The Simple Model of Enlightenment

An Eternal Now SG

http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2010/05/the-simple-model-enlightenment/

The following Question and Answer with Daniel Ingram, was taken from a longer interview that happened last year. This question did not make it into the final episode, due to its length. Because of the technical nature of the conversation, you may want to listen to some of our earlier interviews with Daniel.

Vince: Just to get into a little bit of the enlightenment models, which we’ve talked about before, but I don’t think we’ve discussed this. One way you’ve talked about the process that you just described is this “ditching the split”. That the split somehow is there. And then, as you go along, it starts to become smaller and smaller. And that there’s some changes in the practitioner, on the person who’s doing this process, as a result and then finally the split is ditched. Could you talk about that particular way of looking at this process?

Daniel: Yeah. So, from what I’ll call a simple model point of view, though it’s hard for me not to throw in some path numbers, but called the simple model which is essentially the first thing is you go through the cycles of insight and you go up through the stages and you get stream entry. And when you’ve got stream entry, you can get your fruitions and you can get your hits and you can go through your cycles. And you can see all these things and you know all these things in a way you didn’t know before. And you can talk about the dharma. You can talk about emptiness. But it’s not much of a living experience most of the time for most people. You’re walking around, you still seem to be basically the same. Reality seems to be pretty dual and I do really seem to be here somewhere in my head or my heart or my body, looking out at a world out there that’s happening to me. Or I’m trying to do something with it. Which is all reasonable ways to look at the world. I’m not saying these don’t have their pragmatic point of view. But from a baseline experience point of view, there’s a lot more that can be done.

And so as people start to go through more insight cycles and new territory, they may get into what I’ll call second path or the second stage [of enlightenment] which is now they’ve completed a whole new progress of insight. They’re abandoned the previous stages and started looking at more layers of mind and re-gone through the process of seeing the true nature of those and a new set of insight stages, vipassana jhanas or nanas or whatever you want to call them. And has gotten a new fruition. And gone, “Okay. So now I know how to abandon previous territories. Start looking at new territory, new layers of mind” and they are now what are called “second path” or the second stage in the simple model. And their experience is all about, “Oh, this fractal and this territory. Oh, this new thing and this experience.” Particularly if they’re geeky people like myself. Now some people are not geeky model-based people may not… but it’s what their experience may be. They cycle and they are seeing deep levels and deeper integrations of the mind and not doing some things it used to do. And doing some new things that it didn’t do before that they think are good.

Then they begin to go, “Well it still seems like the point of my practice is to get my fruition and get my hit. Sort of reset my mind. But walking around, I’m not really seeing what I think I should be able to see.” And that gets more and more frustrating. So people being to incline their minds towards what I’ll call a less cycle-fixated approach and a more right-here-right-now, it’s got to be now or never kind of dharma-awakening approach. And they begin to see more and more of what I’ll call emptiness in real time. Where, as they go deeper into more cycles and stages and more really investigating how things are, just moment to moment, same good, old foundation technique stuff. They begin to notice, “Wait a second. The center point really doesn’t seem to be such a big deal anymore. The sense of subject seems to be becoming more integrated with the field. Or it seems to become less important.” Or they seem to see I’m seeing more of what I’ll call “luminosity of phenomenon”. That they’re just showing themselves over there. Because that’s showing itself over there, maybe this is just showing itself over here. And they begin to make those connections in terms of their experience and begin to notice as an obvious living, direct, non-theoretical but just sort of baseline sense processing experience. Wow, this field really seems to be more and more integrated. There seems to be more and more just a sense of this is just what’s happening and it’s all wide open and it’s all just part of the field of attention and the sense of subject and center point and watcher or me, whatever you want to call it, at that level is not such a split off thing. So you can get to anagami stages, tend to be a lot like that. And as you get towards the high end of the anagami territory, you start to notice, “this seems to be really pretty complete and kind of done.”

I remember when I was a late anagami, I don’t know how many stages I went through thinking I was an Arhat and was so wrong. I would walk around for a few weeks and everything seems centralist and luminous and like it was happening on its own in some completely non-dual way. And then I’d cross another arising and passing way and hit a new dark night and realize I was completely delusional. But it was kind of nice while it seemed to last. And it sort of gave me hints of what would come next.

So one begins to have…one’s experience become more and more completely like that. And then finally one can get to a place where one simply understands it has to be now and it has to be all the time and there must be some truth that I’m missing. And one finally begins to see through the subtle anagami traps of wanting a super space—that some transcendent space they can come into. Or wanting this to be some super-watcher or wanting everything to be luminous in a wondrous “Oh it’s all luminous, wonderful kind of way”. And as the golden chains of the high levels, or mid-, high levels of realization start to fall away and they end up coming back down to earth. Finally they abandon even those subtle things and subjects and wanting to be the subtle watcher that is simultaneously empty and luminous and wanting to be the subtle enlightened being that is the whatever… The transcendent super being or something. And as that all finally falls away and is seen through as being just preposterous and unrealistic, one understands, “Oh. This is it.” And when one finally comes all the way back down to earth, the split can dissolve. That usually takes good work and strong concentration and all the standard supports for insight and investigation and all that. But finally one knows, “Oh yeah. This is done.” And the sense of subject-object duality does not arise again once one is stabilizes in that. And the whole field is just happening and life is just going on, bodies just moving, thoughts are just coming. All aware or just manifesting where they are. And concepts like luminosity and awareness even seem extraneous. There’s just the sense-field , really at a basic, ordinary, human level. And yet there is something remarkable about that. But it’s way more down to earth than everybody thinks it’s going to be. That’s my basic outline of the stages of insight from that point of view.