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

important lessons to teach and are very interesting territory. However, they may also come to realize that this is really just a new beginning in some ways, sort of like graduating from high school but then becoming a lowly freshman in college.

The period after completing a progress of insight and after gaining some strong sense of mastery of its stages is also a great time to work on one’s concentration practice abilities. The reason for waiting is that concentration practices and insight practices tend to have a certain inertia to them. If you have recently been trying to get into really stable samatha states, this can make it harder to see things flicker for a while. If you have recently been training hard to see things flicker, it can be hard to get into really stable samatha jhanas. Thus, what you don’t want to do is to gunk up the natural mastery phase of your practice until you are comfortable enough with these stages to get stuck in one and not have it be a big deal. This usually takes at least a few weeks, but this is a very crude guideline, and everyone is different regarding issues of timing.

Judge for yourself how well you handle stages such as Re-observation and decide if you would be alright if you got stuck in it for a few hours.

The time after gaining some mastery of these stages is also a great time to work on one’s stuff. Actually, doing concentration practices and working on one’s stuff go very well together, as concentration states tend to cause our stuff to come bubbling to the surface where we can work with it. The time during a mastery phase is also a great time to make 253

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sure that one’s daily life is functioning well, particularly if one made a mess of it while trying to get enlightened or more enlightened.

Mastery of these stages tends to peak at some point, and the sense can arise that one has really “got it.” Fruitions tend to occur fairly quickly, clearly and easily. Given time and practice, they may begin to become somewhat bored with their current level of attainment and with their ability to attain these stages and Fruition. Their practice can begin to seem sloppy, and the quiet bliss wave after Fruition can diminish somewhat unless they do not attain it for some long period of time (which would probably require resolutions to that effect).

The understanding that there is more suffering to uproot grows.

They begin to see more levels of reality that are clearly not well understood or illuminated by their current understanding, hints of which probably showed themselves very soon after their attainment of that path. Subtle thoughts and mental patterns may be noticed at the edge of one’s perceptual threshold. Attention begins to incline towards the next level of reality that must be understood and away from familiar territory. More fresh insights begin to show up.

They begin to investigate reality with more effort and clarity as before and begin a new progress of insight from the beginning, i.e.

access concentration and then Mind and Body and the rest. This might play out as follows: fairly soon after the sense of strong mastery, one will simply be meditating along, perhaps a Fruition will occur, and then suddenly the mind drops into this new state rather than a new review cycle beginning again. It is stable, interesting, and somewhat jhana-like.

It is sort of like re-inhabiting one’s life or reconnecting with the sense of the observer. It is also likely the next Mind and Body. This could also happen when one was just going about one’s day.

The postural obsession, odd movements, strange tensions and

pains, emotional volatility, vibratory stuff that seems new, a fresh and clearer sense of what dualistic perspectives remain, and all of the other early progress of insight stuff may arise in its time naturally and perhaps sooner than one might wish. The phrase “leading onward” is often used to describe the wisdom that arises from dharma practice. Strangely, it is a phrase and a fact that I have cursed just as often as blessed, and entering new insight territory at inopportune times or before one feels 254

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ready can reveal why. Insight cycles can sometimes be very traumatic, and it is often advisable to take a break to recover one’s sense of humor and appreciation of life before plunging on. However, at this point the dharma waits for no one and may plunge on regardless of your wishes.

Note well, for those in between stages, there initially is still the ability to easily attain any of the previous stages starting at the level of the current Arising and Passing Away, so things can get quite murky if they are trying to figure out what stage they are in or attain specific new stages. It can be as if the early stages are opening up to us, whereas for a while things always started out at the level of the Arising and Passing away.

Fixating on thoughts about what stage you are in is guaranteed to cause some degree of suffering that is worthy of investigation, especially in the in between stages, though a gentle awareness of the maps can still be slightly useful. There can be a sort of a fork in the path for a while, with the meditator seemingly being able to choose whether to review previous stages or press on. It can seem as though the background is solidifying and the mind is growing nosier as well as less predictable and skillful. More of our stuff is suddenly bubbling up to the surface. We notice subtler thoughts and mental images, many of which we may wish we hadn’t. We may feel less “enlightened,” as if our realization were fading. Clear and consistent insight practice, i.e. understanding the Three Characteristics of all types of sensations, which includes thoughts of maps and goals, is the only thing that finally helps, just as before.

After the meditator crosses the next Arising and Passing Away Event, which may happen relatively quickly if they practice well and often, they will tend to have a very hard time re-attaining Fruition for a while. One may meditate along and then get stuck in a stage that seems to lead nowhere and is sort of like low equanimity, in that there are clear vibrations that are not varying with the breath or any other movement, and yet the background is too dense, noisy and poorly perceived for clear and complete formations to show themselves.

Finding the proverbial fork in the road to familiar territory can now be quite tricky, and even if they do find the way back, the old territory is unlikely to be particularly appealing. Old Fruitions may arise, but they may do so in a way that is less reliable or certain. Suddenly, the 255

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meditator is “on the ride” again, and will soon have to face the fullness of the next Dark Night with all of its implications. It may even be more challenging than before, but could just as easily be less so. One friend of mine sailed through one Dark Night in about six minutes, and the next one took him many years. There is no predicting these issues of timing.

It can happen that many times they will try to meditate to

equanimity but fall back when they get to Re-observation. They may thus try to re-attain previous stages, as they may feel in over their heads.

They may get into the next stage of Desire for Deliverance, wish very strongly to go beyond all of this, and do so by re-attaining to a Fruition of the current path instead of attaining the next one.

However, even if they are able to retreat into the old territory, they will still be haunted to some degree by the Dark Night in their life and will have to learn to navigate skillfully in this territory one way or another. Sometimes re-mastering the current path is helpful for building a sufficient foundation from which to proceed well into the new territory. Eventually, there is no way to go back, and one is simply left facing the new territory without an obvious skillful escape route.