Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 13: Steve Armstrong

Episode Date: May 11, 2016

Enlightenment (or, more specifically, exactly how one gets enlightened) has become a somewhat taboo subject. For years, American meditation teachers have largely avoided discussing what's known as "the progress of insight" -- the various stages that lead to Nirvana -- with their students. But why? In this episode, Dan gets clear, candid answers from Steve Armstrong, a long-time meditation teacher and the managing editor of the new book "Manual of Insight." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

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Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Today we are once again going high-eak, deep-nerd. But I promise it's going to be interesting.

Well, here's what I promise. It's going to be interesting to me. What we're talking about is something that for years, American meditation teachers have largely avoided discussing with their students, although they discuss among themselves. It becomes something of a taboo subject. It's called the Progress of Insight. If you're a close listener, you will remember that we've talked about this a little bit

with previous guests on the show. But today we're going deep. The Progress of Insight is another way of saying, and this is my translation, the stuff that will allegedly happen to you or that you will allegedly experience if you do a ton of a specific kind of meditation. And the culminating experience, and again, I'm gonna use the word allegedly

because I have not tasted any of this for myself and as a result of that, I remain, I retain a healthy skepticism about all of this. But again, the culminating experience is allegedly Nirvana, which is a loaded term, but we'll, again, we'll get into it. So what does that even mean? What does any of this even mean?

My guest today is Steve Armstrong, a long time meditation teacher, and the managing editor of a new book that's coming out soon. It's called The Manual of Insight. And I don't know how you're gonna feel about this term, but it's a little bit of a cookbook for the progressive insight. We'll see how you feel about that term. You should feel free to correct me in any errors I make. And the

fact that this project even exists is a bit revolutionary because as I said for decades teachers really avoided this subject. So Steve, thanks for being here. Thanks for the invitation. It's an absolute pleasure. We're going to get into the book in a big way in a minute, but I want to start by just giving people a sense of who you are, how you got here. How did you start meditating? Well, the story I tell is after dropping out of law school, resorting to a commune to... This is the 60s, the 70s.

Recover, yeah, mid 60s, late 60s, to recover from education. The focus of the commune was, we were all fans of the great foot dead in Pink Floyd, partaking of the sacrament as often as we could. And this was our idea of sacrament being a recreational LSD among other things. So that was our lifestyle. Where was this commune?

Central Main. Okay. So you grew up in the name. Called Summit Plantation. Summit Plantation was the name of it. Yeah. Does it still exist? It's an uninhabited territory in Central Main. Yeah, now it's uninhabited.

And just by way of background, you grew up in Maine, you grew up in Lincoln, Maine, which is north of Bangor, which is where I started my TV career. Yeah. And you went to law school in Portland, Maine? Yeah. And went to the University of New Orleans, and then law school in Portland, Maine. Undergraded the University in Orlando, and then law school in Portland. Undergrad at the university in Orano and then law school in Portland, University of Southern Maine. University of Southern Maine. First year only. First year early.

So you hated it so much that you ran off to a community. Yeah. And that's where you discovered meditation. No, I met someone who found a book called Beginning to See by Shujata, had little one-liners about mindfulness, and wrote to the address in the back for more information, and found out that there was a retreat being taught in Bucksport, Maine, just an hour and a half from where we lived, at that very time. The last two weeks of what it was the original first three-month course was open to beginners. So in 1975,

Jack Joseph Sharon and another teacher since deceased were offering the first three-month retreat in an old Catholic monastery in Bucksport, Maine, and we went to the last two weeks of it. Can I just interrupt for one second? Because I want to explain who Jack Joseph and Sharon are. Again, close listeners will know that's Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salzburg and Joseph Goldstein, the three sort of prototypical jubos who brought, really, were pioneered, they brought the practice of insight meditation, which is turned into secular mindfulness to these shores after having practiced over in Burma. In Burma India.

Burma India and Sharon has been on the show and Jack and Joseph will certainly I hope be on the show in the future. So anyway carry on. Yeah, so we went to this, on the point of day, we drove to this monastery. And now there'd been 50 people or so had been practicing meditation there in silence for two and a half months. So we walked in and on one side is the dining room, with a notice saying new arrivals will meet at five o'clock

or something and on the right-hand side was the Meditation Hall, a chapel turned into a meditation hall. We or something. And on the right hand side was the meditation hall, a chapel turned into a meditation hall. We looked at the schedule on the door of the chapel and it says, you know, wake up for a clock, do your yoga, sit, walk, have your breakfast, sit, walk, sit, walk, have your lunch, sit, walk, sit, walk. Have some tea, sit, walk, 730, talk to 830.

And we looked at each other and said, well, at least we get an hour a day to talk. But what that meant was we really get an hour a day to listen. So there we were. And I, probably at that time, I had never met anybody that meditated. I didn't know anything about meditation. I didn't know anything about Buddhism. I wasn't interested in spirituality. I didn't know anything about it.

And it was excruciating, you know, to sit in that hall and to just kind of watch the body scream in agony and the mind just all over the place was a torturous, but one thing that happened that was noticeable and significant was when I heard the Dharma talks, the talks in the evening that was explaining the teachings of the Buddha and how to apply to our life and how to practice, I felt like I'd always known what was being said and I always had lived that way or agreed with that, but I'd never heard it before. That's not actually the head of the way I felt.

It's just like, this is so natural. Well, it's been called. It's been called advanced common sense for a reason. Right? It's nice. You're so. Yeah. And that's how I started.

And did the two weeks and they immersion into the mind through mindfulness practice over the course of two weeks is so gradual that you don't really notice. I mean, you're dealing with the day-to two weeks is so gradually you don't really notice. I mean you're dealing with the day-to-day stuff but you don't really notice that you're really getting quite deeply into the mind and out of your ordinary chatter. So that when we went back to the at the end of the retreat, went back to the to the commune, everybody was the same. Everybody was doing the same thing and everybody was there and it was all familiar, but because our perspective on our inner life was so different, it's like, wow, we saw the commune from a different place, from a different perspective.

Who's the we, you and the rest? We and the woman who went to the retreat. You and your girlfriend at the time or something. Yeah. Okay. And so did that cause you to drop out of the commune? We gradually did more meditation practice and drifted away from the behaviors and the people and left the commune. Yeah. Took a few years, but gradually we did. And then what happened? We ended up at the Insight Meditation Center as soon as it opened or soon after it opened. That's the Meditation Center in Massachusetts. Yeah. Opened by Jack Joseph and Sharon.

Opened by Jack Joseph and Sharon. They bought it shortly after that retreat. They bought it in February of 76. I showed up in 77 and stayed for eight years. Eight years? I was on staff and I was doing retreats. When I was on staff I did long retreat and I was involved with the board of directors and was there to kind of as a board member was overseeing and participating in the creation

of the Darmacid tape library where all of the recordings of mindfulness retreats have been kept and made available online. So that was my home, that was my focus in life. And then you went off and became a monk. Then I finally got my act together enough or got enough understanding, enough commitment to yeah, to want to really understand what mindfulness practice was about. I think the first eight years was kind of repair work, emotional repair work, family of origin, healing and stuff like that. And by 75, 85, I was, or 84s when I made the decision to actually go to Burma, and then I went in 85. And it's been five years as a monk. Yeah, five years as a monk. So,

all right, that's a good background on it. Mr. Armstrong, let's talk about this book, the Manual of Insight. He was actually written by a guy named Mahasi Sayada, and you were the managing editor of translating this. Who is Mahasi Sayada? Mahasi Sayada was a very well-known scholar and practitioner in Burma in the last century. When there was a convocation of the Buddhist of the world in Burma in 1956, I think, he was like

the second in the hierarchy of monks to attend. He was like number two. It was very knowledgeable, and he was responsible for codifying and correcting the whole Polly Canon, which is the basic foundation of teravada Buddhism. And teravada Buddhism is kind of like the old school. The old school of Buddhism. And so he's very well studied. And when he went to do his own meditation practice, he got what instructions was available to him practiced, but made some adaptations for himself in practice, which ended up proving quite successful for him. And when he tried it out on his relatives, who wanted to know what he was doing and how he was doing it, he found that lay people, householders, like I saw, could actually hear these meditation instructions and practice quite well in the course of a month or two. Whereas prior to that time, if you'd wanted

to get that kind of instruction, you'd probably have to ordain as a monk or nun for life, and it would take years to get that level of instruction and that degree of instruction. So he made a very lengthy study and practice very succinct and available accessible to us to lay people. And basically he wrote, he wrote it all down all the things that he experienced. And so I used this term cookbook. You gave me a little bit of a look. What about an operator's manual?

Okay, fair enough, fair enough. I'll take that. It is. It's, it's, here's how, it's the how-to book. How to get in line. How to get in line. If you want to use that loaded term, but it is. How to get enlightened if you want to use that loaded term, but it is how to get enlightened

and Tris no Buddhist enlightenment. Yes, so Traditional modern skeptic me I hear that I'm thinking okay, that's got to be a load of crap Yeah, I can understand why But why why is because wow we have this pretty kind of outrageous, kind of uninformed view of what being enlightened is. I mean, what do you think enlightenment is? You know, we have all kinds of ideas that, well, we don't know because we're not enlightened. Right? So we have all these ideas and he kind of reduces it right down to moment to moment life,

unfolding, can be free of suffering, free of entanglement. Moment to moment life unfolding can be free of suffering, free of entanglement. Moment to moment can be known as it really is, the nature of being a human being. And when one wakes up to that very grounded ordinary, this is the way it is for a human being or other beings too. Then we come out of delusion, we come out of illusion, we come out of the fantasies that we live in. We put aside our assumptions and beliefs that we've acquired through family of origin and cultural conditioning, educational system and all that that are well excuse me, their fantasies, their

ways of seeing that are not in alignment with our deepest experience of the way it is, the way reality is. So enlightenment, nirvana, liberation, purification of mind, all of these terms that get thrown around that are pretty grandiose and kind of interesting and mysterious at the same time. All of that you're saying is just that there's a fancy ways of talking about something very normal, which is meditation practice at an advanced level shows you, it allows you to see your actual life as a sonfolding right now, what you're experiencing without the, to use your term entanglementslements without the suffering, without clinging to things that you want and pushing away things you don't want and being

numbed out to the rest. That, among other things, yes. But I think that what gets in a way is that we have these beliefs and assumptions about ourselves or the way things should be or what we expect or hope it to be. And when they aren't that way, we think, well, somebody's to blame. Or, you know, it's wrong, not my thoughts are wrong, my assumptions are wrong. But we don't know, we often don't know what our assumptions and beliefs are. There's kind of uploaded, uploaded into our tender little brains and minds when we're, you know, defenseless, you know, in our family of origin and schooling and things like that. And so we've got them, but they are, you know, some, you know, kind of not very skillful ways of dealing with.

Are you talking about our resistance to enlightenment because we're taught to think that that's fancy and foreign and weird? Or are you talking now about the obstacles to achieving enlightenment because of the the latter? Both. Both. Yeah. Because I think, you know, we have this, we have a grandiose idea. When you hear the word enlightenment or whatever, we think, well, that's, that's for people way back then or beings that are some kind of special somehow different than me and you know that keeps you at an arms distance. I don't think either of those things I think it's just a sort of unproven religious claim. Okay well it's something out there.

Yeah but when you have an idea of it it gets in the way of actually experiencing it. Yeah well when you when you describe it the way you describe it, which, and with the way it's described in this book, it actually becomes less high-falutin. It's just about actually waking up to what's happening right now. Waking up to having the feeling, knowing this body and knowing this mind into infinite and intimate detail. Yeah. As it occurs.

All right, so let's dive into the Owners manual operators manual Never henceforth to be referred to as a cookbook So how does it work so if you do this involves a high volume of Meditation right so do you do you have to be in retreat to experience these experiences? That lead up to Nirvana to experience these experiences that lead up to Nirvana? No, you don't have to be. But for most people we need some guidance. And you know, I always say that it's easier to learn to drive a car in an empty parking lot than on a freeway. So if you learn, if you get meditation instructions just on the way to work in your hustle and bustle and hurry,

you're not going to have much time to kind of settle in, get familiar with it, figure out the terrain of your own heart and mind and how it works. So you go on retreat. You go on retreat and you've got nothing to do, except here are the instructions and try it. Hour after hour, with some encouragement, some inspiration, some, you get your questions answered

and keep trying. And even though the course of a day, you can see, oh yeah, something's happening. Over the course of a week, or a long retreat, as you know yourself, things happen. You know, you get a little, you get kind of removed from the chatter of your own mind, and you get to experience things the way they are a little more intimately. What I find, fat, definitely things happen when you go on retreat. No question. A lot of them are terrible.

So did I. But what I find fascinating about the progress of insight other than the fact that it's controversial and we'll talk about why in a second is that basically the proposition is that if you do enough meditation, certain things will happen to you reliably and predictably. Yes. And what does that say about the way the mind works? You will have a bunch of these experiences that again allegedly culminate in Nirvana, which we will talk about. That I just... people have been doing this for millennia.

There appears to be something here, and I find that very, very interesting. But I've been, and again, I want to dive deeply into what these experiences and stages and insights are, but I've been meditating for, I don't know, almost seven years now, I've done plenty of several retreats. I've been meditating a couple hours a day right now. I haven't had any of these experiences.

So what does that tell you that I'm a complete idiot, or that one needs to do a high volume of meditation in order to experience these things? Well, you know took me eight years So you got another year to go Dan Took you eight years before you pasted any of this before before before I really I mean, you know the little the little samadhi the little concentration effects that you've had I've had you know had but little samadhi, the little concentration effects that you've had, I've had, you know, had. But before, I really got to the practice where the mind could do its thing, you know, that was in my eighth, eighth or ninth year.

And that was when I was more continuously in retreat as a monk. Right, but so I'm not going on retreat as a monk, I have a baby. I mean, that's not going to happen. So do I have any shot at experience? Oh, yeah. Sure. You're building up your building up your potential all the time. You know, you're your daily, your daily meditation an hour a day to hours a day. Really is important. That's what keeps the thread of it going. And you know, it's like as you see, as you become familiar with how the mind works, and you see how the mind works. It's not what you think about your life. It's what your life actually is, this important. And when you start looking at that, and you start seeing how the mind works, then you can

put aside some of the reactivity and some of the recreational distractions that you indulge in, and actually see the mind. Now, you know, there's many different spiritual traditions that have existed on the face of the earth and still do, and they've discovered some elements of this, whetherification with the whole, great loving kindness, you know, whatever. There's just lots of different experiences that some people, some religions claim as, this is it, it is the big it. This is the end, this is the goal, This is the purpose of life, of religious practice. And Buddha practiced those practices and discovered those conditions, those experiences, and

he realized, this is not the end. This is not the goal. This is a scenic turnout on the route. So as you practice and the mind is allowed to just do what it does best, which is to know things as they are, you know, ecstasy will come. Bliss, joy, ecstasy, rapture, just pass out, you know, indulgent pleasure. These are all things that happen during the progress of insight. They happen at a certain stage in this progression of insight. And we call them the spiritual goodies. It's a spiritual goody phase of practice where effortless energy and soaring faith and

unshakable equanimity, things like that. Sorry, but very attractive. Yeah, no question. But before we get too deep, let's just go step by step. So if I've done enough meditation, and I start to enter this progressive insight, what's the first thing I will experience? The first thing that you're going to know clearly is,

in every moment, I'm experiencing something. Something's being known. I'm feeling the body, I'm watching sounds, I'm experiencing something. Something's being known. You know, I'm feeling the body, I'm watching, I'm hearing sounds, I'm seeing sights. And so there's this this knowledge called knowing of the nature of the mind and the body. Each of these stages has a pretty elaborate thing. I love it. I've said this before, but it's really something out of Dungeons and Dragons, but I love it. So, okay, the first, what, what, the first knowledge is called the knowledge. It's called, number, number Nama Rupa, but it means the knowledge of mind and body.

Okay, so this is the first, so basically you know in the first, what's the term for the stage, the first stage? They will call this the first knowledge. Okay, the first knowledge is you know that you have a mind and a body. Yeah, and you know that in every moment something is being known. This is basic awareness. Okay, so maybe I've been hit this. This is basic awareness. Okay, so maybe I'd be able to hit this. Yeah, oh yeah.

For moments. But there's a lot of time. We're just living life and we don't really pay attention to what we're doing. We're on automatic pilot. Yeah, most of our lives. Yeah. Well, that's when you come out of automatic pilot and you realize, oh, this is what I'm doing.

This is what's happening to me. Oh, breathing in, breathing out, walking down the street. Oh, hearing sounds, getting excited, getting angry, feeling bliss, whatever. So you're basically the first knowledge in this progress of insight is just basically just waking up to the raw fact of existence that you're experiencing things, that things are happening and you are experiencing. That's it. Experiencing.

Okay, so what stage number two? That seems to appear because of your actions. You know, because I'm meditating, this is what's making it happen. But later, if you keep paying attention, you're going to realize that, hey, things happen because of causes and conditions. They're not just happening randomly. You know, and the way we train people to see this in retreats is we say, when you sit down, just have the intention to sit still. And inevitably, you'll find yourself moving, scratching an edge, adjusting your posture,

opening your eyes, swallowing, and doing all sorts of things without having noticed that you had the intention to do it. So the body doesn't move unless there's an intention. So what we do is we start paying attention to intentions and then we see that hey, the body is dependent on the mind. The mind is dependent on the body. So this is the knowledge of conditionality. Things aren't happening randomly, they're not accidental, whatever happens to you, mentally, physically, is not accidental. That's okay. I so I might have experienced two of these.

There's no such thing. Okay, good. Now this is how you evaluate your own practice. You know, someone talks about the progress of insight and you can say, oh yeah, I've had that experience or I might get to some place you say, no, I haven't had that experience and you realize, oh, okay, I'm just far apart. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about.

That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. So what's the third knowledge? Well, the third knowledge is you begin to... What's it called for? I love the names. This one is called comprehension, the knowledge of comprehension. It's where you start to recognize the qualities of your experience,

primarily that things are changing all the time. Things are coming and going, you see that, no matter what it is that you experience, it doesn't last very long. So you begin to understand the characteristic of phenomena is that they're impermanent. Everything is impermanent. Okay, I've had this experience. Yeah, sure. But along with it comes

this the the second characteristic or the second knowledge, which is the knowledge of duke. Now suffering, suffering. It's it's both duke duke is suffering, obvious physical and mental suffering. But there's this other thing called Vipari Namaduka, which is the duke of change. You know, you might have a good sitting for a while, and then it changes and it becomes painful. So the pleasure of the good sitting really isn't stable. So when you begin to see that things aren't stable, they, even if they're, even if they're pleasant, they don't stay pleasant.

So when they change, you know, then you're left with this duke. So you can just say, let me just jump in there for a second just for the, the uninitiated duke, duke, k-k-h-a, is the poly, poly being the language of the Buddhist book, ancient Indian language. It's the Pali word often translated, often mis-translated as suffering. The Buddha's principle, pronouncement, or most famous pronouncement was,

life is suffering, life is duke, but that really is a simplistic way of understanding it. It really is that life is going to be satisfying, unsatisfying if you cling to things that will not last. Yes, it would be one way of saying it. And so you said before, duke, duke is like, that double duke is straight up raw suffering when things suck.

But then there's the other kinds of suffering, which is you see that something that is right now good, you're eating a bowl of ice cream, could make you sick later. And that is, that is this suffering that is inherent in everything in life. Things don't, things don't stay the same, you know, or change. We live with this insecurity. We live with this instability, you know, no matter how much you put into, you know, your relationship, your job, your finances, your house, your kids, or

whatever, no guarantee. Things are unstable, right? Things are insecure. So this is what you see. We live with a level of insecurity all the time, but we mostly try to keep it out of sight. But in mindfulness practice, we turn and see it. We look at it like, wow, this is going on. This is going on all the time.

Well, one of my favorite Buddhist writers, Stephen Vatula, talks about how Buddhism commonly misunderstood, in my view, and in his view as a religion, actually is sort of a rejection of all these death-defying dogmas. And in fact, is a turning toward all of the stuff that's going to destroy you. And that's a really interesting, to me, that is really the heart of what's interesting about Buddhism, or one of the

areas that makes it so. So this is all this stuff that we're talking about with Dukha and suffering. This is what you understand in the third knowledge. Yeah, start to answer. There's one more thing. So there's several components to this third knowledge. Is that what you're getting at?

Yeah, there's three characteristics that we're going to begin to see. Impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and the third one, I'm going to call conditionality. Conditionality means that things arise due to causes and conditions. And when you see that, you realize everything is made up of other things. And there's nothing that has an inherent existence

within itself, kind of heavy, heady. But what this means is, things are, you know, our mind is kind of out of control. We can train it, but we can't prevent certain thoughts or feelings from arising in the mind. They just come, don't they? Due to causes and conditions, we don't control all the conditions of our life externally or internally. And so that kind of can be coming to this, coming to see this and to recognize this in our experience can be rather unsettling. First knowledge is knowledge of mind and body. Yes.

Second knowledge is knowledge of conditionality. And third knowledge is a knowledge of the three characteristics, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and I'm going to call it conditionality, but something has referred to as selflessness. Yeah, selflessness. But that's a scary word. It's like selflessness. Well, who am I if I'm selfless? Right.

So, but in selfless in this context, doesn't mean generous. It means that you think exists, doesn't exist. The little inner you, the little inner Dan, Dan, right, it doesn't exactly exist. Yeah. It's just a conjunction of, every moment is just a conjunction of conditions giving rise to an experience,

which we identify with as me. Yes, but if you break down life from the solid movie of experience to the 24 frames per second, you see that the little Dan is just a story you're making up every frame as opposed to actually what is happening in every frame. Something is happening and somebody is knowing or and it is being known. But there is nobody doing the knowing. That's right.

So this is heavy stuff. So we'll maybe not, we'll get into it a little bit deeper as we progress through the progress of insight. So what is the fourth knowledge? The fourth is a significant stage in practice. It's called arising and passing away. Okay, so I think I've had the first three. And I've heard of the arising and passing away.

Sometimes referred to as the A and P. And this is the fireworks. These are the fireworks. This is where the fireworks come. But what happens is at arising and passing away is the speed with which you can notice the moment's experience start going by very rapidly. You just see, you just see, you just see, you just, stuff is just going by, you know, and you're not stopping the flow of experience to kind of like have a emotional reaction to it or have a relationship or have a cognitive story about it. It's just like the mind is just seeing things as they go by, moment to moment, very rapidly. And this is when the mind can do its work.

The mind's work is to know. To know what is. And when all of our stories about ourselves and reactions to, I like it, I don't like it, kind of put aside, and that's what happens in the first three knowledge. We slowly begin to kind of put aside all our reactions, all our beliefs and assumptions. And we just see, this is the way it is, then the mind is able to do what it does and it gets just really lit up. And then there are these phenomena called pseudo-Nibana. Sudo-Nirvana or Nibana would be the polyprincipation of spiritual goodies. We can call them spiritual

goodies. Sudo-Nibana meaning that people mistake the experiences they're getting in the A&P for Nirvana, or Nirvana, Nirvana being Sanskrit and Nirvana being Pali. Like what? Well, ecstasy, you know, for example, there are times when the mind just gets lit up and it is just, it's not like the ecstasy of, oh boy boy oh boy, there's so much fun. It's just like the whole mind and body is just in well orgasmic bliss just like full body orgasm for hours What's what's the bad part of this?

It's exhausting It's exactly no, but in the meantime, but while you're experiencing that and when it first arises, you say, wow, finally, I'm out of knee pain and I'm out of restless, wandering mind. It's just blissful. It's just joyful. It's like, wow, this is excellent. This is great. You know, we say, this has got to be, yeah, this is, this is, this is so good. So you think you're in line at this point. That's right. So you read the chapter of my book about being on retreat. Yeah. Well, you were one of the teachers on retreat. Yes. Hey, you didn't name me.

I didn't name you. I didn't name you. Because we didn't actually meet until today. But the retreat was in 2010 and there's a moment in that chapter where I describe having a very heightened experience for about 36 hours. Is that a NP territory or is that just like a terrible beginning meditator has his first

bout of clarity and feels pretty good? You had a lot of samadhi. Samadhi is a continuity of mindfulness and purity of mind. Purity of mind opens the door to all these spiritual goodies. So you'd get some taste of tranquility and joy and ease and clarity and a lot of confidence. You had a lot of confidence during that bout. And these are all manifestations of some of the pseudo-Nibbana's or the spiritual goodies. But you don't think technically I was in the fourth knowledge there.

You can't say you kind of like go through a door and then you're there. It's more like it kind of, as the cutting edge, we could say, you step through the door. But you fall back into the third knowledge and you don't stay in there all the time. So you're gradually learning how to access the fourth knowledge. Yeah, we're okay. We're okay. Don't take that as a confirmation of anything, but just as we're talking, it's... Why is so touching to confirm. Because we're really, the whole process and the whole progress of insight is self-knowledge.

It's about self-knowledge. And if I can say to you, puff, then you're enlightened. If you believe me because if you're faith in me or you're wish to be enlightened or whatever, you can walk around full of BS for a long time before you realize, well, that's a delusion. So is this why we're taking a bit of a detour here from the Progressive Insight? Is this why Western meditation teachers have been so reluctant to talk about this stuff explicitly? Partly, but I think it's more that most of us who started practice in the early years, very driven in some ways, either spiritually called or comically called and just really, you know, on the fast track

to get to our spiritual life. And when we say, when we are told, here's the map. Check it out. Some people just get really strive over bearing, obsessive, and strive too hard, or with too much effort, which actually impedes their evolution, and I should say, of the knowledge. Great. so the weird thing about this map is trying to hard you can't make any progress. No that's right. So you have to pull yourself in this weird

kind of neutral position of trying without trying. Well it's like you know if you went if you said hey I've heard of this town called Paris I'm gonna go find it. You could wander a long time before you'd ever hit Paris. So it's good to have a map. Here's the map of where Paris is. Boom. Okay. So you can wander around to find what looks like Paris. And then you say, I need a map of the streets of Paris. So you get a map from someone who's into famous authors that lived in Paris. And you follow those that map to all these locations that famous authors lived, well you might be obsessed with getting you know your checklist done, but in the meantime you're seeing the rest of Paris and missing it. A lot of it. Because you've got to focus

on that and you're missing what goes by elsewhere. So same thing with having a map of a spiritual journey. You know if you've got a map and you're missing what goes by elsewhere. So same thing with having a map of a spiritual journey. You know, if you've got a map and you're obsessively just trying to get it, that's, well, that's just the wrong attitude to begin with in the first place. Did you go through some of that? Yeah, of course. You know, when I first had a meditation practice, I thought it was to have drug-like experiences.

I mean, you know, I thought, you know, you get high. You know, that's good. You know, so that that seemed like the the goal when I first shared that That mistake in belief with Saito Upandita the first time I was practicing with him Saito Upandita was Mahasi Saito's successor in Burmant and with whom you practiced. Yeah, he recently died Yeah, and when I you know, he said something about, well, what do you think happens? And I said, well, you know, you have these kind of experiences. You just be mindful and you have some drug-like experiences and then, you know, puff you get enlightened.

He just burst out laughing. He just kind of burst out laughing. And it, I mean, I wasn't offended. It was just, I was naive. And so he spends a lot of time instructing, offering the teachings of what the path is, at least the beginning path, how to get on to the path, so that you're not wasting your time looking for pseudo-nabana. It'll come. Anybody that practices is going to definitely experience pseudo-nabana.

But it's pseudo. is gonna definitely experience Sudo in Nevada. But it's Sudo. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies

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So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. Just to get back to why you and your ilk, you and the other meditation teachers have been so sort of hush, hush about this. There's a lot of weirdness around this progressive insight.

You're one of the first teachers who I've been able to sit here and just talk about this, you you know and talk about the names and then But even you got a little you were like don't take me is confirming anything so and and and and we'll have them on the show at some point But there's a guy named Daniel and Grim who you and I were discussing before before We started the podcast who wrote a book, he's a Western guy, he's an ER doctor down in Alabama and he wrote a book about how he became, how he sort of went all the way on the progress of insight. That book was very much a cookbook, the term that he's okay with.

And that caused an enormous amount of controversy within the tiny world of American Buddhism. And so the reason why that's controversial, there are about 7,000 reasons why it's controversial. One of them is that if people know too many, American teachers, yourself included, have had a lot of hard experience personally and with their students, have seen people get obsessed with making progress, which of course impedes progress. Sure. That was the danger. You'll know too much, and we're very heady. We're great thinkers. We Westerners are great thinkers and we don't have a

lot of faith for practice. You know, so, you know, if you can think yourself into kind of a blissful state or kind of like into believing that you're in light and great, good. Don't have to do the work. So excuse me, that's kind of the cynical view. But, you know, our... You know, ouricism is here, just so you know, you know, you see what I mean. I know we're in the same club. But, you know, I think that, you know,

the introduction of a lot of what came in with the teaching of mindfulness and insight in the West, primarily the Western psychological understandings that help a lot of us kind of get through the first years of practice and kind of become normal and then suitable for really intensive practice of insight. I think it's been a great blessing and to have gotten a kind of this, the fast track to enlightenment early on could have derailed me and others. I mean, I, you know, I heard about it a little bit, but didn't pay much attention to it because I wasn't, it didn't seem real to me, frankly. And it wasn't until I got to Burma that,

oh, it became apparent that this is what's happening. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay, so we're at the fourth knowledge here, either rising and passing away, which is where you see very clearly that this is what's happening. Gotcha. Okay, so we're at the fourth knowledge here, the rising and passing away, which is where you see very clearly that everything is rising and passing away. And that can feel really good. And you can have these pseudo-Nibana or pseudo-Nervana experiences.

Fifth knowledge. Now, let me just say about pseudo-Nibana. Yeah. Because we think this is it, we get attached to it. We take delight in it. We take delight in bliss. We take delight in joy. We take delight in clarity.

We take delight in strong faith. We take delight in effortless energy. We take delight in non-reactive equanimity. And we just feed a sense of self. So until we can see those experiences as just ecstasy being non, bliss being known, great faith being no clarity, piercing clarity, just being known, so what?

Until we can have that level of equanimity towards those spiritual goodies, we don't progress beyond rising and passing away. So it's a big step. I can see worse things than being stuck in a state of ecstasy. That feels like a pretty good cult to sack to me. Well, it's a turnout on the route down. There's as Upran Dita would say, there's better things ahead.

Oh, but before you get to those better things, you got to go through some tough things. So let's go, let's progress through the other knowledge. The next, the next, the next big mature arising and passing way where the, the spiritual goodies are arising, but you're not indulging in them. That's great. You know that the path is just noticed. Is like the best practice you've ever could imagine. It's just like it's so effortless and it's so clear and it's so continuous and soful, and you're not indulging in it, and you don't care if it comes or goes, it's just very easy, a lot of equanimity. It's really great. And so the next phase of practice is where I guess we'd have to say we

purify our understanding of duke. What's the name of this? It's called, well, it's called banganiana, but it's the opening to the duke anyanas, what are called the knowledge of duke. Suffering. Yeah, suffering. And this is one of those, I didn't mention it before, but this is the second what we call a rolling up the mat, stage of practice. This is where practice is so hard. I mean, people forget, roll up their mat. Yeah, we just want to roll up the mat, stage of practice. This is where practice is so hard.

And so painfully. And so painfully. Yeah, we just want to roll up our mat and go home. So this is, this comes immediately after the awesome, the awesome stuff of A and P. Yeah, right. And again, the name of this knowledge is, it's Bunga Nyanah, the knowledge of dissolution, dissolution.

So every, so sometimes the series, sometimes this knowledge is called the dark night Well, you know, I don't I yes people don't like this some people don't like this I'm like if some of it say it's the dark night of the similar to the dark night So I don't know what the dark night's soul is but some of the there's some of the similar characteristics but I'll also make a distinction if you want me to but When you when you begin to open to the fact that everything is rising, passing away, and everything is unsatisfactory, changing, and it's out of control, suddenly or gradually you begin to recognize up until this point, I have to use

three-dimensional, you know, objects are rising and they're being known. Another object arises and it's being known. Object arises being known and it's very fast. But all along up to this point, the knowing has seemed to be steady, stable. Like it doesn't arise and pass away. But at mature rising and passing away, you start to notice that the knowing itself is not steady So the Dan that's knowing is actually not there. Yeah, right It's like the object and the knowing arise at the same time and they both pass away at the same time

and they arise it again An object and another knowing and it passed away. So that's dissolution another yeah because the the sense of a permanent enduring knower of changing objects dissolves. And this is scary as hell for a lot of people. This is very scary. Yeah, it's unsettling because it's very, you can't keep track of one moment to the next. The you that was mindful of the moment ago isn't here to be mindful this time. So let me tell you, it's visceral.

It's like you feel as like, you know, where am I? Let me tell you about experience I had when I was a younger guy, much younger guy. Were you ever not younger? I'm, I'm, I'm, well, 45 this summer, so I'm, I'm not so super young. So when I was very young,

I had a recurring panic attack when I would smoke weed. And the pat and the contents of this panic attack were that every, like it was like my brain was turning over in my head, everything that was happening was happening right now. Oh no, this is happening right now. No, no, no, it's now. No, it's now.

And it was terrifying. It felt like air I was waking up and then dying and waking up in every moment. And I know a little bit about the progress of insight in this stage, which is sometimes called the Dark Knight or the knowledge of fear or whatever. I sometimes think that maybe I was having an experience like this as an immature weed smoker. It does sound like you access that understanding, that knowledge, but the difference between doing drugs or having a mental illness where one would access that kind of stuff is that you can't integrate it.

You can't integrate that knowledge into an understanding that you can live with. No, I didn't integrate it at all. It was like a vampire being confronted with garlic. I was just pulsed by it and freaked out. Instead of just leaning into it and seeing it with some equanimity. Right. And that's what happens. We get afraid and we have to work through the fear of objects and dissolution. And then there's another phase of this dark night. There's both the fear and then there's what we would call disillusionment where you start to see that all that has appeared and that we've been fascinated by in our life is just really not very it doesn't really

Offer the goods is we get we get disillusioned with more Experience nothing does it for you nothing does it for you So this is another knowledge and other. Yeah, it's scary because to think nothing does it for you and there's no you that it's gonna be done for anyway. It's kinda like, what's it all about? You can really fall into a deep confusion and nihilism and just, you know, you disappear and you don't, it's scary. So this progress of insight is a real adventure.

But there's another thing I like about it. Oh yeah. There are great things that happen and all these obstacles you have to navigate. It's back to my sort of dungeons and dragons comparison. Okay, so I don't know which knowledge we're in anymore, but we've gone from fear into disillusionment and then what happens after that?

Okay, so now you're getting familiar with, well, let me just say, when people get into that stage, we recognize that this is the dissolution, this is the banganyanas, this is the knowledge of Dukha, the Dukanyanas, and people want to go home, and so we have to just say, okay, just settle back, just kind of notice what you can, don't look for the kind of experience you had last week, that's going backwards. Just keep noticing what you can, just settle back, be comfortable, don't push, don't know expectations, and eventually people will get through it. Their pace of noticing gets even faster. But there's a knowledge, there's something that has to

transpire in the mind. And that is, as bad as this is, I got here through the knowing that I just had to recognize something is being known in each moment, something is being known in each moment. This now is being known in each moment. Disillusionment is being known in each moment. Fear is just being known in each moment. Terror is just being known in this moment. And when you really remember that and of recommit, this is the next day, this is the next level of insight, where it's called re-observation. You kind of re-determine,

you determine, you know, the way forward is to just keep noticing things are being known, one after another. This is called re-observation. Re. Re observation. That's the name of this state. That's the state, yeah. Okay. You reaffirm again, you're just observing, you're not judging this. I mean, if we were judging our experiences, go to bed and saying, this is scuffle or not,

you would go home. You would not practice. You wouldn't know how to practice. You need a teacher. You need a teacher, a scuffle teacher, at the Dukanyanas to help you navigate it. skillfully. If you don't have a skillful teacher, you don't have a teacher that you can have faith in to trust, to guide you, you'll end up really disturbed.

And again, the Dukin Yanas are the knowledges of suffering that happen after the fireworks of the rising and passing away. So that's like sort of the valley one has to. Yeah, the valley of death. Right, that's it. But literally because you're seeing everything dies. So, okay, so we're in reabservation. We're starting to emerge out of the valley of death. Yeah.

And what's the next, what happens next day? There may be a, I haven't got it quite in my mind right now, but you're on your way towards more equanimity. And that is the stage, equanimity. This is the stage that we're headed towards. And gradually, we haven't seen it because we've been so fascinated with the variety of objects that we've been noticing. We've been so fascinated with the spiritual goodies, and then we've been so obsessed with

the preoccupied with the dukenyanas. We haven't noticed that the stability of the mind to be with these changing objects has gotten stronger and stronger and stronger to now where it's just so equanimous, anything can arise and we don't react. Anything can arise and we don't react. The best possible spiritual goodies can arise. No indulgence in them. The worst terrifying, fearful duke that you can imagine arises. No fear of that. Equanimity.

Unshakeable steady observation. This is the way it is. Moment to moment. So you've had this, okay, so here we are. We're about to get to the sort of culminating experience in this Here we are, we're about to get to the sort of culminating experience in this adventure. So the start out was in basic understanding of the way the mind works and during the progress of insight. And then you hit, the mind is steadyed and concentrated and seeing things clearly. And you hit these, the fireworks of the arising and passing away sometimes not a cold pseudo-nervana or sometimes I love this term, corruptions of insight.

No, let me just explain what that means. Okay. The spirits of goodies arise because you have good practice. But as soon as they arise, they become an object of indulgence or feeling gratified. It's that gratification with those experiences. This is the corruption. Joy is not a corruption. Tranquility is not the corruption. Joy is not a corruption.

Tranquility is not a corruption. Faith is not a corruption. Clinging to them is the corruption. Indulgent. Right, clinging to them. That's the question. So we started with the basic understanding of the mind and the body and conditionality,

and then we enter into this A&P where we have the pseudo-Nirvana, and then things get scary. We're in this so-called Ducanianas, the dark night, the Valley of Death, whatever, the bunch of stages of this, and then you start to emerge with re-observation where you fall back into the real anchor, which is that mindfulness, which is just seeing things clearly. And then you get to this really cool area called, that, and again, I've had no experience with any of this, it's just my understanding from talking

to you and reading, you have equanimityity which is like everything's cool. You're just cool with everything. And out of equanimity, this is where we get to the big N word here. Okay. Now let me just prep you a little bit. Okay. Okay. When we have, when the mind is in this equanimous, it's not a state. It's like moment to moment, it's just not reacting. It's just there. It's there. It's, it's there, things are going by extremely rapidly. And even the sensations of the body are going by so fast, you don't stop the flow of experience at all. And it just, you know, when I, for myself, when there was strong equanimity, it just, the tangibility of the body feels like mist, mist. That's as heavy

and as thick as the body is. It's like mist. Okay? And so the mind is very light too. It just not, it just doesn't get entangled in anything. It doesn't miss anything either. It just doesn't get entangled. It doesn't pick up. It often doesn't even pick up the ideas of what's being presented to it. It sees, but it's not picking it up the ideas of what's being presented to it. It sees, but it's not picking it up to massage it into, I like it, I don't, I should do this, I shouldn't do that. The mind doesn't do that. And so the equanimity tends towards long periods of time, of just sitting quietly observing

the flow of phenomena. Time gets distorted. You sit down, you seem to take two or three breaths and a couple of hours has gone by. Yeah, some real time distortions that are phenomenal. Okay, now what's happening is the objects are being seen quickly and recognized quickly and when I have no reaction to them, but what's being seen about them is one of the three characteristics. We're seeing that they're impermanent, we're seeing that they have the characteristic of duke which means they read a painful themselves, not at this point.

They're unstable, or they're not controllable. Unreliable. Unreliable. Yeah. And then the third characteristic is that conditioned and they're not not self. They're not stable. You can't control them Okay, so we're seeing objects we're seeing the these characteristics of all objects and So think of it this way Dan. Imagine that you were seeing you understood everything that you're experiencing is painful

You wouldn't pick it up. You wouldn't deal with it. You just, no, I don't want to deal with that. Or if you realize this that I'm looking for to make my life 10% happier is unstable. It doesn't last. It might be 10% happier today, but it's going to be 10%. Let's happy tomorrow. Why do that? So you don't pick it up. The mind doesn't reach for what it sees, doesn't offer what it looks for. So the mind is not reaching for to hold on to anything because it's impermanent, doesn't last. It has the characteristic of a duke. It's not controllable.

It's not yours. It has no essence, even. And so the mind doesn't reach. Now when the mind doesn't reach for anything, it might fall into the unconditioned. Okay, so now the unconditioned is another way of saying Nirvana or in the Pali word, Nibbana. Unpack that for me, man. What is the unconditioned and how would one fall into it? Well, you know, as Trump will Rinpoche so aptly put it, he says, you know, Enlightenment is an accident. Practice makes us accident prone. Right? Okay, so it's like you can't make it's

unconditioned. It's not conditioned to buy anything. it's uncondition, it's not conditioned by anything. It's a reality. So we live in this world as this vast soup of causes and conditions, but Nirvana is the unconditioned. Is this, yeah, it's its own reality. And when you fall into it, you spend a lot of time there or is it like a zap and you bolt out of your chair. What is, what happened?

Well, the text say it's just a momentary visit by the mind to this reality. And some people recognize it instantly and some don't. But if you continue to practice and develop what's called the fruition, not just the initial path of DeBina, but the fruition of it, then it can last for a longer period of time. What's the difference between the path and the fruition? So this first visit to the unconditioned is a profound experience, is a profound experience and it permanently transforms the mind. Okay? And some people experience it and it's just like, wow, they're just done. They're just done. They don't need to practice. They don't want to practice anymore. They just have done all they want to do. Some people just ride the wave of bliss and kind of Dharma joy for hours if not days.

Just kind of like, wow, relief. It's a kind of relief that's just like unbelievable. Okay? So what happens is that all along in our practice up to this first taste of the unconditioned is we've been purifying the mind, purifying our understanding, and we're becoming more confident that this is the path to the end of suffering, the end of clinging, at least suffering, and that at some point we have kind of looked at all of our doubts, At some point, we have kind of looked at all of our doubts, looked at all of our, is it possible, really, is it me?

You know, does it work for them, does it work for me? Can I do it? All that stuff we've been seeing is just another moment to experience arising and passing away. And it has said that at this point of first accessing the unconditioned, that doubt about the teachings of the path, the Dharma, and the ability to practice in this way is uprooted. Meaning, it's not just suppressed through concentration, it's uprooted from the mind never to appear again. But also it has said that this belief in this, the little dana or the little steve that's in here that this is all happening to, that that belief is also uprooted from the mind

at the access to the first access to the uncondition. But what is it, but what is, you've had this experience clearly, so what does it feel like? What is it like? Not supposed to say. Why are you supposed to say, this is where things get weird. Why are you not supposed to say? It's not, there was not supposed to say, it's in the book. It's, it's, it's, it's a non-experience, if you will.

You could have to say, it's a non-experience. So what's so great about it if it's a non-experience? Because it has this powerful effect on the mind. But what's so great about it in the moment you're having the experience if there's nothing to experience? That's the greatness of it. Because at this point, you have seen that every moment, every moment's experience has this

characteristic of duke. Suffering. Right. Nothing is going to do it for you. And so now you have, now there is this experience of no duke. I see. I see. No duke.

Wait has been lifted or something like that. Wow. So it's like nothing's going to do it for you until everything does it for you. No one say everything does it for you. I think you still realize that nothing is gonna do it for you like you thought before. But now your sense of your understanding of what happiness is is forever changed.

So switch seats with me mentally here. If you were in my chair and you just listen to someone to describe this adventure that culminates in a non-experience that permanently changes the mind, would you believe any of this? No. Probably not. I would be skeptical. I would say, yeah, but so why? Why?

Why? Why would I want to do that? Can you prove it? And tell me about it. And something. Show it to me. You know, can to do that? And can you prove it? And tell me about it. And something, show it to me, can't do that. But the experience of it is real. And why don't you just say that based on your own experience? Once you taste, once you taste the experience

of the unconditioned, you know what it is. Okay. But there's a lot of controversy around this because we're talking about a we're talking about the understanding of enlightenment from one school of Buddhism. Yeah, there are many schools of Buddhism. Yeah, that's right. And so if you sit with a Tibetan monk and talk to them about the unconditioned, they're going to look at you like you're crazy. Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, in fact, one of my one of my colleagues who does practice with

Tibetan teacher described this kind of experience to his Tibetan teacher, and his Tibetan teacher didn't, there's nothing in Tibetan Buddhism that would value that. Okay, well, you know, it's just different, you know, probably a great Zen master from Japan and a Chan master from China and a Tibetan master from Tibet and a a John from Thailand and a side off from Burma if they all got together and talked about there you know most liberating experiences wouldn't be able to understand each other but that doesn't mean it doesn't actually work you know there's

come some cultural stuff there and there's some how you how you frame the experience you know but when you when you when you when you when you frame the experience. But when you take the Buddhist teachings on the four noble truths, that there is this experience of suffering, and once you come to know suffering, really, what the suffering is that he's pointing to, then you begin to understand, or begin to get an idea of what the end of suffering is going to look like.

And when you taste that end of suffering, then you confirm for yourself, oh, that's it. That's it. So, so the, the, you, you, you have all of these different schools, and, and they have differing maps of enlightenment. Right? We just talked about one map, but there are other maps. Do you ever have a student who starts studying under you and start showing landmarks on other people's maps and other traditions maps?

Well, I don't know. I don't know the too many details of other maps, but I do know that when other students from other traditions come to me and they talk about their experiences, I can locate them on my map. I see. I see. So I can say, oh, well, that sounds like, you know, this is how I would understand it from my perspective, from my map, and, you know, having talked with a lot of

students who practice Tibetan teachings, there's a lot of overlap. But there are places where it goes dissonant and kind of fuzzy and you can't overlap, you can't lay them over direct fit. There was an effort here in the west to form something called the Contemplative Development Mapping Project where they would sort of lay the maps over each other and see if they could see what the common goalposts are. But we finished the progress of insight or one part of the progress of insight with

the Nirvana experience. But the fact is that actually this is just the beginning, it's called stream entry, you enter the stream. And then you actually go through this progress. Yes, and then the second time you have a Nervana experience, it's good. Let me just correct. It's not the second time you experience in a Nervana. Because remember I mentioned the path.

The path is the first moment of experiencing or the realizing Nervana. But then with training you can develop the capacity to enter this state, or enter the will call as a state, the state or this reality of nibbana or nibbana for extended periods of time. But this is a special training of the mind. So you might stay in this experience, realization of nibbana for a minute or two or five an hour more. Okay, so those are fruition moment. Yeah, those are fruition. That's not second path. No, that's not the second experience. So we can experience or kind of realize Nibana many times before one moves on to second path. And then the second path, and I want to get

too deeply into this because we have a lot of, we don't have that much time left on to second path. And then the second path, and I want to get too deeply into this, because we have a lot of, we don't have that much time left, but second path you are at this point, a once returner, and then the third path moment is a non-returner, and the fourth is an arhant, which is a fully enlightened being. Yeah. What's that all mean? Yeah, well, I want to ask you,

so can you even say, or you allowed to say, where you are in this progress, and why can't you, if you can't? This whole lineage comes from the monastic tradition. And the rules of the monks were not to, they weren't prohibited from sharing their personal realizations and attainments. personal realizations and attainments. But if in the process they deceptively led others to believe their attainments, it could damage others' faith. And so monks were very cautious and just don't talk about their attainments. So you're not allowed to say... Nobody's preventing me from saying anything. But you don't feel comfortable saying, I'm a once-returner, I'm a non-returner or whatever.

No. But don't you see how that's a little, like there's like this, like this, weird silence, like Mafia thing, like you can't tell me where you are in this map, why not? I'm still on the map, I'm still sad. I asked Joseph Goldstein who was reference before, was my teacher, and has been the teacher for you for many years I once asked him where are you and he said something like I'm somewhere between the first and the third

Or something along those lines, but people people feel That there is this omerta you you just really are not supposed to say what where exactly you are on the map That's I mean, you know,, I respect Joseph's, you know, hedging, if you will, and kind of clarity without specificity. I think that's probably as skillful as we can get. Do you guys, are you comfortable talking about this with your teacher or among other teachers? Are there like back room conversations where you guys sort of figure out where you are?

Something like that. You know, when I first started teaching three-month course with Joseph Sharon and a couple of other senior teachers, we did take one year of teacher meetings during the three-month course where we all spoke about our, what we considered our best, clearest, most liberating, whatever experiences both practicing concentration or jhana as well as practicing insight or liberation and it was really what was really really instructive to me Dan was that we've all practiced we were all practicing in the same tradition the

Mahasim Sada tradition, and we all had very distinctively different experiences, but we all had a similar understanding. So, but was that like a kind of like of a measuring, public, you know, measuring of where we are on the path? Well, we were just, it was just very, we were sharing with each other what are, what are. but I get, don't you get into comparing mine?

Oh, look, Joseph so much farther ahead of me. That's for people who haven't got to the first stage. You can't understand this conversation in, in, in, in, comparing. My mind is one of those, those grabbing things, you know, conceit, you know, I see comparing mine. So by the time you get the first stage, you've done a lot of, you've uprooted a lot of that, comparing mine. Okay, so you still hangs in there till the end, but. Gotcha.

So that actually leads to my next question. I have two final questions I wanna ask you. One is, you've gone, you won't tell, say how far, but you've gone somewhere, some pretty far on the progress of insight, I would imagine, are you, do you retain the capacity to be a jerk ever? Oh, I practiced that daily. How, how, if you've gone through these adventures

many times and you've experienced Nirvana, how can you still be a jerk sometimes? Jerkism is, is, is, is a, is an evaluation usually from other people's eyes? No, I know when I'm being a jerk. Yeah. Absolutely. I know when I'm being a jerk. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's being human. I think of it as being human.

And in some ways, we become more human. Maybe not careless in being a jerk, but there are times we just, we still have our conditioning. We still have a lot of personal family, cultural conditioning, which just comes out in, being carelessly saying things, doing things that well, I come from, coming from a place of delusion. We're still, we're not, we're not free of delusion.

So you're not fully enlightened yet? No, we still have a lot of a version, still have desires, still have conceit and pride and these things come out in ways that harm others or hurt others or shock others or shock ourselves even. And so, yeah, we, it's, you know, none of us like to think of ourselves as a jerk all the time, but we do, we all have some, you know, relapses, I'd say, from our most mindful and ethical and wise place that we visited. So here's my final question. I've been playing the skeptic, but the fact that matters and while I am actually genuinely a skeptic, I'm really curious and want to experience some of this stuff for myself.

Is that really possible given the reality of my life? I have a crazy full-time job. I've started a company, I write books, I'm, I have a baby, I will be able to do a retreat a year and a couple hours a day of sitting, which is pretty good. Yes. But you took you eight years, you had to become a monk before you started really getting down the path. So that makes me feel little disperited. No, don't. I'll tell you why, because all that you're doing, the practice that you're doing, the retreats that you do, even once a year, the daily practice, and keeping yourself informed, talking about diamond with other people is inspiring, it keeps your mind headed in that

direction a lot of the time. And it's not only silent retreats, it's going to mature the mind, mature the power, you know, the power of the time. And it's not only silent retreats, it's going to mature the mind, mature the power, you know, the power of peace. That is the power. The power of peace are the forces of purity in the mind. Generosity, loving kindness, understanding, truthfulness, energy, resolve.

Yeah, but all that I understand is all to the good and it does prepare the mind for this, but don't you need to build up some concentration like really? No, I mean, no, no, no, no, mistake, mistake. If you build up the power of me, if you, if, and in your daily life, you always have, every day, you have ample opportunities to practice the power of me. Patience, generosity, loving kindness, non-reactivity, you've got to practice that every day. If you make it a conscious practice, you are preparing the soil of your mind for liberating

insight. And there are those among us who didn't get a light and didn't get their first stage on retreat. How so? Yeah, they hit stream entry, their first path experience, whatever lingo you want to use, not on retreat. Yeah. Okay. So this could happen in my bedroom. I'll depend on what you're doing. Right. I didn't mean that in a four-hour type of way.

I meditated my bedroom. So this could happen in my bedroom. Yeah. Sure. Yes. It's, I don't want to set a, I don't want to set, you know, if you inform yourself, read the book, study the book, whatever, find out what's involved. Practice the paramies daily. Do your daily practice. Do a retreat when you can. You're gradually, if you haven't gotten first stage yet, you will. Thanks as always to the producers of the show,

Lauren, Efron, Josh, Cohan, Sarah Amos, and Dan Silver. You can hit me on Twitter at DanB Harris anytime you like. If you liked the episode today and youB Harris anytime you like. If you liked the episode today and you want to hear more like it, you can subscribe to the podcast, rate it and leave a review. Thank you for that and we'll talk to you next week. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts.

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