The Big Cycle of Awakening

    Remember how I talked about the fractal models, hills and valleys in the chapter on the Vipassana Jhanas? First path is basically like a new beginning. With the first taste of ultimate reality (15. Fruition), the stream enterer begins a journey of continued awakening. Determined to master the path of finding ultimate reality beyond the world, the stream enterer forges on to second path, which is a bit like the top of the hill. They seem to have the best of both worlds. They seemingly get to still be a separate self in most ways and yet be a master of attaining some transcendent truth beyond the universe.

    As I have noticed in myself and others, if someone is going to become an intolerable egomaniac about how enlightened they are, it will probably happen somewhere around here, though it could just as easily happen later on. This is what Zen calls “the stink of enlightenment.” However, don’t fall into the trap of letting intolerable egomania lull you into a false sense of security. Even people who are not even close to being enlightened can become egomaniacs about how enlightened they are, just as enlightened beings like myself can.

    Should you find yourself getting all into how enlightened you are, try the following exercise. Take a piece of paper and write down, “I am enlightened, and so…” Fill in the last part of the sentence. We may begin by writing things like, “I am enlightened, and so I see clearly, am a saint, will save the world, am a great meditator, am a wonderful person, am very wise, etc.” Keep going until you get to the point where you write something along the lines of, “I am enlightened, and so what.”

    As insight deepens, doubts creep in, and somehow the mortal wounds that were given to the illusions of duality at stream entry begin to fester. Those of second path may struggle against the surrender to interdependence that is required to attain third path, like trying to avoid falling off the other side of the high hill. They still don’t fully get that the path is also it. Those of third path understand that falling with gravity is the only game in town, but somehow they still want to control the fall or possess the exhilaration. They still want to be that which is enlightened. They just can’t quite let things rest, particularly the fine golden chains of very subtle and high experiences, and this causes difficulties. Finally, the arahat rests at the bottom, i.e. with reality however it manifests, and returns to what they were all along without fundamental struggle or identification.

    Except for arguments relating to the necessary stages of human development, the mind never needed to create a sense of a watcher or a dualistic split, and even all that went into its creation was always empty of a separate self or permanent existence. The arahat knows all of this naturally in real time, and the fundamental sense of a separate watcher never arises again. Questions of subject and object, of the observer and the observed, become nonsense, though the use of such language in its conventional sense is no problem for the arahat.

    Thus, sensations of effort are just sensations of effort, but imply no fundamental split off entity that is making this effort. It is just a natural product of the interdependent universe. Just so, the sense of a will is replaced with a mysterious sense of absolutely natural causality and a natural, creative “intelligence” that operates in all of this, though the sensations that make up the sense of will continue as before. This is what is meant in the teachings of the twelve links of dependent origination when it says, “With the complete cessation of [fundamental] ignorance, volitional formations cease.” Similarly, sensations of intimacy are just sensations of intimacy and simply imply proximity rather than a separate self. Those of third path know this to some degree, and those of second path can look into this to try to attain the understanding of third path. Arahats have fully understood this.

    Phenomena are aware/manifest where they are, thus the profound teaching I have mentioned before, “In the seeing just the seen, in the hearing just the heard,” etc. As mentioned before, even experiences of the Three Doors at the highest levels of clarity are thus incomprehensible in the dualistic terms of a fundamental “this” and a “that,” i.e. are non-dual.

    That said, the cycles of insight continue as before. Those reading very carefully and those with a lot of insight might see a conflict between the fact that perceptual thresholds continue to change and the fact that realization is a done deal and not dependent on how reality manifests. Yup, there it is.

     I have already introduced the concept that there are two ways the word Nirvana (Nibbana) are used, but perhaps I should go into it a bit more. A friend of mind and I were having a dharma debate. We were discussing Nirvana, one of our favorite topics, and he mentioned the important fact that if one “is there” for the “experience of Nirvana,” then it wasn’t it. This is true in two ways, and this has implications for this model and to the previous discussion of formations in the section on stage 11. Equanimity.

    The first way in which it is true is that Fruition, which is beyond the universe, time, space, etc., cannot possibly involve experience, as there is nothing to experience and no one to experience it. No description of Fruition is possible. You might as well try to describe what is beyond the End of Time from memory. Those of first and second path know this well. Enough on that.

    The second way in which it is true has to do with the fact that the sense of a self is an illusion, and no sensations are truly a self. In fact, they never were. Thus, realization is not something created, but something inherent in reality. The word Nirvana has a meaning related to this, that relating to the attainment of arahatship. At this level, no sensations have the power to imply separateness anymore, and so the sense that any of this is fundamentally a self or other is gone.

    Note well, these are the same types of sensations that previously implied self and other, so it is not that something in the sensations changes. It is the way that sensations are understood that changes. Basically, the “blinking” to part of each formation has finally stopped forever, as happens temporarily in the fourth vipassana jhana with formations at their very best during the three or four moments of the Three Doors.

    The profound meaning here is that, “If reality took a perfectly good formation, a perfectly complete frame of the experiential universe, perceived it poorly, blinked to a part of it, split that poorly perceived part off as implying a self, then it is not perceiving reality clearly enough and has not yet attained to the understanding of the second meaning of Nirvana.” While this may sound discouraging and perhaps even snotty, the point is that the previous discussion of formations points to how to begin to stop the blinking and splitting. When we see exactly how this process works, it stops by itself. When the blinking and splitting stops, even for very short periods of time, profound insights occur.

    When the best meditation teachers say “grasping,” “clinging” or “attachment,” in the context of insight practices, what they mean is this process, the habitual and chronic process of “grasping” at poorly perceived parts of formation after formation and pretending these are a self. Thus, they are talking about something that happens at the level of bare perception, not about emotions such as lust and hatred. However, it is true that such emotions cause significantly more problems when there is more blinking and splitting. However, people can get stuck as this emotional level and work there, never realizing that increasing the speed, precision and consistency of their attention is the only way to finally get to the heart of the matter.

    Thus, one can use the concept of formations to realize that blinking occurs, that splitting off aspects of a more complete experience occurs, and to begin to see this process as it happens. One simply pays careful enough attention to what is happening, how the sense of a split feels, what sensations appear to be on this side and what sensations appear to be over there, how long each of these lasts, how big they are, and precisely how they seem to be related to each other in time. Exactly in this way, one can begin to get closer to perceiving formations.

    What categories of sensations seem to “really be you”? Exactly where are their edges? Can you find the exact experiential line between self and other? What do these edges feel like? Exactly how long to they last? Do sensations of “self” occur when sensations of “other” occur, or slightly before or after them? These sorts of questions can lead to the sort of direct investigation that brings one closer to perceiving formations and thus to the doorway of awakening.

    I rarely seem to be able to miss an opportunity to point out situations in which fascination with content is not helpful, and when attempting to see formations is one of those. It is largely impossible to carry out this rapid, consistent and thorough investigation of reality that I advocate here if one is concerned with what the sensations are in some way that is bound up in stories, melodramas (“melo-dharmas” as my ex-wife cleverly called them), and one’s issues. Do this some other time. It is work that also needs to be done. However, when doing insight practices, try to see exactly what is meant by the completeness of the experience of formations.

    While I am generally a die-hard fan of the Theravada, I have a great appreciation for much of the rest of Buddhism and the world’s other great mystical traditions. In that spirit, I offer the following. Traditional Tibetan training is broken down into Three Yanas or vehicles: the Hinayana, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana. These correspond very nicely to the needs of practitioners at various stages of the Simple Model presented above.

    The Hinayana is a set of techniques and practices that closely resembles many of the traditional trainings of the Theravada, and these are often confused for this reason. (There are some historical relationships between the two that I do not wish to go into.) The Hinayana’s emphasis is on basic morality, stabilizing the mind, and looking into the Three Characteristics, i.e. all of the fundamental practices and emphases that I mentioned in Part I. It is designed to get a person to the first stage of awakening, i.e. first path, which the Tibetans would call third path in the Tibetan Five Path Mode, or attaining the first bhumi.

    Getting to the next stage of the non-duality model or third path involves a deep appreciation of interconnectedness in real time and a willingness to surrender to it. The Mahayana path provides methods for understanding this in abundance with its strong emphasis on helping others and on the intrinsic emptiness (“shunyata”) of phenomena. The Bodhisattva Vow, a fundamental part of the Mahayana path, not only expresses a deep willingness to surrender to and understand interconnectedness, but its emphasis on not becoming a full buddha can help people get away from the temptation of purely future-oriented goals and grandiose visions of perfection that can still be quite a challenge at this stage.

    To get to the next stage, one must completely understand the intrinsic luminosity of all phenomena without exception. The Vajrayana path, with its emphasis on intrinsic luminosity and Tantric techniques that work with the awakened nature of the fullness of the emotional range, fits very well with the needs of one trying to gain the final understanding that emptiness is form. Dzogchen teachings also explicitly emphasize inherent luminosity and that all things are of the nature of truth.

    I am still a big fan of the Theravada, obviously, but I have a strong appreciation for the tailored beauty of the Three Yana system of the Tibetans. It has an uncanny sophistication to it and is part of what happens naturally even if you are following Theravada techniques. I am also a big fan of Zen, particularly its strong emphasis on keeping things down to Earth, e.g. “After enlightenment, the laundry.” If you learn any of these traditions well, you will come to see that they each contain the others. As always, it is not the tradition that is important, but that it work for you.

    In short, the non-duality models are the only models of awakening that hold up without apology, qualification or exception. The rest of the models have serious problems, though each may contain some amount of truth in it, however poorly conveyed. Given sufficient experience of the real world, those who believe in literal interpretations of such confused models as the limited emotional range models and limited possible action models will either:

1) Be forced to come to the conclusion that no living being meets their definitions of enlightenment,

2) Be forced into a dark corner of borderline-psychotic rationalizations of what actually happens, or

3) Be headed for a very rude awakening indeed, to make a bit of a bad pun.

    There is only one thing worse in my mind than students getting caught up in the dogma of the worst of the models, and that is realized teachers getting caught by them. Just as it is disappointing when those with long retreat resumes but no fundamental insight want to encourage faith in their beautiful tradition by appearing to know more than they actually do, it is doubly disappointing when realized beings can get caught in these fallacious models, acting as if they worked in the fantasy-land way that most people think they do. I know exactly where they are coming from and how tempting this is, but I dream of a day when such things never happen. The dharma world would be so much better off if teachers were honest about what realization is and ain’t, both with their students and also with themselves. Don’t think this sort of dishonesty doesn’t occur. I have seen some of my very best and most realized teachers fall into this trap and have also done so myself more times than I can count. Learn from those who have had to learn the hard way and are willing to admit this.

    While these two models are stated implicitly above, I thought I would summarize them again to make sure that I have made this important point clear. There are models of awakening that involve getting rid of all of our “stuff”, i.e. our issues, flaws, quirks, pains, negative emotions, traumas, personalities, cultural baggage, childhood scars, relationship difficulties, insecurities, fears, strange notions, etc. Such models underlie most of the mainstream visions of spiritual attainment.

    What is funny is that lots of people spend so much time working so hard to get rid of all their stuff but think that enlightenment, i.e. ditching the illusion of the dualistic split, is largely unattainable. I have exactly the opposite view, that ditching the split is very attainable but getting rid of all of our stuff is completely impossible. When I hear about those who wish to attain a type of Buddhahood that is defined by not having any stuff, I usually think to myself that the countless eons they usually claim are necessary to accomplish this are a gross underestimation. The real world is about stuff, and enlightenment is about the real world.

    What is very nice about ditching the split, aside from the fact that it can be done, is that now we can be friends with our stuff naturally, even if it sucks. We can work with it as well as can be expected and from a place of great clarity and understanding. Stage by stage, ditching the split makes all the slow but necessary healing so much easier or at least more tolerable. Thus, take the time to work with your stuff, or try not to, as you like. Our stuff is here and being dealt with anyway. However, seriously consider also doing the practices that can ditch the split, i.e. those that ask us to see the true nature of the sensations that make up all of our stuff and our attempts to deal with it.

    Try these two scenarios on for size and see which seems to fit with your goals for your life, with your vision of a life well lived. In the first, imagine working with your stuff as best you can for most of your life, never really knowing what is just needless mind noise and mental duress caused by a lack of basic clarity. In your old age you do the practices that lead to realization. The benefits of that level of understanding may then be used for yourself and others during the remaining years of your life.

    In the second scenario, you take the time early in your spiritual practice to attain to realization, following the precise instructions and recommendations of a well-developed insight tradition. You then use that level of increased clarity, acceptance, intimacy with life and transcendence to work on your stuff and benefit others for the rest of your life. The second approach seems vastly superior to me, but it is still possible that these things are a matter of taste. One way or the other, take responsibility for the choice you make.

    Spirituality that ignores or covers up our inevitable dark or undesirable sides is doomed to be bitten and burned by them. Models of realization that involve high ideals of human perfection have caused so much dejection, despair and misguided effort throughout the ages that I have no qualms about doing my very best to try to smash them to pieces on the sharp rocks of reality. They are not completely useless, and there is some value in keeping the standards to which we aspire high as we will see in the next chapter, but most of the time are taken way too seriously to be helpful at all.

    It is clear that those who adhere the most rigidly to the self-perfection models of enlightenment are also very often those who believe enlightenment is the least attainable and feel the most disempowered in their practice and spiritual life. Not surprisingly, those with the highest standards for what realization will entail often have the lowest standards for their own practice and what they hope to actually attain in this lifetime. Becoming grandiose about aspiring to a high ideal seems to be a common coping mechanism for dealing with a lack of confidence and insight. They are the armchair quarterbacks of the spiritual path. As Christopher Titmuss, one of my best and most honest teachers, often says, “We do not come from a self-perfection lineage.” There are those who do explicitly come from self-perfection lineages. I wish them good luck. They’ll need it.