Hi Jeffrey,
Great comments on the dark night of the soul.
Yes, the idea that Vipassana is a separate practice is absurd. Vi (clear) passana (seeing, or any sense) is clearly not only an attainment but something that starts to develop even before the first jhana. I remember the first time I sat for 45 minutes with someone else 7 years ago. I couldn't believe how vivid and amazing the world looked. I consider that a taste of vipassana.
Yes, I too have experienced what you described above as a product of leading a contemplative life. I call it "intuitive, revelatory, insight." And, I find it a byproduct of meditation that produces jhana, so if you had a nice meditation and found yourself insightful from it, then you were most probably meditating to at least the first jhana.
The Mahasi people say, "well really we mean satipatthana is the practice."
The Goenka followers say the same thing. So, why not call it 'satipatthana'?
It is relevant to note here that there are four main suttas that describe the practice of meditation in the Discourses of the Buddha. They are:
Anapanasati Sutta (MN 118) “Mindfulness of the breath”
Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10) “the Four Paths of Mindfulness”
Kayagata-sati Sutta (MN 119) “Mindfulness of the Body”
Maha-satipatthana Sutta (DN 22), “Larger Discourse on the Four Paths of Mindfulness” updated 10-27-04
The term 'vipassana' does not appear in any of them. It is also worth noting that since the suttas came out in translation Goenka has been referring to the
Anapanasati Sutta (MN 118) and the
Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10) only. He does not refer to the other two suttas. It is further worth noting that the above two suttas do not refer directly to jhana; whereas the other two suttas do. It suggests that is the reason why Goenka does not refer to them.
But that is only based on a horrible misunderstanding and mistranslation of the Satipatthana Sutta. Bhikkhu Bodhi (To be fair he does discuss dissenting views in the footnotes). Translates the second paragraph in that one as "this is the direct path to nibbana"(ekayana magga) [I summarized]. If you do a little digging you realize this is not correct. You also realize that the Buddha is not describing a separate non-jhana path.
Well it is clear and obvious that the Buddha is not describing a separate non-jhana path; however, 'ekayana magga' means eka-one, yana-vehicle, magga-path. However, I do not believe that only one of those 4 suttas was the one and only way to enlightenment; but all 4 suttas describe that one true path in 4 different ways.
One pet peeve of mine is now that we have some teachers who are advocating jhana, these teachers are constantly and endlessly caveating every mention of Jhana with ("But don't forget Vipassana is more important!"). I assume this is only so they will be allowed to teach at Insight Meditation Society.
Well, I teach jhana and I do not repeat this nonsense, but then I am not invited to teach at IMS.
Regarding Mahasai Saydaw Vipassana. I find that tradition to be the most polar opposite of what you teach (bizzaro-GWV perhaps?)
I agree with you, but to call it "bizzaro" is being too kind.
They won't say Jhana is bad, but when you read between the lines they clearly think that one has no time to practice Jhana and one has to do all these mental exercises of sub-vocalizing every sense experience. How can more thinking lead to the religious experience?
Well put. We should ask why people are so infatuated with meditation techniques while being so offended by the GWV? I think people are just addicted to their mind, and terrified of the religious experience, so they would rather burn a mystic at the stake than give up their mind and have a genuine religious experience.
There are some great things about Mr. Ingram's work. He has some wonderful essays criticizing the meditation scene that you would agree with but he really loses me with his Vipassana bias. He also makes an attempt to correlate experiences across traditions but again...same problem.
He claims he gained access to all 8 samadhi states once he became a Sotapanna. I at first took his word for it. However, I saw a video of his colleague Kenneth Folk having a conversation in what he claimed was in the arupa Jhanas + cessation while chatting. This was just too much for me. He also claims he discovered 4 new arupa jhanas called "the Pure Land jhanas" which I find to be an extremely ironic name (as Pure Land is pretty much the greatest fraud ever).
I actually joined their forum and dialoged with them when I saw that everyone on the forum was claiming jhana attainment. I thought, "great, we can all be friends." Well, it turned out that to them all 8 stages of samadhi are just a mental projections. I asked not one of them can still his mind, so they are surely not making it to the 2nd jhana.
There is only support of a Vipassana path without Jhana in the Vishudimagga, Mahasi Saydaw's school. The Mahasi Saydaw people also claim there are four Vipassana jhanas quite separate from the shamata jhanas (I don't recall if this is in Buddhaghosa's Vishudimagga or not).
Well, this nonsense is also in Gunaratana, except he has 32 jhanas. In his epistemology there are 16 "vipassana-jhanas" and 16 "shamata-jhanas." It is amazing how people invent huge stinking piles of nonsense when they cannot understand the simplest instructions.
Anyway, you of course know all this. I am simply purposing that 95% of the Theravada world finally comes out of the closet and officially converts from Buddhism to Buddhaghosaism as they clearly find his instructions superior to the Buddhas.
Well, that is what is going on, but the history goes quite far back. The arahat was dumped around the first century when the last arahat was demonized by the Mahayanist Buddhists in Persia. A new arahat arose in Sri Lanka around 500 AD, he and his followers were killed and their monastery burned by the other monks. They then dragged out the Vishudimagga and presented it as a peace offering, because the Vishudimagga discusses jhana, but it is nonsense. They hired a Brahman priest, renamed him Buddhaghosa, and put him up for a rains retreat, then had him rubber stamp the Vishudimagga, then had him burn commentaries by the priest who was murdered, then they shipped Buddhaghosa back to the mainland, where he went back to his wife with a retirement.
I do enjoy listening to that youtube show "Ask a monk." by a Mahasi Saydaw monk as it's good to challenge my own world view. On specifics of meditation his views are the polar opposite of my own.
That ringing and the vibrations you experienced as you were staying conscious through the later sleep stages is classic-pre-OOBE experience. And, in my experience the charisms and the pre-OOBE phenomena are one and the same. Also, I find it useful to meditate lying down at night instead of falling asleep. When traverses through the stage you mentioned then one goes out-of-body.
Very interesting. I am experimenting with this myself. When that happened yesterday, I was suddenly awake in my room or so I thought. I noticed the cat was next to my bed but then I remembered I had actually put her out. Clearly I was dreaming some sort of hallucination of my room. Then when I woke up I started my day. Everything seemed fine, but I was shaving with a normal razor when I only use an electric razor. Another false awakening again. It was hugely disturbing.
There must be some stage where the mind is confused by the fact that you stayed conscious and is trying to project a simulation of your room reality ect.
You were having an OOBE, you just did not know it. It is an altered reality with many levels. On the lowest level it is the dream-world.
James Randi and other skeptics claim that this is all there is to the OBE experience. James Randi reports having a "hallucinated" OBE like this and believes he fully understands the OBE experience.
There are a number of so called researchers who have dismissed the OOBE. Clearly they have never had one.
