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

Further, as absurd as this may sound to some, the maps allow you to plan your spiritual path to some degree. True, there are ultimate points of view that would make this perspective seem quite ridiculous, but indulge me. A sample plan might be this:

1. Go on a three-week retreat and really power the mindfulness and investigation all day long, consistently stretching your perceptual threshold and speed of investigation to its limits to maximize the chances of crossing the A&P Event. It is not that hard to cross the A&P with fairly imbalanced effort, so don’t worry about that.

Remember not to be freaked out by the strange raptures around the A&P. Note, a two to three month retreat would give you a great shot at stream entry if you are ready to really practice, so if you are at that level, go for it.

2. Once you have crossed the A&P, Dark Night stuff will come bubbling up soon enough, and the choice to deal with this on or off retreat will depend upon how much time you can devote to retreats and how much intensity you can stand. My vote tends to be for on retreat if you can take the heat, but not everyone can the first time around and not everyone can easily spare the time. On the other hand, that Dark Night might just be a cakewalk. Give it a go and find out! In the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition, they typically think that two to three months of diligent noting practice on intensive retreat is enough to get many people to stream entry, but perhaps you do not have the time or dedication to step to that level yet.

3. If you decide to deal with the Dark Night off retreat, realize that you will likely fall back but keep practicing an hour or two each day. Do your very best to realize that any of the odd feelings that you may experience are probably just Dark Night side effects. Try to imitate 238

How the Maps Help

normal life as best you can and avoid rash decisions such as sudden and permanent renunciations of things you will want later on. Try to be nice to people and do your very best to keep your “stuff” from bleeding onto those around you. Find ways to honor and deal with your stuff that don’t involve projecting it out onto other people or making a mess of your life.

4. If on retreat, or the next time you can go on retreat, just keep practicing as consistently and accurately as you can and avoid indulging in the content of your stuff at all costs. Put worldly concerns behind you for that period of time and investigate bare sensations with acceptance and bravery.

5. Attain to equanimity regarding whatever arises, but be wary of indifference. This is not always as easy as it sounds, but it could be strangely easy nonetheless. Once the weight lifts, just keep sitting or walking or whatever, with no sense of special effort. After really getting into high equanimity, stream entry should arise soon enough; if it doesn’t, repeat the above cycles until it does.

6. From this point, you are “in there,” and progress of some kind is now inevitable. This first finger-hold on ultimate reality is extremely important, as without it you can wander far and wide and yet get nowhere. Advice for what to do next is given later on.

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Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

27.THE THREE DOORS

Insight practice is all about understanding the Three Characteristics

so that when we deeply understand them we may see beyond the three illusions and enter ultimate reality through one of the Three Doors.

Stages 12-14 and subsequent attainments of Fruition at that level of awakening present as radical and complete understandings of the Three Characteristics at the level of formations, i.e. at the level of the whole sensate universe, lasting three or four moments of one tenth to one quarter of a second each. As unpalatable as the Three Characteristics can seem, in the end they are the source and substance of our complete salvation.

There are three basic ways the doors may present themselves, which I will describe shortly, at least two of which are combined to produce the experience of entering ultimate reality. The third characteristic is considered inferred from the way the other two present, but sometimes aspects of that third characteristic will be experienced directly.

Regardless of the way that door manifests, there are some common characteristics of doors that point to something beyond all of this. They reveal something completely extraordinary about the relationship between “the watcher” and “the watched” that it would take a very warped view of the universe to explain, though I will try shortly. One way or another, these fleeting experiences cannot be explained in terms of our normal, four-dimensional experience of space and time, or within our ordinary experience of a subject and object.

One way to sort out a door to ultimate reality from an A&P Event is that the Three Doors involve the whole experiential space-time continuum as well as the object of investigation, as these become the same thing, an integrated whole. This does not hold absolutely for A&P

Events if we are being honest with ourselves, as the subtle background of sensations that provide reference points is not completely included.

Further, A&P Events tend to be very rich and thick, whereas there is always a sort of silent and luminous transparency to the way the Three Doors present. As stated earlier, the A&P Event occurs very much as the Three Doors, is then followed by an unknowing event, but then there are a few moments (usually about 3 or 4) as the breath drops all

The Three Doors

the way to the bottom, followed by another unknowing event and a state shift.

Without doubt, the clearest and most illuminating experiences of the Three Doors come from attaining Fruition in the formless realms or in the realms of the “psychic powers,” though these are not necessary, just very interesting, memorable and educational. Another perspective would say that the Three Doors always happen at the level of the psychic powers, but this is a matter of semantics. The strength of one's concentration practice and the recent continuity of practice will also help determine how clear these experiences are. I had to go through them hundreds of times with an eye to exactly how they presented before I was able to write a chapter such as this one. The entrance to Fruition through one of these doors is always completely unexpected.

I will explain the aspect that each characteristic lends to each door and then combine these to explain what actually happens. When particularly clear experiences of the three quick moments of the Three Doors occur, they can provide fundamental clues that can be used for further debunking the Three Illusions, as well as explaining where so many of the teachings that try to describe the true nature of things come from.

For instance, the impermanence door aspect has to do with mind moments (the particle model), arising and passing, vibrations, understanding that from which all this arises and that to which all this returns, understanding the source of all reality, the universe strobing in and out of existence, and that sort of thing. When the Tibetans talk of non-existence, they refer to the fact that all experience is utterly transient (the wave model) and thus abides or exists not at all but is constantly in absolute flux and ephemeral. The impermanence door aspect relates to realizing what is “between the frames” of the sensate universe (formations), and it tends to have a “dat.dat.dat-(gone)!” quality to it.

The suffering door aspect has to do with fundamental attachment, dropping attachment like a hot coal that one finally realized one was holding, really letting go, compassion, ultimate bodhichitta, the true love of God, being purged in the flames, renunciation, relinquishment, feeling the fundamental queasy tension in the illusion of duality for just a bit longer than one ever would normally, and that sort of thing. The 241