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

by Daniel M. Ingram

Continuity of practice is very important for cultivating jhanas. The more consistent and consecutive practice you do, the better. Concentration states are much easier to get into on retreat or at high doses of daily-life practice. There are those who, having attained real mastery, can drop into concentration states just by a gentle inclination to do so. However, for most, concentration abilities can fade quickly off-retreat, which can be a real surprise for those who are not expecting this.

Back to the instructions: if you are using the breath as your primary meditation object, you might try purposefully visualizing it as sweet, smooth waves or circles that are peaceful and welcome. Try breathing as if you were in a garden of fragrant roses and you wish to experience the fullness of their fragrance. Perhaps these tips will help illustrate the kind of non-resistant and peaceful presence that can facilitate attaining these states. Tune in to sensations in and around the primary object that feel good. Harbor no guilt, anxiety, or fear related to the depths of pleasure, ease, and well-being. The spiritual life need not be a relentless, austere grind, particularly when doing concentration practices.

From the first jhana there are basically three things a meditator can do: 1) get stuck there (I know someone who spent some twenty years cultivating the first jhana in daily practice, thinking that was insight practice); 2) progress to the second jhana; or 3) investigate the three characteristics of the first jhana and thus progress in insight. They can direct their attention to breaking the illusion of the solidity of that state into its component individual sensations so as to gain insight into their actual mode of momentary presentation.

Again, the meditator also has the option to: 1) get stuck here; 2) go on to the third jhana; or 3) investigate this state and begin the progress of insight, paying careful attention to completely deconstructing the state into its moment-to-moment components, as with the first jhana.

Again, from this state, meditators have a few options. They can: 1) get stuck; 2) move on to the fourth jhana; or 3) investigate this state and begin the progress of insight. This would require careful attention to make sure that all the specific sensations that make up peace, equanimity, subtle bliss, and spaciousness are clearly observed to arise and pass, not satisfy, and not be self or the property of self.

This state is remarkable in its simple spaciousness and acceptance. The extreme degree of imperturbability would be astounding if there were not such pronounced imperturbability. This is by far the most restful of the first four jhanas.

Just to drive this point home, an important feature of concentration practices is that they are not liberating in and of themselves. Even the highest of these states ends. The afterglow from them does not last long. Regular life and reality might even seem like an assault when that afterglow has worn off.

For those using something like a candle or plate, place the chosen kasina object about four to five feet (about 1 to 1.6 meters) in front of you and slightly below eye level such that your gaze rests on it easily. Make sure the background setting of your image is something boring, plain, and neutral so that distracting images are not introduced. Sit comfortably and at ease with a posture that is upright and aligned, but not tense or rigid. Comfort is moderately important, as pain can be very distracting initially. I personally also like lying on a couch or on a bed and staring at an overhead light. If you try a strong light source, like a lightbulb, then having something that you can flop down over your eyes once you have stared at the kasina object will help block the light coming through your eyelids and allow a greater appreciation of the fine details of internally generated images. Fine details happen to be important in this practice.

Stare at the kasina with relaxed eyes and facial muscles until you feel a shift in which the color starts to bleed around the edges of the kasina if you shift your eyes, or when you notice some visual distortion. This might take from thirty seconds to a minute or two. Then close your eyes and fix on the visual purple after-image (a general term, which doesn't imply the image will necessarily be purple, but that it will be the complementary color of the object which, if the object is yellow, will be purple), and pay attention to this to the exclusion of everything else, if possible. So, if the external kasina object is bright, the initial visual purple after-image will be dark, and if the kasina is dark, the after-image will be light. The visual purple image may wander, spin off to the side, morph, flicker, or fade, but don't worry about that initially, just keep your attention on it, tracking exactly what it does with a high degree of interest in the fine specifics of every little movement, change, and wiggle.

There is considerable evidence that the lack of this information in insight traditions that don't consult the maps has been one of the primary obstacles to progress.

Each stage is marked by very specific increases in our perceptual abilities. The basic areas we can improve in are: clarity, precision, speed, consistency, inclusiveness, and acceptance. These improvements in our perceptual abilities are the hallmarks of each stage and the gold standard by which they are defined and known. Each stage also tends to bring up mental and physical raptures (unusual manifestations). These are predictable at each stage and sometimes very unique to each stage. They are secondary to the increase in perceptual thresholds by which we may judge whether we are at a specific stage.

So, we sit down (or lie down, stand, walk) and begin to perceive every sensation clearly as it is. When we gain enough concentration to steady the mind on the object of meditation, something called “access concentration”, we may enter the first jhana, now called the “first vipassana jhana”, which is in some ways the same initially for both concentration practice and insight practice. However, as we have been practicing insight meditation, we are not trying to solidify this state, but rather trying to penetrate the three illusions of permanence, satisfactoriness, and self by understanding the three characteristics.

We try to sort out with mindfulness what are physical sensations and what are mental sensations, and when these are and are not present in our direct experience. We try to be clear about the actual sensations, just as they are, that make up our world. We try to directly understand the three characteristics moment to moment in whatever sensations arise, be it in a restricted area of space, such as the areas in which the sensations of breathing arise; or a moving area, as in the case of body-scanning practices; or in the whole of our world, as is done in what are generally called “choiceless awareness” practices, using some other technique or object, such as noting, or just by being alive and paying attention. Thus, this first stage has a different quality to it from that of concentration practice, and we attain direct and clear perception of the first knowledge of Mind and Body.

Combining these two pieces of important advice, Resolve Thus: I have recently crossed the A&P and I know this by the many directly experienced signs of that stage. Now I am feeling highly reactive and negative about things that I ordinarily can handle with more balance and clarity. I know that much of this is due to the inevitable stages that tend to highlight and exaggerate suffering that follow the A&P.

I realize that I am in a less than ideal position to deal skillfully with the personal issues that are driving me crazy, since I am likely to project the suffering from the illusion of duality and the odd side effects of the Dark Night onto people and issues. I have been warned by master meditators who have successfully navigated this territory that projecting my stuff out onto phenomena is an extremely bad idea (and an even worse experience), and I have faith that those meditators know what they are talking about. Even if these issues seem very real and valid, I am likely to blow them way out of proportion and not be able to bring balance, compassion, or kindness to resolving them. By contracting into my own reactive misery and confusion, I could easily and unnecessarily hurt others and myself. Thus, I resolve to keep my darkness to myself, tell only those who are skilled in navigating Dark Night territory, or otherwise share it in a way that protects others and does not project it out onto my world and them. This way, I will spare those around me needless suffering which they do not deserve. In short, I will use the meditation map theory to keep the reins on my dark stuff and deal with it in ways that are known to help rather than harm. I will make time for insight practices and retreats during which I will simply see the true nature of the sensations of whatever arises, however difficult, painful, extreme, or compelling, and not indulge in the spin cycle of ruminating o...

The Dark Night is like that for most people who go through it. They started meditation to gain relief (or just paid enough attention to their ordinary daily life to cross the A&P), hit the Dark Night, and are now like a pregnant woman who doesn't know what pregnancy is or what caused it. That same exact situation is what is happening globally with the A&P to Dark Night cycle, which is a strangely common part of human attentional development. How many people have crossed the A&P and entered Dark Night territory? I have no idea, but I do know that the number is vastly higher than what most people would think, as most people have never even heard of this basic, human progression of cultivated attention and its accompanying side effects. In the circles in which I run, the percentage is high. If you are reading this book, then it is likely to have happened for you, as reading a book like this and getting this far into it is the sort of thing that people above the A&P are much more prone to do.

I rarely pull out the physician card in this meditation business, but I am pulling it now and throwing it down hard on the table. As a physician and trained scientist, I know as undeniable fact that the cycles of insight are an innate part of human development, occur on a broad scale, and cause profound physiological and psychological effects in significant numbers of people. I have seen it hundreds of times in others and experienced it many, many times myself. I also know for certain that meditative practices and map theory can help those in these stages. One day it will be part of standard psychological and medical curricula. Until then, needless, blind, un-contextualized suffering and chaos continue. How many people have been diagnosed with having bipolar II rapid cycling when they are just going through the A&P to Dark Night cycle I have no idea, but it has happened to a few friends of mine who, later, suddenly were fine when they got further along in their practice.

I highly recommend noting practice. It may seem like backsliding to those of us who abandoned noting during the glory of the A&P when our minds were way too fast to formally note all we could perceive, but the spiritual path is not a linear one. In the face of Dissolution and the stages that follow, noting practice can be very useful and powerful. Additional notes to add at this point include things such as, “vague”, “dissolving”, “vanishing”, or Shinzen Young's famous “gone” for when things disappear again and again in Dissolution. Speaking of Shinzen, definitely check out his The Science of Enlightenment, as well as his videos and other resources, such as Five Ways to Know Yourself.

Strangely, some may find the openness, ease, and spaciousness of Equanimity disconcerting, disorienting, or ungrounding, particularly if they have spent a lot of time being in significantly more contracted modes of being. This may cause some to then retreat into those more contracted modes, such as the Dark Night, as that sort of familiar discomfort may actually be more comfortable to them in some strange way than the ease and openness of Equanimity until they get used to it. Milan Kundera's book title The Unbearable Lightness of Being sums up well this surprising but understandable phenomenon.

Fruition (phala in Pali) is the fruit of all the meditator's hard work, the first attainment of ultimate reality, emptiness, nirvana, nibbana, ultimate potential, or whatever extrapolative and relatively inaccurate name you wish to call something utterly non-sensate. In this non-state, there is absolutely no time, no space, no reference point, no experience, no mind, no consciousness, no awareness, no background, no foreground, no nothingness, no somethingness, no body, no this, no that, no unity, no duality, and no anything else. “Reality” stops cold and then reappears.

The initial aftershocks following the first time this happens at stream entry (or the first time it happens at the beginning of a higher level of awakening), however, can go on for days, and may be mild or spectacular, fun or unsettling, or some mixture of these. There are times when it is fun to show off, and this is one of those times. (Particularly mature? No. Honest? Yes.) Aftershocks I have noticed after paths include but are not limited to: the brief visceral feeling that sensory reality is so intense that the nerves in the forehead and upper neck may not be able to handle the strain; the feeling that new brain pathways are now being infused with vibrant life they lacked before, as if new nerve channels are tingling into life; the feeling that we have become diffused into the atmosphere without a center, purpose, function, sense of direction, or even will; a feeling of joy and gratitude bursting through our being beyond our usual sense of appreciation; the sense of having at long last discovered what we most needed;

the profound sense of coming home, a quiet awe like the stillness after a great storm; rapturous transcendent highs that make anything that happened after the A&P seem like dry toast; the profound feeling that something pressed a reset button on reality, causing it to reboot as new, clean, clear, bright, pristine, and fresh.

Just after the attainment of a path, particularly the first path, is a time when formal resolutions have an outrageous amount of power. The Buddha said that the greatest of all powers is to understand and then teach the dharma, meaning to attain full realization, however you define it, and then to help others do the same. I had been advised to use this unique period in my practice well, and I resolved to attain this awakening for the benefit of all beings as quickly as was reasonably possible. Despite all the complex consequences of having done so, I do not regret my decision in the least and highly recommend that you do the same.

Insight practice is all about understanding the three characteristics to such a depth that we may see beyond the three illusions and enter ultimate reality through one of the three doors, which is a metaphorical way of describing the few moments before a Fruition. Stages twelve through fourteen and subsequent attainments of Fruition at that level of awakening present a radical and complete understanding of the three characteristics at the level of formations, that is, at the level of the whole sensate universe, lasting three or four moments of one-tenth to a quarter of a second each. As unpalatable as the three characteristics can seem, in the end they are the source and substance of our complete salvation.

The strength of our concentration practice and the recent continuity of practice will also help determine how clear these experiences are. I had to go through them hundreds of times with an eye to exactly how they presented before I could write a chapter such as this one. Plenty of people have failed to notice the previous sentence and thought that they would likely have similarly clear experiences. When I say that I had to go through them hundreds of times to compile this list, with only a small fraction of those yielding the nuggets of dharma goodness that I serve up below, I mean it. Do not expect that you will necessarily be able to notice all of these with this degree of clarity any time soon or perhaps ever. I must reluctantly admit that fine phenomenology expressed in clear writing seems to be a particular talent of mine, and it turns out that this is not that common even among excellent, learned, disciplined, talented, and awakened practitioners.

More specifically, the impermanence door aspect has to do with mind-moments (the particle model), arising and passing, vibrations, understanding that from which all arises and that to which all returns, understanding the “source” of all reality, the universe strobing in and out of existence, and so on. When the Tibetans talk of the lack of a substantial way of existing or lack of an unchanging mode of being, they refer to the fact that all experience is utterly transient (the wave model) and thus abides or exists not at all but is constantly in absolute flux and ephemeral.

There are all sorts of pitfalls that can occur, but perhaps the most significant is calling experiences “Fruition”, “stream entry”, “nibbana” or “nirvana”, or the next stage of awakening that simply were not those. It is a mistake that we are all likely to make more than once if we practice well, know these models, and care about them in the least, and even awakened beings with years of practice will sometimes wonder, “Was that Fruition?” or “Was that the next stage of awakening?” Some of us, such as myself, will be particularly prone to blowing this on a regular basis even if we are well along the path to awakening. Take heart, failure can be a great teacher.

As mentioned earlier, insight stage four, Arising and Passing Away, particularly the Arising and Passing Away Event itself (the peak of the A&P, again something not everyone who crosses the A&P will notice distinctly), is a pernicious trickster and has fooled countless practitioners throughout the ages into thinking it was Fruition or the attainment of a path. This may even fool accomplished meditators who are working on the next path.

Below are some basic guidelines that may be used when trying to honestly answer the question, “Was that a Fruition?”

Specifically regarding Fruition, there are stream enterers who know they had a Fruition and got stream entry, and those who don't know that they attained a Fruition and don't know they got stream entry. There are stream enterers who can get repeat Fruitions and those who won't have another one until second path, and this may change with various paths later. There are stream enterers who can get repeat Fruitions easily, even during ordinary daily activities, and those who can only get them under special circumstances, such as when on retreat or practicing formal meditation.

Thus, if someone is awakened, I brazenly assert they cycle like this, but that doesn't mean they are aware that they do, and if their practice unfolded gently or slowly or without very intense concentration and a map-oriented focus, they may have no idea about most of the things I am discussing here, and yet these things still apply to them. Just because a pattern is occurring doesn't mean everyone will notice it. I poured massive amounts of energy into practice, developed very strong concentration, and care incredibly much about the maps, but that doesn't mean that others who are awakened did or do. Anyway, back to describing the stages…

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 dedication to step to that level yet, or perhaps you will beat the odds and just be with what is happening, settle in to your experience, and nail it.

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.2

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.

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.

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.

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.

So ended an interesting saga, but the end result, at least from my point of view, has led to four conclusions: 1) Beware of the limited emotional range models! 2) 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. 3) Be careful with claims of having done something final before really giving reality time to show you what subtleties and complexities remain. 4) 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.

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.

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.)

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.

Definitely check out the remarkable book Great Disciples of the Buddha, Their Lives, Their Works, Their Legacy, by Nyanaponika Thera and Hellmuth Hecker, edited by Bhikkhu Bodhi.

See Pointing Out the Great Way, a remarkable book on mahamudra, by Daniel P. Brown, footnote 47.

There are many sources, such as A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, both by Jack Kornfield, that treat these topics much better than I do in what follows—but hopefully some of these simple points will be of use.

I have many friends on the spiritual path who seem to be doing work that I associate with integration when they don't yet have any fundamental insights to integrate. This seems to be a very strange way to go, if you ask me. They seem to be working on their stuff without the clarity and perspective that come from realizations into the truth of our sensate experience. Go get awakened! Become a stream enterer at the very least and preferably an arahant.

When doing insight practices, it is useful to accept a few things. We should accept that no fixed, unchanging body exists, nor does such a mind exist, nor are there natural boundaries inherent in sensations. There are sensations that arise and pass quickly, do not satisfy, and are without an owner or controller self—without intrinsic identity—meaning that they are empty or devoid of any absolute, unchanging, static, or fixed way of being. It is not all that useful to get overly concerned with what these sensations are or why they arise. We can investigate experience diligently using these testable truths.

It is not uncommon for people who get deeply into practice to encounter two issues: 1) it is difficult to learn to go easily between one way of being to another, from one conceptual framework to another; and 2) that practice and “the world” seem to be in direct conflict.

Have you ever wondered at the staggering aesthetic beauty of many monasteries, thangkas, rituals, gestures, mantras, and the accouterments that adorn spiritual traditions that contain realized masters? The causes are many, but one is that, for those with deep wisdom, there is nothing blocking that creativity anymore, nothing else to work on but truth and beauty, as the bohemians put it, nothing else but the specifics to optimize. Attain to realization. Optimize reality from that vantageless vantage point. You will be happy you did.

Causality unfolds. To quote a song from the classic movie Casablanca, “The fundamental things apply as time goes by.” Go and read some extensive book on integration and tell me if it basically said the same thing while using a whole lot more words to do so. Still, such books can be helpful.

The key point here: once you have seen through the three illusions by your own clear practice, don't neglect the first two trainings, as they continue to provide a great foundation for the rest of the optimization that is the natural flowering of realization.