity was so strong that I strongly experienced it. It became predominant, everything else fading away. And there was—here’s where non-duality was important—no distinction between light and dark. It wasn’t that, “Wow, there’s all this light so I don’t have anything to be afraid of. The void is out there,” the light and the void are one. Opening into that light, and then just a profound experience of the Unconditioned.
Resting in that space for I have no idea how long, probably only a few minutes, then coming back out into these Fruition and Path and Reviewing Knowledge. What just happened? I was very uncertain. I had no articulation for it, just everything in the conditioned world fell away and there was this vastness. It wasn’t a void, it was full. But there was no way to express it. And it was not separate from me.
So I rested in that space for a while, and then Aaron said to me, “It’s time to wake your children and get them ready for school.” “I don’t want to! I don’t want to leave this space!” And he said, “If you are clinging to this space, you haven’t understood anything. Go wake your children and make them breakfast.”
With each move into this space, stream entry and then eventually, I don’t know if we would call it once-returner because it happened many times, but it was no longer stream entry, it was clear that it was purifying things at a deeper level, releasing old roots. Each time, there was more clarity about what I—not “I”—what had been experienced, more ability to remember. The first time it was hard to remember anything. The second time, third, fifth times, it became easier to remember. Pieces started to fall together.
Then I went through a period of maybe 5 or 6 years needing to do the work that this experience had led me to: to find forgiveness for old things, to fully open the heart, to deepen in sila, to bring it all together, until I was ready to take it further.
I don’t know what year, maybe late 1990s, John and I did a several-week retreat together at a retreat center in upstate New York. At that retreat there was the first, I remember it was
I was sitting outside doing pure awareness meditation with a big open view of hills, and then coming into the meditation hall in the evening, and shifting to vipassana, but the luminosity was predominant. Just present with the luminosity. Re-entered what I would say was like a very similar series of experiences, but it was clear they were at a much deeper level. Each step just kept enfolding into the next step.
What’s noteworthy for me here is, not the authenticity of the first experience itself but the fact that I was then led back to the reviewing to understand exactly what had happened and what I needed to do in order to invite moving further.
So each step builds on the prior steps. And of course, since then there have been other profound experiences, and each one has deepened and supported the others. As the process continued for me, there was the ability to, I can only liken it to looking at a map. If you have a map like Google maps and you’re fine-tuned, you can only see the local roads. You don’t really know how it fits into the next roads out. But as the process deepened, there started to be clarity, “Oh, this connects to that, and this connects to that, and this connects to that.” Seeing how sila, panna, and samadhi go together, for example, really understanding the connections.
My latest experience with this was at the Casa this last winter. I was in bed after surgery. Usually I would just fall asleep. But I was meditating deeply, and then I had a sense of a spiritual circle of high spirit entities surrounding me. The leader of this group seemed to be a very ancient Buddhist master, and he said to me, “Tell me everything you know about dharma.” Tell you everything I know about dharma?! So I started to just think it, and he said, “No, you don’t have to say it out loud but literally put it in words, not just images.” I talked for 3 hours. He kept asking leading questions. I was meditating, but it was not this kind of experience, it was simply pulling everything together and a deep seeing of how it all goes together. A giant web. It was extraordinary. It was beautiful. It was very powerful.
When it ended, the next day I was invited, “Now you have your next book.” And this will not be a channeled book so much as my book, trying to put this vast web of experience together. I guess this is in a sense my rewriting of Visuddhi Magga, but in totally accessible terms and modern dharma, modern articulation.
Being able to articulate it is totally insufficient. We need to live it. We can never go faster than we can live it. We must always be totally honest with ourselves and do our work, and live what we’re practicing and teaching.
So that shares with you some of my experience with this. This, what I’ve just said, is somewhat private. I would prefer it not go out to others. But I want to share it with you because I’m teaching you how to do this for yourselves, how to reach these stages of insight and teach them.
Your experiences may be totally different than mine, and that’s fine. There’s no right way to progress through this. Maybe you had some profound experience through shamanic journeying. Maybe you had it through chanting or in a strong energy experience. What I want to hear next class is, looking at the map, what you think you experienced based on the map. How it came to you. Your own particular unique way of experiencing it. What it taught you, and how you can use that to help support your students. So let’s give each of you 15 or 20 minutes to talk about it. Okay?
Any questions about what Aaron has said, or what I have said?
Q: It’s an interesting experience. I can feel in my being that I know this, but as “Q” I am learning. Part of my brain wants to say, “Ah, too much information!” But then if I just relax and go more into that feeling of knowing, it feels okay.
Barbara: You all know this from past lives. You’ve all worked within this tradition in past lives, and gone deep in this tradition. And you also have learned in other traditions and past lives. The issue is here, however you’re going to articulate it, you need to go into, first to deepen present experience of it fully through retreat and the chance to really get deep into the experience. And then to look at, when you have more direct experiences of the Unconditioned in this life, it will lead you to some kinds of memories, and also understanding other kinds of experiences you’ve had in this life and how to integrate them, how it all goes together. It’s out of all of this that your articulation will come to your students, and your ability to guide students, to support students.
We could take this whole thing and toss it. It is one map. It’s a very complete map, but it’s not always an accessible map. And this is why I really want to encourage you to find your own articulation of this, understanding using the map as a way to say, “Oh, this is what that experience might be,” and finding your own articulation.
You wrote me an email about Buddhism. It’s wonderful to express it in Buddhist terms. One of the things I love that’s happening now in Deep Spring that I hope will continue to happen is that people will have the ability to choose the kind of articulation they want to use. The students that most want to hear it in Buddhist terms will go to this teacher and those who want to hear it in other terms will go to that teacher. But we’re teaching the same thing. We’re teaching liberation. We’re teaching kindness. Aaron’s bookPresence, Kindness, and Freedom. We need people who are interested in and able to teach it in Buddhist terms. It’s all there.
But for those who don’t want to put it in Buddhist terms, that’s fine. Find your articulation of it. And those students who need to hear it in that articulation will come. The important thing is your clarity, so that you come up with a clear translation. This is one translation. You’re not translating this; you’re translating the actual experience into whatever articulation is most clear for you. And this is what I hope Deep Spring Center will evolve to, that we’re all on the same path but with different articulations and space for those articulations.
I understand what you’re saying, because for years Aaron kept saying to me, “Just let yourself remember. Don’t try to figure it out.” And I think that’s what you’re doing.
Q: I thought it was a little confusing, the earlier talk about conditions and causes, because, even my intention being a condition, that it puts everything in a condition. It’s all conditions.
Barbara: Everything is conditions, but sometimes the conditions become a cause, a deeper rooted condition. There can be, as Aaron said, all the cars on the highway, the sleet, all the different conditions. We maneuver our way through these conditions based on our intention. So if we’re in a situation where there’s a lot of anger around us, people yelling, throwing things, these are conditions. We can get caught up in those conditions and respond with hostility, or we can find the conditions for peacefulness in ourselves, for deep hearing, for open heart. And then the intention not to enact the unwholesome conditions becomes a root cause.
It’s not clear-cut, just play with it.
Q: When I look at the natural world, natural phenomena, we can say this causes this causes this, chemically, in chemistry. But really, what is the intention…
Barbara:… When you say “this causes this causes that,” this is one condition out of which that arises, that is another condition. But what really is a cause of a volcano erupting? There’s lava under the surface, there are certain cracks in the earth. What is the final cause from which it erupts? Can we point to a final cause? Often not. It’s just the coming together of conditions. Sometimes we can point to a final cause, though.
Q: So we’re looking at causes on a human intentional realm, right? When we’re teaching this, we’re talking about cause in relationship to our human conditioned realm, and intention, yes?
Barbara: Partially, yes. Are you reading with the class the bookDalai Lama’s Cat?
Q:I read that, yes.
Barbara: I don’t remember what page, but he talks very clearly about the distinction between conditions and causes. But it’s okay not to understand it. Just understand that all conditions are not causes, all causes are conditions. But all conditions are not causes. They are insufficient in themselves for something to arise, but they are conditions that contribute to its arising. And then it comes to the point where just at that moment, striking a match—the gasoline is here, this is there, boom!
Q: Is it like when I have been plantings seeds in my garden, they all need soil, water, and light. But some seeds want to be planted a little deeper, some want to be on the surface. They need that part to come together to open. So the depth would be part of the cause…
Barbara: So it’s the accumulation of conditions that becomes the cause. And why this is important is that we can watch different conditions, such as anger or fear or boredom or whatever may come up in us, and suddenly boom! We explode. What caused that? And often when we look back, we see it’s because I was not mindful of the conditions, so they accumulated until they came together in explosion. But if I’m mindful of the conditions and take care of the conditions, then that cause does not come together.
We need to end…