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

An extended series of progresses of insight tend to proceed as follows. They may be called “Paths” in the Theravada and “Bhumis” in the Tibetan, though there are some problems that arise in trying to resolve the inconsistencies in these two models that will be touched on a bit later. Thus, a more general treatment follows, and the descriptions of the stages here are not taken directly from any particular tradition. From one point of view, all of this is not necessary information, as continued practice just as before will continue to move things along quite naturally.

On the other hand, if one has expectations about what might come next

Beyond First Path (“What Next?”)

that are not in accord with reality or interfere with practice, then this information might be helpful.

The meditator masters this stage of awakening by continued practice as before. They can quickly learn to rise through all of the stages, starting from the Arising and Passing Away, through the Dark Night, up to Equanimity and Fruition in a single sitting or even during some of the activities of daily life. Merely sitting down on a cushion, or being awake for that matter, will involve naturally moving through these cycles, thought the speed and clarity of these can vary widely depending on the practitioner and circumstances. They may even find it interesting to purposefully hang out in some of the stages of the Dark Night just to learn more about them and from them, as they have some very

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

Beyond First Path (“What Next?”)

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.