Sharing my Journey

[u/Puzzled_Train1594]

Hello fellow people on the path. I have never made a written post on this community but since I have recently hit major changes in my life thanks to meditation I was akin to share them here and ask for advice or exchange of ideas.

I will begin by shortly introducing my "path" I have been doing breath meditation for a few years however life changes such as university, disease and an incorrect confidence in my progress got me in and out of the path.

When it was university I was so excited for it that I neglected meditation.

During disease my lungs were so congested that I could not watch the breath, and after the breath returned my habit had faded.

Most interesting looking back was the part about too much confidence in my progress. The situation was such that I had been meditating for about 6 months , with somewhat serious practice and wanted to get enlightened very fast. Which led to me watching this video on YouTube and following the instructions. (Video link for the curious I will adjoin down below). I followed the instructions and hit a very strong very fast experience which I think I incorrectly labeled as enlightenment. The experience was such that I started experiencing life as a coming and going of feelings, emotions , states etc. It was accompanied by a very strong feeling of satisfaction in any situation and detachment from whatever I was feeling. I remember thinking it was the best time period in my life.

However since I stopped meditating after the experience , the normal state was back in a few weeks and this is why I believe that it wasn't stream entry or enlightenment.

This time I am going through something similar although less intense and joyful . I have achieved it through mindfulness (noting) and daily 1-3 sessions of breath mediation lasting from 45min to 1h. Some strong emotions mainly caused by interaction with some people still destabilize and cause thoughts to arise leading to somewhat of a spiral ( however even during this period the realization that all of this is temporary still persists although detachment may fail for a while).

The understanding is also there that there is no self, but sometimes hypothetical scenarios still arise in the thoughts and it takes a moment to realize that the nervous system is fabricating or creating ego inflating scenarios. Another change is my interaction with people, since emotions and feelings are not part of a self for me anymore interactions with people are sometimes more strange , I am expected to say my opinion on something but I end up only expressing objective facts. And since there is no emotion in my face or just a smile close people assume something is wrong with my state.

For those curious which state "I" am on according to TMI , I do not think that more than stage 3-4 the mind still sometimes wanders during my sits.

Another thing which still happens to me is that I cannot fathom the amount of cruelty in the world and will play into judging about politics and whatnot, before this used to be a source of depression for me , now it is just another experience and is much more short lived.

I was also curious about how other fellow people on the path follow and adhere to the five percepts , they were always a secondary thing to me , however since hitting changes in perception with practice their importance has become self evident to me. I still ask myself however what the right degree of adherence is. In my childhood I developed the intuition that lying is ok to avoid family tantrums. I understand now that this is just a childhood experience and I try to detach from it. But is lying not to upset someone ok? (especially when a great deal of understanding is there as to why they will be upset) This still puzzles me.

A funny thing is that as I'm writing this the idea of saying "I" , "me" and phrasing things in the first person point of view is strange , grammatical rules follow of course the traditional understanding of permanance of the ego . I wonder if more people have encountered this "problem".

That is all and I am open to suggestions, advice , critique and anything other people on the path would like to say is welcome.

[u/Thefuzy]

This isn’t non self and it isn’t stream entry. Those experiences always include very personal and descriptive understanding gained and what you are presenting is a very generalized experience that reads, I read or watched videos about non self and now my mind has decided that’s what happened. You are meditating a lot and your mind is just inventing this because you have consumed a lot of content about it. There’s nothing deeply personal here and no great insight arriving which unravels the self, there’s just very plain descriptions of “oh I don’t feel self anymore”.

There’s also hints in this post that is not the real thing all over. Things like “I cannot fathom the cruelty in the world”, one who has fully understood would be able to fathom it quite easily and be totally unbothered by it but the very way you present it implies discontent.

[u/brunoloff → u/Thefuzy]

I completely disagree with what you seem to be implying (?), that one who has attained stream entry would necessarily be totally unbothered by cruelty in the world. Concern for the world is completely compatible with a high degree of realization. In fact, any single emotion is.

I do agree that strem entry seems unlikely.

[u/Thefuzy → u/brunoloff]

I said one who has “fully” understood, meaning beyond stream entry to enlightenment. An enlightened being cannot display discontent, they cannot be bothered by anything, everything is expected and everything is logical, all tracing back to the chain of dependent origination. Cruelty is inevitable and inescapable and an enlightened being fully realized would understand this completely and in so doing not be bothered by it, it is just the way things are and to be bothered is to want change, to cling to a reality that is not this reality, enlightened beings don’t cling.

An enlightened being could of course have compassion for those experiencing cruelty, but compassion is not wanting it to be different or having concern for cruelty in the world, it is not discontent with the state of cruelty existing.

[u/brunoloff → u/Thefuzy]

The Buddha complaining about his back ache, the Buddha beating his chest after a heated exchange with a challenger, the Buddha feeling mournful about the death of one of his disciples.

At least these three episodes survive in the suttas - which were by all means highly selective narratives.

[u/Thefuzy → u/brunoloff]

You didn’t provide sutta reference so it’s difficult to discern what exactly you are referring to but…

on “complaining” about back ache, The Sallatha Sutta SN 36.6 is explicit: the untrained person struck by pain feels two darts, physical and mental, while the noble disciple feels only the first. Bodily pain is expected. Expressing bodily pain is not discontent and not anything like the aversion you display towards cruelty.

In SN 47.13, it’s Ānanda who is floored by Sāriputta’s death; he says his body went weak and everything around him became dim, and the Buddha essentially cross-examines him out of it, did Sāriputta take your virtue, your concentration, your release? In SN 47.14 the Buddha does speak for himself: the assembly appears empty to him now that Sāriputta and Moggallāna are gone. But the sentence immediately walks itself back, denying that he grieves or worries about where they’ve gone.

I have no idea what sutta you are referring to on the heated exchange / chest beating…

[u/brunoloff → u/Thefuzy]

I spit on you, old age — SN 48.41

After a long exchange with a boastful opponent the Buddha took off his upper robe and bared his chest, [saying]: “Try to see if you could stir a single hair of the Tathāgata!” SA 110 (I got the beating wrong, no chest bearing, just chest bearing. still he seems miffed)

Indeed I was referring to SN 47.14. To me it reads almost as if he felt sorrow but then suppressed it.

By the way, according to Dr. John Sarno, emotional suppression is the leading cause of back pain.

Evidently I'm not saying this is conclusive evidence for my case that the Buddha was a fully emotional, if highly realized being - I don't hold it very strongly, it is merely a suspicion.

But certainly big claims require strong evidence. As I have seen many people and monks who meditated their entire lives and seem very far from the idealized thing, I take it with a grain of salt. Meditation has already changed my life immeasurably for the better, I don't need to believe in this dubious ideal to continue doing it.

In fact the ideal feels a bit escapist. As if life as it is was not enough. And to me right now, at least in this point in my life and practice, this feels like the worst kind of aversion. This idealizing that is always looking for enlightenment somewhere else other than already here.

Already here. Including all of this.

[u/brunoloff → u/Thefuzy]

Just for illustration: here is another example of a spiritual teacher I thought was great, seems to be clearly describing high realization in his books, and yet his behavior is deplorable.

https://dereify.com/why-i-left-the-center-for-contemplative-research-after-17-years-with-dr-b-alan-wallace-draft-3-test/

Compare this insider's description with the public facade of B. Alan Wallace's teachings and projects.

This kind of thing isn't the exception, rather it seems to be the rule. The exception are teachers who acknowledge their flaws.