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This surprised me, because there are 2+ thoroughly-awakened people in my social circle. And that's just in meatspace. Online, I've interacted with a couple others. Plus I met someone with Stream Entry at Less Online last year. That brings the total to a minimum of 5, but it's probably at least 7+.
How do you tell? How would I discern someone else's state of enlightenment? Or my own?
I am not asking out of scepticism. A problem I have understanding the whole meditation/enlightenment/jhanas/arahant/stream-entry/QRI/etc. collection of ideas is that despite trying, I have never been able to find myself on the maps of this territory that people present. I have experienced no unusual states of consciousness from the various suggested activities, and no intimations of being in the presence of someone who had something real to teach.
This is indeed a hard problem, hence why this stuff is so illegible. First I'll define how I use these terms.
- Meditation is sitting quietly and stabilizing your mind. (Technically-speaking, some people consider zazen meditation-adjacent and therefore technically not meditation. This distinction is not relevant to this post.)
- Jhanas are altered states of consciousness characterized by stability of attention. There are other altered states of consciousness relevant to Awakening, such as mushin.
- Stream Entry (aka Awakening) is the first big checkpoint on the meditative path. It's when a large chunk of your suffering drops away permanently because of a fundamental shifting in how your consciousness works. Under Zen dogma this happens suddenly, but I believe it can happen gradually.
- Arahant has a traditional Therevada definition that I don't use. In this post, I use Daniel Ingram's Revised Fourth Path mode. I feel the term is unwieldy due to the conflicting definitions. I used it for ease of readability, so that I didn't have to write "person with the fruit of the meditative path" over and over again.
- Enlightenment refers to someone who is perfectly realized. It doesn't really exist in our physical universe, but it's useful to aspire to, the way a Carnot Engine or "a perfectly beautiful painting" points in a useful direction. (Note: I do sometimes use "enlightenment" in other ways—just not in this post.)
- I don't know what you mean by QRI. I don't think you're referring to the Qualia Research Institute.
The first thing to understand is that altered states of consciousness like jhanas are instrumental. I mean, they're useful and pleasant, but they're somewhat orthogonal to altered traits. The Powers don't count as insight either. They're just a side-effect.
What matters are stages of insight. Whether these are discrete "stages" or a continuous process is not important. Sometimes these things happen suddenly, which makes them obvious to you; other times they sneak up on you gradually, over a period of time. That's why Awakened people sometimes don't even know they're Awakened. (And that's not even counting the rare people getting Awakened just randomly outside of a mystic context.)
Statistically-speaking, if you haven't done 100+[1] hours of meditation and/or had an obvious transformative experience that permanently altered your conscious perception of reality, then you're probably neurotypical, in this respect.
It's much easier to discern your own state of meditative insight than someone else's. Here are a few examples of signs you can use. All of them are difficult to communicate, since they're so non-normative. Do not take this list as authoritative.
- 85% or more of your suffering falls away suddenly. It's been a year since then and it still hasn't come back. (This can happen more than once, with compounding effects.)
- You no longer feel that your "self" is in a privileged position against the other stuff in your consciousness.
- You accidentally touch a hot stove and don't feel any pain. It's been months since your sensory inputs have congealed into pain.
- Your conscious perception of time and space break down such that they are directly perceived as mental constructs rather than immutable aspects of external reality.
Except now we have a problem, because the moment I list things like this, people who read the list will (mis?)report these experiences, even if they haven't had them. This happened to one of my teachers. Kriyas somehow entered the pop culture and then his students began reporting them. Which is stupid because kriyas are useful only as a metric of concentrative progress, and this wrecked the utility of kriyas as a metric of concentrative progress.
How would I discern someone else's state of enlightenment?
This is even harder than discerning your own level of insight. The most important thing is alignment of incentives—namely, to be in a community where nobody is incentivized to misreport. At my zendo, nobody ever talks about their own level of attainment except in one-on-one private dokusan with the head teacher. (You can talk about your own hinderances.) This isn't because there's a hard rule against it; it's just counterproductive, like eating junk food at Fat Camp.
But just because it's counterproductive to state your own level of attainment doesn't mean it's not useful to get a rough idea other peoples' level of attainment. I consider Zuiko an arahant because of how she talks about (or, more accurately, doesn't talk about) her health problems. Zuiko's hands are failing due to arthritis, but it doesn't seem to bother her. She pays more attention to my new scooter helmet.
…no intimations of being in the presence of someone who had something real to teach.
There's a autobiography Reports from the Zen Wars: The Impossible Rigor of a Questioning Life by Steve Antinoff. The author notices that a specific Zen Master is highly awakened and wants to become a disciple so he can be the same way. The book is a tragedy, because the author looks externally (to the Zen Master) for teaching, instead of to his own conscious experience.
I often encounter claims that it can thousands of hours of meditation to hit Stream Entry. For me, it took me significantly less than one thousand hours. ↩︎
Please do not torture any arahants without their consent lol.
It's a generalized pain transcendence, so there's no reason it would work any different for capsaicin than for heat. To my knowledge, science experiments studying this often use heat, because the threshold for intolerable pain is below the threshold for tissue damage.
1You accidentally touch a hot stove and don't feel any pain. It's been months since your sensory inputs have congealed into pain.
Is this something you have achieved? Could you give more details about what this means?
- If you touch a hot stove will you reflexively remove your hand?
- If I inflict on you what to most people would be extreme physical pain (that is not physically damaging) (capsaicin?) would this be at worst a mild annoyance to you?
- Do you ever take painkillers? Would you in an extreme situation like a medical operation?
Is this something you have achieved?
Months? Maybe. But I failed the year-and-a-day test today. I have a headache right now because I'm sick. It is causing me pain. Daniel Ingram has reported many of his attainments going out the window too when he was much more seriously sick.
Could you give more details about what this means?
Here's an analogy: When you meditate in full lotus position, it's common for your legs to fall asleep, which produces pain. It is not uncommon for meditators who concentrate their attention on the pain in their legs to "dissolve their pain into vibrations". The criteria I stated has this become one's default state, instead of a just special altered state of consciousness.
If you touch a hot stove will you reflexively remove your hand?
Yes. I recently accidentally touched the handle of a cast iron pot I had left in the oven. It was this experience that caused me to list that the hot stove example. For the instant before I reflexively removed my hand, I felt the raw sensation of the skin on my finger(s) burning, instead of the abstraction layer of pain blocking it out.
If I inflict on you what to most people would be extreme physical pain (that is not physically damaging) (capsaicin?) would this be at worst a mild annoyance to you?
It was eating a spicy meal that I noticed something weird was going on. My eyes were tearing and I was too incapacitated to do anything productive, but I didn't notice any suffering attached to my sensory inputs—at least in the course sense that such an experience would neurotypically produce suffering. That abstraction layer of pain wasn't blocking my direct perception of my sensory inputs. I just sat down on my big beanbag chair until it was over, but the sensations didn't cause me suffering the way pain might. It was an inconvenience.
Do you ever take painkillers?
Sometimes. I haven't for a while, but that has nothing to do with meditation. I have just been in good health and the side effects of painkillers scare me, so I don't take them unless necessary.
Would you [take painkillers] in an extreme situation like a medical operation?
Probably.
1A quiz! (I am jokingly taking this in exactly the spirit you warned against.)
85% or more of your suffering falls away suddenly. It's been a year since then and it still hasn't come back. (This can happen more than once, with compounding effects.)
No, I've never had anything like this. My attitude is more, shit happens, I deal with it, and move on. (Because what's the alternative? Not dealing with it. Which never works.)
You no longer feel that your "self" is in a privileged position against the other stuff in your consciousness.
Does experiencing my "self" as including all that stuff count? I am guessing not. I have a strong sense of my own continuing presence.
You accidentally touch a hot stove and don't feel any pain. It's been months since your sensory inputs have congealed into pain.
Sounds dangerous. It was certainly painful when I closed a car door on my thumbnail a few months ago. (The new thumbnail may have grown back in another few months.)
Your conscious perception of time and space break down such that they are directly perceived as mental constructs rather than immutable aspects of external reality.
Way beyond me.
I seem to score a zero on this.
I'm sure I've notched up some 100s of hours of meditation, but spread over a rather large number of years, and rarely a daily practice.
shit happens, I deal with it, and move on. (Because what's the alternative? Not dealing with it.
1Hahaha!
Does experiencing my "self" as including all that stuff count? I am guessing not. I have a strong sense of my own continuing presence.
I'm not just talking about your thoughts and feelings. When I say "everything in your consciousness", I mean [what you perceive as] the Sun, other people, mountains in the distance, the dirt on your floor, etc.
You accidentally touch a hot stove and don't feel any pain. It's been months since your sensory inputs have congealed into pain.
Sounds dangerous.
Not really, unless you plan to light yourself on fire to protest something. It's still unpleasant, and the reactive instinct is still there.
I seem to score a zero on this…. I'm sure I've notched up some 100s of hours of meditation….
I think I hit this stuff with fewer hours of meditation than is typical, and that most people require more hours on the cushion. Also, it depends on what kind of meditation you do. Not everything branded as "meditation" is equally effective at jailbreaking the Matrix. Whether you're doing it badly is illegible too.
I'm not just talking about your thoughts and feelings. When I say "everything in your consciousness", I mean [what you perceive as] the Sun, other people, mountains in the distance, the dirt on your floor, etc.
To me, the Sun etc. are out there. My perceptions of them are in here. As anyone with consciousness of abstraction knows at a gut level, the perception is not the thing that gave rise to that perception. My perceptions are a part of myself. The Sun is not.
I don't know what you mean by QRI. I don't think you're referring to the Qualia Research Institute.
I am. I group it with all that other stuff, but perhaps you wouldn't.
That makes sense. I was misunderstanding your list as "a list of meditation-related things that are difficult to define", and got confused, because it is easy to define what the Qualia Research Institute is.
The school I found that seemed most serious (and whose stuff also worked for me) held the position that these things basically don't work for some people unless or until they have certain spontaneous experiences. No one knows what causes them. Some people report that they had the experiences on psychedelics, but no one knows if that's really causal or their propensity to take psychedelics was also caused by this upstream thing. I don't think there's much point in trying to force it, I don't think it works.
Note: Richard_Kennaway's quote differs from my post because I miscounted. My original post read "That brings the total to a minimum of 5, but it's probably at least 7+." I changed it to "That brings the total to a minimum of 4, but it's probably at least 6+." That's because the woman at Less Online who merely had Stream Entry doesn't yet count as "thoroughly-awakened".
oh ok you said "has obvious adhd" like you're inferring it from a few minutes observation of her behavior, not that she told you she has adhd. in general no you can't get an accurate diagnosis by observing someone, you need to differential diagnosis hypomania, hyperthyroidism, autism, substance abuse, caffeine, sleep deprivation, or just enjoying her hobby, plus establish whatever behavior is adhdlike happens across a variety of domains going back some time.
