Remember how I mentioned in the chapter called Concentration vs. Insight that the original texts used the same four or eight jhanas to delineate the states of concentration and the stages of insight? Remember how I said that the delineation of the stages of insight didn't occur until the later commentaries? In the second half of the 20th Century, considerable work was done to try to resolve these maps. As with most terminological issues in the spiritual life, there is some disagreement about just how the jhanas and the stages of insight line up.

    The practical application of delineating the vipassana jhanas is that the traps that awaited us in the samatha jhanas can arise during the progress of insight, and so being able to apply the body of advice that deals with these occurrences can be very helpful. For instance, we may be going along in the progress of insight but get stuck when we stop investigating rapture, which is a part of the early jhanas and also of some of the early insight stages. Thus, realizing that there are some relationships between the samatha and vipassana jhanas can keep us on the lookout for aspects of our experience that we may be missing or artificially solidifying, as it is so tempting to do so. Going the other way, if we have some mastery of a set of insight stages, we can use these stages to learn get into samatha jhanas by concentrating on solidifying their predominant positive qualities.

    “And the states in the first jhana – the applied thought, the sustained thought, the rapture, the pleasure, and the unification of mind; the contact, feeling, perception, volition, and mind; the zeal, decision, energy, mindfulness, equanimity and attention – these states were defined by him one by one as they occurred; known to him they arose, known to him they were present, known to him they disappeared. He understood thus: ‘So indeed, these states, not having been, come into being; having been, they vanish.’”

    Those with traditional views can squirm and pontificate any way they like, but this guy is clearly maintaining an extremely fast, consistent and precise investigation of impermanence and is thus clearly doing insight practices.

    To digress for just a moment into another rant, the guy the Buddha is talking about here is none other than my hero, Sariputta, who incidentally is often the whipping boy of much ridiculous and degrading Mahayana propaganda. Don’t get me wrong, the Mahayana has done some great things in its day, but ragging on someone with this level of skill and insight is just hypocritical and arrogant beyond reason. The Buddha says that Sariputta goes on to do very precise and powerful insight practices high up into the formless realms and attains to very liberating insights. I often hear Nouveau Tibetan Buddhists making comments that clearly indicate that they feel themselves to be quite qualified to denigrate his practice and don’t seem to notice how ironic this is, as they are almost always those whose own spiritual progress doesn’t qualify them to lick the muddy sandals of someone with a fraction of Sariputta’s talents. When one in a thousand of the meditators I meet who make these absurd and insulting statements about Sariputta can do what he could do or understand what he understood, I’ll eat this book. You have no idea how good it feels to write paragraphs like this one.

    Back to business. All of this map stuff is only helpful if it keeps you practicing clearly and in a way that brings results. I will discuss more of the pros and cons of maps soon enough.

    The problem with this map is similar to the problem with the two maps that follow, namely that some of the stages of insight tend to suck and the samatha or pure concentration jhanas are always a good time or peaceful. Thus, to say that the Dark Night stages such as Disgust are part of the fourth jhana just rubs the wrong way somehow, as does saying that Three Characteristics (which also tends to suck a bit) is part of the enjoyable first jhana. The point is that no matter how you slice it, the correlations are not quite perfect, and insight practice is rarely as pleasant as good old concentration practices. That said, there is something to these models anyway, and if you master insight and concentration practices and know a bit of theory, you will see for yourself what they were trying to get at.

    The next model is the one that was used by the late, great Bill Hamilton, who interestingly enough was also a student of U Pandita. He was also quite a mighty meditator in his own right, if a highly under-appreciated one. True, he was a quirky old bat on a good day, but he also died an arahat and a mighty scholar who had complete mastery of the formless realms. There was nothing particularly spectacular about Bill’s life other than his understanding of it, and he died in poverty and obscurity in basic denial of the severity of his pancreatic cancer. I have never met anyone who had given the question of the vipassana jhanas more consideration, and his fascination with complex models was remarkable. A quick digression here about Bill, as I did dedicate this book to his memory...

    Bill Hamilton was not only a meditation master, he was also a rogue teacher and basically felt like an outcast from the modern international Vipassana community. The guy was basically too smart, too uncompromising, too scholarly, and too dedicated to non-watered-down dharma and to absolute mastery to be a popular mainstream teacher. Like U Pandita, he didn’t teach to make people feel good about themselves.

    His obscurity was a tragic loss for the many people who didn't know about him. However, for me and a few others who knew about him and were willing to put up with the fact that he was basically a strange, suspicious, perhaps paranoid, and fairly quirky dude, Bill Hamilton was just what we were looking for.

    Bill seemed to live for the sole purpose of sharing his dharma rather than for flying around the world, making money, or being popular. Unlike the few other Western dharma teachers with his level of mastery, you could call Bill on the phone and talk for hours about this stuff, and then you could do it again. His very unpopularity made him a true and accessible teacher. The other nice things about Bill were that he would talk about actual mastery (though you had to drag it out of him) and also had incredibly high standards that I found quite refreshing.

    Bill also taught in a very interesting way. His style was basically to seem extremely skeptical that any of your descriptions of any experiences could really have anything to do with the attainment of anything. This was basically quite irritating, but it made his students question deeply whether or not they were really experiencing what they thought they were and so look more deeply at the truth of each moment. It also served as a helpful counterbalance to his interest in models and specifically named levels of attainment. His teaching style didn't win him many friends, but it was powerful and served his ends. Part of my fantasy is that a bit of his edge, uncompromising attitude and deep understanding may have come through in this work, though it must be stated explicitly that Bill never let on that he was particularly impressed with anything I ever described in my own practice.

    Bill's model diverges from U Pandita's in that he puts the whole of the Arising and Passing Away in the second jhana, the whole of the Dark Night in the third jhana, and Equanimity in the fourth jhana. There is considerable logic and experience behind this model. First, it gives the fourth jhana its due. Second, there is a phrase in the original texts about the third jhana that goes something like, “Happy is one who dwells in third jhana with mindfulness and equanimity.” Bill concluded from this that if you were in the third vipassana jhana without mindfulness and equanimity then you would not be happy. Notice that those who are not mindful and equanimous in the Dark Night are likely to get kicked by it until they learn to be so. Thus, there is some good logic behind putting the Dark Night in the third jhana.

    Also, if one is skilled at concentration practices and insight practices, one may sort of fuse the two together to some degree as is done when trying to attain the cessation of perception and feeling (see the Appendix). If one does this, then one may notice that the perspective shift to panoramic that is characteristic of the entrance to the fourth samatha jhana also occurs after Re-observation on the entrance to Equanimity. Thus, there is further evidence for Bill's model.

    On the other hand, there is something very third jhana-like about the mature stage of the Arising and Passing Away. Bill would have said that this was just the third sub-jhana phase of the second jhana, which brings me to the dangerous subject of fractals and sub-jhanas. As I will mention later, it is possible to see models within models within models etc., and if you practice long and clearly enough with the models in mind you will run into this aspect of things. The warnings about the problems with the models go ten times or more for the sub-jhana models and deeper fractal theories of meditation terrain. They are a largely endless subject whose usefulness is debatable and whose perils are well known. Consider yourself duly warned!

    Unfortunately, I somehow am not able to keep myself from presenting just a few of the basics of fractal theory here, particularly as it relates to Bill’s model. There is also something exceedingly universal about the pattern that I am about to present, and resonances of it are found back as far as there is recorded human history, religion and art.

    If you consider the first 360 degrees of a sine wave (like a rounded capital italic “N” that has been tilted just a bit to the right), you will notice that is starts at zero, goes up in a hill-like way, peaks, descends below where it started in a valley-like way, bottoms out, and then returns to the same level at which it began but yet farther along.

    Were one walking on this curve, one would have to make effort to climb up the hill. One would then have a spectacular view and a great sense of accomplishment. One might then try to keep walking up to get more of this, but end up sliding down the other side of the hill, farther down in fact than where one began. And yet, this is still progress, and could even be somewhat thrilling and even effortless with the right attitude. Just when one gets to the very bottom, trapped in the darkest part of the pit, by finally coming to rest at the absolute bottom the upward motion begins to happen naturally, and one returns to where one was, ground zero, and yet farther on at the same time. A cycle is complete and yet begins again endlessly.

    This easily correlates with the first four vipassana jhanas, as well as many other obvious cycles such as those of the sun and seasons, etc. For those trying to correlate the maps of the progress of insight with those of Tantra’s Five Buddha Families or those of any number of pagan and nature-based traditions, this should prove most helpful. The first vipassana jhana is climbing up the hill, eager beginnings, hard work, dawn, Spring, East, etc. The second vipassana jhana is the giddy high of accomplishment at the top of the hill, high noon, Summer, South, etc. The third vipassana jhana is the exhilarating and yet scary fall far down the other side into a cool and shadowy valley, dusk and nightfall, Autumn, West, etc. The fourth vipassana jhana is coming to rest regardless of where one is and returning to one’s origin naturally, the cool of the dead of night and early morning, Winter and the promise of Springtime, the coming of a new year at the end of the old, a time of rest, completion and renewal, North. The correlations with the stages of insight are thus obvious. One may also correlate this with the Four Path model which will be explained later.

    Interestingly, one may begin to see a full cycle of each of these stages in each of the four vipassana jhanas as well, with each peak and valley adding or subtracting from the position of the greater wave it is an aspect of. For all you incurable model geeks, try plotting y=sin(x)+0.25*sin(4x) from x=0 to 2π on a graphing program. You have my sympathy. The x-axis is the jhanas and subjhanas, from 1.1 to 4.4, or 1.1.1 to 4.4.4 if you want to go into subsubjhanas. Unfortunately, what goes on the y-axis would be the subject of a book longer than this one and would read like the most difficult works of Aleister Crowley. In short, the possible complexity of this model is endless and it is no substitute for practice. Try not to become an arrogant twit like I did when I began to figure all this stuff out. Esoteric map theory won’t win you any friends.

    I have spent way too much time thinking about the fractals and modeling in my own practice. In my insecure moments, I have considered showing off and writing a book that detailed the hundreds of little parallels and patterns that I have noticed over the years, how this tiny little stage of some vipassana subjhana mirrored or was in inversion of another aspect of some other little stage of some other subsubjhana, but I couldn’t come up with any practical use for it at all. If you do the technique, you will see all of this and more. If not, reading about it won’t help you. It’s just another content trap, but a seductive one for us pseudo-intellectuals. On the other hand, Khabbala seems to have made related permutations into meditation itself, and those who are particularly inclined to this sort of analysis might want to try taking it as a vehicle for going beyond it. Also, guess where the complex geometric Tibetan Mandalas that are supposed to be pictures of the Mind or the Universe come from? Bingo!

    The last model is one that is hinted at by the a line in The Visuddhimagga when it says that Desire for Deliverance, Re-observation and Equanimity are one. This cryptic phrase may mean many things. One of them is that the content of these three stages is likely to be largely the same, while the relationship to it may change dramatically. It could also be used as justification for a third model that put these three together in the fourth jhana. Further, as the fourth vipassana jhana is about equanimity concerning formations, one might presume that one would have had to perceive formations at an earlier stage, such as the previous two, in order to have had the necessary time and experience to come to equanimity concerning them.

    This is the model that I find the most useful when I am using complex visual objects for insight practices. Remember how I mentioned that the descriptions of the stages of the path presented in the Progress of Insight chapter assumed that you were generally using the breath or physical objects as your primary focus? It turns out that there are objects that can be used for insight practices that produce a pattern that you have to be really good with models to relate to my description of the stages.

    Here is an example from my own practice while I was in a Review cycle after attaining a Path. I would stare at a candle flame for about five minutes and then close my eyes. Out of the shimmering colors would arise a little red dot presenting strongly and solidly in the center of my “internal” visual field. So arose the first vipassana jhana, which in this case was the same as the first samatha jhana. This red dot would begin to shudder, flicker and break up as I began to notice the cycling of intention, presentation and consciousness relating to the dot. This marks the end of the first vipassana jhana.

    The dot finally broke asunder and in its place arose a somewhat larger red star of about 10 points with a gold star of 5 or 6 points in its center. Both were spinning at rates from slow to fast and this frequency was related to the phase of my breath, which was hardly noticeable. This marks the second vipassana jhana.

    The double spinning star finally would spin very fast and then vanish, with a pronounced state shift disrupting the whole field, and in its place a larger black dot arose, around which were whitish-gold stars of very many points overlapping each other and extending towards the edges of the field of attention, growing faint the farther they were from the black dot. These were spinning at rates that did not vary, and their intersecting lines produced many complex harmonics in the visual field. These extended stars occurred in the third vipassana jhana.

    Finally, the lines that made up the many stars diffused and expanded to fill the whole field of attention with vague rainbow flux lines of equal intensity across the field, making complex and uncertain patterns like complex geometric eddies in an oil slick. Something about this was a bit disconcerting, and only the far edges of the field of perception were clear. These flux lines began growing more clear, defined, coherent, and three-dimensional, until the very fabric of the space-field of attention was coalescing into some sort of a very regular pattern, such as a black hole, Buddha image with tantric consort or some such thing, (I went through many similar versions of this pattern with the most variations occurring at the endings.) This would spin, twist or flicker suddenly, taking the entire field of experience with it, and thus form the entrance to Fruition through one of the Three Doors. All of that occurred in the fourth vipassana jhana.

    As you can see, you have to really know the stages of insight, particularly their frequency patterns, the width of the field of attention in each jhana, and some of the very fine points of map theory in order to line up those experiences with the maps as I have presented them. Thus, working with a teacher with a broad range of experience or at least experience with the particular object you are using for your insight practices can be very helpful.

    When using objects other than complex visual geometry, I personally like Bill's model the best, though the other two still have many good points to them. Go see for yourself and consider which of these three models presented here fits with your actual experience, or throw this book and all of its models out the window and investigate the Three Characteristics precisely regardless of what happens! Actually, such decisions might be better made after reading the next chapter…