Epistemic status: pretty confident. Based on several years of meditation experience combined with various pieces of Buddhist theory as popularized in various sources, including but not limited to books like The Mind Illuminated, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, and The Seeing That Frees; also discussions with other people who have practiced meditation, and scatterings of cognitive psychology papers that relate to the topic. The part that I’m the least confident of is the long-term nature of enlightenment; I’m speculating on what comes next based on what I’ve experienced, but have not actually had a full enlightenment. I also suspect that different kinds of traditions and practices may produce different kinds of enlightenment states.
While I liked Valentine’s recent post on kensho and its follow-ups a lot,...
Yeah, some Buddhist traditions do make those claims. The teachers and practitioners who I'm the most familiar with and trust the most tend to reject those models, sometimes quite strongly (e.g. Daniel Ingram here). Also near the end of his life, Culadasa came to think that even though it might at one point have seemed like he had predominantly positive emotions in the way that some schools suggested, in reality he had just been repressing them with harmful consequences.
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