Daniel Ingram - Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha - An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

The Progress of Insight

insights into my issues, and this will be of great benefit to myself and all beings.”

One of the primary reasons that I wrote this book was to write this important resolution. I have suffered needlessly and sometimes profoundly from the failure of myself and those I love to follow this resolution. They have also. Were you hearing me say these things to you rather than simply reading them, you would see tears in my eyes and hear my voice cracking with sorrow as I recall those past events and even reflect on what is happening around me as I write this. I beg you, for the sake of all that is good in this world, do not fail to heed this advice.

Unfortunately, not everyone seems to be able to do this. In fact, not everyone is even willing to attempt to follow this advice, particularly those who buy into the dangerous paradigm that “whatever I feel right now is real” in the sense that their feelings at that moment must be the only possible valid perspective on their current situation and are thus completely justified along with their reactions to those feelings. There are those who simply don’t believe that such a wondrous and holy thing as insight practices could produce such profound difficulties. There are also those who do not believe in the maps or that the maps could possibly apply to their own very special and unique life. Lastly, there are a few whose pride and insecurity issues will not allow them to admit that they might be affected by the Dark Night in this way.

I would warn such people to STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THE

DARK NIGHT until they come to a place where they might be able to approximate at least some aspects of the above-mentioned resolution or apply the basics of the theory behind it. That means that if you are not willing to at least try to make and live by some version of my recommended resolution, you should not do insight practices and should not cross the A&P Event. Yes, I am a little bitter. Bitterness comes and goes.

I am a big fan of fast sports cars, but I wouldn’t give one to a six-year-old kid. Just so, I am a big fan of insight practices, obviously, but I have come to the conclusion that those who are not willing to use them responsibly and intelligently should not use them, as it is too dangerous.

They cause too much trouble in the world to be of little if any benefit.

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This is not likely to be a popular view, but I have experienced too much of what can go wrong when people fail to try to live up to such a resolution to come to any other conclusion.

The problem is that some people cross into the Dark Night without doing formal insight practices. I did when I was about 15 and had no idea what was going on. How to reach these people I have no idea, but they tend to come wandering into spiritual communities soon enough. I hope they find people there who help them sort out what has happened to them can tell them the above advice. I my naïve dreams I imagine that one day there would be training on the maps and basic spiritual development in some generic, non-sectarian way in elementary school, just as we learn about biology and mathematics, and so would be just another ordinary, accepted, standard part of human education, and so everyone would know about these things as if they were the ordinary, natural things they were, but we are a long way from that now, and so hopefully a few who run into this technology will help spread it around and help people who have crossed the A&P Event to recognize it and handle it properly.

This resolution and the spirit implied by it are an aspect of training in morality, and this sort of morality is one of our best friends in the Dark Night. When we adopt the spirit of this resolution, we do our conscious best to craft our way of being so as to be kind and compassionate. Many people have commented that insight training is a

“monastic practice.” If we are able to build our own virtual monastery through skillful speech and skillful action, then we do not need a monastery to protect us and the world from the potential side effects of our practices. We can live skillfully in the ordinary world and still make progress in insight.

However, there are those who are willing to buy the theory and spirit inherent in the above resolution but are so swamped by their personal issues that they simply cannot follow the above advice after they get into the Dark Night despite their kind and skillful intention to do so. My advice to them is to diligently and quickly seek professional help in the form of psychotherapists and their ilk until such time as they are able to follow something like the above-mentioned resolution.

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Realize that this is not an optimal way to go, as the inherent lack of perspective of the Dark Night makes aspects of the therapeutic process more difficult, but for some there will be no other option and this solution is better than simply floundering. On the other hand, at least such people have tons of stuff bubbling loudly up for them to deal with, making some aspects of the therapeutic process easier. However, I would try to do just enough healing so that you can push on to the first stage of awakening with minimal bleed through and then finish whatever therapeutic process you began in the Dark Night after you are out of it.

There another seemingly positive way of looking at the Dark Night, or the Knowledges of Suffering, one that doesn't really fit well with our mainstream ideals of how life should be. It is the view of the renunciate, which basically says, “Ah, now you see the pain of your materialistic life, of your cravings that will never bring you happiness, of your worldly attachments, and that house of cards you call a life. Far better to give it all up and take up the way of the dharma.” While I have generally advised doing completely otherwise, I can completely understand why one would do this. However, the problem comes when we have things like debt, children, aging parents and the like, and sorting out the ethics of these conflicts is complex. Regardless, the Dark Night does teach important lessons, and learning them is essential to moving to what comes next. These lessons do not require specific lifestyle choices for mastery. Instead, it is a question of clear perception of, you guessed it, the Three Characteristics of the sensations that occur during those stages. As I mentioned in Part I, each training has a specific kind of renunciation associated with it, and they couldn't be more different.

It is time to get back to describing Dissolution. As the stage of the Arising and Passing Away ends, the meditator may be left feeling raw and incompetent despite the fact that they are continuing to make valuable progress into deeper and deeper levels of profound insight.

This feeling that something is wrong when things are actually getting better and better can cause all sorts of problems during the Dark Night, especially to those not familiar with the standard maps.

On the other hand, having come through the A&P territory can be quite a relief, and so sometimes Dissolution can seem quite welcome.

Some will stop practicing here, as they feel they have “released the 189

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Kundalini” and so are done for the time being. Dissolution feels like a very natural place to stop practicing, the only problem being that the later stages (Fear and the rest) tend to follow it soon enough even if one stops, though less intense practice leads to a less intense, if often prolonged, Dark Night.

However, those who wish to keep doing formal practice may find Dissolution frustrating. Whereas just one stage ago they could sit for hours and perceive the finest vibrations of reality in exquisite detail, now reality appears to be slipping away, vague, and hard to get a handle on.