Open Enlightenment

The End of Open Enlightenment?

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The Milestones of Meditation

You don’t have to meditate to experience enlightenment, but a lot of people do, and it’s probably fair to say that meditation is the most popular technique for getting it done. Yet it struck me recently how I’ve never come across a model for the progress of insight phrased in terms of the development of meditation technique.

I was thinking about this because I’d noticed a couple of important milestones in my practice that I’d never seen listed in any of the classic descriptions of enlightenment. These milestones, I realised, were developments within meditation rather than stages of insight per se. Having understood this, it seemed possible to describe a whole model based on technique, although the model closely follows the contours of the classic Theravada four-path insight model.

The first milestone

In terms of meditation technique the first milestone is passed when the meditator overcomes completely his or her aversion to sitting.

I noticed this for myself after the attainment of stream-entry (or the grade of Magister Templi in the western magical tradition). Beforehand, there was often a sense of disinclination toward the prospect of sitting, of having to resolve oneself against one’s natural desire. But at the first milestone in my new model this is eradicated, although in a curiously paradoxical fashion: one’s aversion to sitting becomes itself an object of interest.

After stream-entry the involuntary expressions of aversion that arise at the prospect of sitting become a source of motivation. There is no longer any question of whether one will sit or not. The meditator has understood that the resistance to sitting offers a juicy opportunity for investigating how ignorance partitions certain sensations away from others (i.e. the sensation of not wanting to sit is isolated from the feeling that one should sit) in order to create an impression of a self.

The second milestone

This, like all the others, also appears as a deeply experienced paradox, but is most likely not established until the meditator has a few fruitions under their belt.

Simply put, on passing this milestone we begin to notice a new level of stabilisation in our technique, to the extent that we begin to become aware of what we are not currently aware of.

If we are focusing on the breath, for instance, or other sensations in the body, then when the mind wanders we are not completely absorbed in the wandering, but a kind of paradoxical consciousness enables us to see that we have wandered and we remain focused during the wandering in a way that enables meditation to continue rather than to be grossly interrupted.

In other words, there is no longer any ‘break’ in our meditation when the attention loses focus upon the object. The focus remains even during the wandering; it is merely a change of object that has occurred.

Again, this breakthrough in technique represents an erosion of the sense of self. Formerly, if the mind wandered from the object, there was an experience of a ‘break’, as if the change in focus represented a transition from a self that was meditating and focused to a self that was not meditating and unfocused.

The leap in technical competence that is achieved with this second milestone comes about because the meditator has examined reality thoroughly enough to observe that sensations of being focused and unfocused are simply that, and do not imply a self separate from those sensations that somehow can ‘have’ a focus to gain or lose.

The third milestone

The first milestone concerned the challenge posed to meditation by the ‘self’, and the second concerned the challenge posed by the ‘object’. The third milestone undoes the very basis of both of these.

Prior to this milestone, when we sit we are driven by a desire or the idea of a goal that is to be achieved. After this milestone, our practice is informed by a curious sensation that whatever idea or goal we set ourselves, our current experience is already it. This development represents a deep acceptance and a letting go of the idea that in our meditation there is anything to be surmounted.

The experience that our current awareness is already ‘it’ is not wish-fulfilment, but the simple realisation that nothing ‘extra’ is needed for us to see what is. Our meditation now becomes fulfilling to a degree that we had not imagined possible, yet at the same time it’s clear the practice itself is entirely redundant.

This milestone is passed shortly after the attainment of third path (or the grade of Magus) and represents a deep and dramatic shift. The notion of meditation technique itself now comes into question and is seen through. Indeed, it’s probably advisable to abandon whatever practice one was doing formerly at this point, in order to understand clearly that whatever that practice was, it isn’t responsible for what can now be seen, for how could it possibly be that experiencing reality as it is should involve ‘doing’ or ‘seeing’ anything? This is already it! That’s the realisation that underpins the shift in technique at this stage – a shift towards abandoning technique altogether.

The fourth milestone

The third milestone is a curious echo of the first: the overcoming of the aversion to sitting (‘don’t want to’) is superseded by the more inclusive realisation that meditation isn’t necessary (‘don’t need to’).

Similarly, the fourth milestone is an echo of the second: the realisation that there is no ‘break’ in awareness is superseded by the more inclusive realisation that there is no difference between meditating and not.

The practice of meditation is, in a sense, destroyed at enlightenment. There simply isn’t any difference between meditating and not meditating. The culmination of the progress of insight, from the perspective of meditation technique, is to arrive at a point where there is no longer any technique whatsoever, because when a person who has experienced enlightenment sits, then they’re just sitting.

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Shinzen Young

Shinzen Young is one of those rare Buddhist teachers who actually teach enlightenment. You can find his website here, and here’s a whole bunch of great videos .

Thanks to OE reader C4Chaos for the link to this wonderfully frank and in-depth discussion of Shinzen’s approach to teaching enlightenment. Shinzen is the real deal: a bone fide spiritual authority (in the sense that he has experienced everything he talks about) who accurately describes the territory and gives a great overview of what to expect, even after enlightenment, which is very rare indeed.

I’m not sure that I would agree with Shinzen that the first experience of enlightenment permanently does away with the notion of the self, because in my experience the final stage of enlightenment – what Shinzen calls the 4^th stage in the interview – involves the dropping of something fundamental that is not touched by the peak and partial awakening stages beforehand, which is why it remains permanent. (It’s the difference between Adyashanti’s ‘awakening’ and ‘liberation’.) But this is splitting hairs really; his model of four stages is useful and accurate, as I’m sure a lot of Ingram fans would agree.

However, Shinzen doesn’t make the mistake of putting all of his eggs in one basket by only recognising a gradual process of stages, and marginalizing anyone else’s experience that doesn’t fit this model (something I’ve only just recently learned this year); progress with enlightenment can be unnoticeable for a long time, and for some people there may not have been a before or after at all. I think a lot of ‘practical Buddhists’ could learn a lot from this man.

Shinzen has certainly helped in disabusing me of the idea that after enlightenment there is nothing left to learn on the subject, and if I could have him as my teacher, I certainly would.

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Rapid Versus Gradual Awakening

Vipassana plus magick is perhaps the quickest, driest route to enlightenment there is. It was the path I followed, and although I’m not necessarily an evangelist for this route I think there are problems with the criticism that it makes sense to ‘hold back’ on awakening and develop concentration and morality instead.

The first problem is the simple question of time. How much do you suppose you have to plan your ideal realisation? The longer we ‘delay’ enlightenment the greater the risk of dying before we get there. The Great Work is no less subject to impermanence than any other goal.

Secondly, how much mastery of concentration and morality is enough? If you can sit in samadhi for a whole day, should you aim for a week? Similarly, morality: how easily should selfless acts come before you’re a worthy candidate for enlightenment? Should you wait until you’ve landed a Nobel Peace Prize?

Concentration and morality are attainments based in the relative world. There’s always more work you could do on them. This leads to the third problem: because they’re relative attainments they can stand in the way of the Absolute.

If you can remain in samadhi for a whole day, then great, but there will always be situations in which you can’t. You might be ill, or problems may arise in your life that distract you, or the people next door are too noisy, or an earthquake strikes. No matter how good you get, something can always trash the mastery. The same goes for morality: similar sorts of factors can disturb the purity of our intentions and – of course – there’s never any guarantee that even the most refined of intentions will produce its appropriate result in the real world.

In short, the assumption that concentration and morality can be ‘mastered’ sometimes arises from a belief in a masterful self, whereas mastery of concentration and morality actually consists in realising that they can’t be done – not in the way we might imagine they can.

Fourthly, the idea that fast awakening in itself is somehow morally slack or retrograde is presumptuous. What specific harm can a rapid awakening be supposed to have done? Any answer that points to something that may happen in the future rather than to what is supposed to have occurred already I propose to disregard, on the basis that people are innocent until they actually commit a crime.

Doubtless, there are gurus with psychopathic personalities. Their moral failures generally involve financial or sexual exploitation of their followers. Treating students in this way will hold them back rather than awaken them. I’m not aware of any guru who could be accused of awakening too many people too quickly. Quite the opposite, sadly. And let’s face it: concentration and morality were never going to fix people like these. Someone with the moral world-view of a three year-old was never going to sit down and think ‘I really must get myself sorted before I go too deep’, so why pretend there’s any solution to enlightened fuck-ups other than cutting off the supply of fragile personalities who unfortunately flock to them?

The world is full of nut-jobs who will do you over, given the chance. There are probably more plumbers, builders and bankers among them than gurus. If a banker made your investment grow ‘too quickly’, or a builder put up your house ‘too fast’, you’d have every right to be suspicious. But it wouldn’t be correct to assume automatically that they’d committed a crime, or that you were necessarily their victim.

If someone has awakened and discovers that this makes them happier or more free, then choosing to help others follow the same path is surely more morally developed than vanishing into silence. The fact remains that some people have a harder time with dry insight practice than others. If the issue lies with the person rather than the path, then an alternative route may indeed be a good tactic. It’s understandable that someone fortunate enough to enjoy a swifter ride may attract suspicion, but genuine psychopaths behave in the same way regardless of whether they set themselves up as gurus: they intimidate, dominate and exploit.

I strongly doubt that dry insight practice is a common factor among psychopaths.

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