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

All that said, there is some debate about what factors or progress allows some people to just notice the Three Characteristics of the sensations that make up their world in the fact of their stuff as opposed to those who just flounder in their stuff. Some would argue that you have to have done enough psychological work and deal with enough of your issues to get to the place were you can move on to the next stage. I must reluctantly admit that there is probably some truth to this.

However, I didn’t consider myself particularly psychologically advanced when I started insight practices, as I had all kinds of stuff to deal with and still do, and yet somehow, perhaps through good instruction, perhaps through some other factors I have yet to identify, I was able to practice well despite it all and make the shift from being lost in content to noticing how things actually are.

THE THOUGHT MODELS

Speaking screwed up models, we have the Thought Models. These are models that tend to focus on something different happening with thoughts in those who are awakened, rather than simply seeing through the thought patterns that create a sense of a center point or special, permanent, separate self. These idealized models include not thinking certain thoughts, such as enlightened beings being unable to think the thought “I” or “I am”, not thinking at all and thus stopping the process of thought, or some other modification to thoughts, such always thinking good thoughts, whatever those are.

I got an email a while ago from a seemingly nice engineer who said basically: “I did some Taoist practices, got enlightened, and now am incapable of thinking any thoughts or visualizing, yet I seem to function normally. What do you think of this?” I put a lot of thought into my response, and so am including it here, in slightly edited form:

“One of my dead teachers, Bill Hamilton, used to talk about how people's conceptions of what was supposed to happen would have some influence on subsequent events, with some question about what that influence was. We used to discuss this often, with possibilities including: 297

Models of the Stages of Enlightenment

1) People with different models of awakening might actually achieve different results. I am no fan of this proposition but admit the possibility.

2) People with different models might achieve the same thing but describe it differently. I believe this one more than the first.

3) Some combination of these.

4) People might fail to achieve results but be scripted to report or believe that they had achieved something in line with their own working model. This is a common occurrence, one that I have observed in myself more times than I can count and also in the practice of many other fellow dharma adventurers. Bill would often mention people's ability to self hypnotize into semi-fixed states of delusion. He had a long run of hanging out in scary cult-like situations with psychopathic teachers and got to observe this first hand in himself and others: see his book Saints and Psychopaths for more on this.

5) People with different models and techniques might have very different experiences of the path along its way: this is clearly true in some aspects, and yet the universal aspects of the path continue to impress me with their consistency and reproducibility regardless of tradition.

6) Other possibilities we hadn't considered, in the style of Donald Rumsfeld’s famous Unknown Unknowns…

The “no thought” question is an interesting one. It is commonly used in some traditions as being the goal, these including some strains and descriptions of Hindu Vedanta, multiple non-aligned traditions, and others. Zen sometimes toys with the idea on its periphery. As to Taoism: I did a bunch of reading of the old Taoist masters some years ago, but I wouldn't consider myself an expert on it's current practice or dogma.

Buddhism does not generally consider not thinking or not being able to visualize among its goals, which brings us to the points mentioned above. For instance, the Awakened Buddha often says things in the old texts like, "It occurred to me that I should wander by stages to

[such and such a place]." Or, "This spontaneous stanza, never heard before, occurred to me." These obviously are thoughts. Furthermore, if we note the old texts as reference, all of the enlightened disciples of the 298

Models of the Stages of Enlightenment Buddha and the Buddha himself were described as thinking thoughts.

Further, many of the Buddha's disciples could visualize, as could the Buddha, and if we look to modern times you can't be a tantric master without some strong visualization abilities.