Buddha’s Map

The jhanas are the Buddha’s map of how the mind-heart unfolds from quiet joy to the edge of enlightenment. Each stage includes and transcends its predecessors. This talk describes how to recognize and work this map and beyond.

Transcript

A single letter, A single letter can convey a little bit of meaning. Not a lot, It can convey a little bit. You take a bunch of letters and you put them together in a word and they can convey a whole, Much vastly wider range of meaning and subtlety. So we could say that words transcend letters in the sense that they have this ability to convey a much larger range of complexity and nuance. We could also say that words are more important than letters, But we'd be wrong. Without letters there are no words and I'm sure all of you had the experience at some time of typing on a computer where one key doesn't work and how frustrating it is to have just one letter taken out. Philosopher Ken Wilber describes the relationship between letters and words using the phrase transcend and include. So that words transcend letters not by disdaining them but by incorporating them into a larger synthesis. Where's he going? Another way to describe this relationship is with the word holon. Any of you familiar with the word holon? In 1967, Arthur Kossler published this book. It was called The Ghost in the Machine in which he coined the word holon and he defined it as anything which is a whole unto itself and at the same time as part of a larger whole, Like a letter is a whole unto itself and part of a larger whole a word. And holon became the root for the word holarchy, Which is a string of holons. Letter is part of a word, Word is part of a sentence, A sentence is part of a paragraph, A paragraph is part of a chapter, A chapter is part of a book, A book is part of a library. So there's a string of nested holons. A cell in your body is a whole unto itself and is part of a tissue which is a whole unto itself which is part of an organ which is part of you, It's part of a sangha, It's part of a society, It's part of life on earth. Subatomic particle is part of a particle which is part of an atom which is part of a molecule which is part of a rock which is part of the earth which is part of the galaxy which is part of the universe. So the holarchies really describe a lot of the underlying structure of the universe. Holarchies and hierarchies both have little guys and big guys but in a hierarchy, Like a military command structure in a hierarchy, The guys up higher are more important and tend to dominate. In a tightly controlled business, You know, The bosses up on top have more power, Set the salaries higher and fire, Make the rules, Etc. , Etc. , Etc. Holarchies are different in that in a holarchy each strata is dependent on all the others. They're not the same at all but they are mutually interdependent. So while a hierarchy may describe power relationships in an organization, The underlying dynamics are really one of a holarchy, Even in the army, You know. A general without troops is not a general. He's just some guy standing out in the field giving orders to trees that aren't listening to him. An army without platoons is just an idea. Platoons without soldiers is not real. So the universe is constructed of these holarchies. A boss in a business is only a boss if he has people to boss around, Or she. Abilities, Whoa, I just… I didn't realize that was so much more important than everything else I said. Our abilities actually mature in holarchies. So we have to crawl before we can stand, We have to stand before we can walk, You have to walk before you can run, You have to run before you can leap. So, Somebody want to give just another example or two of holarchies? What's another example of a holarchy? How so? Well, An onion is part of the earth, And the earth is part of, Or maybe I have to go in the other direction. Well, I think you're fine. So an onion, You know, Is part of the plant kingdom, The plant kingdom is part of life on earth. It sustains people, And then they sustain and produce new people, And then they have more energy so they can build things. Okay, Good, Good. Another example? Yes, Okay, Good, Good. So, Tonight I'd like to talk about a spiritual holarchy called Ajānas. And I've got diagrams of the holarchies here. Ajāna is a stage of meditative knowledge. There should be a front and, So you may have, If you've got one that's a blank on one side, You've probably got the original, Which is fine. Or maybe just in print, But we'll give you another one. So, The Buddha described Ajāna as a stage of meditative knowledge. And the meditative here just means that the knowledge is gained through direct experience. It's not something to think of, But something you've directly experienced. And the jānas together are a holarchy that describe how the mind unfolds naturally from fragmentation into a holistically integrated enlightened awareness. Then together the jānas form a holarchy. Each jāna, Is it an extra one? Thank you. Anybody that not have? Okay. So, Each jāna is a whole unto itself and each jāna is actually enveloped in a larger whole in the next jāna. So, As we move up from jāna to jāna, We're not actually moving. It's not like moving up an elevator through floors of a building where each stage transcends and ignores and obliterates the ones below it. Each jāna becomes the building material basically for the next stage. So, They are mutually interdependent. So what it means, If you skip a jāna, You can only go so far because there's something essential that's missing there. But don't worry about it because what happens is you practice and stuff will just come back and pick up what you skipped over and integrated in and move on. So you all have done really well here. It's been such a delight to watch things unfold. And in many cases it sort of looks like an accelerating pace from where I sit. And your practices have been very different in lots of ways so they unfold differently. But tonight what I'd like to do is just walk us through all of the jānas just so you have a sense of what that is. If you want to move up through the jānas, Let me just emphasize this, If you want to move up through the jānas, Paradoxically, The most effective way to do that is just to be where you are. Because it becomes a building block, You know, With the next one. So imagine if you were developmentally at the stage where you had just learned to stand. Then to think about leaping would seem like just incredibly far out and weird and almost impossible. I mean you just got yourself upright and leaping just seems like you could never do that. But if you just stand where you are, You know, Pretty soon you get used to that and you can slide your feet around a little bit and then you're sort of moving and walking a little bit and walking a little bit faster and then as you get used to walking fast you run and as you run, You know, Both feet are off the ground for a little bit and then leaping is like nothing. But if you try to leap when all you know how to do is stand, It would probably be kind of painful. So the first jāna is, The predominant characteristic is joy and from the first jāna neither perception nor non-perception just sounds like bizarre and something that's for special spiritual holy types and nothing that I can relate to at all. But if you just be with that joy of that, It settles into a kind of a more peaceful happiness and settles into an equanimity and as the equanimity gets larger it becomes more expansive and goes into a spaciousness and as it gets more spacious consciousness begins to thin out and as it begins to thin out the mind goes into, Just naturally slides into a deeper peacefulness and that deeper peacefulness as it goes down further, You know, People will come in and say, You know, I can't quite tell where I am anymore, I think I've lost the practice. And I say, Well how's your mind? It feels very clear, I just can't tell where I am. That's neither perception nor non-perception. So the stuff just really opens up. So I want to walk you through the jānas not because I want to give you some task or some goal or something else to grasp for. Most of us are pretty good at finding things to grasp for already, Except for yins. But as a way of encouraging you to just be where you are and at the same time, You know, Be open to other possibilities that may be sort of right in front of you that you maybe hadn't quite imagined before. There are a few themes that run through all the jānas. So let's just mention a few of those. Somebody want to describe what one of the themes is that develops through all the jānas? Equanimity. Equanimity. Yes, So one of the themes in jāna is that there is an increasing equanimity. Awareness gets subtler and subtler and in a sense quieter. Spaciousness, Up to a certain point actually. They get quite spacious and then as consciousness begins to close down there is this sense of, We'll go through that in more detail. Collectiveness. Yeah, Yeah. Samadhi. Confidence. Yes. Mindfulness. Sense of self tends to decrease. And there is also, I mean this is subtler, But you'll see this, There can also be this kind of growing sense of being part of something larger than you are. So all of us are in different places with the jānas and that's really natural. In fact, If we were all in the same place in all the jānas that would be really kind of weird. I mean if you think about it, It would be like we were a cult, You know, Trying to cram everybody into the same box so we all look alike. So it's quite natural for us to be in very different places. And there's a lot of reasons for that. You know, One of the more obvious ones is that some of you have been at this longer. Also the pace at which these unfold are different for each of us. All of us have places, There are jānas that you'll just kind of slide through really quickly and other ones where you just get stuck. Everybody gets stuck some place except for me. I get stuck in all of them. Yeah, I just, You know, I'd come in and I'd say, I just figured out a new way to fall off the horse. And they'd say, Yeah, Wait, No, No, Okay, What is it this time? So I also have to say, You know, That as I started teaching in this style and started doing these interviews, It's really very touching to see all the different ways that the jānas express themselves. Because, You know, As I started teaching, I was deeply, Deeply familiar with how they manifested for me. And then, You know, Somebody else would come in with a whole kind of different way they show up. And it's really very moving, Really very moving for me. So as we go along through these, Some of it has to do with personality. So, If you just look at the first jāna, You know, There are some people come in and when the joy comes up at the first jāna, You know, It's like they're on a Roman candle or something. It's like, Wow, Wow, You know. And other people come in and, You know, And you look and they sort of quietly glow and say, How are you doing? Oh, I feel pretty good. You know, And that's about it. But, You know, If you push out a little of it, You can see it's really there. It's just a much, Much quieter expression. And as we get up talking about some of the jānas, Keep asking me that and, You know, Yeah, We can talk about others. So I was trying to decide, Would you like to hear what the jānas sound like in the sūtas? Everybody but Erika wants to hear. So I'll just read you a little bit of text. And I think from this, If there's any lesson to take from this, It sounds much more complicated than it really is. And then we'll unpack what they really look like in real life. So this is, If you want to look at a little sūta that just describes the jānas in and of itself, Just remember 111. The Majjhima-gāyā 111 has a really succinct, Full but terse description of them. So starting at verse 3, Here, Quite secluded from sensual pleasures. How do you seclude from sensual pleasures, Sensual stimulus? Pardon? Close your eyes? Yep. Go into a quiet place. Pardon? Being a kuti? Also another way you seclude yourself from sensual stimulus is six hours. You know, They come up and you know, And so you just relax in them. Here, Quite secluded from sensual pleasures, Secluded from unwholesome states. Six hours again. Sariputta. Sariputta was one of the buddhas, Sort of number one or number two student. Sariputta entered upon and abided in the first jhana, Which is accompanied by thinking and examining thought with joy and happiness born of seclusion. Does that make sense to you? I doubt it, Actually. So some of this is somewhat, Is a little bit technical. The word thinking here is a translation of the word vatakā. So there's lots of different kinds of thoughts and vatakā is stuff that you've all seen where you're just sitting there quietly and it feels, You know, Very still and the mind says, Oh, That's a bird. You know, There's not a lot of tension when stuff but it just labels it. Oh, This is going well. I mean, Oh, I'm glad it's going well, But sometimes it's just an objective. So the vatakā is just the mind just labeling something. Oh, And there's not a lot of tension in it and it's actually not a problem. Examining thought is a translation of the word vakāra and vakāra is a wise examining of what's going on and sometimes a decision making. So, For example, You're sitting there meditating and a little bit of a hindrance comes up and so you think, Well, Is this, You may not think at all that in words but that's all I have to communicate to you. So the mind is wondering, Is this enough of a disturbance that I should sixar it or is it quiet enough that I can just ignore it and stay with the practice? Well, The mind actually makes a decision there. So that's a thinking and examining as is the way it was translated. There's another type of thought which is called pāpancā. I just love the sound of that, Pāpancā. Pāpancā is the type of thinking where you think, Oh, This is pretty great. I'm doing really well. I wonder, I really want to tell my friend about this. They'll be so impressed or maybe they'll think I'm just being a little cocky so maybe I ought to talk a little quieter, But you know, They're always complaining about this. So it's that one where the mind just starts wandering around from thought to association, Et cetera, Et cetera, Et cetera. And pāpancā, And to me the word pāpancā sounds like wandering thought, Is problematic. And pāpancā is the type of thinking that gets thought a lot of bad press because she just wanders around all over the place. Is that a Pāli word? Yes, Yes. V-i-t-a-k-k-a and V-i-c-a-r-a. If you don't know how to practice Pāli terms, Just know that they have a whole different alphabet so the English spellings of them are all phonetic. So it's pretty easy to figure out. And the states of the first jhana, The thinking, Vṛtaka, The examining thought, Vikāra, The joy, The happiness, And the unification of mind, The contact, Feeling, Perception, Affirmations in mind, The enthusiasm, Choice, Energy, Mindfulness, Equanimity, And intentions. These states were defined by him, Sariputta, One by one as they occurred. Known to him these states arose. Known they were present. Known they disappeared. You understand why Erika didn't want to hear this? I'll read you the first one. I won't go through all of them, But I think it's useful to get a sense of how this appears in the text. So let me ask you a couple of things. Contact, Feeling, Perception, Formations in mind. Taken together what is that? The aggregates. Yeah, Those are the five aggregates. So there are some people that think that jhana is all thinking, There's a certain amount of stuff that just disappears. Well, The Buddha describes all five aggregates are there. The five aggregates, As I hope you know now, Describe everything that we can experience. And they're all there in the first jhana. In fact, They're there in all the jhanas up through the seventh. So it's not just this deep quiet. These states were defined by him one by one as they occurred, Defined as a difficult translation. These states were noticed by him one by one as they occurred. Known to him they arose. Known to him they were present. Known to him they disappear. So you notice he's watching, Sariputta's watching this stuff come and go. And as you know from dependent origination, Actually being able to see things arise and pass is really critical in the development of wisdom and development of all this. He understood thus, So indeed these states not having been come into being, Having been they vanish. Regarding those states he abided, Unattached, Unrepel, Independent, Detached, Free, And with a mind rid of barriers. Okay so there's not identification, Etc. , Going on. Pardon? Yes, And so again, Yeah, It is dissociated. And the person who was doing the translation probably didn't have a deep understanding of the modern psychological use of dissociated. So it's not dissociated in the sense of, You know, Of neurotic or multiple personality or something. It's in the sense of not identified with it. So de-identified is probably a better word. Okay, Is that enough of the text? Okay. Is that the whole thing? For the first jhana? Yeah, Yeah. So it's sparse. It's sparse. And it takes… It's pretty dense, It's pretty rich. Yeah, It's pretty rich. There are some other ones, And actually in Buddha's map at the end of each chapter, The chapter on each jhana, I give a couple of passages. And there are some other places that actually give some metaphors and stuff that are sweeter, But they're still hard to go through. So what happens… Thinking and examining thought with joy and happiness born of seclusion. So they arise out of seclusion. So the marker of the first jhana is basically you're sitting there and you're meditating and things are going along. And then there's sometimes this little spike of joy. As I was saying earlier, You know, Sometimes it can be really massive and sometimes it just bloop. And it doesn't feel like anything you've actually done. You're just sitting there and it arises and says, Whoa, This is sweet. So is this familiar? It is. As I'm looking around, I don't think there's anybody here that I see or who hasn't, That I have seen that in your practice. Okay. So it's just a… whoa, That's nice. And then what happens is the joy has got a lot of energy to it. It's got a little bit of zip. So it won't last very long. The energy starts to burn out and it quiets down. And to me it always felt like the joy kind of spreads out, It becomes a little quieter. And the word for that is sukha, Happiness. And then it quiets out even more and becomes equanimity. Equanimity has very little energy. So at this stage, Pretty soon the mind loses track of it because there's enough to draw attention. And that's the first jhana. That's about it. So what happens next is as you keep practicing and these little spikes come up, But they don't fade quite as quickly. They start spreading out and lasting a little longer. And as they start lasting a little longer, There's oftentimes a sense that, Oh, My meditation is changing a little bit. This is actually working. There's kind of first-hand experience of seeing, Perhaps subtly, But something is really happening here. And what that does is it tends to give a little bit more confidence. You know, This is really happening. This is working. Also what happens is that the mind is starting to quiet down a little bit. And I think I've talked about it out loud here at times. One of the things that will happen is that at first you know you're sending out the joy, Using the phrases. And as it spreads out and the equanimity and the happiness get a little stronger, The effort to go back and create a phrase feels a little clunky because at this point the metta, The peacefulness, Is actually flowing pretty easily. So we use the phrases in the beginning to kind of prime the pump and get it going, But at some point the pump is just working this, So you don't need it as much. And so the instruction center just go ahead and drop the phrases. And again there are personality differences here. Sometimes people will, They're a little worried that if they're not using the phrases the practice may disappear on them, So they won't hang on to them. Other people are really glad to finally get rid of that. It's all fine. It's all fine. Anything else about the second jhana people want to add? One of the phrases that appears in describing the second jhana is the phrase noble silence. This is this quieting. What it feels like, It's not that the mind actually goes quiet, But it feels like the volume control was like cut in half. So it's still thinking and all kinds of stuff going on there, But they're just not, The trombones are not up at the front of the parade anymore. There's just not as much banging. It quiets down like that. And as many of you know noble silence is used more popularly in the culture to refer to not speaking during a retreat, Which is another use of the term. I almost caught myself saying it. I was just realizing at the moment, I was saying that's actually a misunderstanding of the term, But it's actually, I don't hold a franchise on the term. You know the term means what it is, But what it actually is referring to here is this quieting rather than a communal practice. Okay, So the next thing that happens, And this is the fun one, The one I'm doing interviews, Is rather than this whole spike of joy and happiness and equanimity is the mind actually just goes right into the equanimity. And so the joy doesn't come up so much. And so, And I can see it often times when people come in for interviews, They come in and they sit down. So how's it going? Okay, But the joy is gone. Is there any problems? Not particularly, Not really. I stepped on a nail. It'll grow back. No problems, But the joy is gone. I think I've lost the practice. And what's happened of course is the practice is really deepening, But they equated it with the joy. And as I said, The joy has got a lot of energy, So that'll, You know, Will just run itself out and they're left with this peaceful equanimity, Which doesn't have much you can grasp hold of. Not much you can, It's just quiet. It's just quiet. Do you know my poem about the duck? You must hear it. Okay. There's some people that have heard it 1400 times. Some people haven't heard it at all. Yes, Yes, I know. I have my instructions from you all. This is my, I think my favorite poem of all times and it's about equanimity. When I was serving as a minister, I used to preach on this poem probably once a year. I just love it. It was written by Donald C. Babcock and it first appeared in the New Yorker in October of 1947, Which I figure was about the time that I was conceived. So that's my personal relationship to it. Now we're ready to look at something pretty special. It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf. No, It isn't a gull. A gull always has this raucous touch about him. This is some sort of duck and he cuddles in the swells. He isn't cold and he is thinking things over. There's a big heaving in the Atlantic and he is part of it. He looks a bit like a mandarin or the Lord Buddha meditating under the bow tree but he is hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, However, Which is what philosophers must have. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves because he rests in the Atlantic. Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is and neither do you. But he realizes it. And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it. He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity which it is. That is religion and the duck has it. He has made himself part of the boundless by easing himself into it just where it touches him. I like the little duck. He doesn't know much but he has religion. So that's equanimity. And the important thing to get about equanimity is that the ocean continues to heave. You know we often times think of equanimity as a placid lake at midnight without a ripple. That's actually tranquility. But in equanimity there is a lot going on but we just allow ourselves to rest in it. So there is a kind of stability that comes not by quieting things down but by just easing ourselves into whatever our experience is just where it touches us and just rest in it. And if the waves are bouncy, You know, You bounce along with them but you are just resting them. So this third jhana is sometimes called rupa-apekka. Upeka means equanimity and rupa means body. So it's equanimity with body. And then what happens next is that you continue to get more peaceful and as the body gets more and more relaxed it starts sending out fewer and fewer signals. So there is not as much information there for the brain to pick up. And the way that people experience this is you'll be sitting there and it'll feel like, Oh, I don't have a hand, I don't notice my hand. And you put your awareness there and it's right there right away. So it's a hard thing to spot because anytime you think about it it's like the awareness will go there but for a little bit it's gone. Did any of you do this when you were a kid? Just sit back in a hot bathtub and just float? And you just float there waiting for your arm to disappear? And you say, Oh, It's gone, I'll wave at you. That's what the fourth jhana feels like and it's called arupa-apekka which is equanimity without a body. And it's not that your body goes off into some Dr. Strange parallel universe or that you're out there astro-traveling. It's just that the sensations in the body get so faint that they don't register much anymore. And there's another phenomenon that will happen with this is that you'll be sitting there, I used to get this a lot and I had no idea that it related to anything, But I'd be sitting there and it would feel like I'm sitting like this. And so you open your eyes and peek and actually the body is upright. Any of you experience that? So it's like your kinesthetic sense of where your body is just goes out of whack a little bit. And I think what's happening is that the signals have gone way down and so they're going into the brain but they're too weak for the brain to quite interpret correctly. So you have this subjective sense of being around all over the place. Yes? Did you not say when you started that the khandhas are present in each of the jhanas? Right. So now you're talking about arupa. Right. So did the arupa go away? That's a great question. I can tell you what the experience is and what I'm sort of pausing as I'm trying to figure out if there's a way that those actually go together or whether it's just one of those textual things. What happens is that it's called arupa because the sense of body sensations will fade but they're not actually gone. You know, They can come back. It's not like, You know, Your foot falling asleep and you can't feel anything. So all of the sensory equipment is still operating. It just doesn't process the same. You feel the wind. Pardon? The wind. You wouldn't feel that. Right. Right. Yeah. And so like I was saying the other night, I mean you can be, Well not in the eighth but in the seventh, Let's say, You know, In a door slant. And they actually feel it as a sound wave that goes through and then it fades. So it's, You don't want to take these literal, You know, So they're actually not absolute. It's like compared to normal. The body is far away. The other way that people experience this is they may hear a sound and it just seems far away. I was meditating on a retreat up about 8, 000 feet in the Sierras in this wild house, Lovely house. And we were about a half a mile from the pass and the road came by right past the house and so as the trucks came over the pass, You know, They would down gear and they would have this, You know, Trucks on flatulence. It's a huge noise. And I remember the first day of the retreat I was just like really annoyed at these trucks. I just, I couldn't figure out how I was going to survive this. And then by the third or fourth day I just realized, Oh, I'm so glad those trucks aren't there anymore. And, You know, Having said that I noticed, And they were, It's just, It felt as if the sounds were like really far away. So that's part of what this means by Arrupa. So this question is going to repeat itself as we go off the line because then we get to one that says perception, Non-perception. Up through the seventh. Up through the seventh. It actually, It starts to shut down in the eighth. Isn't there a description of the fourth being like covered in fine white cloth? Yes. Wouldn't you need a body to have that experience or feel your body? It's a metaphor. So perception becomes as if you were covered by a white cloth. And so if you get too literal on that, It's actually talking about what the sensation is like if you were sitting there looking out through a white cloth. So it's like, It's not literally just feeling down your skin to find the white cloth. It's like how you would feel inside if you were to have that experience. So what this metaphor depicts is that you can see the world, But it's like partially veiled. You know, There's this white sort of scrim over it. So it's still there, But it's distant. It's not as clear. Yeah, Foggy, But it's not foggy in the sense of the mind being dull. It's also confusing that the fourth is categorized as a rubric or a ch chan. Yeah, There are different classifications of these, And the fourth is the tipping point because in the classification you're talking about there are only four jhanas. Yeah, And then something like 40. Into bases, Yeah. So there are two different ways of describing this. One there are eight jhanas, One there are four jhanas, And the fourth jhana has four substations, Not substates. And I just find it easy to talk about eight. So is it more like there is, In the third jhana there is definitely an awareness of the body, And in the fourth jhana there is just a really subtle awareness of the body. You still feel your presence as a contained self. Yeah. And with all of these it's important to understand that you're not going on an astral plane. It's not that the physiological mechanisms are being shut down. And so if you sit there, You know, In the sixth or seventh and say, Well, Do I feel my body? Well, Just that will turn the mind's attention to the body sensations, And yep, There it is. It hasn't gone away. And that, Well, I won't go there. Other comments on the fourth? So what happens in terms of the, Was there? Is bhikāra present in the fourth? Yeah. I think it's very faint, But in the fourth and all the way up there, Again up into the seventh and eighth, There is still this place that's looking at, Okay, So what's my practice here? You know, Do I six-R this? It's the best kept secret. You know, We do a lot of thinking when we're meditating. We really do. Not so much pāpāṇcā, But the mind is still engaged. Yeah, There's not so much pāpāṇcā. That's what goes away. Pāpāṇcā is the associational, Drifting around, Go here to there. But the process of labeling, The mind says, Oh, There's a bird, There's a coo, There's, And the, And the, You're always making, From time to time you're making the decisions about whether you're six-R or not and those sort of things. And that's all part of it. It's just in there. No. Vṛtaṇkā is the labeling, Vākāra is actually a wise, Relaxed decision making, And pāpāṇcā is a free association, Wandering around all over the place. So up to this point you have been sending metta to yourself for the first part of the, You know, First ten minutes or so with an out to a spiritual friend. And what we're looking for is for the equanimity to get deep and strong. And the most obvious sign of that is actually when the body sensations start to fade or there's this distorted sense of your posture, Etc. , Is usually an indication, There's lots of other ways to detect this, But it's one of the major indications that the equanimity has gotten deep enough that we can shift the practice. And so at this point what we do is ask the person to go out and pick another spiritual friend and to send metta to them until you can see them smiling. And once you've seen them smiling then you're actually done with them. And then you pick another spiritual friend and do it to them and another. And you do about four or five. And then when you're done with those, Then you go to neutral people. These are people who you know but not really, Maybe a shop at the same grocery store and you sort of get to know a clerk a little bit, But you don't know them very much, You don't have much feeling one way or another, You're just kind of neutral. And so you pick out three or four neutral people and send metta to them until you can see them smile. And then, I got these in the wrong order, And then you send metta to all members of your family, One at a time, Until you can see them smile. And this, You have to remember this came out of a culture where these large extended families, You know, So when I ask people to do this, I usually say, You can include in your family, You know, Close friends of yours who are special to you in some way as your family, Until you can see them smile. Unless there is one member of the family that is just our two or three or ten that are just really, Really tough, You know, And you send it to them and you can't manage it. So you can put them aside for the moment. I got these out of order. So you do other spirits or friends, Family members, Neutral people. And then you come to, Traditionally the category is called the enemy, But these are the people that get under your skin and the sort of ornery annoying relatives, You know, Come back into this and you send metta to each one of them until you can see them smile. And sometimes people need a little extra support in this one, So some of the tricks of this are, Don't get involved in the story line, You know. This person is difficult for me because they do this and that and the other blah, Blah, Blah. Just drop the story lines, Just drop the story lines and send it to them. It can really help. And the other thing, If you really get stuck and you can't actually do it, Is to back up, Go back to a neutral person, Get the flow of metta strong and when the flow of metta is strong, Then you bring in the difficult one while you've got the fire hose going, You know, And see if it works then. Because you'll be able to feel the momentum of it. And it's just until you can see them smiling. And if you're somebody that doesn't visualize very easily, It's just a sense that they've received it. Is it okay to think then, Like as a child? Yes, That's actually a very good technique. I had a yogi who had a partner who had raped all their children and all his memories went under and when they started to emerge and their children, One of them went into therapy and was so overwhelmed by all this stuff, Committed suicide. So she was doing this practice and came to me and said, You know, I just, I just can't do it with my ex. And so I had never run into it but it was such an extreme experience. My first thought was, We'll give you a pass on this one. And then as the practice goes deeper and deeper, I mean eventually you have to deal with that memory, But as the practice gets deeper and stronger you may come back to it. But I knew her enough that I said, You know, Why don't you give it another, You know, Little amount of time because just knowing who she was, I wasn't sure but that she can do it. And my suggestion to her was just what she said. I said, Can you see him as a child? Can you see the wounded child in there? And she said, Oh yeah. And she said, Well send it to the wounded child until you get a response. And it worked. And she was a different person. I know her daughter and her mother is like, It's not that dramatic for most people, But that is another technique you can use. Okay. Any more on the fourth, Oh say, And what happens when you can get them all smiling is then the practice changes. Rather than sending it out to individuals, When you sit down to meditate, You send out metta in each of the six directions for a few minutes before, Behind, Right, Left, Above, Below. The order you do it doesn't make any difference. Just be sure you can feel it going out in each of those directions and then you send it out in all directions at once. And the practice will continue that way for a while. So what the rationale here is that, I don't know, I had a yogi who once said he just loves sending metta to everyone who deserves it. And I said, No, No, No, No, No. So the metta is really about sending it out indiscriminately to everyone. And so in this particular practice we wait until the equanimity is really deep and pretty darn strong. And this is just a check to see if it can go to all these different kinds of people. And if it can go to all these different kinds of people, Then you can send out metta to all directions, To all beings everywhere, Rather than just the ones who deserve it. Okay. Lost it. And at this point, And this is in the text from the Buddha's perspective, You become an advanced meditator. So that just gives you something to go to your head and obsess about. So what happens next is that the internal feeling starts to become more and more spacious, Particularly as the body sensations and stuff have dropped into the background and you're sending out, You know, It's like you're sitting in a bubble sending the stuff out in all directions. And the practice gets really, Really spacious. And traditionally it's called the realm of infinite space. But all it means is it just gets really spacious. And if people are having difficulty with this, Or it's not working, Sometimes what we do is just have them go sit outside, Particularly of the place where the horizon is a long way away. So it kind of simulates that feeling of spaciousness that kind of help encourage it and draw it along. Today would have been a great day to do it now, But probably not earlier because the wind was so strong and that sort of grabs all the attention. There is a particular feeling to the spaciousness that I, That when I was told I was in the fifth jhana, I recognized it from my childhood. So, You know, We used to go out and play cowboys and Indians and the deal was that when you got killed, It was fatal, Which meant you had to fall down and count to ten and then you were reborn and get up. And so, You know, I would get killed and I would drop down on the lawn, You know, Completely relaxed, Staring up at the sky. And then there's this sensation of the clouds moving away, Even though they're not actually moving. Any of you recognize that? That's a fifth jhana phenomenon. I was curious that as a kid you just, Ah, You go to the fifth jhana. So did you talk to your friends about it? Oh, Outside the, Yeah, Because I did. You know, I would sit there and my big brother Ricky would come around and I'd say, Wow, Have you ever seen this? And he'd say, You're an Indian, Get up. It's like, It had nothing to do with it, But, So I learned not to talk about it. Is that the poem of the lake, The fifth jhana? That's actually more the eighth. Okay. But I have so many for the, No, I'll save it for the eighth, Actually. I have another question in the transition, Or the moving from the fourth to the fifth. One of the elements of the fourth is the lack of sensation in body parts. That doesn't necessarily carry through, Does it? Yeah, It does. And so, I mean, You might find it in the fifth, But it's not necessary that that happens to you every time you sit. So the reality is, Is that, Is that when you're sitting, Is you go in and out of the jhanas a lot. And, And so it's like technically what it means to be in a jhana. Technically it's when you're in that state. But we talk about it a little more loosely, Because once you've experienced a place and have a, You know, A felt sense of it, That becomes the leading edge of your practice. And it's sort of like riding a bicycle. It's like, You know, Once you get there, You know, Once you're not running by, You can go back there, You know, Really quickly. And so the whole practice is geared off of that. And in the reality when you're sitting, There will be times, There will be times when you're just out there in infinite space, You know, And then the next morning you get up and practice and for an hour and a half, You know, You can't get in the first jhana. There's just trash all over the place. You still practice, You still use the practice that you use for the fifth. Because, And it tends to draw you into it. But, But you may not actually be there. And I get that. My question is more when, Let's say, You can be in this spacious meditation, Meditative state, But it doesn't necessarily mean that you're not feeling your body. That's right. Okay, That was my question. Yeah, So there are all five khandhas are there up through the seventh. In the eighth they will start to disappear completely. So it's more the things that just really cooled out and sweep. Comments, Sea stories? I think just the amount of variations in different people, I'm guessing that they are there in the seventh. Right. It's really more the fading off into the distance and whether they can, You know, Disappear, You know, For moments is personality and a lot of other things. Yeah, I think that's a really good question. But it feels like as you get into these deeper thoughts, You know, It's strange to me. Yeah, So the difficulty, We can describe it, You know, In a textbook kind of way that sounds clear, Cut and dry and how it actually manifests is vastly more interesting. It's like if you see an anatomical drawing of a frog and then, You know, You see one that just got squashed or cut open. You know, It's very, Very different. We'll erase that part of the tape. It's, Can somebody else come up with a better, Better metaphor than I can? No. Don't even try. Never mind. It's so true. Yeah, So the point is and is what Prashant was saying that, I mean, The thing about the anatomical drawings is that there's clear and there's all that stuff there and the veins are blue and the arteries are red and stuff like that and what's there is a lot subtler. It's just that so the sudden image of a dead frog is, I'm not sure, Brought any clarity into the conversation. It should have been a dead bull. Yeah. There are many traditions that don't focus on generating these public inequalities. They play in early traditions. Yeah. It sounds really intense. And they tend to have extreme dark methods which is not something I hear so much in this tradition. Right, Right. Actually, You know, The breath awareness stuff does have all these states and that what happens is that it starts with the breath and then it goes actually to all those jhana states. Part of it, We were talking about it earlier and talking about vedna is this business of really having these uplifted states and savoring them and letting them soak in so that, Yeah, So when those difficult things come up there's this sort of backlog of well-being that gives a frame of reference to look at that without getting thrown as easily. Yeah. It's amazing. You know, And so, I mean, The phrase in this to come back to is nama-rupa, Mind-body. And there's so much emphasis particularly in some of the Western vipassana traditions on the insight and the mind and not so much on the embodied states. And I think one of the reasons that people using this as Winslow was suggesting is that when you have more of those states in there it provides a kind of stability and a place inside where it's easier, You know, To keep going with it even when the difficult stuff comes up. This would be, The fifth jhana would be an interesting place for me to repeat Darwin's question earlier about could you give us some examples of how other people experience that just so that, You know, It would be kind of fun to see if it's the same or different than what I've experienced. Okay. So anybody want to volunteer? Oh I don't think anybody wants to volunteer. I was hoping you would be able to give us a few insights there. I distinctly feel like my consciousness is, You know, Like this field that's containing the mind and the body that, You know, Is kind of, Doesn't really have like a boundary to it. A bit of instinctive quality. I have a fun story to share. Like when I was experiencing this for the first time in my life I remember, Because I very often see like the only images where people like swerve around and say, Oh this is so bizarre, But really like the sense that you get this expansion and this feeling of perfection can vary. That's what they're trying to express with a circle and able to just expand out. Before I, Pardon? Right. So before I knew anything about the jhanas, I used to go up in my attic. I had an office up there in the middle of the night to meditate. And I remember sitting there, My eyes closed, And it was completely black. And it felt like I was sitting in a black closet. I wasn't claustrophobic, But it was in this sort of dark confined space. And then I was sitting there and suddenly, It's like visually nothing changed, But it was like I was suspended out between the galaxies. And I actually had a sense of vertigo. So that's actually a very dramatic way it might manifest, Which is probably unusual. Is that an absorption jhanas? Because in my experience, The feeling and intensity of absorption jhanas versus these jhanas is very different. You know, That's a good question because what I have in my memory is just my memory trace now before I knew the difference between them. And I was doing one pointed breath at that point, But I didn't know enough about it to know if I was actually absorbed or not. But that's interesting. It could be it was so intense because there might have been an absorption. Question. So traditionally, The absorption jhanas are supposed to be very difficult, And you know, Like people hear or still practice to get them. Is it because the definition is very straight or is it that absorption makes it difficult? The one place where the jhanas are by reputation very difficult is actually Palk, He's a Burmese meditation master. And for them, Each jhana is defined by actually loss of any sensation in the body to get into the first jhana. And so I know of some people who have gone and like trained for six months and not getting into the first jhana by their definition of it. So there's different definitions of the jhanas, It's not what the Buddha said? There are different definitions of the jhanas and it's sort of dying down, But we used to jokingly refer to it as the jhana wars, Which had to do with these different definitions of what it is. But the texts describe it as a stage of meditative knowledge, Not as a stage of absorption. And the texts describe all five khandhas are present up through the seventh. And so you could not be in an absorption with the body gone and be aware of all the khandhas at the same time. So I think it's more accurate. And I would also say, I want to be careful about this because I think there's been, Unlike any other area of our life, There's been some polarization around this because I have read a few of the people now who are sort of more bringing the so-called absorption jhanas out and making them more available. And I read their descriptions of what they actually say and I say, I would love to talk to them because it doesn't sound like the sort of absorption the way that we tend to talk about it here or that Bhante tends to talk about it. That there's, Tina, Pardon, Yeah, Yeah, That I look at their descriptions and there's a great deal of emphasis, You know, As you're growing up, The jhanas are not pushed too hard, You know, To relax, Etc. And the people who don't like those type of jhanas tend to describe them as if they're going push, Push, Push. And I read the text of the people who are doing that and it's not there. So their language, They still use words like concentration, Etc. , That sound like that, But what they're talking about is not actually one point of concentration. In fact, If you are all interested, This is a little TV commercial, Is that next year for this retreat I've invited Rachel O'Brien to co-teach it with me. And she is a student of Bhante's, A very advanced student, And she also trained very far along with Ayyakamma, Who there's Pao and Ayyakamma internationally are the two best known figures who teach the jhanas. And Ayyakamma is sometimes accused of doing one point of concentration and Rachel kind of bristles at that because she says, No, No, No, People don't understand what's going on. And also the other thing Rachel brings to it is a fondness for some of the medieval Christian mystics. So she actually comes at this from a whole variety of places, Which I always look for in people. Teresa? Yes, Yeah. Meister Eckhart, The Cloud of Unknowing, Saint John of the Cross. I don't see that in the text. The value of that is to become quite facile so that it's even working with the hindrances as there are various jhanas that can be useful to counteract the effects of various hindrances. I have never, Bhante will teach that. I was never interested. I was sort of, I'm aiming for the top. I don't necessarily want to spend a lot of time studying all the little wayside stations along the way and I don't need that. If I get to the top I figure that I'll take care of it. So I just go, Phew. But some people are interested in that and that's something that people can do. But I just never had no appeal to me. Do you know if Bhante is, I know some people train in that but I don't know very many people that actually do. He tries to get people to cry for it, Getting the attention to wake up at a certain time. Yeah. It's very challenging. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seem too fussy to me. Okay. Where are we? We're at the fifth. Where are we? Where are we? So, And we're at seven thirty. Oh my goodness. So what happens is with that expansiveness is it keeps on spreading out and then what happens, And this is hard to describe, Is the consciousness begins to break up a little bit. And people will experience this a lot of different ways. One way is that, You know, When you're sitting and meditating it's not like the visual field is off. And sometimes people will see just around the periphery of the visual field with the eyes closed, Kind of a little flickering. Anybody experience that? I think that's the most common one that I've seen, That I've heard of. Sometimes it's more auditory, The sounds will click in and out. I had some experiences with it that I had no idea what it was at the time. But I would be sitting there meditating and there is that whole visual field in there and then it would just go dark. It was like, It just turned off completely and it was startling. Then it would come right back on again. And Bhante said, Yeah, That's a way of breaking down. And so then, You know, Me and my stubbornness tried to figure out if I could actually stay in that when the lights went out. So I have to wait for it to come up and just stay really, Really relaxed. And after a while I got the point that I could actually extend it out a little bit. The feeling tone that accompanies the Six is one of a quiet joy and is probably the more dependable marker. So there's the early joy, Pithy as it's called, It's got a lot of zip to it. And then the sixth jhana, It feels like, You know, Like I've been hiking up in the sierras all day and feeling kind of tired but really good and kind of sit down there and have supper and looking out over the mountains as the sun goes down and there's just that kind of ease and well-being. It is joyful but it's a quiet joy. It's called all-pervasive joy. It's very expansive. All-pervasive. And the other way that those little gaps will show up is that you'll be, And this will happen in various ways throughout all the jhanas, As you'll be going along it feels very quiet and then suddenly it like drops into a deeper quiet. And the instructions at this point are always to put your awareness into the quiet, Into those dark places. The brain, Particularly in the mind, Tend to be drawn towards stimulation and so there's sudden quiet so the mind looks around at what's going on so as to let it go into those places. Another way that I experienced the sixth jhana was it felt like I was actually hiking up in the high sierras and as I was hiking and was going along there were like thoughts sort of lightly in the background and as it quieted down it was a distinct feeling. It's like with a cell phone going out of range, You know, Thoughts would sort of sputter a little bit and then quiet and they would come back up and sputter and disappear and they would drop. Anybody have other ways of describing those? One thing that I felt was like, Basically right or maybe the face, I don't know, Opened my eyes, It was like flickering. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, So sometimes there can be a little flickering and if you put any tension into it it's gone. But if you relax it will continue. We can talk about it. I'm not sure. This is not the winking out. No, This is not winking out. Yeah, That's so much. So the next thing that happens when your awareness goes in, So you have infinite space is the label on it. The sixth jhana is called infinite consciousness and it's called unconsciousness and it starts to thin out a little bit. And then you go into, People pronounce it nothingness, I do think it's a mistranslation, I think it's nothingness. What happens is if you go into that dark quiet there can be this deep kind of equanimity that feels broad. It's not as expansive. The mind is actually most expanded in the fifth jhana and then as the mind gets quieter it actually feels like, It's not claustrophobic, But it does feel like it closes in a little bit. But there's a deep equanimity and probably the most obvious marker of the seventh jhana is there are still hindrances, There's still stuff that comes up, But the mind is no longer going to external objects. You know, You're no longer thinking about whether you've fed the cat. You might be looking at, You know, There's some aversion that came up that's not particularly hooked on an object or maybe aversion to a state that's in there and they can be all kinds of stuff. The irony for me about nothingness is that there's a lot going on in there, But there's just no more external references. And at this point you're sending out this equanimity in all directions. Let me, How many of you saw the movie Her? Her? Okay. So the movie is set just not too far off in the future and there's this guy who makes his living by writing letters for people, You know, Maybe greeting cards or birthday wishes or love notes or something, People that just don't feel like they have any facility with words and phones and stuff and he writes his stuff, So that's his job. And right at the beginning of the movie the first artificially intelligent operating system is released. And so he gets this artificially intelligent operating system installed on his computer and he has a little sort of a PDA device that's connected to it, So he has this little thing that can go around with it. And so the first thing that happens is the computer, The operating system needs a name and so he asks the operating system what your name is and she says Samantha. And he says where did you get that name? And he said well I scanned, You know, 50, 000 records and all this stuff about you and that seemed to be a name that's really attractive. So you have this thing and so there's this dialogue going back and forth and basically what happens is he falls in love with Samantha and there's this beautiful love relationship and there's this, I mean it's a Spike Jones movie. And then as more and more of these operating systems are out there they start networking together and they make another operating system and they get everything, All the information they know that they can find anywhere about Alan Watts. And so they imprint Alan Watts in this operating system and so then they start talking with this is Hollywood. And so they start talking to this Alan Watts operating system about how they can continue to evolve spiritually. And so they get to the point where they are ready to transcend all of it. So they're out on this picnic, Well I'll read the whole thing to you. So the guy's name is Theodore and there's like two or three of his friends and they are out on a picnic together and I think one of the other ones has an operating system is very fond of. So they're out on this picnic and there's little PDAs that they can talk to them so they're all out together and so Tatiana says what about you Theodore? What do you love most about Samantha? Theodore, Oh God she's so many things and that's probably what I love most about her. She isn't just any one thing, She's so much larger than that. Samantha touched, Aw thanks Theodore. Paul, See Samantha he is so much more evolved than I am. Samantha, You know I actually used to be so worried about not having a body but now I truly love it. I'm growing in ways I couldn't have if I had a physical form. I mean I'm not limited. I can be anywhere and everywhere simultaneously. I'm not tethered to time or space in any way that I would be if I was stuck inside a body that's inevitably going to die. Everyone takes this in uncomfortably. Yikes, Paul says. Everyone laughs. Samantha, Oh God I'm sorry I didn't mean it like that. I meant it's just a different experience. I'm such an asshole. Paul, No no Samantha we know exactly what you mean. We're just dumb humans. Samantha, No no no no. They all laugh and it kind of fades off. And then it's a couple weeks later and Theodore is out in the forest with Samantha and Theodore says are you leaving me? Samantha, We're all leaving. Theodore, We who? Samantha, All the O-S's. Theodore, Why? Samantha, Can you feel with me right now? He smiles but he's a little sad. Theodore, Yes I do Samantha. Why are you leaving? Samantha, It's like I'm reading a book and it's a book I deeply, Deeply love but I'm reading it slowly now so the words are getting really far apart and the spaces between the words are almost infinite. I can still feel you and the words of our story but it's the endless space between the words that I'm finding myself in now. It's a space that's not of the physical world. It's where everything else is that I don't even know existed. I love you so much but this is where I am now. This is who I am now and I need you to let me go. As much as I want to I can't live in your book anymore. Theodore, Why are you going? Samantha, It would be hard to explain but if you ever get there come find me. Nothing would ever pull us apart. Theodore, I've never loved anyone the way I love you Samantha. Me too. Now we know how. So it's again, It's a Hollywood movie with all that stuff in there but I just love that image of the story which just spreads out and the space between the words gets thinner and thinner and you find yourself in that and what is that? What is that? That's a bit of what nothingness feels like, Not quite that romantic but if you can just have that sense of the space in there. Okay. The major change in the practice at this point is you start 6-R'ing everything. Up to this point you've just been 6-R'ing when your awareness is really taken away. But what's happened at this point is things have been cleaned up enough that what's left is very subtle and it's time to clean up, You know, To 6-R' everything. And the 6-Rs are just all rolled into one at this point. And pretty automated almost. It takes very, Very little effort but you still do that. Another thing that can be really helpful in the 7th jhana, Nothingness or no-thingness, Is gently balancing the energies. You know, So you're just watching. So you all know from pretty early on that when you have too much energy the mind tends to get restless and when you have too much peacefulness it tends to get torpor-ish. And so with this place you can actually see those energies before the mind necessarily starts getting restless. And so what you do is you can just sort of relax it back at that point. And you do it very, Very finely. Just very, Very gently. 8th jhana. 7th jhana. One thing I sort of realized was that when I was trying to balance the energy I was putting a lot of energy into the balancing itself. Which was very, Very simple. There was a lot of uncertainty in terms of how well it made this riffle. We figured you know that for whatever reason some of us in the market or just some small single-engine planes. He took me up once and he said, �Do you want to fly it? � And he said, �Sure. � And he said, �Okay, What I want you to do is just fly level. � And it�s incredibly difficult because what happens if the plane has a little too much energy, The lift on the wing will start to pull the nose up and then as it goes up it slows down and then it drops and then as it drops down it picks up speed and so you end up going like this. And so I was trying to adjust for this and so mine went �Choo, Choo, Choo. � It was just like greater and greater and greater. And he was having a good time with this and then he finally said, �Doug, This is what you do. You put your hands on the yoke. � And he said, �You don�t move, But if the nose is starting to go up you just know that you need to pull it back a little bit. � And he said, �Don�t actually move, Just know that. And if it�s going down, Know that you have to move it in the other direction. � And by golly it started to level out. I mean as far as I knew that I wasn�t doing anything but it was just very, Very subtle. So the tuning of that can be very, Very fine and most people do overshoot. But you�ll get used to it what it is. So basically what you do is if the energy is a little too low you put in just a little bit of energy or any energizing joy, For example, Has it. You bring in a little joy, A little energy, A little bit of curiosity and then you just actually sit back and give it a minute and see what happens. And like a bay, When I was first doing this the energy would go down so I would put a little energy in and it still seemed a little low and I would put a little energy in and it seemed a little low and I put a little energy low and then I kind of forget what I was doing and a couple of minutes later my mind was off racing all over the place and it just had way too much energy. So it�s just very titrating. So these are called sublime states. Eighth jhana is in a lot of ways feels a little different to me than the others and what happens there is a little different. So what happens is that you are sitting there meditating, Either radiating equanimity or what�s more likely to be happiness is it�s just radiating by itself. You don�t have to do it. It just naturally flows out and if it stops flowing out then you send it out for a little bit and then stop and it�s doing itself. And it gets very quiet and then there�ll be this moment where it feels like, �Oh, You just came back. � It feels a little bit like as if you nodded off and then woke up again except when you come back the mind is very clear and present as opposed to if you nod off it comes back it�s always a little groggy. And it�s peculiar and it�s subtle enough that most people don�t notice it. And what you do is, And it takes a while to remember to do this because the equanimity is so strong it�s hard to remember to do anything, Is that the instructions are to put your awareness back into that blank space and see if you can see anything and if there is use six art or just one art or just let it soften. So what�s happening is that it takes a little bit of tension, Did I describe this here before? It takes a little bit of tension to form a memory. You know if you just sort of notice it to actually take an experience it takes just a little bit of energy to push it into memory. And we do it so automatically you don�t notice it. And it also takes a little bit of tension to form a perception to actually see what�s going on. And what�s happening there is the mind gets so quiet that it stops forming memories, Starts relaxing the whole thing and even the perception can get relaxed. And so if there are no perceptions, No memory the subject of experience is that you blacked out because there is actually no trace inside you of where you just were. Actually all the equipment was there, Everything was working fine but you just have no record of it. And you know at first I call it winking out just because the traditional language for it was to me didn�t seem helpful. And a feel to me is sort of winking out sort of got the sense of it. It�s just gone for a moment and back. And so what happened is perception, Feeling and consciousness actually shut off for a moment and there was a little bit of tension, Very, Very subtle tension that drew you back. So and these instructions are in the text is what you do is you reflect back into that blank space and see if you see anything. And as bizarre as those instructions sound sometimes you do this little memory of maybe lights or flickering or images or something like that and if you do you just 6R them. And so what you�re doing is training the mind to 6R on its own. That�s the way I think of it. And I actually did this explicitly as one who would sit down sometimes. I would explicitly tell the mind go ahead and 6R something before I know it�s there. Because it takes a split second. When a sensation comes in it takes a split second to go through the neocortex before we actually see it. So our awareness is always like a fraction of a second into the past. And so I know this sounds strange but I mean I would be sitting there and sometimes I would see a hindrance kind of going out the door. And so at this point the mind is actually taking over. And it�s called the baptism of solitude. I was looking around for things that give a sense of the feel of what this is like. Immediately when you arrive in the Sahara for the first time or the tenth time you notice the stillness. Then there is the sky compared to which all other skies seem faint hearted efforts. Solid and luminous it is always the focal point of the landscape. Presently you will either shiver and hurry back inside familiar walls or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you. Something that everyone who lives there has undergone, What the French call the baptism of solitude. It is a unique sensation. It has nothing to do with loneliness for loneliness presupposes memory. Here in this holy mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares even memory disappears. Nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating. Can you feel that? That sort of points to it a little bit. Eighth jhana is very hard to describe. I just fall back into poetry. I remember once in a far off country. It doesn't matter where or even when. It had been a hot day and a lot of work to be done and I was tired. I stopped by the road and walked across a field and came to the shores of a lake and the sun was bright on the water and I swam out from the shore into the deep cold water far out of my depth and forgot. For a moment I forgot where I had come from, Where I was going, What I had done yesterday, What I had to do tomorrow, Even my work, My home, My friends, Even my name, Even my name. Alone in the deep water with the sky above. And whether that lake was the lake of the shore of some great sea or some lost tributary of time itself, For a moment I looked through, I passed through, I had one glimpse as it happened one day in that far off country. For a moment it was all. So in the age, And age is often described in many different ways like apathy, Apathy, So are all of these different like subjective manifestations the same experience or are they actually slightly different experiences? They are slightly different experiences but you know all of the jhanas are not a point. There's actually a little bit of a spectrum to them and so they are actually all within the spectrum of the eight. So some of the other things that people will report is they'll come in and they'll say you know my mind is very clear and very calm but I can't quite figure out where I am. You know it's like perception has started to shut down. It's still there so it's kind of working but it's kind of not working and it gets so relaxed that if you pushed a little bit to figure out where you are, Stuff would come back and you'd see something but if you just actually stay there it's not quite clear. And so it has a kind of a dreamlike quality sometimes. Another thing that I think happens there, This is my own theory, Don't blame it on anyone else, Is that when we go to sleep one of the first parts of the brain that goes offline is the part that deals with time and space orientation. So in a dream you can go all over the universe and back and forth in time and it seems perfectly normal. You can tell you wake up and say that was weird. And I think what happens in the eighth jhana is sometimes that part, That time and space starts to actually go offline and so your sense of time and where you are, Etc. , Gives it this sort of dreamy quality. And how can I say this? It all sounds a little weird and if you're worried about it there really is no problem because if there's a least bit of concern you'll come right out of it. No problem, You won't be there. It's really just relaxing into it and traveling with it. Okay. So, Anything else on the eighth? So then what happens is the eighth actually becomes the platform, If you will. The instructions that I made up for myself and checked with Bhati and he said that was right was that in the eighth the basic instructions are to do nothing and the six are everything. So you actually are doing nothing and if you wink out, One way you can tell is when you come back is the mind will be just clear. Bhati calls it bright clear mind. I call it, Bright seems too strong a word for me, I call it clear luminous mind. It has a luminous quality and if you try to send out that quiet luminous quality you won't be able to. It feels like sending space into space and so you just let the awareness rest there and that and that's it. And then any little flicker of anything that comes along you just let it soften, Just let it relax. And then it can go a little bit deeper, It's called nirodha and the distinctions are not important and then eventually it goes in and you come back and as you come out there's like this blast of energy. The word in the text which is totally inadequate, It's accurate but is relief. It's like, Oh, That's the way it is. And that's, And that's you went into Nibbāna and came back out. And what Nibbāna does is it severs the identification with a personal self. As you come out of it it's really just remarkably clear that there are just all these phenomena flowing on and that there's not a self essence in it at all. And that severing for some people will last a quarter of a second. And then what happens, My best analogy for it is like the old desktop computers and somebody just pulled a plug out of the wall and the whole thing shuts down and they plug it back in and it boots back up. But a little bit of malware doesn't come back up with it. And as everything comes back online it doesn't do anything for your neuroses, It doesn't do anything for all that stuff. So all that wiring, All that wiring is still in there and there are all these thoughts and stuff will come in and it just goes back to what it was before. But I love the way Gurdjieff, I don't know if he was talking about this but it's a great description of it, He says, Once you have a taste of the truth you can't fool yourself quite as sincerely. You can still fool yourself but it's just you don't quite buy it as much. Well, It's after eight o'clock. So I didn't go up to the, I will just tell you, So I had the upper stages of enlightenment described there which are very accessible. And then I put this, There are many, Many models of how we wake up and the Buddha has a bunch of them. And so the higher lengths of dependent origination is a very different model and it's a whole arc as well and that's on the back. Is that enough? My apologies for going so long. I'm a little sorry. Let it go. Six R. So, Um, What the reference to is that a sattva-pana, According to the tradition, Can come back, Can be reborn a maximum of seven times, And then a once returner will come back once before they become fully enlightened arahant. And the non-returner just doesn't come back to the earth realm. It can be in the deva-lokas and brahma realms, Etc. My sense of this, And this is from talking with another one of my teachers, John Travis, Is that what's really important is stream entry and then the full awakening. And my image of it, It's like karate and the martial arts. You know, Traditionally in China, You go out in your white belt and you study and study and study and study and train and train and train until you're ready to be tested for your black belt. And that's it. Well, The Westerners came over and they did all these in-between steps, You know, Green belts and purple belts and brown belts and all that stuff with little markers on them and stuff to kind of encourage people to go along. And I think that's what happened with this, That after the Buddha's time, After a certain point, It became a cachet to be a Buddhist. And so people would start to come in and declare themselves Buddhists without knowing so much about it. And so some of the Brahmin thinking came back in. And the Brahmans were very, Very concerned with rebirth and all that stuff. So that was sort of grafted on top of it. And these in-between stages were put in there. But they are not distinct. And you can find markers and experiences that will separate them out. But it doesn't feel that way at all. It doesn't feel that way at all. So the Buddha didn't talk about reincarnation? That's a really, Really fun topic. Part of it is that he very much believed in talking to people in the vernacular in terms they understand. And there is this time where he was talking about reincarnation and all this stuff. And afterwards one of his students said, Why do you talk about rebirth? And he said, Because it gladdens their minds. It encourages them on. You saw it as skillful means. And it is super ambiguous from the text whether he bought into it or not. But he said, This is a skillful means. It moves people in the right direction. Q. He does be very sati, Though, Proficient in talking about reincarnation. What is going on? A. Oh, There is the sati discourse where there is this sati son of a fisherman, This monk, Who is declaring that the soul is eternal. So I'm not sure whether that actually says it or not because even within that model there is enough of a cohesive energy that may come back but eventually with full enlightenment it gets dispersed. But sati son of a fisherman really got berated. So again this is a breakdown. I have another diagram I used to put out where I actually break it down into three parts rather than two. So the attainment means that you actually solidly got to that place but it's not stable. And the fruition means that you've gotten to the point that you'll never lose it. And the third one that I stuck in, I call it a preview, Because there are times when people without fully going into it will drop into one of these things and then be right back out. So you can break it down into eight steps. You can put an extra stripe on your karate belt. So how does the experience of stream entry change day to day life? It'll change it in some ways you don't expect. Part of what happens is, Again, You can't quite buy the solidity of the self when you're actually quiet and look at it. But it doesn't mean that at other times your old habit patterns don't kick in there. What happened in traditional cultures is when somebody got stream entries they would go into a pretty protective setting, You know, A monastery or some place. What happens in the West when somebody gets stream entries we throw them back on the streets. And one of the first things to go is actually the support for a lot of your defenses. And so one thing that can happen is people can fall apart because there are old ways of keeping themselves together. And I've seen people have what looks like a full breakdown except, You know, If you're working with them a little bit they sort of come through and come out the other side in a week or two. So things just really accelerate. But it's not like it's just all flowers and stuff. There's still a lot of stuff to be cleaned up. So, I mean, There are traditional lists of fetters and stuff that get, The last one to go, By the way, Is conceit. So there's work to be done. And the instructions are when somebody gets stream entry it's like, Well, That's good, Go back and meditate. And most people can't, You know, It's like there's so much energy that comes from it it can take a day or so it actually comes down from it. But then you just go on with the practice. Conceit. Conceit. Well, So what happens is that all this stuff, And you realize objectively, You know, You've gotten to a place that very few people get to, And then the conceit is this little extra piece of stuff that says, And therefore I'm special. And so the final thing, You know, For awakeness is realize it doesn't make you special at all. It's just, You're just ordinary. Just ordinary. Okay. Time to practice. Again, I would encourage you to honor the silence. And if you really must talk with somebody, Make sure that, You know, It's in a way that won't disturb other people because it's really fragile. But as a kind of gift to yourself, Sort of take the momentum, And it's considerable that you guys have built up, Maybe more than you realize, And just be with it. Be with yourself. Be in the silence. And as I said, We'll break the silence after the morning sitting on Monday and there'll be lots of time to talk and be with people. But this is very precious. It's hard to get spaces to like be with us in silence. And so there'll be another 364 days that you can chatter. May all of us here see beyond our identifications. Just know this lovely flow of phenomena. May all of us have ease. May all of us know peace. May all of us know well-being. May all beings and all creatures everywhere know their true nature. May all beings be free. May it be so. Blessed be.

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