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

The Three Doors

suffering door relates directly to “the mind” releasing its fixated hold on the whole of relative reality and allowing it to fall away, leaving

“awareness” to discover itself. Remember, these words in quotes do not refer to fixed phenomena or experiences. It can also feel like the sum total of existence is suddenly ripped away from us. The suffering door aspect tends to be the most unsettling or wrenching of the Three Doors, the most death-like.

The no-self or emptiness door aspect has to do with the teachings on the mirror-like nature of the mind, the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters (that oh so mystical and overlooked line from Genesis 1.2), God making man in his image, merging with a tantric image of a buddha, seeing one's Original Face, thinking of who created thought, and that sort of thing. It relates to directly observing the collapse of the illusion of duality, the collapse of awareness into the intelligence or cognition of the perceived. It is a bit like staring back at yourself (or something intelligent regardless of whether or not it looks like you) with no one on this side to be stared at and then collapsing into that image. The emptiness door aspect tends to be the most pleasant, easy and visually interesting of the three.

Each of these doors has to do with complete understanding of the ultimate aspect of relative reality, and thus realizing the ultimate nature of ultimate reality. Each door also relates in some way to completely countering one of the three fundamental defilements. The

impermanence door relates to countering fundamental ignorance. The suffering door relates to countering fundamental attachment. The emptiness door relates to countering fundamental aversion. From a True Self point of view, the impermanence door relates to the permanence of ultimate reality, the suffering door relates to the compassionate nature of ultimate reality or ultimate bodhichitta, and emptiness door relates to the fact that The Void is “what” we truly are (in True Self parlance at least).

When I use the word “fundamental,” I always mean something to do with basic illusions of duality or the gradual or sudden elimination thereof. Thus, I use the word “fundamental” when what I am talking about has nothing to do with specific content, emotions, physical 242

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sensations, mind states, psychological manifestations or understandings, or any other specific and limited categories of sensations.

I will now try to describe six possible combinations of these three aspects that create the actual experiences of the three doors. While there can be quite a lot of variation in the specifics of how these doors present, they will always fall into one of these basic patterns. As I stated earlier, these events are so brief and sometimes so unclear that persons who have been through them many times may not understand that they present in the way I describe them here.

When the impermanence aspect predominates and is combined

with the emptiness aspect, then the whole universe strobes three times quickly with something staring back at us as a minor aspect of that universe, and then it seems that awareness collapses into the space after the third gap, perhaps turning slightly towards the thing that was staring back. When the impermanence aspect predominates and is combined with the suffering aspect, then the three strobing moments feel wrenching, and the plunge into the gap feels fundamentally violating, like exactly the wrong thing to do.

When the emptiness aspect predominates and is combined with the impermanence door, there are three clear and discrete moments of moving towards or sideways to (or perhaps focusing on) an intelligent seeing image staring back at us, except that there is nothing on this side.

After the third moment, the illusion collapses in a very natural and pleasant way. When the emptiness door predominates with suffering as its second aspect, then a very strange thing happens. There is an image on one side staring back, and then the universe becomes a toroid (doughnut), and the image and this side of the toroid change places as the toroid universe spins. The spinning includes the whole background of space in all directions. Fruition occurs when the two have changed places and the whole thing vanishes.

When the suffering aspect predominates and is combined with the emptiness aspect, again, the toroid thing happens, except that it can be a quite distorted or cone-like. The universe can rotate up or down and away from us, so that the primary experience is of an image falling from this side, though with the hint that it might be coming back around to this side. When the suffering door aspect predominates with

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impermanence present, then the three moments in which the universe is ripped away from us are distinct. When the suffering door predominates, the experience is always a bit creepy.

For those working on the higher paths, reflecting on the ways that the few moments before fruition have presented themselves can be very interesting and helpful. For those working on the last stage of awakening, I offer the following advice. The special ways that the doors can present can seem to imply the following:

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That there is a link between some special and intelligent spot on that side and some transcendent this that is unfindable. This is implied by the definable qualities of that spot and certain subtle sensations implying space.

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That there is some space around space, some transcendent

super-space around the universe that we may try to rest in or imagine is here. This is implied by sensations with definable qualities.

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That there is some void-like potential that creates all of this and to which all of this returns. This is implied by sensations with specific and definable qualities.

Seeing that these qualities that seemed to imply something very special are actually just more qualities that we have misinterpreted as being a potential refuge reveals the refugeless refuge. Reflecting and investigating in this way, the last illusions may fall away and we may attain to the complete elimination of all fundamental illusions, or at least the next level of the fractal.

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28.“WAS THAT EMPTINESS?”

Welcome to the world of models, states, stages, and visions of goals to attain. The curse and blessing of knowing all of this terminology and theory is that there is a natural tendency to begin to try to apply it to our own experiences (and those of others) and wonder what was what.

Beyond that, not only have I just provided enough information for a few of you to become Master Posers on the spiritual path, I have just given some of you enough information to start obsessing way too much about

“where you are” on the path. However, this is a trivial danger, and why senior dharma teachers do not ever seem to put the important details about sorting out what is what into their books is completely beyond me. That it should be left to a young and cocky upstart like myself to fill in this gap is less than ideal. Note, when I use the word “emptiness” in the title of this chapter, I am using it specifically to refer to a Fruition, and in this case generally mean stream entry, and not any other meaning. It has many other meanings, but this is the specific one I care about at this moment.

There are all sorts of pitfalls that can occur, but perhaps the most significant of them all is calling experiences “emptiness,” “Fruition”,

“Stream Entry” or “Nirvana” that simply weren’t. It is a mistake that we are all likely to make more than once if we practice fairly well, know these models and care about them in the least, and even very enlightened beings with years of practice will sometimes wonder, “Was that emptiness?”, meaning “Was that my hit?”, or “Was that the next stage of awakening?”. Some of us will be particularly prone to blowing this on a regular basis even if we are actually somewhat enlightened.