Awakening and The Four Stages - 2nd Interview with Andrzej

Today we're meeting to talk a little bit more about the different ideas related to meditation practice. I know last time we spoke, we were talking about the jhanas and talking a little bit from our experience about what the jhanas are and the levels and the experiences and the factors that are present. And we pretty much discussed all the way up to cessation of perception and feeling and kind of talked a little bit about what happens right after that. So I think you and I have discussed talking a little bit about now that you've experienced cessation, there is something called awakening.

And when we say awakening, it's a very specific word. It's a very specific term to mean something. And there are different ways in which people may interpret that or ways in which people may look at that and try to compare and contrast based on different spiritual concepts. So maybe first what we'll do is we'll try to define what we mean by awakening and what it actually refers to from the context of this practice, and what it means to us, personally, from our own personal journey, what that actually feels like, or maybe what we feel is something that we've always thought about on our spiritual journey as an ideal to experience. So I mean, very simply put, what do you say awakening is? How do you contextualize awakening? Yeah, that's a really good question.

and um when you are asking this question i have in my mind like it's it's pop-up in many different answer and you know it's it's really hard to say in um just one way because um i look for meditation for a different angles so when we just look from different angles that that can mean so many stuff but uh let's keep it the buddhist model so i would say that this is like going into understanding four noble truths and more like um experiential level than just intellectual level because uh when i first met uh the idea for noble truths i was just understanding this intellectual into intellectual level and then when i was arguing with my wife i was curious oh

no, it doesn't work. Why is craving the problem? The problem is my wife is a problem, not is a craving. And finding this deeper layer is something that can awaken us from the dream of the problems that we have, and going deeper it can show us different ways how we can see awakening. We can just talk about a really nice concept, the deep stuff like dependent origination and understanding the links. We can talk about losing completely clear craving. We can talk about loosening up the sense of self and seeing anatta. But I really like to see awakening, like seeing things, what is, how I react. And if I can see what is and how I react, there is a space, and in this space is a space of kindness. So I would say that we can just skip over this concept and say, and start with kindness

as a base. Because I started my journey with lots of accumulation, and when I first heard about awakening, it was like the project for ego. I was, oh yes, great, let's go be awakened. Oh, oh my god, that's crazy, I want to do this. But I didn't know what I was signing up for, deconstructing this concept about the self. Years of meditation took me to understand that it's not about a state, because I imagined at the beginning that this is the state that I get to some place, and this place will be ah, and I got it, something. I think it's not only for me, but probably for many people it's the biggest obstacle, that we just crave for a state and try to catch something. Then just open with kindness for everything that arises to us, and see really clearly what is. Because

for me it's just what is in every moment. Another moment is what is. And if you see how you react to this, you see this useful concept of dependent origination in a simple way. Because for example, there is a tiredness, and there is a reaction: oh, I want to relieve this tiredness, I want to go for a holiday. But if I can see this without identification, just see what is and open for this, there is wisdom that arises in this moment. So this is my understanding of this idea.

Yeah, yeah, that resonates a lot with me as well. When I was on my spiritual journey, there was all of this mystification about what enlightenment is. That's the other common word, enlightenment. I'd studied with many different teachers from very interesting lineages, and some talk about enlightenment as: there's a big flash of light in the middle of the head that explodes and you experience a lot of bliss, and it's the light of a thousand suns. Someone like Osho, for example, said this. And what happens is it makes a concept in the mind, okay, if I have to experience enlightenment I also have to experience a thousand suns blazing in my head, and these kinds of things. And if you think about what awakening really is, it comes from the word Buddha, in Pali. So Buddha, who we talk about as the discoverer of the four noble truths in the present time,

he really was on a journey to find the end of suffering he wasn't really looking for mystical states he wasn't looking for any kind of space in which you're transcending and and these kinds of things those are i think secondary or war secondary to his journey he just wanted to know how do i how do i experience the freedom from suffering the freedom from emotional suffering mental suffering and physical suffering even um and so buddha you know comes from the word buddho which means you know buddh which is intellect or the mind the mind has woken up um the mind has awoken uh and what is it awoken to or what has it been awakened to it's awakened from the dream of existence you know and i borrow this from bhande punaji and in my understanding as i continue to explore my own practice my own experiences with the practice of uh jhanas and meditation i think letting go of any perfectionist attitude is also very important so what do i mean by that perfectionist attitude right you know you know it means that oh i can never experience craving i can never experience

frustration, I can never experience hunger, or I can never get sick. Some people have that idealistic attitude that once you're awakened it means that your body is in perfect harmony and you'll never experience sickness, and things like that. But in my personal way of seeing things, awakening really is freedom. It's freedom in the sense of, when we think about the word moksha, which is a word you will commonly see in India, for the ultimate goal of a spiritual path. So whether it's Vedanta or yoga or Buddhism, moksha is used across all traditions

to mean to be free, and it comes from the word muchite, to be free, like the ripe fruit that drops from the tree; it becomes free from it. So what are we actually free from? In my mind, we're free from any sort of conceptuality. We are free from any sort of constant identification with things. The mind is used to that. The mind is used to grasping on and thinking, how does this benefit me, how will this affect me, who is this to me, is this mine, is this not mine, these kinds of things. Our whole world, for the most part, revolves around this I, or me, mine, myself, as the center point of experience. And I think as we start to practice deeper and deeper, we start to uncover the layers. You mentioned dependent origination, which is a huge topic, huge huge topic. And some people, as you say, can define it as awakening is seeing the links of dependent origination

or it's awakening to the four noble fruits. Yeah, I understand that, but I think experientially, for a lot of people, they wonder what does that actually mean? What does that actually look like? And I think awakening is a verb, which means it's an ongoing process. It's like a spiral. We go deeper and we experience the same thing, but from a different viewpoint, from a different standpoint. So the same emotions that may have affected us before, the same situations or similar situations, have affected us before, but we have a new perspective on it because of this experience of awakening, so that we can let go of it further, so that we don't have it affect us in a way that causes us suffering. So very simply put, I would say awakening is awakening from the dream

or from the idea that there is a permanent me that's there, and seeing that the me is a construct that's used for the purposes of interacting with the world, but no more than that. And there's a lot of freedom in that when you actually realize it. For some people it feels disconcerting or destabilizing, because their whole world has been used to the idea of there being a stable, static me. But since we go through the jhanas and meditation and we utilize bliss and equanimity and wonderful co-factors to stabilize the mind, the insight that liberates the mind into seeing through the nature of things as an impermanent process, an impersonal process,

feels very freeing. And the other thing I would say is a lot of people have this conception that awakening means that you enjoy, you have a lot of bliss, you're always happy all the time. Yeah, it's like everything is a Disney cartoon. No no no no. It's - It's not that like at all. - Yeah. - So maybe we can talk a little bit about, you know, our understanding of the post-cessation experience, because that's really generally where people experience their first awakening for the most part. So how would you convey that to people? That's a good topic. So the post-cessation experience could be surprising, because I remember myself, I

Didn't expect something like that, you know. It was... I had so many imaginations of how the cessation looks like, but I can say it looks like any cessation, because there is no continuity in your memory. So when you just go out from this cessation, there are several things that are going on. The first, I'm talking about my first time right now, this is because it was the most vivid and powerful experience. Then I was like, the mind is going to use the stuff, probably because there's more equanimity. So it's not like vivid, but the first time was when I came up with this sit. I wouldn't say I came up with this sit, it was just experience going.

going you know it like the experience it was um like some how to say like explosion of the concession consciousness it wasn't explosion in a in a in a sense of uh noise but boom very clear awareness that came up and in some moments there was just pure awareness no self no direction no object no sense of self just pure experience experiencing i would say like pure experiencing uh i haven't i i hadn't had any that kind of experience before with so pure awareness and then come up the feeling of relief and it wasn't exactly relief because i was like saying something uh bad word like oh what what's going on and i come up immediately with meditation because whoa and then i thought it was like you know

When you go around with a bag full of something heavy, and you take off the bag, you feel very light. Yeah, and I felt the same. I was carrying on my back a backpack full of bricks, and I didn't know about it, and then I was like, these bricks were just gone. And it was strange, because I didn't notice that I had so many, so many of these bricks in my backpack. And then I thought, really, powerful joy, really powerful joy, and I was so excited. There was lots of energy and everything was

colorful, just like it was a similar experience to taking just a little bit of psychedelics. Everything was very colorful, because it happened in my flat, my apartment, not on the retreat, and I was seeing my flat for the first time. Everything was new. My neighborhood was like, oh, I felt like I'd just gone for a vacation in a new place. It was an amazing feeling of freshness. And then I started thinking about what had happened in this process, and I got through a few realizations about this, because

I experienced a big change in my personality, and it was a sudden change. Before the cessation, I was struggling with addiction, many years before. I was really heavily addicted to drugs, alcohol, etc. When I started meditation and I was getting more and more deeply into jhanas, I just lost this addiction, but I still had addiction. I needed to drink some beer during the week, and I was craving one too many beers, and I couldn't stop, and there was some power that was

I couldn't imagine that it could stop, and after cessation this completely evaporated and never came back. Just one click. I don't want to advertise this for people who have a problem. You don't create any expectation that this will happen, because that's my personal journey. But that was the most vivid part. It was like gone, completely gone for years. I just felt like I had never had any problem with alcohol. That was the change that came to my mind. And my heart wants, since this morning, my heart wants to be very kind and go with ethics. I didn't think about, you know, keeping precepts and being so focused on this, but I noticed that I had organized myself in a different way

in a different way, more harmful, less harmful, yeah, for me and for people. And I got to the realization that this post-cessation experience is very important, because in this moment, when you just come up from the cessation and all these conditions arise again, there is a moment like a reset for the mind. It was the first insight that there was a reset, because when everything comes back in this clear awareness, the mind sees this for the first time with no identification, for a moment, because some identification comes up again. That's important to see: when you come up from the cessation, look back at what is going on and really be mindful in this moment, because after this there is lots of excitement

and this excitement could also be some kind of craving, and you can be lost in the same patterns, but more spiritual patterns. So that's my experience with this topic. And then it wasn't the end of everything. I would say it was the beginning, not the ending, because I had an imagination that when I got the cessation my problem would be gone. After, because I was really joyful for a long time, I think three weeks was a very long time for me, the next day I had the next cessation. I sat, and suddenly I went again. I was mindful, oh, I forgot about this, because the mindfulness, the learner's alertness, was so clear. The mind was just very clear. And then after a few months, some problems and issues came up again, not stronger than before, but it was the time to revise this. And now I see this as the beginning of the

work when you got to the first session it's like the moment that you know really now how to walk the path it's not the end of the path but this is like a knowledge knowledge how to walk the path because you still probably go right and left and that's okay because this is that idealization that we have and i was like hitting what you said about perfectionist because it was like my problem with perfectionism and i was trying to get ideal meditation ideal awakening ideal stuff and it was the most awakened stuff it's not being ideal it's being as you are in this moment humble honest with yourself be yourself even there is no self be yourself because to to get no self you need to be honest i need to be honest not to be yourself just just relax with who you are in this moment and don't say don't take this so much personal who you are in this moment and and then was like it was like more working with um

the stuff that was arising and understanding in a when a better understanding dependent origination and just let going more craving more craving more craving i still didn't let go all cravings so i'm just working on this but my life has changed dramatically uh over the years of meditation and um after experience uh cessation because what has changed it i still sometimes experience anxiety i still sometimes experience uh shame or guilt but some emotions were like there was it was less this emotion on the intensity of the emotion just drop dramatically like anxiety i had really problem with anxiety and just drop it doesn't mean i don't experience anxiety but it's

the level is low, and the mind doesn't have a problem experiencing this stuff so much. So that change is really important. And last but not least, about awakening, I got to some really interesting insight, because when you think about what the unawakened mind is, you can see that this is the mind that is like in hypnosis, because we are hypnotized by the faults. There is the first thought, and this creates the next fault, and the next fault, and the next fault. I was living in a chain of faults, faults, faults, faults, hypnotized. My attention was hypnotized about who I am, in the context of people, who I am to myself, and all the time, like in a dream. And then I wanted this, it was open. Oh, just the faults, the I is just the fault, useful. It's like an indication in a space. I'm talking to you, but really it's just a concept, it's nothing more, and this is really freeing in this understanding.

Yeah, that's wonderful, actually, because this is so important for people to understand: not every experience is going to be the same for people. Generally speaking, with cessation, it's like the mind is rebooting. That's the word. It's like a computer: you defragment the drives of the computer, and now things get a little bit more efficient, a little bit more effective in their processing power. So cessation is a reboot in my mind. It's restarting the system, and when you restart the system you can start to see how things come up that create

the world in your mind and create the world outside as well. Because really, the way I look at it, while there is the possibility of an objective world around us in terms of the physics, the mathematics, science and everything else, most of us, I would say probably 99.9999 percent of us, live in our thoughts, as you rightly put it. We are going from one thought to the next thought to the next thought, and we're only thinking about things rather than actually experiencing things. So awakening really cuts through that, through cessation, for those few moments or however long it is. I can speak from my own experience. In 2016 I did an online retreat with David Johnson, who is the author of the Path to Nibbana. He's been a very long-time close friend and student of Bhante Vimalaramsi, who spent many years as a monastic traveling around Asia and really developed the system that we call TWIM - Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation. I got inspired to do a retreat there because

Prior to that I was, you know, studying a little bit more about yoga, and then the brahma viharas, and it seemed like this program was really talking about cultivating the brahma viharas. So anyway, I signed up for the retreat, and I went through the instructions as they were given and as laid out. I had taken time off for those nine, ten days to just focus on the retreat, so I had a lot of time on my hands to meditate, to sit, to walk, to do all these things. And it was so interesting how the jhanas came one after the other, and how, as you're listening to the description of the jhanas, the experience also fits that description, and, you know, vice versa. And then I was in a space of nothingness for a while, just radiating race, simply radiating equanimity for a bit. And I remember just being in that nothingness for a bit, and then it's like my mind had a gap in its awareness. It was like there was a winking out, and

Just as you said, like, it was like, what was that? Where was that? What was going on in that moment? It was like, I didn't fall asleep. I didn't become drowsy. I was not with sloth and torpor. It was just like somebody had cut, you know, one of the films from the film reel, and now there's missing data in there. It's like a file 404 error, can't find that particular memory. And as you say, it's a cut in the continuation of the memory. And so

I remember just being like, whoa, what was that? And I remember seeing these little ripples in my mind's eye, these little concentric circles that just rippled out, and it was like, whoosh, just this amazing relief that was there. It was just like, and there was an over, like a fountain from my heart of so much joy, so much bliss in that moment. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. And I got up from my chair and started walking out of my room, and just remembering, like, I don't think I was walking. It felt like I was floating. Obviously I was not floating, but everything was so peaceful.

You know, everything was perfect in those moments. Everything was just as it was. You didn't really have to think about anything. And I remember walking across the kitchen and entering the backyard, and the sun was just setting, so I was looking in the backyard, and we had a great big backyard with a big swimming pool and lots of flowers and trees and grass. So I remember just getting, like, caught up in the beauty of the flowers in the bushes, and it was just a brilliant pink, brilliant yellow, brilliant red. It was like hyper vivid, you know, 16K, 4D, whatever you want to call it, the vision. And I remember turning around.

So I had some friends over there who were playing ping pong, and they were playing ping pong, and they said, hey, do you want to join us? And I just, you know, silently shook my head. I had this smile on my face, and I was just walking, felt like I was gliding, you know, in the backyard. And I turned around and I saw the most glorious sunset, you know, I had probably ever seen. It was just having shades of purple and shades of pink and orange and red, and there were like little dark strips of clouds here and there. So it was just like, wow, you know, it was a brilliant light. And I remember just like, yeah, it was sort of like a micro dosing of psychedelics or something, you know. Like everything was much sharper, everything was a little sharper. So I went back to my room and started sitting for a while, and just nothing in the mind, just complete clarity in the mind. There was just this sort of knowing, this sort of realizing that this is just an impersonal process.

This is, like, I wasn't verbalizing in that way. It was more like, yeah, I can, like, there was a knowing that there's just walking going on. There's nobody who's controlling the walking, or there's just sitting going on. There's no one controlling the sitting. There's eating going on, but no one is controlling the sitting, the eating. It's just happening, and life is just unfolding, you know. And this lasted for a little bit, and I remember talking to David, and I said, you know, this is the experience I had. And he said, oh, that's very interesting. And I think he had gone back to meet with Bhante to talk about my report, and he came back a little bit later and he sent me an email. He said, it sounds like you went for a little swim. And I said I was wondering what that means, and I realized what he's saying is you've entered the stream, you've gone for those from you entered the stream. And so this is what we call stream entry in Buddhism.

And I didn't really know what he was talking about. I didn't really understand much about it. I remember watching the videos of Bhante on retreat where he's talking about the four stages of awakening, but it didn't really click for me. But in my mind, it was more like, yeah, that's great, don't know much about that. But it feels like a lot of relief. It feels like, yeah, it feels like a lot of suffering had just kind of just gone. A lot of suffering had just sort of evaporated.

And, you know, I felt like this for a few days, and David said, you just keep sitting, keep going, you know. And in that retreat I had multiple cessations, and each one kind of locked in a different kind of experience, and things became more clear. The knowledge of dependent origination became less intellectual and more experiential, like being able to see how contact is coming up, being able to see what is the vibration of feeling or experience. And yeah, it was fascinating to go back and read the suttas, because now the suttas started to make sense, you know. The Pali Canon, where you have the words of the Buddha from the earliest Buddhist texts. It's like, oh, this is what they mean by mindfulness, what they talk about when they talk about clear comprehension. Oh, this is what they mean when they talk about contact and feeling and perception and so on. And, you know, the idea of the four stages of awakening became more concretized in my mind, less of a concept and more of like, okay, these are models.

This is a model for us to kind of aspire to, words, whether we experience it or not. Nobody can be for sure, nobody can be for certain, except on our own experience, our own mind, which will inform us: is there more craving left, or is there less craving? Is there no craving left? Is there restlessness still in the mind? Is there agitation still in the mind? Is there still a desire for certain kinds of states of mind? You know, these kinds of things. I think the four stages of awakening are helpful as gauges.

But I think it's important for people to understand that you use them as inspirational tools and a way of engaging, and less of an obsessive, like, thing of, when will I get there, or how will I experience it, or beating ourselves up due to that moral, ethical, spiritual perfectionism, where we feel like we failed. But I want to remind everybody that this process is an ongoing process. It's a process. It's a verb. It's something that will continue. You never stop at it, so to speak. You're continuously evolving, you're continuously changing, and the more you do consistent practice and consistent insight and consistent awareness and mindfulness, the deeper the insights will start to become in your mind, the deeper ingrained they will, which will shift how you experience reality on a day to day basis.

you mentioned about the four stages model and i have some uh you know um caution with this model because uh the sutas are beautiful but they are at the same time are so rigid in uh in describing stuff and i remember uh i remember myself uh because i i had also no not maybe multiple cessation in in this because i it wasn't ready i was just meditating at home so i had one cessation next then the second cessation next month's next cessation and then i just coming to more like having more this experience of cessations uh and in some moment i opened the the book of david jensen of um and the path to nibbana and i said oh with this book um i'm i should be arahant but i i don't feel like uh arahant and i said i started to talk with that crap about this and because i was like are suspicious about some dogma in um in a model like the model is very useful but the experience is something different because we have so many backgrounds

Yes, my background was pretty heavy. I was, like, addicted to anxiety, depression, and it's lots of stuff to let go. And then I realized that the Dhamma I can reveal in a different way for different people, and when I started to teach for the first time I was surprised how different the Dhamma can reveal for different people. And this is, I think, really important to say really loudly to people, that they should trust their insights, and their, oh, I forgot the word, intuition. Because I said this and I'm always telling the same story, that I think doubt is the biggest problem. Like when we have this model of craving, of course doubt is a form of craving. But we, especially in the Western world, have a problem believing in ourselves. We feel underestimated, and we can go in the psychological understanding of this, how we just get it by identification, how people treat us, of myself, parents, and then we just have this self-esteem.

And, to be honest, this is really doubt. This is like doubting all the time, doubting. And that was one of the biggest problems, because I was doubting on the inside, doubting in myself. And really, for today it's funny for me, but I know that it isn't funny for many people, but talking about self-esteem and getting self-esteem, it's great. It's great for me, like, laughing, because I was trying to get self-esteem, and in one moment I understood, on some retreat, and

I was leading a group and I was having lots of thoughts about, I'm a bad teacher, I don't know anything, my awakening is fake, and etc. It was arising, arising, arising, arising, arising, the stuff. And then I was talking with Dark Craft and he told me. I said what I should do to get this self-esteem, and that was like identification. I wasn't able to see, and he said, do you need any self-esteem? And I said, any? Are you talking about the law? Any? And in this moment I just

This is the story I gathered by myself, and then it was like evaporated, never came back. And for now, I know many people probably have a problem with self-esteem and trying to get some good self-esteem. But to be honest, this is the story that we tell ourselves in the mind. Talking about the awakening, or awakening and going in deeper, deeper stages of awakening, is just letting go of the stories. Going, the subtle stories that we have, because some stories we let go, and there's more identification in other stories, and we still keep telling the stories: how I awaken, how I'm not awakened, when I'm in this model, maybe I'm not anagami yet. And I'm trying to get. And the most important fact in meditation is that the problem is not taking the next step. The problem is how to see that I'm trying to get the next step. Just let go. Because the mind, it was a long journey for me to see this. Probably I don't see quite

good for now, but it's easy for me to get to this understanding: that the problem is not to get somewhere, but seeing the conceptualizing mind, that the tension arises. Just relax and soften into experience as it is, and just trust that every moment is awakened. There is no really awakening moments, because we are talking about cessation. We are talking about the beautiful bliss moments. And I've read the book of Eckhart Tolle saying about his awakening and joy, and etc., but really it's the same mechanism. Like the first jhana, we are free from hindrances for a moment, and the joy arises, and we think that this is awakening. Now it's just the experience of the joy. Awakening is now. So you can hear us and check: just in this moment you are awakened. The problem is, oh, I want to get, I want to gain what Delson gets, or what Andrzej gets, or I want to be in a different place. Who is going to, who wants to get there? It's just the movement of my mind. Just relax into an object of meditation, no object of meditation.

Just soften into tension and see what is, and see how the mind reacts, going, oh no, it's, I'm not awakened, oh, I'm awakened. All this movement. And just see: this is it, this is it, nothing more to get. Yeah, that's beautiful, actually. It's such an important reminder, and I want to re-emphasize what you said about that, which is, we think about it from the perspective of jhana. We think about it from the perspective of, oh, I want to get to this specific jhana, I want to get to this specific state. And the moment we let go, we actually get there. So

The double-edged sword is that we want to let people know what awakening feels like. We want to let people know there is something called awakening. We want to inspire them from our own experiences and the experience of other people, and from the suttas. But it's a double-edged sword, because it helps us to be inspired, but on the other side of it, it's like making us be in that sense of, are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet. And a lot of people who practice will say the first cessation was the easiest. It was the second or the third that was more difficult, because now there's a fruit, that's a carrot that I'm chasing after. And the moment we just let go of that, we let go of all ideas, it's much easier for the mind to actually sink into, let's say, cessation, and maybe even have another level of awakening, and so on.

And I just want to touch upon it for the sake of posterity, because maybe people are curious about the four stages, and what are we talking about when we say the four stages. Just to kind of appease the conceptual mind, I do want to touch upon that a little bit. What I'll say is, the four stages of awakening are sotapanna, which means stream entry; sakadagami, which means once-returner; anagami, which means non-returner; and arahant, which actually means the worthy one.

And these models, or these stages, you will start to see a lot in the suttas over a period of time. What's interesting is when you look at the first and second sermon of the Buddha, chronologically speaking. In the first sermon, you see stream entry. Somebody attains stream entry just upon listening to what the Buddha says.

And in the second sermon, all the five that are listening attain arahant. So these intermediate sort of stages of sakadagami and anagami, you see later on in the suttas, chronologically, as distinct stages. So I think even there, while there is a consensus within the Theravadan community about these four stages and what they represent, I believe that in the spirit of the Dhamma, what it really is in terms of the essence, or the essential aspects, is: are you suffering, or are you suffering less, or are you not suffering in this moment? That's it.

Because the same model that can cause inspiration can, because of the nature of the mind that's always looking, looking, looking, cause suffering. And I'm not saying the four stages itself, or the model itself, but the identification with the model, the desire to attain those models, or those stages in the model, is counterproductive and counterintuitive to the freedom that's actually always present, as you rightly said: the awakening, right here, when you relax into this moment. And there's no conceptualization in the moment. That's what's known as nipapancha, the lack of mental proliferation, which is synonymous with nibbana. No fire, no craving in that moment, no desire for anything in that moment. There's a deep, deep, deep, deep contentment

and acceptance of things as they actually are. So going back to the four-stage model and what it represents, the four stages of awakening. So, sotapanna, stream entry, what does that actually mean, traditionally speaking? What that means is that three fetters have weakened and then been cut off. And what that experientially translates to is that the mind experiences a deep-rooted confidence in the practice.

It's like, now I've seen where this practice can take me, and I have unshakable confidence that the practice will take me all the way. There's a deep sense of appreciation and confidence in the Buddha. And there is a deep appreciation for our fellow practitioners, because we are in it together, and there is a Sangha, a community, let's say. Community can be two people, even. It's fine. Two or three people. But there is a coalescing of volition, that we're all in this together, right? So that's sort of the traditional idea. But experientially, what it is, is confidence that this path that I have taken has invariably led me to a sense of peace and joy and gratitude and awakening.

The second part that goes away is the attachment to rites and rituals. So what do we mean by rites and rituals? What are rites and rituals? Well, they could be something like praying to a deity, or lighting up a candlestick or an incense before you sit for practice. Doing these kinds of different things. And the thing is, with regards to the rites and rituals, it's not like you stop doing them. You might start to lose interest in them. You might say, I don't really need to do this for anything. But it just keeps the mind motivated. It keeps the mind uplifted.

But you realize, I could take it or leave it. There's no longer this obsessive compulsive idea that, oh, I was not able to light the lamp today, that means it's going to be a bad meditation, or I'm going to, oh, I didn't do this, so that means I won't get awakening. You've divorced, you've cut away the connection between: if I do this, this is what will happen in terms of this rite or ritual, and therefore I'll have awakening. You've let go of that completely. Because you have seen that the path of insight

of meditation and insight is what takes you there. And the path of meditation and insight is not dependent upon any kind of rites and rituals. You can do it anywhere, at any time. You can do it in a car. You can do it on a train. You can do it on a plane. You could be sitting just in your cabin. You could be out in the park. You could be lying down. There's no rites or rituals there. You can take your mind. Your mind goes wherever you go. So, there's an understanding that the path

the inherent path, happens by me meditating and letting go and experiencing insight. So, that's very important. And then the third aspect of that is the realization that, ah, yeah, this is an impersonal process. We may continue to still take things personally because of the emotional core of whatever the memory or the experience is.

But there is, in the back of the mind, sort of like a software upgrade, in which the operating system has been renewed or refreshed, so that the corrupted fragments in the hard drive that cause us to think, intellectually even, that there is this permanent self, have been neutralized. And so even though I will say I am Delson Armstrong, and I love Indian food, and I love my family, and I enjoy spending time with my friends, and I like to read a good book when I'm on vacation, or I love to do this and that and the other, all of those are different personality traits and aspects of a structure.

But in the back of all of that, there is the knowledge, there is the knowing that that is just impersonal process. My preferences, who I think of myself as, Delson Armstrong, what I do for work, how I relax, all of that is still an impersonal process. There's no central identity or core that I can see or understand at an intellectual and experiential level. So this can be available to people when they meditate and have the insight into this at a deep level. And when they continue on the path, as we may conjecture to see based on the traditional model, they get into what's known as once returner.

And the once returner is somebody who has attenuated, has decreased the level of sensual craving and aversion or ill will that can happen. So such a person may have very deep mindfulness, they have deep collectedness, but there's still irritation. There's still frustration with things. There's still maybe ill will towards someone. Maybe there's still some forgiveness that needs to be done. And there may be slight attachments to sensual things. And so it's like, if I don't get that thing, I feel frustrated. Or I get obsessed around that particular sense-based object. So in this case that weakens, so the mind is able to catch that and be able to say, ah, I noticed that.

Let go. You know, there's some slip-ups, and that's okay. That's completely okay. We should be comfortable with failing. We should be comfortable with making mistakes. The more comfortable we are with failing, the easier it is to master something. That's what it is to be a master. They have failed more times than any of their students. So they are fully aware of that. There is a humility to it. There is a sense of, I don't need to put on a show. I don't need to put on a show for other people or for myself. I just accept things as they are. And as you do this, the mind will do what it needs to do to make adjustments based on the tools of meditation and insight.

And as you get further down, you start to eradicate that sensual craving and aversion. So in my mind, as I would see it, it would mean that you still have preferences for things. You still have, I grew up in India, so I love Indian food. Somebody else who's grown up in Poland, they love Polish food because that's what they're accustomed to. But does that mean they have sensual craving towards it? Not necessarily. It's just that I enjoy these things. Ill will goes away, so there's a greater degree of acceptance of people around us. There may be frustration about things, because we want to get things done and things are not getting done on time, and there's a certain pressure, especially when we're living the lay life. But the idealistic model is there's no more sensual craving, and there's no more ill will.

And then you get to the stage of arahantship, where five different things have fallen away. And that is something known as conceit, restlessness, attachment to jhanas, attachment to formless states, and ignorance. So when we say conceit, it is the mind that is comparing between myself and another, or the mind that's comparing between this experience and another experience. It's the mind that feels that intrinsic sense of, I am better than you, or I'm worse than you, or I'm equal to. And when we see through that, then the mind lets go of performing, lets go of trying to be a good person. It just accepts things as they are. There is a sense of stability

which is independent of any causes and conditions, because conceit is that desire for security in a world that is generally very insecure, the desire for stability in a world that is generally unstable. And we look for stability in different things. We look for stability in a relationship, we look for stability in validation, we look for stability in sex, in drugs, in music, in things that we enjoy, in food, whatever it is. That thing that feels like, ah, you know, I don't have to do anything, I feel safe and I feel secure. But when the mind gets to that stage, idealistically speaking, it doesn't need that anymore. So it remains independent.

and restlessness and remorse. There's no longer any agitation of regret about the past. The past was the past, it's fine. Whatever happened in the past happened in the past, and there's a deep acceptance of it, and there's no worry about the future, what will happen in the future. So the mind remains very, very rooted in the present moment, which continues to flow, which continues to flow all the time.

The attachment to jhanas. This is really, a person sees through the jhanas also as signposts. They're just interesting states to be in that the mind can take refuge in for purposes of relaxing and meditation. Likewise with the formless states, and there's a detachment from them. There's less dependency on them, let's say. And finally, there's the ignorance, what we generally call avijja in Pali, and that means the lack of wisdom.

And I think, practically speaking, what it means is there's a lack of the awareness of the emptiness of the self. There's a lack of mindfulness of the Four Noble Truths. There's a lack of mindfulness of the present moment. That's really what, practically speaking, I see as ignorance. And so in my mind, that's probably what fades away for somebody who becomes an arahant. So these ten fetters are dropped traditionally speaking through these four stages, and I've given this information just for people to understand the model, but it should be understood very importantly

that it's more about, in your mind, am I suffering in this moment, or have I let go of suffering? If you have that as your compass, then it becomes less about an achievement of where am I in that stage or in that model? And it becomes less about that. It becomes more about, do I have peace in this moment? Am I able to deal with the situation in a way that doesn't cause me harm and doesn't cause another harm? Can I be, can I be in my emotions

but not let my emotions take over in a way that causes further distress, further suffering. That's really important to understand, that this is very simple and mundane stuff. This is what you said, because all this practice, it's just seeing if there is any suffering, and if it is, just relax into it, just be okay with whatever arises. And when you were talking about the stages, I got some idea that awakening is like, just understanding that having something is as good as don't want something. If you can just understand that this is it, and it doesn't mean that we don't want to get pleasure on things in life, but that having this is the same as good, well, don't want it, and if you can't get, you can just relax and be okay with it. And this is really mundane stuff, because sometimes we go with and the journey with the opposite state, and we think that this is like we're missing the point, that it's about deep equanimity

and deep equanimity is not indifference because some people and this is also my path and some of my students we have the tendency to to avoid life because oh i'm so enlightened so i don't need anything uh i there is no wanting in me no it's not about you know you have one thing and not the one thing but can you have you can have all these preferences because i many time read about the awakening saying that there is no preferences but no preferences no no other preferences it's it's it's more like having preferences and having no preferences that you have these preferences like the meta level of this understanding i can i can want that thing or you know experience but if i just can allow myself relax and see that if i didn't if i can get this experience on things i can just relax into it and have the same experience be free this is it it's not like avoiding something it's just really be honest with yourself with the present moment not trying to fool yourself because because of these ideas uh that

should be helpful, but sometimes the mind can understand in an opposite way. It's about avoiding. It's about just being really honest. This is the fact that I was spending many years getting to the place of just being really honest. What, because you know, it's not about with someone or somebody, I know you. It's really to just admit that there is this feeling arises, and going just really light about this topic. It's like it's about authenticity, it's about honest, it's about kindness, it's about being yourself. This is funny, because when I thought this topic for the first time, it's anatta, no self, but the best no self is when you are just can be yourself, because there is no tension and no conflicts between, oh, I'm that person, I'm that person, and I'm bad or good or something like that. And when you just can be with all your conflicts, all different intentions, and be okay with it, just, no steps further

Just saying clear, what is that? That's beautiful. I actually, that's a great way of looking at it, right? Just being comfortable with yourself, being, yes, authentic, as you said. Just accepting things as they are also doesn't mean that I suppress my own conditions or I suppress my own emotions. Being in touch with them, being in touch with what's actually going on in your mind, actually is more productive than saying, oh, I shouldn't be this, I shouldn't be doing that, because then you can actually transform that if you need to. You can actually learn from it. You can see, and being, as you say, honest with yourself means when you see the blind spots being exposed, not withdrawing from them, but rather leaning into them and seeing them and saying, okay, this is who I am in this moment, this is what I'm experiencing in this moment, and finding the suffering in that, relaxing into it, and just in that process, things evaporate, the tension, the tightness, it evaporates, and there's a greater degree of intuition. We use that word intuition,

which allows us to see things in a way that isn't filtered by that sense of I, which is as objective as possible within this subjective mind and body complex. So I think we can stop here. I think we've had a good sort of journey of understanding our own interpretations of awakening and looking at the traditional model. And I think you did a great service to people by saying accepting things, being honest with yourself, being authentic. I think that's what people should take away from this. Yes, yes, because this is a realization that I got all up in the end of all these concepts and practice.

is just simple: be yourself, be honest, be kind. I know it sounds simple, it's easy to set simple, but really it is just kindness, honesty, and it's just being emotionally mature and just a little crazy too. Great, great, wonderful. Andrzej, yeah, we'll stop here and we'll take up a new topic another time. So thank you. Yeah, thank you. Wonderful talking.