1. Book One: Kenneth’s Story#
1.1. The Setup#
In 1982, I was a suicidally depressed cocaine addict. A 23-year old musician in Los Angeles, I had a lot of free time to sit around being depressed and wondering how my life had gone so terribly wrong. I was trying to kick my cocaine habit, and failing. One night, alone at home, having exhausted all the cocaine in the house and spiraling into despair, I took four hits of LSD. And while I’m neither advocating drugs nor taking a moral stance against them, this is what happened.
I put the LSD in my mouth and turned on the television. I watched part of the Shogun miniseries about a 17th Century English ship pilot who was shipwrecked in Japan and adopted Samurai culture. There is a scene in which John Blackthorne, the protagonist, who has now become a Samurai, decides to commit seppuku, Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Just as Blackthorne is tensing his muscles to plunge his short sword into his own abdomen, another Samurai reaches out and grabs Blackthorne’s hand, preventing his suicide. Watching this scene on television, I wondered about the changes that might take place in the mind of someone who had completely accepted death in a moment and yet didn’t die. I was fascinated by the question, and this theme of death and rebirth would set the tone for the evening.
I went into my bedroom, closed the door, and lay down on the bed, face up. I had nothing left to do but reflect upon the unsatisfactoriness of my own life. Still pondering the question of death, I remembered another movie I had seen in which an old Native American Indian chief climbs a hill and lies down on a funeral pyre. The pyre is not lit; it’s just a bunch of sticks. The old man lies down on the pyre and says to himself. “Today… is a good day to die.”
Tired, defeated, and yet inspired by the possibility of surcease, I said to myself, “Yes. Today is a good day to die.” In that moment, my mind felt so powerful, so focused… I was absolutely convinced that I could will myself to death.
Flat on my back, I began to meditate, using a technique I had learned from my older brother a couple of years before. It was a simple concentration exercise, nothing more than looking at the backs of my eyelids with eyes closed, and falling into the blackness there. In the past, I had practiced it occasionally in an effort to relax, and to have an interesting experience of an altered state of consciousness. Now, I was meditating with a purpose. And as I was thus engaged, earnestly attempting to will myself to death, an odd thing happened; it occurred to me that if I did die, I would be opening myself up to whatever negative forces were out there in the ether. I had a visceral fear that there was some kind of malevolent force, some kind of evil that would wash over me and take control if I let down my guard. I think I also understood in that moment that I had never let down my guard before. So here I was, 23 years old, and somehow I had managed throughout my entire life to maintain a wall, to keep something, who knows what, from entering my consciousness and taking it over. I could feel this unspeakable evil clamoring outside the gates, trying to get in. I was both terrified and bemused.
I wondered if this was what Christians meant by “the Devil,” the very personification of evil. Interestingly, I wasn’t the least bit religious. I thought religion was foolish. I didn’t believe in God. I didn’t believe in the Devil. But somehow here I was, thinking “the Devil’s gonna get me.” Ridiculous, on hindsight, like something out of a seventies-era comedy skit. At the time, though, it didn’t feel like a joke. Far from it, in fact; I had never been so frightened. This fear lasted for a few moments, and then I began to ponder a kind of equation of good and evil: if indeed there were such a thing as the Devil, then there must also be such a thing as a God, in which case, if I opened myself up entirely, they would either cancel themselves out or God would win. Somehow, this childlike idea of symmetry in the universe gave me just the courage I needed to take the leap. So I did. I opened up entirely and surrendered to death.
This absolute and unquestioned surrender to my own death… no, even more, commitment to it… inspired by the movie scene I’d seen earlier of John Blackthorne’s abortive suicide attempt, triggered a remarkable series of events.
Immediately upon acceptance of my own death came the recognition that the “malevolent forces” barely held at bay for so many years by my own dogged unwillingness to admit them, were none other than my own fears. I was protecting myself from myself. This recognition, so surprising and stark, brought, all of itself, enormous relief. The insufferable burden of a lifetime was seen as an illusion fueled by a misconception. Indeed, the fears themselves were tolerable; it was the effort to avoid them that I could not endure. With the shattering of the illusion, a burden was lifted and the need to die was gone, but the event now had a momentum of its own and continued to unfold even though all thoughts of self-destruction had evaporated.
Next was a kind of instantaneous life review. A thousand images flowed through my mind in a single moment, images of things I had done, both “good” and “bad.” The theme was that actions have consequences; it was immediately and intuitively obvious that actions motivated by good will had led to positive results while actions motivated by ill will had led to sorrow. This insight was matter-of-fact, with no implied judgment or moralism; here is everything I’ve done, and here are the consequences of each action. Here was my very own mechanistic, non-moralistic judgment day.
The experience continued to unfold in stages. Next, I found myself being drawn up into the sky through what appeared to be a long glass tube. I was fascinated, riveted by this experience. Suddenly, there appeared a flock of small, translucent, quasi-intelligent, possibly unfriendly beings on the other side of the glass tube, trying to get my attention, and keeping pace with me as I was sucked up toward the sky. I had the impression that they wanted to get inside the tube, to go where I was going, and that they were frustrated by being stuck outside. I was aware that I had taken acid and was hallucinating, but the kind of cohesion and consistency of these visions, this entirely new world created out of thin air, was unlike anything I had experienced before, with or without drugs. As I was floating up the glass tube alongside these roundish, colorful beings, I remember thinking to myself that this must be some kind of challenge or quest: “I’ve got to find a way to communicate with these things, but we don’t have a language in common. How can I communicate with them?” I felt that if I could find some common ground with the creatures, we would be able to establish a basis for communication. Well, it didn’t happen. My mind was a blank. If it was a quest, I failed it. I soon outpaced the creatures and they disappeared.
I was being sucked up into the sky faster and faster now, and was able to see that there was an end to the tube, and at the end of it was white light… blinding, glorious, perfect light beyond imagining. I was moving so fast now that almost immediately after first glimpsing the light, I was pulled into it and merged with it. And this was far and away the most ecstatic experience of my life so far. Because now I was one with what felt like universal consciousness. It was an utterly mind-blowing experience. I thought this must be what the Christian mystics meant when they said “God”. But it wasn’t the personal God of a Michelangelo painting. It wasn’t a man up in the sky who was like me, only big and powerful; it was everything that was or had been or could ever be, and it was self-aware. And in that moment of merging with what seemed to be universal consciousness, it was as though I knew everything there was to know; everything that needed to be known was known, and yet there was no need to ask. This felt really good. Beyond good. Perfect, exquisite, ecstatic, flawless… superlatives fail to capture it. I marveled to myself, “Everything up until now, my entire life, has been a dream. Only now am I awake. Only this is real.” And almost immediately I realized that it was going to end. I was going to be kicked out of the garden. Later, I wrote in my journal, “As I lay naked beneath God’s crushing foot, I asked Him to throw me a bone: ‘Nobody is going to believe this. I’m going to need some proof. Give me something to take back with me.’” This experience of merger with something infinitely larger than myself made everything else pale in comparison, and already I could see that it would end and that I would have nothing to show for it. There was a moment of profound grief. A moment later, I found myself back in my room, lying on my bed facing upward, exhilarated, exhausted, annihilated and reborn.
Now, as it happened, my cocaine addiction vanished in that moment; I have not used cocaine since. There was no aversion, no negative feeling about the drug. I just wasn’t interested anymore. My reaction to being offered cocaine was similar to what I imagine might happen if someone offered me a plate of cold, raw tofu: “No thanks, I don’t much like cold, raw tofu.” There was no offense and no judgmentalism, only disinterest. It later occurred to me that this might be the “bone” I had asked for, the objective proof that something remarkable had happened. As to who it was that granted me this boon of the bone, my thinking has changed over the years. I no longer believe I was having a conversation with an “Eternal Being,” or even that there is such a thing, although I did believe that for a long time after the event. My current speculation is that what happened that day was an internal event, a function of the interplay between a brain, a psychoactive substance, meditation, and a traumatic life situation. One way or the other, the experience was deeply moving and may have saved my life in addition to setting me on a new course.
The experience of union showed me a reality beyond my ordinary self, but it was only a short-lived glimpse. I found myself on a quest to understand what had happened to me and to “get it back.” With the assumption that what I had glimpsed was somehow truer than my ordinary life, I wanted to be able to access it again, and ultimately find a way to feel like that all the time. I was now officially a seeker, but I didn’t know how to seek. For many years following that experience, I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was somehow “doing it wrong.” I experienced myself as alien, but I remembered that it was possible to be complete, and I was determined to feel that way again.
Although both meditation and drugs were involved in that first big opening, my intuitive sense was that the way forward was through meditation, not drugs; it seemed to me that while drugs might temporarily open windows in the mind, a more systematic approach would be required to keep them open. So, I began meditating each day while I did some research.
I began by reading self-improvement books, a genre I had previously regarded with contempt. I read the likes of Dr. Wayne Dyer about how to realize your potential as a human being. That was a place to start, but it wasn’t zoomed in enough on where I wanted to go. On a recommendation from a friend, I bought a copy of the Ram Dass book Be Here Now. This was getting closer. Ram Dass made vague but tantalizing references to spiritual awakening, spinning interesting and implausible yarns about his guru, who he considered to be a “fully realized being.” From there, I began reading Buddhist books, getting ever closer to what I really wanted, which was an instruction manual. I read Alan Watts on Zen wisdom and then The Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau. I also read Ouspensky’s book about Gurdjieff, and took a brief detour into New Age books like Seth Speaks and Richard Bach’s Illusions. I found all sorts of hints, a drop of wisdom, a dollop of childish nonsense, and a large portion of snake oil, but no method. In 1989, I read Ken Wilber’s Spectrum of Consciousness. Wilber was the first author I had found who bridged the gap between a nebulous and impractical pursuit of spiritual enlightenment and a more concrete understanding that could be approached systematically and reconciled with common sense and science. By talking about levels of mind that could be targeted by specific practices, Wilber made spiritual awakening/enlightenment sound like a realistic project. But he did not offer a method. I had been an almost daily meditator for seven years, ever since my big opening in 1982; I was willing to do the work if someone could give me the instructions. In Spectrum of Consciousness, Wilber mentioned in passing that he was offering a conceptual framework as opposed to a method, and that resources abounded for those who sought a more hands-on approach. I was frustrated. I had no idea what resources he was referring to. I continued to practice without a teacher.
Fast forward to 1990, eight years after my first unitive experience. My depression had returned. I made my living as a bass player in a dance rock band. Sometimes I would find myself onstage in front of a hundred people, on the verge of tears for no reason that I could name. I couldn’t play music anymore. I quit the band in North Carolina, where I had moved two years earlier to pursue my musical career, and moved back to Southern California. I promised myself I would never again perform music for money. All I wanted to do was meditate. My most cherished fantasy involved checking myself into a cave in the Himalayas and living as a monk for the rest of my life.
1.2. Bill Hamilton#
When I moved back to Southern California, I had my mail forwarded from the post office in Chapel Hill. A few weeks after arriving in California, a postcard arrived, forwarded from my old address. It was a simple white postcard with some dot matrix computer-printed text on it, advertising a series of audiocassette recordings of discussions between the Dalai Lama and western scientists. It sounded intriguing, so I decided to order the tapes, which would set me back about twenty bucks. Reading the phone number on the postcard, I noticed that the area code and prefix were from a town not more than a half hour’s drive from where I was now living. Excited, I called the number and said I’d like to order the tape set, and that I was nearby, just half an hour away. The man on the other end of the line, whose name was Bill Hamilton, said he was a meditation teacher and invited me for a visit.
My first impulse was to impress Bill with what I knew about Buddhism and spirituality, because I was used to thinking of myself as a big deal; I’d had this thing happen to me that most people hadn’t had, or at least weren’t talking about. But within two minutes of meeting Bill, I realized he wasn’t speculating; he knew far more about meditation and awakening than I did. I stopped talking and started listening.
Bill was twenty-five years older than I. He was gawky and tall, about 6’1”. He had white hair, a Prince Valiant haircut, and a short white beard. He was affable, humorous, and just slightly socially awkward, with a tendency toward malapropisms. In spite of the occasional mis-used word, though, Bill Hamilton was a masterful communicator. He was eloquent, articulate, creative, and had a special way with concepts. And he was the king of the one-liners. When I asked Bill what it felt like to be enlightened, he said, “Suffering less. Noticing it more.” Bill was a natural entrepreneur. He had founded the Dharma Seed Tape Library as a volunteer at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in 1983 but had since moved on and was now subsisting solely on the proceeds of his own mail order cassette tape business, Insight Recordings. He had a couple of professional dubbing machines in his apartment, and did all of his own promotion and bookkeeping on his computer. Bill liked to modify his own computers; he had several, and they were always breaking down. He liked to laugh about “computer follies,” which was his way of referring to all the time he spent jury-rigging his machines. He also had a 35mm SLR camera that he would drag out randomly to shoot pictures. Bill had been married and divorced three times, and was now alone.
Bill became my mentor. I drove the 20 miles to his apartment every Sunday afternoon for a personalized dharma talk, a hangout, and 45 minutes of formal sitting meditation. The first thing Bill taught me was to use Mahasi Sayadaw’s (Footnote here with link to noting definition and instructions.) mental noting technique instead of the Zen breath counting exercise I’d learned from a book. And every Sunday evening, when I left Bill’s house to drive home, I would be on cloud nine, full of hope and optimism, and a deep calm that felt like the most precious gift in the world, and the only thing worth pursuing in an otherwise confusing and pointless existence. I did not understand why spending time with this old man affected me so profoundly.
One of the things that struck me about Bill was his willingness to walk his talk. The first day I met him, he needed to go to his storage unit to get something out of it. Since Bill drove an old yellow Volkswagon bug, he asked me to drive him there in my Honda wagon, which had more cargo space. At the storage unit, rummaging around in boxes, Bill found a black widow spider. I would’ve just killed it, but Bill left it alone. When I asked him why, he told me that one of the five precepts of Theravada Buddhism was to avoid killing. I was impressed by the fact that he not only knew about these precepts, but actually followed them, unwilling to kill so much as a bug. Inspired by Bill’s example, I too adopted the precept to avoid killing “sentient beings,” and for years I didn’t kill insects either. Incidentally, a few years later I was on retreat at Bill’s Whidbey Island Retreat, which was his retreat center (made available by a generous friend) in Washington State, consisting of 20 acres of pine forest and Bill’s tiny trailer, along with an extra motor home for a yogi or two to stay in. I was the only student there at the time. One day, I saw Bill smack a mosquito. I said, “I see you’re no longer abstaining from killing insects.” Bill said, “Last time I was [on meditation retreat] in Burma I felt like killing them. So I did.” Bill had been following the non-killing precept for years. I interpreted this not as backsliding, but as progress. Notwithstanding the beauty of a life without killing, Bill had come to a place in his practice and his life where he could question even his own dogma.
Compared to everything I’d heard and read previously, Bill’s model of enlightenment was simple and clear. He told me about the four “Paths of Enlightenment” of Theravada Buddhism, discrete developmental landmarks that could be attained by systematically applying the vipassana technique. [The first of the four paths is called stream entry, and is discussed in greater detail in Chapter X as part of the method.] Together, the four paths form a map of what can happen when a meditator does vipassana practice. [I will be presenting my interpretation of these stages in Chapter X, “Get Stream Entry”, as one tried and true programs for developing contemplative fitness, a method I have seen work for dozens of students.] If you read traditional descriptions of these four paths, you will find references to future rebirths (and lack thereof), saints, “fetters,” and “purification.” If, on the other hand, you strip away the jargon, magical thinking, gratuitous mythology, and hero-worship, while making healthy allowances for hyperbole and hagiography, the four-path model can be interpreted as describing an organic process of human development. (Editor’s note: Link to a section describing my interpretation of the four path model explaining why I reject the idea that I am “redefining” the model; my contention is that there is no One Correct Way (orthodoxy) to interpret ancient teachings, by which all other interpretations must be judged (and found lacking).)
In other words, the ancient Buddhists were onto something. Bill was talking about something do-able, and he believed there were many people living today who had these attainments, including arahatship (fourth of the four paths), or “full enlightenment” according to Theravada Buddhism. Bill gave me to understand through indirect speech that he himself had attained at least the second of these four paths of enlightenment. Finally, after eight years of reading fairy tales culled from a Zen master’s fantasy, I was sitting across the table from a man who asserted that there was something called enlightenment, and that he had it. Or at least that he had some significant amount of it, and was working towards getting more of it. (Purists, don’t despair at the irony of getting enlightenment as though it were a side of bacon in the butcher shop window. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of “spiritual materialism“ in a later section. For now, suffice to say that it was precisely the clarity of language made possible by the acquisitive approach to awakening that made it possible for me to jump in with both feet.)
1.3. First Long Retreats#
Within a few months of meeting Bill, he had convinced me to commit to a three-month-long intensive meditation retreat at Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts. When he first suggested it, I balked; the prospect of spending three months in silence, meditating all day long, every day, was daunting. But I soon warmed up to the idea. The guidelines for the three-month retreat called for several weeks of prerequisite meditation retreats before attending such a long program. But Bill had connections at IMS, having spent most of the 80s there as a “long term yogi,” living in the unfinished basement of the facility, attending all the retreats and recording the dharma talks. He pulled some strings and got me signed up. I spent the fall of 1991 on retreat. I kept a journal of the entire ordeal. When I returned home around Christmas time, I sat down with Bill to tell him about it, reading directly from my notes. I read for two hours straight, and literally put Bill to sleep at one point. I pretended not to notice that he was snoring and kept reading. After listening to my report, Bill told me that I had gone through ten of the sixteen stages leading up to stream entry or “first path,” the first level of enlightenment according to the Theravada map. I had not attained stream entry, but I was close. Remarkably, Bill was able to extract some useful information from my long-winded story. It took me years to figure out that my vipassana teachers didn’t care what I thought about my meditation. No matter how important it seemed to me, they couldn’t glean much information from my opinions and psychological or philosophical commentary. They wanted to hear about what actually happened, in clear, simple terms. The ability to distinguish experience from thoughts about experience is key to both effective practice and effective reporting. By comparing phenomenological descriptions of my experience to the developmental map they carried in their heads, they could tentatively place me on that map and give me targeted advice on how to develop further.
Based on my report, Bill was able to neatly line up my experiences with the Progress of Insight map. (Footnote to P of I essay.) He showed me, point by point, were I was and where I had been. About halfway through the retreat, for example, I’d fallen into a notoriously difficult stretch of territory, and languished in it for the remainder of my time in Massachusetts, meditating less, sleeping more, ruminating and worrying, journaling, shuffling about the retreat center in a funk, and generally wasting time. Bill explained that all of this was predictable, and that if I’d spent more time meditating and less time thinking and writing during the second half of the retreat, I might well have moved through this difficult stage and on to next, which was, by the way, a distinctly more agreeable state. I might even have attained stream entry! I pointed out that this would have been valuable information to have in real time. “Why didn’t my interview teachers tell me what you just told me?”
Bill grinned. “IMS is a mushroom factory.”
I didn’t catch the reference, so he explained: ”Keep ‘em in the dark and feed ‘em shit.”
How to explain the impact of one comment on my entire life? The IMS teachers had treated us, the students, like “mushrooms.” I was stunned, later enraged. I found it appalling that teachers would withhold such valuable information. Surely, if I had known that my discouragement, confusion, and lack of motivation were normal, typical, temporary, and the entirely predictable consequence of a particular phase of developmental that was first mapped over 2,000 years ago, I would have practiced differently and had a more successful retreat.
My commitment to full disclosure about states and stages was born with Bill Hamilton’s “mushroom” comment. Much of my teaching since 1991 has been a reaction to what I came to think of as the “mushroom culture” of mainstream Western Buddhism. The antidote to the mushroom culture was the simple dissemination of information. I railed (and still rail) against the presumption, patriarchy, and authoritarianism that leads a few teachers to withhold information from their students. This theme later became a movement, when my friend Daniel Ingram, having heard my story and later having experienced the mushroom culture for himself, wrote about it in his 2003 book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha.
Bill suggested that I go to Asia, check myself into a monastery, and get stream entry. So that’s what I decided to do. At the time, I only cared about meditation. The rest of my life didn’t matter. Bill told me: “Everything you do in order to make your next retreat possible is part of your practice.” I found this vastly empowering; now it was possible to view all aspects of my life as supporting my practice, rather than getting in the way of it. I had a job delivering pizzas at Domino’s Pizza, which was demoralizing due to the low wage. Again, Bill came to the rescue: “Just figure out how many pizzas you need to hustle to buy a ticket to Burma. Then, get busy.” I got busy. Although I didn’t earn much at the pizza store, my goal was concrete, and I could see progress each day as my piggy bank filled up. I sold my car and bought a one-way ticket to Malaysia, understanding that I was going to meditate at a Burmese-style monastery in Penang while applying for a visa to continue on to Burma. I didn’t know when or whether I would return home. In fact, returning home was the furthest thing from my mind. I planned to get enlightened. I was steeped in the four paths model of enlightenment that I’d learned from Bill, and I wanted to get not just first, but also second path before returning home from Asia, however long that might take. [I no longer view the four paths model and the progress of insight map as the only way to model contemplative development, but it is a useful tool (lens) for diagnostics and teaching that consistently leads to results.]
I remember saying to Sayadaw U Rajinda, the Burmese monk who was both my interview teacher and abbot of Malaysian Buddhist Meditation Centre in Penang, “I’m going to stay in Asia until I get 2nd path.” U Rajinda smiled approvingly, and in his deep, resonant voice, said, “Good plan.” This was powerful validation; now, both Bill Hamilton and Sayadaw U Rajinda were on my team, and both of them took this as seriously as I did. Enlightenment was real and doable. I stayed in Malaysia for six months. U Rajinda was my teacher throughout that time. I saw him later that year in Burma when he came for a visit, and again in Malaysia after that. He and I formed a bond. He once drew a picture of me on a scrap of paper and gave it to me as a gift. It was an image of a shaven-headed meditator sitting cross-legged in meditation, with the caption “Mr. Kenneth” printed underneath in English.
Being on retreat in the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition is intense, immersive, and often grueling. There’s very little to do other than meditate. You go to sleep at 9:00pm, wake up at 3:00am and meditate, alternating one hour of sitting with one hour of walking meditation. Sometimes I would wake up at 2:00am. If you whittle it down to four hours of sleep by going to bed at 10:00pm and waking up at 2:00am, you earn a smile from the monks and a sense of macho satisfaction. After breakfast, there is a work period. They give you a piece of a plant, something like a palm frond, to use as a broom, and you might spend 10 minutes sweeping the floor of the meditation hall. An ordinary broom would be more effective, but there is apparently some sort of ceremonial significance to the frond, and after all, it’s not as though we were pressed for time. After work period, it’s back to meditation, all day long, with a break for lunch at 10:00am. Lunch is the last meal of the day; monks are not allowed to eat after noon, and there were no special provisions for those of us practicing as lay people to sneak in an extra meal.
A little bit of talking is allowed, especially if it is about meditation, but anything beyond five or ten minutes a day is met with disapproval. As such, most of the adventures occur internally. Looking at the workings of your own mind is rarely dull, and you encounter the whole range of experience, from “this is the most wonderful, amazing experience possible for a human and I never want to leave retreat” to “I hate everything about this and I’ve got to get out of this hell hole immediately.” The deep compulsion to let the process run its course, to find out where it was going, was so strong that I stayed for an entire year the first time, and for months at a time in two subsequent trips to Southeast Asian monasteries.
Within about two months of starting my retreat in Malaysia, meditation had become uneventful. All of the big, exciting, “wow” things of my earlier practice had passed and I was just sitting, quiet and comfortable. This is the stage called “insight knowledge of equanimity” on the Progress of Insight map, the stage just beyond where I had gotten on my IMS retreat in Massachusetts. One day, sitting after lunch, something changed. I fell so deeply into meditation, it was almost as though I went to sleep, or lost consciousness for a moment. And then, suddenly, I perked up and said to myself, “Was that it? I think that was it.”
According to the Mahasi interpretation, stream entry and subsequent path moments are signaled by an event called a “cessation.” [More on this in Chapter X.] A cessation, by this interpretation, is a blip out, a loss of consciousness, typically for just a brief moment, although in some cases it might last longer. Now you’re here, now you’re not, now you’re back, with no sense of the passage of time and no memory of what happened in the interim. The first time this occurs, it signals stream entry. I instantly recognized my experience that afternoon as stream entry, based on what I had heard and read about the phenomenon. Bill Hamilton had characterized stream entry as a great anticlimax compared to experiences that often precede it, like my first mind-shattering opening in 1982. Although such powerful unitive experiences are often assumed to be enlightenment by those who experience them, they are, at least according to the Theravada Buddhist tradition, preliminary stages; Bill said that the initial unitive opening is to stream entry as the germination of a seed is to the blossom that eventually grows from it.
After attaining stream entry in Malaysia, I got up from the cushion and walked around the monastery laughing for a day or two. I felt free. Life was good. I suddenly had access to jhanas. Jhanas are pleasant, discrete, reproducible altered states of consciousness, each more refined and exquisite than the next. [I will present the jhanas as part of the method, in Chapters X, Y.] I found that I suddenly had access to four of these states. I had heard a little bit about the jhanas and what they were supposed to be like, but this was my first experience with them. The first four jhanas would normally arise in order during a sitting: one, two, three, four. But I also found that I had random access, and could jump to any jhana from any other, just by intending to do so. The jhanas appeared as discrete channels to which I could attune the mind, much like moving the dial of an old-fashioned radio. The depth and clarity of these new meditative states was completely different from the day before. I took this as further validation of stream entry.
Within hours of the event, I went to Sayadaw U Rajinda’s room and knocked on his door to request an impromptu interview, something I had never done before. I told him what had happened and hinted that I understood this to be stream entry. U Rajinda hinted that he thought so too, and gave me the new instruction to note “pleasant” and “unpleasant” while sitting, and sent me back out to meditate some more. “Pleasant experiences may arise in your sittings and they may stay for a long time,” he said. “Be sure to note ‘pleasant’ when this happens.” After six months in Malaysia (and a great deal of pleasantness), I flew to Burma, where I would spend another six months at Panditarama Meditation Center in Rangoon. My teacher there was the famous and cantankerous Sayadaw U Pandita, abbot of Panditarama, highly decorated scholar, and celebrated master of the technical aspects of meditation. In his community, he was affectionately known as “Sayadawgyi” (pronounced “sigh-a-dow JEE”) meaning “Big Sayadaw.” Sayadaw is itself an honorific meaning “elder monk.” There were lots of Sayadaws in Burma, but there was only one Sayadaw Gi at Panditarama.
U Pandita was interested in spreading the Buddhist teachings outside of Burma, so he spent a lot of time with the foreign yogis, charging his lieutenants with the supervision of the local Burmese students. We foreigners (non-Burmese yogis, both Asian and Western), interviewed with Sayadaw U Pandita several times a week, and we heard dharma talks by him on the days we weren’t interviewing. The interviews were done through an interpreter, even though U Pandita was able to understand a bit of English. Interviews were one-on-one, but were done in front of the entire group of 10–15 foreigners, so we all got to hear all the interviews.
Several times a week, I would spend half an hour or so talking privately with U Vivekananda, a German monk and disciple of U Pandita who has since become a Sayadaw in his own right, and abbot of Panditarama Lumbini in Nepal. U Vivekananda spoke perfect English and was more forthcoming than Sayadaw U Pandita. Monk’s rules prevented him from being completely open in our discussions, especially with regard to his own experience, but I could ask him questions that I couldn’t ask U Pandita.
Much about the authoritarian structure and hierarchy of the monastery was difficult for me. Having to bow three times, on hands and knees, forehead to the floor, before and after each interview with Sayadaw U Pandita seemed like a charming custom at first, but eventually it was just annoying. I wanted to engage U Pandita in discussion, and in my more grandiose moments I even fantasized about educating him about what I considered to be certain superior aspects of Western culture. Once, I brought this up to U Vivekananda after a frosty encounter with U Pandita. The German monk said. “Never argue with Sayadaw. He simply can’t tolerate it.” This was obviously true, and part of the challenge of monastery life was suppressing my own psychological need for open engagement on a level playing field; there was no opportunity for that whatsoever. I reminded myself again and again that it was worth the pain; I was getting something that I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. So I stayed on.
There is a common misconception that a high level of contemplative development will necessarily transform a human being into a lovable, likable, caring, infinitely compassionate, and utterly sanitized cartoon saint. Sayadaw U Pandita was living proof that this was not so; he displayed the whole range of emotion. Although he could at times be loving, kind, and supportive, more often he appeared angry, irritated, cutting and sarcastic. In short, he was a mean old man. Between my instinct for self-preservation and the powerful taboo against outright disclosure, I judged it unwise to simply tell U Pandita that I believed I had attained stream entry. All I could tell him was what I was experiencing in my individual meditation sessions.
When I first arrived in Burma, I was still in the review phase after stream entry, a kind of afterglow that follows attainment of a path. This left me without much motivation for precise reporting; my meditations were often so blissful that I would just sit and bask in pleasure for an hour or more at a time. I wasn’t able to adequately describe the precise phenomenology of those experiences, so to U Pandita I was just being sloppy. He shouted, “You are dull, dreamy, drifty! This is not acceptable!” He would angrily hold forth on the inferiority of western yogis in general and Americans in particular. “You Americans, you think you can do it your way! But here in Burma, there’s only one way, and that is my way!” It would have been funny, had it not been so intimidating. Kneeling on the floor of a monastery in a foreign land, with the legendary Sayadaw U Pandita sitting cross-legged on his throne above me, surrounded by his disciple monks, my Western notions of equality did not apply.
I became obsessed with U Pandita. His presence filled my world. Every waking moment was spent reflecting on our conversations and his criticisms, along with imagined conversations in which I would skillfully refute his attacks. But there was no future in this and I knew it. My two options were to either follow Sayadaw’s instructions, or to leave the retreat. After several weeks of internal turmoil and barely restrained resentment during interviews, my resistance collapsed. In my mind, I bowed to U Pandita and said, “I surrender. You’re the king. What do you want me to do?” U Pandita recognized the change at our very next interview. As soon as I began to do things his way, I saw the kind and supportive side of the man. He smiled. “So now… you look like a yogi!”
What Sayadaw U Pandita wanted was for me to be almost painfully simple in my reporting. He wanted me to say, for example, “when I observe the rise and fall of the abdomen, I feel pressure, tightness, coolness, warmth, softness. I feel mind states of fear, annoyance, joy, equanimity.” These kinds of bare-bones explanations gave him the information he needed to gauge my progress, place me on a map of development, and give targeted advice. It was very important to him that I not space out or get into sleepy, dreamy, states, and that I report in simple, concrete terms, with little or no interpretation or commentary.
I did not attain 2nd Path on this first Asian retreat, in spite of my earlier promise to Sayadaw U Rajinda during my stay in Malaysia. After about a year of intensive meditation in the austere conditions of Buddhist monasteries, I was sick and exhausted. I had lost 60 pounds of bodyweight, going from 200 to 140 in 12 months. It was time to fly back to the States and rest.
1.4. Alaska#
While I was in Asia, my parents bought a cabin by a lake near Haines, Alaska, and got to know some people there, including a locally famous artist and woodcarver. He had been to India as a spiritual seeker when he was young, and understood the culture shock of returning home after immersion in another culture. When he heard that I was returning from a year-long retreat in Southeast Asia, he suggested to my parents that I come live with him and his family and work in his art gallery as I reintegrated into American culture. And that’s what I did. The artist taught me the art of woodcarving in his unique style, which was in heavily influenced by Northwest Coast Indian Art.
I was also involved in community theater in Haines. We performed a melodrama every Saturday and Sunday night in the summertime for the tourists who came on cruise ships. Occasionally we’d do a big production as well, and when we performed Fiddler on the Roof, I played Fyedka, the Russian boyfriend. My Alaskan adventure was a magical time, a creative time, and the calm and clarity of mind resulting from a year of intensive meditation practice made the breathtaking natural beauty of Southeast Alaska seem all the more exquisite.
Shortly after arriving in Alaska, a local woman recruited me to teach meditation, and I led a weekly sitting group. I would give talks and teach basic techniques like following the breath and noting in the Mahasi style. I also taught the model of the four paths model of enlightenment that I’d learned from Bill Hamilton and my Asian teachers, and spoke of stream entry as a realistic goal. I made no secret of the fact that I believed I had attained stream entry. These views were met, for the most part, with resistance or indifference, but there were a handful of people who became my friends and came regularly to the weekly sittings.
Most people in that tiny Alaskan town thought of me as a kind of odd quasi-monk. I didn’t date throughout the time I spent in Alaska, mainly because the women I was interested in attended my sitting group, and it was clear to me that it wasn’t a good idea for teachers to date their students. So I continued my monkish ways. My parents were spending the summers in their cabin 26 miles outside of town, so every weekend my father would pick me up and we would drive out to the cabin together. My dad was an avid, even obsessive, fisherman. He and I would go fishing every weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, on a nearby river or on the lake just outside the cabin’s back door. Mother was an intellectual and a reader; she and I would discuss ideas in the evening, sitting at the table in the one-room cabin as Dad lovingly cared for his fishing tackle. In the wintertime, Mom and Dad would drive back to their place in Oregon, and I spent my first Alaskan winter alone in the cabin by the now frozen lake. There was no electricity. Illumination was courtesy of gaslights, and the cabin’s only heat source was a leaky old Franklin stove that required constant attention and had an insatiable appetite for firewood. I spent a lot of time alone that first winter, splitting wood, feeding the stove, reading, and meditating.
I returned to Southeast Asia twice for retreats during the period I called Alaska home; two months in Malaysia for the first trip, and four months for the second, half in Malaysia and half in Burma. My teacher in Burma on my third Asian retreat was the lovable Sayadaw U Kundala, a direct disciple of Mahasi Sayadaw who was as famous as U Pandita in Burma, but less well known in the West. It was on this retreat with U Kundala that I attained second path. Both stream entry and second path were so obvious to me that I didn’t require validation from my teachers. Nontheless, Sayadaw U Kundala validated me. I described the phenomenology of the cessations I was experiencing, which at the time I experienced as cluster of visual freeze frames, often in quick succession, and U Kundala declared: “Oh, this is magga phala!” Magga and phala are the Pali words for “path” and “fruition,” respectively. I explained that I had experienced this once before, two years earlier in Malaysia, and had been through the stages of the Progress of Insight before as well. Sayadaw U Kundala acknowledged this and even taught me how to use resolutions to re-experience the cessations of stream entry and second path, which were subtly different.
I was impressed by how open Sayadaw U Kundala and many of the Burmese Buddhists were in talking about meditative attainments and progress. There seemed to be a whole culture of acknowledging attainment at U Kundala’s monastery. According to Buddhist tradition, giving a gift to someone who has attained some level of enlightenment accrues spiritual merit to the giver, so as word got out (various people were able to overhear my interviews with U Kundala) that a Western student was making progress, people began to come to my room and offer me gifts, including some beautiful silk sarongs and a warm Russian-style furry hat with earflaps for chilly Rangoon mornings in the cool season.
When I finished the retreat and was ready to leave Burma, I got a ride to the airport from a man who was a board member at the monastery. He was clearly well connected in Rangoon, because when we get to the airport, he waved his hand at a bunch of soldiers with assault rifles, causing them to stand back and let me pass, so that I didn’t have to wait in the customs line with the other hapless tourists. As I was walking away, the man from the monastery waved goodbye and shouted to me across the crowded airport, “You got two! Come back for a third,” in a less-than-veiled reference to the four paths of enlightenment.
I had remained in touch with Bill Hamilton throughout my time in Alaska, and would periodically go to California or Bill’s Whidbey Island Retreat in Washington to spend time with him or to do a silent retreat. Returning from my third Asian trip, I stopped by Whidbey Island. Bill confirmed my attainment of second path in his characteristic indirect style; I later heard from a mutual friend, “Bill said you attained second path!” This was part of the odd, roundabout way in which Bill liked to communicate about attainments. In my own teaching, I have taken the Burmese willingness to talk about attainments one step further; I speak openly about my own attainments and freely give my opinion to my students about where I think they can be placed on a developmental map. [It’s worth pointing out that I don’t consider myself the final arbiter of other people’s attainments. I’m not in a position to validate or invalidate other people’s attainments; I can only give my opinion. An attainment either happens or it doesn’t, irrespective of anyone’s opinion including the teacher and the student herself.]
1.5. Deeper Into Jhana#
After attaining second path and returning from Asia, I spent several months meditating at Bill Hamilton’s Whidbey Island Retreat. I had gained access to the first four jhanas with stream entry, and I now set out to develop jhanas 5-8, four more altered states commonly described in Theravada Buddhist literature. I thought of jhana practice as support for my vipassana practice as well as being interesting in its own right, and I wanted to be able to access these states on demand. I planned to do kasina practice, a type of pure concentration practice in which the attention is held steady on a single object or concept. [I had secretly done some of this kind of practice on my Asian retreats too, without telling anyone.] I had a brown plastic sluicing bowl from Burma that I had bought to bathe from water tanks when I didn’t have access to a shower, and this bowl was to serve as my kasina. I propped up the bowl in my tent on Whidbey Island and got to work; the work in this case was as simple as staring at the bowl for hours at a time. [I was probably following instructions from the Visudimagga, of which Bill had a copy, and the “One by one as they occur” sutta (MN 111).] Using this technique, I was able to develop the fifth jhana within a few days, and the others followed one after the other until I had access to eight distinct altered states.
Having attained the first two levels of enlightenment according to the four paths model, my next landmark would be third path. I had heard a little about third path from Sayadaw U Pandita and from Bill Hamilton. It was said that first and second path were fairly straightforward and I had even heard from Bill Hamilton that first and second path were “a dime a dozen” in Buddhist circles. But third path was considered more difficult, rare, and harder to diagnose. And in fact, although my own attainment of stream entry and second path were self-evident, the exact moment in which I attained third path is not clear to me.
Some time in the mid–90s, I discovered a new set of jhanas beyond the eight commonly taught within Buddhism. I was sitting in my car after a grocery shopping expedition. I remembered reading about a vow that a Buddha named Amitabha had made. According to what I remembered of the mythology, Amitabha once vowed that anyone who sincerely invoked his name would be instantly transported to the Pure Land, a kind of Buddhist heaven. Notwithstanding my initial experience of mystical union in 1982 and a few brief flirtations with religious concepts, I had remained as skeptical as ever, and didn’t believe for a moment that there was a magical Buddha named Amitabha up in the sky, poised to intervene on my behalf. Still, I well understood the power of metaphor and suggestion in human experience, so I decided to try an experiment. With as much sincerity as I could muster, I invoked Amitabha Buddha by repeating the phrase “Namo Amitabha” over and over. Almost immediately, I entered a state of boundless gratitude and happiness that I hadn’t felt before. This was a discrete altered state, but not one of the eight jhanas I was already familiar with. This new state was so pleasant and profound that one of my first thoughts was I would happily toss away all of the previous eight jhanas in return for this one. I found that I could conjure up this new jhana at will by picturing Amitabha Buddha in his traditional red robes, by recalling the sense of boundless gratitude, or by focusing on the “third eye” area in the middle of my forehead, which was experienced prominently in this state. I dubbed this new state the “Pure Land jhana,” since it had come from the Pure Land Buddhist practice of invoking Amitabha Buddha. A few months later, I went on another retreat with Bill at Whidbey Island and discovered another altered state in the same mental territory as the Pure Land jhana. It wasn’t the same state as the Pure Land jhana, but was of similar character, so I began thinking of these states as Pure Land One and Pure Land Two.
While I was cultivating the Pure Land jhanas on Whidbey Island, I received a letter from my good friend and former meditation student Daniel Ingram in which he claimed access to a state called nirodha samapatti. [The Pure Land jhanas and nirodha samapatti are discussed in more detail in Chapter X.] Nirodha samapatti (NS) is a special meditative phenomenon that is said to only be accessible to anagamis (those who had attained the third path of enlightenment) and arahats (fourth path practitioners, the “fully enlightened”). I once heard U Pandita describe NS during a dharma talk in Rangoon as “a way of accessing nibbana” [Nibbana is the Pali word for the Sanskrit Nirvana.] that “those nobles ones, the anagamis and arahats” had in their bag of tricks. The developmental aspect got my attention; if only 3rd path yogis and beyond had access to nirodha samapatti, then access to NS was necessarily a key diagnostic criterion. To access NS was to be an anagami, a developmental attainment supposedly so lofty that most modern Buddhist practitioners did not consider it a reasonable goal. And here was my friend Daniel claiming to have access to NS, and accordingly claiming to have attained third path. I didn’t believe him. I wrote back to Daniel suggesting that he get over himself and keep practicing. Years later, though, perhaps in 2003, I found that I also was able to access to a curious state that seemed to line up with textual descriptions of nirodha samapatti. Daniel and I compared notes and seemed to be experiencing the same thing. Together and separately, we have since heard many of our students describe a similar phenomenon.
In the face of the prevailing Buddhist culture, which holds that we live in a degenerate age and that it is not possible for modern humans to achieve the same levels of awakening as the great mystics of the past, it is natural to ask whether what I identify as nirodha samapatti is the same phenomenon described by the ancients. Unfortunately, I cannot know the answer to this question. I can never be sure that any of the experiences described by others correspond exactly with my own, and this kind of comparative mind-mapping becomes all the more difficult if the other people involved are dead or unwilling to talk openly. The larger issues here are dear to me and have become a mainstay of my practice and teaching. Are modern people capable of attaining the high levels of contemplative development spoken of in ancient texts as “awakening”? I believe we are. In fact, it’s hard for me to imagine what would prevent it. To the extent that the accomplishments of ancient meditators seem beyond our reach, I suspect it has more to do with hyperbole and hagiography than with any inadequacy on the part of modern humans. I believe it is realistic for us to reach and even go beyond the achievements of the ancients and I practice and teach accordingly. Contemplative fitness is within everyone’s reach, and contemplative excellence is there for those of us willing to dedicate our lives to its pursuit. In this, we see yet another parallel between physical and contemplative fitness. As for the conventional wisdom that awakening not only leads to but is defined by moral perfection, omniscience, etc., my answer is simple; I don’t believe there ever was a morally perfected or omniscient human. Whatever contemplative development the ancients were describing, it did not entail perfection. And yet, I am convinced that ancient advocates of meditation were pointing to something real and infinitely valuable. My ongoing efforts to separate reality from fantasy, abandoning childish notions of perfection while continuing to cultivate contemplative excellence are a large part of what motivates my teaching (and this book.)
1.6. Third Path#
Years after I first came across the two Pure Land jhanas, I found a list of the 31 realms of existence of Buddhist cosmology on the Internet. [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sagga/loka.html] The 31 mythical realms were mapped to jhanas. I’d seen a poster years before, hanging on the wall in the Malaysian Buddhist Meditation Centre, that lined up the 31 realms to jhanas in a similar way. In the online map, there were five realms said to be accessible to anagamis and arahats only. These were labeled as suddhavasa realms or ”Pure Abodes.” This was a great “aha” moment for me. From here, it wasn’t much of a stretch to connect the states I had independently named “Pure Land” jhanas with these “Pure Abode” realms. Bill Hamilton often spoke of mapping our mind states to the Buddhist realms. For Bill, the Buddhist realms of existence were, above all, a mind map; irrespective of whether one believed they had any independent existence, we could view the realms as corresponding to layers of mind that were stable enough to be taken as object and accessed as jhanas. It also seemed plausible that the reason no one seemed to be talking about or teaching any jhanas beyond the first eight was that the Pure Abodes were developmental; most people could not access them, and admitting that you could was tantamount to claiming to be an anagami, which neither monks (because of the rules of their order) nor neo-Buddhists steeped in the culture of non-disclosure were likely to do. There is, to this day, very little information online about the Pure Land jhanas. Ten years ago, there was even less. So it was left to me to explore this territory on my own, and see what I could see. Since I was initially able to access only two such states, the fact that five pure abodes were listed on the 31 Realms map was provocative in the extreme. My interest in nirodha samapatti, which was also said to be accessible only to anagamis and arahats, tied in with this; I wondered if NS might be one of the five realms in question.
I worked on expanding my understanding of these realms for about a year, and went on a retreat at the Forest Refuge for this purpose. While meditating formally, I would ride what I called the “jhanic arc” up and down through the available strata of mind, and open to the possibility that there might be another layer above the ones I knew, i.e., above the second Pure Land jhana. [“Riding the jhanic arc”, a method I invented for accessing and developing strata of mind, is discussed in Chapter X.] As a result of this targeted exploration, I found that there was such a state! A new layer opened up, a new jhana that felt as though it were from the same family as the two Pure Land jhanas. I still considered the possibility that nirodha samapatti was one these realms, but I eventually accessed five discrete Pure Land jhanas, none of which were nirodha samapatti. I asked myself if nirodha samapatti fell naturally into the sequence of the set of the pure land jhanas, and as far as I could tell, it did not. So I ended up with a set of states that can only be accessed by practitioners who have attained to at least third path: the five pure land jhanas, and nirodha samapatti. I’ve taught a number of people to access all five pure land jhanas. As far as I know, no one has come up with any additional jhanas, so to my knowledge this is the complete set: the four material jhanas, the four immaterial or formless jhanas, and the five Pure Land jhanas.
1.7. Disillusionment#
I had been led to believe that stream entry and certainly second and third path were so lofty and quasi-holy that by the time you had them, you’d basically be on easy street; if your life wasn’t yet a cosmic bliss out, it was certainly on the way. If anyone had said I would still be depressed after the second path of enlightenment I wouldn’t have believed it. But as it happened, by the standard diagnostic criteria I learned from the Mahasi system, by 1994 I did have second path and I was still depressed. By 2003, I believed I had attained third path too, but my life was still in shambles. There was a rift between what was happening and what I thought ought to be happening. On the one hand, I was a meditation expert; I had a high level of facility with altered states, knew a great deal of Buddhist theory, and had had myriad fascinating and profound experiences. I could easily access jhanas, and use them to temporarily remedy my problematic mind states, but it wasn’t enough. Depression and anxiety continued. It seemed to me that my brain chemistry was seriously fouled up, and this movement via my meditation practice through what I thought of as an organic, somehow biological spectrum of development was not addressing my mental health issues. I was becoming resigned to the conclusion that meditation would help me accept my depression but would not help me overcome it. I bitterly came to terms with my depression as a long-term, chronic problem that might be with me for the rest of my life; in 1999, I begged a friend to take me by the hand to the county mental health clinic and help me ask the doctor for antidepressant medication.
My spiritual opening on LSD in 1982 had sent me on a quest for enlightenment, and I was still caught up in that current. The feeling that I was on a ride towards enlightenment consumed me. Although I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it at the time, what I really wanted was to be done with it; I wanted the ride to stop. My meditation practice was a blessing and a curse, because I was moving along this developmental continuum in ways that were rich and fulfilling, and yet it was torture to wake up each morning with the feeling that something important remained to be done. I didn’t know how to proceed. My practice had given me access to entirely new categories of pleasant mind states, but this access was not reliable. Instability was the curse of third path. I kept practicing only because I didn’t know what else to do.
1.8. Off the Ride#
In June of 2004, I went on a retreat at Southwest Sangha in New Mexico. One day, walking under a pepper tree in the desert, I gave myself permission to be enlightened. I had been practicing obsessively for twenty-two years, including a cumulative three years on intensive retreat. I thought of myself as a professional yogi. On this day in New Mexico, reflecting on the question “have I suffered enough?” I gave myself permission to be done. I was acutely aware of everything around me — the sights and sounds of the desert, the feeling of heat on my skin, the warm breeze on my face, the pulsing in my veins. It suddenly occurred to me that I was done. The current that had carried me for so many years had relaxed. The ride that had begun the day I first saw the white light in 1982, this thing that had taken hold of me and had been the most important thing in my life for these twenty two years, was over.
I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, clicking her heels three times, and then waking up to find that she’d been home in her own bed the whole time, safe and sound. I called my mother the next day and told her what had happened. “I think I’ve just wasted twenty-two years of my life. The ride is over and nothing much has changed. But I have never been happier. There is peace.”
The essential realization that comes from this process is that there isn’t anyone here to get enlightened. You work tirelessly for years to get enlightened, only to find out that you couldn’t possibly get enlightened, because there isn’t anybody here for it to happen to. Contemplative development, in its purest sense, is learning to see yourself as process.
I walked back into my little trailer in the desert and wrote on the calendar, “I see the elephant.” This was a reference to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant] I’d been able to see parts of the puzzle before, but now it came together. I saw the elephant. My depression went away. I weaned myself off of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication over a period of several months. I stopped having trouble sleeping. It does not happen this way for everyone, but this is what happened to me.
By the way, what is an arahat? According to Theravada Buddhism, an arahat is a “fully enlightened” being. This person has attained all four of the Four Paths of enlightenment. Some say arahats are extremely rare, although in the time of the Buddha, they were apparently as common as ants at a picnic. Whether there are few arahats or many, or for that matter, any at all, depends entirely upon the definition of the word. By one popular definition, an arahat is a kind of superman who has transcended human emotions. He has “overcome greed, hatred, and delusion.” In other words, he does not experience or express fear, anger, hate, lust, envy, nor any other “afflictive” emotion. By this definition, it’s not surprising that there don’t seem to be many around. In fact, I doubt there ever was a person like that, Siddhatta Gotama Buddha included.
My own preferred definition is much less ambitious and, I believe, much more useful. Moreover, I believe it is what the people who originally coined the word meant when they said it. An arahat is someone who has come to the end of a particular developmental process. The process of which I speak is familiar to anyone who has had a spiritual opening. Once it is set in motion, there is a kind of visceral pull that propels one to practice more. There is the feeling that one is moving toward…something…one knows not what. But there is the pull. It will not be denied, and ignore it at your peril. Almost all yogis know this pull. But some yogis also know the end of it. These yogis are arahats.
An arahat is not a superman. An arahat is off the ride. Viewed through this lens, the old stories suddenly make sense. According to the suttas [Suttas (Pali) or sutras (Sanskrit) are the Buddhist scriptures that record the oral teachings of the Buddha.], it was fairly routine for someone to walk up to the Buddha and say something like “Done is what needed to be done.” Why did they say it like that? Because that’s what it feels like. How do I know? Because it happened to me on June 13th, 2004, while walking under a pepper tree in New Mexico. A circuit was completed that day. A palpable energy that had been working its way through my body for 22 years completed its circuit and has been recycling ever since, stable, without any sense that anything else needs to be done.
It would be impossible to overstate what a profound change this caused in my understanding of my own life. The pull I spoke of earlier, the sense of “being on a ride,” and needing to see it through to its conclusion, had formed the backdrop for nearly my entire adult life. Suddenly, it was over. What should I do now? At the very least, I would have to find another project. All of this was clear in a moment. I chuckled, turned to an imaginary Buddha standing next to me and said, “Done is what needed to be done. You got nothin’ on me now.” I understood that there was not, had never been a Buddha outside of me. I was finally free… and yet it wasn’t me. It was just a constellation of thoughts and sensations conveniently designated Kenneth.
There is infinite opportunity for misunderstanding here, so I want to be as clear as possible. Being done refers only to the attainment of a particular landmark along a natural developmental continuum. It does not mean, contrary to hyperbolic legend, that the arahat has “erased all karma,” “perfected him or herself,” etc. Those are children’s stories, told by charlatans or starry-eyed apologists (or pre-industrial quasi-biographers who depended on mythic deeds as a vehicle for their stories).
Simply being enlightened will not magically transform you into a glow-in-the-dark saint. It won’t necessarily even make you a good person. The evidence for this is all around us, as we see that it is not exceptional, but rather the norm, for enlightened teachers to get caught with their pants down. If we were to give up our childish expectations of saintly behavior from our sages, we would not have to feign surprise when they succumb to the same human temptations that plague the rest of us.
I understand that many will not accept my definition of enlightenment. They will mumble something about “higher standards” and go on believing in superheroes. But I think there may be some who are ready to take a mature and realistic look at what enlightenment can and cannot do for us as individuals and as a society. For them, the empowerment of knowing that enlightenment, even to the level of arahat, is possible, will outweigh the disappointment of having to give up the fantasy of infinite wisdom, moral perfection, and steady-state bliss.
1.9. Full Circle#
After my New Mexico retreat, I drove to Barre, MA, and worked at Insight Meditation Society on and off for about a year and a half in the maintenance and IT departments. Almost immediately after arriving at IMS, I met my wife, Beth, who worked in the retreat center as a cook. My chronic depression, which had left me dysfunctional for months at a time throughout my adult life, was gone, and I no longer felt the need to subordinate everything else to my spiritual quest. I was able to get my life together. I went back to school and earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish literature and culture, and a master’s degree in second language education, both from the State University of New York. While still in school, I began teaching meditation over Skype and I’ve since become a full-time meditation teacher, making my living doing something I enjoy and passionately believe in. Beth and I stayed together, and were married in 2008. The relief that comes from having gotten off the ride isn’t what I thought it would be; it is not a cosmic bliss-out or a perpetual beatific smile, but rather a deep, abiding sense of peace, and the feeling that there’s no longer anything missing from my life or the universe. This doesn’t prevent my taking on projects, having goals and motivations and seeing them through, or caring about my life and the people and things around me. Nor does it erase the difficulties of an ordinary human life. Life continues as before, but with less sting. Contentment underlies all, much as the deep sea underlies the froth on the surface of the waves. Even the most violent storms do not disturb those depths.
No description of awakening is adequate. If you get there, you will be surprised, no matter what you hear or read in the meantime. In response to my questions about enlightenment during the early years of my practice, Bill Hamilton used to say, “Highly recommended. Can’t tell you why.” I’ll end my story here, not because my story has ended, but because it hasn’t; my story is ongoing and will not tidily fit within these pages. Indeed, my life has changed as much in the last nine years (since that day in the desert) as in any nine-year period of my life. I have not retired or put myself out to pasture. I teach, learn, meditate, spend time with my wife, family, and community, and run a business. But my purpose in teaching meditation is not to make clones of myself; I see contemplative fitness as analogous to physical fitness. Every individual is unique. Your contemplative fitness will be your own. There is no universal ideal, and no predetermined outcome.
If you want to be strong, lift weights. If you want to be well-educated, go to school. If you want to awaken, meditate. The rest of this book will show you how.