When Dharmic Views Become Prisons – Tales From Nibbana Pilot Episode with Delson Armstrong

Interesting realization, or I guess thesis, let's say, about the way that at the end of the second Mahamudra map, or maybe the beginning of the third one, where you reorient to the ground, its ground. The Mahamudra path, or the way that that then framed its plan, was to do it and let go. And then it goes away, occasionally the shikha.

Now there's the metaphor of striking the bell, right, and letting it fly before around then. If I'm doing that continuously, because it's like a continuous movement of taking away attention from anything that's still trying to use attention to spin and construct, and it trends, even it trends, much more significantly towards the solution where you can guarantee attention has a much harder time holding. And I realized listening to some Frank Yang video, the recent one about twins, where he was saying that towards the end of his path he was impersonalizing everything, 24 hours, the entire universe. And Daniel told me the same thing. Daniel Ingram mentioned the same thing to me: towards the end of the stage I was just walking through life and, like, tearing everything down continuously. And I would not say that when I'm doing this I'm tearing everything down continuously. It's a little more gentle than this, but it's like there's no part of the space that's not aired out. It's like every part that's still more solid, even if I'm doing this, it's a little more

vacant forest expanded. It's like, it's like I'm heating it up and particles of it just dissolve through the process. So I wonder if it's the same thing. I wonder if it's the same practice, walking around continually impersonalizing everything. If you look at it from the Jarvatan point of view versus the reorientation to the groundless ground from awake awareness, or mediated awareness, like when you're already stabilized outside beyond self, subject and object, you can really do it all the way. Even I feel the same. Well, I think one question arises, which is: what does it mean to impersonalize experience? What is it that's going on there? And that's something that I've been writing about a lot, because I think generally the way that people conceive of the path as skillful and can be okay, so you see now, if I had the student here, someone was asking. We have a lot of motivation to use the whole skill.

But now I'm sitting with you, I'm like, eh, I don't feel like it. I'm a student of yours, so go ahead. Not only when people speak about Vipassana from the perspective of Theravada, this attempt at seeing through, let's say, course level meaning or mental constructs to get to more direct perception of reality, so to speak, or to see the three marks of existence, and there's the assumption that just seeing those marks, so to speak, the seeing of the more rapid rising and passing of sensations, is somehow enough to enlighten the mind. And here I think the conception of Mcnet is a little closer to what I think, to the paradigm that we can use now to describe the process, which is all phenomena is mental construction. Nothing has an inherent essence or meaning. It's not interdependent rising based on causes and conditions receiving its meaning. It's meaning in a completely subjective relative

way and then when we use the skillful views when you do the practices and adopt the perspectives that allow us to see not just the layer of meaning but also all the underlying components, then through the seeing of the underlying components that are otherwise blocked through the perspective of just the meaning of the construct, the porousness or transparency. Now the fundamental components, the actual data coming in, can update the model, can update the construct. So it's not that there's some fundamental units of truth existence that you have to come into contact with. It's just that there's a trend towards being able to more and more not hold on to anything if it has inherent meaning, any narrative, any mental constructs, any thoughts, any emotion. I mean any ontology in the view of the world. And so the mind is much more dynamically updated, and in the process it really relies on, and unless you release and not rely on so much on more gross constructs that are just artifacts of early development that were never never never looked at again, well, you know, Daniel was thinking about much more

precise terms: mindfulness, continuous contact with six sense doors, having a complete awareness or near complete awareness of the fundamental sensations or mental components. Sometimes I like to bring the mind out of all the phenomena, continuously. I think the difference between the Theravada approach and the more Vajrayana approach, in I don't want to say nothing, because in some places in the future there's so much of an attempt of striving for loosening everything, dissolving, being the three marks and so on, versus the Mahamudra approach, which at some point progressively brought the past when it was just as you rest into the things. Which I think is also where the instruction comes from. It's just reorient and sort of glide on it and be more forceful in trying to resolve everything.

Because you run the risk of having a very subtle self-agenda, striving to be in the background. You're not really achieving. You might even just create more karma if you're trying to break down other karma. Yeah, I often find that when you try to discuss, anybody tries to discuss the three characteristics, they say, I have to look for the three characteristics of the experience rather than just allowing them to reveal themselves. And so I think that process of trying to look, they always confuse with investigation as an enlightenment factor in a Theravada tradition, or an awakening factor. But investigation, which comes from the word dhamma vichaya, I look at as just understanding things as they arise or just seeing things as they arise.

And so a process of doing something, like you said, it engages with this sense of self or I am doing something. On the life by the craving for some awake state in the future. Exactly. Instead of just, in some sense, being passive, but attentive to what's going on. And then sankharas kind of just rest on their own. And then you start to see for yourself, so to speak, the experience of the three characteristics. You know, it's interesting because even the concept, it's a concept, the three characteristics are a concept, that they arise and pass away, that they are prone to suffering or subject to cause suffering, and that they are not me, not mine, not myself.

And so there has been a tendency among students to be like, okay, I have to see the arising in this way of phenomena. And when they're doing that, there's still a sense of I, a sense of me, looking at the experience. And so that just creates another layer of, like you said, a craving for that awakening. That's also creating existential craving. Of course, the notion of anicca, things coming and going, presupposes time. Yeah. The notion of having to find myself presupposes self. Yeah. And the notion of all phenomena leading to suffering presupposes suffering.

Which is why I have a lot of resistance to these notions being called marks of existence. I don't know if this is just really bad translation. Well, the Pali is 'thilakana' or the Sanskrit is 'tri lakshana', and 'tri' is, of course, 'tri', and 'lakshana' is 'sign', 'lakshana', it's a sign. So where is it different? Yeah, exactly. The framing that I enjoy more to this sort of thing is that they're skillful views. And just like any other view, you have to know where and when to put it down.

Yeah. Yeah, generally what I appreciate about the path of Mahamudra is taking up of more and more subtle views. You go deeper down the path, which is explicitly stated, and so there's also just a systemology that's much more neatly stated and acknowledged and expressed, in that all of the practices, in some sense all meditation is views. You take on some perspective, and then it filters all incoming phenomena, conditioning sensations, in some ways. In some views, some practices lead towards regression, towards seeing things as they are, so this way or seeing things in a less constructed way, allowing you to operate your model. And then at some points it is useful to see all conditioned phenomena as causing tension, right? You take it on and you see the truth in it, so this way, or you see the way that's looking that way, and rising phenomena can inform some of the models that just are not aware all the stuff they're projecting into awareness is causing more tension. Yeah, there's like there's a lab in all Theravada traditions that are

practice this of a realization that if you have a collected, stable mind, just resting will trend towards liberation, nothing more to do, nothing more in particular to see, nowhere to go, nothing to do. And I'm curious what you think. Why is that? How is it that this is not a major emphasis, so much emphasis on meditating, actually? Yeah. I mean, the idea of not doing anything, or there's nothing to do, as you say, it's this idea of getting through, getting to the point in your practice when you're collected enough, when the body is online, when you have transcended the subject-object reality and awareness is just holding itself, so to speak, without things egregiously hijacking, pulling you from that, where it's just possible to let go, doing non-doing, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, it's interesting because when I talk to twin students, especially more advanced practitioners, so-called advanced practitioners, oftentimes we see them going through the first four jhanas, and they're doing this and that, their mind gets collected, and then they go into infinite space and so on.

And there's this one part where they go into, which is called neither perception or non-perception and that's where the mind becomes very very quiet and it's difficult to give plain instructions although the most plain instructions I could give to them then is don't do anything and then what happens is there's a tendency to say okay I have to do nothing but if you go back to like the the Theravadan Pali Canon Sudhas, there are steps into understanding this process where you realize, okay, the disenchantment and dispassion really equate to where the mind remains at rest, unaffected by the pulling here, the pulling there, going in this direction, looking at this. And so, you know, just going a little, before that, we were talking about, You know, the three characteristics, you know, the vipassana, the vipassanalizing things.

Actually, the path is right there, which is the mind becomes quite collected. There are some preceding elements before that, but the mind becomes quite collected. And as a result of that collectedness, it goes into what's known as yathabhuta-nanadassana, which means seeing things as they actually are. The knowledge body terms. Yeah, it's perfect. The knowledge and vision of things as they actually are, which means that there's nothing you have to do there. As things are revealing themselves, as they're being revealed, your mind is just seeing things as they are. You don't have to look for them. You don't have to go, "Okay, now what do I see? Now what do I see?"

Your mind has become very, let's say, spacious and relaxed, but collected enough to be attentive to what's going on. And as a result of that, there's the experience of disenchantment and dispassion, where the mind just lets go of all effort. And in letting go of all effort, that's a disenchantment. It stabilizes in this presence of mind that remains unaffected by any kind of experience, and remains in that. The final step there is ultimate liberation and the knowledge of the ministry. What do you mean when you say unaffected, meaning unmoved by an experience? Yes, there can be other experiences going on. For example, if somebody was in the eighth jhana, there were all of these sankharas coming up in the form of patterns and things like that. They just see that but don't grab onto it. My experience in those spaces is very open, relaxed, collected. Not so much that the mind is necessarily unmoved. It's just that fewer and fewer movements have the capacity to obscure awareness.

And that even gives the capacity to see even the most major movement of craving as they are. The craving takes you, and for lack of awareness you're not seeing its component. You're treating it as a value, you're buying the story. For people, you become the story, become the self that is exercising the craving. From the perspective, sometimes even, if I have the thought the mind needs to remain still, then I will slowly be blocking these very fundamental, deep movements. When they're fully allowed, and the system can hold them, can reflect the movement to itself and to the rest of the awareness,

then the fuel can be charged, and the thing can be advanced. So I totally resonate with what you're saying there, because that, well, I shouldn't say should. We don't want to should ourselves. But it's like the mind, for example, when you're in the signless awareness of mind, there's no real object there. That's why it's called signless. It's objectless.

However, there is stuff coming up. And in my experience, when I was in the signless, experiencing the signless, in the seeing of whatever movement was coming up, there was also liberation from that. Nothing to do. So in a sense, the very seeing of this discharge of craving, or whatever is coming up, liberates itself. I want to just comment on seeing things as they are. This is something that trips me quite a bit. In my past, I mean, never fully, but there was always a sense of doubt

like, maybe there's a more fundamental reality, maybe there's an actual something that's seeing things as they are. What would that even mean? I mean, there's always a perception, even if it's not through conditioning, or what we call conditioning. But again, the same things as they are has more to do with the mind not being grabbed or grabbing by mental contacts, by the five forms. I think this is crucial, because thoughts are students that have passed by and had to switch to be able to see things as they are. So you see a like, and tell them you're doing it right, and they're like, oh what? No, this is just... that's just this. This is it. They're looking for, I don't even know what. But if you think those are seeing things as they are, there's something in the back of the mind, like, am I... can I see the atoms? Why would I be seeing

Yeah, turns out it's the same stuff, just with less of the warping obscuration. But then conditions perceptions towards seeing things in terms of how, in some paths, we were conditioned to see them. In the Sutta, they have another kind of way of looking at it, or it's the same kind of description. It talks about Majjhima Nikaya 1, it talks about how an arahat or a Buddha would experience the world, and it says that he would see earth as earth, but not earth in relation to earth. So in other words, just seeing without projections, let's say, of concepts that are overlaid on them. But even that is idealistic. Yeah, very misleading. Yeah, that's why it's very... you're very careful how you explain this to

students. Like, if you do completely deconstruct the mind, you know, go over everything with a mental lawnmower, at least just basic sensory contact, there's a way that you could say you could see earth without relation to earth. But then also you would not even see earth. That would be the thought that will come up, the farther. Yeah, if you release, allow, but then of course earth is already in relation to what is not earth. Yes, yes. And anyway, the ultimate goal here is not to be some robot, only in the three characteristics, right? So I don't understand why they went so extreme in the sutta in this way.

There's another one, the Vaya Sutta, which I often quote: in the seeing, there's only the seeing. In the hearing, there's only the heard. In the sensing, there's only the sense. In the cognizing, there's only the cognized. When there's no you in that, then there's no you before that, by that, and so on. Just that is the end of suffering.

But it's interesting, because when you read the suttas there's a tendency to look at it and be like, okay, so what does that mean? The seeing, there's only the seeing. So I should just be seeing, I should just be hearing. But then there's just an eye that has to see it. So language is very tricky. And so, to complete that thought, not even about not seeing things in relations, forever abiding in a state of emptiness, non-conceptual silence and stillness. It's losing the mind, developing beyond the capacity to make the fundamental

mistake of not seeing that mental constructs are created by mind, atoms, by sensory components, sensory bits continually changing, vibrating, moving, even as we entertain things as solid for whatever purpose. Right, holding things as solid for a moment is very useful. I want to pick up my sandwich and take it to my mouth. Maybe for that I don't need a conflict. If I want to tell you I want this sandwich, it's good for us both to hold that solid, and at that point it doesn't even become a choice. I'm choosing to reify a bunch of sensations for a second. The machinery of this being is all the magnificent ability to do that without needing help from continuous instructions or the thing that pretends to be in control continually. And I wish this all was better expressed the way that we are defining our system: to do what it already does really well, with fewer and fewer bottlenecks, like energy kinks, places where the information is not flowing well. This is where stuck mental concepts are tying up resources of the system and kinking up the

pipes. Yeah, I think you should note that it's definitely not about seeing the atoms, or any kind of underlying reality, the matrix, the matrix. So much of a desire to see a different reality. You can see the matrix, you can see it is trying to escape existing suffering. Yeah, it's another kind of craving, craving for non-existence.