https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-vi-my-spiritual-quest/70-around-the-world-and-finding-home/the-second-mbmc-retreat/
Daniel explain 100% capture in detail in this video:
https://vimeo.com/250616410


What I want to ask in this thread is if someone can capture 100% of experience including 100% of dukkha arising, why can't they also interrupt the chain of dependent origination 100% of the time and end suffering 100% of the time?

My understanding of dukkha is that it refers to what I will call cognitive suffering - suffering that arises in the mind in response to thoughts or situations.  This excludes physical pain and it excludes mental suffering due to purely biological causes such as some types of anxiety and depression.

My experience is that dukkha happens when you let thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experience and sense of self take over your mind and body, but if you notice when dukkha is arising if you relax (let go)  and without suppressing (continue to observe) and don't let the mind get carried away, you can prevent dukkha from arising.

Dukkha is a biological phenomena, a neurological phenomena. It seems to me the brain can learn to not do it. Particularly if you can learn to capture 100% you should be able to stop dukkha 100%.

​​​​​​​I don't claim to have mastered this 100% but I don't see why more practice won't lead to increased ability. And if I don't achieve 100% mastery in my lifetime I certainly wouldn't rule it out for other people.

The really hard types of suffering to let go of are "hot button issues" cognitive responses that are so ingrained they seem to be hard wired. I am not saying these cannot be let go of, but for the sake of discussion, it also seems to me to be possible that some people may not develop "hot button issues" because they had a fortunate upbringing and/or because their particular genetic make up gives them resilience. Because of these possibilities I think it is very possible for some people to end dukkha.

Daniel seems to be referring to basically maximizing his effort in vipassana - by attempting to "capture" a maximum of sensations, he is basically turning his effort in vipassana to 11.  Meditation / mindfulness practice,  generally speaking, leads to a honing of our power of awareness and eventually breakthrough/ insight experiences. So maximizing our effort in this regard would ideally maximize our shot at insight (ideally because that's assuming that what everyone needs to gain insight is maximal effort vs relaxing, more spacious types of meditation, emotional work, etc). 

In my experience, true relief from suffering is not simply about the practice, but rather where the practice leads, i.e. the result.  Thus maximizing effort in meditation isn't by itself interrupting the causes of suffering themselves (chain of dependant origination as you mentioned, but ultimately framework dependant), it's just maximizing your chances of achieving insight (genuine end to suffering).

When you write "it's just maximizing your chances of achieving insight (genuine end to suffering)" I think you are saying insight leads to a genuine end to suffering.

As far as I can tell Daniel does not agree with that. He wrote:

https://danielpostscompilation.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html#jump-to-188


I will take Daniel as an authority on the question and accept that perfect insight (100% capture) does not end suffering.

So I think if suffering can end there has to more than just insight involved. There has to be some effort, like the effort to capture 100%, maybe there can be an effort to end suffering.

The interesting thing about attempting to 100% anything is that it really solidifies the sense of self. In this case, the self that captures, the self that percieves.

"I did this from the moment I woke up in the morning to the moment I fell asleep at night." A multi-day retreat of doing this... imagine.

It's interesting how we can operate from the sense of I, but more focused on the work that the "I" is doing rather than the framing of this assumed "I" itself.  But what was Daniel's "I" doing? Was it really doing anything?

As he describes (as quoted by Oliver in the other thread):

"Except that perspective actually misses a really essential point that is strangely obvious once you think about it and yet also quite slippery, given how we are so used to not seeing things this way, or so we think.

That point is that each sensation already knew itself when it arose. If it arose, then the comprehension was build into it, intrinsic to it, the same as it."

Interersting isn't it? Perhaps awakening is more of an insight into the nature of the assumed I, rather than perfecting the things that the I seems to do.

At the risk of putting more words in Daniel's mouth, the sense I have gotten from him is that he believe he has genuinely ended the Buddhist problem of "suffering", via progressive insight culminating in 4th path.  I have never understood him to mean that regardless of insight one must continue to practice vipassana meditation all the time at 100% effort in order to not suffer.  To me that actually sounds quite unsatisfactory.  ;)

Read ahead a few pages in MCTB2 to where he mentions the outcome of his maximal effort "100% capture" vipassana.


​​​​​​​and 


​​​​​​​Sounds a lot like some kind of insight leading to an end of "suffering" (followed by not practicing 100% vipassana anymore).

Note: I have put suffering in quotes because MCTB seems to emphasize it as a perceptual distortion rectified by insight vs the standard stress and anxiety of daily life (an interpretation I agree with).

I thought awakening was the ending of suffering. Insight into the nature of the assumed I is part of that, but is there more to it than that?

Isn't awakening the end of dukkha?

Doesn't letting go of attachments and aversions end dukkha?

If someone is experiencing dukkha aren't they still experiencing attachments and aversions?

If realizing anatta doesn't end attachments and aversions, doesn't that mean there is more to awakening than realizing anatta?

Of course. It's important to know how to do 99% of the work and eventually the last 1% too. Practice in the end is very paradoxical, but there is no need to figure it out ahead of time. It becomes obvious in time that practice is strangely asymptotic unless practice/effort/"somebody awakening" also is seen clearly. Eventually practice is like "the stick that stirs the fire gets burned up."  Yes, lots of stiring the fire with a stick at first, but also the stick gets burned up in the end.

And actually, now that I think about it... this aspect of "the practicing self" is often the most sticky part of making progress at many stages of practice. We often forget to notice/note/acknowledge the experience of being a practicing self in our investigations of this moment...

During a pre-A&P yogi, the often over-identify with needing to "focus" on the breath and overlook how attention doesn't take effort. Maintaining attention takes lots of low-effort practice, not high effort force. They make assumptions about "I AM focusing"... but when they soften that, then practice stablizes and A&P eventually happens.

Dark Night yogis are often blind to how they think "I need to get rid of it" and overlook how this too is aversion. They overlook how their attitude toward the dark night contributes to the dark night. But when they soften that, then the dark night turns into more of a purification than suffering.

Pre SE yogis are often seduced by equanimity and forget that this too is a state. So they identify with space, ease, comfort, clarity and forget to objectively notice/note this aspect of their sits. Once again, some aspect of experience is assumed to be an "I", but when they soften this identification then the hard early stages of EQ flow into the more airy aspects of high EQ and path.

On the road to second path yogis often overcomplicate things by trying to apply mapping and technique tweaking efforts as they practice. They really identify as meditators and think that there is something they need to do. Fortunately, the confusion of the road to 2nd quickly shows them that they aren't in control. But usually most need to be reminded that the job of the meditator is to fully experience the moment, not map it, not find techniques for "fixing" it. 

And 3rd pathers get overly fascinated with formless jhanas and visonary/siddhi material and think that because this stuff is happening in the road to third, even more is needed to get to 4th. The sense of idenity is focused around a fundamental greedyness for "spiritual" experience, which is the classic "being enslaved in golden chains" scenario. The chains are gold, but still chains. These folks often need to be shown how their outlook really isn't much different than a hungry ghost and until they see it, they can enter a bizzare late stage dark night of high-highs and low-lows.

And we've already talked about the road to 4th path above.

So I guess this is actually a common problem throughout practice. We often overlook how we relate to the world of experience and form unseen/unquestioned dualities about "I" and "it" in our practice. 

Perhaps it's possible to experience worry, stress or anxiety without suffering, even though they are negative emotions.

I have had glimpses of this, even as a raw rookie. When a respected teacher died, I felt grief and cried, but I noticed if I really concentrated on experiencing as much fluxing changing impermanence in the sensation of grief, it was not painful or emotional suffering. 

I feel vipassana helps gain insight into the three characteristics when there is still a sense of a doer doing vipassana. "I" am going to get 100% capture. "I" am going to strive to take "my" vipassana to level 11! The sense of separation from what is, the thought that "I" am the one doing vipassana causes a LOT of dukkha, so the dukkha is pretty easy to pick up on. But is there a doer doing the vipassana? Sure feels like there's one. Until it just doesn't. Like magic!  I think that is the point of doing vipassana, realizing there is no doer, no body in which these sensations arise, just sensations and a thought based concept of what "our" body should look and feel like. Thoughts that arise from nowhere. What is that nowhere? What is creating this sense of volume? Is there a boundary containing all this stuff!? I flip back and forth. Some things still pull me in. I get a sense of dukkha when I type out this bullshit! When I pay attention, the dukkha just transforms. It's all a wave on a vast ocean, and we are surfing the present moment. There is no dukkha. There is no body, no "I". But here "I" am, Rob is typing again. So much suffering!

Yeah there is a big difference between positive, negative, and neutral sensations/emotions/thoughts and greedy, aversive, and indifferent sensations/emotions/thoughts.

Actually, it's not a big difference, but it is discernable. 

The "spot" to look at is right at the point of an experience arising. There is a difference between vedana and tanha  (Pratītyasamutpāda - Wikipedia)

I seriously doubt it's possible to capture 100% of all the dukkha a human being experiences, and I posit that nothing like that is required of being awakened. That's coming from personal experience, BTW.

That makes sense. People wake up from very different types of practices and sometimes from no practice at all.

But my point is that if it is possible for someone to notice 100% of the dukkha arising at the moment it arises, then in that situation it seems possible that they could let go of whatever attachment or aversion is behind each instance of dukkha arising. In my experience dukkha occurs when the thoughts/emotions/impulses are allowed to take over the mind/body because mindfulness is not maintained perfectly, I forget to be relaxed. This is one reason I think it is important to start vipassana from a tranquil state - it's easier to let go (relax) when that means staying relaxed. When I don't notice dukkha the instant it arises it seems to be involuntary, but when I do notice it, it seems to be voluntary but "unintentional" in a sense because it is habitual. If you can be mindful of 100% of all experience, then training yourself to be mindful of just the dukkha should be easier. If you are mindful of dukkha arising you have the opportunity to not do it to yourself just because it is a habit.

Does Daniel say if he succeeds at 100% capture, or was that just a theoretical goal to help explain his practice?

That's one enormous "if" isn't it?

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From this point of view, realizing anatta is not the entire solution to suffering. Realizing anatta is important - we judge our self as successful or not by whether we can get what we like/want and avoid what we don't like/don't want. So ego (identity view), dukkha, and cravings and aversions are all intricately connected, and disentangling them is immensely helpful. But realizing anatta doesn't necessarily end the habitual reactions. You can think you are detached, that it is the aggregates that are suffering, but it seems to me if you want to really end suffering you have to train the aggregates, the nervous system that supports consciousness, to give up the habit of suffering - to learn to interrupt the sequence of dependent origination, not just experience it mindfully as an agentless beingness (non-observer), but get involved in it. I think this is why the anapanasati sutta tells us to calm the breath, body, feelings, and mind and to make the mind joyful (piti), and to produce tranquil happiness (sukha) and to gladden the mind. It's telling us that to end dukkha we have to get involved. And I think that is why in the fetter model of awakening, realizing anatta is not the end it is just the beginning.

As far as I can tell dukkha is biological and can be summarized as tired neurons.
Body indicates issues with pain and just not having issues related to tired neurons doesn't make pain gone. Some of the pain is lessened related to additional pain caused by neurons processing pain getting tired - and in extreme cases this can be for some people most suffering they experience. Emotional suffering is lessened for the same reason but even more because rather than dwelling in loss of someone/something neurons which start feeling tired will be put to sleep. Time heals and without dukkha with affected neurons sleeping time heals even faster.

Cognitive suffering is purely tired neurons. Even normal perspective of self/doer is just tired neurons. Switching pathways fast fast can resolve it - in this case it is exactly what people accomplish. The so called field of self knowing sensations is the same perspective seemingly flipped by having process of forming sense of self constantly interrupted.

Since we talk about Daniel to me he always seemed practice first ask questions later kind of guy and therefore good example of where these practices taken to extreme can take you. Technically field with self knowing sensations is much easier to have and sustain than Daniel's story leads people believe. As always the most subtle details matter the most here and people often miss anything they do not want to see, things indicating that if they want to claim what Daniel attained they have to get more serious about their practice because he does mention overclaiming a lot and this is something people like to miss and just assume barely visualizing similar thing and letting go of striving is being done. It is "a solution" but not Daniel's attainment. Likewise Daniel's "solution" is not Buddha's* attainment.

I myself never claimed the same exact attainment and always indicated I practice eyes and merely things discovered for this purpose fit more standard models and I can visualize these attainments because I have mastered all the qualities necessary for them. For 4th path (and its what you seem to aim for) the key is experience of "doneness". Its not merely thinking you are done but literally something in mind indicating all the time something regarding what is processed is done. There are far easier ways of having it which lead to attainment called "vajra-like meditative stabilization" but setup for having shot at them is arduous. I practiced differently than Daniel (though at some point I did incorporate Mahasi noting and inducing qualities it caused) but my own standards for mindfulness were similar: from morning to going to sleep I would note anything "unskillful" like distractions and would correct them. At some point figuring it out was inevitable and in my case I started noticing something about how my visual perception operates and came up with optimalization which would lead to changes which would cause my visual consciousness quickly indicating "processing done". Only detecting changes would trigger actual 'seeing' and otherwise visual consciousness mostly felt completely done with processing and therefore inactive and using only reduced set of processing of changes to trigger main visual perception pulses. In other words seeing which seemed to always happen would cease while visal field was much more detailed and completely static. This is contrasted with using Nibbana which caused kinda flickering which was not visible because non-experiences are not really experienced.

Now Jhanas always affected my vision and some of the effects did happen at times, especially when I would get really strong concentration while going through all formed and formless jhanas. In fact said "doneness" can be easiest had from exactly 8th jhana. Less so the kind of 8th jhana which is experienced at first - and by at first I mean at 3rd path people do not know real formless jhanas. It is attaining real formless jhanas which is real 4th path and there at exactly 8th jhana one can reconfigure neurons to have consciousnessess they together create not pass away right away to get to vajra-like meditative stabilization.

Since Daniel never described it and when I did he seemed to have no idea what I am talking about I assume he kept with Theravada's insistence of noticing annica - and since obviously practice of noticing qualities is equal to inducing qualities - even with the same trick which cause this experience of "doneness" he never stood a chance of crystalizing his whole sensate field to the same degree because his insistence of seeing consciousnessess pass away would cause them to pass away before whole experience is done with processing.

Not that it matters for dukkha.
I just find it just funny, especially given comment about strong concentration from Sayadaw. My own idea of what Shamatha is is inducing concentration by Jhanas and not inducing Jhanas with concentration and it always felt I am putting much less active effort in having Jhanas but had to put more effort in to the kind of Vipassana as I understand it - distilling pure qualities from composite experiences. Penetrating experiences has nothing to do with noticing each sensation.

Not sure if you get these concepts but Daniel's Vipassana is like trying to notice each sensation impulse and its beginning and end while mine always was performing a kind of Fourier Transform... VFT - Vipassana Fourier Transform.
Not dwelling and noticing sensations in time domain but trying to extract each individual quality in quality domain from multiple sensations treating them as arising from the same sources and noticing when they do not arise through configuration of qualities - and likewise for eg. sharply falling (passing away) sensations the whole thing would be seen as multiple qualities contributed to this effect. Like with real FTT/DFT to get better frequency resolution getting better quality resolution and hit pure qualities requires samples spanning multiple moments. Shaping experiences would be done by tuning qualities down to make other qualities stronger (nervous system has power limits and noise is not conductive to experiencing strong pure qualities) and/or make them stronger directly - though its more for shamatha because vipassana is about nailing quality down and while it is not it is hard to strengthen it exactly. Requires some fiddling with to get it right is all I am saying - still quality-wise and not in time domain. Time domain can be used to check how it looks in normal experience.

After thorough Vipassana having qualities inducing them (Shamatha) causes effects. I always practiced Mahasi noting that way. Would do it normally and then Vispassanize hell out of it (literally, hell being having to actually do it XD) and inducing its qualities I would check if mind still notes correctly. I always practiced my eyesight that way - tune qualities in visual cortex/eyes and checking if I can sit further away from monitor and still effortlessly see everything. Only when playing computer games I prefer not doing it this way. Still in the end when I notice my control is imprecise then it is doing VFT in how control works and relating responses in this domain that gives much best results and not trying to react fast and precise enough.

BTW. If you see anyone say things like some kind of THIS its more of a VFT kind of affair, specific profile of qualities to be applied which keeps visualized mind state going when induced by experiencing it. People might not do or understand correct Vipassana/Shamatha practices but in the end when it comes to effectiveness they still have to do it the right way, even in very limited form. Despite this they can still be pretty non-reformable regarding how to practice and never realize THIS is specific** to them thing (still switching pathways fast fast but there are many ways to do it). People are at times really funny.

*) Claiming to know what Buddha attained is silly thing to do.
Stream Entry - entering Buddha's dharma stream. If even today people do not realize what the "stream" is supposed to be then they should imho abandon all hope ;)

**) These specific THISes can be realized with some effort in the same way.
If anyone's this I would really recommend learning is Buddha's. Don't know more dispassionate person. No wonder his mind didn't cling to it even one bit and had to fall on Nibbana just to not get crazy.
Compared to Buddha people create comfy THISes, cling to them and then wonder where is their Nibbana... but just to be honest one doesn't need to be Buddha's THIS dispassionate toward absolutely everything. They just have to be able to at any time on moment's notice be THIS dispassionate and understand why it makes sense even if everything is otherwise alright.

Hopefully everything I just said is understandable.

I am not so much concerned with how you define awakening or araht. Awakening can be realizing anatta, an araht can be someone with no sense of being an observer or agency.

But what I think is important is that the four noble truths are not about anatta, they are about suffering.

If you are suffering you haven't reached the end of the path. You can still make an effort to end suffering.
It might be impossible to end suffering 100%. I am not saying it is or isn't possible.

But a track and field athlete doesn't retire just because he breaks a record. He keeps working to get better.
It might be impossible to run a mile in five seconds, but that doesn't mean athletes don't try to improve their personal best.
Someone on the path might not believe it's possible to end suffering 100% but if they are suffering there is still something to practice for.

If you can make 100% capture a goal, you can make 100% end of dukkha a goal. Even if it is an impossible goal, you can still work toward improving as much as you can.

Some people are mostly interested in anatta. That's not a bad thing.
But people should not be discouraged from trying to end suffering as much as possible either. Ending suffering is not a bad thing either.

I can definitely see the value in simplifying things to "suffering" -- buddha himself did this in his summary "all i teach is suffering and the end of suffering" quote.

But I can also see the value in teasing out the nuances in how this happens. For example, the list of fetters portray something very sophisticated:

1. Self-Illusion (Sakkaya-ditthi)
2. Doubt (Vicikiccha)
3. Attachment to Rules and Rituals (Silabbata-paramaso)
4. Sensual Lust (Kamacchando)
5. Ill Will (Vyapada)
6. Craving for fine material existence (Rupa-raga)
7. Craving for immaterial existence (Arupa-raga)
8. Conceit (Mana)
9. Restlessness (Uddhaccan)
10. Ignorance (Avijja)

For example, if equanimity is one of the fine material existances, what would be the suffering caused by craving equanimity? This is a really really important question.

And then what kind of suffering is the is the fetter of conceit about? How is this different from the first fetter of self-illusion? And restlessness, what is this kind of suffering?

There is a real treasure of clues in the list of fetters about what is needed for the kind of "100% end of dukka" that buddha found.