Distinguishing Between Actual Freedom, Genuine Enlightenment, and Buddhistic Practices (Thread 2)

[claudiu]

Hi all,

Following on from Thread 1, I thought it would be of benefit to re-post an exchange I had with Daniel Ingram two years earlier as well, that touches on the same topics.

Part 1/3

Feb 26, 2022

CLAUDIU [to Daniel]: You came into my thoughts recently [… snip anecdotes …] [I was] reading “A Critique of Western Buddhism”, which basically makes the claim – in an extremely dense and academic way that I find mostly unnecessary – that Western Buddhism is more an “environment” rather than a set of teachings, and this environment has the quality that any criticism of it can be rebuked by another instance or iteration of Western Buddhism which then still remains Western Buddhism. Like it is infinitely morphable and defensible. I remember in a particular early A&P stage, feeling like I could essentially “prove any point”, sort of “apply the dharma to it” and it would all work out.

From the same book I was surprised to learn that Western Buddhism isn’t such a recent thing, but rather the beginnings of it (reframing Buddhism as scientific, experimental, rational method – as opposed to revelatory, transcendental, divine knowledge) started in Burma in the 19th century when the Burmese monks came in contact with Western thinking, and the head monks themselves did this reframing (not the westerners as I had previously thought).

That they did it so readily perhaps points to that it’s been a centuries-long , if not millennia-long , practice of reshaping Buddhism to whatever fits the contemporary ideals of the time … where I just have to point out that Theravada is (and I take this all from Wikipedia :D) a sect that comes from the Mahavihara sect, which is a branch of the Vibhajjavada sect, which is a sect of the Sthavira Nikaya, which split from the Mahasamghikas school 100 years after Buddhia died, which itself is one of the schools that formed after the Buddha died…

Now this may seem like a non-sequitur but my first reaction to the description of Richard’s (of actual freedom (in)famy) Enlightenment was that he has no idea what he’s talking about, he goes on and on about ‘being’ the Absolute, but as we all know from our experiential meditation practice, “there is nothing that is perceived that can be said to be me or mine”. So if he was perceiving this thing he called ‘the Absolute’ properly , he would see it is not-me, not-self, and he wouldn’t say he was that… there is no being that, in Buddhism.

But then it would have to be explained why, when I was chatting with Richard one day when I went to visit in Australia, about his Enlightenment, and he was talking about what we call the arupa jhanas, and how the first one has “akasha” in the name for a good reason, because this first arupa jhana is an interface between the physical world and the metaphysical world (i.e. the Absolute), I intuitively/instinctually caught on to what he was saying and then started experiencing that very “akasha” that he was talking about!!

It was a feeling exactly of something sublime and transcendental, that was supreme over anything in the physical world, that I could dive into and never come back out of… that way lay divinity. And this was part of the experience, the words I’m using now just describe what I was experiencing, they aren’t concepts I’m overlaying on top of it afterwards.

Now interestingly, in the Anatta-lakkhana Sutta , and many others for that matter, the Buddha asks the monks: is rupa/vedana/… nicca {permanent} or anicca {impermanent}? Anicca, of course… and is that which is anicca, dukkha or sukkha? Dukkha, of course… and is that which is anicca, dukkha, subject to change, fit to be regarded as “‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’?”" No , of course not…

I mention this because my experience of akasha , which I glimpsed because of Richard describing his experience of Enlightenment , was such that this is something that is nicca, that is permanent, that is not subject to change (as opposed to the many and varied other meditative objects I had spent much time meditating on for the years before).

And as that which is anicca is dukkha, that means that which is nicca is sukkha… and therefore this is something that is fit to be regarded as “This is mine, this I am, this is my self’”

I’ll also mention here that part of the conversation with Richard leading up to my experience entailed him describing that the etymology of “dukkha” is essentially “du-” as in, asunder, or apart from, and “-kha” , as in “akasa” i.e. that very same akasa in the name of that first arupa jhana - akasanancayatana - and “sukha” is essentially “su-” as in together-with (instead of apart from) + -kha, as in akasa.

This “akasa” being none other than “The Absolute” that Richard experienced himself as being, while he was Enlightened.

That is to say that my experience of something that was permanent, therefore being permanent it is “sukha” (as in together-with the Absolute, not apart from it), and that which is permanent and sukha is fit to be regarded as “This is mine, this I am, this is my self” — which therefore precisely matches that succinct description Richard gave of Enlightenment equates to ‘being’ the Absolute / ‘being’ nothing other than that Absolute (as starkly contrasted with everything in the pragmatic dharma circles today).

I also only recently was able to fit a meditative experience I had, before going to actualism, into any kind of framework… I was sitting with my eyes open, and entered into a usual concentrative/trance state. Then with my eyes still open, my vision began to knit together, blur, and disappear entirely (with eyes still open)… but while I had a similar thing happen before, and I had experienced the arupa jhanas to the high standards you hold them to (i.e. first arupa jhana, is ‘space’, meaning the body is gone, totally gone, as (if I recall correctly) you emphatically told me in person one day) …

… this time something else happened, where my entire “center of my being” literally disappeared and/or shifted downwards into perhaps my neck area. There was still experiencing, there was still awareness, and some very background thoughts of me commenting on this, but there was a remarkable and palpable aeonian-feeling peace that is what my experiencing was.

When it ended there was a shifting back/coming back upwards into my normal center, vision came back (eyes appeared to have been open the whole time), and I was left with the distinct impression that no matter what happens in my life, I can always return to that peace / it will always be there, I can always seek refuge in it… though I never was able to find my way back to it, as nothing in the maps I had really accounted for such a thing.

I put it off as just a weird one-off thing, but nothing to hang my hat on…

However I recently remember Richard’s description of his experience of another of what we call the arupa jhanas, namely the one we call “Nothingness” (which I have experienced as well, and it was certainly not like what I’m describing here). Richard, rather, described it as “Self with no Other” (or perhaps “Self with no Object”).

I didn’t connect the two before, but, seeing as Self is that which is permanent, which is together-with-the-Absolute and not apart, which is unchanging, which was exactly what I experienced then (an eternal (i.e. unchanging) peace)… and not to mention the distinct absence of an egoic center (though a center there still was, albeit shifted downward) directly corresponds to Richard’s description of being Enlightened here: “This absence of ego/ ego-self was so remarkably obvious ‘he’ would flesh-out ‘his’ description by pointing both forefingers directly to either temple so as to pinpoint its exact location via where an interior place immediately behind the mid-point of the eyebrows was intersected by that line-of-pointing. And, speaking even more experientially, a distinct vacancy, a clear emptiness, at that precise location was an on-going and compelling experience.”

In short, the above is what has led me to my current understanding – which essentially formed when i glimpsed the akasa that Richard described to me in person in 2012 – that Richard did in fact experience precisely the Enlightenment that the Buddha did, that is actually described in the Pali canon (albeit with mis-translated words and misinterpreted), and which is obviously something other than what you yourself experienced and laid out in MCTB — and which, despite others putting down “4th Path” as a meager attainment, seems to correlate with what most, if not all, in pragmatic dharma describe as their end goals — which perhaps can trace its roots very far back in time, if not to the Buddha himself.

If this is at all interesting to you, there is way, way more in this very lengthy post on Buddhism here.

[…]

Regards,
Claudiu

[claudiu]

Part 2/3

Daniel responded a few weeks later, in a mostly non-commital way, to which I replied:

Mar 14, 2022, 1:51PM

CLAUDIU: […] One point of interest to follow up on …

CLAUDIU: That is to say that my experience of something that was permanent, therefore being permanent it is “sukha” (as in together-with the Absolute, not apart from it), and that which is permanent and sukha is fit to be regarded as “This is mine, this I am, this is my self” […] I also only recently was able to fit a meditative experience I had, before going to actualism, into any kind of framework… I was sitting with my eyes open, and entered into a usual concentrative/trance state […] When it ended there was a shifting back/coming back upwards into my normal center, vision came back (eyes appeared to have been open the whole time), and I was left with the distinct impression that no matter what happens in my life, I can always return to that peace / it will always be there, I can always seek refuge in it… though I never was able to find my way back to it, as nothing in the maps I had really accounted for such a thing.

DANIEL: This epistemological thing of having a “permanent experience” that you can “return to even if it has ended many times before”… perhaps a better word would be “reproducible” or “re-findable” or “re-cultivatable"?

It’s obviously oxymoronic to call it a permanent experience seeing as it ended :D. Which I suppose is your point.

But I wouldn’t call it a permanent experience… I would put it as “an experience of something permanent”, i.e. something that is always there, but not always experienced, but that can be returned to. For example, right now I am in an office in Portugal, but my parent’s house in the United States is there and continues to exist even though I am not there, and I can return to it. (Of course the house itself is not permanent, which will be the difference of the house or anything else in the phenomenal world as opposed to those things in the metaphysical world/the Absolute as Richard describes it.) But the point is that while I haven’t been at the house, it has still been there, and I can return to it.

But the way you asked your question I think goes to the core that may inform the differences between Enlightenment as you experience it, Actual Freedom as experienced by Richard et al, and Enlightenment as Richard experienced it/as I got glimpses of.

I know you take a phenomenological approach, as also I remember being the prevailing approach on the DhO (not sure if it’s the case for pragmatic dharma in general). But if I’m not wrong, the axioms of this approach are, all that there is that can be known is phenomena, and nothing more can be said about the ‘nature’ behind them, except maybe something that can be seen to apply to all phenomena.

So one would not be able to say strictly speaking that the house in the US exists, when not experiencing it - or even while experiencing it, all one can say is “sight is experienced, color is experienced” etc. Thus no one can say anything about whether anything really ‘exists’.

If this is inaccurate or a misrepresentation let me know .

But if it is accurate it strikes me that it is sort of axiomatically true then, that there is nothing that is permanent, etc. I mean it isn’t a conclusion, it’s an axiom. In a sense it shares the same qualities of solipsism which is that it can’t be argued against or refuted. It’s a tautology, the premises pre-suppose the conclusion, and there’s no way to disprove it…

While with Enlightenment as Richard experienced it, the idea is there is this thing called the Absolute, it does “exist” albeit it is not of the phenomenal world (or as Richard put it it is “an acausal, atemporal, aspatial, aphenomenal alterity of an ‘utterly other’ nature”), one can experience it (in the arupa jhanas for example), and one can ‘be’ that.

And of course with a PCE , an intrinsic part of the PCE is an existential sense, that what you are experiencing actually exists. Words cannot really convey it, it’s an aspect of experience that usually simply doesn’t occur, and you don’t even know it’s missing until you have a PCE. It is literally part of the experience – that the things being experienced exist outside of just this body’s experience of it – and conversely if there is not this sense of things existing then it is likely not a PCE. I remember distinctly, the first PCE I had after exposure to actualism, I saw that I do actually exist (as this flesh and blood body) and that the actual world does actually exist – while outside of a PCE, ‘i’ feel myself to exist as a feeling-being, which ‘i’ is found not to actually exist in a PCE (i.e. this feeling of existing is illusory – while the experience of actual existence is not).

{[Addendum in a 2:00 PM e-mail:] Oh and of course that, while when Enlightened one is that immaterial Absolute — when actually free, one is that actually-existing universe, experiencing itself as a human being.

So it seems we have three clearly distinct things, to abuse the term ‘Absolute’ a bit:

• a phenomenological ‘Absolute’ – where when having attained to it (Enlightenment) one is the “field” experiencing itself as impermanent, center-less, self-less phenomena that are aware-of-themselves, but don’t inherently exist per se
• an ‘alterity’/non-phenomenological ‘Absolute’ – where when having attained to it (Enlightenment) one is this immaterial/aspatial/etc Absolute
• an actually-existing ‘Absolute’ – which is in and of itself the trees and the birds and the rivers etc existing in-and-of-themselves – where when having attained to it (actual freedom) one is this actually existing universe, actually experiencing itself as a flesh and blood human body.}

Fun stuff to talk about indeed

Cheers,
Claudiu

There was no further contact with Daniel until his interview request ~2 years later (Thread 1).

[claudiu]

Part 3/3

For further context, I took the opportunity at the time to ask Richard if my experience was indeed a genuine experience of the ākiñcaññāyatana arūpabhava^[1]:

Feb 27, 2022:

CLAUDIU: Hi Richard,

I hope this finds you well! […] in brief, I wonder if a spontaneous experience I had pre-actualism was a genuine experience of “ākiñcaññāyatana”, which is (mistakenly) called the “Nothingness” arupa jhana in pragmatic dharma circles. I ask because if it is, I find that I’m in a perhaps unique position where I can experientially verify some of the things relating to your experience of full Enlightenment - which may be beneficial for future discussions with spiritualists / Buddhists. But I would not want to be inaccurate.

Also rest assured that I have no interest in becoming Enlightened as the actual world is more and more appealing - and experienced to be closer, more magical, more perfect - every day

[… I was reminded] of a meditative experience I had, before I came to Australia for the first time, that I wasn’t able to place on the MCTB maps. I found myself writing a length e-mail to Daniel Ingram on this topic, and in part of it I relayed it to him there:

click to expand quote

Feb 26, 2022

CLAUDIU: I also only recently was able to fit a meditative experience I had, before going to actualism, into any kind of framework… I was sitting with my eyes open, and entered into a usual concentrative/trance state. Then with my eyes still open, my vision began to knit together, blur, and disappear entirely (with eyes still open)… but while I had a similar thing happen before, and I had experienced the arupa jhanas to the high standards you hold them to (i.e. first arupa jhana, is ‘space’, meaning the body is gone, totally gone, as (if I recall correctly) you emphatically told me in person one day) …

… this time something else happened, where my entire “center of my being” literally disappeared and/or shifted downwards into perhaps my neck area. There was still experiencing, there was still awareness, and some very background thoughts of me commenting on this, but there was a remarkable and palpable aeonian-feeling peace that is what my experiencing was.

When it ended there was a shifting back/coming back upwards into my normal center, vision came back (eyes appeared to have been open the whole time), and I was left with the distinct impression that no matter what happens in my life, I can always return to that peace / it will always be there, I can always seek refuge in it… though I never was able to find my way back to it, as nothing in the maps I had really accounted for such a thing.

I put it off as just a weird one-off thing, but nothing to hang my hat on…

However I recently remember Richard’s description of his experience of another of what we call the arupa jhanas, namely the one we call “Nothingness” (which I have experienced as well, and it was certainly not like what I’m describing here). Richard, rather, described it as “Self with no Other” (or perhaps “Self with no Object”).

I didn’t connect the two before, but, seeing as Self is that which is permanent, which is together-with-the-Absolute and not apart, which is unchanging, which was exactly what I experienced then (an eternal (i.e. unchanging) peace)… and not to mention the distinct absence of an egoic center (though a center there still was, albeit shifted downward) directly corresponds to Richard’s description of being Enlightened here: “This absence of ego/ ego-self was so remarkably obvious ‘he’ would flesh-out ‘his’ description by pointing both forefingers directly to either temple so as to pinpoint its exact location via where an interior place immediately behind the mid-point of the eyebrows was intersected by that line-of-pointing. And, speaking even more experientially, a distinct vacancy, a clear emptiness, at that precise location was an on-going and compelling experience.”

Then I realized that instead of wondering if what I experienced was indeed “ākiñcaññāyatana” that I could simply ask you .

To describe it a little more, it wasn’t just the visual field that disappeared but also the ‘tactile field’ as well. I was centered in this very unfamiliar center (never experienced it before or after) but it was really quite mind blowing. It was long ago, but I would say that I did experience blackness – so it wasn’t that there wasn’t even an experience of blackness, but there was an experience of blackness. And possibly of some faint white glow, and/or of something pure and apparently immaculate in this center, or maybe pervading throughout. I was certainly conscious, wide awake and aware, with an awareness that I was still aware, and as I wrote there were thoughts in the background.

I’ll also ask if my report about what I experienced as the interface between the physical and metaphysical world, matches with what you experienced as it, or as akasa. I’m actually a little unclear as to the difference between the interface and akasa itself. It seems the interface has the qualities of akasa but isn’t quite it? I wouldn’t say I entered the “ākāsānañcāyatana” while talking to you, it was only a hint of something off-into-the-distance, but I had an intimation of it. So perhaps I didn’t enter the ‘interface’ fully but just glimpsed it from the outside?

I re-described it in the email to Daniel also so I’ll put it here so you have more to go on.

click to expand quote

Feb 26, 2022

CLAUDIU: Now this may seem like a non-sequitur but my first reaction to the description of Richard’s (of actual freedom (in)famy) Enlightenment was that he has no idea what he’s talking about, he goes on and on about ‘being’ the Absolute, but as we all know from our experiential meditation practice, “there is nothing that is perceived that can be said to be me or mine”. So if he was perceiving this thing he called ‘the Absolute’ properly , he would see it is not-me, not-self, and he wouldn’t say he was that… there is no being that, in Buddhism.

But then it would have to be explained why, when I was chatting with Richard one day when I went to visit in Australia, about his Enlightenment, and he was talking about what we call the arupa jhanas, and how the first one has “akasha” in the name for a good reason, because this first arupa jhana is an interface between the physical world and the metaphysical world (i.e. the Absolute), I intuitively/instinctually caught on to what he was saying and then started experiencing that very “akasha” that he was talking about!!

It was a feeling exactly of something sublime and transcendental, that was supreme over anything in the physical world, that I could dive into and never come back out of… that way lay divinity. And this was part of the experience, the words I’m using now just describe what I was experiencing, they aren’t concepts I’m overlaying on top of it afterwards.

I’ll also point out that as these experiences come to mind, they seem irrefutable, undeniable, that to “be” those things that are pointed to – that aeonian peace, or that mystical realm – would completely transcend and render utterly meaningless anything to do with this phenomenal world, that there would be simply no ‘arguing’ with such a ‘being’ as this ‘being’ would be inherently, in-and-of-itself, ‘rightness’ personified.

I’ll repeat that even so, there is no danger of me becoming Enlightened - if it’s even still possible - because when I then rememorate the PCE, all of this irrefutable experience seems to ‘contract’ and is revealed to be just a tiny bubble that is completely delusional, where the actual world in a sense completely pulverizes it, in turn (although in a different sense – it feels that the other-realm would more actually pulverize the phenomenal one and render it meaningless, while it’s more that the actual world doesn’t really interact with this other-realm per se).

If anything I find this all utterly fascinating and vitally interesting!

Regards,
Claudiu

Vineeto replied with the following:

Mar 3, 2022

VINEETO: Hi Claudiu,

Great to hear from you.

Richard and I read through your very informative and interesting post and I agree with him that you do understand that the arupa jhanas are totally dissociated from the sensate world, the world of sensate experience. To an external observer the body would be catatonic, totally unresponsive to outside input (pinching the earlopes with the fingernails of thumb and forefinger, shining a bright light at close range into the eyes, looking for involuntary pupil contraction or dilation, etc.).

Provided there is complete dissociation from the sensate world, akiñcaññayatana informs the practitioner of the nature of the Absolute, as supported by the Pali text and confirmed by Richard 2500 years later.

As to your question about the distinction regarding the interface between the physical and the metaphysical and akasha itself, what you are asking in effect is whether entering through the doorway leading from the hallway to the bathroom is any different from entering the bathroom itself. In other word, the word “interface” is just a useful way of talking about its nature.

[…]

I am very pleased to hear that you have “no interest in becoming Enlightened as the actual world is more and more appealing - and experienced to be closer, more magical, more perfect - every day”.

Cheers Vineeto

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1. arūpabhava=arūpadhātu (PTS-PED: ‘the element or sphere of the incorporeal’); namely: viññāņānancāyatana (the realm of limitless, radiant, unestablished consciousness/unmanifest mind); ākiñcaññāyatana (the boundless state of consciousness without object/self with no other); nevasaññānāsannāyatana (the dimension of neither agnition nor non-agnition/ ‘neither being nor not-being’); saññāvedayitanirodha samāpatti/vimokkha (the cessation of/deliverance from agnition and hedonic-tone) which is an ineffable cataleptic/comatose state; see #7703 and #7712 and #7731 for some detailed reports/descriptions/explanations. [source]

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