37. Models of the Stages of Awakening ⚡¶

Before I discuss the various models, I should begin by saying that this is almost certainly the most easily misconstrued chapter in this book. Further, if you are a big fan of standard Buddhist dogmas, I strongly recommend that you stop reading this chapter now and skip ahead to other sections of this book. Seriously, I’m about to get quite irreverent again, but in that irreverence are bits of wisdom regarding the models of awakening that are hard to find so explicitly stated elsewhere.

In the ongoing “axes of development” theme, this chapter will discuss various beneficial perceptual and functional modifications and insights you can realize about the way reality manifests. I am also going to talk about a lot of the traditional models found in various forms of Buddhism, but before I do, I want to talk about models in general, particularly their general uses and problems. We have already seen a lot of this with the progress of insight, but it is more important in this chapter, as the progress of insight is in many ways very straightforward (in other ways not so much), but it is a wonder of straightforwardness in comparison with the models that deal with stages of what might be termed realization, enlightenment, awakening, etc., which have serious problems. While I am generally known as a “map guy”, I think that most of the maps of awakening are seriously problematic, and I find that only a few contain some degree of accuracy and have some degree of practical value.

General Problems with Current Models¶

I will get right to the point and list the major general problems with most of the standard models of awakening and then spend some time fleshing out the specifics.

Some models assume predictable linear development, such that if you attain this, next you will attain that, and so on, with this and that being very specifically defined and always following an immutably linear path. I call this “the linear fallacy”. It is not that there aren’t some truths in these models, but there are generally problems as well, and all of the linear models I know of have possible exceptions that I have known of secondhand from my fellow dharma practitioners and some firsthand in myself.

A related set of models are the models that assume there is only one true track along which people progress, usually defined by some specific dogmatic tradition, and these models generally either completely fail to acknowledge other models or disparage other models to some degree, making them more accurately “the one best and only track” models.

Some models assume that if you attain or understand one thing, you will automatically attain or understand something else that might be entirely unrelated, something I call “the package fallacy”. A simple, classic example would be that if you understand the three characteristics of the sensations that make up your sensate world, you will also necessarily not be able to feel certain emotions or will always be a very pleasant person to be around. It is not that packages of abilities, transformations, and understandings don’t occur, as they sometimes do, but most package models presume it will always happen exactly that way or that the packages will always contain the same transformations or elements, when in fact for most of the standard packages there are variants and exceptions as they relate to what happens in real life. Said another way, the package models assume simultaneous, synchronized, guaranteed, perfectly predictable development along totally different axes of development.

Some models assume that, if you can perceive or do something now, you will always be able to (at least until you die, that is, in models that don’t assume realizations carry on into a “next life”). I call this “the permanence fallacy”. It is not that there aren’t some very long-lasting and extremely resilient transformations that can occur, but some of the models that involve permanence have problems that I will touch on in a bit, with what happens when pratitioners have strokes and other health issues that can damage the brain representing the tip of the iceberg.

Some models assume that if you attain something, you will automatically describe your attainments or experience in certain ways, such as using very specific terms or even very specific lists of descriptions. I call this “the descriptive fallacy”.

In a similar vein, some models assume that if you attain something, you will automatically know that you have attained it, what it is called, what it is, what it does, and what it means, as well as all the capabilities it bestows. I call this “the perfect self-diagnosis fallacy”.

Some models assume that there is only one endpoint that is valid, final, or ultimate, and that it will look a certain way, often a very specific way related to a very specific person and how they look or looked. I call this “the final destination fallacy” or, as Kenneth Folk calls it, ”pernicious convergence”, meaning the belief that all roads lead to some very specific final point if you take them all far enough. If you look at the lives of the most accomplished students of the Buddha during his lifetime, such as Sariputta, Dhammadinna, and Moggallana, you will notice that they were much more specialists than they were clones, each having their own skill sets they were particularly good at, their own personalities, their own styles of presentation and emphases. [16] Thus, we shouldn’t expect practitioners today, who are often coming from significantly more diverse conditioning than those who studied with the Buddha, to be more homogenous than those early students were.

It is worth noting that I have fallen victim to believing all these fallacies to some degree at some point, though now don’t completely accept any of them. Exactly how these fallacies do and don’t apply is complicated. The problem is that many of them do get at something that can and does happen or something that is at least partly true with some qualifiers at points. As I introduce the various models, I will try to point out which of them I feel fall into each of these various traps and to what degrees some of those traps may not actually be traps but contain some valid truths.

Models that are Mostly Unhelpful¶

Now I am going to present multiple models of awakening that I largely don’t like and I will explain why I don’t like each one as they come up. Most of these models are too simple and unsophisticated to detail the wide variety of what we naturally find in the wild jungle of meditators. We may of course forgive the various creators of these models for speaking out from the perspective of their own time, place, culture, practice, goals for developing the model, and limitations. I will assume they were all doing their best with what they had. Still, I care most about contemporary utility, so that is the filter I will apply when explaining and critiquing them.

One major problem with most of these models is that we take this imagined something, this mental model, and project it or superimpose it onto our practice and then fixate on that mental construction of an ideal and attempt to imitate it rather than doing the practices that lead to the real deal, however defined. It is also very easy to use various models to script yourself into believing that you have accomplished what they are pointing to when in fact you have either done nothing of the kind, or accomplished part of the practice but left further possible depths of it entirely unexplored and unrealized. People can really get weird, stuck, and even totally flip out if they are using models that are too far out of touch with the circumstances within which they exist, and imitate an ideal that is not aligned with what is going on in their specific contexts and circumstances. I have seen more real-world examples of this happening than I care to count.

Thus, my distinct preference when practicing and when motivation and discipline are sufficient to motivate real practice is to assume that “enlightenment” is completely impractical, produces changes that are very limited in scope, carefully defined, and circumscribed, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the scopes of the other two trainings of morality and concentration. This means that I take it as a working hypothesis that it will not make me a better person in any way, create any beneficial mental qualities, produce any states of happiness or peace, and provide no additional clarity into any of the issues concerning how to live my ordinary life. I have experimented with adopting other views and found that they nearly always get in the way of my insight practice, which is perceiving the sensations that occur now, however they are, as well as ideals about them, which are just more transient sensations. Thus, it is not that this particularly pragmatic view is entirely true, as it obviously isn’t, but it really does work well when practicing, and practice that attains results is what I care about.

It is not that I can’t appreciate the traditions that realize that, since insight can arise on any object or quality of reality, those qualities of arising reality might as well be skillful, as this is a reasonable perspective. For example, if you are visualizing a field of buddhas and bodhisattvas who project their good qualities into your mindstream while you also try to see the essential nature of this luminous display, that can clearly be skillful practice. It is not that we can’t operate on two fronts at once, that of insight and that of skillful content and profound meaning, and most people find themselves doing this in their practice anyway to some degree. However, as content is so tempting, and insight often so counterintuitive, many who try to do insight practices that also equally focus on specific qualities of content will stray far to the side of content and miss the insight aspects. So, I offer my perspective as a counterbalancing measure, not as some absolute injunction.

Further, nearly all meditative practices and traditions are based at least to some degree on idealized views of how the specifics should be. Views so easily become reified, absolutized, and thus the temptation is to not investigate the sensations that make up thoughts about that view, but rather to imitate the ideal expressed in the content of that view. These traps are very easy for people to fall into. This attempt at imitative versus applied practice can seem so much like actual insight practice, but it is not. It is true that good outcomes and positive personal development can arise from this sort of practice, so it is not that I am criticizing those who focus primarily on positive qualities, meaning, and high ideals regarding the specifics their lives, but I am instead stating that many will miss what is more fundamental than these skillful emphases.

I realize that I am probably not doing a good job of advertising awakening here, particularly following my descriptions of the Dark Night. MCTB1 stopped there and said basically, “Good point. My thesis is that those who must find it will, regardless of how it is advertised. As to the rest, well, what can be said? Am I doing a disservice by not selling it like nearly everyone else does? I don’t think so. If you want grand advertisements for enlightenment, there is a great reeking mountain of them there for you to partake of, so I hardly think that my bringing it down to earth is going to cause any harmful deficiency of glitz in the great spiritual marketplace.” However, my not advertising awakening much has caused enough complexity that I have included more about the benefits of practice despite my strong reservations about doing so.

Bill Hamilton had a lot of great one-liners, but my favorite concerned insight practices and their fruits, of which he said, “Highly recommended; can’t tell you why.” It is traditional to advertise awakening or enlightenment in the negative in Buddhist and other traditions (for example, Christian contemplatives’ “via negativa”), either stating what it is not or stating what is lost at each stage. It is so very tempting to imagine that “freedom from suffering” will naturally translate into a fixed and unchanging state of mental happiness or peace, and this can tempt us to try to mimic that idealized state. That mimicking, in which we try to fix our mind on certain specific qualities that we privilege regardless of circumstances, would obviously be a concentration practice.

Having said all that, the fact is that the models of the stages of awakening are out there and available. Even when they are not explicitly mentioned, they influence how people describe realization. Stronger practitioners routinely use various conceptual frameworks when engaged in the “shop talk” of meditation. Scientists are starting to try to figure out how to use various models to put people into categories that make for meaningful contrasting studies by various measures—from behavioral studies to studies using data collected with instruments such as fMRIs and EEGs—but unfortunately much of what they have to work with is far less than optimal. Thus, I have decided to try to work with some of the traditional problematic models so that they might be used in ways that help rather than harm. This is more difficult than you might think and, as reality testing with MCTB1 has shown, routinely backfires.

There are days I wish the terminology for awakening didn’t exist, the models didn’t exist, and the whole process was largely unknown to the ordinary person so that it would be less mythologized and aggrandized, thereby making conversations about it more down-to-earth and less triggering. I wish we could start over, strip away all the mythical trappings and alienating cultural elements, create simple, clear terms, and move on. The longer I do this, the more I appreciate why some of my teachers wouldn’t talk about or use models at all in any explicit or defined way that I could tell, but I will bet, being humans with brains that can’t help but think in patterns and reductive terms, that they had models they used to evaluate students’ practices even if they didn’t credit those models.

There are other days when I think that at least people know it might be possible, even if most of what has been said about it is pretty fantasy-based. My greatest dream is that the current generation of accomplished and semi-accomplished teachers will go far out of their way to correct the descriptive errors and false promises of the past and lay the groundwork for the perpetuation of these reforms despite the economic and social pressures to do otherwise. One of the issues restricting reform is that unfortunately only a few have gone far enough to see how the majority of the golden dreams of awakening do not hold up to reality testing, and most have not seen the true, deep, and amazing benefits of correct practice. Another thing holding this back is that putting oneself on an artificial pedestal based on promising false hopes and dreams can be rewarding in many ways. One way or another, the number of voices trying to bring things back in line with what can actually be done is miniscule compared to the forces that want to make it into something so grand and thus largely unattainable yet paradoxically quite marketable.

Before I get too far into the details, I should explain that the most essential principle I wish to drive home is that this is it, meaning that this moment’s sensations contain truth. Any model that tries to drive a wedge between the specifics of what is happening in your world right now and what awakening entails needs to be considered with great pragmatic skepticism. With the simple exception of clearly perceiving sensations occurring now and seeing through the illusion of a separate, continuous individual, nearly all remaining dreams related to awakening, however beautiful, are problematic to some degree. This basic principle of this is it is essential to practice, as it focuses attention on the here and now, and happens to be true. Back to the complexities …

The mental models we use when on the spiritual path can have a profound effect on our journey and its outcome. Most spiritual practitioners have never really done a hard-hitting look at their deepest beliefs and assumptions about what “awakening” or “enlightenment” means or what they imagine will be different when they “get enlightened”. Many probably have subconscious or largely unconscious psychodynamics and ideals that have come from sources as diverse as family dynamics, religious or non-religious upbringing, education or lack of it, cartoons, TV shows (Kung Fu comes to mind), movies, legends, 1960s gurus, music, magazines, media of all sorts, and countless other aspects of pop culture and the cultural and temporal milieu of which we are the inevitable conditioned products. More formal and traditional sources include the ancient texts and traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Sufism, Kabbalah, Christianity, Western mystical traditions (Alchemy, Theosophy, A∴A∴ and other Golden Dawn-related traditions, such as the various strains of Wicca, etc.), the ancient Greek mystery schools (including the fragmentary writings of those such as Heraclitus), and the non-affiliated or ambiguously affiliated teachers such as Kabir, Khalil Gibran, the Krishnamurtis (J. and U. G.), and many others.

Modern fusion traditions, such as the various new versions of Buddhism and other traditions available in the West, also have a wide range of explicit and implicit ideals about awakening. Plenty of people also seem to take their personal higher ideals for themselves or for others that have arisen from hard-to-track sources and made these a part of their working, if usually poorly-defined or unidentified, models of enlightenment. There is also a strong tradition in the West of believing that awakening involves perfecting ourselves in some psychological sense, though this is also prominent in certain Eastern and traditional models as well in slightly different forms. This trend also makes attempts at the scientific study of these mental transformations very difficult, as just attempting to explain what has changed so often gets lost in large amounts of cultural baggage. This can color study design, implementation, and interpretation, and might be termed some sort of “unconscious ideals of enlightenment bias”.

Just about all these sources contain aspects that at times may be useful and at other times not, even sending people in the wrong direction. It is hard not to be inspired by grand visions of how amazing we might become, chasing after the various archetypal masters’ legendary examples of excellence. Those extremely high ideals ring deep within our collective hearts and call us to find those qualities within ourselves. Thus, as a pragmatist, I have tried to strike some balance of presenting the good, the bad, and the ugly in a way that hopefully will work for my imagined readership. Here “work” means “facilitate results-producing practice”, and you as actual readers will have to figure out for yourselves whether any of my ways of presenting it does that. If not, you will have to figure out where you can find such practice, as it is entirely possible that my way of presenting this material may not work for you, or that it does not achieve that balance of reality-based models that yet speak to something deep in your own makeup and thus compel you to realize your own potential as a wise and compassionate person.

To take on the models of the stages of awakening is a daunting task, but by breaking it down into simplified categories, some discussion of the mass of dogma of varying relevance and veracity is possible. The number of contradictions that can be found even within each specific tradition on the subject is much larger than I think most people imagine. For instance, those who attempt a systematic review of the dogmas of awakening within the Pali canon will find themselves tangled in a mass of widely divergent doctrines, myths, stories, and ideals, and this is only one tradition. Attempting to do this across the various Buddhist traditions leads to endless chaos, and attempting to do it across the rest of the world’s meditative traditions gets almost impossible, as the range of ideals out there is vast. I will use simple, broadly applicable models and discuss specific models that come from some of the more standard Buddhist traditions, and try to relate these to reality. In the end, relating them to reality or throwing them all out the window is part of the practice, and that falls to you. One of my favorite teachers was from a Thai Forest lineage and was at the very far end of the throw-the-maps-out-the-window school.

I consider this attempt to make sense of the models to be just one addition to an old and ongoing tradition of attempting to reform the dogma and bring it back in line with verifiable truths, albeit one that is more specific and comprehensive than any that I have found. Each new culture, place, time, and situation seems to need to do this again and again, as the forces within us and society that work to promote models that are out of touch with the truth of things are powerful and perennial, with money, power, fame, ideals of endless bliss and pleasure, the enticing draw of the ideals of self-perfection, and the pernicious inertia of calcified or unquestioned tradition being chief among them.

In that same vein, this chapter is very much a situation in which I explicitly claim a very high level of realization, write as if what I have achieved is sufficient authority to write a chapter such as this one, and then present it as if this is a definitive text on the subject, enough to contradict significant portions of 2,500 years of tradition and the teachings and writings of countless previous and current commentators. The previous versions of this book contained the line, “While it is hard from my current vantage point to not believe this to be true, anyone with sense will read this chapter with appropriate skepticism, and this, as I see it, is one of the strengths of properly applied Buddhism and rational thought in general.” That line needs revision, and explicit revision that compares it to the previous version. Here is something that I think is better than what I wrote before, and one day perhaps I will think this is wrong and write something else.

From this current vantage point I see an extremely broad range of various beneficial mental modifications that people have managed to accomplish, and they do not all look the same. Some upgrades occur out of the standard sequence that I would typically expect. Some practitioners seem to skip steps and go straight to perceptual modifications and upgrades that have surprised me. Some have suddenly lost previously available abilities after they managed to accomplish some interesting shift. There are further complexities that I will try to touch on as we go. So, take these models with a grain of salt. They are models—and reality, particularly the reality of the mind and perception, is very, very complicated. I do think there are some essential truths that people can realize for themselves with a fair degree of predictability, but within that there is a whole lot of variability about the specifics.

The Buddha asked people not to take his word at face value, but instead to do the experiment and see if they come to the same conclusions. I recommend the same. If you achieve something beyond what I state is possible, more power to you, and please let me know how you did it! I would feel real regret if this work in any way hindered another from achieving his or her fullest human potential. I am always looking for practices and concepts that are useful. While there is not much new under the sun, there are a few things on occasion that are, and if something you did worked to accomplish something beyond what is currently available and known, you should test it out for a while and, if it still performs as you think it does, let someone know.

Finally, to the models … Here is a list of the basic categories of models that I use, though most traditions contain a mix of most or all of these. There are probably other aspects of the dreams of enlightenment that I have failed to address, but this list should cover most of the basic ones. I look at each of these as representing some axis of development, and basically all of them are good axes to work on regardless of what they have to do with enlightenment. That said, from what I have already written, it will not be hard to pick out my favorites. These are components that are typically put together to form more complex, traditional models, but looking at these specific parts of these compound models allows us to really get to the nitty-gritty of each of the more complex models.

Non-Duality models:: involve eliminating or seeing through the sense that there is a fundamentally separate and continuous centerpoint, agent, controller, watcher, doer, perceiver, subject, self, observer, or similar entity.
Direct Perception models:: involve removing or seeing through some distorting or interfering factor in the way we perceive sensate reality.
Time and Space models:: involve transforming some aspect of the way time and space are perceived and understood.
Fundamental Perception models:: involve directly perceiving fundamental aspects of things as they are, including perceiving emptiness, luminosity, impermanence, suffering, and other essential aspects of sensations regardless of what those sensations are.
Specific Perception models:: involve being able to perceive more and more, most, or all of the specific sensations that make up experience with greater and greater clarity during most or all times, and usually involve perfected, continuous, panoramic mindfulness or concentration at extremely high speed.
Emotional models:: involve perfecting the emotions, limiting the emotional range, usually involving eliminating things such as desire, greed, hatred, confusion, delusion, and the like, or eliminating emotions entirely.
Action models:: involve perfecting or limiting the things we can and can’t do in the ordinary sense, usually relating to always following some specific code of conduct or performing altruistic actions, or believing that everything we say or do will be exactly the right thing to have done in that situation.
Powers models:: involve gaining abilities, either ordinary or extraordinary (psychic powers).
Energetic models:: involve having the energy (chi, qi, prana, etc.) flowing through the energy channels in the proper way, the chakras spinning in the proper direction, clearing our aura, etc.
Sleep models:: involve changing aspects of sleep, such as how much we sleep, what happens in dreams, and being conscious while sleeping.
Specific Knowledge models:: involve gaining conceptual knowledge of facts and details about the specifics of reality, as contrasted with the models that deal with directly perceiving fundamental aspects of reality.
Psychological models:: involve becoming psychologically “perfected” or eliminating psychological issues and problems, i.e. having no “stuff” to deal with, no neuroses, no mental illnesses, having perfect personalities, etc.
No-thought models:: involve either limiting what thoughts can be thought, enhancing what thoughts can be thought, or reducing or stopping the process of thinking entirely.
God models:: involve perceiving or becoming one with “God”, or even becoming a god oneself.
Unity models:: involve becoming one with everything in some sense.
Physical models:: involve having or acquiring a perfected, hyper-healthy, or excellent physical body, such as having long earlobes, beautiful eyes, a yoga-butt, or super-fast fists of steel.
Biological models:: those that relate to the degree to which realization transforms our actual biochemical function.
Radiance models:: involve having a presence that is remarkable in some way, such as being unusually charismatic or radiating love, wisdom, or light.
Karma models:: involve becoming free of the laws of reality or the causes that make bad things happen to people, and thus living a blessed, protected, lucky, or disaster- and illness-free life, or perhaps creating no new conditions that could lead to any possible suffering for anyone.
Perpetual bliss models:: involve saying that enlightenment is a continuous state of happiness, bliss, or joy, the corollary of this being a state that is perpetually free from any form of pain. Related to this are models that involve a perpetual state of jhanic or meditative absorption.
Concentration models:: involve the various fruits of concentration practices and typically relate them to awakening in some way.
Immortality models:: involve living forever, usually in an amazing place (Heaven, Nirvana, a Pure Land, etc.) or in an enhanced state of ability (angels, bodhisattvas, sorcerers, etc.).
Transcendence models:: involve the idea that we will be free from or somehow above the trials of the world while yet being in the world, and thus live in a state of transcendence.
Extinction models:: involve getting off the wheel of suffering, the round of rebirths, etc., and thus never being reborn again—or even ceasing to exist in any way at the moment of enlightenment, that is, the great “poof!” on the cushion, not to be confused with the more mundane atmospheric consequences of a legume-based diet, as anyone who has been on a vegetarian meditation retreat knows all too well.
Love models:: involve us loving everyone and/or everyone loving us.
Equanimity models:: involve awakening being characterized by a perfect, pervasive, perpetual state of equanimity.
No-preferences models:: involve having no preferences, opinions, tastes, likes, or dislikes.
Special models:: involve us already being or becoming special.
Social models:: involve being accepted for what you may have attained, that you have attained something because people think you have, and variants on these themes.
Ultimate reality and unreality models:: involve adhering to specific positions about questions of Ultimate reality and unreality as they relate to awakening and the true nature of reality.
Meaning models:: involve advocating for an optimal set of values, goals, and meanings for practice, as well as the claim that awakening will result in a specific set of views regarding values, meanings, and the answers to key perennial questions.
Other models:: involve a wide range of other effects that get described and tacked onto models of awakening, and I will try to sort through some of them.

Like me, you have probably run into most or all of these ideals of awakening in your spiritual quest and within yourself at some point in time, either consciously or not. Given these high ideals, it is not surprising that we find the task of awakening daunting if not preposterous or completely unattainable. Imagine yourself as the universally accepted radiant immortal angel bodhisattva bright-eyed yoga-butt-endowed all-loving one-with-the-universe perpetually mindful perfectly healthy emotionally perfected psychologically pure unimpededly altruistic non-thinking desire-free psychic-superhero starchild of love and light, and then notice how this image may be in some contrast with your current life. If you are anything like me, you may notice a slight discrepancy!

I will take on each model, relate each to a few of the traditions I’m familiar with, and try to make sense of where these ideals came from. I will also address which ones are realistic and helpful in our context and which are beautiful dreams that can either help you identify areas to work on or really screw up your spiritual quest if you are not careful. You will note that none of these model names so far come from any formal tradition. To relate them to the traditions, here is a list of some models from Buddhism:

The four-path model from the Theravada, which involves becoming a “stream-enterer”, second path (“once-returner”), third path (“non-returner”) and then “arahant”.
The five-path model from the Mahayana.
The ten-bodhisattva bhumi model from the Mahayana.
The ideal of Buddhahood from all the Buddhist traditions.
The “sudden” and “gradual awakening” schools.

There are other models from other traditions (e.g. St. John of the Cross’ “Ladder of Love” or “Divine Ascent”), and I have already mentioned these in “The Progress of Insight” section. I won’t go into much detail here about them, but when you are familiar with the models I am about to discuss then you should be able to make some sense of them.

The Non-Duality Models¶

The non-duality model is without doubt my favorite of them all. It essentially says that the goal is to stop a process of identification that turns some patterns of sensations into a doer, perceiver, centerpoint, soul, agent, or self in some very fundamental perceptual way. By seeing these sensations as they are, the process can be seen through gradually until one day the last holdout of duality flips over and there are no more sensations that trick the mind in this way.

My favorite quote that articulates this model is from a sutta called the Bāhiya Sutta in the Udana (Ud 1.10). In it, the Buddha was talking with Bāhiya of the Bark-cloth (gotta love it!) and said that realization involves this direct insight: “In the seeing just the seen, in the hearing just the heard, in the sensed just the sensed, in the cognized just the cognized”, and then Bāhiya of the Bark-cloth was promptly killed by a cow. On his passing, when asked about his future rebirth, the Buddha said that, having practiced according to that pithy instruction, Bāhiya of the Bark-cloth had become fully unbound before his death, meaning fully awakened. [17]

I may repeat this quote about the sense doors just being exactly themselves without any additional complexity just to make the point of how preposterously profound it is. Basically, there is just a field of sensations, as there was before, but now all these sensations are progressively just seen to be as they are, and all the sensations that we generally call “me” are just a part of this process. In this model presented by the Buddha, direct experience of sensate clarity provides the basis of awakening and eliminates the sense of separation and the dualism of the perceiver. Remember, the Buddha was not into unity as the answer, having rejected that on numerous occasions, nor was he into duality, clearly, which yields (you guessed it) non-duality. Yay, Theravada! So simple! So direct! So immediate! So practical! I just love it.

This non-duality model does not imply anything else. It promises nothing related to any other models, except in some loose way the fundamental perception models and the direct perception models that I will address shortly. The non-duality model is one of the most practical models for practice, in that it focuses on simply perceiving sensations as they are right now. For this reason, it is my favorite model.

Waxing scholastic and away from pragmatism and empiricism momentarily, I realize that some ultra-orthodox Buddhist traditionalists from certain strains will notice that the word “non-duality” does not appear in the Pali canon or the commentaries. Using the term non-duality, particularly as it is often associated purely with Vedanta in the minds of those who don’t know better, can really annoy the crap out of some who feel that anything possibly Vedantic should be kept far away from anything Buddhist to avoid violating fire codes and to protect the children, like the two are matter and antimatter and their contact would blow up the planet. While I don’t fully buy the whole “all religions point to the same truth” thing, as clearly there are some significant and largely unresolvable areas of doctrinal conflict, there are distinct reproducible commonalities that occur when people pay very careful attention to bare sensate reality, because bare sensate reality is how it is.

Thus, stating that my favorite models involve “non-duality” burns some serious bridges with fervent traditionalists. However, I am a pragmatist, empiricist, and phenomenologist at heart far more than I am a politician, obviously, and, as the concept of non-duality as articulated by the Buddha in the Udana fits very well with reproducible experience, it is the one I use.

I could have called this model “The Udana Model” or, even better, the “Bāhiya of the Bark-cloth model”, as that really would have had that ol’ time Theravadan feel to it that I admit I also love aesthetically. Then, even though it was the same model in terms of the direct experience it points to, all the strict canonheads would have been nodding, “Ah, yes, the Udana, very old, very authentic, nice choice.” Clearly, I have all the political savvy of the cow who killed poor Bāhiya of the Bark-cloth, and perhaps someone with better skills will one day present this advanced, technical, practical, reproducible, reality-based material in some softer form.

Back to business: the concept of non-duality as an experience arises many times even in the early Buddhist literature, but it is just phrased differently, such as in the Udana quotation earlier, in the teachings of dependent origination (more on that later), and other deep philosophical areas of even very old Buddhist texts. The concept is also clearly pre-Buddhist, arising in the Vedantic literature perhaps a few hundred years before the birth of the Buddha. It is also incorporated into various Mahayana schools in the word advaya.

There are those who think, “Now wait a second, there is non-duality, and then there is non-duality, and never the twain shall meet,” a view whose dualistic absurdity requires no further comment. If you need help sorting out that sort of complexity, I will refer you to the Internet and libraries (remember libraries?) for more if you wish, with Wikipedia doing a nice job of the complex history of the concept of non-duality and its usage across the various traditions.

I will talk more about the non-duality model as we go, and have already talked about it often in a less direct way. I present it first to serve as a foil or counterpoint to all the other models, and it is one of the only models that can withstand rigorous sensate reality testing without qualification or difficulty. Most of the other models contain some degree of truth in them, either literally or metaphorically, but this one you can hang your hat on all the way through your practice. This awareness develops gradually with some sharp jumps along the way, leading to the endless debates about the sudden versus gradual schools of awakening, a subject that will hopefully become clearer as we go, but probably deserves some mention here.

The Sudden Schools of Awakening¶

There are schools of awakening, what I term the “sudden awakening schools”, particularly in some Zen (Chan) traditions from China and Korea, and in some interpretations of various “Hindu” traditions (realizing this is a huge and disparate category)—this is not a complete list—which say that awakening happens in one big shift and that’s basically it, regardless of exactly how you define “it”. They deny claims of the progressive schools (Theravada, Tibetan Buddhist, some other strains of Zen, most schools of Sufism, Kabbalah, other Western traditions, etc.) that there is mappable territory before awakening and during the process of awakening and deny that there might be lots to do after stream entry or whatever you want to call it. Possible explanations for these schools include that there may be a few rare individuals who manage to go straight to something that feels to them like a complete or final awakening due to whatever interesting way they are wired or how they practiced due to whatever remarkable excellent causes (with training and meditative accomplishment in previous lives being the stock Buddhist explanation). While I have never met anyone who did this, there are various accounts in our times of it happening, though I suspect that careful questioning regarding what happened before and after would yield at least a somewhat predictable progression. This is purely my own speculation based on familiar patterns.

There may be schools founded or influenced by people who got to the first stage of awakening (stream entry) and somehow never realized there could be anything more than that or got trapped in a lie about being fully awakened when they hadn’t yet realized there was more to realize and never retracted their initial and erroneous claim.

It is possible that they went through a progression of stages but their definition of enlightenment was such that only some final shift met their criteria, such that they deny, dismiss, or fail to acknowledge the various shifts and previous causes that got them there and instead focus only on the “final” one.

There are people who just thought that sudden awakening was the single dogma that must be believed and stuck with it regardless of any issues of having insight.

There are likely other explanations I haven’t thought of or run across.

Being that every single accomplished practitioner I have ever known has followed a progressive path, including myself, it is very hard for me to believe the sudden claims except for remaining open to the possibility that there may be the exceedingly rare practitioner who occasionally manages to pull this off and thus imagines, based on their limited experience, that this is how it happens in general. In short, if you manage to do this, more power to you, and please let me know. Otherwise, I would bet on the gradual, progressive schools, and if you attain something that you are pretty impressed by, give it time to see how it holds up when life’s inevitable vicissitudes come knocking at your door over the months and years after that grand shift of perspective. Most of the people I know who are deeply into this stuff have reported many shifts and experiences that were quite impressive for some period, but later revealed aspects that could still use some maturation or improvement.

The Direct Perception Models¶

The direct perception models are also useful models, pointing to something that we can learn to perceive. They relate to the ability to have more and more of our experience be known through a more pristine, clear, direct way of perceiving the sensations that make up experience. At certain stages of practice, particularly Mind and Body, the Arising and Passing Away, and the middle and last stages of Equanimity, what is meant by directly perceiving things can become temporarily more obvious, as experiences may suddenly take on a vividness that they didn’t have before. At the stage of Conformity, Change of Lineage, and Path, as well as subsequent entrances to the three doors, we get a very transient but flawless taste of this perceptual perfection. Beyond these brief moments of sensate clarity, the states of awakening can involve permanent shifts of the way reality is processed such that there is a substantial increase in how clearly things present and how little interference there is with them.

By “interference”, I mean two things. First, as people begin to practice, they will notice that a substantial portion of experience is not the material data they always thought it was, but instead is mostly conceptual processing of the mental impressions that were made of those original sensations, thoughts about those mental impressions, and the like. For instance, they may eat a bite or two of food, and not notice that beyond those first few bites, they didn’t really feel or taste much of the rest of the meal. Or, they may see a sunset, and then spend a lot of time thinking about their reactions to the sunset rather than continuing to notice the actual colors and shapes of the sunset.

This interference is not only a product of attention turning away from the original raw sense data, but also the interference that occurs when alternating between the physical sensations and the mental impressions, creating a distortion of the physical sensations based on them not presenting when the mental sensations are presenting. It is not that those mental impressions aren’t also raw sense data, as they are, but most people do not perceive them as such. Thus, most of their experience, even of pleasant phenomena, is substantially reduced by the degree to which they instead focus on thoughts about those experiences.

In that same vein, the mechanisms of attention, effort, mindfulness, investigation, and all the things that appear to regulate, process, monitor, evaluate, and otherwise modulate what would seem to be attention can themselves create a similarly mental but in some ways more fundamental interference pattern that distorts, detracts from, and interferes with the raw freshness and vividness of the original sensations. One of the mental modifications that can result as we go deeper into the world of sensate clarity is that these veils of distortion can fall away, such that we are left in a world that is suddenly much more pristine, more defined, more naturally present, and less distorted. In fact, everything that seemed to be a distortion is itself more clearly perceived, but this lack of distortion is more than that, it is a relying on the bare sensations as being sufficiently representative of themselves such that substantially less “processing” of them is necessary. In this way, those processing elements that remain are now just part of the shimmering field of experience, and many of those processing elements don’t occur anymore at all, as they don’t need to, since the original things naturally represent themselves.

The best result of this increased clarity is that when it is well-developed and locked in as the default mode of perception, reality naturally shows its true nature without any effort required to perceive it, what the Tibetans refer to as phenomena “self-liberating”. There are many names for this way of perceiving things found in other traditions, but regardless of what you call it, I would highly advocate for trying to establish this way of perceiving sensations as the default, as the vivid freshness that results from this is remarkable and vastly better than other modes of reality perception. It is common for people to have glimpses of it along the way, and the memory of these experiences can help keep us not only motivated to practice, but also to point the way, and that way involves being meticulously attentive to whatever is going on and trying to perceive the bare sensations just as they are.

Time and Space Models¶

Time and Space models, some of which I do find to be of value, have to do with alterations in our perception of those two basic aspects of reality. The general themes regarding time are the reduction and then elimination of the sense that there really is a past, that there really is a future, and that these are something different from the memories and expectations that occur now. It is not that practically there are no past and future, as practically there are, from cognitive, predictive, anticipatory, memory-based, and related functional perspectives, but that we can live more and more fully and naturally in this moment, a shifting moment of memories, expectations, etc. By increasing our sensate clarity through standard practices focused on what is happening right here and now, we can learn to perceive these reasonable mental functions which generally relate to time and space as immediate, as a continually unfolding present, however you wish to describe this.

This increasingly automatic clarity about how the sensations related to a sense of time—related to an anticipated future and memories of a past—are always just happening now, and this perceptual understanding leads to reductions in the sense of “time pressure”, meaning stress related to time. Reducing and then eliminating that stress is of real value due to reducing and then eliminating this aspect of suffering.

Related to this is the deconstruction of space, which involves more and more directly perceiving that space arises on the fly, and that various sensations are actually integrated with space, such that we might even reduce the number of sense doors to one, that being the space sense door, and notice that space itself has textures and qualities that we usually divide up into the other sense doors but really, when carefully investigated, seem to just be part of the integrated, fluxing, vanishing, reappearing quality-texture-volume thing. This way of perceiving cuts away a lot of boundaries and, when fully integrated into the way we perceive reality, causes profound alterations in perception that allow for levels of clarity to be naturally present, and these are hard to come by without that aspect of understanding.

The Fundamental Perception Models¶

Related to the non-duality models (and basically an extension of some aspects of the direct perception models) are the fundamental perception models, which are also useful for practice. I say “models” here because various traditions emphasize different qualities of phenomenal occurrence as being ultimate from a practice-oriented point of view. For instance, the Theravada uses the three characteristics of impermanence, suffering, and no-self, as you know well by this point. The Mahayana traditions (Tibetans specifically), may emphasize shunyata (emptiness of intrinsic existence), and the Vajrayana traditions may emphasize the union of bliss and voidness or space-like meditative equipoise. They may also talk about maha ati, mahamudra, rigpa, or express fundamental truths in some other way. I recognize these are complex terms that occur in specific practice contexts, and my treatment of these is superficial. My apologies to those well-schooled in these traditions who would have preferred more specifics here.

Many learn of these models and infer that enlightenment involves continuously perceiving these aspects in all sensations at a conscious level, so that every waking instant we are flooded with the sense of impermanence or luminosity or whatever as our dominant experience. While attempting to perceive this at all times is excellent practice advice, particularly when on retreat, were these models true, then realization would seem to involve flooding the consciousness of the individual with a ton of unfiltered and unfocused sensate information from all sense doors at all times.

While there may be moments or bursts of this sort of perception in enlightened individuals, this is not what finally happens, or at least not the way most would imagine it. The reasons for this are manifold, including that intensity and focus of sensate reality varies widely just like the rest of its specific aspects. With strong awareness of how things are, a process of identification stops, and the switch is thrown, as noted above in the non-duality models. By following the practice advice of the fundamental perception models, we may come to stop this process. A man asked the Buddha if he was continually aware of the fact that he was awake, and he said that he wasn’t, unless he paid attention to the awakened aspect of his sensate world, and then it was obvious.

However, as the Buddha said, do not imagine that you must continue to carry the raft once you have crossed the river. While awakened individuals can at a whim notice the true aspects of sensations, just as color is perceptible to a person with good eyesight (assuming they are not color-blind), so these aspects are clear to an awakened being to various degrees as they progress along the path. That said, just because a person can perceive something doesn’t mean that aspect is the dominant aspect of consciousness at all times. In short, the fundamental perception models are very useful for practice, but do not quite accurately describe the experiential result.

The Specific Perception Models¶

Specific perception models essentially state or imply that an awakened being will be uninterruptedly hyper-aware of every single sensation that arises in their field of perception, including not just the ultimate aspects of the fundamental perception models, but also every single little detail of the content of those sensations, achieving at all times the perfected fusion of the completely open and panoramic perspective of High Equanimity with the laser-like precision of the Arising and Passing Away at its peak (which is the A&P Event). It implies that rather than stopping a process, enlightenment is about becoming so fantastically alert that you see not only the true nature but also the specifics of every sensation that arises at all times, like some sort of perfect version of Sherlock Holmes. This is not even close to what happens in experience. While awakened beings will cycle through those stages, when mindfulness is low then each of those stages will present in a low-key way, and only for moments here and there will there be anything like that kind of hyper-intense awareness, though when enlightened beings are on retreat and/or powering the mindfulness and concentration, they can temporarily achieve something that resembles these high ideals.

The specific perception models are another instance where practice instructions get turned into an ideal of what is supposed to happen in the same way as happens with the fundamental perception models. They become one more example of carrying the raft after we have crossed the river. Again, mindfulness comes and goes, sleep comes and goes (though the Tibetan teachings on dream yoga are very intriguing, more on that later), concentration comes and goes, various perspectives and perceptual thresholds parade through, and the cycles of the ñanas continue on and on, with a few possible exceptions noted later.

The ideals in this model and many models that follow it are sometimes used as a weapon by those who like to criticize those who claim, rightly or wrongly, to be awakened. Examples include, “Don’t you remember when I said (such and such)?”, “Didn’t you notice how I cleaned the bathroom?”, or “How could you have forgotten to pay the power bill?” (It’s all right, married people, you can laugh now.) The implication in each of these is that awakened beings should have perfect awareness of all aspects of their sensate reality as well as an infallible memory. This ideal is unfortunately completely bogus. I so wanted to be a sensation-perceiving superstar with a photographic memory, but have been sorely disappointed. There are people with photographic memories, but it is a separate axis of capability from awakening. Since basically everyone out there has some aspect of this model in their working definition of what “enlightenment” must be, these ideals can be a problem in close relationships, particularly business and romantic relationships for those who are out of the closet about awakening but still running into the misconceptions that abound about what awakening entails for real life.

In this basic vein, this brings up another selling point of realistic, down-to-earth, human models of what awakening delivers. If you tell people you are enlightened and promote very high, idealized, delusional, perfectionistic models of awakening, those who know you well will quickly realize how full of shit you are, particularly people such as spouses or partners, co-workers, best friends, and the like. Further, the more you get stuck trying to be like the person you dream you are supposed to be rather than who you are, the more isolated you can get in your false and pretentious fantasy land, locked away from the grounding, healing, human, and helpful reality testing that comes from community and real, vulnerable, close human relationships. However, if the specific perception models are a problem in this way, you haven’t seen anything until you get to the emotional models.

The Emotional Models¶

The first edition of this work is known for various things, including and perhaps particularly this section. Its revision will probably cause some consternation among some readers, perhaps praise from others, and very likely other reactions I haven’t anticipated. My apologies if anything here seems contradictory to what came before, but this is my best attempt based on my current available data to make sense of what has been a hotly debated topic in my circles. It probably will produce more questions than answers, and those looking for something more definitive will have to look elsewhere. It will hopefully frame the complexities and controversies in some way that will at least allow you to understand some of the basics of the discussion.

Since I wrote the first edition of MCTB, I have had the privilege of meeting and conversing with many other dedicated explorers with much talent, long practice histories using a wide range of techniques, high standards, as well as high ideals about what practice might lead to. I got to be part of their adventures in some ways, sharing techniques and tricks with them as well as learning from them, and thus they became part of my adventures and explorations. Central to all of this is what to do with the emotional models, which promise some sort of emotional transformation, some elimination of certain emotions, or the elimination of all emotions entirely. Thus, before the main party begins, I add the following practical points:

Adopting a limited emotional range model may tempt us to imitate a limited emotional state. Thus, rather than investigating the sensations that made up that emotion or understanding the causes and conditions that led to that emotion arising, we are repressing that emotion. We may get farther and farther from ourselves instead of more in touch with ourselves. Real-world experiences with my own practice and those of my valiant and remarkable co-adventurers confirms this again and again.
Investigating emotions themselves can be both rewarding and difficult. Most people on meditation retreat who attempt this come away with mixed results. Many get overwhelmed for various periods of time by their issues, delving into circular thought patterns that often don’t end up leading anywhere except to reinforcing and repeating those thought patterns through strong concentration. Some do occasionally arrive at helpful resolutions of those issues, as insights into various other ways of perceiving and then interpreting that situation arise, or in the process of finding those sensations in the body and noticing their true nature, or other variants on those themes. More attention to the sensations that make up emotions and to the sense of how they arise and function eventually brings more clarity to them and so is very worthwhile. That said, here goes the fun from*MCTB1*, modified in places to make it more to my tastes these days.

The limited emotional models are so fundamental to the standard ideals of awakening as to be nearly universal in their tyranny. You can’t swing a dead cat in the great spiritual marketplace without hitting them. Almost every tradition seems to have gone out of its way to promote them in the most absurd and life-denying terms possible, though there have also on occasion been attempts at reform. I must acknowledge and express thanks for the attempts, however ineffective, bizarre, mythologized, cryptic, vague, and culturally naive, which the Tibetan and Zen traditions have occasionally made in this regard, and mourn their nearly perpetual failure to make these issues clear. At least they tried, whereas the Theravadins have barely tried in 2,500 years, as far as I can tell, except for the vagueness you sometimes find in the Thai Forest tradition on the subject. If I am wrong, please do let me know, and please provide specifics.

These emotional models basically claim that awakening involves some sort of emotional perfection, either gradually or suddenly, and usually make these ideals the primary criteria for their models of awakening, while often ignoring or sidelining issues related to clear perception of the true nature of phenomena. Usually these fantasies involve elimination of the “negative” emotions, particularly fear, greed, hatred, anger, frustration, lust, jealousy, restlessness, and sadness, but some claim to eliminate all emotions, period. At a more fundamental level, they promise the elimination of all emotional forms of attraction and aversion.

As I am sure you can already tell, I am no fan of most of these models of awakening. In fact, I consider their creation and perpetuation to be basically evil in the good old “you should burn in hell for perpetuating them” kind of way. (Did I mention I was raised in the South, y’all?) However, as guidelines for trying to be kind and behave well (training in morality), I find them of real, but limited, inspirational value. I acknowledge the hints of truth they contain and also what a marketing ploy they are, and will attempt to make both aspects clear. This is not easy to do, and the dogma of the emotional models is so deeply ingrained in us all that shaking it can be the work of a lifetime even in awakened beings.

In fact, the cognitive biases that cause people to interpret basically anything you say against the emotional models back through some sort of emotional-model-in-disguise filter is amazing to witness. It is like we just can’t imagine awakening without them getting in there somewhere. I find even those who have bought into the general operating concept that there is something wrong with the emotional models falling back into their clutches again in their own practice.

The practical application of being explicit about our specific emotional ideals is that it is nearly guaranteed that we will try to become like the model we consciously or unconsciously adopt. While even very early insights, such as Mind and Body, can definitely help us handle our emotions with more balance and spaciousness, it is easy for us to buy into the limited emotional range models to go around imitating an emotionally limited or limiting state by repressing, denying, or ignoring what’s actually arising in our experience (because we’re not supposed to have x or y emotion) or our basic human nature, as I know all too well from my own practice and that of my colleagues. Bill Hamilton often warned to avoid some form of ideal-driven self-hypnosis that would cause me to unconsciously imitate spiritual ideals without real understanding. He made an excellent point. It is also worth mentioning that a relentless emphasis on not indulging in the content of experience but noticing the three characteristics of the sensations that make up emotions can easily become a form of emotional repression and/or dissociation, so be careful to try to avoid that. Noting is not supposed to turn us into robots, it’s supposed to sharpen our wisdom and to help us realize the intrinsic alignment of heart, mind, and body.

I personally benefited from going back and giving the emotions much more attention after my more technical phase in which I gained some fundamental insights. It helped to round out the picture and to take those insights and integrate them into various aspects of how the emotions can manifest. Once we gain transformative insights, it is helpful then, in that new mode of perception, to revisit previous issues, hangups, neuroses, tensions, and conflicts—bringing them into awareness to see what is different and what is the same about them. This revisiting often leads to a changed perspective on them, and this often provides at least partial resolution of some aspect of them that was caught up in some previous way of being. Doing this consciously, intentionally, as a systematic practice often provides some additional looseness, openness, clarity, perspective, humor, and balance.

By this point, we are likely to be very, very familiar with our issues list. We might even write them down, sit down after deep insights, and bring them to mind in this new space one by one to see how they feel, how they perform, what is still sticky, what is less so, and so performance-test whatever it is we have learned on the cushion. I realize that, by writing a paragraph like this one, I risk undoing the necessary counterbalancing of the emotional models. However, if our fundamental insights don’t change something essential about the way we perceive and relate to what dwells in our human hearts, particularly the tricky bits, then more insights are called for and likely available with good insight practice. As one of my favorite meditation teachers, Sharda Rogell, once said, “Meditation is not about turning a human being into a stone. It is about turning a stone into a human being.” (Is this an original saying of hers? I don’t know, but she is the one who shared it with me.)

There are some benefits to identifying and then skillfully moderating the inner processes and external manifestations of negative emotions while simultaneously being conscious and accepting of the fact that difficult emotions occur. Morality training is vast and contains many foundational practices, forming a skillful, albeit incomplete, solution to how to deal optimally with our unskillful emotional aspects. For example, in my work as a physician, I do my best to maintain professionalism and kindness in the face of various suffering patients and their myriad reactions (such as kicking, hitting, screaming at, and spitting on their care providers) to help defuse situations and maintain an atmosphere that is more conducive to good patient care and healing for all involved. However, if we repress our various emotional reactions to suffering while simultaneously pretending that they can’t or don’t occur within us (usually based on some “spiritual” model that tells us they’re verboten), this sort of cultivated denial can also produce huge shadow sides and a lot of unconscious, more extremely reactive, neurotic, and even violent behavior. A tour of basically any spiritual community on the planet (or hospital for that matter) will reveal this in staggering abundance. Dissociation and passive aggression are classic manifestations of this sort of denial and refusal to see our emotions for what they are.

A far more practical approach is to accept that we are human, try to be decent in a normal, down-to-earth sort of way rather than in a grandiose, (non-)self-conscious, spiritual way, and assume that reducing and eliminating the illusion of the dualistic split is possible through doing basic insight practices. Reducing the sense of a split can provide more clarity, allowing us to be the human beings we are with more balance and less reactivity in the face of that humanity. In fact, it is by being clearer and more aware of exactly what our emotions are, and how and when they arise, that makes it easier to come up with wiser responses to them. As we habitually bring attention to the whole range of human experience, that attention can transform aspects of what happens in our experience and in our interactions with others.

That said, all living examples whom I have encountered fail to live up to the highest ideals of the standard emotional models that promise the elimination of either all negative or destructive emotions, or all emotions entirely, in some way. I know a few people who claimed to have eliminated all emotions only to realize later that they were totally wrong, sometimes with extremely unfortunate consequences. I know a few people who claim to have eliminated all emotions and yet externally seem to be totally emotional, including demonstrating what looks exactly like emotions that would often be considered bad by the standard ideals. That they claim to be unable to perceive this seems more like denial than realization to me. Is it possible, as is sometimes argued, that people will for all the world appear to have emotions externally and yet not have any internally? While there is an outside chance that this may have occurred in someone, I truly believe it is just another form of hyper-sophisticated spiritually-induced blindness and rationalization, common things being common as they are, and there is no reason this couldn’t be blended with genuine insights, as most of the people I know who claim this sort of thing have spent a lot of time practicing.

The Theravada Four Path Model¶

The root of the complexity in standard Buddhism comes to us from the Theravada four-path model. This is the original model presented in the Pali canon and the oldest Buddhist model we have to work with. All the subsequent schools (i.e. the many and varied strains of the Mahayana and Vajrayana), react to it in their own way but are still influenced by it even if they say they are not, so you need to know it to understand the debate.

The problems began long before the Buddha in the various ancient traditions that would eventually and collectively be referred to as “Hinduism” (which had a huge impact on Buddhism, despite what some naive Buddhists will tell you) and probably long before that, but this is as good a place to start as any. I shouldn’t blame ancient India and Nepal for what is really a perennial human wish. Let’s face it: we all want emotional perfection, as a large chunk of the pain felt in our lives relates to our emotions causing trouble. I propose that not perceiving our emotions clearly is a far greater problem than the emotions themselves, but I seem to be in the minority in this regard. As I stated in the chapter “Harnessing the Energy of the Defilements”, there is a lot to be said for the skillful aspects of what we usually consider negative emotions. It is important to realize that empty compassion drives all our emotions, whether filtered through the illusion of duality or otherwise.

“Really?” you might reasonably reply, “Even the heinous acts of ‘terrorists’ and telemarketers? [18] Really, these are in some twisted way resulting from empty compassion?”

To which I reply, “Yes.”

Does that make their actions ethical? Often not, obviously, though ethics is sometimes in the eye of the beholder, and there is the rub that makes a bare bodkin of us all, to bastardize Mark Twain’s bastardization of Hamlet, and of course meaning no offense to those whose parents weren’t married at the time of their conception. [19]

The Theravada four-path model has four stages of awakening, namely first path: “stream enterer” or in Pali, sotapanna; second path: “once-returner” or sakadagami; third path: “non-returner” or anagami; and, finally, fourth path, which gets translated in various ways in various sources, with some including “perfected person”, “holy one”, “saint”, or “conqueror” (one who has conquered the defilements that prevented the realization of nibbana), or arhat, arahant, or arhant, pick your favorite spelling, but I will use arahant, realizing that I used arahat in the previous version. The terms once-returner and non-returner have to do with issues relating to the dogma that those who have attained to second path cannot be reborn more than once before attaining arahantship, and certainly not in the lower realms (i.e. hell realms, hungry ghost realms, or animal realms, see the “Samsara” Wikipedia article section on realms of rebirth, and/or Chögyam Trungpa’s Transcending Madness for a discussion of the six realms), and that those who have attained to third path, if they do not attain to arahantship in this lifetime, will at worst be reborn in a heavenly realm where the conditions are optimal for achieving awakening.

However, the core of the Theravada four-path model is the dogma that enlightenment involves progressively eliminating the ten defilements (also often called the ten fetters, and so this is sometimes called the “Ten Fetter Model”). In this model, stream entry eliminates the first three defilements: 1) skeptical doubt; 2) attachment to rites and rituals; and 3) “personality belief”, meaning belief in a separate, independently existing self. Second path attenuates the fourth and fifth defilements, usually translated as: 4) greed; and 5) hatred (or, more technically, attraction and aversion to everything that is not a jhanic state). Third path is said to eliminate those same fourth and fifth defilements, however translated. Fourth path, that of arahantship, eliminates the remaining five defilements: 6) attachment to formed jhanas (the first four jhanas); 7) attachment to the formless realms (the second four jhanas); 8) restlessness and worry; 9) “conceit” (in quotes because the Pali word māna is a bit hard to translate); and something called 10) “the last veil of unknowing”.

It is important to note that arahants who are said to have eliminated “conceit” (in limited emotional range terms) can appear to us as arrogant and conceited, as well as restless or worried, etc. That there is no fundamental suffering in them while this is occurring is an utterly separate issue. That said, conceit in the conventional sense and the rest of life can cause all sorts of conventional suffering for arahants, just as it can for everyone else. While discussing conceit, perhaps I should take on the subject of the word “ego” in a more comprehensive way than I have done so far.

The pop psychology meaning of the word “ego” is something like arrogance, self-absorption, pride, narcissism, conceit (in the conventional sense), and a failure to consider the feelings, rights, needs, and/or existence of others. This is also the definition that is most commonly behind such mainstream Buddhist statements as, “That action or statement [that I really didn’t like] had a lot of ‘ego’ in it.” I think that this definition of ego can sometimes be slightly useful for training in morality if we are very kind to ourselves and those around us, but often it seems to me to be pop spirituality turned into a weapon and a form of denial of someone else’s difficulties, feelings, and suffering.

Worse, people often take this definition, mix it in with their own insecurities and unfortunate fear of existing or asserting themselves in the conventional sense, and then take this neurotic mélange and use it to continue to flog themselves and those around them. Please don’t do this. It is misguided and will not help you or anyone. This pop psychology definition of ego also has nothing to do with the “self” that is being seen through in the quest for awakening in the formal sense, so don’t bring it to mind when you read this chapter except to dismiss it.

Another definition of ego is the formal psychological one put forward by Freud. In this definition, ego is the moderator between the internalized parents or police of the super-ego and the id’s primal drives, those largely involving survival and reproduction. In this sense, ego is extremely important and should be cultivated consciously. This definition has to do with the more formal psychological concept of “ego strength”, a strength that is very positive and necessary for the deep and often difficult personal growth that we all want for ourselves. One of the explicit requirements for entering intensive psychoanalysis (and intensive meditation for that matter) is highly developed ego strength, the ability to face our reality and dark stuff without completely freaking out. Thus, eliminating this form of “ego” would be a disaster.

For reasons completely beyond me, the word “ego” is also used in a high mystical sense to describe the elimination of the experiential illusion of there being a special reference point as described in the section on no-self in the chapter “The Three Characteristics”. One who had eliminated this form of ego, which is in this case a useless illusion, might describe their experience in this way: “In this full field of experience or manifestation, there seems to be no special or permanent spot that is observing, controlling, separated from, or subject to any other point or aspect of the rest of this causal field of experience or manifestation.”

This is the experience and realization of the arahant. Notice that this use of the term “ego” seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the other usages of the term. This is exactly the point, and so I strongly advocate never using the word “ego” to substitute for “self” as understood in the context of describing realization of ”no-self”. Those who do otherwise continue to cause an astounding amount of unrealistic, disempowering, and life-denying thinking in mainstream Buddhists. It is my sincere wish that the misuse of the word ego and the associated negative side effects stop immediately and forever.

Since the Theravada four-path model explicitly states that realization is mostly about eliminating greed, hatred, restlessness, worry, etc., this suggests a limited emotional range model, and deserves some serious skepticism. In fact, this is a good time to go into what I love and despise about the Theravada. [20] I absolutely love its emphasis on the three characteristics, love the astounding power of its techniques, and am grateful beyond words for the maps it provided me with for the territory before second path, however incomplete and idealized. I am profoundly grateful, at times to the point of tears, and I mean that, for the monasteries I got to sit in, for its preservation of what has been true and useful in Buddhism for over 2,500 years, and for the chance to have sat with real, awakened teachers.

And yet, its maps of enlightenment still contain a hefty helping of scary market-driven propaganda and so much garbage that is life-denying, dangerously out of touch with what happens, and an impediment to practice for millions of people. That the enlightened lineage holders of the modern Theravada and their ex-monk and ex-nun Western counterparts don’t have the guts to stand up and say, “We are deeply sorry that for 2,500 years, many of our predecessors perpetuated this craziness to put food in their bowls and fool ignorant peasants so that they might be supported in their other useful work, and we vow to do better!” is a crying shame. The huge question is, how many of the monastics are really practicing deeply, really giving attainment of actual realization everything they have, rather than being monastics for worldly reasons, that, while potentially of benefit to them and their supporters, lack the key focus for which the Buddha founded the order?

Due to this lack of realization found in so many monastics, they are chained to the texts, myths, and the ancient exaggerations, as well as the culture, seemingly doomed to indoctrinate and brainwash generation after generation of monks and nuns, practitioners, and devoted followers with their delicious poison, however benevolently intended. What a freakish paradox that the meditative techniques and technologies that I consider among the most powerful and direct ever developed should come from a tradition whose models of awakening contain some of the worst myths of them all. I have sat with numerous arahants who were monks or former monks who just couldn’t seem to overcome their indoctrination and so when giving dharma talks would occasionally mix in the junk with the gold when it was obvious they knew better from their own direct experience.

Here’s an example from one of my favorite, realized, arahant teachers who taught me a ton and to whom I am extremely grateful. Someone asked him, “Are you suffering?”

He answered, referring to himself, “This [name withheld] is not suffering!”

Except that I was aware of the details of this teacher’s life, and this teacher’s life involved all sorts of real, ordinary, straightforward misery and problems, the sort of suffering that is listed by the Buddha as being an integral part of the suffering of having been born into this life.

I have at times dreamed that all the great, realized teachers from all the Buddhist practice lineages would get together, come up with a plan to jointly get themselves out of the trap, and in a big formal ceremony present the truth as a new beginning, like a mass intervention, like a family gathering around an alcoholic to try to force them to reform their ways. None of them on their own seems to be fully able to take the heat, as each one that steps out of line in a direct fashion tends to get blasted, squashed, silenced, shunned, etc., though there are a few gentle and subtle exceptions, such as Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Thus, I think they should all try to do it together, with Zen Masters, Roshis, Lamas, Rinpoches, Tulkus, Sayadaws, Ajahns, and their Western counterparts all sitting side by side around a large table saying, “Enough is enough! We are declaring a new era of honest, open, realistic, relevant dharma teaching, free from finely honed sectarian fighting, free from mythic and archaic models of awakening, and free from denial of humanity!” Enough of my ranting, back to the models …

I have no significant problems with most of the traditional descriptions of stream entry. It does make people realize somewhat that rites and rituals are not the primary reason that they got enlightened, though I know practitioners who awakened with the significant help of techniques involving various rituals in their practice, and why not? It should also be noted that there are rituals and there are rituals. Some rituals involve high degrees of concentration, altered states of consciousness, and profound investigation, elements that can be conducive to deep insights.

Stream entry does counter in some semi-intellectual way the sense that there is a permanent, separate self, though exactly how meditators know this is much more mysterious than at the higher stages of awakening, and the degree to which this is noticed varies depending on the practitioner. Regardless of the degree to which they notice it, it beats any understanding of this that is pre-stream entry. However, beware the pernicious descriptive fallacy that states that all stream enterers will describe their reality and realizations exactly as we imagine they should and thus automatically state that they are totally free of “personality belief”.

Further, they know that awakening is possible and can be done in this lifetime, assuming they know they are awakened in the first place, which strangely not all awakened beings do. Those persons that encounter this understanding outside of established traditions may fail to recognize that what they have understood is called awakening, among other names. Regardless, stream entry is metaphorically understood as “the opening of the dharma eye”, as contrasted with the “wisdom eye” of arahantship. These are simply poetic metaphors for some aspects of clearly perceiving things and don’t refer to anything beyond those attainments themselves. I hesitate even to mention those terms, as I get all sorts of totally strange questions about them, as if they are some bizarre psychic or anatomic phenomena. They are poetic metaphors, not some extra eye on your forehead à la Lobsang Rampa. [21]

My real problem with the Theravada four-path model comes as soon as it starts talking about second path, that is, the attenuation of greed and hatred or attraction and aversion, and by the time it promises eliminating these in their ordinary forms, as they say occurs in third path, I think that a serious critique of their language and dogma is called for. Those in more explicitly dogmatic, traditional Theravada circles may notice the third path glass ceiling they find after second path, meaning that they can find lots of examples of people who are second path by their definitions, but then suddenly there is a total disconnect in which people continue to progress and practice, go through cycles, and gain all sorts of additional insights into the basics of reality, but still have the emotions that the dogma said should be eliminated by third path. It is a problem. They still might get angry. They still might get sexually aroused. They still might feel and do all sorts of things that those who are anagamis are not supposed to be able to feel and do.

Then, if you try to find living examples of those who are out past second path by the standard models, people suddenly get vague and the talk either quiets down or becomes full of zealous bluster and pontification. Hints are put out there that so-and-so might be third or fourth path, but then everyone is watching them to see if they do things that might imply they still have emotions related in any way to greed and hatred. In this way, the whole topic gets covered in this neurotic mass of complexity, shadow stuff, and reality-theory conflict.

What the models at their best are attempting to say is that the sense of the observer, centerpoint, continuous and separate subject, watcher, or however you want to describe the sense that there is some self at the center of all this stuff that so compellingly seems to be divided into over here and over there is, in fact, just a bunch of sensations. When these begin to be perceived as they are, the sense of how special the center point is begins to lose its grip on perception, which begins to become broader, more inclusive, and more even in its basic treatment of and interaction with phenomena.

Accomplishing this is fundamentally a matter of direct sensate clarity about those processes as they occur, hence the simple beauty of insight practice. When this is better understood and becomes part of our baseline way of experiencing, there doesn’t seem to be so much of a “this” side and “that” side. This perceptual improvement reduces the imagined mental dance involving attempts to get away from that side when it is bad, get to that side when it is good, or just tune out the whole thing when it is boring. Thus, the system functions better as it gets better at realistically perceiving the information coming into it. As these perceptual insights encounter old, outdated emotional patterns based on the previously poor way of perceiving reality, there can be transformation of those patterns.

This is a very tough topic to talk about and even harder to map. It certainly doesn’t sell as well as saying, “Do these things, and you will be free from all negative emotions,” or, worse, “We did these things and so are free from all negative emotions, and so you should worship us, give us donations, support our center, buy our books, give over power to us, think of us as very special, divine, or extraordinary, stand in awe of us, sleep with us, allow us to act like raving lunatics, etc.” I think you get the picture. Thus, what really happens is that aspects of the misperception that seems to make specific categories and patterns of the causal, sensate field into a separate “self” are reduced and then stop. However, many of the traditions advertise eliminating negative emotions and the sensations of all forms of craving or aversion, even things like hunger and thirst. The two couldn’t be more different, and yet they are described as the same.

A Revised Four Path Model¶

Here is my revised version of the four-path model. It is the primary model I use when describing awakening, talking about my practice, and helping others practice. I think that using the original terminology and revising its definitions allows a lot of the most universally applicable and least culturally conditioned information from the Pali canon to be used today, thus maintaining a link to that previous great work. However, I realize that using terminology that already has such deep cultural and dogmatic resonance may be a problem. For those who want something new, I will shortly present a rephrasing of this model that I call “the simple model”.

In the revised four-path model, stream enterers have discovered the complete discontinuity that is called Fruition and sometimes called nirvana (Sanskrit) or nibbana (Pali), as in texts such as the Abhidhamma. This is the first of two meanings of nirvana (with the other being the waking, walking-around, day-to-day experience of fourth path). Stream enterers cycle through the ñanas, know that awakening or some different understanding from the norm is possible, and yet they do not have such a different experience of most sensations from those who are not yet stream enterers. They may correctly extrapolate a lot of good dharma insights from momentary experiences, particularly far along in High Equanimity and the three moments before Fruition, but this is not the same as living there all the time. In fact, most stream enterers have a very hard time describing how their minds have changed in terms of their everyday perception except that they cycle and can understand the dharma in ways they never could before.

Those of second path have now completed a new insight cycle. If they attained this within a tradition that maps this process in something like this way, they will understand the process by which awakened beings make further progress and equate progress with further cycles of insight, which is partially true. Strangely, psychological issues tend to be a bigger deal during this particular path, and psychological development often more becomes interesting and important to those of second path in some way. More model-obsessed, intellectual, or analytical practitioners at second path may get very into fractal models, consciousness models, enlightenment models, various integrative theories, etc.

By this point, many people—though certainly not all—have at least some understanding of the basics of the shamatha jhanas (assuming they are training in a tradition that can point those out), and these can be very fascinating. What they may be most bothered by is that, despite cycle after cycle of practice, duality remains the predominant experience most of the time. Their capacity to appreciate finer points of dharma phenomenology, such as sub-cycles, subjhanas, sub-ñanas, and the like, will be generally superior to stream enterers, but there is a range and wide individual variation in phenomenological and analytical ability, both of which can be significantly improved by training.

Third path individuals have shifted their understanding of progress beyond those of second path, and begin to see that they can perceive the emptiness, selflessness, impermanence, luminosity, etc. of many sensations in daily life. Perception tends to get broader, more spacious, more expansive, more through and through, with awakening being now more of a waking, walking-around experience. This can be a long, developmental process from the first time they notice it to when it becomes a nearly complete experience. Thus, third path tends to be a long path, though it doesn’t have to be, with individual variation being significant and affected both by natural ability and formal training.

At the beginning of third path, most practitioners think: “I’ll just complete more cycles of insight, as I did before, and this will do the trick.” They don’t understand yet what it is they have attained, or its deeper implications. By the mature stage of third path, which for most can take months or years to show up, the practitioner is more and more able to see the selfless, centerlessness, luminosity, etc. of phenomena in real-time, so much so that it can be very difficult to notice what artificial perceptual dualities remain.

“Rigpa” is a nuanced and subtle term from Dzogchen meaning something along the lines of the “clear light” of the natural, awakened mind, the ultimate nature of reality, and is meant to help point to something essential about the nature of consciousness. I don’t want to go into an in-depth discussion of rigpa, but I do wish to point out the oft-noticed phenomenon that fascination with terms like rigpa, and feeling that they now seem very important to one’s practice and what one is experiencing, is common in this territory. Fascination with the concept of“rigpa” as well as related concepts such as “luminosity”, “ground of being”, and the like, is not diagnostic of this territory, as unawakened scholars may have similar fascinations, but, if you are up into the path of awakening and are noticing that those terms seem to have a lot more experiential relevance, then the advice in this section may be helpful.

I get a moderate number of questions from people in the general territory of the first two paths about how to attain the next two paths, as they can begin to recognize rightly that they are missing something more fundamental that must apply to everything. Thus, I include here some advice that people have said was helpful to them for attaining third path.

Continue to practice directly perceiving sensations arise and vanish on their own everywhere in experience, however you can do that. Direct observation of all the complexity is better, though using noting to ease into unpleasant or disconcerting patterns of sensations can sometimes still be useful. Try to notice that all experiences occur in this moving space of experience. This may sound so simple that its profundity may be missed, but it is a key to awakening.
Going broad and through: what you are looking for is more spaciousness, more about dissolving a significant chunk of what seems to be observing, doing, controlling, analyzing, and the like. Take on more of the sensations that seem to make up “you” and those core processes. “Who am I?” practices may be of value here: pay attention to both who is asking the question, the answers that result, and*where in space they occur*. Mindfully explore with natural curiosity how to dissolve the artificial boundaries that seem to delineate whatever seems to be “you” from everything else, meaning the rest of what happens in what seems to be space. Play around with investigating that moving line: how do you know what the edge is between what seems to be you and not you, viscerally, perceptually, vibrationally, texturally, geographically, volumetrically? Identify and become familiar with any qualities of experience or pattern of sensations that seem to really feel like “you”, then notice the three characteristics of those patterns again and again, more times than you think you should have to.
Regard your cherished ideals and the patterns of sensations that make up those ideals about what you think meditation practice will get you as more sensations to observe. If you can do this at the level of fluxing, shifting patterns of suchness, it is easier. Whatever level you find yourself at is the level that you can work with, as it is all the same from that point of view that includes whatever is going on as both practice and the foundation of realization, and knowing that simple fact can help a lot. This is a good time to check out Dōgen and his practice-enlightenment emphasis. Traditions that emphasize dangerous concepts such as “ground of being” might be more helpful now than they might have been earlier, if you can take them with an appropriately huge grain of salt and eventually see beyond them. [22]
Really allow experience to show itself. Really allow luminosity to show itself. Really allow things just to happen as they do. Less control, more direct understanding of that natural unfolding, more noticing of how the sense of control occurs at all, what it feels like, how that set of textures and intentions sets up a sense that there is a “you” that is doing anything and how obviously wrong that is. Feel into what seems to be looking, asking, wanting, and expecting, and investigate all of that. Do not do this forcefully. Instead, skillfully and subtly coax those patterns into the light of awareness that sees through their clever tricks. There are only so many trick patterns: learn them and see them for what they are. The right feel for this is the same as the way you must look just slightly to one side of the Pleiades to see them clearly. It is almost as if you must sneak up on core processes so gently that they don’t notice and can be caught unawares, except that the sneaking up process is what you are also trying to sneak up on. Thus, the slower you move attention, the more likely you will be able to catch up with yourself. Skillful rapid vibration junkies will shift to become flow-fluxing, panoramic, gentle synchro junkies instead. Remember “The Exercise of the Spinning Swords”.
Notice that you can’t do anything other than what happens. Try. See how those patterns occur. Try to do something other than what happens. It is preposterous, but when you try it, there are patterns that arise, patterns of illusion, patterns of pretending, patterns that if you start to look at them you will see are ludicrous, laughable, like a kid’s fantasies. Yet, that is how you believe you are controlling things, so try again and again to do something other than what occurs and watch those patterns of confusion and of pretending to be in control which arise, and you will learn something. This is an unusually profound point. I spent many hours exploring exactly what happens during attempts to do something other than what happens and found it high-yield.
Keep the six sense doors and the three characteristics in all their profundity as the gold standards for whether you are perceiving things clearly. In each moment that you aren’t clear about these, notice why and debunk it right there, and then do it again and again and again. It always takes more repetitions of this process than people think it should, and so many get psyched out, when it might have been but a few more iterations of the process to have succeeded in locking in that way of perceiving things.
Feel the going out into new territory with its confusion, tedium, frustration, and creepiness as the prize itself. That which wants it to be known, mapped, predictable, certain, safe, and familiar, is part of what you need to see as it is. Perceive those patterns in the head, chest, stomach, throat, etc., as more shifting, fresh patterns. That freshness keeps you honest, keeps you really paying attention in that slightly violating, slightly personally taboo way that really helps in the end.
If you are familiar with the vipassana jhanas as living, familiar, felt perceptual modes, then realize that third path, due to the fractal strangeness of the mind, has elements of the third vipassana jhana to it. Third path is broad but there is something creepy about it, as it violates the center in a more intimate way than do the earlier paths. The more you have a tolerance for something in that letting go through-to-the-bone creepiness and can see the good side in that, the breadth, the spaciousness, the naturalness, the directness, the completeness, the fullness, the now-ness of it, the better you will do. It is a more sophisticated way of perceiving things, more beyond control, more decentralized, more spacious, braver, more free, requiring more trust, more openness, more acceptance, being more down-to-earth, and at the same time also more diffuse, which is an odd juxtaposition of feelings to get used to, but it is worth it. Said another way: third path is an acquired taste.
If you have Boundless Space, or even j4.j5, meaning the spacious aspect of the fourth jhana that is not truly formless but still quite open and wide, this is a really good pointer, just also allow it to go through anything you think is you, working on that seeming boundary line, as above, but allowing it to breathe, to flux, volumetrically, like moving blobs of space with texture all together, all of them just the natural world doing its rich and empty thing.
In that same way, if you have access to Boundless Consciousness, or even j4.j6, meaning the Boundless Consciousness aspect of the fourth formed jhana, the aspect where you see the luminosity of consciousness pervading the space of the jhana and its formed elements, cultivate that. There is also some element of this that is useful to realizing what third path is all about. It is not that the jhana is third path, or that third path is perfectly like these jhanas. It is that these jhanas do fill in some piece of the puzzle, which, when combined with insight, helps third path arise.
If you have the last two formless realms, Nothingness and Neither Perception Nor Non-Perception, enter them and leave them again and again and again. What remains of you when you are in these rarified states? What falls away when you enter them? What seems the same? What perceives them? You can’t answer these questions for the eighth jhana, but it is very instructive to try. Further, that glorious post-eighth jhana junction point (P8JP) has some interesting power to it, and, after leaving the eighth jhana, asking deep, direct, perceptual questions about perception itself can be quite powerful. What rearises when you leave them? What do they tell you about your typical impression that you must be a body, a mind, or even something perceived? Set intentions to answer these questions before you get into that territory and watch what happens!
There is something very immediate about third path. Thus, look for how a sense of time is formed in your experience. What does your mind do when you think a thought of past or future? How do those feel different? What is the difference in the qualities of sensations, in the way the head and eyes hold themselves, in where thoughts occur, in how they feel? Formally experiment with how a sense of time is created here and now, consciously, clearly, in this space, in this immediacy. This begins to create some of the frameworks of insight that will be very useful later. Read that sentence again and see how you immediately perceive the concept of “later”!

As those on third path cycle, they will enter new territory, possibly causing some uncertainty or instability, and with each Review phase they tend to feel that they truly have done it until they notice the limits of their practice. There can be this nagging sense in the background that things aren’t finished, and yet figuring out exactly what the problem is can be very slippery. It is a bit like being in the stages just before stream entry, trying to figure out what exactly needs to be done. They need to notice something that has nothing to do with the cycles to untangle the knot of perception at its core, but doing this can be a real trick. It is a very strange place, as we seem to know the insight practice–related aspects of the dharma all the way to the end and yet somehow it still isn’t quite enough. In that vein, it is interesting to note that I wrote most of this book while I was an anagami and, years later, I still appreciate much of what I wrote then. My emphases are slightly different now, but the basics are the same.

As practice deepens, anagamis begin to tire of the cycles to a small or large degree and begin to look to something outside of or unrelated to them for the answer to the final question. Golden dreams, meaning golden chains, such as a luminous transcendent superspace or ground of being, can at once become more compellingly attractive and more repulsive. Finally, the cycles of insight and, if meditators have them, the shamatha jhanas, the powers, and all the other perks and prerogatives of their stages of awakening, as well as any concentration abilities (again, if they developed them), hold no appeal and only lead to more unsatisfying cycles. In fact, these cycles may strangely begin to become a source of deep, existential disgust, and this can come as quite a surprise to those who previously felt enraptured by them.

I completed around twenty-seven full, complete insight cycles with powerful A&P Events, challenging Dark Nights, equanimity phases, and what seemed to be brand new, fresh Fruitions and Review phases between third and fourth paths. There is nothing special about that number, both because it is just a rough guess and because of the reasons I stated when describing the phenomena of what Bill Hamilton referred to as “Twelfth Path”. The later cycles got faster and faster, so that by the end it seemed I was whipping one out every few weeks or even every few days, but they still seemed to be leading nowhere.

It was only when I had gotten so sick of the cycles and realized that they were leading nowhere that I was able to see what has nothing to do with the cycles, which also wasn’t anything except a strange untangling of the knot of perceiving them. The cycles, for better or worse, have continued just the same. Thus, there is not much point in counting cycles or paths, as they don’t necessarily correlate well with anything beyond the first two or three, and issues of backsliding can really make things complex, as I explained earlier.

Finishing up my revised four-path model, arahants have finally untangled the knot of perception, dissolved the sense of the centerpoint as being “The Center Point”, and no longer experientially make a separate self out of the patterns of sensations that used to produce that sense, even though those same patterns of sensations continue. This is a different understanding from those of third path, and makes this path about something that is beyond the paths. This is also poetically called “the opening of the wisdom eye” (which, as mentioned, is not talking about any sort of additional eye or psychic eye or whatever, as some people seemed to extrapolate from my mentioning it without this qualifier in MCTB1). What is interesting is that I could write about this stage reasonably well when I was an anagami, but that is a whole different world from knowing it as an arahant. As an anagami, it seemed like about ninety-five to ninety-nine percent of the field of experience knew itself where and as it was. The last little remaining ignorant percentage was maddeningly difficult to track down, with the tracking down paradigm obviously being part of the problem. That subtle few percent of the field of perception that was still poorly perceived caused a surprising amount of discomfort that got worse rather than better as practice progressed.

To use strictly metaphorical language, the wisdom eye may seem to blink initially, which is a way of saying that this untangling of the final knot of perception may re-tangle itself, though having ever seen perception truly untangled, that insight, even if transient, really points to the essence of realization, and even remembering what it was like can call the mind back to that far-superior way of perceiving. We may go through cycles of suddenly untangling just after Fruition and then having that insight slowly fade over a few hours (at least on retreat) as each round of physical sensations, then mental sensations, then complex emotional formations, then lastly fundamental formations such as inquiry itself, move through and become integrated into this new, correct, and direct perception of reality as it is.

Review cycles may recur many times during each period when perception is untangled, and during those periods, the cycles may seem rather irrelevant in comparison to keeping the level of clarity and acceptance high enough to keep the “eye” open. When the direct and untangled perceptual mode fades and the knot of perception seems to retie itself, the familiar insight cycles may seem like pure drudgery, as the focus drifts back to getting lost in the cycles and then gradually shifting again to getting clear enough to get the “eye” to “open” again. The themes that occupy center stage go through a cycle that is very much like a progress cycle.

Finally, the various cycles all converge, and the wisdom eye stays open from then on, the knot remains untied. Said another way, we cease to be able to perceive reality in a tangled state, and even everything that seemed tangled is now clearly perceived as intrinsically untangled without any other perceptual option. That being seen, nothing can erode or disturb the centerlessness of perspective. Done is what had to be done, and life goes on. That there are arahants who have flipped reality around to the centerless mode of perception but had it re-tangle, and that there are those who have opened it and had it stay open is rarely mentioned but worth knowing.

For the arahant who has kept the knot untangled, there is nothing more to be gained on the ultimate front from insight practices, as that axis of development has been taken as far as it goes. That said, insight practices can continue to be of great benefit to them for a whole host of reasons. There is much they can learn just like everyone else about everything there is to learn. They can grow, develop, change, evolve, mature, and participate in this strange, beautiful, comic, tragic human drama just like everyone else. They can integrate these understandings and their unfolding implications into their general way of being. Practicing being mindful and the rest still helps, since the mind is an organic thing like a muscle, and how we condition it affects it profoundly. These practitioners also cycle through the stages of insight, as with everyone beyond stream entry, so doing insight practices can move those cycles along.

I commonly get questions about the fact that arahants still cycle, and thus must go through the Dark Night stages. The Dark Night stages are not the problem that they were before, as they relied on the knot at the center of perception for much of their disturbing power. With the knot of perception gone, the stages’ unfortunate aspects vanish, and the skillful aspects that engender growth, keep us real, and promote fascinating spiritual adventures, remain. It is amazing to call up the stages of insight and go deeply into them while in this untangled perceptual mode and watch how they just don’t stick as they did, don’t catch us in the same way, and yet still take us on a rich tour of ourselves in so many different, human facets. This sort of formal Review practice can yield rich treasures of development and amusement. Enjoy!

On less fun topics, in the circles I run in, MCTB1 inspired some folks to create a spin-off term, “technical fourth path”, which continues to be loosely defined in a strangely large number of ways by various definers, but generally was pointing to this disconnect between the standard Theravada models that implied eliminating all negative emotions and the perceptual models that involved seeing all things as naturally empty, centerless phenomena. Please note that various schools of thought on exactly what the criteria are for “technical fourth path” do not agree on those criteria, and claiming that someone has “technical fourth path” has become relatively common, for better or for worse. If you run into someone claiming this attainment, it might be worth asking exactly what they mean and what their criteria are, to avoid confusion and needless projection.

One criterion that gets thrown around as primary for this “technical fourth path” is the sense that a person is simply “done”. Over the years, I have had that feeling myself many times and I have come to the measured conclusion that we have to be very careful with what we do with that feeling of being “done”, as it can very easily become a subtle (or gross) and intractable delusion, something we cling to that prevents us from carefully seeing what is happening now—like a refusal not to progress, grow, and improve—and it can keep us from knowing what the limits of our practice might be and how much more progress could occur if we had more of what Carol Dweck calls a growth-versus-fixed mindset.

Thus, should you find yourself feeling “done”, just watch how that unfolds over time and varies by the moment, as well as how that feeling responds to the challenges that life can bring. Keep an open mind, as I think that this attitude will likely help you more than being certain that the feeling of doneness will last forever or be something you can ride on. I also advocate that whenever that feeling of being “done” arises, you recognize it and make a conscious resolution to open to anything beyond it, just in case, as such resolutions have real power in this territory. I was blessed enough to be sitting at a lunch table with some of the grandmothers and grandfathers of the modern Western meditation teacher world one day, a truly accomplished and seasoned group of wisdom beings, and they all agreed that, whatever you think you have achieved, you should always keep practicing. There are so many axes of development that further practice can benefit. Further, if you are really “done” in the insight sense, no amount of inquiry can violate that, so inquire your ass off, just to be on the safe side, as it can do no harm and can do much good.

Since the term “technical fourth path” is out there, were I to define “technical fourth path”, I would define it as having all the following attributes:

the total and final elimination of any sense that there is anything called “attention” or “awareness” that is different from, separate from, or unrelated to bare phenomena;
the perfect direct comprehension of all sensations in the entire field where and as they are by themselves, as perception and the sensations are the same thing, so the parity between perception and reality is perfectly one to one at all times, meaning that the question of parity is actually completely eliminated perceptually, as there are just sensations;
the total naturalness of the field, such that everything is obviously happening completely on its own in a perfectly causal way;
the total integration of all sense doors into one unified and all-pervading “sense door” as mentioned in the Time and Space models section (meaning that all sensations appear to be just qualities of this perfectly integrated, boundaryless, fluxing, created-on-the-fly volume), which also specifically means that all thoughts are perceived naturally as part of this same integrated, fluxing volume;
the direct and immediate perception that time and space are created out of sensations that arise and vanish now, such that the sense of time and space as existing real entities is entirely seen through;
all sensate phenomena without exception self-liberate automatically, meaning that the experience of such questions as, “Is this field awake?” yields a wonderfully direct and satisfying experience of centerlessness and directness of the whole interdependent moment of that same question;
any sense of a this-and-that is fundamentally completely uprooted at the perceptual level (not that ordinary discrimination doesn’t function as before), and that this holds up over the long-haul, meaning off-retreat and for years in the face of the strongest vicissitudes of life, across insight cycles, across jhanas and other shifts, and is the only and default perceptual mode at all times when there are any sensations of any kind occurring.

By having this sort of take on what awakening is about (which I think is a pretty high standard), I have been accused of having very low standards. I think this standard is a very reasonable one, and if you think it is a low bar, then I would recommend attaining it and seeing how you find it, and wish you well on your journey beyond it to whatever else calls to you at that point. If you have already attained it, and it has held up for a while, drop me a line if you feel inclined, as it would be fun to talk about it.

So, now that we have talked about the Theravada path models, we should give some time to the related Indian Mahayana models.

The Bodhisattva Bhumi Model¶

One of the models of Indian Buddhism propagated by the Tibetan tradition is called “the bodhisattva bhumis”. The word “bhumi” means stage or ground, in the sense of level of attainment. It is a model of progressive stages of awakening that gets very different emphases depending on the author. I actually like a few aspects of the bhumi model, such as the idea of directly realizing shunyata or emptiness and deeply integrating that into our perception, paradigm, practice, ethical conduct, and personality. It is a model that addresses many axes of development simultaneously.

The details of the bhumi model can be found in various Mahayana texts, such as The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, Asanga’s Bodhisattvabhumi, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation by Gampopa, and many others. Chögyam Trungpa gives a nice description of it in The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation. I tend to think of the standard number of bhumis as being ten. However, some texts and traditions also list other numbers of bhumis, but I will stick to the way of counting that involves ten bhumis for the sake of simplification.

I do not consider myself an expert in this model. It is a very complex one that ascribes a wide range of exceedingly high and complex criteria involving emotions, paradigms, concentration abilities, perceptions, psychic powers (specifically the ability at each level to create multiple emanations that increases exponentially with each bhumi), and a whole host of other aspects to practitioners at each stage. It is also heavy on metaphors that some unfortunately take literally. We could take the general point that there are many, many, subtle levels of development and a vast range of abilities, experiences, talents, qualities, personality traits, and skills that can be developed to profound degrees by dedicated practitioners. Or, we could just go off into Crazyland by reading those models literally. If you check them out, hopefully you will immediately see the problems and the beautiful message to have high standards and be developed broadly.

The most common form of Crazyland that otherwise mature adults tend to jump into with the bhumis reminds me of the old comic book debates I had when I was about eight years old, such as who would win in a fight between Wonder Woman and Batman. The Buddhist version of this is when grown humans basically debate who would win in spiritual combat, such as between an arahant like Sariputta and a bodhisattva of whatever bhumi. Obviously, if the bhumi descriptions are accurate, best to bet your money on the bodhisattva, as even a first degree bhumi belt fighter can shake one hundred world systems, not to mention manifest one hundred bodies with one hundred attendants to each body, and the numbers go up exponentially from there with higher bhumis! Yay, mythical dharma combat! Seriously, I have heard serious conversations between Buddhist practitioners with doctoral degrees that were that weird and weirder.

Not only are the metaphors of the abilities of practitioners at each bhumi of the grandest variety, the bhumi models are fraught with other problems, as they assume simultaneous, synchronized development on numerous, largely unrelated developmental axes. I consider such notions a bit naive, and the bhumi models are among the most complex and intricate of the package models. However, like most of the teachings, they contain some very interesting points made in what I consider language that can be alienating and confusing to an untrained reader of this material. Thus, I recommend you check out the bhumi models cum grano salis, particularly if you want to understand Tibetan texts or do practices in that tradition and, unlike me, you should probably study it with an expert, rather than assume that your practices in one tradition qualify you to do a critique of someone else’s tradition, a lesson I clearly have failed to learn even through long years of repeated error.

One of the more common pastimes of us mappers is to try to correlate attainments across traditions and maps. This is seriously problematic, if often fascinating. It is not that useful insights, conversations, and thoughts can’t arise from this sort of work, as they can. However, resolving the tensions between models and across Buddhist vehicles that rely on such totally different underlying paradigms and practices can lead to lots of bizarre and sometimes unhelpful conclusions.

Ignoring the complexities, and speaking just in terms of fundamental levels of realization, which is already a very narrow filter, I am very comfortable associating the first bhumi with stream entry. Second path is very hard to line up with any bhumi, but it is tempting to put it in the early bhumis just on general principles. At points I have lined up anagamihood with anywhere from the fourth to the seventh bhumi and arahantship with anywhere from the sixth to tenth bhumi. My favorite correlation for arahantship is the eighth bhumi, at least in terms of underlying perceptual realization and ignoring the remaining elaborate criteria.

My perennially patient and wise anonymous editor informs me that to get these correlations right we would also have to have cultivated the unique causes provided through training in the practices of the bodhisattvayana (the ten perfections; often the first six are more widely known), the criteria with which I am moderately unfamiliar. My editor also reminds me that my correlations lack nuance and are perhaps misguided, and this is probably correct. However, I clearly don’t have the sense to entirely heed my editor’s sage advice. Associations of paths and bhumis are not perfect correlations, and if you spend some time reading about the model, you will see why. I recommend that you check out the sources listed above if you are interested in further information about the bhumis and hopefully through good practice you can come to your own conclusions.

The biggest problem with this model is that it delineates the exact number of emanations that we should be able to manifest as bodhisattvas at each bhumi, and as the bhumis progress the numbers quickly get so large as to be absurd. Why some realized, uh, “poet” included in the model this ideal of very specific numbers of manifested poly-locations I have no idea, except perhaps to challenge our limited idea of what might be possible for a mind guided by realization of shunyata (what has been problematically translated as “emptiness”). Why so many Tibetan practitioners since then have read this poetry literally I also have no idea.

Somehow, no Tibetan teacher that I am aware of has since called into question the practical applicability of literal interpretations of that presentation. Perhaps this model works well in Tibetan culture to inspire unique levels of effort, but I am not convinced, and I do know that it doesn’t always translate well to the West, which can be a bit concrete and literal-minded. Because of it you will hear Tibetan teachers occasionally say things like, “I don’t know any living person who has reached beyond the first bhumi as traditionally described,” which is acknowledging this odd problem of manifold manifestation, as well as the other truly fantastic criteria.

Aside from these problems, the texts that describe the bhumis make for very interesting reading if you can ignore the strangeness and appreciate the poetry, particularly in the middle stages of enlightenment. Our postmodern assumptions and paradigms, as well as some discomfort with myth, magick, metaphor, and how these might overlap with reality, likely impairs our ability to obtain nourishment from the nectar-filled petals of the bhumi models. That said, is the Tibetan tradition so weak and fragile that it can’t go back and explain how its ancient, myth-heavy, poetic models have relevance to modern practitioners in straightforward terms? I truly look forward to that work being done, and I hope, as you likely do, that I am not the person to do it. In other words, game on!

The Mahayana Five Path Model¶

While I am discussing the Indian Buddhist models, I will present the five-path model. The details of this model can be found in various places, such as Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche’s book Dharma Paths (published by Snow Lion). As that book does such a fine job of explaining the model and is not expensive, I will give only a brief treatment of it here. There are other good resources, such as Alexander Berzin’s extensive website, www.studybuddhism.com, that explain more of this model. It splits up various grades of arahants, as well as those of the lower paths, covers topics related to bodhisattva aspiration, and details the differences among some of the different historical tenet schools. My relatively simple caveman take on all of this is to practice well, aspire to help beings awaken, attain deep realizations, and see what remains to be done from there.

First path in this model covers the territory from just beginning through the Arising and Passing Away, and is called “the path of accumulation”. In the territory of first path, one accumulates direct insight into the true nature of sensations by direct investigation of impermanence and the selfless nature of phenomena, as one does in the first four ñanas. Second path, that of “unification”, encompasses the territory from the Arising and Passing Away, through the Dark Night, to High Equanimity, and the first taste of stream entry. These are perfect correlations, and thus have already been described.

Third path is “the path of seeing”, and encompasses stream entry and/or the first bhumi, depending on how you believe those align. Fourth path, that of “meditation”, encompasses the rest of the bhumis within the sutra system. (Note that the bhumis are counted differently within the Vajrayana/Tantric vehicle.) Third path is described as a plane taking off, and fourth path as that plane flying higher and higher. Fifth path is that of Buddhahood. This map is a pretty good one as they go, and particularly if you can relate to the bhumi models that arise in what they call fourth path skillfully.

The Vajrayana Models¶

Some of the Indo-Tibetan Vajrayana models add a lot of nuance to discussions of the emotional models and to working with the emotional aspects of our lives and of our practice in general. These are models that say there are lots of emotional energies that occur and that they can be perceived and manifest in either the light of wisdom (perceiving their empty and compassionate aspects) or the confusion of dualistic ignorance. This paradigm is a very dangerous one to work with, as its glaring and oft-demonstrated shadow side is a lack of skillful restraint in the face of these emotions. But, if the model is used properly, it can really help cultivate a healthier, broader, and more accepting understanding of the world of feelings in general. Remember training in morality? I hope so, since if you are going to use this model, which I do advocate using in the right place and at the right time, you really need to keep up that side of formal practice or you are asking for serious trouble. The bodhisattva and Vajrayana ethics are beyond the scope of this book, but the point remains that strong ethics are critical if you are going to follow this sort of path. As with the five-path model, I recommend Alexander Berzin’s outstanding multilingual website www.studybuddhism.com for reliable information on this conceptual material.

The basic benefit of this paradigm is that it says essentially, “Here is reality in all of its human richness, intimacy, vibrancy, intricacy, and range. If you perceive things clearly and understand and accept this, you can begin to transform this wide range of emotions and experiences into something that is wise, bright, active, powerful, engaged, healing, full-spectrum, and awakened.” Thus, it takes a totally different approach from the models that advocate the elimination of emotions, their suppression or repression, and shutting out vast swaths of our hearts and realities.

Please indulge my telling a brief part of the story of my path regarding how I came to appreciate the Vajrayana approach to the emotional models and its practical uses. I tell this part of my story to make some points that I failed to make in MCTB1. This story explains a lot of points you find in this book, so it is perhaps worth knowing the rest of the background story, if in extremely abbreviated form.

I started out in a very straight-by-the-book, Theravada context. I went on retreats, got stream entry, and came home from India. Stream entry delivered as advertised. The techniques and models had worked well. I had the expected abilities and insights. All was well on that front. I practiced more. I attained second path. It was different, richer, more fractal, more complex, and there was a definite transformation of some things related to emotions, what triggered them, how long they lasted, and how they were perceived. I could clearly feel that they went down totally different, unfamiliar, and clearly superior brain pathways a substantial portion of the time. I was impressed. The models seemed to hold up. I plunged on. I attained third path, or at least, I attained something.

Suddenly everything was different, very different. The shift in my walking-around way of perceiving things was huge and unexpected. Suddenly nearly everything was luminous, nearly everything seemed to contain its own light, its own awareness as something intrinsic to the sensations themselves, and this caused a massive delocalization of the sense of watcher, doer, controller, and a totally different appreciation of what the path was about. Now practice was much more about the field of experience, about this luminosity, about richness of phenomena, about trying to figure out how to get the last little subtle patterns that weren’t perceived this way to be perceived this way naturally and at baseline. Let me pause here; before I finish my story, I need to set up some more terms, concepts, and models I haven’t really talked about yet.

The Concentration Models¶

The concentration models describe the general category of models that deals with how the shamatha jhanas and the stages of awakening align. At the far end of those which I consider to besome of the worst of these models, some models and modelers assert that awakening involves attaining some of the higher jhanas, particularly the fourth through eighth, and that the ability to attain these is awakening itself. I know a few meditators and a teacher or two who subscribe to these models. As these are transient states, this is not the sort of awakening that I consider worthwhile, though I do consider these states worthwhile for what they are and can do. The Buddha had a similar opinion, as he trained in these states and found them profound but unsatisfying, as they occur only in special circumstances and do not provide the deeper transformation—true liberation—he was looking for.

Only slightly better are the models that equate the various stages of awakening with the jhanas themselves, so that each of the various stages involves something like a permanent jhanic state. It is not that there aren’t some very interesting parallels between the paths and the jhanas that fractal-heads such as myself can’t help but notice, but that is not the same thing as the paths being permanent jhanic states, which they are not. No mind state is permanent.

There are some models of the stages of awakening which include criteria that people who are of a certain path can attain certain jhanas accessible to them only if they also have the requisite concentration skills. Specifically, there are five states corresponding to what are called “the pure abodes” (Pali: suddhavasa), which are some of the classically-described realms in the more general category of the fine-material realms (rupa-lokas). The old texts (e.g. AN 4.123) describe the fine-material realms as realms of existence associated with various degrees of jhanic bliss. The specific five pure abodes in question are the abodes of the peerless devas or divinities, the clear-sighted devas, the beautiful devas, the untroubled devas, and the devas not falling away, which are part of the standard thirty-one realms of existence you can find mentioned in the book The 31 Planes of Existence, by Venerable Bhante Suvanno, transcribed by Jinavamsa, as well as online at www.accesstonisight.org (a great website, by the way), that correspond to special jhanas that only anagamis and arahants can attain.

These are traditional, canonical models and hold up moderately well to reality testing. Thus, the model implies not only that people who have attained those levels of realization with solid concentration skills might be able to attain those abodes, but also that those who can attain them must be at least anagamis if not arahants according to the traditional four-path model. Thus, some who can attain these jhanas sometimes use this standard bit of Theravada theory as part of their justification for whatever label they use for their level of insight.

I have had fun tinkering with the jhanas that I think correspond to these realms. Descriptions of these vary by practitioner, but here are my descriptions of two of them that I spontaneously ended up in past the eighth jhana, being another interesting option beyond that post-eighth junction point (P8JP) already mentioned. For the first one, take the bliss of the second jhana, the breadth of the fourth jhana, the sense of pervading presence of the sixth jhana, and then add a massive dose of gratitude, as if this is the gratitude jhana, as though something has gone so perfectly right and you can deeply and fearlessly feel appreciative of it.

For the second one, extend the state out in a much more diffuse way, such that there is the more diffuse, cool bliss of the third jhana, add in something of the fourth jhana in terms of the evenness and breadth, and then add a massive dose of contentment and relaxation, like the most relaxed you would be during the best massage in the most perfect spa after the most satisfying day of your life. My experiments past those first two yielded contradictory results, but those first two should give you a sense of what this general territory can be like. These are remarkably healing, complete, pervasive, satisfying, and heartfelt states, and the descriptive “pure” applies quite nicely. Early on I barely noticed them and would jump as fast as I could from the eighth jhana to Fruition and the cessation of perception and feeling (described in just a bit). Now I know better and sometimes take the time to enjoy them. They write ease, beauty, clarity, well-being, and contentment onto the mind.

While I am discussing unusual states, I should point out there are actually quite a few of them out there, further highlighting how the old texts simply don’t give us enough terms and concepts to categorize the wild and kaleidoscopic world of meditative experiences. Here’s another one of the more interesting ones: it’s also somewhere in that territory that seems basically like pure presence, like being a super-pervading watcher, with the quality of its self-perception dominant. This has a very different quality from the sixth jhana, Boundless Consciousness, and in my opinion is far superior, and at points I have been so impressed by it that I have been tempted to consider it one of the highest of the temporary states that involve experience. I can see why people who chance into these might be compelled to ascribe to them some ultimate status, or “ground of being”, “self”, as well as to use them as visions of a final endpoint of the path, but, being conditioned and being specific states, they end. So beware of yet another of the dangerous golden chains that would tempt you to stop there and fail to progress further.

Be careful to realize that jhanas are moldable by intention and vision, meaning that people can learn how to sculpt, craft, and engineer jhanas to fit their specifications, either by combining certain elements of various jhanas to make a fusion jhana, or by dreaming up new things to amplify into a pervasive state just by the power of strong concentration. Two of many weird examples from my own experiments are what I call “the lidocaine jhana” and “the crushy love jhana”. I am not saying that these are necessarily a good idea, just mentioning them to give examples of what is possible with a concentrated mind.

For the first one, I woke up from a nap before work and was lying on my arm. It had fallen asleep, I took that feeling of numbness and extended it out just like you would take any other sensation that you wanted to cultivate into a jhana and spread it to fill my entire body from head to toe with that odd, numb sensation. It was about equal parts creepy and restful, but the fact that it could be done was most intriguing.

In the second, this feeling of the best, most intoxicating part of crushy love, like you might feel in junior high school, just showed up for no obvious reason without any specific person that it was taking as the object of this feeling. I took it and expanded it out to fill my whole body. It clearly had some second jhana elements to it, but it also had its own distinct qualities in terms of emotional feel. It is so helpful to notice that feelings we usually associate with specific people can be just states that we simply create out of nothing but the states themselves. Similarly, a vast range of states can be achieved by just inclining to any feeling we have ever felt and, if we practice well, we can learn to combine them in unusual and amazing ways to suit our various tastes. This is obviously both a possible skillful exploration of the power of intention and attention, as well as possibly a trap for those who are more on the jhana-junkie end of the spectrum of personality types.

The territory out there/in here seems to be limited only by our imagination and concentration ability. I have imagined staging a friendly contest among high-level practitioners to dream up states that are even better than the ones I know, so that we can play with attaining them and seeing if there are any limits to the thing. The list of all the exotic celestial or deva realms found in the old texts lends credence to the view that there might not be. I realize this may seem like a contradiction to earlier statements I have made about being able to master concentration practices absolutely. It is. Actually, the only axis you can master absolutely is the one people think is the least attainable, that of naturally perceiving all phenomena as they are.

The take-home is that, as models of enlightenment go, the jhanic criteria, while lots of fun in terms of inspiring cool avenues of exploration, are not that reliable. People at lower levels of fundamental awakening who have powerful concentration abilities and who understand that this territory is malleable can get themselves into states that seem essentially the same as those that people of a certain level of realization are supposed to be able to attain. Unfortunately, there is no obvious, foolproof, objective way to sort out exactly what they have done. Thus, beware of using the concentration models as your primary criteria for assessing awakening, though certainly be informed by all the nifty options that may await you when you gain certain levels of insight. In that same vein, we get to one of the best options of them all …

Nirodha Samapatti¶

Then there is an attainment called “the cessation of perception and feeling” (Pali: nirodha samapatti, henceforth NS, or simply nirodha in my general way of speaking) that is hard to classify. The word “nirodha” (meaning “cessation”) is also sometimes used without the qualifier “samapatti” to refer to Fruition, so be careful to keep your terms straight when reading the old texts or speaking with others about these subjects. I always mean the cessation of perception and feeling when I use the word “nirodha”, but others often do not and may mean Fruition.

This is the highest of the temporary attainments. It is discussed in multiple places, including sutta 44, “The Shorter Series of Questions and Answers”, from The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, in a talk given by a female arahant named Dhammadinna, and Path to Deliverance by Nyanatiloka, which draws from that fine text. You can also find it in commentaries, such as the Visuddhimagga, XXIII, 16, as well as in the last few pages of the Vimuttimagga. By the commentarial criteria at least, it can be attained only by anagamis and arahants who also have mastery of the formless jhanas. This attainment cannot be said to be either a state or not a state, nor can it be said to be strictly a concentration or an insight attainment, as it is attained by a fusion of both shamatha and vipassana and since it lacks a sensate basis for analysis, meaning there is no experience at all that can be analyzed, as perception and feeling have stopped.

We attain NS by fusing insight and concentration practices in a gentle way that is much less precise than if we wanted to attain Fruition, as well as much less concentration-heavy than we would use if we were doing pure jhana practice. I find it slightly easier to attain NS when reclining, but the first time I attained it I was sitting. We rise through the shamatha jhanas in a low-key way with some light awareness of their true nature (the three characteristics), and then enter the eighth jhana (Neither Perception Nor Non-Perception), and then emerge from that state to that magical post-eighth junction point from which we might also attain the pure abodes. Technically, in the old texts we find that there are a few other points of set-up that we might do before this, including to make sure that we are not going to die before the state ends, resolving to wake up if summoned by the sangha, and some other minor details, but I have not found them necessary.

Sometime shortly thereafter, and without warning or a very recent premeditation, we may suddenly enter the cessation of perception and feeling, or we might not, depending on whether we have met the entrance criteria and are not inclining to anything else. Please note that previous interest in attaining this during the preceding days or weeks tends to increase the chances of this attainment occurring, as do resolutions just before starting the ascent from the first through the eighth jhanas. As we get better at attaining this, we can slip in the inclination (resolution, intention) to attain it after emerging from the eighth jhana and then forget about it before dropping in. There is really nothing that can be said about this attainment, except for things that relate to entering, exiting, and the consequences of the attainment, all of which are unique to nirodha.

The texts rightly say that, upon entering nirodha, verbal formations cease first, then physical sensations, then the whole of mental functioning ceases when the attainment is fully entered. This is traditionally explained as correlating to the first jhana, the fourth jhana, and then the entrance into nirodha, respectively. However, you may notice that in the three moments before cessation of perception sets in (during the complete power failure–like entrance) verbal formations, bodily formations, and mental formations cease in that order also in three consecutive and distinct moments, with the whole entrance taking about one-third of a second, like someone threw the master dimmer/power switch on sensate reality all the way down and the whole thing just shut off. The texts may have a double meaning, or may have been misinterpreted by scholars who had never themselves attained nirodha samapatti. I say this because it is still typical for bodily and verbal formations to arise between the eighth jhana and the entrance to NS, and thus the traditional interpretation does not hold up in experience.

The texts also say that this attainment may last seven days or even longer (some say up to ten days), but I don’t personally know of anyone who has admitted to this occurring in their experience. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but it would probably require a long and sustained retreat beforehand to generate the necessary stability and stillness of mind. The duration of such attainments will be related directly to our concentration abilities, and these are very dependent upon practice conditions and how much concentration abilities have recently been exercised.

Please also note that, like Fruition, there is no experience at all during NS. There is no time, no space, no something, no nothing, not anything at all. Just as a desktop computer shuts down totally when you press the power button, so too with anything to do with experience in NS. I have friends who have talked about something they got into where they could still feel time passing, and that is definitely not it. NS is like the ultimate rest for the mind, something far beyond even deep sleep, as even a few seconds in it leaves one with a massive feeling of having gone extremely deep in a way nothing else can match.

Unlike Fruition, we exit this attainment in the reverse way we came in, with mental formations arising first, quickly followed by physical and then verbal formations in the characteristic analogue way of the entrance and with the same timing, like throwing on a big dimmer switch in about one-third of a second. After leaving this attainment, the mind tends to be a remarkable mixture of deeply peaceful while very clear, and our body tends to be very relaxed. The longer the attainment lasted, the stronger and longer-lingering this effect will be.

I have found it to be by far the most impressive, long-lasting, and heavy of the afterglows of the various attainments, and have noted feeling the effects of it for up to about twenty-four hours afterwards. From my point of view, the whole point of attaining to NS (other than learning the level of control needed to attain to it, which has it own rewards for other avenues of spiritual development—and for just showing off and proving you can do it—is the amazing afterglow. Thus, I would not recommend attaining this immediately before entering into situations that require quick decisions or actions, such as driving in complex traffic. The texts say that we incline to solitude or quiet after attaining this state, and in general I agree. Loud noises and jarring situations can be particularly so after NS. Its afterglow is very conducive to deep relaxation, deep practice, deep insight, and deep magickal workings—that is if you can get up the emotional energy to care at all about those workings in the face of that stunningly chill afterglow. I talk about the powers later so, if the topic of magick bothers you, just pretend I didn’t write that. Say, “La, la, la, la, la …” in your head to clear the memory of it, or whatever.

While I am nervous about the current trend to use meditation to create more productive, compliant, and docile worker-bees, I must admit that studying for my emergency medicine board exam one day in the afterglow of NS was like a dream come true. I could steadily plow through hundreds of pages for hours and hours with vastly less mental fatigue than I would have had in any other state I am familiar with.

Aside from nirodha samapatti’s importance due to being included in some system’s criteria for various stages of awakening, it is worth mentioning this attainment because it is found today by real, living practitioners but has often been relegated to the realm of myth and legend or has been ignored or even forgotten entirely. It is not that nirodha samapatti is necessary, but it is a good and useful thing to be able to attain. In fact, I have not yet spoken with anyone who had attained it who didn’t consider it the absolute King Daddy of meditation attainments other than arahantship, as the depth of its afterglow never fails to impress and amaze. Hopefully, mentioning it will raise the standard to which people feel they can reasonably aspire, which is basically the whole goal of this book.

One more little morsel for you brave adventurers … I have noticed that the easiest time to attain NS is usually a few weeks after attaining a path, when the vipassana jhana aspect of the progress of insight is becoming clear and a nice degree of mastery has been attained in that Review phase. However, it has this nice/nasty habit of helping to precipitate a new progress cycle, as the level of clarity gained in its wake is impressive, and clarity furthers insight. Thus, we may go from the best highs of a Review phase and NS’s glorious afterglow to the third ñana, A&P, and the Dark Night quickly. In fact, this seems to be a very natural part of many cycles of anagamis who also know the eight jhanas and how to ride the line between concentration and insight practices. One word of warning: NS’s afterglow is so extreme that it is easy to imagine that one has attained some new level of awakening, as the mind feels very, very different after NS has occurred, and residual hindrances and negative mind states may be very far away. Wait at least a few days after any dive into NS to see how those changes hold up in the face of the world before starting to draw any conclusions.

I must say, there is something truly fairy-tale wonderful about NS. That you can pick up a book from about 2,000 years ago that gives complex instructions like some weird recipe for something you can do with your brain that you would have otherwise been extremely unlikely to know as even being possible, and that you can follow those instructions and they can actually work, blew my doors off the first time I did it. This stuff is just amazing! Yay, dharma!

Back to the Vajrayana Story¶

All right, now that I have set all that up, I can finish my little story about how I came to appreciate the Vajrayana models that involve seeing emotions in the clear light of wisdom, as part of the luminous field of natural manifestation, as an integral part of awakening, and not something to reject. Shortly after I got what I think of as third path, I attained nirodha samapatti. Bill Hamilton talked about nirodha samapatti a lot, as did Bhante Gunaratana, and I could tell that both masters really liked it, so I read everything I could find on it, which wasn’t much, and went for it. I poured energy into my shamatha skills. I learned to walk from the insight side of practice to the concentration side of practice and back again, trying to find that right balance of the two that would allow it to occur. I resolved to attain it again and again. I got it after about a month of hard work. As that was part of the standard criterion I had been brought up on for third path, that pretty much clinched it for me: that and the radical transformation of the baseline way I perceived the world. However, there was a problem …

As you may recall, third path in the standard Theravada ten fetter model involves the elimination of all forms of greed and hatred (other than desire for jhanic attainments), but I still had emotions including lust and anger. Those weren’t supposed to be occurring, and yet they were. They were perceived very differently and in a way that seemed “right”, as now they mostly (but not quite completely) seemed to be just a part of the natural field of experience, like textures of space that were happening on their own. This seemed very important, very profound, extremely relevant, and yet the models I had to work with suddenly didn’t describe my experience at all. This caused heavy-duty internal conflict, as previously the models seemed rock-solid, predictive, and useful. I knew that what I was experiencing was related to wisdom, and yet the textual sources, friends, and teachers I had access to didn’t seem to mention anything like what was happening.

Thus, I branched out and started reading more broadly, poring through texts to try to find someone who was talking about this stuff, and luckily I found the brilliant works of the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and his book Journey without Goal, specifically chapter nine, “The Five Buddha Families”, and suddenly I felt like I was not some sort of freak, as here was someone whose explanation made so much sense to me. Searching around in that general neck of the woods, I found Dzogchen, along with other books on tantra, and suddenly I realized that I had chanced upon a very Vajrayana way of understanding practice and experiencing reality by methods that were relentlessly Theravadin.

Those books were a very useful and empowering launching point for a project that would finally be completed some years later. My practice during those years often emphasized taking on just the whole sense field as object however it occurred with basically no agenda except that the field be known as it was, where it was, on its own, including any emotion, any thought, any mind state, anything. That type of totally nondiscriminating wisdom which embraced the whole vast world of experience turned out to be extremely liberating. I personally think that would have been much harder to accomplish had I not tossed aside models that tempted me to mimic an emotionally repressed or robotic state.

This way of viewing the path, in which all emotions are considered opportunities to bring light and wisdom to the way we perceive patterns of experience, also really helps in the Dark Night stages of any path, both before and after stream entry. Imagine that you are being given a thorough tour of your entire brain, heart, gut, body, the entire range of your life and sensate world, and, during that tour, you have the opportunity to bring awakening to each and every part of your reality, to hard-wire it into yourself, such that no matter what happens, the habit of clear seeing will naturally apply to that aspect of these natural occurrences. Thus, in each of the stages of practice, with each experience that arises, you can confidently say, “Ah! Here is this part that we can also awaken, just as we have done with so many parts before! What a joyous opportunity to have had this arise that we may thoroughly engrain the habit of recognizing its inherent nature and intrinsic clarity!” That was the gift that exposure to the Vajrayana gave me, and for that I am extremely grateful, as it finally allowed me to throw wide open the doors that, with even just a hint of hesitation or subtle prejudice against any part of experience, might never have opened. These explorations finally led me to what I call “the simple model”.

The Simple Model¶

In some very early versions of this work, I had a model called “the heart sutra model”. The simple model is the less mysterious, stripped-down version of that earlier model, though it is essentially the same. While in one sense it is also rephrasing the revised four-path model, as it has no numbers and is free of the traditional names, it has some advantages over that terminology.

I present this somewhat novel model here because it focuses on real insight directly and treats any emotional benefits of this as side effects. Further, there are often too many cycles of insight before arahantship, making the four-path model troublesome. The phenomenon of too many cycles between each of the four paths gets worse as we work towards final awakening. As Bill Hamilton put it, and I learned the hard way, “The arahant fractal is vast.”

The simple model does not reinforce fascination with content, nor with life-denying ideals or with limited emotional range models in the way that the traditional four-path model often does. It hopefully does not tempt us to count paths. It keeps the focus on precise inquiry into the truth and into our experiences in all their richness and complexity.

This model basically says that awakening is about direct insight that progressively reveals something different in the relationship to the field of experience and gradually allows all qualities of manifestation in it to be held in their natural, intrinsic, proper proportion. It is a progressive non-duality model.

The first understanding is that sensations are sensations, thoughts are thoughts, and this forms the basis of further inquiry. When we begin to see the universal characteristics of these sensations, our understanding grows. Knowing the whole sense field directly and completely can cause an entrance into Fruition through one of the three doors, which represents the first stage of awakening.

When we appreciate the cycles of the process of awakening and have completed at least one more new progress cycle, we are at the next stage. When we begin to appreciate the emptiness, luminosity, centerlessness, agentlessness, etc. of phenomena in real time and this becomes the focus of practice rather than Fruition, this is the next stage. When the sense of the watcher, observer, subject, controller, doer, etc., is seen completely as it is and the knot of perception untangles, that simple, fundamental way of perceiving things is the next stage of awakening. When that untangling stays untangled, that is the next stage. As we integrate that understanding into our lives, we are at the next phase, though it is more an ongoing process than a stage.

The problem is that some of the purveyors of the traditions seem to want to make this understanding into so much more than it is and thus to add ideals of emotional perfection onto this righting and untangling of perception. There is some truth in the models dealing with emotions, but it relates to emotions moving through us faster and more fluidly, as well as being perceived more clearly and spaciously. It does not have anything to do with “bad” or unwholesome emotions not arising. I am reluctant to go there, as my goal is to give the emotional models the bashing they richly deserve, but I also do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thus, here it goes.

As the deep-seated perceptual sense of a separate, continuous, permanent, observing agent stops being extrapolated from the same old patterns of sensations that appeared to be an agent, there is a broader, more inclusive perspective that can come into the consciousness of the awakened individual, depending on their level of awakening. There is also a slowly growing directness of perception that comes as reality is not filtered so heavily through thought. There is a growing sense of immediacy rather than a sense of temporality. There is a growing appreciation of ephemerality. There is a growing sense of spaciousness and openness to perspective. There is more softening and less contraction.

These perceptual upgrades can combine to give the emotions of awakened beings less sticking power, so that they may move through them more quickly than those who are not awakened. Those emotions also may be seen more quickly and clearly as they arise and vanish. There also may be less reactive or blind contraction into thoughts and emotions and a broader perspective which sees these normal, human, mammalian processes as just parts of a broader process like the textures of space, thus giving other parts of the brain more of a chance to create moderated responses to the emotions. That said, even when seen through, there seems to be a biological component to how emotions move through humans which can only be expedited so much. Still, the more that emotions arise in an awakened mind, the more something in the habitually conditioned reactions can change, lessen, soften, and relax due to having arisen in that improved perception. The more this goes on and the clearer and more awake the mind is, the stronger this effect becomes.

However, anyone who thinks these highly qualified statements are anything like a vision of emotional perfection or the elimination of all negative emotions is not paying attention! That is the last thing I would want to imply. I merely wish to say that there is some increased clarity about our basic human experience, and this clarity can help, but that is all. That said, you would be amazed how angry, lustful, or ignorant some technically awakened beings can be, and they can still do all sorts of stupid actions based on these emotions, just like anyone else.

Here I would like to tell a little story, a summary and simplification of a situation that unfolded over a few years. I knew four people, three were friends of mine before all this began, and two were people whose practices I knew quite well. They all began following a teaching in which a person claimed to have eliminated all emotions entirely. These four were good people, strong practitioners, and appeared honestly inspired by a practice that seemed straightforwardly helpful: notice feelings as they arise, see what causes them and how they function, and notice how they seem to relate to a sense of a self, with an emphasis on bodily awareness of those feelings and a commitment to being very present all day long and enjoying being here now.

The interesting thing is that all four of these people within a year or so of having started this practice claimed to have done it, and by “it” I mean eliminated all emotions entirely, replacing them with a perpetually wonderful perception of the freshness of the sensate world, a lack of time pressure, a reduced need for sleep, and some other benefits and odd side effects. This caused quite a stir in my community, but I was totally intrigued and impressed. Being willing to keep an open mind and revise my impressions as needed in the face of the seemingly honest reports of my fellow adventurers, I spent a reasonable amount of time with some of them trying to figure out exactly what they had done and how they did it, as well as adopting the basic practice of deeply embodying feelings as a focus all day long, and appreciating the sensuous beauty of the freshness of the sensate world; basically mindfulness of emotions and emphasizing rapture. I must say, it was in general a fun and interesting practice that seemed grounded on sound basic principles. I experienced various beneficial relative effects, but the elimination of emotions wasn’t one of them.

Time passed, however, and one by one, the four renounced their claims to have eliminated all emotions, with each stating something along the lines of having realized that their model had caused them to be in denial of what they were actually feeling to some degree. All four later arrived at the conclusion that the people who had inspired them were also clearly not free of emotions. One of the four ended up with some long-lasting psychological complexities, though the remaining three did better, and two of them did say that they did change something useful in the way that emotions were experienced, though the elimination of emotions was not that something.

So ended an interesting saga, but the end result, at least from my point of view, has led to four conclusions:

Beware of the limited emotional range models!
Investigating the sensuous beauty of reality, emphasizing rapture, and tuning in to the freshness of the sensate world, the body, and its feelings can be a fun and rewarding practice.
Be careful with claims of having done something final before really giving reality time to show you what subtleties and complexities remain.
Strong, dedicated, intelligent practitioners can be led astray and confused by golden promises of the spiritual marketplace, just like anyone else, so keep reality testing your practices to see how they hold up.

I know of a few other people (some of whom I have met, some by reports of good friends who have met them) who still claim to have eliminated all emotions (as well as nearly all thought), though those who have spent time with them all say that they still appear to have emotions, and can be moody, snippy, arrogant, and the like, just as anyone else can. Can I be certain I know exactly what is going on with them regarding their internal experience? Obviously not. Am I very skeptical? Yes, I am. However, in the interest of fairness, I present these examples just so that you can do your own research and realize that there is still controversy about this. Best of luck sorting it out for yourself. Regardless, the ability to modulate responses to emotions skillfully can sometimes give the impression that these emotions have been attenuated or eliminated, but that ability and emotional elimination are not the same thing.

The Action Models¶

The action models tend to involve certain actions that awakened beings cannot commit or must commit. Both types of models are completely ridiculous, and so we come now to the first of the models that simply have no basis in reality. The traditional Theravada models contain numerous statements that are simply wrong about what an awakened being cannot do or will do. My favorite examples of this include statements that arahants cannot break the precepts (including killing, lying, stealing, having sex, doing drugs, or drinking), cannot become sexually aroused, cannot have jobs, cannot be married, and cannot say they are arahants. They also state that unordained arahants must join the Theravada monastic order within days of their realization or they will die. Needless to say, all are simply absurd lies, lies that have unfortunately often been perpetuated by arahants.

There is also another subtler and more seductive view, which is that awakened beings somehow will behave in a way that is better or higher, though they won’t define what those actions might be or what actions they might avoid. I consider this view exceedingly dangerous. While I wish to promote the shift in perception that I call awakening and other names, I don’t want to imply that somehow this will save anyone from stupid actions or make them always aware of how to do the right thing or avoid screwing up. Such views are a set-up for massive delusion and huge shadow sides, as anyone who has spent enough time in any spiritual community knows all too well. As a Zen expression says, “The bigger the front, the bigger the back,” and this particular view can give you a shadow side the size of Texas.

The list is remarkably long of awakened individuals who have bitten the proverbial dust by putting themselves up on a pedestal, hypocritically violating their own lofty ideals of behavior, and then having been exposed as actually being human. The list of spiritual aspirants who have failed to draw the proper conclusions from the errors of the awakened is even longer. That so many intelligent individuals have such a hard time sorting all this out, instead putting a spin on, rationalizing, enabling, justifying, protecting, and defending the often dangerous behavior of countless teachers and spiritual leaders is truly mind-boggling, until you consider its parallels in the leadership that countries with the capacity to end most life on the planet choose for themselves, and suddenly it is less surprising. There are many schools of thought on this issue, and I will give them formal names here, though in reality, they don’t think of themselves this way.

“The partway up the mountain school” essentially believes, “Those who screwed up and caused a scandal were only halfway up the mountain, only partially awakened, as anyone who is really awakened couldn’t possibly have done those terrible things.” While clearly some were only partially enlightened, or perhaps not enlightened at all in the technical sense, a number who screwed up clearly knew and know ultimate reality inside and out, and so this model misses many important points.

“The crazy wisdom school” believes that “Enlightened beings transcend conventional reality and with it conventional morality and causality, so they are the natural manifestation of a wisdom that seems crazy to us foolish mortals but is really a higher teaching in disguise!” While not entirely absurd, as there are many cultural aspects and societal norms that can seem a bit childish, artificial, unnecessary, unhelpful, or naive in the face of realization, the crazy wisdom school provides too easy an excuse for plenty of behavior that has been and is just plain wrong, irresponsible, stupid, exploitative, reckless, hurtful, delusional, narcissistic, inconsiderate, juvenile, depraved, vile, and needlessly destructive.

Then there is my school, for which I have yet to come up with a catchy name, but perhaps we could call it “the reality school”, and it promotes the view that, “Awakened beings are human, and unfortunately humans, enlightened or otherwise, whose brains contain a thin veneer of civilization retrofitted over a much larger, more ancient, more primal (lizard) brain, all screw up at times. There is nothing special or profound about this.” In short, this school categorically rejects the specific lists and dogmas of the traditional action models in all forms, from the preposterous lists of the Theravada to the subtle sense that enlightened beings somehow are guaranteed to act in “enlightened” ways perpetually, whatever those are. It also rejects the rationalizations of the crazy wisdom schools.

That said, the ability to see things as they are does allow for the possibility of more measured and intelligent responses to situations and emotions, as stated earlier. That is a very different concept from coming up with a list of actions that enlightened beings never would or could do, and it certainly doesn’t mean they will necessarily act the way we think they will or that theirs will always be the right or best action, from our perspective. Further, while this is not an exhaustive list, the behavior of any being is always affected by the following:

the standard laws of the natural world;
the limits of their level of realization;
the ingrained habits of the realized individual, including personality quirks and “stuff”;
the residue of and/or shadow sides of the techniques and traditions they used to attain their understanding (don’t underestimate these!);
the fact that mindfulness waxes and wanes (at least in arahants, those below arahantship, and in all realistic definitions of Buddhas);
the fact that confusion and stupidity can still occur very much as before;
the limits of the relative knowledge and experiences of the realized individual;
the psychological and physiological issues that apply to the brain and body of the realized individual;
their cultural upbringing and the social conventions and mores created by it.

You will notice that this is quite a realistic list. Thus, the dogmas of the standard action models, while containing a few grains of truth, are simply wildly inaccurate, and generally represent some of the most questionable of the models of enlightenment.

A closely related issue involves the tensions between the “technically enlightened” models and the limited possible action models. There are schools of thought that say, “One enlightened action and one is a Buddha, one deluded action and one is an ordinary human being.” These have their value from a certain behavioral point of view, and can serve as a valuable reminder that conventional morality tends to be an extremely good idea most of the time. I, for one, think that everyone, regardless of purported realizations or lack thereof, should be held to a high and universal, non-harming, ethical standard, though in some humane, just, inclusive, and forgiving way. However, teachings based on some arbitrary ideal called “enlightened action” can begin to diminish the importance of direct realization of the truth of things and reinforce the mythical residue of the limited possible action models of realization.

There are those who are “technically” unenlightened (meaning that they have never completed even one progress of insight or attained to any direct understanding of emptiness or non-duality) who nonetheless live lives that would be considered unremittingly exemplary and even saintly by the very highest standards of human generosity, compassion, and conduct. I have been fortunate enough to meet and work with a few of these people and continue to stand in awe of them. Just so, there are those who are “technically” awakened, who nonetheless can appear exceedingly ordinary, seem to be of distinctly questionable character, disposition, and moral virtue, or seem sometimes downright debauched, nasty, and insufferable. I have met a good number of these, and that I have met more of them than I have those I would consider truly saintly leads me to the data-driven conclusion that it is easier to master insight practices than to master ethical and kind behavior. I say this not to excuse anyone but just to point out that we should all continue to strive to be moral people, and this is evidenced in our behavior with one another.

While the failure of the limited or enlightened action models and limited emotional models is a huge disappointment from one point of view, it also means that there is hope for the rest of us. Our lives are it, our emotions are it, our habits are it, our limitations are it, our neuroses are it, our issues are it, and our shadow sides are it. How can we attain understanding if we do not see clearly into reality as it is? How can we see clearly into reality as it is if we spend most of our time thinking that it isn’t good enough to examine reality clearly?

The Perfect Speech Models¶

Very closely related to the action models are those models that imagine that enlightened beings will always say exactly the right thing in a perfectly kind and appropriate way. It is not that right speech as a practice and part of the eightfold path isn’t important; it very much is, but here I am talking about models regarding results. It is not that insight practice can’t help us to recognize our intention to speak before we speak and thus provide an increased ability to internally edit the mental script before it translates to actual words. It is not that insight practices can’t slowly transform our ways of being in the world into somewhat healthier ones, as they often do.

However, the ideals that people have around right speech almost always conform to their own personal vision of exactly what proper speech and etiquette are and how everything should be said, ideals that are part of their own individual and cultural conditionings, which vary widely. Chances are slim that any two people, even awakened ones, would agree on exactly what would be the perfect thing to say and the perfect way to say it in any given situation, and that also includes awakened beings. Styles of communication, agendas, and goals for speaking vary widely. There is little chance that you will understand exactly what someone else is trying to accomplish when they say something, and even less of a chance that anyone will always know exactly how someone will interpret what they say.

I am a big fan of the moral training in right speech. Here are some key features of training in right speech: abstaining from lying, divisive speech, abusive speech, idle chatter (SN 45.8), and speaking at the right time, speaking truth, speaking kindly and helpfully with a mind of goodwill (AN 5.198). That said, plenty assume that success in insight training will necessitate success in right speech training, and this is unfortunately not the case.

The Perfect Internet Behavior Models¶

Related to this model and a testament to the world of technology as I write this is that the world of internet forums and online interaction has exploded, and so it is now worth including “the perfect internet behavior model”, in which awakened beings will automatically post, email, text, tweet, etc., exactly what your specific ideals of perfection dictate that they would. As numerous online dharma forums have clearly demonstrated, there is, unfortunately, only the loosest of correlations between levels of deep insight and the way that those with some realization interact online.

Some people are kind and respectful, some abrasive and mean, some trollish, some power-hungry, some needy of attention, others needy of being liked or validated, some put out only the safest of whitewashed politically correct platitudes, others dive into the edgy world of online flame wars at the drop of a hat, and some blast others without any apparent regard for their feelings at all. Just as there are lots of different personality styles, just so internet personas vary in those with deep insight and in those without. I have seen all these and many more from people who have extremely strong practices, so those who imagine that awakened people will meet their high ideals in the online world are very likely to be disappointed.

Further, those who judge online practitioners by the personality traits of their posts are also likely to be some degree of wrong regarding how these relate to their actual practice, insights, and abilities. Again, there is often some correlation, but you would be amazed at how easy it is to be wrong about who is on the other end of that keyboard when you can’t see them (and even when you can). These basic rules of the Internet apply just as well to online dharma as they do to everything else. There are people with great abilities and wisdom who do a poor job of representing themselves in text form, and plenty who really are not that talented, accomplished, or wise who manage to do a great job at internet advertising. It is again disappointing, but that is the way of the internet, as well as the rest of the world.

The Powers Models¶

On a related topic, awakened beings are often believed to have various kinds of magickal powers, typically extraordinary ones, and thus we have the powers models. The converse of this is the belief that people who have extraordinary powers might be, or must be, awakened. However, the relationship between the powers and fundamental insight is tenuous, though not nonexistent. Psychic powers come out of shamatha or concentration practices, particularly the fourth shamatha jhana, though they may arise as well in the stages of the Arising and Passing Away, High Equanimity, and sometimes in other stages and states. Some people just seem to have them regardless of their concentration or insight abilities. I have provided a more detailed discussion of the powers later, but if you are curious you could jump to Part Six now. It is strange to talk about the powers models when I haven’t even really talked about the powers yet, but this odd order of things is a cunning and calculated move to keep people reading who would long ago have gone into some internal emotional spasm due to the stuff that I cover in Part Six.

Note: nearly all the states and stages where the powers arise can be attained by beings who have not yet reached the first stage of awakening, and so we can see that there is no clear connection between most of the powers and awakening. The shortlist of powers that are the exclusive domain of the awakened are attaining to Fruitions, the pure abodes, nirodha samapatti, and being able to talk about the dharma from direct experience, along with a few other subtle odds and ends that perhaps I will cover some other time.

It is true that along the way to awakening it is hard to avoid chancing into all sorts of experiences that are described in the standard lists of the powers, and it is also much easier to develop the shamatha jhanas when you are in the Review phase of a path than it is if you are not awakened. However, developing seemingly random experiences into powers that can be attained again and again is a completely different matter and still unrelated to awakening except on this one front: there is something about the direct perception of the interconnection of things that does lend a certain umph to the utilization and development of powers. Further, some of the same mental skillsets that allow us to awaken also allow us to cultivate the powers more easily, should we be so inclined. Thus, we see some hint of why there are these models of awakening. However, as stated above, these are associations and nothing more. In summary, just because someone has powers doesn’t at all mean they are awakened, and just because someone is awakened doesn’t mean they will have any psychic powers that are not directly related to their clear perception of things. That is really the key point.

The Sleep Models¶

The sleep models generally relate to either sleeping less or being awake in some way while asleep. Sleeping less is common during retreats, particularly in some stages such as the A&P. I also know some people who, because of spiritual attainments, have reduced their need for sleep, and this has happened to me at points, but it hasn’t been sustained in my case.

More interesting than those effects are the possibilities of being awake in various ways during sleep. Lucid dreams and out-of-body travel are two commonly described effects, though many people who aren’t technically awakened also have these experiences. However, some dreams can show aspects of how awakening persists in the dream stage. I remember a dream in which I was giving a dharma talk. During the talk, I was putting about half of my attention on noticing the awake, centerless, luminous field of experience, just like what happens when I notice it when awake.

Taking the awake-during-sleep theme further, we have those who have developed the ability to stay conscious in some way throughout the night and not drop into unconsciousness or deep sleep at all. I personally haven’t managed this, though I haven’t emphasized those practices in my own training so far. Some models of awakening use some of these unusual sleep effects as part of their endpoint criteria.

You can find further information about models like this in books such as B. Alan Wallace’s Dreaming Yourself Awake: Lucid Dreaming and Tibetan Dream Yoga for Insight and Transformation, as well as Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. I really like Tenzin Wangyal’s other works also, such as Wonders of the Natural Mind, and I recommend you check out his take on practice. Also recommended is Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama, edited and narrated by Francisco Varela. I personally haven’t yet done as much of those formal sleep-related practices as I have done the other practices that I discuss in this book, so if you want more information about them, you should get it from those who have experience with them.

The Specific Knowledge Models¶

On a totally different tangent, the specific knowledge models basically state or imply that awakening will somehow magically provide hidden conceptual information about all sorts of specific things in life, such as the workings of particle physics, how to bring about world peace, who our disciples should marry, and the like. Some go further and state that enlightenment progressively brings complete omniscience, meaning the ability to know everything simultaneously about every single part and particle of the entire at least eight hundred trillion mile–wide universe.

While these might seem to some people like reasonable things awakened beings should somehow know, let’s include other things it might be good to know, such as how to create safe, inexpensive lithium ion batteries for electric cars, how to consistently beat the return of an S&P 500 index fund over the long haul, how to balance the federal deficit while providing everyone with outstanding social services and not raising taxes, how to instantaneously make every blue-collar Republican realize that they are voting against their own self-interest, and how to build a fusion reactor that is safe, inexpensive, produces enough energy for everyone on the planet, and has no radioactive disposal issues. When you consider these, the concept of specific knowledge gained by merely seeing the true nature of ordinary sensations begins to seem as ridiculous as it really is.

The only specific thing I did gain a little insight into was the beauty of differential equations that discuss the oscillation from the imaginary quantities (potential) to real quantities (manifestation), but that’s about it. Other than a bunch of direct knowledge of how the mind works and a whole lot of knowledge about what a load of crap most religious and mystical dogma is, and that includes much Buddhist dogma, I didn’t really get any specific knowledge of anything else. So much for that idea!

The Psychological Models¶

Here is another thing that didn’t happen upon awakening: psychological perfection. While the mainstream Western Buddhist world is absolutely drowning in the notion that somehow Buddhist practice will either eliminate all their psychological “stuff”, or at least cause them to become self-actualized in the good old psychoanalytical sense, nothing could be further from the truth except totally bogus models such as the Action models. I think that I learned more about reasonable psychological health from reading one book on transactional analysis (Ian Stewart and Vann Joines’ fascinating book TA Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis) than I did from over a decade of highly successful Buddhist meditation. That doesn’t mean that I have achieved perfect psychological health, not by a long shot!

Focusing almost exclusively on psychological growth over insight practice is an epidemic disease in Western Buddhism. Many of the major retreat centers that purport to foster insight practice in the US and Europe are really bastions of the worst pop psychological bullshit retrofitted with a bastardized Buddhist front. You have only to go to a few small group meetings on retreats, as I mentioned in Part Two, to hear that the majority of people who are supposed to be doing insight practices are actually just wallowing in their own neurotic crap. Sure, they may be highly intelligent, super sophisticated, fantastically well-rationalized, pseudo-Buddhist practitioners of the Great Sacred Neurotic Crap Wallow, but they are wallowing just the same.

While the dharma is vast, and the teachings of the wisdom traditions contain a lot of material for helping us grow psychologically, we can’t conflate psychological growth and maturity with awakening, and letting people get stuck in the Great Dismal Crap Quagmire does them little service, if you ask me, which you clearly did, as you are reading this book. As I said before, working on our psychological stuff can have lots of value, and Western psychology has added a vast array of useful conceptual frameworks and techniques to the world of psychological health and human development, but I firmly believe that clearly drawing the line between insight practice and psychological work is essential to doing either well. I have been to therapy and really got a lot out of it, just on a totally different front from what insight practices got me. It is not that I haven’t had psychological insights of great value when on retreat, as I have had plenty, but those psychological insights came from good insight practice as some surprising and appreciated side effect rather than the other way around.

Further, it is oh-so-easy to imagine that the teachers on the front cushions couldn’t possibly be as neurotic as we are, and before you know it we have the breeding ground for massive shadow sides, exploitation, isolation, and scandal, just like we had with the models that serve up emotional perfection. The jet-set culture of teachers popping in and out of town, getting up on the front cushion, spouting their beautiful ideals, and jetting off to somewhere else before anyone can see them as the humans they really are, only goes to reinforce these dangerous notions. It is just so easy to project all kinds of wondrous qualities onto them when the dream is so nicely laid out, the opportunities for reality testing so few, and the amount of transference and countertransference out there is simply huge.

As an aside of great importance: anyone working with meditation teachers or teaching meditation should read up on projection, transference, and countertransference, as these fly thick and fast in the world of meditation just as they do in psychology (and basically all other human interactions). Want to perform a not-so-fun experiment that teaches you hard lessons about what ordinary adults can do and say when they get caught up in projection and transference? Write a book called something like Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, call yourself something such as an arahant, and watch the projection and transference fly despite your best attempts to bring things back to earth in that very book. Ah, good times …

Other highly recommended topics of useful theory that Western psychology provides that are largely lacking in Buddhism: narcissism, narcissistic injury, narcissistic rage, and narcissistic supply. All of these are worth reading up on and recognizing when they occur. While knowledge of them is not enough to eliminate their negative effects, it is better to understand the mechanisms than not. It is true that skillful use of transference can occasionally occur, but that is as slippery a slope as they get. Clearly, the amount of transference, projection, and idealization suits most teachers just fine, or they would go more out of their way to counter those notions and set the record straight, but, as those teachers quickly learn, countering those notions just doesn’t sell well most of the time, and getting caught up in that sort of transference feels mighty friggin’ nice.

Thus, I think that models that reinforce the notion that psychological perfection or freedom from our psychological stuff will come simply by seeing through the sense of a separate, permanent agent are a serious problem for these major reasons:

they simply aren’t true;
they cause practitioners to get caught up in their stuff rather than focusing on the three characteristics or something functionally equivalent, thus squandering the majority of practitioners’ limited retreat and practice time;
they allow teachers to be able to ride the hot air of preposterous ideals to dangerous heights, as meditation scandal sheets reveal again and again;
they contribute to the erroneous sense of the gap between this ordinary, human existence and awakening by creating unrealistic ideals and goals.

Most Buddhist practitioners whom I know have something like one or more of the following belief structures:

awakening is impossible, so the best thing to try for is psychological or emotional health or perfection;
awakening is equivalent to psychological or emotional perfection, so by trying for psychological or emotional perfection we are doing the practices that lead to awakening;
awakening involves psychological or emotional perfection, so it clearly is impossible, and by sitting we are trying to accomplish something else, but if you ask them what that goal is they are usually unable to answer clearly.

What is so ironic is that awakening is hard but clearly not impossible, and not nearly as impossible as achieving psychological or emotional perfection. In fact, seeing sensations clearly enough to see that they are all just happening—coming and going—is extremely straightforward once you finally realize that this is what you are supposed to be doing. Further, when I think back on all the things I have done, including going to medical school, working as a volunteer for a year in India, and finishing an emergency medicine residency, I must say that what I went through to get those things was significantly more work than it took to get to stream entry and even arahantship.

It is not that getting stream entry was easy, just not as hard as plenty of other things I have done. I attribute my success to a vast array of factors, but two that are relevant here are a tolerance for pain and having a good working model that I was willing to modify as data from the experiment swamped prior hypotheses. That model was one that was blissfully free of the notion of emotional or psychological perfection. Psychological growth and maturation are reasonable things to aspire to and cultivate, but exaggeratedly high ideals involving notions of perfection are damaging and toxic to most practitioners, as reality testing has shown again and again.

When I think about what it would take to achieve freedom from all psychological stuff, the response that comes is this: life is about stuff. Stuff is part of being alive. There is no way out of this while you are still living. There will be confusion, pain, miscommunication, misinterpretation, maladaptive patterns of behavior, unhelpful emotional reactions, weird personality traits, neuroses, and possibly much worse. There will be power plays, twisted psychological games, people with major personality disorders (which may include ourselves and our dharma friends and teachers), and craziness. The injuries continue right along with the healing and eventually the injuries win and we die. This is a fundamental teaching of the Buddha (SN 4.6). We could arguably classify all of these as learning and growth opportunities, or we could lump them into the great slagheap called “suffering”; you must determine for yourself which paradigm works best for you as you go along. I wish the whole Western Buddhist world would just get over this notion that these practices are all about getting to our happy place where nothing can ever go wrong, hurt us, or make us neurotic, and move on to mastering real Buddhist practice rather than chasing some ideal that will never appear.

All that said, there is some debate about what factors or progress allow some people to just notice the three characteristics of the sensations that make up their world in the face of their stuff as opposed to those who just flounder in their stuff. This question applies to many of skillful meditative practices. Some would argue that you must have done enough psychological work and have dealt with enough of your issues or grown up in a sufficiently healthy psychological context to get to the place where you can move on to the next stage. I must reluctantly admit that there is probably some truth to this for many people. However, I did not consider myself particularly psychologically advanced, mature, or evolved when I started insight practices, nor did anyone who knew me well. I had all kinds of stuff to deal with and still do. Despite this, through good instruction, complete faith in the straightforwardness of the technique, and perhaps some other factors I have yet to identify, I was able to practice well despite everything and make the shift from being lost in content to noticing how things are.

A subset of the psychological models is the specific issues model, which says that we must completely work out each of our issues along the way and that progress is essentially a countdown to having no issues at all, whatever that means. It is true that attaining a sufficiently wise and functional perspective on some issues can facilitate having a better life and also mastering insight practices. It is also true that insight practices can sometimes shed valuable light onto and improve our perspective on specific issues as we go along.

However, I do not accept the notion that we simply eliminate some personal numbered master list of our issues (as understood in the standard pop-psychological sense) one by one and when we are done that is it. That model places the focus so totally in the realm of content that it is hard to imagine anyone really understanding the direct clarity that comes from insight practices if they are working with that sort of a model. I have yet to meet anyone who could possibly be said to be anything resembling “issue-free” no matter how much successful practice they have done. I find no Buddhist texts that even promise anything like the idea of being “issue-free”, as these sorts of concepts and ideals didn’t seem to exist then; this issue model has seemingly arisen out of the last century or so of the development of modern psychological theory in the West.

The No-Thought Models¶

Speaking of problematic models, we have the no-thought models. These are models that tend to focus on something different happening with thoughts in those who are awakened, rather than simply seeing through the thought patterns that create a sense of a centerpoint or special, permanent, separate, independently existing self. These idealized models include not thinking certain thoughts, such as enlightened beings being unable to have the thoughts “I”, or “I am”, or them not thinking at all and thus stopping the process of thought, or some other modification to thoughts, such as always thinking good thoughts, whatever those are.

Do the minds of progressively awakened people generally get quieter? Yes. May they experience greater periods of time when inner talk seems to be doing very little? Yes. May they come to a completely different perceptual relationship to thoughts in general? Yes. Does anyone who is still alive eliminate all categories of experience that are mental and might be classified as thoughts? No.

I got an email awhile ago from a nice engineer who said basically: “I did some Taoist practices, got enlightened, and now am incapable of thinking any thoughts or visualizing, yet I seem to function normally. What do you think of this?” I put a lot of thought into my response, and so am including it here, in slightly edited and revised form:

“One of my teachers, the late Bill Hamilton, used to talk about how people’s conceptions of what was supposed to happen would have some influence on subsequent events, but with some question remaining over what that influence might be. We used to discuss this often, with possibilities including:

People with different models of awakening might achieve different results. (The more I practice and get to know people’s practices well, the more I realize there are some real individual variations on some of the general themes. That said, there are also commonalities to how most human brains function.)
People with different models might achieve the same thing but describe it differently. (I like this one more than the first.)
Some combination of 1) and 2).
People might fail to achieve results but be scripted to report or believe that they had achieved something in line with their own working model. This is a common occurrence, one that I have observed in myself more times than I can count and also in the practice of many other fellow dharma adventurers. Bill would often mention people’s ability to self-hypnotize into semi-fixed states of delusion. He had a long run of hanging out in scary cult-like situations with psychopathic teachers and friends and got to observe this firsthand in himself and others: see his book*Saints & Psychopaths* for more on this.
People with different models and techniques might have very different experiences of the path along its way: this is clearly true in some aspects, and yet the universal aspects of the path continue to impress me with their consistency and reproducibility regardless of tradition.
Other possibilities we haven’t considered, in the style of Donald Rumsfeld’s famous “unknown unknowns”.

The “no-thought” question is an interesting one. It is commonly used in some traditions as being the goal, these including some strains and descriptions of Hindu Vedanta, multiple non-aligned traditions, and others. Zen and some Thai teachers sometimes toy with the idea on its periphery. As to Taoism: I did a bunch of reading of the old Taoist masters some years ago, but I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on its current practice or dogma.

Buddhism does not generally consider not thinking or not being able to visualize among its goals, which brings us to the points mentioned above. For instance, the Buddha often says things in the old texts like, “It occurred to me that I should wander by stages to [such and such a place].” Or, “This spontaneous stanza, never heard before, occurred to me.” These obviously are thoughts. Furthermore, if we take the old texts as a reference, all the enlightened disciples of the Buddha and the Buddha himself were described as thinking thoughts, and furthermore, as expressing them in speech, which evidences preceding thoughts and intentions. Further, many of the Buddha’s disciples could visualize, as could the Buddha, and you can’t be a tantric master without some strong visualization abilities.

Even further, the notion that one can write an email or do engineering, which inherently involves abstraction (mathematics) and other concepts being converted into actuality, or even speak and have it not involve thought, is one that I think is merely a conceptual understanding itself and thus an arbitrary designation. As intentions fall into the realm of thought, and all physical actions are preceded by intentions by the fixed mechanics of the system, the notion that action can occur without thought falls into the same camp. This also applies to all such things as memory, which you clearly demonstrate, as this inherently must involve thought by definition (with caveats as above).

Given those assumptions, the question I ask is: have you simply stopped calling those processes “thought” to fit with an arbitrary and dogmatic model? Have you perhaps forced yourself to stop noticing that mental processes occur, as you believed that was supposed to happen? Maybe you have achieved something real and because of your preconceptions choose to describe it through that terminological filter, or have achieved something completely different from those that is not on my radar screen for whatever reason, possibilities including my own delusion or lack of experience, as self-doubt and reasonable skepticism clearly have a place in all such discussions.

The terminology that I am familiar with involves seeing thoughts as they are, thus having them be just a very small and transient part of the natural, causal field of experience. However, please realize that, since thoughts can only be experienced as aspects of the other five sense doors, then labeling thought as thought is also just an abstraction and just as arbitrary as is labeling the other five sense doors as such. These are simply convenient designations (thoughts) for the sake of discussion.

When one notices that all things that simply arise causally, including those sensations that may or may not be designated as thoughts, are empty of a self, as they are and always have been, with no separate or independent observer or controller or doer that is not just a part of the field of experience or manifestation, then one has understood at some level what the Buddha advocated that people understand. (Remember, when training in morality, assume you have agency and control, and take responsibility for your actions.) Thus, the model that I prefer, as it is practical, non-esoteric and direct, is that:

Sensations that can be labeled as thoughts occur.
Thoughts are natural, causal, and essential to nearly every function we perform.
Thoughts are not self, not other, are part of life, and devoid of absolute or intrinsic identity.
Thoughts always have been this way, before and after any spiritual achievement, and when their true nature is seen, they are still as they were.

An essential question regarding enlightenment is: does it make things different from how they were, or does it merely reveal a true and accurate perception or perspective on how everything always was? I advocate a moderated version of the latter view, as I believe it is more helpful to our practice and is more accurate. Thus, in this view, which is just one view, anything that could happen before, such as thought or visualization, can happen after, with the only difference being an untangling of the previously tied knot of tangled perception.

In terms of my experience (another interesting conceptual designation), and expressed using relative and down-to-earth language: I can make my inner voice as loud as it could be before; it is much more clear than it was before, it is perceived as part of the natural field of causality in a way that it was not before, and mindfulness comes and goes as before. In high jhanic states the inner voice is very subtle, but I can still visualize as before, sometimes with even more clarity depending on practice conditions. In short, I have not lost abilities nor have I changed much about the way the system operates. That said, something is clear that was not clear before, and the sense of a special centerpoint seems seen through, though the sensate patterns that made it up generally seem to occur as before, and it is only the perception of them that is different.”

I have met a few people since then who also claim to have a marked reduction in thinking, and some claimed to have eliminated thought entirely, the poor deluded fools. However, those who I have had a chance to talk further with admit that they are really talking about certain categories of thought they consider negative, based on the models they adopted, and have worked hard to reduce and tried to eliminate them. So, it is no wonder that they have modified their brains in some way to have fewer thoughts or to ignore thoughts, as our brains are modifiable, but none that I know, after careful questioning, have actually eliminated all categories of mental processes and all categories of thought while still being alive and conscious.

The important counterpoint to my points about thoughts is that most people start out filtering way too much of reality through the narrow channel of linear thought, not at all realizing that the full richness of reality is already happening and being perceived. For instance, when basically everyone starts meditating, they only count as clearly perceived those things which they made a conscious and deliberate mental intention to perceive clearly, as they associate perception with the after-image, the mental impression, and memories. Basically, they are mistaking the mental impression that follows the perception of the raw data (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch) of each phenomenon to be the recognition of that phenomenon, not realizing that the phenomenon that the mental impression was made from already illuminated itself just fine where and as it occurred. Further, the mental impressions themselves are just part of this same direct richness. When the full, rich, direct field of sensate reality begins to stand on its own without this strange need to create some after-image before we are satisfied that we perceived something, this is the development of profound awakened wisdom, and is part of the hints of truth found in the thought models.

The God Models¶

On a very different tangent, we have the God models. While Buddhism pretends to be an exception to the theological traditions, many Buddhists across the globe essentially worship the Buddha as God just as Christians worship Jesus as God. Further, the majority of the meditative and mystical traditions that promote awakening involve some sort of theological background or underpinning, including Hindu Vedanta’s focus on the divine nature of things, Sufism’s focusing on The Friend or dissolving in Allah, and Christianity’s various dissolution in God metaphors, such as the “divine marriage” and “no will but Thine”. Buddhism has the same idea at times with the phrase “Buddha Nature”. The Tantric Buddhists visualize deities all the time and equate them with various aspects of ultimate reality as skillful means, but this often degenerates into ritual worship and granting ultimate status to these deities.

These are interesting models to talk about, and basically the question comes down to the distance between “God” (or “gods”, or whatever) and our life. Those who believe in a God that is a separate entity are already in trouble. Those who believe this entity is far off in Heaven or largely unavailable are really in trouble. However, those who believe in a “God” that is right here, right now, and present in all things, including themselves, have a fighting chance, and this is as practical a model for awakening as any other, if done correctly, which it almost never is. I generally have a pretty good time talking with the awakened Christian mystics I know and, as long as I am willing to use God-language, which I am, we typically have a great time sharing the interesting aspects of the path.

The problem comes for those who believe in “God-free zones”, that is, those places where God is not. These tend to be people who believe in a limited, abstract God. Most people who believe in God have not taken the time to consider the question of whether they believe in God-free zones or a limited God. In fact, most people who believe in God in the monotheistic sense would be offended by the notion that their God was somehow limited. However, if you question them about whether God is in their toilet paper or in a rock, or perhaps is the toilet paper or the rock, is their weird popcorn fetish, is the annoying itch in their armpit, and is everything else, even most people who in theory believe in an omnipresent, unlimited, all-powerful God will simply not go that far. This is too bad, because if they did, they would have a good working model for realizing that this is it, and so we are back to my original, simple, excellent premise and test for good models of awakening.

Here’s how this works: if you believe that you are trying to see God, and you believe that all creation is a manifestation not just created by God, but in fact is God, then you are back to basic insight practices: seeing the sensate world exactly as it is, because there you will find ultimate reality, or “God”, if you want to call it that. When the centerpoint is seen through by your careful investigation of all these sensations, or all the aspects of God, then all that is left is just these sensations as before, that is, all this God. Thus, if we are willing to believe in an omnipresent God, then by truly, deeply, directly perceiving all sensations to be just part of the causal, natural unfolding of what they label God, all the boundaries between self and other can be seen through, and the phenomenal world is left doing its divine thing, thus the practitioner realizes they always were part of God, in a sense, and there is no will but God’s, and all knowledge is God, though these designations are merely terminological one way or the other.

Thus, the problem with God models is that people don’t take them far enough—because if they did, they’d be able to get into something great, though they could get there just as easily without them. Some people really resonate well with God-based traditions. Some thrive in tantric models where they visualize themselves as actual deities. Some are very inspired by a sense of immediate divine presence or the notion of dissolving into God. Both motivations and modes of practice and conception of practice can yield great results in some meditators. I myself attained stream entry in a vision that involved God and a gerbil while doing Buddhist practices, as I will describe later.

However, all the other ideals that are involved in becoming God or seeing God are just more odd dreams and possible side effects of spiritual practice. I have a few friends who saw visions while on LSD in which “God” told them useful stuff, and this is fine. A few friends have gotten some great mileage and powerful, positive inspiration out of other spiritual experiences that had some specific divinity in them, but this is back in the realm of the powers and has nothing to do with awakening and only a very limited amount to do with “God” in the ultimate sense.

The Unity Models¶

Directly related to the God models are the unity models, those that promise a palpable sense of your connection to everything. This is another one of those models that contains some strange grains of truth, but can easily get idealized in all sorts of problematic ways. What we generally imagine is that we will stay an agent, a separate, conscious, in-control being and simultaneously be part of everything in some mysterious way, such as either feeling everything else in the universe at all times, or even more ludicrous (or delusional), being in control of everything else at all times. Somewhere subtly buried in there is also generally some dream of ownership, that we will possess everything.

The general problem is that we half-imagine the model and don’t take it to full, actual, direct, experiential unity of the field, a field that is transient, just happening on its own, and not artificially divided into self and other, but just fluxing textures, qualities, and aspects, all the way through. Unity tends to imply numerous problematic ideals, such as stability, as in some stable, solid connection between a stable “I” and a stable everything else. It also tends to imply a duality, paradoxically, in that we imagine that we will be here as this defined and fixed entity that is experiencing unity.

Experiences that people describe as “unitive” are relatively common in certain stages, most commonly the A&P and Equanimity, as well as in the fourth, fifth, and sixth jhanas, though they can occur at other stages also, so if you have some transient experience of those, consider the context and its other aspects and see if it fits with one of those. Even Mind and Body, when it hits hard enough, can feel extremely unitive in some wondrous way, though this is not nearly as common as when in the A&P and Equanimity. Each of these is a partial unity, a taste of something unitive, and it can be profound and point out hints of something more that is possible.

We can describe high levels of realization as having a unitive aspect, in that mental and physical processes are just part of the fluxing field of experience in an integrated way, just aspects of some space that itself is fluid and transient, but the concept of Unity for most people implies something solid, stable, permanent, unchanging, eternal, fixed—and fixity, or changelessness, is an illusion, so beware of chasing unity in that way, as this is not as good or true as simply noticing what is going on clearly and directly.

The True Self Models¶

Closely related to the unity models are the true self models. As we start out with a strong notion that there is some self, some true, abiding, permanent, separate “I”, it is only natural that various models will then take that view and augment, modify, or work with it to some degree to try to explain what happens when the sense field wakes up to its essential characteristics. The great no-self versus true self debate tends to arise when Hinduism or Christianity encounter Buddhism. However, perhaps it should arise more when Buddhists are thinking about Buddhism.

While I have been talking about how Buddhism proposes the fact of no-self, various generally newer strains of Buddhism also contain a surprisingly large number of “true self” teachings, though if you told most Buddhists this they would sneer and maybe scold you. Many of these teachings have their origins in Hindu Vedanta, Hindu Tantra, and the long and complex history of how the dharma spread to Tibet, China, and beyond. Much of the watered down or misinterpreted talk of Buddha nature, and the distorted understanding of the bodhisattva vow, etc., are true self teachings. By pointing to this wide field of experience as being somehow related to awakening, true self teachings can help some more aversive practitioners to examine their reality just as it is and “inhabit it” in an honest and realistic way, to be more embodied and grounded in what is going on—or they can cause more desirous practitioners to cling to transient experiences as “self” if they misunderstand this teaching.

Many of the juvenile and tedious disputes between the various insight traditions result from fixation on these concepts and inappropriate adherence to only one side of these apparent paradoxes. Not surprisingly, these disputes between insight traditions generally arise from those with little or no insight. One clear mark of the development of true insight is that these paradoxes lose their power to confuse and obscure. They become tools for balanced inquiry and instruction, beautiful poetry; they become intimations of the heart of the spiritual life and of our own direct and non-conceptual experience of it, and ways to redirect those who wander either too far to one side or the other on the spiritual path. When experience is simply the experience, that is profoundly straightforward, and much less odd than the various confused and confusing interpretations of no-self and true self would seem to indicate.

At their very skillful best, true self and no-self teachings are talking about the same thing, just from different perspectives. In short, when the artificial boundaries and misperceptions fall away, there is just what is happening. You could say in some strange way that all this was “you”, or you could equally state that the whole field was “not you”.

There are potential advantages and problems with both. Just as with the unity models, if you say the whole unbounded, causal, natural, intrinsically aware sensate field is “me”, then many will unfortunately assume all sorts of odd things, such as, for example, that they could somehow control the whole field of experience or the whole universe, that they could somehow perceive all sorts of things, such as feel the whole world in some sensate way beyond what they actually do, and that they could know all sorts of remarkable things about the universe, such as what the animals on the other side of the planet feel like at that time, for example. They also tend to imagine some permanent something that would be this true self. All of those are very confused, narcissistic, grandiose ways of looking at the true self way of describing things, as they all take the delusion of localized control and a centralized permanent perceiver and just extrapolate that out to all phenomena.

If you say that the whole field is “not me”, then some people will similarly misinterpret that, such as by imagining that their body will disappear, that consciousness will disappear, that they will feel nothing, that the sensations of effort and will and the like won’t arise, that they will stop moving, that they will stop thinking, and that perception itself will stop permanently. They may believe more mundane things, such as that they should repress themselves and thus try to be less than themselves in various disempowering and life-denying ways. That said, the benefits of no-self teachings are that they directly counter the sense that there is a separate watcher, and that this watcher is an “I” that is in control, observing reality or subject to the tribulations of the world. However, if misunderstood, no-self teachings can produce a shadow side that reeks of nihilism, dissociative tendencies, schizoid behaviors, disengagement from life and the world, and denial, all of which preclude, sidestep, bypass, or dismiss the first training of morality.

People can get all fixated on eliminating a “self”, when the emphasis is supposed to be on the words “separate”, “unchanging”, and “permanent”, as well as on the illusion that is being created. A better way to say this would be, “stopping the process of mentally creating the illusion of a separate self from sensations that are inherently non-dual, utterly transient, totally causal, without any actual boundaries that could construct a separate self, and thus perpetually and totally empty of any separate, permanent self.” Even when you awaken, you will still be here from a conventional point of view, but you will also be just an interdependent and intimate part of this utterly transient universe, just as you always have been. The huge yet subtle difference is that this will be known directly, clearly, palpably, and pervasively. The confusing language “eliminating your ego” is similarly misunderstood most of the time.

As stated before, there are physical phenomena and mental phenomena, as well as the “consciousness” or mental echo of these, which is also in the category of mental phenomena. These are just phenomena, and no phenomenon is a permanent, separate self, as all phenomena change and are interdependent; they manifest where they are without any observer of them at all. The boundaries that seem to differentiate self from not-self are arbitrary, conceptual, and not the true nature of things. Put another way, this utterly transient sensate reality is intimately interdependent and non-dual.

Related directly to the problems with true self teachings, there also seems to be something people call various things such as “awareness”, but awareness is not a material phenomenon, and therefore not localized, so even to say “there is also awareness” is already a tremendous problem, as it implies separateness and a permanent existence where none can be found. Terms and concepts like “I” and “awareness” are conventional, expedient, and helpful for relative, ordinary work. But, for insight practice, it is easiest to say that the specific textures and qualities of this transient space that create the sense of attention, of comprehension, of “awareness”, are just an intrinsic property of the qualities of experience that arise, just more textures and qualities, nothing more, and certainly not anything that can be found to be more than that.

For the sake of discussion, and in keeping with certain strains of standard but very true-self–influenced Buddhist thought, such as those that use the term “ground of being”, awareness is sometimes described as permanent and unchanging, but picking this apart, we notice something subtler about this. If there is experience at all, meaning that things are in the realm of manifestation, “time” and the like, then you can say from a conventional perspective that there is awareness, which is to say there is sensate information. This will always be true when there is experience. That said, you can’t find any awareness that is different from phenomena. So, you could just say that while there is manifestation, there is always something manifesting. That doesn’t mean that there is always manifestation, or that there is something continuous across those manifest, transient moments. Thus, while this would seem to imply something perpetual, there isn’t anything permanent that can be found, but merely a repeating quality that presents again and again when sensate information is happening. You could also say that the sensations presenting and the presentation are the same.

Then some of the true self schools will say things such as, “All things arise from it, and all things return to it,” though again this implies a false certainty about something that is impenetrably mysterious. More importantly, mixing the concept of an extrapolated infinite potential or ultimate source with “awareness” is a notoriously dangerous business. As already mentioned, these sorts of misunderstandings are some of the standard traps that lie in wait for people in the middle stages of awakening.

We might be tempted to call what we wish to be there, either as some perpetual awareness or as some infinite well of potential, names like “God”, “nirvana”, “the tao”, “the void”, “ground of being”, “Allah”, “Krishna”, “intrinsic luminosity”, “Buddha nature”, “Buddha”, “Bubba” (did I mention I currently live in Alabama?), or just “awareness”, as long as we realize the above caveats, especially that it is not a thing that is separate from phenomena or localized in any particular place and has no definable qualities, in which case we will be okay for a while. Awareness, though formless, is sometimes conceptualized as pervading all of this while not being all of this, and sometimes conceptualized as being inherent in all of this while not being anything specific. Neither is quite true, though both perspectives can be temporarily useful in very specific contexts and dangerous in others, and finally we have to come to something that is actually much simpler than the term “awareness” generally implies, nothing more than just the sensations themselves, much more fundamental and yet more ordinary than anything grand that those terms would suggest, “Bubba” obviously excepted.

If you find yourself adopting any fixed idea about what we are calling “awareness” here, try also adopting its logical opposite to achieve some sense of direct inquisitive paradoxical imbalance that shakes fixed views and points to something beyond these limited concepts. This is incredibly useful advice for dealing with any teachings about “ultimate reality”. I would also recommend looking into the true nature of the sensations that make up philosophical speculation and all sensations of questioning, as that more direct inquiry gets much more quickly to the answer.

One teaching that comes out of the Theravada that can be helpful or harmful, depending on how it is interpreted, is that there are three ultimate dharmas or ultimate aspects of reality: materiality (the sensations of the first five sense doors), mentality (all mental sensations), and nibbana (Pali) aka nirvana (Sanskrit). In short, this is it, and “that” which is beyond this is also it. You will notice that I have mentioned two meanings of nibbana, those being Fruition (from which we might extrapolate a false view that nibbana is some ultra-transcendent infinite potential we might enter as a refuge) and as the state of things being perceived as they are, which can give rise to the false view that everything is some stable ultimate something. Notice that “awareness” is not on this list. It might sometimes be conceptualized as being all three (from a true self point of view that included some extrapolated infinite potential), being just the first two (as those involve sensate experiences), or quickly discarded as being a useless concept that solidifies an illusory, permanent, separate and/or localized “watcher” (from the no-self point of view) and/or some unknowable and extrapolated well of creation.

Summarizing, we can start with the simple practice that notices that, as phenomena are observed, they cannot possibly be a separate, stable observer. Thus, the observer is not any of the phenomena pretending to be it, cannot possibly be a phenomenon, and thus is not localized and doesn’t exist truly. This is no-self. Taken the wrong way, some practitioners using this emphasis will become averse to all phenomena and/or dissociated, so one must guard against this misinterpretation. Some of the many possible remedies to achieve rebalancing are practices that are embodied, visceral, and inclusive, that still maintain an insight-oriented focus, such as focusing on momentary transience more than on other aspects of no-self.

As the illusion of duality is just an illusion, when perception is well-developed, the sense that the textures of reality actually form some boundary between what we call “self” and what we call “other” doesn’t exist in the way we generally perceive it to. When the illusion of duality permanently collapses in final awakening, all that is left is all of these phenomena, which is what is meant by true self, that is, the lack of a separate self and thus just transience as it occurs. Remember, however, that no phenomena abide for even an instant, and so are empty of permanent abiding and thus of stable existence.

Until we have a lot of fundamental insight, the sense that duality is true can be very compelling and can cause all sorts of trouble. We extrapolate false dualities from sensations until we are very highly awakened. Similarly, the more unitive experiences we may have can be so compelling that we yearn for an idealized (solidified, real, abiding, permanent) version of them to be “The Answer”. However, now we have a very practical gold standard: if it still seems that any patterns of sensations habitually fail to reveal their true nature automatically, and thus falsely imply a duality or a unity, then those sensations are what must be investigated carefully to understand all this for yourself directly.

As both unity and duality clearly fail in the face of such lenses as logic, physics, and deep investigation, the term non-duality has value, and yet obviously it is an inherently paradoxical term, one that confounds reason and our current experience of reality until we are truly accomplished insight practitioners. If we accept the working hypothesis that non-duality is true, then we will be able to continue to reject both unitive and dualistic experiences as being some final answer and continue to work towards awakening, which sees through both of these as limited and missing something critical about the sensations that make them up. This is probably the most practical application of discussions of no-self and true self.

There is a great poem by the late Kalu Rinpoche that goes:

We live in illusion

And the appearance of things.

There is a reality:

We are that reality.

When you understand this,

You will see that you are nothing.

And, being nothing,

You are everything.

That is all.

There are many fine poems on similar themes presented in Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. [23] Taking no-self and true self to the extremes to make some basic points: it is because we are none of this that freedom is possible, and it is because we are all of this that compassionate action for all beings and ourselves is so important. To clearly perceive this moment is to understand both truly, which is the middle way between these two extremes (see Nisargadatta’s I Am That for a very down-to-earth discussion of these issues, albeit from the true self perspective). I also recommend checking out the standard Pali canon anti-dogma dogma (you will see what I mean by that when you read them) in, for example, “The Root of All Things”, a sutta found at the beginning of the Middle Length Discourses (MN 1), and “The Supreme Net: What the Teaching Is Not”, found in the beginning of the Long Discourses (DN 1).

The Physical Models¶

On a completely different track we have the physical models, which tend to involve physical perfection or stylization. The old Theravada texts (for example, DN 30, MN 91) go to great lengths to list the thirty-two interesting physical qualities of the Buddha, such as having forty teeth and having arms so long that he could touch his knees without bending down. It is remarkable how bodily ideals change, as in our modern context that would make him look more to us like a dentally challenged Cro-Magnon than a spiritual superhero, but I digress.

Numerous pop culture sources make us associate interesting physical qualities or ideals with spirituality, particularly yoga magazines and martial arts movies. There is not much more to say about these models other than that they are amusing and completely inaccurate. We may imagine that awakening somehow involves impeccable physical health, or that awakening or insight practice may cure some illness or other adverse condition, but I wouldn’t bank on anything like this at all.

That said, my friends who regularly do practices like yoga and tai chi do tend to look good, and this only makes sense. However, this is not related to ultimate realizations except peripherally in that those practices involve mindfulness and if done well can lead to real insights. Does the reduction in cortisol levels that can happen through mature practice reduce some of our needless stress reactions to situations and improve our health in some way? Probably, though more data is needed. Is awakening on its own likely to give you forty teeth and freakishly long arms, or a yoga-butt for that matter? Obviously not.

The Biological Models¶

Speaking of cortisol, some variants of the physical models are more in the realm of physiological function models, or systems that involve some alteration in biochemical or neurological function that results from awakening. There are lots of these models, in fact way too many to list them all. Some are being shown by science to have some merit, whereas others are preposterous. Some of the ones I consider the funniest (and the most dangerous) are:

the belief that awakening involves people becoming “breatharians”, or people who can exist without eating or drinking and obtain all their nourishment just by breathing;
people who upon becoming awakened suddenly lose the ability to become sexually aroused or to orgasm (beware the guru who claims this one and asks you to sit on their lap); and
people who suddenly gain immortality and immunity from illness.

All these are ridiculous and easily dismissed.

On the other end of the spectrum, science is showing that there are real, demonstrable alterations in response and function that meditation practice can produce, and some of these are pretty cool. Blood pressure effects, cortisol level reductions, reductions in sympathetic resting tone, fMRI images and EEG findings that show alternative pathways of activation in response to external stimuli as well as internal practice: all panning out to be measureable phenomena. There will likely be many more of these as we gather more data and create more sophisticated measuring devices. There are unusual physiological alterations that can occur in very advanced practitioners, but I am going to glide past that topic, as its intricacies are not my forte or focus here.

Then there are the models that fall somewhere in-between science and fiction, and where things get slippery and most relevant for our practice. As we have seen in the emotional models section, ideals of spiritual awakening purport radical transformations in our emotional reactions to phenomena. However, many of those ideals also veer far into the realm of the biological, neuroanatomical, and physiological in their potential implications.

If awakened beings experience the physical sensations of hunger, is that desire? If awakened humans exhibit physical sexual arousal in response to various stimuli, is that lust? If awakened humans experience bursts of adrenaline in response to sudden danger that transforms muscular, cardiovascular, and brain function in the standard, predictable, mammalian ways, is that anger or hostility? If awakened humans are startled in response to a sudden jarring stimulus, is that fear? If an awakened human is sleep-deprived, circadian-rhythm-disrupted, sick, or poisoned, can they get grumpy, and is this irritation? If an awakened human is subjected to strong mind-altering substances and they exhibit what we might think of as suboptimal behavior, what does that say about their awakening? When some old monk with pudendal nerve damage (from extensive sitting), low testosterone, neuropathy from diabetes due to a rice-heavy diet with little exercise, and pudendal vascular disease finally can’t get an erection anymore, does that mean that all awakened men can’t get erections?

These are the sorts of fascinating questions where the interface between ancient ideals and modern conceptions gets interesting and often where reality testing of some of the less realistic ideals from ancient times breaks down. Said in more traditional terms, what is the difference between a kilesa or defilement and what is just the natural, unavoidable consequence of having been born human? To what degree can you transform human biology and to what degree is realization about transforming the perception of and relationship to human biology?

I would actually love it if someone with the practical, down-to-earth rigor of, say, B. F. Skinner, the well-known twentieth century behaviorist, or Alfred Kinsey, the great twentieth century biologist and sexologist, would do the study on those who claim awakening and just put them through their paces, subject them to various controlled conditions, dose them with various drugs, and measure their biological and behavioral responses, particularly comparing how their reported realization holds up both objectively and subjectively to various real-world conditions. The modern world’s range of meditation claims seriously needs to be subjected to that kind of scrutiny. That this hasn’t happened already hints that the relationship between science and meditation is still relatively infantile. When the experiments are finally done, which I assume they will be if we don’t blow up or roast the planet first, I make the following predictions:

The traditionalists and dogmatists will rationalize that actual awakened beings are not found today or that in our times they only exist with low levels of realization.
The scientists will be moderately surprised both by the humanity and the unusual responses that advanced meditators and awakened humans exhibit.
The meditators being studied will learn very interesting, novel things about themselves and what meditation has and hasn’t done to, in, or for them, with both overestimations and underestimations of the real-world effects of practice being corrected by better data.
The mainstream world will be more empowered to practice well, as ancient ideals that don’t hold up are demolished and ancient ideals that do hold up to reality testing are verified.
We all realize that awakened mammals are still mammals.

I am going to wax a bit personal in the biographical section that comes later and give you my summary of what awakening has and hasn’t done regarding my experience of the physiological transformation of this particular mammal, as this is what I can speak of the best. Obviously, we are now at the level of individual case study data rather than broad prospective population-based data, but it will have to do for our purposes here until we have something better. I will draw on the datapoints of some of my advanced meditator friends who have corroborated some of my observations, so we are at least to the level of an informal case series. As a scientist with an MD and an MSPH in Epidemiology, I am disappointed that this is the quality of data I have access to. Still, it is better than much of what has come before.

The Radiance Models¶

Related to the physical models are the radiance models, which involve imagining that awakened beings will have a remarkable presence, radiating love, charisma, wisdom, peace, or even perceptible light. A friend of mine used to joke about this by saying that people practicing Western vipassana at the Insight Meditation Society thought that an arahant would be someone like Dipa Ma (a talented practitioner of vipassana and shamatha who was known for her kindness, strong concentration abilities, and psychic powers, and who died an anagami by her own admission), but with light shining out of their ass. This is a bit of a humorous exaggeration, but it makes the point that these ideals are so ingrained in us from many traditions that it is hard not to imagine that enlightened beings must have something remarkable about them that you could feel or see.

Everyone knows that all saints have light coming out of their heads, as did Jesus. You have only to look at medieval paintings of saints and saviors depicted with a nimbus or halo to confirm this. The stories of the Buddha are full of descriptions of his marvelous presence. In fact, his very first interaction with a human after his awakening went something like this: the newly-awakened Buddha had gotten up after exploring the depths of his realization and abilities. He decided to go try to find his five companions who had been with him during his period of intense asceticism, and surveying the world with his psychic powers found they were at Benares.

He took off walking down the road between Bodh Gaya and Gaya, and the first person the Buddha talked to after his awakening who wasn’t a god or a giant talking snake was the monk Upaka. I quote the Buddha as he tells the tale, as rendered in Bhikkhu Ñanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi’s English translation of The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, sutta 26, as it is so priceless, containing such a wealth of information about the origin of these models and ideals.

[Upaka said], “[f]riend, your faculties are clear, the color of your skin is pure and bright. Under whom have you gone forth, friend? Who is your teacher? Whose Dhamma do you profess?”

I [the Buddha] replied to the Ajivaka Upaka in the stanzas:

“I am one who has transcended all, a knower of all,

Unsullied among all things, renouncing all,

By craving’s ceasing freed. Having known this all

For myself, to whom should I point as teacher?

I have no teacher, and one like me

Exists nowhere in all the world

With all its gods, because I have

No person for my counterpart.

I am the Accomplished One in the world

I am the Teacher Supreme.

I alone am a Fully Enlightened One

Whose fires are quenched and extinguished.

I go now to the city of Kasi

To set in motion the Wheel of Dhamma.

In a world that has become blind

I go to beat the drum of the Deathless.”

[Upaka replied], “by your claims, friend, you ought to be the Universal Victor.”

“The victors are those like me

Who have won to destruction of taints.

I have vanquished all evil states,

Therefore, Upaka, I am a victor.”

The passage is remarkable in that it sets out so many criteria and specifics about what awakening means to the Buddha and to Buddhism in such a short space. Further, what is interesting is the number of times the word “I” appears. In fact, “Buddha” means something like “awakened one”, or “I am awake”. Thus, we see that the Buddha had no trouble talking about what he had done and who he was, nor did he have trouble thinking the thought “I”. While it is entirely possible that these are not the actual words (or translated words) of the Buddha, it still tells us much about how the early Theravada tradition viewed the Buddha and what he had done.

We note his remarkable presence and skin, and so have the first of the Buddhist radiance models and physical models. We note that he says he is superior to the gods, which is sort of a God model in and of itself, except one better. He describes being free of all the taints and evil states, which is a complex mix of emotional and psychological models. He also mentions the drum of the deathless, and here we have hints of an immortality model or an extinction model, and while formally Buddhism would reject both of these associations, aspects of both show up often in the texts anyway. There is also a transcendence model, as he says he is unsullied by all things, and a specific knowledge model, as the Buddha says he is a knower of all. In short, he says he has accomplished something remarkable, and asserts that he is going to go tell others how to do the same thing he did, or is he?

In case anyone is wondering, I am a huge fan of the Buddha. I apologize if my parsing his purported and translated words through a hyper-analytic and reductionist postmodern filter comes across as disrespectful or in some other negative way. Might the Buddha’s choice of words, metaphors, and similes have worked perfectly in that context, inspiring practitioners to excellent practice without undue confusion? This is entirely possible. However, today, as his words have come down to us translated into this cultural context over 2,500 years later, the results are often delusional chaos.

I put textual selection and commentary here merely to demonstrate that we have lots of places in the Buddhist texts from which we can draw various conscious or subconscious models of awakening, not all of which are helpful. Still, the Buddha inspires the heck out of me, and you gotta appreciate his purported moxie! I recognize that systems of thought and practice that may not be helpful in our current cultural context might have been very skillful and appropriate in another cultural or temporal context, and bringing the East to the West has shown this in abundance.

The question of how the Buddha’s realization relates to what he was trying to teach others is a complex one. There are numerous passages where he says he is quite different from and superior to all other awakened beings, and draws a clear line between himself and other arahants as well. Thus, we must look carefully at what his claims about himself have to do with others, and I devote the whole next chapter to this complex issue. Suffice it to say, the problem comes when the ideals the Buddha discusses as applying to himself (however mythologized and posthumously augmented by creative authors) are applied, without careful investigation, to awakened beings of theoretically inferior degree. I will leave off discussing the question of the Tibetans who purport to produce full Tantric Buddhas (with their own set of criteria for what that means) in one lifetime, as that is beyond my pay grade.

Back to the issues of whether enlightened beings have a special presence. I have seen examples of both, though I suspect that in some cases their presence was largely that way before they started doing spiritual practice. Many people who have asked me questions about practice over the years have reluctantly but seriously asked me if there was something remarkable about my presence or how I was able to keep my realizations hidden at work. I am both sorry and happy to report that I have no problems in this regard at work and as far as I can tell have nothing whatsoever that is unusual about my presence that wasn’t there long before I got into all of this, other than the confidence and passion with which I speak on the dharma, which I almost never do at work. Wearing specially tailored light-blocking undergarments keeps the rest in check! Seriously, the physical models and radiance can be another trap that people fall into, both in their own practice and when evaluating the possible level of realization of others.

The Karma Models¶

Karma models involve the promise that somehow realization eliminates, exhausts, cancels out, or moderates the forces of causality that would cause bad things to happen to the realized being. Karma involves action and its consequences, and in its simplest form is essentially the statement that causes lead to corresponding effects in a lawful way. The subject is imponderable, as the forces and factors involved are so vast and complex that no mind can fully comprehend them. That said, many Buddhist and non-Buddhist models and ideals subtly or overtly present a vision of awakening that promises some sort of relief or freedom from worldly adversity.

However, if we look at the life of the Buddha who, by definition, is as awakened as you can get in Buddhism, lots of unpleasant events happened to him, at least according to the texts. He had chronic headaches and back pain, got illnesses, was attacked by bandits, and was the target of others’ assassination attempts. [24] His own order broke into warring factions, people harassed him, and on and on. Thus, even the Buddha, after his awakening, was not free from adverse experiences, and so it would seem naive to assume that we would be. [25]

However, the karma models raise an interesting question, that of the timing of the fulfillment of the promises of awakening and what this has to do with death. The Theravada claims that the moment of complete freedom from suffering is at the death of an arahant or Buddha, as it is only then that there is no more coming into further birth and there is the complete cessation of the senses which cause pain and discomfort.

However, the karma models can be used by a few, non-hyper-literal, non-hyper-dogmatic people with real wisdom in a way that is neither destructive, overly simplistic, nor reductionistic. By seeing each thought, state, and emotion as it is, there is an increased ability to watch these arise and vanish on their own, thus allowing for their causal karmic force not to wash through to the future without some moderation of intelligence and wisdom. In this way, past causes, habits, tendencies, and the like can be mitigated through clear seeing, and the actions we take based on these that create future causes can be done with more awareness, clarity, and a broader, more inclusive perspective. This is not the same thing as eliminating all “negative” karma, but it is practical, realistic, and verifiable, and thus represents the truth found in the karma models.

One of the most dangerous variants of the karma models are those saying that, past a certain level of realization, awakened beings are not creating karma at all while yet still alive. While these traditions typically use a very specialized and subtle definition of karma, in most people’s hands this gets subtly interpreted as their actions having no possible bad consequences due to their level of awakening, a concept fraught with peril, creating the possibility of rationalizing all sorts of harmful behavior. If you are working in a tradition that uses this sort of model, take great care with it and remember training in morality, as the laws of causality still apply regardless of whether we conceptualize causality as karma.

The Perpetual Bliss Models¶

Perpetual bliss models focus on enlightenment bringing about a state of continuous and uninterrupted happiness, peace, joy, or bliss. These are commonly found in Hinduism, though they also exist in full force in Buddhism, particularly certain neo-tantric schools, and other traditions as well, such as in some systems that misinterpret of Christianity’s “the peace that passeth all understanding”. Buddhism often describes nirvana (nibbana) as synonymous with the highest happiness and the end of suffering, and this end of suffering is the natural corollary in many people’s minds of the perpetual bliss models which, together with their corollaries, are so pervasive in the world of awakening as to be a central, nearly unassailable tenet of most people’s core beliefs. I am sorry to say, they need serious revision.

The first point relates to impermanence. Bliss, peace, happiness, as well as their counterparts of pain, chaos, and misery, are all transient phenomena, subject to conditions, arising and passing like the weather. As the Taoist saying generally attributed to Chuang Tzu declares, the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows march through our lives according to the laws of reality that have always been in place. This brings us to the great question of realization: does realization change things or does realization reveal how things always were? I advocate a modified version of the latter view, both for practice and for having sane models, but the dogma and those selling something often stray into the promises of a radically different and better existence. It is not that realization doesn’t produce beneficial changes, as it clearly does, but I care about practice, and those who do insight practices while dogmatically averse to suffering do more poorly than those whose models allow embracing what is going on now.

The standard Buddhist argument is that by removing the condition, namely ignorance or misperception, the suffering caused by this condition is also removed. The question then is how much suffering is caused by that specific condition and how much suffering is caused by just being alive. I assert that a significant portion of our suffering is caused by simply being alive. Changing something in the relationship to the ordinary facts of life and humanity does help in global ways.

The other side of the perpetual bliss models is the notion that, by awakening, we will enter into a permanent jhanic state, such as the fourth jhana or some sort of nibbanic jhana. These versions of the bliss models imply perfect, continuous concentration untouched by circumstance, and/or enhanced by an inborn wellspring of jhanic qualities. As noted above, all the concentration states are temporary, not related directly to realization, attained by the awakened and unawakened alike, and thus are a false promise if added to a model of awakening in which they become permanent states.

However, as so many people get a taste of jhana and are sure this must just get better and more continuous as they progress, they end up cultivating these states again and again and get nowhere in insight practice. Further, why would someone who was hanging onto a bliss model want to investigate suffering? They won’t, and so the chances are slim of them coming into real insight territory or handling the Dark Night well. Now, it is true that there is a relationship between the perspective on things that occurs in the first four jhanas and the four paths. For example, the panoramic perspective of both the fourth shamatha jhana and the panoramic perspective of arahantship share positive aspects, but they are not the same thing, and even mentioning these patterns and parallels is dangerous, as it can cause a lot of misguided effort and assessment of where people are on the path.

I think that this is a good place to introduce the Indian Buddhist concept of the three kayas, as it has some useful aspects that help make sense of these things.

The Three Kayas¶

Contrary to what some Tibetan Buddhists would tell you, arahants have a deep understanding of what is meant by their teaching of the three kayas or “bodies”. For me, the three kayas are very close in meaning and implication to the scopes of the three trainings.

Arahants understand the fullness of the implications of having been born and of there still being a body and mind (called the nirmanakaya or “manifestation body”), relating to training in morality. All teachings of dependent arising, interconnection, and interdependence fall into the realm of the nirmanakaya.

I realize that this presentation is likely to seem forced and unsatisfying to those with deep, formal Vajrayana training, given its fusion of concepts and terms across traditions that are a bit of a rough philosophical fit. However, I put it here to try to counter the tendency towards gross or subtle aversion in those practitioners—from whatever tradition—who wish to reject their ordinary body and life if they are in favor of the dream of being able to escape into more rarified realms. A good tantric practitioner can work with whatever ordinary sensations arise, whereas a deluded, aversive practitioner may seek to find ways out of this ordinary world without embracing it properly or at all. “A good Vajrayana practitioner will learn to see the ‘ordinary’ as nothing other than deeply sacred and extraordinary,” so said a very helpful Tibetan nun to me one day.

Arahants and those with similar levels of realization know intimately the fullness of the ordinary realities of the human condition: sickness (physical and mental), health, sorrow, joy, conflict, harmony, pleasure, pain, clarity, confusion, stupidity, and brilliance. These manifest according to the same natural laws that have always been in effect, contrary to popular belief. A body was born and it will get sick and die. The eight worldly winds of being happy or unhappy respectively in relation to praise and blame, fame and ill repute, pleasure and pain, and gain and loss still blow impersonally as always. The laws of biochemistry, physics, and physiology still hold. We still must pay taxes. From a cynic’s point of view, the nirmanakaya is the most disappointing aspect of awakening. Did you really imagine that somehow it would be otherwise? Don’t believe the hype! Another of the great Bill Hamilton one-liners was, “Suffering less, noticing it more.” The more we wake up, the more we notice exactly what it means to have been born.

The nirmanakaya points to what is meant by this passage pertaining to the arahant: “The disturbances resulting from the taint of being can no longer be found here, the disturbances related to the taint of attraction can no longer be found here, the disturbances related to the taint of aversion can no longer be found here, and yet there remain the disturbances inherent in these six sense doors that are dependent on a body and conditioned by life,” from sutta 121, “The Shorter Discourse on Voidness”, in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (MN 121). Notice that this says, “six sense doors”. Arahants still think, contrary to occasional myths about “stopping thought”, as noted before. While the content of thoughts is still inherently dual, the true nature of the way thoughts manifest is non-dual. Arahants know both aspects of thought directly, a bit like being able to see waves on the ocean and yet also that the whole thing is made of water and intimately connected. No wave would ever be fooled into thinking that one wave was watching, controlling, or isolated from another.

The nirmanakaya teachings point to the aspect of integrated manifestation to do with personality, habits, and issues of character. Don’t imagine that just by understanding the full ultimate truth of phenomena that these things will somehow lose their considerable causal inertia. To paraphrase Chinul, the great Korean Chan monk, just because the sun is shining brightly doesn’t mean that all the snow will instantly melt.

On a related theme, the nirmanakaya also relates to the facts of the physiological inertia and biological conditioning of the bodily aspects of emotional life. The mind of an arahant is extremely resilient, but the flesh of mammals such as humans works according to the same laws that were in place before. The spacious mental resilience of an arahant has some positive consequences for physical life, but this reliance does not completely transform it. Thus, physical sensations associated with hunger, pain, tiredness, sexual arousal, nervousness, fear, and all the rest are still intimate realities for the living, mammalian arahant when they arise, and are not inconsequential, though the points made above in the karma model about seeing things arise and vanish still apply. The nirmanakaya includes issues of biochemistry and neurochemistry, and all the issues of mental pathology that may go along with these.

Another aspect of the perpetual bliss models we just mentioned, and directly related to the nirmanakaya, are the “no pain” models, which generally state that fully awakened beings must not feel any pain at all, as how could there be no suffering while there was still pain? Or, they state that fully enlightened beings might feel pain but it would not be pain to them, or that there would be no possible mental or physiological reaction to that pain. I have had plenty of exposure to some very advanced practitioners and do I know any that feel no pain? No. Do I know any who would seem to be able to handle any amount of pain and not have any physiological stress reactions to that? No.

Is it true that meditative practices can reduce the amount of additional suffering in relation to the pain we experience? Yes, as plenty of even relatively novice practitioners with diseases like cancer have found this to be the case over the years; suffering can be reduced with deep insights. Is it true that as the field wakes up to the localized nature of perception and the proportion of the painful part of the field gets smaller and smaller, that this can really help put pain into perspective and make for optimal responses to it? Definitely.

Do I believe that this can be made limitless such that any amount of pain for any period would be totally blissful and cause no problems? Not at all. Thus, realism regarding what it means to have been born a mammal is called for, as well as hope that we can make things better by practicing well, but in a grounded way. I call to the stand the case of Channa, the arahant in the suttas (MN 144) who committed suicide as the pain at the end of his life was too much to bear, and, for those interested in reading up on the complexity and controversy of these things, try an internet search for Channa as well as Godhika and Vakkali. Further, the Buddha himself suffered from back pain and bad headaches as mentioned already, and his death from some abdominal malady due possibly to food poisoning (or maybe bowel ischemia?) was a very painful one. Nanavira Thera is another relatively recent example.

The nirmanakaya bears out the truth so well articulated by Lao Tzu when he talked about dark and light containing one another and difficulty and ease complementing one another. No level of awakening will allow us to pick just our favorite half of physical reality or humanity and eradicate the rest. This simply never happens and is not possible.

I think that everyone on the spiritual path should occasionally sit down with a piece of paper and list our favorite half of reality that we imagine or wish would be left if we got fully enlightened, and then list all the aspects of reality that we wish or believe would vanish forever. We should then list the things that we imagine would show up due to realization that are not here now. The differences between these lists often point directly to what blocks the development of wisdom from clear acceptance and understanding of reality.

Even arahants and Buddhas have a favorite half of reality as well as dreams about how things could be, so these dreams are not the problem. The difference is that highly realized beings understand directly that both the “good” and the “bad” aspects are of the nature of ultimate truth, including all thoughts about them, and this makes all the difference. These sensations flicker effortlessly and vanish, getting no more or less consideration than they are due. The point I am trying to make here is to include the sensations that make up your world in your practice, and not to retreat into idealized fantasies of what realization will be like, though notice such sensations when they occur.

Arahants also have a wondrous understanding of all of this that is unique to them and to Buddhas (though there may be hints of it at third path) called the sambhogakaya. They know that the full range of phenomenal reality and even the full range of the emotional life can be deeply appreciated for what it is. They see that the world of concepts, language, symbols, visions, magickal experiences, thoughts, and dreams is fundamentally the same as the world of materiality, that they both share the same essential nature from an experiential point of view. The first line of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God,” is a nice way to put it. For those who find this phrase too cryptic, I paraphrase it as: “From the beginning, concepts, words, dreams, visions, and the realm of thought have always been an aspect of ultimate reality.”

Further, in some strange way even the worst of the world has a wondrous richness of texture that can be deeply enjoyed, and a mysterious and sometimes awe-inspiring glory mixed into it. What we were looking for was permeating all the sensations without exception that had made up our world all along! What a staggering irony this is, and what a silent joy it is to discover this at last. This is what is meant by “the bliss of nirvana”. It is a subtler understanding than that of the nirmanakaya and in some largely mysterious way does not contradict it. When everything is just happening naturally, something about that feels great. When thoughts and unpleasant sensations are perceived naturally in their proper proportion, this is a real improvement. As the Tibetans often say, “Amazing! It all happens by itself!”

Beyond even this, arahants also understand in real time what is meant by the dharmakaya, that somehow none of this is them. The dharmakaya seems to pervade all of this simultaneously, not be all of this, and be utterly beyond all of this. It seems to be permanent and yet unfindable, empty and yet aware. The dharmakaya might be called the “simultaneous mind”, in that sensate phenomena and awareness are known to arise immediately as part of each other. [26] However, for many practitioners, describing the dharmakaya can lead to attempts to solidify some transcendent and stable super-space that can’t ever be found, creating a wild goose chase for those who grasp onto the sense that somehow the dharmakaya must be an eternally abiding thing or something other than what is going on right now. It can also lead those who wish to escape entirely to try to find a safe space that is totally outside this world into which to vanish.

The dharmakaya is often described using very paradoxical language, though an arahant would know directly what it is pointing to. This is what is sometimes being referred to by extremely confusing phrases such as “going beyond birth and death”, “samsara is nirvana”, “the arahant is traceless here and now”, “true self”, and “no-self”. Interestingly, the nirmanakaya also relates directly to both what is sometimes meant by “true self” and “no-self”. There is something beautiful and yet tragic in this—a “dark comedy” as a friend of mine put it.

To even say that the dharmakaya is a very subtle understanding makes no sense, as the understanding of dharmakaya arises more from what is absent (dualistic fixation and misperception) rather than a sense of the presence of something. On the other hand, the presence of everything bears witness to it, as it is intrinsic to all phenomena and not some separate thing. Should someone (and you know who you are, Tom) read this and think, “Ah, this deluded X-bastard is articulating the vile heresy of Atman Buddhism, implying some absolute true self, some truly permanent something,” know truly in the depths of your not-self that I am not, so be at ease.

All three realizations (nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya, and dharmakaya) are accessible to the arahant at any time by the mere inclination towards them, which is to say these perspectives arise dependent on causes in their own time. They are three complementary perspectives on the same thing. It is like being able to see the validity of the perspective of all three people in the classic Taoist painting called “The Vinegar Tasters”, with Confucius and his laws for living in the world relating to the nirmanakaya, Lao Tzu and his deep appreciation of life relating to the sambhogakaya, and the Buddha and his emphasis on nirvana and going beyond suffering, birth and death relating to the dharmakaya. Most people think of this painting as a Taoist slam on the other two traditions, but I think that the deeper meaning here is much more useful.

The teaching of the three ultimate dharmas of materiality, mentality, and nibbana that I articulated earlier is closely related to the Indian Buddhist concepts of the three kayas or aspects of the fully enlightened condition. The nirmanakaya relates to form, the sambhogakaya relates to the enjoyable, quiet, and spacious peace of the fully enlightened mind that unifies the mental and physical into the same field of experience, and the dharmakaya relates to nibbana.

Were only the nirmanakaya true, we might be tempted to say unitive experiences are the answer and that we are the whole field of experience. Were only the dharmakaya true, we might be tempted to say crazy things, such as that transcendent “experiences” are the answer, that we create and know the whole field of experience, that we do not exist, and that we are the deathless or God. None of these frameworks can clearly explain the experience of realization on their own.

Presenting the three kayas also allows me to continue to hammer relentlessly on the point about people wanting to find some spiritual reality other than this one. The huge temptation when walking the spiritual path is to try desperately to find a way to get the magical and wondrous ease of the sambhogakaya and the seemingly transcendent luminosity of the dharmakaya while secretly hoping that the down-to-earth, mundane, intimate, visceral, vulnerable, and often embarrassing nirmanakaya will just crawl away and die or at least radically reform itself. The nirmanakaya is often treated as though it were the bastard stepchild of the fully enlightened condition, but you can’t have one without the others. Intimacy with reality is bought at the price of attaining transcendence. Transcendence is bought at the price of attaining intimacy with reality. These inescapable facts should not be forgotten.

The all too common temptation of those who advertise and sell spirituality is to sing the praises of the sambhogakaya and dharmakaya while trying to gloss over the profound yet down-to-earth implications of the nirmanakaya. Buyer beware! If awakened beings didn’t feel the fullness of their humanity and the ordinary world, compassion for themselves and others would be completely impossible. From a Tibetan point of view, it is because awakened beings progressively lose their artificial defenses against this realm that they have no choice but to become bodhisattvas, bringing awakening to this material realm, which brings us nicely to our next model …

The Immortality Models¶

The immortality models are significantly more prevalent in Tibetan Buddhism than in the other strains, though they also appear in Pure Land Buddhism and elsewhere. While all strains of Buddhism on the one hand categorically deny immortality as the goal—based upon the standard tenets of Theravadin logic—most of then turn around and sell immortality like used car salesmen. So many Buddhists want to be up in the Heaven called Nirvana, as empty yet separate beings who don’t exist and yet live forever as bodhisattvas saving the world. That they can hold this profound set of contradictions in their fuzzy little brains with such uninquisitive ease is truly award-worthy.

While there are many excellent points in the bodhisattva vows, this is yet another case of bait-and-switch where the results will be a bit more down-to-earth than most people are bargaining for, and where people don’t bother to read the fine print they were told to read. However, many Buddhists who don’t understand emptiness viscerally for themselves become so brainwashed into the ideal of becoming amazing superheroes that they readily give up the notion that they could really understand anything in this lifetime in exchange for the dream that some zillion lifetimes down the road they may get to be spiritual superstars. However, as their mentality can be essentially like people who have bought into some weird cult, I don’t recommend trying to convince them otherwise, as it generally just pisses them off, as whole massive concrete spiritual identities can be created just by buying into that beautiful dream. Just do your practice, take care of your own understanding, awaken, and then see what you can do from there.

Now, as before, there is some weird and slippery truth to the immortality models on two fronts. First, from a technical point of view, what is traditionally called “the deathless”, ”nirvana”, “tao”, “void”, “Buddha nature”, etc., is often referred to as indestructible, timeless, etc. This is because it is referring to either: a) that non-experience of Fruition, which is like a gap in the space-time continuum, which is indestructible only because it can’t be experienced and thus falls outside the ordinary laws of causality, which is obviously a totally unsatisfying thing to build a sense of immortality on; or, b) some universal luminous aspect of utterly transient phenomena and thus not to anything specific or permanent in any conventional sense. This second option means that it is always true that sensations arise and vanish utterly, and always true that they contain within them their own transient awareness, which again is a totally unsatisfying foundation upon which to build a model of stability or immortality. Regardless of which unsatisfying one is implied, it is usually not immediately clear by context which meaning is being sold.

The flip side of this, that of the ordinary, transient world, is that the mechanism of causality rings on indefinitely. This is an interesting and practical, insight-oriented way to look at things. Further, the past is gone, the future hasn’t arisen, and the present is transient, so where can time truly be found in all of that, and where in that utter ephemerality can we find something stable enough to say it has truly died or could be destroyed?

From the perspective of time and cause and effect, things ripple out into the universe like drops of water cause ripples in a lake. This process, the world and us, has always been empty. If we are anything, it is a pattern of discontinuous rippling sensations arising from causes and effects and leading to causes and effects. Thus, “we” send ripples of whatever and however we are into the causal future. If we are awakened, that is one aspect of what ripples out into the patterns we call time, and these ripples go on without definable end. Teachings of rebirth are getting at this point in their somewhat problematic way.

Thus, we see that there is something to the immortality models, but they are not very helpful for doing insight practices except to produce in us an appreciation of causality (which is no small thing), and appreciating causality directly is extremely important in a moment-to-moment way. That said, I think that the immortality models are much more useful for training in morality, despite their obvious paradigmatic problems, as they can motivate people to behave just as do the basic Christian teachings of Heaven and Hell (which also exist in the Tibetan Buddhist “stages of the path” or Lamrim teachings, but which define Heaven and Hell not as places but as states of mind).

One great traditional analogy goes as follows: if you lit a candle, then lit another candle with that candle, and then blew out the first one, what is transmitted? This is causality without a permanent entity, resonance without continuity, an artificial but useful recognition of a pattern, and nothing more. Ask a physicist what information is and you hopefully will get an answer that gets at this basic point.

The Transcendence Models¶

Related to the immortality and bliss models, we have the transcendence models, which essentially promise that you will have the best of both worlds—you will get to be in the world while not of the world, be able to enjoy all pleasant things while being immune to pain and difficulty, and thus live in a protected state of partial, selective transcendence. A lot of people try to emulate such a state in their practice. When presented with suffering they either look away from it or try to make their attention so broad or vague that they don’t notice it or really allow it in, and when pleasant things arise they try to hang on to those experiences and increase or expand them. While this is a perfectly natural thing to do, it is the exact reverse of insight practice, and yet they may deeply feel that this is practicing for the transcendence they have been promised.

As stated earlier, the predictable and obvious truth is that transcendence is bought at the price of a very deep, direct intimacy with life, all of life, both “good” and “bad”. Similarly, this deep intimacy with life is bought at the price of transcendence, since the notion of a stable reference point that will be there to hold onto things will finally be gone. While everyone nearly automatically looks to the good side of both, few consider that realization brings a deep, direct experience of all that is painful, and the reluctant understanding of how hollow and fleeting pleasure is. We must be careful here, as I don’t advocate buying into either extreme. Our ordinary lives have all this already, so don’t look for something that is different from what is going on. Instead, examine your life as it is and see the three characteristics of it directly, instant by instant: this is the gateway to the resolution of the strange paradox that all this is pointing to.

The Extinction Models¶

On the flip side of the immortality models, and somewhat contrary to the transcendence models, we have the extinction models. These are also sold widely in some schools of Buddhism, particularly the Theravada, and essentially promise that insight practices will either have you never be reborn or will make you non-existent in some ordinary sense. The first basic flaw in these models is that they presume an entity to which these things can occur, which from an insight point of view is already a problem. Insight practices at their best presume emptiness as always having been the case, and so to posit that there is something that was reborn flies directly against their root premises. Thus, the notion that there is someone or something who either will not again be born or will somehow cease to exist is absurd. However, page after page, some strains of Buddhism promise that there will be no more coming into any state of being, no more rebirth, no more conventionally existing self, and that somehow this will get us off the wheel of suffering.

Here we get into as gray an area as it gets in spiritual language. Between the weird promises of the immortality models and the weird promises of the extinction models, we can really get into paradigmatic trouble. We are sure that one of these must somehow be right, or maybe both are, or perhaps neither is, or that some other combination we currently can’t conceive of must be the correct one. However, these models are based upon a fundamental flaw, the misperception of sensations and the conclusion based on this misperception that there was some isolatable, separate, permanent self, or “me” that all these dualistic concepts can apply to. There is not, nor has there ever been—though sensations occur anyway. It is a convenient, practical, working assumption, a convention, a way of speaking, but nothing more. Thus, these curious notions simply do not apply. Simply practicing and perceiving sensations clearly reveals the way out of these paradoxes, and no belief regarding them need be adopted to do this well.

The Love Models¶

On a completely different note, there are the love models. These are hard to relate to any previous category except perhaps the emotional models, but they essentially involve some combination of us loving everyone, feeling love all the time, becoming Love itself, being loved by everyone, or some combination of these. The first two are commonly found in various references, such as Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s famous quotation, “Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between these two my life flows.”

This is not a bad quotation as quotations go, because it highlights the apparent paradoxes of spiritual understanding. It is basically a restatement of the concepts of balancing the understanding of wisdom and method, emptiness and compassion, and I like it for this reason. However, lots of people think that awakened beings will be radiating love all the time, walking around saying loving things, feeling profound love for all beings at all times, and the like. Unfortunately, things couldn’t be further from the truth. While it does get sometimes easier to take the broader world of beings into consideration once the centerpoint is seen through, this is very different from walking around in a state of continuous love.

Plenty of people also imagine that if they get enlightened then all their romantic problems will be solved, that their love life will be perfect, that they will live in some enlightened state of marital or partnership bliss, since they will have it all together and so be able to handle any of the problems that being in a relationship can bring. Ask any honest spouse about their “enlightened” partner and see what they say. As far as I know, none would advocate for the veracity of this model, unfortunately. Can realization that has sunk deep and had time to mature help with some aspects of relationships? Definitely. Can plenty of other things also help, like marital therapy, consciously working to acquire mature coping mechanisms, listening well, basic emotional intelligence, cognitive behavioral therapy, and the like? Definitely. Is realization on its own a substitute for all those other things? I don’t think so.

More sinister, intractable, rarely articulated, and yet compelling is the notion that we will get enlightened and then people will not only like us, they will love us. Wow, does this dream not withstand reality testing! Take the history of any of the perennial favorite spiritual superheroes, such as the Buddha, Jesus Christ, St. John of the Cross, Rumi, etc., and notice the reactions most people had to them. The idea that somehow you will be embraced, accepted, appreciated, respected, adored, cared for, or even liked by anyone just because of your realization is, tragically, just another beautiful, delusional dream. In short, think twice before quitting your day job or walking down the street in your guru outfit proclaiming your realization for all to love.

Okay, you might say, the unawakened might not necessarily like us, but of course, when we are awakened, we will at least get along with other awakened beings, yes? Wow, wouldn’t that be nice. I know someone whose primary reason for trying to get awakened revolved around the notion that it would get him the perfect loving relationship with his awakened partner, which, not surprisingly, didn’t work out. Unfortunately, it seems just as likely that awakened beings will get into arguments with each other as with other people, particularly around topics that are often dear to their hearts, such as awakening. Ah, the strange ironies of life.

As no two awakened beings look the same, believe the same things, have the same way of describing their realization, or use terms the same way, communication difficulties, including arguments and not getting along, are common enough. Were that it were otherwise, that awakened beings would at least respect each other, but there are no guarantees in this business, as we are highly tribal mammals with strong territory-defense instincts, which often kick in to defend the territory-less territory of awakening. In fact, awakened beings in the wild often display dominating alpha traits that seem the exact antithesis of what the love models promise.

Now, it is true that you can borrow a lot of pre-programmed respect from some people just by getting ordained, which, viewed another way, means that ordination might get you the respect that your realization should provide, in some idealized universe. However, this will be to a strangely select audience, and the games you must participate in to be a part of that group are significant. [27] You can also get a lot of respect by getting on some senior teacher list, but there are subtle forces that then come to bear that may tempt you into denying a lot of your own humanity when in public, thus leading to the shadow sides I mentioned previously. These points also hint at the social models that will follow in a bit.

The Equanimity Models¶

Some ideals of awakening involve an awakened being existing in a perpetual state of perfect equanimity, completely emotionally unaffected by pain, pleasure, gain, loss, praise, blame, sickness, aging, and death, whether one’s own or that of others. Often, these models seem more like indifference or dissociation models than true equanimity models, since they have agendas for the specific mental state that awakened beings would perpetually manifest, whereas equanimity at its best is a meta-state that allows other states equally without push or pull. In contrast, many of the indifference ideals about awakening seem more like someone who couldn’t care less. Awakening is not bound up in not caring.

Stories such as the one about a monk smiling contentedly while walking through a battleground littered with freshly slaughtered warriors comes to mind. [28] While this image is not an impossible or necessarily bad scenario, it conveys a sense of otherworldly detachment that also suggests some unhuman heartlessness, some oddly homogenized, sanitized set of possible reactions or total lack of any possible reaction save one of peace and tranquility. These are some dangerous ideals that can cause practitioners to imitate such uncaring or highly detached ways of being, causing disengagement from life and insensitivity regarding this world and those in it. I don’t recommend following the dreams these models promote for these obvious reasons.

The No-Preference Models¶

Related to the equanimity/indifference models are the no-preferences models. These ideals of awakening generally seem to imagine that you could feed an awakened being excrement, gruel, Chicken McNuggets, or top-shelf caviar, and their reaction would be an identical smile or blank expression, as if they would have no tastes, aesthetics, or preferences of any kind. They could have their legs chopped off or left on: no difference. They could wear reeking rags or Armani suits: it is all one to them. You could scream obscenities at them or take them to hear Beethoven: it is all just sounds to them. You could paint their grandmother blue and tie her to a rabid wildebeest: it is just passing empty form to them.

These sorts of models have very similar dangers to the equanimity and indifference models, encouraging practitioners to tolerate circumstances that might better have been changed, to remain silent in the face of abuse or injustice, and to try to deny their own actual tastes and preferences, typically producing the sorts of bitter shadow sides and dry, heartless, uptight practitioners that you would expect. These models are the opposite of the love models, since in the love models, there is a great sense of appreciation for beings, whereas in these two models there is very much the opposite sort of reaction.

The Special Models¶

In the same basic vein as the love models, we have the special models, which specify the degree of specialness that we will have at various stages of awakening or that promise specialness in general terms, or before even having gained actual realization, just by dint of association with specific spiritual figures or practices. It is nearly impossible for most people to untangle some vague and even specific notion of specialness from the results of clear perception of ordinary sensations, particularly as the various meditative traditions all sell specialness even when they try not to, as even that “non-specialness” and “ordinary mind” we find in traditions such as Zen still generally have a glossy sheen of spiritual specialness to them. Because of this sense that awakening will involve specialness, all sorts of complex problems arise.

The first problem that I care the most about, being a practice-oriented pragmatist, is that the sense of specialness that we imagine we have or will attain through practice will subtly or overtly separate us from our actual experience in this moment. Many moments don’t feel all that special. We are doing the dishes, driving to work, dealing with some angry customer or disturbed family member, washing the funk off our toes, or whatever. We are sitting on a cushion and our back hurts, our knees hurt, our mind seems a mess, and our practice feels disappointingly ordinary.

If we have some ideal that awakening is about specialness, then we may find ourselves subtly or overtly inclining to some imagined special future, to images of special awakened beings, to dreams of how wonderfully special we will be when we finally get awakened, and yet, paradoxically, those ideals in that moment block the very process we feel will make our lives, selves, and practice so special, namely clear investigation of this ordinary reality. This is a serious and pervasive practice problem and needs diligent attention whenever it arises. This specialness becomes a spiritually rationalized form of aversion to our current earthly reality coupled with attraction to some imagined reality augmented by the basic delusion that somehow this moment isn’t it: a triple-whammy of hindrances. Thanks, Special!

Next, if we imagine that specialness will necessarily pervade the lives of those who are awakened, we may seek traditions, scenes, spiritual friends, and teachers that seem the most special to us based on public opinion and/or our own ideals of what special is. Zen is so cryptically, aesthetically special. The Theravada is so starkly, practically special. The Tibetan traditions are so colorfully, magically special. Shingon is so exotically, mysteriously special. We may be attracted to fringe traditions that seem even more special than mainstream traditions just because they seem to be even more uber esoterically extra-special, yet down those ultra-special rabbit holes we may find forms of special we might best avoid. This specialness can lead to both subtle and overt drawing away from the ordinary facts of our life, our ordinary minds, and our immediate experience, which is, paradoxically, already special and unique beyond belief.

Dazzling is the specialness that the various meditation traditions can construct that undermines a recognition of the extraordinary in the “ordinary”. This dazzling aspect can at once draw people into situations where they find real wisdom and draw them into arrogance, fascination, humorlessness, narcissism, spiritual materialism, sectarianism, and bewilderment just as often. Specialness and intoxicating charismatic displays are double-edged swords. In the West, we tend towards high degrees of individualism and narcissism. When we combine these cultural downsides with these dazzling traditions that are relatively prone to glamorous exaggeration in their myths and advertising strategies, we have a recipe for trouble.

Consider the ethical motivation to save all beings everywhere from suffering: this is at once a beautiful aspiration and intention, a high standard that should reasonably keep us extremely humble, and yet potentially a set-up for staggeringly grandiose notions in those who misunderstand the explanations about such an aspiration and what that aspiration is intended to effect in our minds. If we identify with something like the bodhisattva vow despite warnings in the tradition to reduce and eliminate identification through skillful, balanced practice, and by ignorance solidify and reify this otherwise skillful aspiration and think, “My self-existent ‘I’ will personally save all self-existent beings everywhere,” then we are basically asking for trouble resulting from a lack of study of the subtleties of those ideals.

Were we to sum the total number of beings who have awakened through the efforts of the Buddha and all of his followers and divide it by the total number of beings of all types who have lived since the Buddha awakened, the number would be so close to zero as to make the idea in practice laughable, however noble the ideal. Were you to ask most senior meditation teachers how many of their students have awakened and mastered their practices to the degree that the teachers have, most honest ones would report small numbers, or else the population of great, awakened teachers would be very large by this point, and it is not.

I realize that the advertising strategies, myths, ideals, and ways of presenting all these ancient practices and traditions arose in cultural contexts, times, and places where perhaps they were skillful and augmented personal and cultural paradigms in ways that made for inspired yet humble practitioners who could practice well and achieve extraordinary results. Maybe medieval yak-farming peasants needed a bit of grandiosity to get them through snow-swept nights in freezing caves. Maybe they helped those sitting for long hours alone in sweltering jungles endure malaria, dengue fever, dysentery, and ravenous insects. We must respect the extraordinary trials and tribulations that great practitioners went through who mastered and transmitted these teachings in much more difficult times and settings.

I can easily wax very grateful and pragmatic, thinking that any advertising or coping strategy that delivered the wisdom to this time and place was worth it. But, on further investigation of the workings of religious or spiritual grandiosity in the history of the various meditative sects over the millennia, it might be worth deeply investigating how we frame high ideals, whether those aspirations are reinforcing grandiosity and spiritual narcissism or true humility and excellent practice, and whether those aspirations have been and continue to be the skillful approach that meets the needs of our time and context moving forward in these very troubled days.

There are misunderstandings that are perpetuated within all the schools of Buddhism and all fields of human endeavor based on ignorance, attachment, and aversion. My own take on many of those grandiose notions and advertising strategies, created by beings with mixed noble and ordinary mammalian motivations, is that they often do not work well in our time and place, are often not received or practiced well, and do not often skillfully counterbalance unskillful personal and cultural factors. Instead, I believe that many of those advertising strategies, ideals, and myths, all of which emphasize specialness of tradition, teacher, and methods, can cause serious imbalances, sectarian arrogance, and often exacerbate our already pronounced tendency to take ourselves way too seriously and be way too into ourselves, often to the detriment of our own practice and those around us. Obviously, I am not free of this either, and here we have evidence that even one who is trying with everything they have to break free of this conditioning can easily fail.

Luckily, we have some valuable terms and technologies that come out of modern psychology that may shine light and relative wisdom on what may be serious shadow sides of the meditative traditions, the three patterns that most readily come to mind: narcissism, narcissistic supply, and narcissistic rage. Narcissism, simply defined, is being pathologically self-obsessed, sometimes posited to occur because of not having physical and emotional needs adequately met in early childhood. Modern psychology contains a significant body of very useful and applicable theory about narcissism, much of which applies with scary precision to certain institutional aspects of the various meditative traditions. Any internet search will provide plenty of information on narcissism, and it is no accident that what is likely the most narcissistic age in human history is starting to realize that it needs much more information about narcissism.

Narcissistic supply refers to the various pathological interpersonal supports to a narcissist’s grandiosity and exaggerated self-importance. Many meditative traditions, sects, and more broadly many human organizations and institutions, from family units to large corporations, build communities around narcissists and reinforcing narcissistic supply. Narcissistic individuals and communities require nearly continuous doses of narcissistic supply as part of their pathology, with withdrawal setting in almost immediately if that supply is cut off or withdrawn. Thus, when someone becomes savvy to the dynamic and withdraws from participating as a narcissistic supply, he or she will often be scapegoated and demonized.

Narcissistic rage is the self-rationalizing, unbridled, and intentionally hurtful reaction that narcissists have when they perceive what is termed narcissistic injury, or, more specifically, when their sense of themselves as being special is in any way threatened or called into question, or when their ability to get their own way is blocked, or when those around them fail to meet their lofty standards for how they should treat the narcissist, which generally means praising them and deferring to their entitled and often impulsive demands. In other words, narcissistic rage is the likely result of perceived interruptions or threats to narcissistic supply. Narcissistic rage may arise both in individuals and collectively in narcissistic communities. Did someone with a larger-than-life personality and unusually high standards just metaphorically blow up your spiritual community and alienate one or more consistent and hard-working community members in their unusually large, compelling, and turbulent wake? Is your tradition waging a grand magickal war on some other tradition? Is your tradition sure it is the very best, most holy, most perfect and advanced tradition ever? Consider that these dynamics may contain narcissistic elements.

If you find yourself dealing with unusual amounts of angry reactions that seem intentionally designed to wound and exacerbate a situation rather than rationally resolve or calm it, all justified with the most elaborate and lofty spiritual notions, seriously consider that you might be dealing with a narcissistic person and/or community and read up on how to deal with them. It often takes two to tango, so you should carefully examine your own role in the dynamic, but narcissists will happily put all the blame on you and bat away any notions of responsibility with the fluid dexterity of an aikido master and a suppleness regarding concepts and the truth that may amaze you. Seeing the other side of an issue and taking others’ needs into account is not the narcissist’s forte, to put it gently, except to the degree that it feeds into their own grandiose sense of themselves.

Much of the best advice on how to deal with narcissistic individuals and communities boils down to three points: 1) establish and maintain very strong, consistent boundaries; 2) keep to the polite, respectful, and skillful end of the moral high ground; and, 3) do your best to minimize or eliminate dealings with the person or group without pathologizing them to others if you have sincerely owned your own stuff and found no workable or healthy solution. Space and distance help greatly. In short, and said in relatively vernacular and non-professional terms, don’t let their crazy become your bad day or bad karma. I have read some articles and pieces of advice that involve doing the opposite, such as shouting down a narcissist and mirroring back to them their own toxic behavior when they act out, but I consider this karmically terrible and unacceptable advice, and believe that the other methods are much more ethically sound and skillful spiritually, emotionally, and energetically.

Curiously, narcissists will generally opt for negative attention over no attention, so will try repeatedly to hook you into dramatic and entangled interactions. Very little is likely to be gained and potentially much will be lost by rejoining the narcissist’s games. Narcissists habitually, if unconsciously, craft and thrive on situations in which they will win, or at least you will lose, but most importantly the game and engagement in any form will continue. However, narcissists are often adept at providing something compelling about these dramatic situations, however low-yield, so it can take a high degree of self-control, psychological insight, and restraint to avoid playing into and exacerbating the drama.

There are other personality disorders that can predispose people to unusual degrees of rage out of apparent proportion to what is going on, such as borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder (this last one previously termed sociopath and psychopath). Your ability to deal with all these personality disorders will benefit greatly if you reading up on the reasons that individuals so diagnosed fly into rages, which vary a bit by the disorder. Luckily, these days there is much useful information on these topics readily available on the web, as we realize that these personality disorders cause a large portion of the drama and chaos in the world.

Given the relatively high percentage of people in the population in general and in spiritual communities who have these “Cluster B” personality disorders and traits, learning about how to deal skillfully and compassionately with these people is time well-spent. There are many good books coming out on narcissistic personality disorder, and one I recommend is Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited (tenth edition, 2015), by Sam Vaknin, a self-diagnosed narcissist. The book, while long, makes for compelling and highly informative reading and treats the subject with rare comprehensiveness and depth. It is a book produced by someone who not only knows narcissism firsthand, but whose grandiosity was turned into a useful service in the form of writing perhaps one of the very best books on narcissism.

This apparent paradox illustrates an important point: narcissists often have multiple unusually positive traits and well-developed talents despite their pernicious tendency to cause destruction in human relationships. When reading Vaknin’s amazing book, even the first few pages will likely remind you of many situations you have found yourself in, particularly if you are a narcissist or have codependent tendencies and tend to get wrapped up with narcissists by being their narcissistic supply. Reading about narcissism in general explains a vast range of human phenomena that otherwise would seem to defy explanation, including much of world history, the people that end up running countries, the news, and much of the trouble found in this world at all levels, including the spiritual scandal sheets that never seem to lack juicy material.

In that vein, it is entirely possible that you, the reader, have significant narcissistic tendencies, or have another significant personality disorder. We all have aspects of one or more of the personality disorders, a touch of narcissism here, a bit of the histrionic there, but for some people these are more than mere tendencies and instead pervade them to the core. [29] If this is you, consider that insight into these conditions can improve your life substantially and allow you to get some of your needs met in more skillful ways as well as allow you to seek the help you need to address these challenges.

Further, it is also possible that some of your spiritual friends and mentors will also have these personality disorders. None of the personality disorders necessarily prevent mastery of either concentration states or bare insight. This, I recognize, is a strong statement with vast implications, but it’s true. Because of this, we find a reasonable number of spiritual teachers who also have major personality disorders or traits, such as narcissism, borderline, and antisocial personality disorders. It is therefore not surprising that some of the most compelling, dazzling, and charismatic spiritual teachers fall into this category, as, whatever else you think of people with personality disorders, they are typically very interesting, often entertaining, and sometimes extremely attractive. It has been observed that people without the Cluster B personality disorders do not seem to sizzle in the way that those with them sometimes may. In just that way, many good meditation teachers without those disorders have a hard time creating as much spiritual buzz, specialness, exclusiveness, and grandness as teachers with more Cluster B traits.

Also, lofty and idealizing spiritual teachings and practices, being very “special”, may be more prone to attracting narcissists, who are then encouraged to master those practices over more “mundane” pursuits, which can yield practitioners who thereby destroy any chances of realizing the profound teaching: “Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water, after enlightenment chop wood and carry water.” Any practitioner who sees him or herself as above service in the form of cleaning or grunt work (karma yoga) has missed an important part of training in morality. While narcissists privilege themselves and their agendas over others, the training in morality will remain shallow. [30]

Often tending towards perfectionism, some narcissists will do the work it takes to perfect their meditation craft. Just because you are a narcissist doesn’t necessarily mean you are lazy. Many high-functioning narcissists are found at the top of their fields. The same is true in the world of meditation. However, evidence shows that awakened narcissists are often still straightforwardly narcissistic, much to many an idealist’s chagrin. Numerous contemporary examples evidence this disconcerting fact. As contemporary psychology points out, the personality disorders tend to be relatively hardwired and, despite Buddhism’s frequent claims to free the mind of defilements, the personality disorders are proving to be hard nuts to crack, as it were.

Met some obvious narcissist who claims to have eliminated their narcissism by their amazing practice and in record time? Don’t believe the hype. Clearly, more good research is needed on the relationship between the traditions, their adherents, the results of practice, and the personality disorders.

The more you read about narcissism, the more it can seem that basically all the world’s spiritual traditions were highly decorated with flourishes of grandiosity by narcissists. This grandiosity seems to have had a sticking power that even non-narcissists have a hard time purging once it has gotten in. In fact, this book clearly contains numerous grandiose elements, as I am sure you have noticed, and I in no way claim to be free of some grandiose and flamboyant tendencies. However, if you look more closely, hopefully you will see that I have done my flawed best to try to strip out the grandiose false advertising and to ground claims and the promotion of spiritual practice in terms, concepts, effective practice, and results that have been reproduced today and hold up to down-to-earth reality testing by actual mortals, results that you can realistically achieve also by simply following time-tested instructions.

Finally, if we navigate the intricate play of the various pathological manifestations of specialness in our chosen tradition, investigate our own flawed, ordinary human life as it actually is, and successfully attain wisdom, it is very, very easy to transfer that specialness onto ourselves. Even awakened beings who aren’t formally diagnosable as having one of these personality disorders can, through long conditioning by the elaborately enumerated and relentlessly advertised theories on the specialness of those who are realized, fall squarely into the traps that the misunderstood ideals of the tradition have laid for them.

So, is it true that there is something special about awakened beings? Well, yes, which obviously doesn’t help the problem of narcissism relating to realization. However, this specialness is not only hard to explain, it is typically nothing like the specific marks of specialness that the traditions advertise, as it is about something in relationship to sensate phenomena much more than it is about anything else. This is extremely confusing even to some awakened beings, and it can take years or decades to sort out the implications of clear perception of the bare truth of sensate experience and what is special about it and what is just hype, projection, scripting, and mimicry. Remember that it is very ordinary mammals that get awakened, and keep that mammalian nature firmly in mind when the concept of “special” rears its hydra-like head. Often, the least flashy, least grandiose, and most down-to-earth traditions and techniques offer the highest level of empowering support for good practice that keeps it and you real and reduces suffering.

The Social Models¶

In the same vein as the love models and the special models are the social models. These tend to involve all sorts of social implications or issues around awakening. For instance, we may imagine that enlightenment will automatically have certain desirable social implications, such as being accepted in a specific social role, like that of a teacher, guide, mentor, spiritual friend, guru, leader, avatar, etc. This usually involves some poorly defined group of people accepting us. While spiritual attainments and unrelated qualities can sometimes inspire people to view us in these ways, there are absolutely no guarantees.

As I have pointed out before, plenty of people with wisdom have been ridiculed, ostracized, persecuted, attacked, jailed, tortured, and murdered when they spoke from that place. In short, any social repercussions of an individual’s realization (assuming we are correct in claiming or believing it) will be at the mercy of ordinary causal reality, just as with everything else, and ordinary causal reality can really suck sometimes. Further, most people don’t really have any clue what awakening is about, don’t think that awakening really exists today, may not have awakening as part of their view of what is possible or even desirable, or may even find the notion that you think you are enlightened to be a threat to their religious beliefs or an indication of your grandiosity, arrogance, delusion, or psychosis, and they might just be partially correct. Having lived with these issues for over a decade, I can tell you that these reactions are as likely to be found in the social circles of Buddhism as they are in the social circles of any other meditative or non-meditative religious or non-religious tradition.

Other social models involve enlightenment having something to do with other people’s opinions regarding whether we are awakened, meaning that enlightenment is purely a social convention or collective designation and has nothing to do with reality or an individual’s perception of it. In this model, just as we may elect a president (or at least believe we are casting votes for one), so it is with enlightenment. This is common in many Western Buddhist circles, including some major retreat centers, in which they all bow to the senior teacher list and yet hold the paradigm that no one really gets enlightened. While this is all basically the neurosis and confusion of spiritual children, there are some real, practical truths hidden in this model.

Our direct perception of reality will depend on our practice and insights, so any attempts at directly promoting similar insights in others will be greatly helped or hindered by what people think of us, whether we are given some title, whether a lineage authorizes us to serve as a teacher in that lineage, and whether the concepts and language we use to describe and promote our realization fit in with the cultural expectations and norms of our social circles. Remember the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz who had a brain made of straw but felt so much better about his intellect when he was given a diploma? The social models often predict similar effects on the spiritual path. Further, there are those who falsely think they are enlightened because someone else thinks they are, and there are many people on senior teacher lists who probably shouldn’t be there.

One way or another, it is worth examining our deepest beliefs regarding the social implications we imagine will occur when we get enlightened or more enlightened. These can have a big impact on our practice, our motivation to practice, and what kinds of successes and failures we have in spreading insights around once we have insights ourselves. Unfortunately, most of our beliefs are likely to be somewhat unrealistic, springing from the understandable human grasping for recognition, role, and social status. The serotonergic buzz of status feels very nice. Again, the further we find our dreams are from our current reality, the more we need to look at what is happening right now, with those dreams and needs being one small part of the transient, causal sensations that are arising and vanishing.

Stated in practical terms and by way of example, you could be a medical graduate who had trained well in some medical school in another country, completed a good residency there, be perfectly qualified to practice from the point of view of knowledge, experience, and talent, and yet not be allowed to practice in the United States until you had jumped through all the administrative and educational hoops. The same problem can arise when people go outside of a tradition or partially outside it and yet do very good insight work. They have the knowledge but not the social designation. That said, it also gives the freedom to speak out without worrying about those channels liking what you say, and, as you are probably noticing, there is much about the standard channels to speak out about.

I myself exist in a gray area like this, as do many contemporary teachers and practitioners. I have accomplished much using the techniques of the Theravada, a tradition that explicitly says that only monks can know what I know and sometimes only recognizes monks as lineage holders. This is a cultural and social problem, and highlights the truth embodied in the social models. I suspect there will be a lot more of this as the dharma continues to adapt to our times and places and more people are successful. We need to come up with solutions to this problem that neither artificially elevate people nor artificially prevent them from sharing what they do know that is of benefit to others. Also, if you find yourself in a similar situation, I strongly recommend that you reach out and cultivate a peer group and, if possible, good mentors, so that you all help keep one another on the up-and-up and can address problems when they arise in a way that draws on the wisdom of that community rather than on the limited perspective of those going it alone. Those who go it alone, even very wise beings, often run into various forms of trouble that even a small community providing good social support might have mitigated or prevented.

The Ultimate Reality versus Unreality Models¶

Some traditions strongly emphasize that there are aspects of reality that have some ultimate status, and you will immediately notice that I am clearly influenced by those traditions. By “ultimate”, the models generally mean something along the lines of “irreducible”, “non-negotiable”, “foundational”, “primary”, or “fundamentally true”. From a Theravada point of view, this is generally broken down into three ultimate dharmas, specifically physical phenomena, mental phenomena, and nibbana. This is problematic, as it seems to imply that these are stable aspects. This view might be reinforced by texts such as the Abhidhamma, which basically defines itself as a manual of ultimate or irreducible aspects of phenomenal reality, particularly the sections that list mind-moments that might occur in various sequences.

There are pros and cons to this sort of presentation. Advocating that people ground their attention solidly in physical and mental sensations and realizing what is meant by nibbana is clearly a very good idea, leading in practice to some excellent, useful effects. That said, it would be easy to read this and similar bits of Theravada theory as reifying those aspects of experience as existing in some stable or absolute way, and, in fact, the Mahayana and Vajrayana often read the Theravada texts exactly this way. Were we to investigate both the digital (particle model) and analog (wave model) aspects of our sensate reality clearly enough, as advocated by techniques such as vipassana, we would see through this possible interpretation of things existing as stable particles. However, it remains a persistent source of criticism of the Theravada by the other traditions. It is interesting to note that the Buddhist tradition that is most prone to being billed as a renunciate tradition bent on dispassion and escape from the world still manages to balance this with a foundation strongly grounded in this sensate reality.

Some of the traditions will instead advocate for a conceptual framework that views reality as “dreamlike”, “unreal”, and use similar terms to describe what they are pointing to, concepts that might be skillfully used but are easily misinterpreted or misapplied. Such terms work very well for some practitioners, helping to unstick them from adhering to views about stable realities and to loosen unskillful aspects of attachment. It is a very different meaning system with strong implications for practice that will vary depending on the predilections of the practitioner.

Those who are naturally of a greedy, pleasure-seeking disposition may benefit from having their sense that there is anything to cling to shaken by pointing out such qualities to them and advocating that they practice through such a filter (i.e. that what seems “real” might not be as it seems). On the other hand, those who are more aversive and more prone to dissociation or symptoms of derealization may find that such teachings push them too far from a clear investigation of what is going on here and now and into more delusional modes that are detached from what is actually going on. It is interesting to notice that traditions that are billed as strongly advocating for a bodhisattva ideal, in which one works compassionately for the salvation of all beings, still balances this with the notion that none of these beings are real in any ultimate sense.

Related to this discussion are academic and philosophical questions that might be categorized as the “essentialist” versus “constructionist” debates. You also occasionally see these discussions among accomplished practitioners, but it is much less common for them to take it very seriously. Essentialism states that these practices are designed to reveal something about reality that is universally true, always findable in all times, places, cultures, and humans, something intrinsic to the nature of experience. Constructionists state that these traditions and practices instead create a model of an improved, revised, idealized reality, and then go on to rewire and remodel reality at its core to try to make it conform to the ideal. Weighty tomes have been written about these topics, but I will weigh in without lengthy elaboration: wisdom training is essentialist, and morality and concentration trainings are constructionist. Said another way, anything on the spiritual path that is truly essentialist is the domain of wisdom trainings, and anything that is truly constructionist is the domain of the other two trainings.

Mature traditions contain skillful counterbalancing emphases to help reduce the tendency to give in to the shadow sides and blind spots of their various doctrines and practices. One of the primary ways they counterbalance their own conceptions of the highest abstract ideals of practice is to incorporate seemingly contradictory teachings about the foundations of the ordinary world. Still, in terms of meaning, the traditions are clearly very different in some key ways, as they continue to point out again and again. Practitioners will generally resonate with one way or the other of framing practice and experience, though this can and often does change with time, and so it is good that options are offered, as those meanings that resonate with us drive motivation to practice. Thus, we come to the meaning models.

The Meaning Models¶

Spiritual practice is clearly not just about sensate clarity, but also contains explicit implications for what might generally be called “meaning”. Meaning is obviously one of the keys to how our lives will go, driving our interpretations and even sensate experiences of essentially everything. Those interpretations clearly are profoundly causal. Remember how I was railing against exclusive emphasis on “content” earlier in the less mature sections of this book? This is an attempt at a more mature version of that same set of points. Remember how I said that content was only half of the equation and the other half was sensate clarity? That first half, content, is still half of the point, and as such is extremely important. Clearly, the other half, that of basic sensate clarity and the insight that comes from that, is also extremely important.

Putting a section on meaning in the grand sense in a section on awakening is dangerous on the one hand and hopefully creates an appropriate contrast of axes of development on the other. Awakening as having sensate clarity about the three characteristics is one axis of development. Skillful development of a set of meanings that helps us skillfully navigate the fact of having been born into this life is another axis of development. Curiously, the first axis, that of awakening, has a natural endpoint. The second one, that of meaning, is endless.

We could have a sense that awakening in the strict insight sense is meaningful, and here we begin to see some overlap. However, beyond that, the two are strangely unrelated. This is often disconcerting for practitioners, even very advanced ones, as there is often some residual part of us that somehow believes that mastering sensate clarity will perfectly inform meaning. When this fails to occur, it can cause a significant amount of angst, even in awakened beings.

Each tradition generally claims to have found the best, most optimal meaning or set of meanings for the big question of the meaning of life. However, as the existentialists will be quick to point out, meaning is arbitrary. They are clearly right, at least within the framework of existentialism, as the large number of seemingly contradictory meaning structures offered by spiritual traditions and philosophies readily demonstrates. “It is all Illusion!”, “It is all pure love!”, “It is all emptiness!”, “It is all the tao!”, “It is all God!”: each of these clearly has a totally different feel, and a person subscribing to one of them will likely interpret reality differently from someone subscribing to another, even if they both have a high degree of sensate clarity. These interpretations will clearly have radically different implications for the relative aspects of how we think, feel, speak, and act.

That is where the Buddhists come in, as they will remind you that meaning is causal. Meaning is causal in its arising, as it arises naturally from specific conditions that are biological, psychological, and cultural, at a minimum. Meaning is also clearly a cause for other phenomena to arise, and one of the moderating causes for how meaning creates conditions is the relationship to the meaning itself as it arises and vanishes. Meaning when perceived very clearly in the light of awakening is likely to produce better outcomes, it seems, as meaning is part thought, part feeling, and part something else that is hard to define without circular definitions. As we have seen, what happens around thoughts and feelings benefits from clear perception. Still, beyond just the clear perception, there are the relative implications of the specific meanings that arise, and so the question of which meanings will produce the best outcomes is hotly debated, and strong opinions on this tend to be a core component of spiritual traditions. Even those traditions that propose doctrines along the lines of, “The highest meaning is to transcend meaning,” that still conveys meaning.

As all the traditions seem to have a monolithic confidence that their meaning structure is the optimal one, conflicts are inevitable, as we see again and again when the various traditions interact. Two traditions that agree almost completely on teachings related to sensate clarity can still be perpetually at each other’s throats when it comes to questions of optimal meaning. Most traditions generally don’t think along the lines of “optimal” when it relates to their stock recommended meanings. They just have their meanings, forgetting that they have those meanings for some hopefully good reasons. Obviously, this sort of pragmatism as a lens through which to view meaning structures is itself a statement of meaning in some way, but please forgive this point, since if you throw out pragmatism, then, pragmatically, things get dicey in practical terms. Most of the traditions don’t seem to have the breadth of perspective to sit back, examine what their meaning structures and stock recommended goals and interpretations of reality were supposed to actually do, or to remember this when interacting with other traditions and specific individuals.

Pragmatism is informed by statements of value. What is worthwhile? What is valuable? What is most important? Clearly, I believe that sensate clarity and using this to awaken to the specific sensate truths that remove that tangled, painful space warp at the center of perception is valuable. In this, I put value on sensate clarity as a high ideal. There are other explicit skills, perspectives, and techniques that I value, as should be obvious by now. You have similar lists of values, and I place value on knowing what those are, since knowing what we value leads to the natural question of what leads to the things we value, and then this can lead naturally to doing these things that lead to the things we value. However, some of this is clearly very individual, very personal, and conditioned by causes and conditions about which we likely have little to no awareness, as the psychologists know all too well.

Which do you value more, dispassion or engagement with the world to save all beings? Do you value love or equanimity more? Do you value joy or clarity about suffering? Do you value gritty humanity or refined idealism? These are key questions that superficially divide whole traditions which otherwise would agree on and delight in many other points of shared practice and experience. Clearly there are answers that involve various combinations of apparent opposites, shades of grey, and all the other nuanced aspects of mature meta-philosophy. However, somewhere along the way, for reasons we may never really sort out, we became wired to lean more strongly towards one side or the other of these sorts of initially dualistic-appearing questions. Personal predilections are issues of personality; and personality styles, while not perfectly fixed, are powerful karmic conditionings that are not easily changed. It is true that as we age, grow, and develop, we may come to view these questions differently than we did at various previous points along the path, and our honest answers may actually change moment to moment and circumstance to circumstance. That said, certain trends do tend to persist throughout our lives.

Given that personality styles and relationships to these sorts of questions of value and meaning are often relatively stable, I would advocate for traditions which wish to be broadly applicable to make room for both sides of these debates. Clearly, in some way the traditions are aware that, by taking a strongly one-sided stand, they will often alienate those whose personality style is different from their own. They then often forget this, viewing those on the other side of these perennial questions as somehow inferior to them despite the clear evidence that smart, wise, mature, reasonable people may hold apparently different views from them on key topics of meaning.

All that set-up accomplished, we now come to the meaning models in a more explicit way. Most of the traditions explicitly state that awakened beings will hold certain specific values as more valuable than others, interpret reality through specific meaning structures and, in general, agree with the positions staked out by that tradition regarding the core perennial questions about the meaning of life. They will often then use the corollary of this view to confidently state that those who hold contradictory views regarding key spiritual values and meanings are obviously inferior to those who have practiced in their own tradition. We can reasonably presume that most of this is based on the notion that their views are somehow optimal for this life and that the experiment has been done decisively and that their view is the very best.

Here’s the thing: I can’t for certain tell you that some tradition isn’t right when it comes to answering these questions. I personally am quite certain that I don’t have enough definitive data to make such a claim about my own tradition or about any other tradition. It is possible that such a data set exists and is incontrovertible, but I haven’t seen it yet. If you have seen such a perfect data set that optimally proves the supremely practical complete canon of relative views for all practitioners in all times and places, please let me know.

Until then, perhaps we should all keep an open mind regarding perfect certainty about optimal meanings and values and keep doing the experiment as best we can, as this is likely to allow us to get a lot more out of the efficacious spiritual technologies developed by the various traditions and enjoy the conversation about those technologies a lot more. Here, I clearly value efficacy, communication, and enjoyment in such matters, just in case my obvious biases aren’t clear. If you value something else, I hope it works out well for you based on whatever value system you hold. Still, beware of entangling nets of views that bind you up in fear and conflict, as that may cause needless suffering, particularly when it comes to traditions, and I will try my best to be similarly mindful when I can; this is not easy, as I am sure you have noticed.

The Three Yanas¶

While I am generally a diehard fan of the Theravada, I have great appreciation for much of the rest of Buddhism and the world’s other great mystical traditions. In that spirit, I offer what follows. Traditional Tibetan training is broken down into at least “three yanas” or “vehicles”: the Hinayana, the Mahayana, and the Vajrayana. These correspond very nicely to the developmental needs of practitioners at various stages of the simple model presented earlier.

The Hinayana is a set of techniques and practices that closely resembles many of the traditional trainings of the Theravada, and these are often conflated for this reason. (There are some very loose 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 investigating the three characteristics, that is, all the fundamental practices and emphases that I mentioned in Part One. It is designed to get a person to the first stage of awakening, or first path, which the Tibetans would call third path in the Tibetan five-path model, or attaining the first bhumi.

Getting to the next stage of the simple 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 with its strong emphasis on benefitting all beings and on the 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, it also, if well-practiced, encourages practitioners to stay engaged with this world and avoid turning their backs on the suffering of unawakened beings. One of the interesting things about the Mahayana is that you must have a certain foundation of practice and insight to practice at that level.

Unfortunately, just as studies show that most people think they are above average, many people who identify as Mahayana Buddhist don’t necessarily have the realizations in common with the fundamental vehicle (Hinayana) paths (realizations of the three characteristics), nor do they necessarily realize that to really practice the Mahayana you have to have some strong understanding of relative and ultimate bodhicitta, the deep aspiration to work for the benefit and full awakening of all beings and a direct experience of what awakening actually involves. So, if you don’t have that, strongly consider doing the foundational practices that might get you that understanding, and consider that the Theravada provides a degree of efficacious, technical sophistication that can make that process much easier. I personally find applying the Mahayana motivation and Theravada methods quite empowering, not that very similar motivating factors don’t exist in the Theravada.

To get to the next stage, we must completely understand the intrinsic luminosity of all transient 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 and the richness of this human life, fits very well with the needs of those trying to gain the understanding that emptiness is form. Dzogchen and mahamudra teachings also explicitly emphasize the luminosity of transient phenomena and that all things are of the nature of truth. I absolutely love the book Clarifying the Natural State, by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal, who is one hard-hitting, pithy, no-nonsense yogi, and takes on these topics with an ease, power, and clarity rarely found anywhere.

I am still a big fan of the Theravada, but I have a strong appreciation for the tailored beauty of the three yana system of the Tibetans. It has an uncanny sophistication and explains part of what happens developmentally even if you are following Theravada techniques or those of another wisdom tradition. I am also a big fan of Zen, particularly its strong emphasis on keeping things down-to-earth, as articulated in the well-known saying: “After the ecstasy, the laundry.” As always, it is not the tradition which is important, but that it works for you.

In this spirit, there is a yana called the “Ekayana”, the “one vehicle”, which comes to us from texts such as “The Lotus Sutra” and “The Avatamsaka Sutra”. In this view, all the Buddhist teachings are part of the same vehicle, and all may be drawn on to help us on our paths. This is very much the spirit in which I have proceeded, and I am grateful to those who promote this integrative view. It is not that discriminating between the three yanas (or nine, as the Nyingma school describes) has no value, as it does, but that we can keep a broader perspective than these might allow so that we can benefit ourselves and those around us by adopting terminology and techniques appropriate to various individuals and situations. Further, people who appreciate the Ekayana perspective are typically less fundamentalist and provincial in their approach to Buddhism and indeed to all spiritual traditions.

Further, what happens in real life is that at times we retreat from the world and develop core meditative and spiritual trainings, at times we feel compelled to go and help the world, and at times we are ill or incapacitated to some degree and we hope the world helps us instead. Thus, those who do actual reality testing will find that anyone who claims to follow a specific yana instead typically oscillates between the stereotypical perspectives of them all at various times, both in terms of attitude and function. In this way, having a flexible attitude can allow us to assess our actual changing needs, capabilities for helping ourselves and others, and our current circumstances and heart so that we adopt all of these valid perspectives on our relationship to meditative training and on making the world a better place. Speaking of engagement with the world and on making the world a better place, check out the works of Jay Michaelson, particularly his book Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment.

Perhaps a bit tangentially, a yana I might advise some caution regarding is what I call “the Wikiyana”, which involves people’s tendency to inform themselves or practice from stuff they find on the internet, devoid of the other conducive structures of community and context that help support those practices. Now, don’t misunderstand me: the internet has provided staggering amounts of useful dharma information (as well as useless and inaccurate misinformation) beyond anything previously seen in history, and made it available to people who would otherwise never have been able to access it. When I was coming up in this stuff one literally could have read every dharma book that was easily available and then exhaust the obscure stuff through interlibrary loans. These days, that would be nearly impossible; much less could one keep up with the staggering amount of hyper-proliferative online dharma information in other forms.

The Wikiyana, coupled with good spiritual friends and good practice, can be extremely powerful, reaching people in numbers previously unthinkable to everyone except perhaps the guy(s) who came up with the bhumis, and this is a great thing. Online dharma can also be a massive, distracting, overwhelming time-suck that detracts from focusing on core practices and simple truths. So, if you follow the Wikiyana, find people to hang out with who have benefitted from the great and qualified teachers who do exist, friends who know the path well for themselves, and please also strongly consider finding out more about the supports that are found in the original traditions and drawing on those.

Remember to focus on your practice and beware of getting entangled in the ever-addictive and sometimes crazy world of online dharma. Also, be careful with what online dharma you practice, and discuss it with ones who are doing those techniques so you get a sense of what they lead to. Some practices done out of context or without reasonable foundational practices can be ineffective or, worse, can cause strange and/or unwanted effects due to misconceptions, misapplications, and can even be extremely dangerous—more on that later. The information in this book is among the sources that have significant danger potential, as mentioned many times so far and will be mentioned many more.

Finally, back to the maps. 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 do contain partial truths, however inadequately conveyed, given our cultural context and the social complexity within which we exist. Given sufficient experience of the real world, those who believe in literal interpretations of such models as the limited emotional range models and limited possible action models will either:

be forced to conclude that no living being meets their definitions of enlightenment;
be forced into a dark corner of borderline-psychotic rationalizations of what actually happens; or:
be forced to have a very rude awakening indeed (pun intended).

To my mind, there is only one thing worse than students getting caught up in the dogma of the worst of the models, and that is realized teachers insisting on those models. Just as it is disappointing when those with long retreat résumés but no fundamental insight want to encourage faith in their beautiful tradition by appearing to know more than they do, it is doubly disappointing when realized beings get caught in these archaic models, acting as if the models worked in the fantasy-land way that some 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 themselves and with their students. 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.

Ditching our “Stuff” versus Ditching the Split¶

While these two models are stated implicitly earlier, 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”, that is, our issues, flaws, quirks, pains, negative emotions, traumas, personalities, cultural baggage, childhood scars, relationship difficulties, insecurities, fears, strange notions, illnesses, etc. Such models underlie most of the mainstream ideals 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 awakening, which is ditching the illusion of the separate self and 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 while in this mammalian body is completely impossible. When I hear about those who wish to attain a type of Buddhahood that is defined by not having any stuff in any form, regardless of how it is perceived by them, 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 awakening is about the real world.

What is nice about ditching the split, aside from the fact that it can be done, is that now we can naturally, gently, be friends with our stuff, even if our stuff 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 and less miserable. 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.

Try these two scenarios on for size and see which seems to fit with your life goals, 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 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 my biases are a result of my own conditioning. Our conditioning, opportunity or lack thereof, and circumstance will have a strong impact on what happens. Still, from a relative point of view, take responsibility for the choice you make.

The “Nothing To Do” and “You Are Already There” Schools¶

On a somewhat different note, I feel the need to address, which is to say shoot down with every bit of rhetorical force that I have, the insidious notion promoted by some teachers and even traditions that there is nothing to do, nothing to accomplish, no goal to attain, no awakening other than the ordinary state of being, no practice or tradition that is of value, no technique that will yield anything worthwhile. The other side of this same coin is the point of view that you are already realized, already there, already Buddha, already completely accomplished, and you should essentially be able to hear this to understand it for yourself which, were that the case, would have been very nice of those propounding this view, except that it is complete bullshit. The “nothing to do school” and the “you are already there school” are both basically vile extremes of the same basic notion that all effort to attain to mastery is missing the point, an error of craving and grasping. They both contradict the fundamental premise of this book, namely, that there is something amazing to attain and understand and that there are specific, reproducible methods that can help you do that.

Some defenders of these spiritually harmful views will claim that they are the most immediate, most complete, highest, most special, most profound, and most direct teachings available. I will claim that they do not lead to much that is good that cannot be attained through conceptual frameworks that are not nearly so problematic or easily misconstrued.

First, these notions encourage people not to practice anything. The defenders can say what they like, but again and again I see people who subscribe to these sorts of notions resting on their cleverness and grand posteriors and not actually getting it in the same way that my accomplished meditator friends get it. It seems so comforting, this notion that you are already something that in fact you are not, or that there is nothing that you could do that would be useful.

The idea that people already are something begs the question: what are they? These views tend to imply that they are already something such as perfect, enlightened, realized, awakened, or even worse, that they are awareness itself, cosmic consciousness, the atman, an aspect of the divine, etc., none of which can be found. While the totally misinterpreted end of very confused Buddhism does sometimes go there, such as using terms like dharmakaya and Buddha nature, these are often misappropriated, misconstrued, subtle concepts that were added later and require a ton of explanation and practice experience to keep them from becoming the monsters they nearly always become among spiritual dilettantes.

Awakening involves clearly perceiving universal characteristics of phenomena. While we can attempt to rest comfortably in the intellectual idea that these universal characteristics are there anyway and be comforted by the nothing to attain and already there “teachings”, the whole, core, essential, root point of all this is that there is something to be gained by becoming one of the people who can directly perceive the true nature of phenomena clearly enough to fundamentally change the way reality is perceived in real time. The straight truth is that most people do not start out being able to do anything even close to this, and most are lucky to be able to stay with two breaths in sequence before wandering off into their neurotic crap, much less understand anything liberating about those breaths. The idea that everyone already is someone who can perceive reality the way the masters do without effort in real time is a pernicious falsehood, lie, untruth, delusion, and in short, one great load of apathy-creating insanity.

If we go around asking people without very good insight into these things—that is, the unawakened—about basic dharma points that are obvious to those who have learned to pay attention well, we do not find that everyone is already a person who is perceiving things at the level that makes the difference that dharma practice promises. Further, even individuals at initial stages of enlightenment generally have a hard time saying that they can perceive the emptiness, luminosity, selflessness, causality, interdependence, transience, ephemerality, etc., of reality in real time at all times without having to do anything. In short, the supposition that this is as easy as just being what you already are is wildly off the mark, since most people are woefully underdeveloped on the perceptual front in question.

Thus, all reality testing reveals that these two schools are missing a very fundamental point: while the universal characteristics are always manifesting in all things and at all times, there are those who can perceive this well and those who cannot, and meditative training, conceptual frameworks, techniques, teachers, texts, discussions, and the like all contribute to developing the internal skills and wiring to be able to realize fully what is possible, as thousands of practitioners through the ages have done. I myself have known before and after, meaning that I know what I was capable of perceiving and understanding before I underwent meditative training, and after. No amount of being fed, swallowing, and/or digesting the myth that I am always already as developed as I could be, am already enlightened, am already there, have nothing to do, nothing to develop, nothing to learn, nothing to practice, nothing to master, am always already as clear as I can be, am already perfectly awake, etc., will ever make the difference that practicing for thousands of hours over many years has done.

It would be like saying, “You are already a concert pianist, you just have to realize it,” or “You are already a nuclear physicist, you just have to realize it,” or “You already speak every language, you just have to realize it.” It would be like saying to a two-year-old, “You already understand everything you need to know so stop learning new things now.” It would be like saying to a severe paranoid schizophrenic, “You are already as sane as anyone and do not need to take your medications, and go ahead, feel free to just follow the voices that tell you to kill people.” It would be like saying to a person with heart disease, “By all means, just keep smoking three packs a day and eating fried pork rinds and you will be healthy.” It would be like saying to an illiterate person who keeps having a hard time navigating in daily life and is constantly being ripped off, “You don’t need to learn to read, write, and do math, you are dandy just the way you are.” It would be like saying to a greedy, corrupt, corporate-raiding white-collar criminal, fascist, alcoholic, wife-beating pedophile, “Hey, Dude, you are, like, a beautiful perfect flower of the now moment, already enlightened [insert toke here], you are doing-and-not-doing just fine, like wow, so keep on, like, just being you, maaaan.”

Would you let a blind and paralyzed untrained stroke victim perform open-heart surgery on your child, based on the hopefully by now obviously flawed notion that they already are an accomplished surgeon but just have to realize it? Would you follow the dharma teachings of people who feed other people this kind of complete madness? Those who imagine that everyone somehow in their development already became as clear and perceptive as they could be just by being alive are missing something very profound. Do they imagine that you can just remind people of these things and suddenly all wisdom and clarity will suddenly appear? This is mind-bogglingly naive and some of the worst form of magical thinking out there.

I have gained so much that is good and lost so much that is bad by learning to practice well, learning to concentrate, learning the theory, learning insight practices, going through the organic process of the stages over decades, reading the old texts, reading about the lives of great and dedicated practitioners, having dharma conversations with dharma friends, debating points, wrestling with difficult concepts and how to apply them to my actual life—teaching, learning, studying, writing, realizing how things are, and delving deeply into the sensate world—that I am astounded that anyone would want to reduce something so grand, wonderful, deep, rich, amazing, and profound to such a paltry, puerile, and ridiculous concept as the notion that it is already all in place in everyone regardless of what they have done or not done. All those benefits, skills, learnings, abilities, states, stages, experiences, insights, and fundamental perceptual changes simply were not available until I did the work, took the time, participated in the process, and no amount of anyone telling me otherwise would have helped or made it so.

I know of no examples where the necessary and sufficient causes for the arising of these benefits did not involve effort, a method, and a process. In short, I say to those who persist in promoting the nothing to do school and the you are already there school: STOP IT! You are spreading craziness, and the problem with this craziness is that many people will not be able to discern that it is craziness, and that appears to include those who promote these fallacies. While I usually do not go so far as to tell people that there is something so deeply wrong with what they think and how they communicate it that they should stop it immediately and forever, this specific point is a great example of something I consider abhorrent and worthy of complete and immediate elimination from the planet.

Regardless of any possibly kind intentions, the teachings of these schools take a half-truth that seems so very nice and seductive to us neurotic practitioners who can barely stand another achievement trip and have such a hard time with self-acceptance, and turn that distortion into sugar-coated poison. There is no need to tie the three useful concepts of: 1) no-self; 2) self-acceptance in the ordinary sense; and 3) the notion that the sensations that lead to understanding if clearly perceived a sufficient number of times and to sufficient depth are manifesting right here and right now, to such a perversely twisted yet seemingly benign concept and its offshoots as the ones these schools unfortunately promote.

Depths of Realization and Integration¶

Accurately qualifying and quantifying depths of realization is a perpetually difficult business. In my own practice, I have noticed that realizations which occurred many years ago continue to percolate, continue to change how this Daniel operates, continue to benefit from cushion time and attention to dharma teachings and other practices, continue to benefit from interaction with other dharma practitioners and other social interactions, and seem to have no obvious endpoint in terms of how far they can go to gradually transform this organism. I have also mostly lived the life of a householder, being in graduate school and working at a professional job for most of my adult life except when on retreat. While caring for patients clearly has dharmic aspects to it, providing many opportunities to learn about suffering and to try to do something about it, there are those who have chosen lives dedicated to meditation and the reclusive life, and that causality can be significant.

While a reclusive life of meditation doesn’t guarantee realization, for those with talent who have trained well in that sort of context and gone deep into the realization of the teachings of the Buddha, you can often feel the depths that sort of life allows when you are with them, talking to them, and also reading their written words and listening to or watching their recorded talks. I personally have tried to study with people with very long retreat histories and long periods of monastic practice for this very reason, and found it quite expedient to do so. I encourage you to do the same.

We are currently experiencing a lay dharma renaissance, a time of proliferation of dharma books, teachers, techniques, and centers. There is more open discussion of real attainments, and more talented lay people are bending their wills and minds to the task of learning the depths of the dharma. The texts have never been more accessible to the whole world, there have never been more places to practice, and general freedom to pursue our chosen spiritual tradition has never been greater. That is clearly yielding more dharma understanding and achievement in segments of the populations where it was not previously seen to this degree. That said, the ease with which the dharma can be accessed is causing a degree of superficiality in some practitioners decried by those who appreciate and respect traditional methods and results. I realize this suddenly makes me sound more like the stuffy old guard than some radical trying to reform Buddhism, but my aims are mostly quite traditional, as hopefully you have noticed.

In that vein, some Western teachers have noted an obvious difference between the depth, quality, and clarity of the dharma that comes out of the seasoned monastic masters who trained them versus some lay teachers currently teaching. I clearly fall into the lay teacher category, and in reading my own words as I write them, I must be honest and say that I can feel this same difference. Luckily, I have also noticed that, as I get older, there is some gradual improvement and deepening of the realizations that practicing with the seasoned masters afforded me. That said, I don’t pretend it is anything like the same effect produced by decades of high-end monastic practice and life in a practice-oriented monastic setting. Yet, some of the skillsets and bodies of knowledge that you find in lay practitioners is clearly helping to bring the dharma into the modern world in a way that monastics have not always done as fluidly.

You will likely also notice these differences in your own practice and those you practice with. As the years pass and the dharma does its work, there is some mellowing, some ripening, and, like a fine wine or a good cheese, your practice will hopefully produce something mature and good. Integration of insights takes time, as will be discussed in a bit. It is an organic process. While some situations seem to be able to expedite integration, it can only go so fast and still go deep. The key point here is to give your practice time to develop, keep at it, and have respect for your senior dharma teachers. While they may not be as flashy or charismatic as the younger ones, there is likely something sweet and refined to be gained from exposure to their likely well-integrated wisdom.

Archetypes, Roles, Inspiration, and Becoming¶

As you have probably noticed, I have gone out of my way to insult, tear down, reality test, debunk, and demythologize many of the great archetypes and inspirational role models that we find out there, calling to us inside our hearts and minds. This may be seriously problematic, as there is much to be said for the motivation that comes from chasing a dream. Much great practice and attained wisdom has come from dreaming of becoming like our spiritual superheroes. The technical practitioner, the Zen master, the magickal healer, the big-hearted saint, the unattached wandering bhikkhuni or bhikkhu (nun or monk), the crazy wisdom guru, the shamatha master, the venerable mage, the mental athlete, the deep scholar, the liberated free spirit, the transcendent mystic, the wise shaman, the impeccable warrior, the bodhisattva: all these and more may form the basis of much skillful motivation to practice well, to become something truly remarkable, to plunge deeply into the dharma.

As you can clearly tell, I find fantasy very inspiring, draw from some or all of those archetypes, and don’t regret that in the least, considering it a source of strength and power to try to do better in my own practice. There is a way to hold the downsides, limits, and shadow sides of each of those ideals in our minds while simultaneously deriving true delight in the opportunity to practice techniques that can hopefully get us closer to our spiritual goals and most skillful dharma dreams. Holding the compelling fantasies and the human realities in our mind simultaneously in a way that takes and applies what is good and leaves out what is bad is one of the keys to success on the path. Ah, paradoxes! They are at the heart of the spiritual life.

Dependent Origination¶

The teaching on the twelve links of dependent origination is one of the Buddha’s greatest insights. It is essentially a model of reality, causality, perception, and awakening all in one. You can find it in its original form in such places as sutta 15 of The Long Discourses of the Buddha, DN 15, ”The Great Discourse on Causation/Origination”, also called “The Great Causes Discourse”. Fragments of it appear in numerous other suttas. There are many books and essays that go into the depths of this subject, so if you want something at that level, look there, not here. In an ultra-simplified nutshell, it lays out the chain of causality in which each thing is caused by something else until we get to the root cause. The premise is that if the root cause is removed, then the great chain of causality collapses. This great chain of causality was contemplated by the Buddha shortly after his awakening and represents one of his most profound teachings.

Starting at the top, we have the obvious and undeniable fact that sickness, aging, pain, lamentation, grief, despair, and death are dependent on birth. That link in the chain is an important thing to notice and get to know very well, as, curiously enough, studying that link well leads to understanding the whole thing. Beginning the moment you are born (conceived, actually), you will age, have pain, get sick, and die. Makes sense. The number of people who are in denial of this basic and obvious set of facts is mind-boggling. Don’t be one of those.

Then this gets stranger: “birth” is based on “becoming” (also translated as “existence”). Here we must suddenly dive into the world of ancient (and often modern) India, with its working paradigm that envisioned beings are reborn into countless lives again and again based on their karma. I am going to skip over the complexities (such as what it is that transmigrates), as it is not terribly important to the main points I wish to make here. The teaching on the twelve links makes great sense once you get sufficiently awakened and doesn’t necessarily require belief in the doctrine of rebirth. (All you scientific materialists and nihilists can relax any reflexively constricted orificia.)

Speaking of constriction, “becoming” is based on “clinging”, in that we cling to existence. This clinging is based on “craving” for experience and for being. This craving is based on vedana (usually translated as “feeling” or perhaps “feeling tone”), which is the aspect of sensations being pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. Vedana arises in dependence on “contact” (between objects and the sense doors), and contact depends on “the six sense doors”. These six sense doors are themselves dependent on “name and form” (which refer to mind and matter). Name and form are themselves dependent on “consciousness”. Consciousness is dependent on “volitional formations” (san˙khāras in Pali, a word that has a range of meanings and is worth looking up and reading more about). And, last but not least, volitional formations are based on “ignorance”.

Each of those terms is complicated, and their very specialized meanings and implications are also complicated. The translation makes these difficulties worse. Potentially having a totally different working paradigm from those prevalent in ancient and modern India regarding rebirth may not help at all. However, a few salient points can be made.

First, the elimination of ignorance entails direct realization of the three characteristics, meaning a highly developed degree of awakening to the natural and basic truth of all sensate phenomena, everything that is actually experienced. In this way of perceiving, reality is no longer broken up at a core perceptual level into perceiving subject and perceived object. Nor is anything taken to be unchanging, static, or continuous at a very basic perceptual level. Thus, nothing comprises, forms, or fabricates a deluded sense of an autonomous self, a volitional self, a doer, controller, a “this”, an agent, a separate, permanent, split off, centrally perceiving, independently existing consciousness, subject, awareness, or watcher. This becomes hardwired at the sensate level through clear perception and investigation of the sense doors. At this point in practice, sensate reality is no longer split up artificially into name and form (mentality and materiality, thought and the other five sense doors), as each is just part of the variety of qualities occurring in the fluxing volume of experience.

This then has profound implications for the experience of the six sense doors, as now there is, for lack of a better way to put it, only one wide-open, volumetric sense door and it is sensing itself. Thus, there is really no contact, as there is no sense of anything split off that would be contacting some thing “out there”; there are instead just the qualities and textures of transient space. As there are just the qualities and textures of transient space, it can no longer be said that the qualities and textures called vedana belong to anyone, not that vedana isn’t still causal, since it is. At this point in practice, gone is some sense in that undifferentiated field of a split off “this side” that could try to move closer to pleasant sensations (fundamental attraction), move farther away from unpleasant sensations (fundamental aversion), or tune out boring sensations in a way that creates a sense of perceptual duality (fundamental ignorance), this being the basic implication of craving.

Thus, there is also no solidification of anything, as the whole transient field directly and immediately knows its own utter transience, and so the sort of clinging to any sense of a permanent, continuous “self” referred to here is rendered perceptually impossible. Without any possibility of habitual solidification, the special type of becoming or existence referred to here can’t happen, as it is directly known that no separate thing transmigrates, nothing remains, nothing makes up some stable core of perpetuating consciousness or self. That is all so far so good, as it goes. In fact, if you do insight practices well enough, you too will come to see that all that abstract-sounding theory suddenly describes experience to a tee! How cool is that? In fact, it is very, very cool.

However, finally, in the last two links, we have a problem, that being the annoying fine print regarding the end of suffering promised by the Buddha. As clearly demonstrated in the suttas, and as should be obvious, a body was born, and while the body lives, there will be pain, aging, sickness, and finally death. Then, we have the endless debates between the Mahayana and the Theravada about what happens next, but vastly more important to the pragmatist is understanding the links from one end to the other of this lifetime to the degree that they can be understood while a body still lives.

Final Points¶

Spirituality that ignores, denies, or covers up our inevitable 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 they are taken too seriously to be helpful at all.

Those who adhere the most rigidly to the self-perfection models of awakening are also very often those who believe awakening is unattainable and feel the most disempowered in their spiritual practice and 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 attain in this lifetime. They are the armchair quarterbacks of the spiritual path. Becoming grandiose about aspiring to a high ideal seems to be a common coping mechanism for dealing with a complete lack of confidence and insight. As Christopher Titmuss, one of my best and most honest teachers, said, “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.

Towards Contemporary Models¶

Somewhere along the way I got a two-year masters degree in Epidemiology and a medical doctor degree, so that training and spending most of the last decade or so working in hospitals caring for usually acute care patients has given me a lot more perspective on how extremely complicated the human organism is, physiologically and psychologically. The models we use for both disease and health in medicine are vast. In contemporary Western or allopathic medicine, we are currently mostly concerned with pathology: what has gone wrong. The number of things that can go wrong is simply mind-blowing, well beyond the capacity of any one person to know. The known and relatively well-understood disease processes in all their depth and detail, along with their complicated treatments, are too numerous and varied for anyone without a perfectly photographic memory and a ton of time to read.

There is still much we simply don’t know about why things go wrong and what to do about them. This is in a field that has been given literally trillions of dollars’ worth of attention over the last century by countless researchers and clinical practitioners, not to mention drug companies, device manufacturers, etc. Just mastering the medical terminology takes years and there are always new terms and diseases to look up when you encounter the exotic, such as extremely obscure genetic disorders or typically non-human animal pathogens that decided to feed on humans anyway (with apologies to anyone reading this in the Fear stage).

The field that this book mostly concerns itself with is the mind gone very, very right, with difficult phases like the Dark Night—which can be compared to post-operative rehab after hip replacement surgery—being the obvious qualifier. The amazing things we can learn to do and clearly perceive with our minds, the profound transformations of consciousness, the extremely rare experiences we can have in the far upper strata and profound depths of the world of our minds and bodies during meditation, and the perception alterations and realignments that these sorts of practices can produce, are also similarly vast. It is a real tragedy that we have inherited such small, narrow, linear, unsophisticated, cookie-cutter models from the past and tried to cling to them as if they were the be-all and end-all of what is possible descriptively, terminologically, and experientially.

It would be strange in modern medicine to refer to everything through the system of “the four humors” (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood) that was used in the days of Hippocrates and down through to the Renaissance and beyond. It is just as weird to me to have only eight jhanas, sixteen stages of insight, four paths, and a few odds, ends, and qualifiers in the Theravada to try to describe the vast range of meditative, spiritual, and perceptual development and exploration. The other Buddhist traditions don’t add all that many additional terms when compared with the vast range of experiences and transformations available to living practitioners today.

This is a problem I am going to point out much more than solve, as its solutions will require a very sophisticated and intelligent conversation of the sort that led to the standardization of medical terminology. I believe that the solution involves a collaboration of committed and experienced dharma practitioners having long-term, deep, careful, thoughtful, nuanced conversations, instead of one single person trying to superimpose his or her own idiosyncratic terms and concepts on something that deserves much better than that. It will be beneficial to refrain from simply whitewashing the ancient models and building extensions to them, as I don’t believe that they all hold up in the very dogmatic and simplified way that people usually think they do.

I believe that the place to start is the bare phenomenology, meaning what can be described about our direct raw experiences and shifts of perspective, and then slowly figure out the underlying biochemistry and physiology of what we are actually doing to ourselves, in the way that the work of descriptive naturalists, anatomists, and microbiologists later converged with that of biochemists, neurophysiologists, geneticists, etc., to form the system we currently have for describing and treating disease. I can only imagine what will have occurred on this front in a hundred years, and just as we now look back at the work of the microbiological giants like Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and so on, with some mixture of nostalgia and amazement at how far we have come, just so, I hope that in a century we are looking back on primitive books like this one and marveling that we were ever so naive and simple-minded regarding how we thought about and described meditative and perceptual development.

Footnotes