Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

by Daniel M. Ingram

Meditation Schedule

Reminders: 1) Don't indulge in your crap! 2) When in doubt or struggling, note those sensations and everything else. 3) If you have a question, the answer is in the three characteristics. 4) Analysis is not the same as practice. 5) Practice at all times when awake; be mindful during transitions between sessions. 6) When nobody is around, practice just as hard: this is for you, not them. 7) Remember how precious these moments are and how rare the opportunity to go on retreat is.

Standing is an even more energy-producing posture than sitting, with the obvious advantage that it is even harder to fall asleep when standing than when sitting. It seems to increase the intensity of a meditation session and can be useful when energy is low.

That brings me to the topic of resolve. I strongly recommend developing the freedom to choose what happens in your life, which comes from discipline. While people often think of discipline as being contrary to freedom, I equate the two in many ways. Discipline and resolve allow us to make choices about what we do, and allow us to stay strong in the face of difficulties. Thus, I recommend that when you set aside a period for a specific training, you resolve that for that period you will work on the specific training you have set out to work on, and that you will work on it wholeheartedly.

For instance, when I was studying for a medical school exam, I would resolve, “For this hour, I will study this hematology syllabus so that I may increase my knowledge and skill as an aspiring doctor and thus be less likely to kill patients and more likely to help them live.”

I would like to thank Joseph Goldstein for his soft-spoken instruction to dedicate my practice to the welfare and awakening of all beings, as something in the way he said it landed nicely. I think it has made a significant difference.

He basically said, “Do these very specific things, and these specific results will occur.” He seemed to have little use for ritual, ceremony, or philosophy that were not intended for some practical and beneficial purpose.

There is another related movement in the West that seeks to make Buddhism into something for everyone. Remember, the Buddha's original takeaway right after his awakening was that the dharma wasn't going to be understood by anyone else. He was wrong, but not by a large margin. Unfortunately, what is happening is that Buddhism is becoming watered down, often indiscriminately, to promote mass appeal. The result is something like what happens in places such as Thailand, where most people “practice Buddhism” in a way that is largely devotional and dogmatic, meaning that the Buddha is turned into an object of worship, Buddhism into rote motions, with dana being like medieval indulgences, and personal responsibility for freeing oneself relinquished.

They tend to use the phrase “moment to moment” often, which in my world means “rapidly”. This is all as it should be.

My emphasis on also making time for insight practices is to counterbalance the general trend for most insight practitioners’ practice to be almost entirely about moderately neurotic, largely ineffective, spiritually rationalized, hyper-idealistic wallowing in their emotional pain or attempting to bypass it altogether in a blinding golden haze of Buddhist-inspired fantasy. This sort of practice often impairs both real psychological and emotional maturation and deep insight.

However, there is a cultural factor in Western Buddhism that insight into the fundamental nature of reality or the three characteristics, is almost never directly discussed, unlike in Burma or some other settings.

Thus, most teachers won't say something as straightforward as, “Well, when I was meditating, I spent some time lost in the stories and tape-loops of my mind. This was terrible and I got nowhere but nutty. However, one day a senior teacher straightened me out and convinced me to ground my mind in the specific sensations that make up the objects of meditation and examine impermanence. After some days of consistent and diligent practice using correct technique, I began to directly penetrate the three illusions of permanence, satisfactoriness, and self, and my world began to be broken down into the mind-moments and vibrations that I always thought were just talk. By paying careful attention to bare phenomena arising and passing moment after quick moment, I progressively moved through the stages of insight and got my first taste of awakening.

It doesn't matter what the quality of your mind is, or what the sensations of your body are; if you directly understand the momentary sensations that make these up to be impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not a self or the property of any self, then you are on the right path, the path of liberating insight.

How do I know that solely content-based practice won't produce insight? Because there are only three doors to ultimate reality, that's why, and they are utterly unrelated to content, though they can be found in all content if the content aspect is ignored. “Only three doors? But there are thousands of practices, many traditions! How can you say there are only three doors?” There are only three doors, that's how. I don't care what tradition you subscribe to, what practice you do, or who you are, there are only three basic ways to enter the attainment of fruition, nirvana, nibbana, or whatever you want to call it. These doors relate directly to profound and direct realization of the three characteristics of impermanence, dissatisfactoriness, and no-self, and you must understand the heck out of these to join the ranks of the awakened ones.

Further, the Hinayana, so often mentioned by Tibetan practitioners, doesn't exist today in the way they imagine it does, and is often conflated with the Theravada, and while there are similarities, the Theravada is much more extensive than the Tibetan conception of the Hinayana and contains extensive teachings on compassion and emptiness as well as helping others, but this is a topic for another time.

In short, should you gain ultimate realizations, it will be through one of the three doors. This is just the way it is. It is not negotiable. The natures of the mind and reality are just the natures of the mind and reality. You cannot change this, but you can realize it.

Thus, don't look out there except to find wise guidance about how to look in here, for what you are looking for is “nearer than near”. It is in the looking. It is in the motivation.

Thus, somehow it seems that there is something to defend, some self apart from it all that must be protected. Due to confused compassion, barriers and defense mechanisms continue to be erected to defend this territory, this illusion of a separate self.

Thus, if you feel frustrated that your practice has not been as energized or as clear as you wish it to be, first sit with the sensations of the urgency of that wish, with the fullness of that frustration, with the fullness of your fears, your hopes, with the fullness of that suffering and compassion, as clearly and bravely as you possibly can until you understand them to their very depths as they are. Channel all this energy into clear, precise, kind, and focused living and practice. Since this whole book is clearly goal-oriented, I thought that it would be appropriate to add guidelines about formulating specific goals and working towards mastery that can help reduce the problems that poorly conceived goals can cause. Goals tend to involve a heavy future component. That future component, poorly related to, can fry insight practitioners. The trick is to add a component that relates to the here and now as well.

We could also wish to understand the true nature of the sensations that make up our world so clearly that we become awakened. This adds a present component and makes the whole enterprise much more reasonable and workable. We could simply wish to understand deeply the true nature of the sensations that make up our world as they naturally arise and vanish in that practice session or throughout that day.

Similarly, we could try to be kind, honest, or generous that hour or that day, try to appreciate interdependence that day, or try to stay very concentrated on some object for that practice session. These present and method-oriented goals are the foundation upon which great practice is based.

Stay present-oriented whenever possible, and always avoid purely future-oriented or results-oriented goals! Thoughts of the past and future occur only in the present, which is natural and straightforward. These sensations are worthy of investigation. “Future mind” is only a problem if the sensations that make it up are not understood as they are. A fun practice to try is to think consciously those thoughts whose content is purely past- or future-oriented. Notice that they are occurring now and are part of this sense-field, this space here and now. There is something profound about this sort of practice that might be missed on first inspection, and doing this well enough can deconstruct how the sense of time is created, which is liberating in and of itself.

It is also worth keeping in the front of your mind the three characteristics, the most profound and important of which is no-self, meaning that all phenomena occur interdependently, causally, naturally, and lawfully. By remembering this essential characteristic and keeping it in our minds, we can notice that reality already shows up with comprehension built right into sensations. Sit quietly and notice this most fundamental and liberating aspect of things again and again, realizing that just sitting involves sensations, and each of these sensations is naturally revealing its true nature. Return to this paragraph when you feel you are frying yourself and read it a bunch of times to help it sink in as, strangely, this very easy and natural message can be a hard one to really integrate.

On the other hand, I have found that goal-oriented practice combined with good instruction and a few good conceptual frameworks is largely unstoppable barring extreme circumstances.

Remember that these practices and teachings are not about becoming a nonexistent entity devoid of emotions, but about clearly understanding the truth of our humanity and life. Becoming fluent in the true nature of all categories of sensations, including the sensations that make up all categories of emotions, is a particularly good idea and highly recommended. This might even be undertaken as a systematic practice by those who are dedicated to thorough understanding. Thus, if you are doing noting practice, which I highly recommend, try to note precisely which emotions you are feeling, such as fear, boredom, anger, confidence, restlessness, joy, jealousy, dread, elation, envy, frustration, doubt, etc. For those who want more information on the many and interesting mental factors that can be investigated, consider reading A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma, translated and explained by Bhikkhu Bodhi, which also contains many other useful bits of information woven in with a bit of archaic physiology that can be ignored. The Abhidhamma also outlines very clearly how to investigate and identify the triggers for the emotions.

Try this little exercise the next time a strong and seemingly useless, scary, dangerous, embarrassing, or “unskillful” emotion arises: Stabilize precisely on the patterns of sensations that make it up and perhaps even allow these to become stronger if this helps you to examine them more clearly. You might do this practice with eyes open if the feelings are very strong and you wish to add the perspective that space brings to help maintain a more open perspective. Find where these are in the body, and discern as clearly as possible what sorts of images and storylines are associated with these physical sensations. Be absolutely clear about the full magnitude of the suffering in these, how long each lasts, and that these sensations are observed and not particularly in our control.

Find the compassion in it. Take a minute or two (no more) to reflect on why this pattern of sensations seems to be of some use even though it may not seem useful in its current form. Ask yourself: Is there a wish for yourself or others to be happy in these sensations? Is there a wish for the world to be a better place? Is there a wish for someone to understand something important? Is there a wish for things to be better than they are? Is there a wish to find pleasure, tranquility, or the end of suffering? Sit with these questions, with the sensations that make them up, allowing them to be strong enough for you to see what is going on but not so strong that you become completely overwhelmed by them. Notice that fear has in it the desire to protect us or those we care for. Anger wants to right a perceived wrong, wants us or the world to be happy and work well, or for justice to be done. Frustration comes from the caring sensations of anger being thwarted. Desire is rooted in the wish to be happy. Judgment comes from the wish for things to conform to high standards. Sadness comes from the sense of how good things could be and from the loss of something cherished. I could go on like this for a whole book, so don't turn these into dogma; each has much more nuance that you can explore. Actively reflecting along these lines, sit with this compassionate wish, acknowledge it, and feel the compassionate aspect of it.

Allow the actual sensations that seem to make up the feeling of wanting itself to be directly understood as and where they are. Remember that this same quality of compassion is in all beings, in all their unskillful and confused attempts both to find happiness and to put an end to their suffering. Sit for a while with this reflection as it relates directly to your experience. Then, examine the mental sensations related to the object that you either wish to have (attraction), wish to get away from (aversion), or wish to ignore (ignorance). Examine realistically if this will fundamentally help yourself and others and if these changes are within your power to bring about. If so, then plan and act with as much compassion and kindness as possible. R...

Just for fun, I will give two more examples from even more advanced practitioners and how they might describe their practice. “I sat down on the cushion and began noticing the three characteristics of the sensations that make up experiential reality. There were physical and mental sensations, all arising and vanishing quickly and effortlessly. I could perceive perhaps five to fifteen sensations per second, primarily in the abdominal region, but there were many other little sensations coming into awareness from all over, colors on the inside of my eyelids, sounds from other meditators’ breathing. Occasionally, there were some quick sensations interspersed with these about the Big Issue, like little phantoms vanishing in a sea of flickering color and form. They caused no interruptions to my investigations, being just more sensations for investigation.” This is obviously a strong practitioner with solid insight skills. They know exactly what they are looking for and find it.

Basically, there is a very natural way that attention progresses as we develop our abilities to pay attention, shifting through very predictable ways of experiencing the world. The jhanas become more concentration-like the more we pay attention to the specifics, steadiness, sense of continuity, and positive mental qualities that strong attention generates. The jhanas become more insight-like the more we pay attention to the three characteristics of whatever arises.

To differentiate these two general flavors of the jhanas, I will here call them the shamatha jhanas, or “concentration states”, when those states are more seemingly stable, peaceful, pleasant, etc., and call them vipassana jhanas or “insight stages” when discussing those that are more three characteristics–heavy.

As stated in Part One, insight practices are designed to penetrate the three illusions of permanence, satisfactoriness, and separate self, that is, to realize the truths of impermanence, dissatisfactoriness, and non-self to attain the various irreversible perceptual transformations that are in this tradition referred to as “awakening”.

One of the factors that add to the confusion is that the concentration state terminology (jhanas) is used in the Pali canon to describe both the progressively more advanced concentration states and the progress of insight, with little disambiguation. This was solved to some degree about one to three hundred years after the earliest texts in the Pali canon were written down when the stages of insight were articulated in the Abhidhamma and commentaries to the canonical texts, but the original problem was not explicitly mentioned. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that the problem was sorted out to some degree by Burmese scholar-monks, particularly Sayadaw U Pandita. Bill Hamilton and some of those whom he influenced, such as Kenneth Folk and myself, have developed this more in the last twenty years or so, such that we now have a robust, rich, phenomenological lexicon detailing clearly and deeply what came before.

First, just as a video camera that is shaking wildly cannot produce a clearly visible video, so a mind that can't remain settled on an object will not clearly perceive its ultimate truth.

Second, as concentration states cultivate deep clarity and stability on content, albeit very refined content, they are very useful for promoting deep healing and psychological insights. In other words, if you want to become aware of your stuff, do concentration practices, particularly with a focus on mental objects such as mantras rather than physical ones such as the breath, not that breath-based meditations can't also bring up our psychological issues.

Third, concentration states can be a welcome and valid vacation from stress, providing periods of profound relaxation and peace that can be an extremely important part o...

Fourth, concentration practices can help insight practitioners maintain powerful mental stability as old habitual concepts about themselves and all existence are dismantled and razed by insight practice. However, if these concentration states end up blocking our ability to gain insight, by solidifying a sense of self, or creating aversion to experience suffering clearly, then they can become a significant and dangerously lofty kind of hindrance. Pleasurable hindrances that come from spiritual practice are traditionally referred to as “golden chains”.

I will start with a basic description of each of the jhanas in their more generic aspects, identifying their essential characteristics so that they can be recognized regardless of the type of meditation being done. I realize that some practitioners are not going to like my descriptions, as they have come to think of these things some other way. Please hear me out and hopefully you will see why this system has its uses.

The first jhana in its fundamental aspect is about the application of effort, the beginnings of phenomena, and the center of attention. You direct your attention to any of the six sense doors, and when you do this you perceive an object of meditation arising where you looked for it.

This is a formal list of its flaws: it requires effort, it can easily revert to pre-jhanic attention modes, and it is relatively narrow, being just about the object of attention (rather than things like the space the object occupies, the background sensations, and the sensations that seem to form the sense of “subject”). However, it beats the pants off the mode of attention that preceded it.

The second jhana is an improvement over the first in that significantly less effort is required to keep the attention on the meditation object, and clarity is increased.

The increased ease of staying with the object of meditation and the general increase in clarity of the broad middle of each object's occurrence make this stage much more enjoyable than the first jhana and, in terms of rich enjoyment, tends to be the best of the first four. The later jhanas have other redeeming qualities but, at least in terms of fun and pleasure, the second jhana is generally the best of the standard eight (extended, compounded, and unusual jhanas excepted).

The third jhana is significantly different from the first and second in many ways, and is probably the most important jhana to understand, since it basically turns everything you think about meditation and progress on its head, thus causing endless confusion and frustration for meditators who don't know what it is about and what to look for, and even for plenty who do. From a certain perspective, understanding the third jhana is the key to mastery, whether that mastery is of concentration practice, insight practice, or a fusion of the two.

The party is in the periphery of attention, those areas around the center of attention, but we may tend to think of “good attention” as being “one-pointed”, “tightly focused”, and the like. Because that way of working served us so well in the first two jhanas, and because we generally are woefully underdeveloped at paying attention as broadly as the third jhana demands, most people have a lot of work to do to learn how to get what the third jhana is about, either phenomenologically or conceptually. I have often wondered if many hours of watching a screen rather than walking in forests listening to and watching what is all around us might contribute attentional conditioning that makes the first two jhanas easier and the later two harder.

For those of you who read and practice from John Yates aka Culadasa's material, the first two jhanas teach you a lot about what he terms “attention”, the third jhana teaches you a lot about what he terms “awareness”, and the fourth jhana teaches you how to combine these together in a balanced and complete way.

The third jhana in its more shamatha form is marked by a pervasive, restful, deeper, more open, easier, and calmer bliss than the second, like being submerged in a pleasantly cool pool at twilight.

As stated earlier, the fourth jhana is where everything coalesces. The ability to clearly perceive the center of attention is combined with the ability to perceive the periphery of attention, and then a volumetric or spacious element is filled out in a way that it wasn't before and, more than that, an integrative element as well as a very direct element.

The hallmark of the fourth jhana is equanimity, though certain emphases in practice may not play up this quality as strongly as in others, and when equanimity really develops, it may not be all that noticeable. Bliss, rapture, happiness, as well as pain and strange occurrences may all stand out in the earlier stages, but equanimity may just feel normal and undramatic, making it subtle at times, or so unremarkable that people may miss it. It is generally described as having a neutral feeling tone (vedana), though paradoxically there can be something really nice about the flavor and tone of that neutrality. Why is it that very pure water can taste great even though it has no obvious taste at all? That is the sort of pleasant neutrality that we find in the fourth jhana.

Mentally created images and colors are great for practicing concentration, as they provide you such immediate and obvious feedback on how you are doing, like having your own extremely clear and automatic jhana meter. If concentration flags even a little bit, you can see it in the faltering of the image, and if concentration gets stronger, the image stabilizes within seconds. This rapid and well-defined reinforcement can really help develop strong concentration much faster than most other objects.

Notice that if we are spinning lost in thought, decent concentration is basically impossible. If you wish to attain this, I would try to stay as completely as possible with a chosen meditation object for perhaps one minute. When you can do this, try for ten minutes. When you can do this, try for an hour. For instance, if you were using the breath as an object, try to be aware of every single breath at least in part for a full ten minutes, and then for an hour. This is possible, and a reasonable goal. Try not to pay too much attention to the individual sensations themselves, but conceptualize the breath as a coherent and continuous entity, with many different types of sensations all being thought of as being the breath.