How To Balance Self Enquiry With Samatha (with Daniel Ingram)

[ardacigin]

I wanted to talk about the dynamic balance of concentration and insight practices. 

In stage 8-10 in TMI, the practice turns from Samatha into insight and vipassana after developing stable attention and introspective awareness properly in stages 1-6. This approach is called samatha-vipassana as both aspects of the practice is combined as one technique. The advantages of this style is enourmous in my experience. And I'll explain why in a second.

Peter Ralston, Daniel Ingram, Ramana Maharshi are teachers mostly on the camp of 'dry insight' where the stabilization of attention and awareness development is secondary to the insight practices. You tend to go straight into noting and self enquiry to get an insight into no-self, impermanence, emptiness and suffering.

After doing insight practices like self-enquiry, Three Characteristics etc. I can personally confirm that these practices are de-stabilizing by their very nature.

Your entire self-paradigm is seen through as an illusion. Everything that you've valued and thought of as the source of happiness and comfort is an illusion. Everything that you wanted to stabilize and solidify is seen through as an illusion due to impermanence. Sensory experience being true and being separate from your mind is seen through as an illusion. All separateness is an illusion. All aversion and craving is an illusion.

These insights (when they become experimental) become traumatic. As a samatha meditator who experiences blissful happiness and joy consistently, it is de-stabilizing to see the happiness as a mere sensation, impermanent, occuring in no-self and entity, and its craving leading to suffering. You spend your entire life chasing happiness but in the end the sensation itself is impermanent and is dissatisfactory.

Now, that doesn't mean a stage 8 TMI meditator spirals down into depression in the face of these insights. You only feel the joy and happiness calm down. Equanimity slightly going down. Feeling a little fatigued and shocked. But that's it. Then you balance this reaction with more jhanic factors like happiness and equanimity and go back to insight penetration. It is a healthy cycle a samatha-vipassana meditator can do. But the same thing can't be done by dry insight meditators. Their only option is to push through and get to awakening in a state of anguish.

And that is the advantage of starting insight practices post stage 7 in TMI. After the effortless stability of attention.

There are 2 reasons for this:

1- First of all, insight meditation is challenging even as a samatha meditator. For a normal person, when he sits down to meditate on impermanence or self enquiry, nothing happens for a reason. You can't even do the technique properly without having enough stability of attention and awareness development. These are not beginner practices. Even if you are successful, there is the issue of how the mind will react to such radical truths.

2- Insight practices can produce A LOT of de-stabilization emotionally and cognitively. A lot of negative emotional sensations will start to pervade your entire life until awakening is realized if you are not a skilled jhana and samatha meditator.

I can meditate into relaxation, joy and happiness after a traumatic insight experience but that is because I've spent years developing the skills necessary to live in a jhanic state all day. This is a post stage 8 attainment in TMI. And it saves you from feeling prolonged states of sadness and lack of motivation in the face of insight. That is why we develop samatha in the first place.

Another advantage is that insight becomes effortless in advanced samatha. Your access to these insights are enhanced SIGNIFICANTLY. Samatha and insight literally fuses together. 

Finally, here are some commentary from Daniel Ingram on the samatha path. Realize that not even insight-oriented meditation teachers (like Daniel Ingram) can dispute and deny the value and importance of Samatha skills:

'Insight practices are designed to penetrate the Three Illusions of permanence, satisfactoriness and separate self so as to attain freedom. Insight practices (various types of vipassana, dzogchen, zazen, etc.) lead to the progressive stages of the progress of insight. Insight practices tend to be difficult and somewhat disconcerting, as they are designed to deconstruct our deluded and much cherished views of the world and ourselves, though they can sometimes be outrageously blissful for frustratingly short periods.

Concentration states are basically always some permutation of great fun, extremely fascinating, seductive, spacious, blissful, peaceful, spectacular, etc. There is basically no limit to how interesting concentration practices can be. Insight practice stages and revelations can also be very interesting, but are not potentially addictive the way concentration states and side effects can be. Insight practices tend to be hard work most of the time even if that work is just surrendering to things as they are.

So long as one is very clear about what is concentration practice and what is insight practice, which may not be as easy an understanding to come by as some might think, concentration practice beyond the first jhana can be helpful to the insight practitioner. All of the concentration states stabilize the mind, obviously, and this has four primary benefits. First, just as a movie camera that is shaking wildly will not be likely to produce a clear or intelligible movie, so a mind that won’t stay settled on an object will not clearly perceive the ultimate truth of it. Second, as concentration states cultivate deep clarity and stability on content, they are very useful for promoting deep and healing psychological insights. Put another way, if you want to bring up your stuff, do concentration practices.

Third, concentration states can be a welcome and valid vacation from stress, providing periods of very deep relaxation and peace that can be an extremely important part of a sane, compassionate and healthy lifestyle. The Buddha highly praised those who had mastery of the concentration states, and this should serve as a reminder to those who underestimate their great value or erroneously feel that not enjoying one’s life is somehow “spiritual.” Fourth, concentration practices can help the insight practitioner stay somewhat more mentally stable and balanced as their old concepts of their existence are rent asunder by insight practice. However, if these states end up blocking this process by solidifying a sense of self as being anything or creating aversion to clearly experiencing suffering then they become a hindrance.

This is a very tricky balance. If a student clings to stability or fluidity they will surely not make progress in insight. However, if they plunge into the fast and harsh vibratory experiences of insight practice without the soothing effects of concentration practice to help them stay somewhat grounded, the student can be a bit like someone who has taken a small dose (or a big dose in the worst cases) of LSD or drunk way too much coffee. I spent the first five years of my practice giving only a moderate amount of attention to the samatha jhanas and I now realize that this was probably an error.

Sometimes spiritual openings can be extreme and dramatic, and being able to slow things down and calm down can sometimes be very useful and skillful if we have to deal with the world and deal with these openings at the same time. In short, if you want to gunk up your insight practice because you simply need to slow down so as to be able to get on with your life or not completely flip out, such as to study for medical school boards, etc., one way to do this is to indulge in concentration states. Coupling this with formal resolutions to not make progress in insight can be very effective'

Here is how to balance insight and samatha practices in 4 steps:

1- Whenever the psyche is too de-stabilized and your spiral down into negative states of mind, it is time to do more jhana and samatha practices. Look for the joy. You can't find it? Re-create it. Focus on it. You must have a lot of skill in experiencing meditative joy prior to insight practices.

2- Whenever you feel stable, concentrated, motivated and happy enough to try insight practices, get started on noting, self enquiry, meditation on mental states, mahamudra etc. to see into the three characteristics of sensate reality.

3- If a breakthrough occurs, great!  Keep it up. Keep going deeper.

4- If overwhelming negative emotions, states and thoughts starts to arise, stop insight practices temporarily.Go back to step 1.

Repeat this cycle. Eventually, both your samatha and insight skills will be very advanced as months and years go by. 

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by ardacigin

[Esoteric]

Hey@ardacigin , very helpful and interesting stuff as always.

To simplify things and to ge the terms clear, basically a good samatha practice would be to have stable attention while maintaining peripheral awareness? And playing with the dynamics between the two. And an insight practice would mean to completely remove the stable attention part and just keep peripheral awareness on max. Is that fair to write?

In your opinion, for a beginner to build continous stable attention would the best tactic be to just get back to the meditation object over and over again when the mind wanders, or work with stable attention/peripheral awareness from the get go?

[Matt8800]

@ardacigin I agree with this. When I am mentoring someone, I first teach them concentration meditation before insight or noting. If they cant concentrate or hold their mind in a certain state, their insight meditation will not be focused enough to really penetrate the depths of the ego mechanism.

With that said, Ingram's book was huge in guiding me through the dark night and into equanimity/stream entry. I always recommend his book to people still struggling with the dark night.

The one thing I might comment on regarding the post is that negative states dont always need to be avoided. They can provide opportunities to learn acceptance and how to raise internal vibration through self-creation irrespective of external conditions. When people feel unstable, that is just the ego's shenanigans. If they lock themselves in the present moment (via their newly concentrated mind), they will find there is nothing chaotic or unstable about the present moment.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Matt8800

[ardacigin]

4 hours ago, Esoteric said:

Hey@ardacigin , very helpful and interesting stuff as always.

To simplify things and to ge the terms clear, basically a good samatha practice would be to have stable attention while maintaining peripheral awareness? And playing with the dynamics between the two. And an insight practice would mean to completely remove the stable attention part and just keep peripheral awareness on max. Is that fair to write?

In your opinion, for a beginner to build continous stable attention would the best tactic be to just get back to the meditation object over and over again when the mind wanders, or work with stable attention/peripheral awareness from the get go?

A good samatha practice is to have 'effortlessly' stable attention with strong introspective, metacognitive and extrospective awareness. So minimum stage 8 territory and this is the point where serious insight practices starts anyways in TMI. Although close following in stage 7 is very intense as well.

See, effortless attentional stability and metacognitive awareness are the key terms. Before the attention-awareness dynamic with effortlessness, whole body awareness, jhanic factors like happiness, tranquility, equanimity and metacognitive awareness is developed sufficiently, you are not entirely ready for insight practices.

After developing these skills, the exact point where you'll start insight practices will be intuitive. You'll rest in a deep state of jhanic happiness, concentration and samatha but you'll want to go further and experience subtle layers of craving and suffering due to feeling like a self, impermance etc.

At that point, you'll say: 'Well, all of this joy and happiness are great but it is not entirely solid. Craving is not entirely eliminated. Impermanence and no-self is not REALLY seen on a deep level. I need to really do these insight practices to further reduce suffering.'

That is the natural and intuitive point in one's spiritual development where you'll start insight practices. It generally corresponds to stage 8-9 in TMI. Both jhana and insight practices are all used to glean some amount of insight into different facets of awakening.

For example, jhanas are normally seen as non-insight producing practices. But a mature stage 8-9 meditator will stabilize the jhana in daily life and get an insight into how craving works in the psyche. Inıtıally, you use jhanas to get to a nice place and stay there as much as you can. After a while you still do that but now you heavily emphasize the insight into suffering and craving in a state of jhana. That starts to change the experience quite a bit.

Other practices like body awareness etc. will also be done in a way to show impermanence, no-self etc. depending on your intentions. Lot of these insights perspectives will be easier to see and experience with relative consistency since equanimity also develops with all of these practices. 

4 hours ago, Esoteric said:

In your opinion, for a beginner to build continous stable attention would the best tactic be to just get back to the meditation object over and over again when the mind wanders, or work with stable attention/peripheral awareness from the get go?

At the very beginning, you can't work with the awareness and attention dynamic so you must bring the attention back and try to do your best to expand awareness at the same time both extrospectively and introspectively. Awareness needs the stability of attention to be on a certain threshold.

But As soon as you are able to, you should play around with the attention and awareness dynamic. That is how you do TMI properly but it is way more challenging than just bringing attention back to the breath and trying to exclusively stay there. The lack of awareness development is why people never quite go past stage 6-7.

Starting from stage 4, awareness development with attentional stability is what will make insight practice possible. The actual reason why we develop stable attention is to get attention out of the way, restrict its unconscious movement and develop awareness.

Edited January 2, 2020 by ardacigin

[ardacigin]

5 hours ago, Esoteric said:

And an insight practice would mean to completely remove the stable attention part and just keep peripheral awareness on max. Is that fair to write?

That depends. Not all insight practices require the removal of stable attention. But most of them emphasize awareness to a high degree.

For instance in 'close following' in Stage 7 TMI, you have to MAX all of your stable attention skills to deconstruct the breath. It is very challenging and you need attention for that.

Also for noting, you need 'momentary attention' where the movements of attention occur but is directed by awareness so it is clear and stable. 

In very deep states, the attention is absent from experience in panaromic awareness but we are talking about late stage 9, stage 10 and deep 4rth jhana at this point. So ditching attention is not something that is easy. Most insight practices still include some level of attentional stability or attentional investigation. But it is fair to say that awareness development is more important. 

After effortless attention, the rest of the work generally boils down to awareness dynamic and energetic investigation of direct experience.

[Esoteric]

@ardacigin Thanks, very informative post. When you enter the jhanas are you still working consciously with the attention and awareness dynamic? 

Edit: Saw you more or less answered that question as I wrote that post

Edited January 2, 2020 by Esoteric

[ardacigin]

31 minutes ago, Esoteric said:

@ardacigin Thanks, very informative post. When you enter the jhanas are you still working consciously with the attention and awareness dynamic? 

Edit: Saw you more or less answered that question as I wrote that post

@Esoteric Yes. You need to still play with the attention and awareness dynamic in jhanic factors like happiness, joy, tranquility and equanimity. I'd say that is the essential difference between Culadasa's TMI with Leigh Brasington's jhana book. 

But this is not too easy. Attention can sometimes result in an awareness collapse and joy-happiness can decrease. Or you can emphasize too much with awareness that attention not stabilized and is fuzzy.

This results in subtle dullness, moving attention, wandering mind in a state of jhana. It helps you to have enough energy for dealing with people, thinking about stuff in a state of joy and pleasure. So it is pretty good for daily life but in a formal session, subtle dullness must be addressed. Attention must be localized a little more to the breath while increasing meditative joy. That dynamic interplay is more challenging but from that state (if you can get into in stage 8 which is hard but doable), you can do some pretty nice insight investigation.

3rd jhana practice in movement is my go-to daily practice. You must apply some hardcore body awareness on a momentary basis with happiness and joy AND add that contentment component since this is 3rd jhana. So it is challenging enough for me but not too hard as well. The perfect flow state.

4rth jhana, on the other hand, is something that requires a lot of equanimity. It is said to be the best jhana for insight practice but one needs to be TMI stage 10 to truly go deep and stabilize a 4rth jhana. That is beyond my current skill level. I also suspect that stage 10 mastery of that level will correspond to stream-entry. So awakening is pretty close from that point.

 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by ardacigin

[Esoteric]

@ardacigin Ok interesting stuff, thanks for sharing. I started reading Brasington's book today actually. Looks like you're doing good progress

[ardacigin]

3 minutes ago, Esoteric said:

@ardacigin Ok interesting stuff, thanks for sharing. I started reading Brasington's book today actually. Looks like you're doing good progress

Leigh's book is great. Just remember that TMI version of jhanas after stage 7 gives more depth and manual dynamic to jhanas due to awareness and attention development.

So the first 4 jhanas Leigh talks about in that book is accessed in daily life interacting with people. It stops being a formal sit occurrence you can access for 20 mins. It starts to become a full time gig in TMI. A part of your overall life and meditation practice.

[Pell]

On 1/2/2020 at 1:04 PM, ardacigin said:

Leigh's book is great. Just remember that TMI version of jhanas after stage 7 gives more depth and manual dynamic to jhanas due to awareness and attention development.

So the first 4 jhanas Leigh talks about in that book is accessed in daily life interacting with people. It stops being a formal sit occurrence you can access for 20 mins. It starts to become a full time gig in TMI. A part of your overall life and meditation practice.

I have TMI, but I'm unfamiliar with actually living through the jhanas in daily life. I'm only just poking into stage 7 though. Could you unpack daily life jhanas more? 

[ardacigin]

11 hours ago, Pell said:

I have TMI, but I'm unfamiliar with actually living through the jhanas in daily life. I'm only just poking into stage 7 though. Could you unpack daily life jhanas more? 

@Pell Of course  

TMI doesn't explicitly call them jhanas but the arising of meditative joy in stage 8 is a jhanic factor. Meditative joy is a pleasant sensation, causes happiness and joy. And this is partially effortless and relatively stable. (In stages 8-9)

Now a typical jhana meditator tends to lack metacognitive awareness of joy and happiness. He also hasn't quite worked with attention and awareness so much that he can access effortlessness in stage 7. Due to these reasons, a typical jhana meditator tends to lose the jhana factors like happiness and joy in daily life. Their baseline happiness is not increased radically. (At least initially)

What I mean by jhanas in daily life is to be able to access this meditative joy, happiness and pleasentness; meditate on it (like the breath) and play with the attention/awareness dynamic just like in a formal sit. You can do this on demand.

Initially, this appears challenging but effortlessness of stage 7 allows it to happen without much struggle. The same principle of effortless attention that applies for the breath also applies for meditative joy. Instead of developing awareness while attention is on the breath, you do the same awareness development process while the attention is on the meditative joy. This is what one could call experiencing jhanas with mindfulness. 

TMI version of meditative joy arises out of mind unification. It doesn't require any previous joy cultivation because it arises out of the unification of conflicted sub-minds. This makes these emotions and positive mental states extremely stable, durable and effortless.

In Leigh's version of jhanas, concentration is developed by focusing on pleasant sensations. But there is not enough awareness development. In fact, one needs to have a certain degree of access concentration to even experience any pleasant sensations. You need body awareness, introspective, extrospective awareness and effortlessly stable attention to be able to sustain the jhanic factors in daily life. Just producing the happiness in the mind is not enough to maintain it in daily life. That is why mindfulness TMI teaches is essential.

In a jhana, happiness and joy becomes stable and dominates consciousness. You are only bringing this wonderful state into daily life with TMI. Its origination comes from mind unification rather than concentration. That is why it is different from Leigh's jhanas.

Edited January 5, 2020 by ardacigin

[Pell]

@ardacigin Thank you! I've never realized the distinctions between Leigh's and Culadasa's presentations of the jhanas. You made it clear about how TMI has skill development as the crux of the practice in order to cultivate a holistic samatha. 

Perhaps another question: what are your thoughts on shikantaza/zazen as a means to samatha/insight? From my view, shikantaza has the samatha component because it leads one to stillness/silence. The technique has the vipassana component because it leaves awareness bare. This also reminds me of the question regarding how much collectedness one needs to bare fruit(awakening). Would you stage 6 in TMI terms is the bare minimum? 

[ardacigin]

15 hours ago, Pell said:

@ardacigin Thank you! I've never realized the distinctions between Leigh's and Culadasa's presentations of the jhanas. You made it clear about how TMI has skill development as the crux of the practice in order to cultivate a holistic samatha. 

Perhaps another question: what are your thoughts on shikantaza/zazen as a means to samatha/insight? From my view, shikantaza has the samatha component because it leads one to stillness/silence. The technique has the vipassana component because it leaves awareness bare. This also reminds me of the question regarding how much collectedness one needs to bare fruit(awakening). Would you stage 6 in TMI terms is the bare minimum? 

@Pell I don't think 'just sit' sort of techniques are effective if you don't know how to stabilize attention and develop awareness. If you are trying to get to effortlessness, it can be helpful to relax. An advanced meditator can do shikantaza effectively.

But a beginner meditator shouldn't do it in my opinion. I know that it seems easy to 'just sit' or 'stop moving' but you are not actually developing the skills you need to develop in this stage of the practice. Physical pliancy, effortlessness and mental pliancy SDS and shikantaza develop are advanced practices you should do in stage 7-8 as  bare minimum.

 When there are no practice instructions, a beginner will dip into sustained dullness and stay there. Just sitting and strong determination sits are good. But its effective implementation is only after you master the technique. These are supplements, not the main dish. 

It induces tranquility but it is not guaranteed. One can feel agitated still because attention is not tamed and awareness is insufficient.

Due to lack of development in these areas, vipassana also can't be done effectively. You might as well do dry insight without these skills. But I always recommend a balanced samatha-vipassana approach. You master samatha until stage 8 and start the insight practices from there.

Stage 6 mastery is said to be good enough for awakening IF you've developed awareness sufficiently. Awakening can basically happen at any stage.

The goal of this practice, at that stage, must be 'At what stage can I reduce craving with consistency, produce joy and do advanced insight practices effectively?'

The answer is stage 7 effortlessness -- stage 8 joy development - stage 9 - Joy and Contentment

So around stage 8-9, you will be equipped with so many amazing skills that you'll confused as what to develop first. Insight penetration is possible. Emotional mastery is possible. Compassion work is possible. Social skill improvement is possible. Jhana mastery is possible. Craving reduction is possible. No-mind is possible. Open awareness is possible. Long SDS sits are possible....

So, if you are stage 6, just work on stage 7. Then try to master stage 7. Then move on to stage 8. 

The process works for a reason. Do Leigh's jhanas on the side to reduce aversion and produce more joy. In my case, I've gained all my jhanic factors from TMI but I was very frustrated with the practice and constantly cultivated negative emotions without realizing it.

I don't recommend that sort of wiring in the nervous system so looking for the joy is a requirement for all meditators in the way I look at the practice. Leigh's book is good for that. But the actual fruits will come from TMI.

 

 

[purerogue]

I do not think that you can reach such levels of awareness  just by having sits, you have to  embody it in your daily life, will be very difficult for a while, especially when you become tired , will seem impossible and irritating, but you will start to notice that it becomes easier and takes no effort at all when you are fresh,less gaps when you are tired and then you can get to point where it does not matter even if you are tired, you will be fresh. 

 

 

 

[Jonac]

@ardacigin Daniel Ingram is amazing. Such straight teachings, almonst no one tells you.