Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book - Revised and Expanded Edition

by Daniel M. Ingram

It is important to know that really getting into a sense of the breath as a continuous entity for ten seconds will do you more good than being generally with the breath on and off for an hour.

As concentration improves, it is as though the mind “sees” the first jhana and grabs on to it. Having an idea of what you are looking for, i.e. something enjoyable and steady, can be helpful for this. It has the five primary factors of applied and sustained effort or attention, rapture, happiness and concentration. Thus, it is great fun, feels good, but takes consistent effort to sustain. The attention is focused narrowly, as though one were looking at a small area of this page. This state can be quite a relief from the pain and discomfort of sitting meditation and can temporarily quiet the mind somewhat. As with all the concentration states, it is generally quite easy to concentrate on something that is very enjoyable. Thus, one's concentration skills may improve rapidly and easily after attaining the first jhana and tend to basically flounder until one has attained the first jhana. Thus, attaining the first jhana is really, really important. People tend to really like this state, and may cling to it for the rest of the retreat if on retreat, or cultivate it again and again in their sitting practice at home. It is a valuable attainment, as it serves as the minimum foundation for both insight and concentration practices. From the first jhana there are basically three things a meditator can do. They can either get stuck there (I know someone who spent some twenty years cultivating the first jhana in their daily practice and thinking this was insight practice), they can prog...

Remember that enlightenment is not a mind state, nor is it dependent on any condition of reality. It does not come and go as these states do.

This is quite a high attainment, and can easily be confused with the goal of the spiritual life, though it very much isn't. From this state the practitioner has quite a number of options. They can get stuck, they can move on to the formless realms, they can cultivate what are described as “psychic powers,” or they can investigate this state and begin the progress of insight. When investigating this state, special attention must absolutely be given to the fact that the myriad sensations that make up equanimity and spaciousness come and go moment to moment, do not satisfy or provide a permanent resting place, and are not self.

While Theravada Buddhism clearly states how to obtain the “psychic powers,” it does not say much about how to use them, the benefits of them, or their dangers. Tantra and many other traditions (such as some of the shamanic traditions) do a much better job of dealing with these. One might also check out the later writings of Carlos Castanada when he was not so fascinated with hallucinogens (such as The Art of Dreaming), go to an ashram that focuses on these aspects of spiritual training, or check out traditions such as Ceremonial Magick, Wicca, Thelema, the Golden Dawn, and the A∴A∴

You see, 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 all phenomena are not a permanent, separate self, as they all change and are all intimately interdependent. They are simply “aware,” i.e. manifest, where they are without any observer of them at all. The boundaries that seem to differentiate self from not-self are arbitrary and conceptual, i.e. not the true nature of things. Said another way, reality is intimately interdependent and non-dual, like a great ocean.

Remember, no sensation can observe another, so anything you can think of cannot be said to be “awareness.”

2. CAUSE AND EFFECT In this stage, the relationships between mental and physical phenomena become very clear and sometimes ratchet-like. The joy and wonder of Mind and Body have left, and now the interactions between the mind and body become somewhat mechanical-seeming. Motions such as walking or the breath may begin to get jerky, as there is the intention and the motion, the sensation and the mental impression of it, the cause and the effect, all occurring in a way which can seem sort of tight and robot-like. You note, the breath moves just a bit. You stop noting, the breath stops. You note quickly, the breath jerks quickly. You note slowly, the breath follows. Some will stop noting quickly or stop noting at all, thinking that they are messing up the breath. The advice here is as before: note quickly, and don't worry about what the breath does.

Those with stronger concentration tendencies or a bent towards such things may notice thoughts and perhaps even visions of insight into cause and effect on a macroscopic scale, where past action or circumstances led to various consequences, some event led to some rebirth, some previous life led to something today, and in general may get a sense that they are able to intuit aspects of the workings of karma in a way they did not before. As the meditator becomes more clear about the beginnings and endings of each of these, about the irritation caused by this jerkiness and about the fact that all of this seems to be happening fairly on its own, they come to directly perceive for themselves…

These characteristics become clearer and clearer, as well as faster and faster, as the meditator diligently pays careful attention to exactly what is happening at each moment. For those doing noting practice, somewhere around here your speed and precision may begin to get so fast that you cannot note every sensation you experience. Move to more general noting, mono-syllabic noting (such as “beep” for each sensation experienced regardless of what it was), or drop the noting entirely and stay with noticing bare sensation come and go.

There may be odd bodily twistings, obsession with posture, and painful tensions or strange other sensations, particularly in the back, neck, jaw and shoulders. These tensions may persist when not meditating and be quite irritating and even debilitating. The rhomboid and trapezius muscles are the most common offenders. It is common to try to sit with good posture and then find one's body twisting into some odd and painful position. You straighten out, and soon enough it does it again. That's a very Three Characteristics sort of pattern. People sometimes describe these feelings as some powerful energy that is blocked and seems wants to get out or move through.

In the early part of this stage, the meditator's mind speeds up more and more quickly, and reality begins to be perceived as particles or fine vibrations of mind and matter, each arising and vanishing utterly at tremendous speed. The traditional texts actually call this stage the beginning of insight practices, as from this point on there is a much more direct and non-conceptual understanding of the Three Characteristics. This stage is marked by dramatically increased perceptual abilities when compared with the previous stages. For example, one might be able to hone one's awareness to laser-like precision on the tip of one's little finger and seemingly be able to perceive the beginning and ending of every single sensation that made up that finger. Spontaneous physical movements and strange jerky breathing patterns that showed up in Cause and Effect and became more pronounced in the Three Characteristics may speed up significantly. This stage explains where many practices such as Tibetan inner fire practices of the Yogic breath of fire come from. It can also reveal the source material that inspired teachings such as those about chakras and energy channels. Many descriptions of Kundalini awakening are talking about this stage.

Finally, at nearly the peak of the possible resolution of the mind, the meditator crosses something called “The Arising and Passing Event” (A&P Event) or “Deep Insight into the Arising and Passing Away.” This event marks a profound shift in the meditator's practice, and from then on they will be somewhat changed by what they have seen, with this being the Point of No Return that I mentioned in the Foreword and Warning. The intensity of this event can vary, though it tends to be quite clear and memorable, particularly the first time one crosses it during that cycle. However, for some, there will simply be something that seems to have the general characteristics of the A&P territory that then fades without an obvious peak event. It should also be noted that some people will have a big and obvious buildup to such experiences and for others they will suddenly just show up completely without warning, sometimes spontaneously and even without formal meditation training, as happened to me at around age fifteen. I have a number of friends who ran into these things without formal training and in daily life, others who ran into them when doing hallucinogens including mescaline and LSD, others during yoga practice, others while around powerful spiritual figures, including one who had it happen while hanging out with a Christian faith healer and a few who were hanging out with various gurus.

As a close friend of mine with a ton of experience in insight practices and a gift for precise language and teaching so aptly put it, “The Dark Night can really fuck up your life.” However, I will give you two hard-won pieces of advice that I have found have made the difference in the face of these stages. First, make the time to do basic insight practices. Do your very best to get sufficient insight into the Three Characteristics so as to get past this stage! Make time for retreats or alone time and don't get stuck in the Dark Night. You and everyone around you will be happy that you did so. The second piece of advice is to have a “no-bleedthrough” policy when you suspect you are in the Dark Night. Simply refuse to let your negativity bleed out onto everyone and everything around you. Failure to do so can be disastrous, as your profound lack of perspective, fixation on negativity and the suffering from your fundamental crisis of identity can easily get projected out onto things and people that simply did not cause that suffering! No one appreciates this at all and it does no good whatsoever. Combining these two pieces of important advice, resolve thus, “I have recently crossed the A&P Event and I know this by the many obvious signs of that stage. Now I am feeling strangely reactive and negative about things that ordinarily I am able to handle with more balance and clarity, and I know that a good part of this is due to the inevitable Dark Night that follows the A&P. I real...

There are also those who try to investigate the true nature of their psychological demons and life issues but get so fixated on using insight to make them go away that they fail to hold these things in a wider, more realistic and appropriate perspective. This subtle corruption of insight practices turns them into another form of denial rather than a path to awakening. Drawing from the agendas of training in morality, in which there is concern for the specific thoughts and feelings that make up our experience, they fail to make progress in insight, whose agenda is simply to see the true nature of all sensations as they are. Both are important, but it is a question of timing.

You might be astounded at how easy it is to bruise the egos in the conventional psychological sense of those who have seen through the illusion of the ego in the high dharma sense.

If you consider the first 360 degrees of a sine wave (like a rounded capital italic N that has been tilted just a bit to the right), you will notice that is starts at zero, goes up in a hill-like way, peaks, descends below where it started in a valley-like way, bottoms out, and then returns to the same level at which it began but yet farther along. Were one walking on this curve, one would have to make effort to climb up the hill. One would then have a spectacular view and a great sense of accomplishment. One might then try to keep walking up to get more of this, but end up sliding down the other side of the hill, farther down in fact than where one began. And yet, this is still progress, and could even be somewhat thrilling and even effortless with the right attitude. Just when one gets to the very bottom, trapped in the darkest part of the pit, by finally coming to rest at the absolute bottom the upward motion begins to happen naturally, and one returns to where one was, ground zero, and yet farther on at the same time. A cycle is complete and yet begins again endlessly. This easily correlates with the first four vipassana jhanas, as well as many other obvious cycles such as those of the sun and seasons, etc. For those trying to correlate the maps of the progress of insight with those of Tantra's Five Buddha Families or those of any number of pagan and nature-based traditions, this should prove most helpful. The first vipassana jhana is climbing up the hill, eager beginn...

Once the Three Characteristics begin to become clear, the mind naturally speeds up and becomes more powerful. This is because it finally begins to draw on its tremendous power to see things directly without processing them through thought. Anyone who has driven a car, played a video game or done just about anything else for that matter knows that you just have to do it, but if you tried to think about every little thing you were doing it would be impossible. This increase in mental power due to non-conceptual and direct experience is related to the third factor of enlightenment, energy. Energy may now even be blazing up and down one's spinal cord, the mind gets bright and alert, and soon energy is flowing naturally, as one begins to enter the early part of stage four, The Arising and Passing Away. Remember how this correlates with the second samatha jhana, where applied and sustained attention or effort are no longer needed? They just happen on their own to a large extent, and energy is naturally present. Thus, it all ties together.

Imagine that there is a meditation medication called Damnitall that is used to treat some form of suffering (perhaps it's a pain medicine or an anti-depressant). However, in a subset of patients its long-term use is known to cause pronounced anxiety, paranoia, depression, apathy, micro-psychotic episodes, a pervasive sense of primal frustration, pronounced lack of perspective on relationships, reduced libido, feelings of dissatisfaction with worldly affairs, and exacerbation of personality disorders, all of which can lead to markedly reduced social and occupational function. Imagine that these side effects are known to persist sometimes months and even years after someone stops taking the medication, with occasional flare-ups and relapses, with the only permanently effective treatment being to increase the dose, along with supportive care and counseling, and hope that these side effects pass quickly with little damage. Now, imagine that you are living in the dark days of paternalistic medicine during which doctors are prescribing this stuff without fully disclosing the potential side effects despite the fact that they are fully aware of them. Imagine that drug companies are not forced to disclose known side effects. Does anything in this scenario make you a bit uncomfortable? I should hope so! Let's say for the sake of argument that I am a fanatic who is blowing this thing way out of proportion. Let's assume that Damnitall only causes these effects in one out of every ten ...

Further, as absurd as this may sound to some, the maps allow you to plan your spiritual path to some degree. True, there are ultimate points of view that would make this perspective seem quite ridiculous, but indulge me. A sample plan might be this: 1. Go on a three-week retreat and really power the mindfulness and investigation all day long, consistently stretching your perceptual threshold and speed of investigation to its limits to maximize the chances of crossing the A&P Event. It is not that hard to cross the A&P with fairly imbalanced effort, so don't worry about that. Remember not to be freaked out by the strange raptures around the A&P. Note, a two to three month retreat would give you a great shot at stream entry if you are ready to really practice, so if you are at that level, go for it. 2. Once you have crossed the A&P, Dark Night stuff will come bubbling up soon enough, and the choice to deal with this on or off retreat will depend upon how much time you can devote to retreats and how much intensity you can stand. My vote tends to be for on retreat if you can take the heat, but not everyone can the first time around and not everyone can easily spare the time. On the other hand, that Dark Night might just be a cakewalk. Give it a go and find out! In the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition, they typically think that two to three months of diligent noting practice on intensive retreat is enough to get many people to stream entry, but perhaps you do not have the time or dedic...

Another concept that helps make the maps make sense is that of “shifting baseline”. This is easier to see on retreat, though can be noticed in daily life as well, albeit more gradually. While the standard maps say that a practitioner below Stream Entry must, on each sit or meditation session, begin by attaining access concentration, then work up to Mind and Body, Cause and Effect, etc. in a linear fashion, getting as high as they can go on that sit and then falling back, what actually happens is somewhat different. The initial stages of practice, those of finding the breath, feet, or other object, typically go on for a while until suddenly Mind and Body arises, which is usually pretty cool the first time it happens, but it quickly fades in intensity and profundity in subsequent practice periods. Then, while the practitioner may have to build up to it again and again, they may notice it less and less as their baseline shifts to the next stage, in this case Cause and Effect, which will then predominate in sits and situations, until they gradually move on from there. In this way, their baseline, meaning the dominant place where they are in the insight cycles, will move forward, sometimes with rapid jumps, other times with long pauses in one area. The predominant emotional, energetic, and perceptual experiences will take on the quality of the meditators current baseline ñana. Thus, by the time one is in the A&P, one may barely notice the shifts through the earlier stages, and ...

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, Center Point, Soul, Agent or Self in some very fundamental perceptual way. By seeing these sensations as they are, the process can gradually be seen through until one day there are no more sensations that trick the mind in this way. My favorite quotation that articulates this model is the one that goes something like, “In the seeing just the seen, in the hearing just the heard, in the thinking just the thought,” and thus I may repeat this quotation a few times just to make the point of how profound it is. Basically, there is just a field of sensations, as there was before, but now all of these sensations are progressively seen to be as they are, and all the sensations that we generally call “me” are just a part of this process. This model does not imply anything else, promises nothing related to any other models except in some loose way the Fundamental Perception Model that I will talk about shortly. The Non-Duality Model is one of the most practical models, in that it focuses on simply seeing things as they are right now.

These models may directly state or imply that enlightenment involves continuously perceiving these aspects of things in all sensations at a conscious level, so that every waking instant we were 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 information at all times. While there may be moments or bursts of this sort of perception in enlightened individuals, this is not what finally happens. Instead, with strong awareness of how things are, a process of identification stops, 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. However, as the Buddha said, do not imagine that you must continue to carry the boat once you have crossed the river. While enlightened individuals can at a whim notice the true aspects of sensations, just as color is clear to a person with good eyesight (assuming they are not color-blind), so these things are clear to an enlightened being to various degrees as they progress along the path. That said, just because one can perceive something doesn't mean that particular aspect is the dominant aspect of consciousness at all times. In short, the Fundamental Perception Model...

The 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 available, though there have been attempts at reform also. I must give thanks for the attempts, however ineffective, bizarre, mythologized, cryptic, and vague, that 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 Theravada basically has really not tried in any significant way in 2,500 years so far as I can tell. If I am wrong, please let me know. These emotional models basically claim that enlightenment involves some sort of emotional perfection, either gradually or suddenly, and usually make these dreams the primary criteria for their models of awakening, often ignoring or sidelining issues relating to clear perception of the true nature of phenomena. Usually these fantasies involve elimination of the “negative” emotions, particularly greed, hatred, anger, frustration, lust, jealousy, and sadness. At a more fundamental level, they promise the elimination of all forms of attraction and aversion.

I will claim that not perceiving our emotions clearly is a far greater problem than the emotions themselves, but I am clearly 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 aspects of what we usually consider the bad emotions. It is important to realize that empty compassion underlies all our emotions, whether filtered through the illusion of duality or otherwise.

Finishing up my Revised Four Path Model, arahats have finally untangled the knot of perception, dissolved the sense of the center point actually being the center point, no longer fundamentally make a separate Self out of the patterns of sensations as they used to, even though those same patterns of sensations continue. This is a different understanding from those of Third Path in some subtle way, and makes this path about something that is beyond the paths. This is also poetically called the opening of the Wisdom Eye. What is interesting is that I could write about this stage quite well when I was an anagami, but that is a whole different world from knowing it like arahats know it.

The first understanding is that sensations are sensations, thoughts are thoughts, and this forms the basis of further inquiry. When the universal characteristics of these sensations begin to be seen, this represents growth in understanding. When the whole sense field is known directly and completely as it is, this can cause an entrance into Fruition through one of the Three Doors, and represents the first stage of awakening. When one appreciates the cycles of the process of awakening and has completed at least one more new progress cycle, this is the next stage. When one begins 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 that understanding is integrated into our lives, that is the next phase, though it is more an ongoing process than a stage. The problem is that the traditions seem to want to make this understanding into so much more than it is, such as add ideals of emotional perfection onto this. There is some truth in the models dealing with emotions, but it has to do with things moving through faster and being seen more clearly. It does not have a...

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 and coming and going is extremely straightforward once you finally realize that 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, spending a year in India working as a volunteer there, and finishing a medical residency, I must say that the work I went through to get those things was significantly more than the work it took to get to stream entry and even arahatship. 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 model was one that was blissfully free of the notion of emotional or psychological perfection. 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, neurosis and possibly much worse. There will be power plays, twisted psychological g...

The terminology that I am used to 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, it must also be admitted 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 simply arise on their own, including those sensations that may or may not be designated as thoughts, to be 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. Thus, the model that I prefer, as it is practical, non-esoteric and direct, is that: 1. Sensations that can be labeled as thoughts occur. 2. Thoughts are natural, causal, and essential to nearly every function we perform. 3. Thoughts are not self, not other, part of life, and empty in the good sense. 4. They 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 ...

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 center point is seen through by your careful investigation of all these sensations, or all the aspects of God, then all that is left is just all these sensations as before, that is, all this God. Thus, if one is willing to really believe in a omnipresent God, then by truly, deeply, directly perceiving all sensations to be just part of the causal, natural unfolding of what is labeled God, all the boundaries between what were self and other can be seen through, and the phenomenal world is left doing its thing. Thus the practitioner realizes they always were part of God, in a sense, though these designations are merely terminological one way or the other.

As I have pointed out before, plenty of people with wisdom have been ridiculed, ostracized, persecuted, attacked, jailed and murdered when they spoke from that place. In short, any social implications of one's realization (assuming one is 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, the vast majority of people don't really have any clue what enlightenment is about, don't think that enlightenment really exists today, may not have enlightenment 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. 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.

In short, the non-duality models are the only models of awakening that hold up without apology, qualification or exception. The rest of the models have serious problems, though each may contain some amount of truth in it, however poorly conveyed. Given sufficient experience of the real world, those who believe in literal interpretations of such confused models as the limited emotional range models and limited possible action models will either: 1. Be forced to come to the conclusion that no living being meets their definitions of enlightenment, 2. Be forced into a dark corner of borderline-psychotic rationalizations of what actually happens, or 3. Be headed for a very rude awakening indeed, to make a bit of a bad pun.

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

The third point about integration and living in the world that I have had to learn the hard way is a concept that I recently heard articulated very well by my friend Tom in the phrase, “Right plane, right time,” which was his way of saying, “Use the correct conceptual and paradigmatic framework for the correct situation.” Like the simple lists of Part I, this phrase could be the basis of an entire book (see the difficult but excellent The Spectrum of Consciousness, by Ken Wilber, which spends a lot of time explaining how to keep our paradigms straight and not mix them up). From the point of view of integration, it basically means that one generally should use a way of approaching a situation or problem that fits with that situation or problem. One should be conscious of the conceptual frameworks that one uses when approaching each aspect of one's life, as some conceptual frameworks or ways of being may not be helpful or appropriate for certain situations. I will illustrate this by way of some examples. When doing insight practices, is it useful to assume a few things. One should assume that no such thing as a body exists, nor does a mind exist, nor are there natural boundaries inherent in sensations. There are sensations that arise and pass quickly, are not able to satisfy due to the illusion of duality, and are “empty,” meaning that they imply no self or separateness that is in control. It is not all that useful to get overly concerned with what these sensations actually ...