I am writing this thread in order to get the opinion of and maybe a discussion started between the other people on this site who have reached fourth path about what to do afterwords.

I reached 4th path on the 29 of December of 2011, and since the wisdom eye opened/ stabilized I have begun to notice very strongly that there is much still in my experience which is painful and unskillful. I feel that there is definitely farther to go in the sense of negative patterns of behavior and the way I deal with thoughts; ie. repression, grasping...

I read a while ago that wisdom of emptiness is really considered to be halfway on the path to Buddhahood, the second half I assume dealing more with cultivating compassion. Everything I have come across with regards to awakening indicates that after awakening until death is essentially the longest path, on which there is no limit to how far you can go. There is a shizen young video on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptkH0uK1uXM) where he talks about seeing the no self (4th path)as being just the beginning of a long process of clearing away the mental clutter(he calls “screw ups”) that remain. Unfortunately he does not mention specific practices that can help one to go deeper.

It seems that many on this board have turned to actual freedom practices as the next step, and Tarin is “actualy free?”. I will admit, I know very little about the actual freedom practice. I have looked into it, but I was turned off by the lack of clear information.

In summary, after 4th path, I have really begun to see that there is more to do, and I am wondering what other fourth pathers have done after seeing the no self.

Hi tim,

Can you please explain in your own words what '4th path' is like as an ongoing experience and how you got it done from 1st to 4th. You seem to have done it extremely quickly going by your admission of 'no stream entry' at the end of last year. I'd be interested at how you did it so fast if you really did.

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2280902

Nick

For sure, that is quite a reasonable request. Chiefly, what I did was try to follow Daniels advice in MCTB very precisely and diligently. (I am extremely grateful to Daniel for MTCB, it was an invaluable resource.) Over the past few months, I spent the majority of my time in daily life, no matter what I was doing, engaged some form of insight practice; either noting, or noticing the flickering of physical sensations. I approached this practice with the attitude, and knowledge that I did not know the truth, and could only know it through attention to physical sensations.

Formal meditation wise, I used shamatha and vipassana meditation in conjunction with each other. For the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd paths, my meditation consisted, for the most part, of initially counting breaths (counting ten breaths 3 times) until I had developed some stability of mind (which could probably be called access concentration) and then switching to noticing the flickering of physical sensations. If my mind was relaxed and alert I would focus on flickering of sensations all over the body and just let them happen without specifically focusing on any one area. If my mind was more tense, or tired and paying attention and letting sensation be was a struggle, I would focus on a specific area of the body with noticeable sensations, generally the bridge of the nose, or my arms... I did the noticing practice from MCTB (of trying to perceive to parts of the body at once, and noticing awareness switching back and forth between them) a good amount during meditation in order to get y mind up to speed with noticing, whereupon I would switch to broad body sensation noticing. I really didn't try to do one technique in particular during an insight meditation session, but just switched it up depending on what seemed to be working.

After 3rd path, I was able to access the shamatha jhanas from 1 to 8 pretty quickly, as well as the two additional pureland jhanas (9 and 10). After getting comfortable with working up through the shamatha jhanas, my mediation generally consisted of rising up through the jhanas from 1 to 10, falling back down to 7, and then from there noticing the flickering of sensations (or beginning the process of insight...).

When I reached 4th path, it felt mind blowing, and at the same time very ordinary, or very natural, like I wanted to say "what the fuck!!?!, but at the same time there was really no need at all to freak out about it. I could suddenly see very cleary that all thoughts of I were just thoughts, and I could see the space in between these thoughts. The main thing which was apparent to me was the vast mystery of life, just this massive unknowable, ungraspable aspect which pervades everything. The best I can describe it is a vast incomprehensible field in which everything is.

Since the initial experience of it, it seems I have either become more accustomed to it, or the experience has grown more subtle. At a time like this when I really turn my mind toward perceiving it, and recollecting my initial impressions, the feeling is strongly there. In daily life, the feeling is there, but subtle. The more I focus on it the more dominant it becomes. I have found it is relatively easy to be distracted from this perspective however, and to fall into grasping at experience and thoughts. As well, the patterns in which I have acted for the past 20 years of my life are still dominant. The way I interact with others, the way I treat myself, basically my collection of attitudes on life, are still going strong. This is what bothers me about my experience, and this is what I would like advice on how to work with.

Hi Tim,

Can you elaborate on how the experience of 'self' has changed? What of the centre point?



There are options with what you seem to want to do something about. What do you wish to do about that which is unsatisfactory? 1/ Get to a place where those things arise still but the relationship has changed towards them? 2/ Find out how those things arise and cease their cause thus cease their arising all together? It depends on what you want and what you can live with.

I describe in the link below what I did from April last year onwards, 9 months after getting MCTB 4th. It is option 2/.

http://nickdowntherabbithole.blogspot.com/


I'm sure you'll be exposed to others as well. There are lots of ideas floating around on what is appropriate post-4th practice and ideology. Seems many of us want others to validate our own choices. Strange that.

Here are some yogis talking about option 1/

Edit: you may see that option 2/ is expressed in the option 1/ link above as:



This is a possible approach and result when one does not know how to go about practicing option 2/ appropriately. This 'trap' can be avoided and at the same time one still ceases the causes for unsatisfactoriness. To avoid the mentioned 'trap' , one's practice may involve a combination of both options 1/ and 2/ as well as the inclusion of other practices/approaches.

That does happen. But I think it's sometimes not what it seems. Often it's a case of trying address each other's misunderstandings about the nature of one's choices, and the reasons for making them. That can come across as wanting others to validate (or share/adopt) one's choices, but actually isn't.. it's an intent for those choices to be understood (first).. otherwise there's no point in talking about them, and neither party benefits from the discussion. (And misunderstandings abound).

E.g.,, I've observed (mainly on KFD with you and EIS) that a lot of people who choose AF are perfectly OK with another person's choice not to pursue it, but they're not quite as OK with a failure to understand what it entails and how it stands in relation to other attainments. This can come across as forceful advocacy or pissing contest, when in fact it's just an attempt to explain something that isn't so clear to the other. (Perhaps) conversely...

John

Yes, it would seem so. Misunderstandings abound.

that is 4th path in ingram's technical model (as referred to in MCTB and on which basis he claims arahatship).

This reminds me of my experience of 3rd path.

Not a diagnosis, just a comment.

Hehe. So perhaps then, Tim has not gotten to 4th path as described by Daniel in MCTB; a 4th path which you yourself Tarin have said many of the pragmatic/hardcore dharma movement never really got to even though they say they did, including me and yourself.

So perhaps an option then is to get to exactly what Daniel has talked of. Or follow in Tarin and others' footsteps. Or both.

what i'd said was that almost nothing of what i'd seen in other people's accounts of their attainment and experience of 4th path resembled the account of daniel's 4th path i had heard from him, and that owing to the entirety of its description (a composite of things he's both written and said in conversation), i was not certain that what i had acomplished was the same thing (though i was also not very concerned).

tarin

And not being concerned with where you were matching Daniel's descriptions of 4th path was due to your focus on seeing an end to the causes of that which was unsatisfactory in your ongoing experience of what may or may not have been 4th path as described by Daniel?

Since the topic has come up so often and been so bandied about so many times by so many people, let me state here what I mean by 4th path, regardless of what anyone else means by it. It has the following qualities:

1) Utter centerlessness: no watcher, no sense of a watcher, no subtle watcher, no possibility of a watcher. This is immediately obvious just as color is to a man with good eyesight as the old saying goes. Thus, anything and everything simply and obviously manifest just where they are. No phenomena observe any others and never did or could.

2) Utter agencylessness: meaning no agency, no sense of doing, no sense of doer, no sense that there could be any agent or doer, no way to find anything that seems to be in control at all. Whatever effort or intent or anything like that that arises does so naturally, causally, inevitably, as it always actually did. This is immediately obvious, though not always the forefront of attention.

3) No cycles change or stages or states or anything else like that do anything to this direct comprehension of simple truths at all.

4) There is no deepening in it to do. The understanding stands on its own and holds up over cycles, moods, years, etc and doesn't change at all. I have nothing to add to my initial assessment of it from 9 years ago.

5) There is nothing subtle about it: anything and everything that arises exhibits these same qualities directly, clearly. When I was third path, particularly late in it, those things that didn't exhibit these qualities were exceedingly subtle, and trying to find the gaps in the thing was exceedingly difficult and took years and many cycles. I had periods from weeks to months where it felt done and then some subtle exception would show up and I would realize I was wrong yet again, so this is natural and understandable, and if someone claims 4th as I define it here and later says they got it wrong, have sympathy for them, as this territory is not easy and can easily fool people, as it did me many, many times over about 5 years or so. However, 4th, as I term it, ended that and 9 years later that same thing holds, which is a very long time in this business.

There are other aspects that may be of value to discuss at some other time, but those are a great place to start for those who wish to claim this. If you truly have those, then perhaps we can talk about a few other points that are less central and essential.

Now, how there can still be affect (though quite modified in many ways) when there is centerlessness and agencylessness, this is a mystery to the AF kids and to me as well, and that brings me to my next point: there seems to be areas of development depending on what you look for and aim for that may arise independently, and not everything seems to come as a package necessarily. Those things are what I looked for really hard for about 7 years, and that is what I found. Now I find that the interest in the unraveling of what drives that residual affect is arising, and so that investigation happens on its own also.

Perhaps people will find this helpful in some way.

I think it will be great to have this as a future reference for any other 4th path claimants. Maybe you can have it as part of the wiki. it's good info to have and compare to. Thanks Daniel.

Nick

How does that relate to this?

An obvious and excellent question and gets to the heart of the thing.

If that state arises and it seems like that that all pervading quality of watching is really a separate, in-control, centralized watcher or subject, even in some subtle way, then there is more to look at. If that state arises and it is just one more natural, causal, centerless state, albeit with those particular qualities, which are themselves empty of any sense that they form or constitute some self or subject, then that is a very good sign and one should see how it holds up over time.

Would you consider your 4th path experience in context of this state well characterized by a statement such as "if there is an experience of something that would be described as a super-pervading watcher, it is immediately known to be an experience that is empty of being a watcher, self, subject, witness, etc. despite the description being apt?"

(In other words, "watcher" would just be a label for some sensation or sensations that would previously have been called a watcher but are now just sensations, despite it being clear that "watcher" captures how those sensations would previously have been understood as well as describes them in some way currently.)

Precisely

And that goes equally for any other sensations that seem to imply watching

The problem is not that quality, just something in its not knowing itself as it is as it happens

After realization there's still a body there, which is your vehicle for living. What about cultivating your physical body

Another non-diagnostic comment: reminds me of experience after Stream Entry. Huh. Daniel's clarifications of 4th path are pretty helpful in this regard.

my view of what was possible exceeded both my attainment and daniel's description of his.

Hi Daniel,

Daniel:


Would you provide an experiential example which illustrates an occasion of the mystery you intend in your words (in your context above):
1. "agencylessness"
2. "affect in agencylessness"?

Would you clarify how, depending on what you look and aim for, an area for development independently arises?


1/15/12 6:40 Tarin as a reply to Nikolai:

Daniel, your writing that "the interest in the unraveling of what drives residual affect is arising, and that investigation happens on its own also" seems within the framework of what Nikolai has expressed as having options with what (interest in unraveling) you do something about (the drives of residual affect) but the relationship has changed (investigation happens on its own) and that Tarin has called [MCTB] 4th path.

[Referring back to your words first excerpted at the top here beginning "Now, how there can still be affect..."] can you clarify how this interest you are finding in the unraveling is different from your 4th path, how your interest is converting to an investigation that occurs without you (on its own)?

[Here I ask because the investigation seems to require some agency, even if the agent lacks (gross?) affect, but is not-quite-erratically-studying-a-subject (the subject being "the unraveling" you mention), but also lacks any attachment to the investigation...is rather investigating because this investigation is what is relevant at this moment as a result of sequences leading up to this moment (passage through stages of insight), but now is no longer dependent on insight stages; analogously: roads were followed to arrive at a point and now there is only that point (a result of dependent origination, but no longer dependent), the roads have disappeared (the anicca of dependent origination is experienced) and an infinity of other points (investigations) are available, but why not investigate the point of unraveling since one is there and it is [momentarily] relevant to address it.]

edit: spelling, in brackets

I read through your post a few times and wasn't sure I entirely grasped what you were trying to ask or how you were conceiving of things, but though these points might help:

As to agency, and things requiring agency, no agency ever existed, so nothing ever required it or nothing could have ever happened, as there is no such thing.

Investigation now and before happened on its own, sense of agency or otherwise.

As to "why not investigate the point of unraveling", what do you mean by that?

As to equating a subject and unraveling, that is interesting and I thought I would ask what you meant by that also.

As to how things arise, they arise dependently, causally, naturally, and that includes interest, like everything else. How do you think interest arises and what does it signify in this context for you?

Last point about the word "attachment": it is a very slippery one. Is there another way to say what you mean by that?

Thanks for sharing, Dan. Guilty of bandying about this topic myself; nice to see some clarity instead of speculation. A few clarification questions...


I have heard people claiming 4th saying things like (paraphrasing) "the center point still arises occasionally." Have sensations implying 'center point', 'watcher', 'doer', arisen at all (though instantaneously seen clearly[1]), spontaneously (in daily life) or in meditation ("all-pervading watcher"), or has nothing that could even remotely be called a 'center point'/'watcher'/'doer' arisen at all in the past 9 years?

Also: were there ever any doubts about having done it, once you did it? Like a particularly nasty Dark Night after that last shift made you think potentially there was something more to do (on this axis), but then you realized there wasn't? Or was it rock-solid certainty all the way for 9 years?


Could you elaborate on "no deepening"? Do you mean "there is no deepening of this particular insight"? Or that there has been no change of experience at all, more or less, in 9 years? I ask cause AF folk talk about their experience deepening, colors becoming more vivid, light more dynamic, etc... has anything similar to that been happening for you? What about after starting Actualism practice?


[EDIT: I moved the question I asked to the thread Tommy started as that is more on-topic... please consider replying there =). (Starts with "Are there sensations which imply 'location'/'space' in your...")].

[1] End in Sight: (In other words, "watcher" would just be a label for some sensation or sensations that would previously have been called a watcher but are now just sensations, despite it being clear that "watcher" captures how those sensations would previously have been understood as well as describes them in some way currently.)

Could you explain what you mean by agent (and agentlessness)?

I asked for your provision of an experiential example which illustrates an occasion of "the mystery" (your words) that you intend in your words (in your context which I cited first in the above post):
1. "agencylessness"
2. "affect in agencylessness"?

It would help me to understand what you mean by agency if you can avoid tautology in answering (e.g., "no agency every existed").

Here, by way of example, I consider that you probably have a practice of brushing your teeth (or an equivalent practice in personal dental hygiene). To me, teeth-brushing is effected through agency (based in the desire for a painless mouth (healthy gums and teeth) and possible a social aversion to halitosis) and effected through an agent's willful lifting of the hand to the mouth and many other events which result in having water and tooth paste).

Does this mean that you have no responsibility for your mental faculty's activities, such as investigation or otherwise?

Well, you wrote earlier today "Now I find that the interest in the unraveling of what drives that residual affect is arising, and so that investigation happens on its own also".
Well, here, I am wondering if "the interest" and "that investigation" (over which you - whatever that is - have no agency (which word would benefit by you explanation (perhaps we understand a like-concept)) are wandering mental faculty poltergeists which inhabit living, but otherwise, agentless entities like yourself. Thus, why wouldn't those entities do this (erratically pick opportunities to investigate and take interest).

I don't think you intend the above (poltergeists), because the consequences are....well, distracting here so I'll move on. But I wanted to address it to convey that agentless mental faculties which can independently wander and inhabit pose metaphysical results (zombies, panpsychic rocks, etc) and raise questions tangential to this dialogue.

However - if we have a like-understanding of what is meant by agency (perhaps you can offer another word or experience to convey your meaning) - and if you still have such agency (or other word expressing an your present existence, your senses aggregated faculties and autonomy of the mental faculty by lacking an affective overlay), then you might be finding yourself at the end of affective, habitual coming into being and be simply, freely curious (as an autonomous agent) and, thus, checking out the last place you were as as an non-autonomous agent (one under control of affectation and exploring post MCTB 4th* path). Standing amid infinity, why wouldn't an autonomous agent check out the point of reference in which it find itself awakened and why wouldn't it study it (the unraveling of what drives that residual affect)? You could just as easily not study it and move on to something else in the infinity.

Ok, if you end up actually having a question (currently, you are expressing a subjunctive state of probability and your thoughts are not committed to actually asking a question) would you ask your question otherwise? I did not understand your phrase"equating a subject and unraveling".

It appears to me that there is a) conventional dependent origination (you make money and exchange it for running water and toothpaste, for example, for the conventional purpose of preventing the needless troubles of oral decay), and b) there is an anicca to dependent origination. Thus, even origination is mutable and not inherently dependent.

Here what I mean is that you may arrive at a place of anatta-anicca and decide to study your surroundings (how were residual affects unraveled?) or not (i.e., you could pick up fishing, guitar, or cooking, congress, Congress, etc). A fantastical analogy: Dorthy landing in Oz - affectless Dorthy could look around and study her landing in Oz (the house is a wreck and it appears a witch has been crushed) or move on to other points of engaging (Munchkins! Glinda!) and have no concern for not returning to Kansas or returning to kansas). [meaning: not attached to the particular investigation (what unraveling drivers of residual affect...)]

edit: strike through based on Daniel's explanation of what he includes in his MCTB 4th path model

edit2&3: brackets

As the description I gave was (what I thought was) commonly understood to be 4th path, and yet there seems to be question of whether everyone who claims 4th path means what you mean by that, could you say more specifically what features your experience has that may not be adequately captured by what I described, or what features of my description should be taken more strictly than I or others might think to take those features?

Throwing in a little Zen perspective using the Five Ranks of Tozan model.

A way to see how the progress on the path continues after the clear experience of utter no-center and utter no-agency, is what is sometimes called the "return of the self" or the "fall from grace". A return of the center perspective. This might be experienced as a regression, a sense of "loosing enlightenment".

What comes next is the alternation of the experience of the world as having no center and the experience of the world as having a center, an alternation of no-self/self like breathing in/out or like day/night as a natural cycle. As the alternation progresses, then comes the freedom to experience both ways of being in the world without a preference for one over the other.

After reading through Daniels description of 4th path, my claim still holds. One quote from this thread which describes my experience extremely well is the one here by End in Sight:





Nick-Thank you for that link on option 1!, and for the advice in general. I somehow missed that link before, but that discussion was essentially what I was looking for, minus actual discussion of practices.

I have a question in that vein; Are the shamatha jhanas essentially the end result in shamatha practice, or can shamatha be used in a toned down way simply to learn to let thoughts be? In my experience, whenever I practive shamatha it inevitably turns into the jhanas, but it would be nice to hear other peoples perspectives.

Also, as for option 2 you mentioned; I went to your blog and listened to the conversation between Daniel and Tarin about actual freedom. Based on this, I think I had 2 or 3 PCE's in high school. At the time I though it was a manic phase or something, none the less, these were awesome, free experiences, definitely some of my best memories of being in high school. When I started meditation, I did so in part with the hope that eventually I could live permanently in the sort of state I was in these few times. So based on this, I am extremely interested in actual freedom.

I read an introduction to actual freedom on the site last night which I think put me into a PCE, or perhaps whatever state is right below a PCE. I noticed myself drop out of this state this morning, but I was able to get myself back into it. This pattern occured a couple times during the day. Overall though, right now after a day of trying for PCE's, I am way happier and friendlier than normal, have more energy, am meeting thoughts with aggression drastically less. In other words, I feel like I am seeing that actual freedom does indeed work. I will start reading the available information, but any advice is appreciated.

You may be interested to know that there were many times in my practice where I would have agreed that that description was apt, but there was one specific moment after which I would have had a fairly different understanding of what the meaning of that description was and how it applied to my case.

In general, I suggest working from the assumption that you don't have MCTB 4th path, and looking for counterexamples to the claim. If you have it, it makes no difference; if you don't have it, it will put you on track towards getting it sooner.



Try increasing your concentration as much as possible, but don't enter (what you consider to be) jhana in the process, and see what happens.

@katy: I think that we have gotten so far from regular English that have lost something. Agency: a sense that there is anything controlling this, a sense of a controller or separate doer that makes this body do anything. You posit all sorts of dualities where I don't find those, poltergeists of interest or whatever. It is so much more simple than that and down to earth and straightforward. Perhaps a conversation would be better or more efficient?

To whoever is speculating about the thing fading or center reestablishing itself or subtle center point stuff or anything like that: simply no, not at all, not in 9 years, never, not even a little. There is this diffuse, open field of stuff doing its thing.

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

Daniel:

Daniel:


To posit: assume as a fact; put forward as a basis of argument.

I am not assuming anything. In this thread in your forum, you are using words (absolute "agencylessness"), and are inexplicably redundant ("utter agencylessness") and, what I am doing is reading your chart of words and following up on what you'd like readers to understand.

This is like the pharmacist reading the abbreviated script, understanding what is intended and acting out the consequences (issuing the accurate drug). Your use of the word 'agency' above has absurd consequences (without positing), and thus I have simply wanted to clarify and find more apt words for your experience.

You have read a number of suttas and dharma texts. You are aware of how closely people read these texts to understand practices and exactly replicate them/their purported outcomes to the best of readers abilities. Thus, you may understand that my intent is not to teach grammar here, but to clarify your intent for the record for other readers and find words that can better reflect your experience.

All that was needed is for you to explain what you are trying to convey/say and to answer clarifying questions (e.g., what do you mean by "utter agencylessness"?).

The standard definition of agency does not include anywhere (but in your bespoke definition) "sense of". Hopefully, you can agree that the Concise OED is an acceptable source (as well as the internet, generally).

You might stick with saying, "I have no sense of agency" versus using the absolute concept of utter agencylessness, which has absurd consequences.

Helpful?

What absurd consequences?

Hey dan,

read the posts, answer the questions if you like, or continue to to divert attention in questioning question. You've already been answered in regards to the absurdities. If you don't know what you mean by agencylessness, so be it.

Tarin, since you brought this up, can you comment on this?

Intent is still experienced but is not seen as something independently but rather viewed as arising from cause and effect. This leads to the understanding that free will or agency doesn't exist as an independent thing.

So if someone reads this and stops brushing their teeth, that decision is not caused anything that independently exists as agency. But rather by a chaotic array of factors including the reading of this text, their understanding of the text, their past experiences memories, internal proclivities, etc.

Dan is not saying that things just happen in a fatalistic sense because even that fatalism would be caused by you thinking in that manner, which in turn would be caused by other things.

Seen in this recursive manner the notion of an independent personal agency is an impossibility. Hope that makes sense.

Another point of clarification is that although the lack of free will is obvious, the precise nature of the cause and effect factors that lead to action is not, well at least for me it isn't.

Disclaimer: This is my current understanding / experience, but might not be final or 4th path. If there is further development that I am missing, 4th path folks can chime in and clarify.

Hi Katy,

Daniel:

Daniel's description is perfectly understandable to me, and accords with my experience - no agency. You may find it more useful to throw away the dictionary instead. When it's experienced, the description is quite apt.

If I were tied to the brushing teeth analogy, I'd point to the teeth. They were there before the brushing, are self evident, and aren't controlled by anything to do with the brushing. My current understanding is that all thinking/understanding/perception and action comes from a void - "out of thin air " if you like, with no perceivable agency

Sorry DZ -Your expanded description just muddies it further for me.

I think Dan's question is legitimate. You mentioned 'absurd consequences' twice in your post, yet you never said what those consequences were (and the word 'absurd' is not mentioned anywhere else in this thread). What about Dan's description of "no agency" whatsoever (not only "no sense of agency") do you find would have absurd consequences?

Hi Claudio -

As I've written, my understanding of "agency" comes from its definition (which can be found on the internet generally and which definition available generally on the internet accords with generally accepted dictionaries such as the OED).

Therefore, when you ask: please re-read and observe that I have already noted that the consequences to lacking agency (using the accepted definition of "agency" versus Daniel's personal definition tailored for his experience of several years which underly his MCTB model) are absurd and will distract this thread needlessly (although there may be a benefit to Daniel - and all who follow him to learn his way - to consider the accepted definition of the word on the basis that he cannot provide a non-tautomeristic explanation for his own words nor does he retract his use of agency admitting his error, confusion, ineptitude or other cause).

Thus, when he writes that he has experienced his model for numerous years and that part of his model is "utter agencylessness: meaning no agency" I ask:


For a man who claims Buddhist sainthood (arhat), his inability to render his own words clear and his willfulness to keep his words obscured of clear meaning is worthy of great doubt.

Yes, I agree, his question is legitimate in this forum, because the focus of our particular discussion at this moment (his declaration of utter agencylessness (and his claim to being thus for many years)) attempts to draw clarity from Daniel's system. As it is his system, his interpretation, his lexicon, his evaluation, his creation (tailored from the Burmese Theravedan tradition in his explanation elsewhere) everything in it (and in his executive role in his system) are legitimate:"conforming to the law or to rules".

Edited: ("his declaration"...through to "years))"

In the previous Dark Night meetings organized by Cheetah House, may 16, 2011, Daniel states clearly, "I am arrogant", and arrogance means: having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities.

Knowing anatta would prevent arrogance as it prevents the ability to treat others as peripheral, secondary (inferior) objects of attention over which to be superior. So, in proudly displaying his arrogance (based in ignorance of self, personality view) - which Daniel has sustained (or developed) despite (or because of) his mental gymnastics (unable to apply the stages of insight to actual off-the-cushion living?) his result is exaggerated sense of self.

If he manages to establish a following, one can expect not to achieve anatta, but to suffer an exaggerated sense of self (which balloon is destined to burst).


(Relatedly, he and the master of ceremonies destroy their strawman version of "the general mindfulness community" at various points in the video without ever citing specifics of any mindfulness community. Does Daniel refer to Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, when, in the second video in the first few minutes, he says,
[indent]"Cause and effect is like what they, the mindfulness…this is where the mindfulness community generally ends, except that they sort of in vague terms promise results way, way, way up this spectrum [referring to stages of insight]…to incredibly high stuff that they’re not going to be able to actually achieve (Dan laughing] through their methods, um, but they promise that in some sort of vague terms because the tradition generally promised it and they just never gave that up as part of their selling point, even though they don’t see that in clinical practice generally though they may see some people who get better or they learn some insights and they are able to see, “Oh, well, this is actually just my fear”, which is really useful, but, um, it’s not like, um, anyway. {Here Dan returns to stages of insight[/indent]

Right. So, Dan's practice and method (after many years of practice and teaching) ends in being able to generate mental gymnastics on a cushion, which fruitions are like the computer being turned on and off (his description) and "resetting", and these feats (which Dan also calls the good masturbation in the videos) culminate, again after several years, in the suffering of arrogance (which is fear of small self exhibited by exaggerating that little self into something much more (self-)important and (mythically) capable) and arrogance. What does a person want: Plum Village or plumb dumb?

Edited: typos, grammar, clarity

Ah yes, I didn't realize it was in your earlier post.

From my understanding, 'lack of agency' does not mean 'my body is being controlled against my will/without any will by an outside agent/poltergeist'. that would actually imply agency (namely, that i don't have it, and that someone/something else does). it's just that there is no 'agent'. there is nothing you can point to and say 'that is the dude making all these decisions' - all the decisions are just done in response to stimuli (part of which is self-referential memory, perhaps). neither 'i' am making decisions, nor 'someone else' is making them for me, just - decisions are being made.

So, I suppose you could ask yourself, "Are Katy's questions somehow useful to how I choose to spend my energy, even if her questions are not legitimate (because she is not a part of Dan's internal rules and laws (which tweak tradition as needed, most notably to afford himself sainthood), and much more importantly, am I able to think for myself and does that relate to my freedom?"

It does.

I raise all of this not to be a provocateur, but because autonomy (liberation) is a worthy goal, most definitely worth the effort and the struggle, and requires accuracy, not precision.

This site, which Daniel founded and which he funds, helped me move through stages of insight (as did other practices), notably out of here-called Dark Night, so I offer this for Daniel's own clear sight and that all may realize a transformation of their own suffering into their own autonomy (freedom), versus parrotting another or sit in another's ephemeral shade, temporarily enjoying an academic attention (which arising will pass away). The sun will eventually hit that shade wherein someone tucks, so you may as well be the one to put yourself in the light. Or not. It takes humility (or anatta) to do this.

Hi Katy

There are some tricky things being raised here, and as far as I can see they're partly based on the fact that the more ultimate realizations of later paths yield experiences (temporary or ongoing) are very hard for language to accurately describe, nor can the experiences being described really be accurately imagined nor understood before attaining them. "No agency" is one of them. Dictionary definitions will not help here, as words describing realizations are pointing at something that is beyond conventional knowledge, and more to do with how things such as knowledge arise and are processed, and the added (fabricated) inferences (such as self, watcher, doer) that arise, or not, from the "raw data" of these compounded sensations.

I do think it's important to separate ultimate and relative wisdom - you seem to make the common mistake of confusing relative behavior patterns with ultimate insights. The ongoing experience of anatta, and the road to having this experience being baseline, can lead to a lessening of convention arrogance, and it also can not. Anatta is referring to the nature of what is arising, not the patterns and subsequent perception and labeling of what is arising.

I haven't read MCTB for a while, but I'm pretty sure Daniel mentions the complexity of the question "how do ultimate insights translate to conventional behavior changes" but the answer is complex and varies from person to person. I think it's in the models of enlightenment chapter, which I suggest you re-read. If you are after an "enlightenment" that erases certain personality traits, it might be worth becoming clearer about what insight practice is aiming at.

It's tricky though, I know, as ultimate insights can yield changes to the personality that are more in line with conventional understandings of what it is like for someone to be less "ego-centric" etc. Both these lines of development are important in actualizing (hehe) our potential as human beings, but working on one's psychology / temperament / behavior patterns and insight practice as described by Daniel are two very different things at root...although they do and can cross over in some interesting ways.

Basically, humility and anatta are not the same thing. Again, it's a type of sensation versus nature of sensation thing.

As for the "no agency" discussion, it doesn't make sense conceptually until the point it makes sense experientially. Linguistic accuracy is only a tool, the question is what do you want it to serve?

Thom

Katy aren't you doing the same thing here that you did with AF term "harmless".

Mr. Ingram refers to change in behaviour that follow enlightenment and that those changes are a much better way to live.

If such behavioural changes do not follow realizations made within the mental faculty, then persons may claim enlightenment and continue to practice arrogant objectification of others. Have you been held in an objectified condition by others under the governance of such arrogance ignoramuses?

Arrogance is self-aggrandisment responding to fear of small, impotent self and that Daniel admits it twice in the video (and looks down) is body language and expression worth noting. People "at the top" often fear, hate and want to abandon the establishment they put in motion and feel trapped by it (aware of how they alienated others for not legitimizing themselves/their organization, they fear their own de-legitimization). Thus, they become insouciant persons who denigrate others (Dan's condescension of "the general mindfulness community", for example) while trying to find escape routes from their own work (Dan's desire for deliverance through and vow to achieve Richard's Actual Freedom) or to escape through absurdly amplifying (Dan's "utter agencylessness") their work into collapse (his open declaration with ashamed body language, "I am arrogant").


So, when Dan's MCTB-achieving offspring went to another man (Richard) for a deeper seed, AF, after their realizing that their final path with Dan remained unsatisfactory, Daniel himself vowed to attain Actual Freedom and has attempted to seed himself with Richard's AF. Now, Daniel tucks in and amplifies his own path with absurdities that he finds he cannot actually explain (yet he puts his descriptors out there despite his ignorance of them, "utter agencylessness"). Why? He is at the stage of his experience wherein he wills his own ignorance (collapse).

Santiago's reference is quite relevant:



If you want persons (who may end up in positions of power) to claim enlightenment and show no behavioural modifications (such as is delineated in morality (sila)), that is fine for you, and you can follow MCTB and see where it leaves you. MCTB can be a useful reference, and I found it to be useful personally at some "stages".

But, Daniel himself shows, the final stage of his model is unsatisfactory from his own perspective and does not free him from the suffering of arrogance.

May he collapse and regrow mindfully, freshly in every moment. At some point he may compost his growing mound of detritus (all the offensive odors (words) that waft up from putrid, unworked arrogance (a deluded mental faculty) and the substance of which can transform into rich soil - such that his every moment of mindfulness weeds his capacity to objectify himself (and consequently others) in superiority/inferiority complexes ("I am arrogant"), and his ongoing fresh view can grow in each instance, changing his bedside manner (behaviour) appreciably.

edit: possible clarity

If by "the same thing" you mean that I am looking at the words (words being an agreed upon conventional lexical currency for exchanging concepts between persons, which currency is maintained by definitions and etymology), then, yes, I am looking at what Daniel writes and says (again: lexical currency with which he would pollinate other minds if they accept the currency). The object of his subjectification is enlightenment (and his alienated own self, "I am arrogant").

And, for various reasons known to him (but clues to which are available in his abundant lexical expression in video and in posts) - perhaps his entrapment in the jhana gym to the point of addiction with altered states of consciousnsess effecting a blindness (his own externally-unsolicited declaration, "I am arrogant") to his potential for every-moment* fresh living and to the equivalent arising of "others" (similarly worthy of non-objectified viewing).



* There are no independent, units of "moment", however, I am using a lexical convention to expression fluid, mutable "now".

Katy, just a friendly note - I find no evidence in this thread of Daniel being unable to actually explain his experience. Your posts are quite difficult to follow - I did not even realize you had already mentioned what those 'absurd consequences' were, for example, until I re-read some of your earlier posts, and even then it was difficult to see what you actually meant. It's hard to see what you are attempting to achieve with your latest posts - I mostly just get the impression that they are rather aggressive (in other threads as well), and for what reason, I do not know.

It's hard to see where you're coming from. For the purposes of mutually beneficial communication, I would recommend giving others the benefit of the doubt and engaging them on less confrontational terms. Perhaps try working on a simpler communication style (only offer one point per post, very clearly, with simpler sentence structure) or perhaps engage those you wish to talk to about confrontational matters in other mediums (e.g. gchat or skype).

Hi Claudio - when a man states his own arrogance (Daniel: May 16,2011, Cheetah House, Rhode Island, "I am arrogant") and displays body-language of shame and/or interior-looking, he is inviting confrontation: to face up to and deal with (a problem or difficult situation) (google's offered definition at the time of this post).

Because arrogance is the belief in one's own superiority there is no way to approach Dan (a self-claimed buddhist saint) without what appears to you as aggression. His own admission of superiority is being confronted as a problem of his path with the intent for his own freedom (from the suffering of personality view (a buddhist suffering) like self-aggrandization) - not unlike how, in the DhO, people offer each other's help and experience.

If Dan is off-limits, then you further entrap him in a pitiful condition. In confronting him, as you call it, I press for his freedom of his self-created arrogance (which he reveals for a reason in Cheetah House), because he well deserves to be lightened of that affective weight, created by his own agency. That he cannot explain his own word choice, which words he chooses to describe his mental state of the past several years, concludes that he cannot describe the nature of mental faculty, thus his is obscured, not clear, aka: not well lit, at present.


Edits: spelling and syntax, possible clarity, format

If you are doing this for Dan's sake, then you should modify the manner in which you are communicating with him, as he appears to not be understanding what you are trying to tell him, e.g.:




I'm not saying Dan is off-limits, just that this is not the most mutually beneficial way for you to get your points across. Again, perhaps a more private conversation between you two would lead to better results, as Dan has already suggested:


[1] I took this to not be him mocking your grammar, but rather not understanding what you're trying to get across in the way you're trying to get it across.
[2] I took this to not be him avoiding your question, but rather not understanding what you're trying to get across in the way you're trying to get it across.

Hi Claudio -

You are the only one to introduce mockery in this thread. It is a bit like Dan's strawmen - "niveau Tibetans" and the "general mindfulness community" - groups he never specifically identifies, because they are concepts of his own mind which he introduces in order to have objects for his denigration (another symptom of his self-avowed arrogance).

So, here is the initial aspect of my initial post again, with a further request that Daniel not use tautomerism in his answers.


Daniel:



Would you provide an experiential example which illustrates an occasion of the mystery you intend in your words (in your context above):
1. "agencylessness"
2. "affect in agencylessness"?

Would you clarify how, depending on what you look and aim for, an area for development independently arises?



Yes, Claudio, and if you read my posts you may note that I've already addressed this. Dan puts words in the public sphere (wherein he guides others), and there he should be able to explain his deliberate words (without the ineffective pseudo-strategy of tautomerism (repeating the same words). He has been a student of suttas and has depended on their meaning. In this spirit, perhaps he would make his words clear (and thus reveal clearly the nature of his mind - unless he cannot due to his own fetters). Until then you operate as a mild diversionary proxy for Dan's own replies.

Further he invites a grilling in the first few seconds of this video capture of last May:

Dan: You know ,I got all the way to stage 10 or so with no instruction at all”

Question: were you able to talk in language that was similar at all?

Dan: No. I had no idea what had happened. So that’s why it’s so incredibly useful to have the language. No I couldn’t have said this after I had done that. If people had asked me about stuff I had done, and really grilled me on it, they could’ve gotten to it, because I had some insights into some basic things, the workings of the mind, that I didn’t even know I had.


(interestingly, in his last Cheetah House talk he notes an absence of analytical women in the DhO. Perhaps, analytical female are, to the arrogant mind, just objects for one with ignorant personality-view like his dismissive take on "nouveau tibetans" and "the general mindfulness community". Anyway, I have not grilled, just asked. Perhaps I should grill?)

My apologies. I had a mistaken impression that you had a mistaken impression about something Dan said.

As my posts seem to not be helping in this matter, I withdraw from this conversation.

katy,

there is apparently some gap in the communication between you and Dan. i think I understand the disconnect, perhaps i don't but I will just try to translate... if there is a simple, minor miscommunication followed by fastidious logic with no regard for absurd consequences we can end up in some strange places, like that Dan is some sort of fraud. D Z already explained to you one of the things that I am going to reiterate so I don't know if you missed that or are simply waiting for Dan to explain it himself (in which case i question your motives)... but in any case I am just going to attempt to solve this puzzle, partly because I enjoy reading your posts and trying to figure them out, especially the part about Oz.

I suffer from some obsessive compulsions to analyze and carefully figure out things, I often write posts like this and then don't post them them because I decide that they aren't useful, in this case though, I will post it because I think it is useful


When Dan is saying agencylessness I am 99% sure he is referring to sense-of-agency-lessness. he isn't saying that he had free will and lost it, but that there was no actual free will and only a delusion that there was free will. lack of free will as it is being used here doesn't necessarily mean lack of intention, but simply that intentions are causally determined and arise not due to some separate thing that intends and makes choices. (this is the thing D Z said) volition is a causally determined aggregate, although it is not seen clearly to be causally determined aggregate but rather as an expression of a separate self that is intending things to happen. 4th path is fully penetrating this insight (so i hear).

so perhaps dan was using the word incorrectly to mean a sense of agencylessness rather than agencylessness, thus "utter agencylessness" isn't redundant.



these weren't my words so I can't know exactly what Dan meant. If you look at it with fastidious attention to syntax and logic it is of course directly contradictory. but from context and simply watching discussions like this take place i think this would be a way to rephrase his statement "the goals you prefer, depending on your conditioning, will cause the way forward to become clear."



This question lacks clarity, you ask how this interest you are finding in the unraveling is different from your 4th path, asking dan to explain the difference between his interest and his attainment. I am not sure whether you meant to ask how the interest arises and exists with 4th path vs. without it, or if you meant why the interest in 4th path wouldn't also immediately lead to a further interest in AF. I think the answer to the latter is explained by the fact that people feel a sense of completion with 4th path because they are now totally perceiving phenomena clearly, the insight "axis of development" has absolutely nowhere else to go. The answer to the former is that the interest is occurring in the exact same way but with 4th path it is perceived clearly as not-self and causally determined.


I think this question has been explained by the difference between agencylessness and sense-of-agency-lessness thing above.


Instead of mental faculty poltergeists, couldn't it be that there is a mind, which has potentials for investigation and interest (and intention) which can be causally triggered... all without any separate thing controlling or intending. then, with 4th path this type of mind is perceived clearly.



he meant no sense of doer, which is not a definition you will find in a dictionary, but is compatible with everything else he says if you just insert "sense of" before agencylessness.


you might remember that in that talk he also said that the paths as he experienced them didn't quite line up with all the sutta descriptions and fetter-model maps.


I think you have hit upon the reason some people who attain 4th path want to continue to AF, it doesn't translate into the end of things like arrogance as affective states. Your description of the fruits of the mahasi technical model is really nothing less than Daniel ever claimed it to be... although he doesn't tend to create such a derogatory image.


Thank you, I do believe you are looking for clarity and to help others not get entrapped in what you see as some sort of deception. I think however your standards for flawless coherency are perhaps a bit too high, and have led you to come to conclusions which have no logical flaws in them, but would benefit from a slightly less narrow perspective.


Daniel has stated that his model does not conform to any limited action or affective range models.


shows, and openly admits


thank you for the imagery and metaphor, but don't you think you have taken this a bit farther than a simple confusion over the word agencylessness, and Dan's perceived unwillingness (but perhaps inability, due to not understanding your confusion) to explain himself would warrant?

thank you for reading hehe

Ah,

By independently, I mean not with the other effects, such as affectlessness, as I clarify in the subsequent clause, meaning not as a package, meaning that that aspect of clear seeing arising without and independently of other aspects of development, meaning that by looking into things happening on their own and understanding that, feelings didn't vanish also, meaning that realizing that things happen on their own occurred without and thus independent of feeling vanishing. I didn't mean anything like not dependent in some way as to apply in some grand scheme or cosmology, such as Dependent Origination, as you perhaps read it, but meaning that one could, by way of example, realize that things happen on their own, without doing whatever causes certain other transformations of the way that causal system functions.

As to "Richard's AF", I actually prefer Tarin, Trent, Jill and Steph's apparent attainments regardless of anything related or having to do with this Richard or what they call it, as I see the value in what they have done and believe it can benefit my own practice and round out my own development: what is wrong with that? The method is interesting and fun, the focus on paying attention to feelings hardly contradicts anything sane and reasonable. The problem here is what?

As to "lack of agency", this is a way of speaking using that specific term has worked across numerous situations and with psychological academics and practitioners alike for years with no problems in people understanding what I meant by it and no one has raised the particular objection to the term that you have, but try just throwing out that word, as it is clearly not helping at all, and looking at the numerous synonyms and explanations I use for it, and see if that helps. This is no-self at its core, a fundamental concept that applies to all things at all times, all mind states, all emotions, all actions, all happenings, all manifestations, all qualities, all investigations, all interests, all questions, all "personal" qualities, etc. This is a really, really important point.

As to tautomerism, I believe that providing numerous synonyms and other explanations is not tautomerism as I understand it, but clarification, or that is how it was intended.

That things happen on their own (meaning reality does its complex, interdependent, causal, natural thing), and that includes everything, including investigation, etc., is not just something I made up but is actually the way thing happen regardless even of level of understanding, always have. This is actually oddly easy to see for many objects, thoughts, intentions, happenings, just somewhat tricky to see for a few, seemingly closer to home categories, though with time and practice those can be known this way also.

As to arrogance, numerous people have mentioned this impression of me and this is no secret, and it coincides with my own impression some of the time as well, so why not be honest about this? I don't really see the problem here. I have had numerous teachers who appeared to many and likely themselves as arrogant, but I learned a lot from them and am grateful to have been able to learn something from them, at least. If that doesn't work for you, there are a large number of people out there that the term really wouldn't fit well with at all, and perhaps they would be a better match for whatever you are looking for.

As to my benefitting from this exchange in the way you seem to wish me to, I am not sure this is the most effective way for this to occur, as I indicated, but if this fits with your vision of an attempt to help, I can run with it as best I can.

As to myself being off limits, there are tons of criticism of me on the DhO and other places on the web, and I have never deleted or censored any of it. You weren't here for the First Great DhO Schism, I see, and if you are in a criticize Daniel mood, perhaps you can take comfort from reading some threads from that contentious period early in the DhO history.

As to my criticism of the mindfulness community, I could name numerous specific individuals, practice groups, publications, etc, but that would just be petty, it would seem, and serve no useful purpose that I can think of. I still think my critiques of them shortchanging people who, given better information, would themselves do better, have some validity.

As to my critiques of "nouveau Tibetans", this being a similar pattern to "nouveau riche" in meaning, but ironically without the things that would actually make them "riche" in spiritual terms, I do know a lot of people who suddenly adopted Tibetan trappings of language, costume, doctrine, theory and culture and suddenly found themselves feeling like they were now empowered to critique people who had practices that far exceeded their wildest dreams but they a) had no idea that such practice was even possible, and b) didn't see the stunning irony of them having been given an opening into a great and powerful set of Tibetan techniques but instead just bought into the arrogance of their newly adopted religion without learning to practice them at all, thus converting their very potentially freeing and enlightening tradition into just another set of golden handcuffs that they wanted to attack people with, which is both tragic and common and worthy of critique, or at least it seems to so to me. Actually, given your marked interest in critiquing me, it is interesting you don't also see that your fine analysis and strong set of ideals of how things should be might just as easily be applied to those situations and come to conclusions similar to the ones I come to.

As to this exchange, where is all of this bitterness coming from? Your comments have a lot of force behind them, it seems. I don't mean to diffuse or deflect by questioning, but I think something in this effect is worth addressing, as it seems potent, and is bringing in all sorts of seemingly stored up resentments and feelings about all sorts of things that weren't even addressed in this thread, such as the part about my Brown talks. I am imperfect from numerous points of view, and you have your own set of very strong ideals of how I should be and what I am looking for and seem to feel that what I really needed and meant by saying I was arrogant was for you to lay into that with all the force you could muster.

Just to clarify: I wasn't asking for that in any obvious way that I was aware of, though, if this truly is all well- and kindly-meant, then my thanks for your compassionate and diligent attempts at my personal reform, and, to clarify for the benefit of not being able to see and hear me say it, I don't mean to have any satyrical or mocking tone in that thanks at all.

To be realistic, while I can appreciate the sentiment that I must be freed from those admittedly less-than-optimal personality quirks by your sharp and cutting intellect, I must admit that the chances of your success are less would be the case in an ideal world, and this is unfortunate.

Numerous others have already attempted the same, and, while some slight positive modifications have slowly happened over time, it seems to be a gradual maturation and wearing-away process, just to manage your expectations of success based on previous outcomes, and to presume that the process would come to some perfect conclusion before my inevitable demise is dubious.

Further, as to method, and not necessarily speaking for anyone else, I personally tend to respond better to methods that have less of a bite and bit more of a perceived smile, just for future reference, and this is something that I myself should also try to remember likely applies to others for my own future exchanges, though you are still welcome here to try this chosen method and see if you have better success than anticipated, as my knowledge of the specifics conditionality in its massive breath and complexity is grossly suboptimal also, and I may underestimate its efficacy based on my own preconceptions.

Daniel

1/21/12 3:46 PM

Arrogance is ignorance. Ignorance pervades actions like Dan introducing words Dan cannot explain ("utter agencylessness") whilst claiming buddhist sainthood and maximum enlightenment in his model and while expressing on several occasions in video two that he should just be trusted and that his radical claims are unsubstantiated and the the the research community (Yale and Brown) may have a hard time doing so). Indeed: it is perhaps Dan's "nouveau tibetans" that have been so useful to contemplative neuroscience on an empirical level.

I am not aware of Dan offering any empirical evidence (such as fMRI), but his style is more "trust me" (as he states clearly in his video) while he cannot explain his own words (a claim of "utter agencylessness" to say nothing of his claimed sainthood).

It is notable that you find I have taken this "too far" while showing no concern for Dan's tautomerism and his denigrations of groups he creates (e.g., "the general mindfulness community" (which strawman he renders into an incompetent community by stating that their methods will not get a person through the stages of insight and by stating that this community errantly claims they can get people through the "high" stages of insight, and his denigration of "the nouveau tibetans").

As Dan's declaration of being a buddhist saint (which requires tip-top enlightenment) is getting mild attention from academia (Yale and Brown), it is perhaps worthwhile focusing on his words and claims, as were the words of Siddhartha. In the Cheetah videos, Dan and an interlocutor admit that such discussions are like the early sangha.

I do not say that Dan is a fraud. If I had such a fastidious logic to lead to this conclusion, I would say it and I do not. This is your idea and seemingly based in a fixity-view regarding a substrate nature to Dan that I do not have. He's a mutable sentient being, in my view.

Please note that Dan has asked to be grilled on the stages of insight, and he is describing his own. Perhaps, Josh, observing Dan's own will you may accept that he welcomes being questioned?


So I repeat my early questions to Dan and to his early MCTB definitions (*):

Daniel:


Would you provide an experiential example which illustrates an occasion of the mystery you intend in your words (in your context above):
1. "agencylessness"
2. "affect in agencylessness"?

Would you clarify how, depending on what you look and aim for, an area for development independently arises?



_______
2/16/12 edit to include quotation marks around Daniel's outline here below:
*[indent]"Since the topic has come up so often and been so bandied about so many times by so many people, let me state here what I mean by 4th path, regardless of what anyone else means by it. It has the following qualities:

1) Utter centerlessness: no watcher, no sense of a watcher, no subtle watcher, no possibility of a watcher. This is immediately obvious just as color is to a man with good eyesight as the old saying goes. Thus, anything and everything simply and obviously manifest just where they are. No phenomena observe any others and never did or could.

2) Utter agencylessness: meaning no agency, no sense of doing, no sense of doer, no sense that there could be any agent or doer, no way to find anything that seems to be in control at all. Whatever effort or intent or anything like that that arises does so naturally, causally, inevitably, as it always actually did. This is immediately obvious, though not always the forefront of attention.

3) No cycles change or stages or states or anything else like that do anything to this direct comprehension of simple truths at all.

4) There is no deepening in it to do. The understanding stands on its own and holds up over cycles, moods, years, etc and doesn't change at all. I have nothing to add to my initial assessment of it from 9 years ago.

5) There is nothing subtle about it: anything and everything that arises exhibits these same qualities directly, clearly. When I was third path, particularly late in it, those things that didn't exhibit these qualities were exceedingly subtle, and trying to find the gaps in the thing was exceedingly difficult and took years and many cycles. I had periods from weeks to months where it felt done and then some subtle exception would show up and I would realize I was wrong yet again, so this is natural and understandable, and if someone claims 4th as I define it here and later says they got it wrong, have sympathy for them, as this territory is not easy and can easily fool people, as it did me many, many times over about 5 years or so. However, 4th, as I term it, ended that and 9 years later that same thing holds, which is a very long time in this business.

There are other aspects that may be of value to discuss at some other time, but those are a great place to start for those who wish to claim this. If you truly have those, then perhaps we can talk about a few other points that are less central and essential.

Now, how there can still be affect (though quite modified in many ways) when there is centerlessness and agencylessness, this is a mystery to the AF kids and to me as well, and that brings me to my next point: there seems to be areas of development depending on what you look for and aim for that may arise independently, and not everything seems to come as a package necessarily. Those things are what I looked for really hard for about 7 years, and that is what I found. Now I find that the interest in the unraveling of what drives that residual affect is arising, and so that investigation happens on its own also.

Perhaps people will find this helpful in some way."[/indent]

I was trying to keep the issues addressed to a minimum... the main intent of my post was to clear up the issue over the word "agencylessness," which you didn't respond to in any way.. but I accept that you might be looking for him and him alone to explain his own words


Ok, that is fine, I was answering because it seemed like no one else was addressing all of the points you were trying to make, but Dan has now answered for himself so I will back out and leave it to you two.

Rather, you have expressed there is a benefit in understanding your experience of the stages of insight for those who would "grill" (to question relentlessly; cross-examine (to question from an opposing view-point)) you.


Dan - this is not utter agencylessness (rhetorically emphasized absolute lack of governance over absolutely all action, such as murder or tooth brushing, mental forms, and all conventional (and affective, esoteric, etc) action occurring through you).

Clauses in series do not clarify your word choice: clauses in series add words in series and expand a definition; they do not distill or clarify. If you don't understand that point I will explain it, because it is useful to one who publishes such as yourself.

For all who think this is fastidious logic (Josh) with procrustean objective (uselessly formal lexical gymnastics), it is worth considering that Dan is being studied, offering his personal studies internationally, and that his own ability to form best-language to describe his mental state is probably useful to those listening to him for their own objectives.

To be clear, please confirm then that what you've seen in jhana is that feelings and thoughts and other mental forms arise without a deliberate will (a deliberate action taken on your part). That in sitting on the cushion you are aware of how the mind generates forms (affective, cognitive, sensate and/or altered consciousness) without any perceptible action (agency) on your part. That this percolation of mentally formed phenomena is your experience of the nature of your human mental faculty (and that the buddhist stages of insight indicate that this is the nature of the human mental faculty, nothingness percolating forms) when the mental faculty is not in a void state (and what you call fruition describes when the mental faculty shuts down into nothingness after neither-perception-nor-no-perception, re-sets from void, then issues an initial newly percolated formation from the void. This infant percolation arises dependently on the mental faculty, and is not dependent on any willful agent).

This is what you mean?


_____
Edit: spelling, and I changed the formatting of your words for ease of my reading and possible comprehension, hence the stacking of your sentence in the quote box.

*

Also: katy s, are you having a manic episode?

I think there is a big difference between seeing through that which is compounding (the fetter of conceit for example) and seeing its compounding parts (sensations,thoughts etc) and that they are empty of 'self' and 'agency' and are causal and transient (MCTB ARAHAT) VERSUS seeing that very same compounding (of conceit for example) cease altogether permanently (what seems to be implied in the Khemaka Sutta: SUTTA ARAHAT?).

Versus clarify Nouveau Tibetans (who are these people?) you add another vague group to disparage: nouveau riche?

If you are not interested in naming who you denigrate other than taking shots at general buddhist communities (actually laughing at the "general mindfulness community" for promising methods that you state will not deliver enlightenment - the leaders of which communities have witnessed such lives of war that you may hopefully never understand), what value do you add by generally denigrating these communities?

In this willful denigration, you create a fissure in the communities, needlessly, unless your self-claimed arrogance is a need and your self-claimed sainthood is a justification.

If you understand anatta and if you understand how mental formations arise, your continued and admitted claim of superiority ("I am arrogant") is grotesque.

You have done nothing to merit sweets (the opposite of bitters) and if you taste bitterness here, it is from your mind (whence your senseless words spring and are self-valued in your claim of arrogance) to your mouth.



What you perhaps want is, not the grilling you recommended to better understand the stages of insight, but metta for the caricature you make of them.* Ok.


Edit:
* as you continue forward in your public presentation of your experience of the buddhist stages of insight, consider your advocacy for self-arrogance and denigration of others will be perpetuated.

[link redacted]

Gideon: This is where the battle begun. This is where the battle ends: language.

Although Gideon is talking about AF, the above quote is applicable here as well.

People start to claim certain accomplishments which are grand in nature and use language in a certain way about what they have accomplished. But in the end, it is the language itself that brings the edifice down.

[edit: posts which contain confidential personal information, or links to material which does, will be moderated to have the confidential content removed. in this particular instance, richard's full(er) name was published. while names are frequently not a confidential matter and the posting of them frequently not cause for moderation, in richard's particular case, he has made it very clear that he does not want any of his given name, beyond 'richard', in the public domain.

please consider this message a request that forum participants respect this particular individual's particular privacy wishes, as well as a warning from admin that violations of the site policy regarding personal privacy will not be tolerated and that more serious violations will result in 'no warning and instant termination from the dho', as was made clear (with examples provided) in the personal privacy and the dho thread. these are the house rules; if you want to keep posting here, please play by them.

tarin, mod]

Hi Stian -

I appreciate this excerpt of Venerable Khemaka, prepared by Thanissaro Bhikku that you've presented:

One of the strange experiences of meditation, to me, was the occurrence of when senses no longer become identifiable in their "class", in my experience. I found it fun at first to realize that the conceptual mind had to well-up and name sound as sound, taste as taste, otherwise, in this particular stage of the mental faculty dissolving, the ability to know sound as "sound" is not there. This was the first occasion I had to see that if the mental faculty is not naming sensations, then the level at which I actually experienced the senses was foreign, unknown to me at a conscious level.

A friend has been able to cease on one occasion perception of physical pain (a crushing injury with a deep cut to an appendage) in such a mental state, and while I do not spend time in this stage I can see (based on her experience) that the mental state - if a person can master it - has significant practical value.

No. I looked up the definition here to understand what you are asking.

Edit: spelling

Language is indicative. To me, it is worth meticulous unraveling when there are, yes, claims and condescension. The "dark night" community is vulnerable to the "just trust me" tone. The desire for deliverance is massive.

I credit Daniel with bouncing me into the DhO forum when I first contacted him in summer 2010 and he noted that many voices are better than one. When a young woman eventually contacted me for similar one-to-one, it was good sense to refer her to this community of many voices. She comes and goes and may need one-to-one for a while I guess (and digress).

That said, language to me is not only indicative (of the mind (i.e., my regular post edits for spelling and syntax, without any perfection pathology, reflect a degree of mindfulness that could be improved) but I also see language as often exchanged as currency of approximation (it approximately expresses mutable engagements), best exchanged in person (wherein eyes and body language proximity and flow can be sensed).

It seems to take a good thinker with good self-awareness to express themselves accurately in words alone. Even under such rare conditions, language is still exchanging a momentary experience, and this synthetic containment of engaging is actually an ongoing mutability being described by a momentary language framing (where the containment is called an "experience") .

Soooo, it gets fussy and impractical and I generally take language broadly unless, yes, it is being used to build an imposing complex of beliefs which tramples others. I laughed out loud when I looked up the word "prig" from your link.

To be clear, Dan, I do not see how things (or you) should be. I do not have a plan for your "should be" self.

I do see - by watching your videos and listening and reading what you've said about yourself and your path model, and have noted, your dissatisfaction with your state (though you claim final path in buddhism, that of saint (arhat)), and I query you (as per your instructions to be grilled about the stages of insight as you know them). You would be correct if you see this as a form of respect, because I would not use my time in this way if I did not take you as an actual being, expressing yourself deliberately and worthy of your recommended close attention.


I may be brash (assertive in a rude or unpleasant way, depending on your affective registry of my assertiveness and analysis - which you touchily call "cutting intellect" and toned with "bitterness" (what low-hanging, trite fruit to refer to a woman as bitter!)), but I do not claim arrogance (I do not have an aggrandized view of myself as superior to any other). You are welcome to dispute that, but I'd like you to note that the claim I make for myself is that "I am assertive here" in a manner that may be described by you as "bitter" (tasting, Dan?), and please note that you say for yourself, "I [Dan] am arrogant". While you may hope to balance arrogance with humility by forwardly and regularly admitting your superior view of yourself, it is your ongoing adherence to your arrogance which is determined by you that results in this admission not being humble nor the arrogance being plausibly diminished, nor in deflecting comments by incorrectly noting that anyone who calls you out on your arrogance has the same affliction: you are just, in line with arrogance, holding the floor and commanding attention as speaker. So, I heard you: you are arrogant and this self-aggrandisement is worth analysis in view of your claim of buddhist sainthood and complete realization of the three characteristics (one of which is anatta).

Is your continued determination to be arrogant, to borrow your vocabulary for the stages of insight, also "useful masturbation"? This is one actual question I would pose to you for your clarification on- or offline, if you want to pursue this.

Why do I care? Do I? I am not married to this engagement, but I respect you enough to query you about it (per your recommendation to grill you) until you advise that it is unhelpful to you and unwelcome. At that point, I stop.

There are two purposes I have here in regards to liberation and the consequences of your path model, that I find useful in your forum, the DhO:

The primary purpose is to highlight how your path terminates (with your continued craving for affectlessness and your continued self-aggrandisement) and with these same attributes continuing in your dharma heirs (who commonly referred to themselves as "asshats" (directly explaining that word to be their newfound arrogance in "Asshatship"), and who also need to leave your system to address its unsatisfactory terminus).

On the eve of your second Rhode Island video confab, there were significant concerns raised (about your continued desire (for AF) and inability to evidence behavioural changes in being fully enlightened at the point of sainthood) voiced in the first confab that do not need to be swept under the rug, or lost before this second DN confab. MCTB "asshatship" is no reflection of liberation in my opinion. [EDIT: I am not proposing this area be raised at the confab, just re-iterating points that were made and remain.]

[Edit: and this "asshatship" may be part of your poor salesmanship which you note in May 2011; a two-fold problem of "selling" arrogance ("asshatship") and the actual red flag a person at the outset of path sees in a self-proclaimed saint selling arrogance --- verily this may be why there are an abundance of "Dark Night yogis" on the DhO (myself arriving this way) - mostly those people who will suspend their suspicion of red flags (like arrogance and self-proclaimed sainthood) being quite desperate for deliverance from their suffering.]

The secondary purpose, - and this is entirely your choice should you be interested (again, I am not married to this, but respect your words (which express your mental formations) enough to get into this with your personally, not just to highlight the unsatisfactory terminus of your path model), is to see about permanently unloading that aggrandized sense of yourself that you maintain, because a) by establishing this forum you helped me out of dark night so that my process could unfold naturally (as the path will unfold naturally after dark night is seen clearly) - and I am grateful for this, and b) you clearly want to know what the "AF Kids" (notably a diminutive description of them that you've created) have achieved, yet after a year you have not attained this and privately you've cited reasons and uncertainty. Regardless of whether you want to call their state AF (due to recent withdrawal) you have voiced interest in the affectless state and a need to go further. There are several reasons in your life why your sustenance of you arrogance would be (and I have worked in EMS so I understand some of the ER stereotypes, but do not assume them or apply them to you), but I think (from my own experience is seeing how strong ego can arise in strengthened conditions (like stable jhana) and how quickly strong ego can be diffused with right view), that the reason for your continued, willful fueling of your own superiority (such that you continue to traduce broadly other groups through strawmen: the nouveau tibetans, the nouveau riche, the mindfulness community...anyone else? Bitter/darknight women? Just make of note of your unworthy, inferior groups as they arise; I think this affect will go away with select mindfulness work based in anatta) may be in your jhana practice itself. We can go offline to discuss or not, if you like. However, as you noted to me, many voices are better than one.

[edits: possible clarity, syntax]

Jesus - "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me."

What jhana-fueled arrogance! Sounds like he could have reduced his affect with a little select mindfulness work based in anatta.

[edit - possible light silliness]

Hi Thom, from which translation (and authored edition) do you take your quote?

The politics of religion (and its historic (re-)writings) are vast. It is perhaps nice Daniel has an opportunity to have his actual words read and understood, not a later committee's manipulation of them.

1/23/12 9:52 AM
Perhaps you can state why you raise this point here, Thom.

I would add that Daniel and his path are exceptional in affording people in Dark Night, sometimes chronically, a path to Equanimity and Stream Entry. This is immeasurable. He has a unique ability to provide this opportunity and access where others shy away.*

Edit:
*the issue, of course, is that even Daniel experiences dissatisfaction with his model (after at least seven years living in its "perfection of mastery of training") and his own practice (e.g., by needing a further de-conditioning after arhatship he committed himself to achieving, Actual Freedom). Here is an excerpt of Daniel's definition of arhatship:
[indent]Arahatship designates the perfection of mastery of training in Wisdom, the Third Training in Buddhism, with the other two trainings being Morality and Concentration.[/indent] with his caveat: [indent]"Those who wish to debate these points should realize a few things, chief among them that I am a strong debater and that I am not going to have my views changed on these points." **[/indent]

(**Relatedly, 'Nicca' expresses continuity and permanence, 'Anicca' expresses the opposite: absence of permanence and continuity. )

So, if MCTB is useful to someone in getting out of dukkha nanas (and that is immeasurably useful) -- which exit may also happen in another setting, like a 10-day retreat somewhere if a person reviews the Stages of Insight present by another non-MCTB source -- then, it is likely that the equanimous perspective of Equanimity stage of insight will start shifting the practitioner to other sources for actual realization of anicca and anatta (versus entrenchment in atta and nicca), just as the MCTB model has launched the MCTB author towards other models such as actual freedom.

Ah.

Well, that calls for the Onion :
[indent]

Monks Gloat over Yoga Championship
"I am the serenest"

[indent]LHASA, TIBET—Employing the brash style that first brought him to prominence, Sri Dhananjai Bikram won the fifth annual International Yogi Competition yesterday with a world-record point total of 873.6.

"I am the serenest!" Bikram shouted to the estimated crowd of 20,000 yoga fans, vigorously pumping his fists. "No one is serener than Sri Dhananjai Bikram—I am the greatest monk of all time!"

Bikram averaged 1.89 breaths a minute during the two-hour competition, nearly .3 fewer than his nearest competitor, second-place finisher and two- time champion Sri Salil "The Hammer" Gupta.

The heavily favored Gupta was upset after the loss.

"I should be able to beat that guy with one lung tied," Gupta said. "I'm beside myself right now, and I don't mean trans-bodily."
Bikram got off to a fast start at the Lhasa meet, which like most major competitions, is a six-event affair. In the first event, he attained total consciousness (TC) in just 2 minutes, 34 seconds, and set the tone for the rest of the meet by repeatedly shouting, "I'm blissful! You blissful?! I'm blissful!" to the other yogis.

Bikram, 33, burst onto the international yoga scene with a gold-mandala performance at the 1994 Bhutan Invitational. At that competition he premiered his aggressive style, at one point in the flexibility event sticking his middle toes out at the other yogis. While no prohibition exists against such behavior, according to Yoga League Commissioner Swami Prabhupada, such behavior is generally considered "un- Buddhalike."

"I don't care what the critics say," Bikram said. "Sri Bikram is just gonna go out there and do Sri Bikram's own yoga thing."
Before the Bhutan meet, Bikram had never placed better than fourth. Many said he had forsaken rigorous training for the celebrity status accorded by his Bhutan win, endorsing Nike's new line of prayer mats and supposedly dating the Hindu goddess Shakti. But his performance this week will regain for him the number one computer ranking and earn him new respect, as well as for his coach Mahananda Vasti, the controversial guru some have called Bikram's "guru."
"My special training diet for Bikram of one super-charged, carbo-loaded grain of rice per day was essential to his win," Vasti said.

The defeated Gupta denied that Bikram's taunting was a factor in his inability to attain TC.

"I just wasn't myself today," Gupta commented. "I wasn't any self today. I was an egoless particle of the universal no-soul."
In the second event, flexibility, Bikram maintained the lead by supporting himself on his index fingers for the entire 15 minutes while touching the back of his skull to his lower spine. The feat was matched by Gupta, who first used the position at the 1990 Tokyo Zen-Off.

"That's my meditative position of spiritual ecstasy, not his," remarked Gupta. "He stole my thunder."
Bikram denied the charge, saying, "Gupta's been talking like that ever since he was a 3rd century Egyptian slave-owner."
Nevertheless, a strong showing by Gupta in the third event, the shotput, placed him within a lotus petal of the lead at the competition's halfway point.

But event number four, the contemplation of unanswerable riddles known as koans, proved the key to victory for Bikram.
The koan had long been thought the weak point of his spiritual arsenal, but his response to today's riddle—"Show me the face you had before you were born"—was reportedly "extremely illuminative," according to Commissioner Prabhupada.
While koan answers are kept secret from the public for fear of exposing the uninitiated multitudes to the terror of universal truth, insiders claim his answer had Prabhupada and the two other judges "highly enlightened."

With the event victory, Bikram built himself a nearly insurmountable lead, one he sustained through the yak-milk churn and breathing events to come away with the upset victory. [/indent][/indent]

With all due respect, I think Katy is doing a good thing here, and I would welcome such an "attack" on me. Very few people are able to articulate their positions so fluently and act off of such an accurate psychoanalysis of another person. I do think she makes very good points and is talking about things that are uncomfortable for others. Why do you think she would go to such lengths in her argumentations unless it was fueled by love of truth?

I think such an "attack" would reveal to me my own blind spots, and it's these blind spots that are keeping me unhappy anyways.

Katy, I hope that last story wasn't an attempt to lighten the atmosphere or avoid someone's anger. You have my support.

Oliver.

Hi Oliver -

Yes, I intended to join Thom in lightening the mood and relieving any tension that may accumulate in this community (while not brushing the dialogue out of the way); I do appreciate your outreach to understand of my effort in this thread, Oliver. (Newton knew about troubles with the concept of absolute space and time when he consolidated physical principles formulaically, but withheld those questions from Principia; Einstein would pick up on this later, and Oppenheimer would have life-long concern about having applied some of that information in the hardcore military movement of WWII - which is a long way of saying I don't know if there was a good or bad result to withholding his understanding of actual problems with his figuring of space in Newton's time, but he did withhold his knowledge of his understanding. Likewise, I don't know what is true here (mutability presiding), but I know to follow what someone says about themselves and others, and how such speech reveals the mind of the speaker (as creator, actualist, combo, etc) and what they then do (also reflective of the mind).

Anyone reading - please consider the appreciation I offer Daniel and his site, the Dharma Overground, and its participants. I see that he - with gentler counsel from others, still has fixity notions (mental notions which give rise to the speech of base caricaturization against general groups and which antagonism does not seem necessary nor specific (as to be helpful) - and may reflect on the MCTB path: nouveau tibetans, dark night women, nouveau riche, and the general mindfulness community (as stated in his book and in his May 2011 confabulation at Cheetah House, Brown University, as part of Dr. Britton's research in the dukkha nanas) and still has his own unmet desires (actual freedom) - thus, a dissatisfaction with his "attainments" (detailed in earlier posts) - and, of course he is welcome to keep all of this as par for being a good debater who will not change his views (citation in earlier post).

But, here in this thread, as a brash personification taking up the recommendation to grill, even with Dan's claim of arrogance and arhatship, he certainly does not look more prominent than his interlocator, me.

What he raises in regards to his own quest, his speech in public academic forums (wherein he now proceeds with his professional credentials, ), and in regards to the outcome of following his model (which a novice may associate with the Stages of Insight versus knowing the MCTB to be Ingram's own interpretation of them) are worth calling attention to (as per the guidelines of the DhO) and even debating (versus groupthink, re: 2003 Charlan Nebeth UC Berkeley research; "authentic dissent can be difficult, but it's always invigorating. It wakes us right up"; re: Brian Uzzi (Northwestern) and his "incumbent teams' " findings that that too much interpersonal and cozy familiarity causes assumption and stale outcomes at the expense of authentic/original engagements; re: Noam Chomsky's (MIT) Building 20 work and his study of language as "reflect[ing] the cognitive structures of the mind (...) The fatal misconception behind [group] brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions...Although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant - not everyone is in the mood for small talk or criticism - that doesn't mean they can be avoided." - Jonah Lehrer, 2012-1, "Groupthink"))..

This is not a generic dialogue about the egos Dan generically mentions arising in the contemplative community. This is a specific dialogue about specific words and actions (May 2011 Cheetah House talk, MCTB, and herein) of the founder here for the consideration of the founder and the community, but not punitively. I agree with his hypothetical statement that a covert arrogance is trickier than an overt arrogance. Nevertheless, there is no reason in anatta to continue to give rise to arrogance.

And my points are not to serve as an absolute arrow to perfectionism for others. Everyone is entitled to go forward as they determine best for themselves (unless they violate some right and are caught). Dan makes it clear in his writings and speech that ideals are not the outcome of his model of Insight practice. And while I can agree with non-absolute idealism at a cosmological level (does infinity have an ideal point? I don't think so), I do find that insight begets a natural orientation for ahimsa mentation and action (and this is how I came to house the actualist word "harmlessness" for my own understanding of their system). So, as concentration and mindfulness beget insight, insight begets the three characteristics: where mutability (anicca and anatta) is understood, it accumulates in approaching the cessation of otherization* and approaching the cessation of the desires of himsa-pleasures (and other dukkhas). In my experience. Here is an interesting piece on the pressures put on ER doctors (given by an 30-year cum laude graduate ER doc who would like to see change to the culture of hiding difficult discussions, as without such a change the fixity of ongoing conditions is both punitive to the doctors and the patients alike (an underestimated 100,000 ppl/year dying of medical error, for example) To use this Ted-presentation as an analogy to outcomes to the stages of insight, one could start to gauge what behvioural changes occur under whose maps to see what systems produce. I'll note the video does advocate gentle approaches and I would use those where they work, but consider brash techniques were stagnancy persists.

Regardless, as Dan goes forward into his new website venture and the academic foray, he may get attention/dismissal for such dismissive caricatures, and, within and without buddhist circles, it may unnecessarily bias the stages of insight, the term "Arhat" and/or himself, possibly creating caricatures of all three (and the Onion "article" I copied is a taste of that caricature: himsa as a result of meditative practices).

And, yes, like you Oliver, I am accountable for my thoughts and words and actions and appreciate an engagement that can cause my awareness. A benefit of this site is that I have arrived at some freedom in going forward as my given name and as another mutable sentient being aware of its practice and insights from this practice. I learn from people engaged by religious as well as scientific and just curious precepts as well as with developmental distinctions. It has turned into a not-harder, no-easier, but certainly more engaging experience.

So the two purposes are stated in an earlier post, and I've gone on a bit more here. Dan and I spent some time chatting privately this week, and perhaps maybe we will again. It was an interesting conversation, from my perspective.

[edit: some typos, spelling]
[edit: * and by these words, "approaching the cessation of", how can I know not having ceased otherization? I can't, I can only detect some change that feels like a reduction and has helped me understand one of my mentors (a large animal bevahiouralist). And by "reduction", how can reduction been seen or have value in infinite mutability? I don't know: it has conventional value to me.

Ok, thank you, Daniel. I apologize to you for my brash approach. Good luck with your practice.

Why do you expect no affect because of the 'centerlessness and agencylessness' of experience?

Affect is due to the chakras (which are just sensations that tend to last much more than an "instant"). Centerlessness and agencylessness are mostly due to mental sensations blocked off in "the head behind the eyes." This is the "I" that thinks it's controlling and the center of all things that the world revolves around.

The chakras are the "me" that feels and gets its heart broken/gets horny/feels idiot compassion (though it isn't idiotic if that's all one has to work with). However, it seems when there are significant chakra points present, then this can also present a sort of "center." So if there is complete centerlessness, totally, then affect would not arise because there would be no chakra points left pretending to be "special." Same goes for agency.



It's interesting that the buddha (or whoever said it) would call this a "lingering residual."

Does this suggest that the paths played out the same way for the monks in the buddha's time? Where they got to "4th path" and realized it was really an "asshatship." If this is true then why is it written that 4th path is considered arahatship when this is obviously not the case and is actually something more like sakadagami? Why do the fetters say that all sense desire is cast off at 3rd path when the buddha uses words like "lingering residual"?

UPDATE: Jonah Lehrer - the author of the article to which I linked above "Groupthink", printed in January 2012 - has admitted to fabricating words in the name of Bob Dylan after the author Michael Moynihan pursued his deceit:
Read more: Jonah Lehrer and Jose Canseco flirt with truth, legacies - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_21221767/jonah-lehrer-and-jose-canseco-flirt-truth-legacies#ixzz22g8ZMGr7
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

The New Yorker Magazine has added the following editor's note, though I don't know when they added it:



edit: syntax
edit: title of magazine is "The New Yorker Magazine", not New York