Enlightenment AMA

[-]Richard_Kennaway4mo*3813

Suppose someone was, unknown to themselves, "enlightened" as you and the people you mention are using the word, but not through any practice thought of or labelled as devoted to achieving "enlightenment". They are not aware that they have achieved anything: it is not a thing for them, it is their everyday state. Then they come upon people preaching various paths to something they call "enlightenment", and some claiming to have achieved the goal of these paths. How might this presumptively enlightened person (sans le nom) locate himself on these maps?

ETA: See also, a draft I wrote a while ago but never published until now.

[-]Mo Putera4mo150

Not exactly the same, but your question reminded me of Aella's You Will Forget, You Have Forgotten:

I didn’t realize that what I’d done to myself was noteworthy or unusual – I sort of assumed other people must be doing this a lot, because of course I wasn’t the only person who’d tried acid - all this was no big deal. As far as I was concerned, I existed in a vacuum. I hadn’t read any texts, followed any rules or traditions, undergone any training, or talked whatsoever with any spiritual teachers. I had no calibration of my experience with the rest of the world – until a few years later I talked about my experience at a dinner party and people responded with shock, which was a sudden and strong reframe for me. I was different from other people, apparently, in a much bigger way than I’d thought. This shook me up.
Once this whole thing became A Story, it started getting even weirder. I wrote about it on reddit and got a huge amount of attention. People started referring to me as the Acid Queen. Opinions were divided – some looked to me with awe and asked for advice, while still others explained how I was infantile or unbalanced, and that you can’t get very far with LSD, that only medita

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2Viliam4mo

Related Aella's article: Permanent Mental Effects from LSD. Relevant parts:

6Viliam4mo

This sounds interesting. The "independently enlightened" person would probably be unfamiliar with the Buddhist lingo, so their self-description would not resemble the typical ways. It is possible that they would have a problem putting their experience in words. Then again, if they could, we could get a description free of the Buddhist lingo. Maybe even their experience would be different. Like, maybe there is a thing called "enlightenment", but there are multiple ways to get there, and traditional Buddhist way includes some steps that are not strictly necessary. That person might find a different way (perhaps with different unnecessary components).

4lsusr4mo

People who stumble into awakening on their own very much do have a problem putting their experience into words because they're trying to communicate a subjective experience that most of the people they talk to have no base of reference for. Once anecdote I've read had a woman describe the experience as being "bigger". I interpret this to mean that the non-self objects in her consciousness no longer feel like "non-self" because the self/non-self duality has evaporated. There are indeed different ways to get to awakening. Traditional Buddhist methods are not the only effective means.

5lsusr4mo

While rare, people do stumble upon awakening / stream entry time to time. At least some of these people (there's no way to know how many) get confused, go looking for help, and eventually find their way to Zen. That said, I've never heard of someone being born into this condition. As to your actual question: There are a few different types of maps. Some kinds of maps would apply to your hypothetical person. Others wouldn't. * Trait-based maps based on questions like "do you feel a sense of self?" would apply to the person. We could use these maps to locate the person's stage of awakening. Here is my favorite trait-based map. * Insight cycle maps would not apply to the person, because insight cycle maps are about the process of becoming awakened and a person who was always awakened need not have gone through the process. Here is an example of a simple insight cycle map and a complicated insight cycle map. * Direction-based maps like "just sit" are more useful as a compass than a map because they don't tell you where you are—just what direction to go.

7niplav3mo

I didn't find any case of someone being born with it, but there's something called athymhormic syndrome which sounds a lot like something like enlightenment, and is acquired by having a stroke or injury. See also Shinzen Young on the syndrome.

6JBlack4mo

How would they, and therefore you, know?

4lsusr4mo

It can be difficult to figure out how you differ from other people due to internal mental experiences, but it can be done. I'm autistic, for example, and it wasn't until my late 20s that I pieced together exactly how I differed from the baseline. People who are highly awakened have small tells if you know what to look for. One woman I know, for example, has her hands failing from arthritis. She barely talks about it. I've never even seen a trace of hurt or tension on her face.

3Marcio Díaz3mo

When awakening happens, there’s no feeling of having achieved anything, it's simply natural. Others, too, appear enlightened. Only when you observe and speak with people do you notice they take themselves to be something they are not: a separate self.

2Richard_Kennaway3mo

What does that look like? When I think of the interactions I have with people, face-to-face even, I don't know what the signs would be that "they take themselves to be ... a separate self" or its opposite. I can appreciate people's intelligence, their creativity, their initiative, their practical wisdom, their practical skills, and so on, or the lack of these qualities, but I draw a blank on "they take themselves to be a separate self". I don't know what the opposite of that would be. I mean, here I am sitting at home typing this, and until I click SUBMIT, no-one knows I'm doing any such thing. There's separation, distinction from others, right there. I am aware of thinking these thoughts and hitting the keys, and aware of being aware of all that, and so on. What else is that but "self"? I have met people who seemed to have no or a very limited introspective capability: that is what the words "not being a separate self" suggest to me, and it looks to me like a deficiency, not a state to seek out.

5Marcio Díaz3mo

Distinctions appear like ripples on one lake. The extra move is the claim, "this ripple is me and those ripples are not." That added ownership is what "separate self" points to, not a facial sign but a subtle tightening around experience. How does it show up? As the reflex to defend an image, to compare, to grasp at praise and recoil from blame. Intelligence, creativity, and skill still shine; what changes is the felt need to protect a center that supposedly owns them. When that claim relaxes, the same capacities move with less friction. Privacy, typing alone, unseen by others, does not prove separateness; it is just a pattern inside one field. Yesterday I found out about Korzybski; funny to find you wrote an article about him. "The map is not the territory" fits exactly here: the label "me" is a map laid over the territory of experience. Boundaries remain as useful conventions for coordination, not as absolute edges in what is. This contraction is felt first as suffering: unease, fear, shame, anger. Scaled up, many such contractions synchronize into collective stories of scarcity and threat; they harden into identities, borders, and eventually wars. The one body mistakes its own limbs for enemies, and pain multiplies. The "opposite" of a separate self is not blankness or poor introspection; it is clearer seeing. Before the thought "I am doing this" arrives, sensations, thoughts, and keystrokes are already present, unauthored. Then a thought lands and says "mine." Noticing the gap between raw appearing and the late-arriving claim is the whole point. This recognition does not remove persons from practical life; it removes the confusion of taking the mask as the substance. Reactivity softens, care becomes simpler, and action continues: typing happens, choices happen, without the extra weight of a fictional owner, with responsibility felt as love moving through the whole.

[-]Leon Lang4mo225

Thanks for doing this AMA!

1. In what sense is enlightenment permanent? E.g., will a truly enlightened person never suffer again? Or is it a weaker claim of the form "once one learns the motion of enlightenment, it can be repeated to eliminate suffering at will"? Or something else entirely?

2. I've read Shinzen Young's "The Science of Enlightenment". He describes how in some intermediate stage, he started hallucinating giant insects in his daily life. Have you made similar experiences? How do you interpret them? Do you consider such experiences dangerous? Are such experiences distinct from schizophrenia in a relevant way?

3. As far as I understand, enlightened people don't cling to a specific reality anymore, but they may still have strong desires. Is this your typical experience? How do you relate to your desires? Is it compatible to be (a) enlightened, (b) have a desire that leads to amoral actions when acted upon them, and (c) acting on those desires?

4. Is any amount of pain/anxiety/sadness/anger/etc. compatible with being in a state of zero suffering? Is zero suffering in practice harder to maintain for higher levels of these displeasures, or will a once-enlightened person not fin... (read more)

[-]lsusr4mo*110

Thanks for asking such great questions!

1.1 In what sense is enlightenment permanent? E.g., will a truly enlightened person never suffer again?

Daniel Ingram reports once temporarily losing his insights and ending up back in a state of suffering during a bout of severe sickness.

As for "never" suffering again, it is important to understand that awakening drops suffing by perhaps an order of magnitude, but not to zero. There are many different kinds of suffering. Each awakening cures one or more kinds of suffering (usually the most salient ones), but not all of them. It's like cleaning a room. After you throw away the junk, there's still dusting to do.

1.2 Or is it a weaker claim of the form "once one learns the motion of enlightenment, it can be repeated to eliminate suffering at will"? Or something else entirely?

This is a tricky quesion, so I'm going to give a simplified answer.

In the case of stream entry via Zen, first you learn to eliminate suffering at will. Then, after you put in the work, that temporary altered state eventually becomes a permament altered trait.

I've read Shinzen Young's "The Science of Enlightenment". He describes how in some intermediate stage, he sta

... (read more)

5Said Achmiz4mo

When you say this, are you talking about frequency? Duration? Intensity? Something else? What are the units here? (Assuming that we’re talking about something other than frequency or duration, for which the units are, presumably, the obvious ones.) What are the different kinds of suffering? How many awakenings are there? Are you awakened in all the ways, or only some?

3lsusr4mo

All of them, but more importantly I (as well as normal people) had a baseline suffering that can be removed. Metaphor time: For most of my life I've had trouble wearing socks because I find them too uncomfortable. Then I discovered seamless bamboo-rayong socks for diabetics. Now I can comfortably wear socks. And then I discovered that there exists bamboo-rayon shirts, pants and underwear too! Awakening feels like that. According to people who have gone into deep jhanas, all conscious experience contains an element of suffering. But when explainint this stuff it's easier to point to course feelings like anger, hatred, selfishness, separation from other people, and anything less than universal love toward everyone and everything. The exact number and order (probably) differs from person to person. I've lost count of how may awakenings I've been through. Maybe something like 5-8, depending on how you count? This has been happening for years and my last one was <2 months ago, so it's very unlikely I'm at the end of this road.

3Bunthut3mo

I think getting rid of the voice in my head temporarily is very easy. Trivially, by replacing it with a loud repeating dum dum dum sound in my head, though Im not sure that counts. But I've also just done 30s of no auditory imagination while looking around in my non-blank room, and it took maybe 5s to get there. Is this one of those buddhist terms of art where it actually means way more than a layperson would reasonably think it does?

8lsusr4mo

It's like the first time you've ever tasted chocolate, ever felt love, ever had your heart broken, all at once, and then you die, and you can never tell anyone what you've seen, or how precious life is, unless they've seen it themselves. Then you go to work and pay your taxes.

[-]Samuel Hapák4mo173

So, I am utterly confused about this whole Buddhist thing. It seems to me that the main goal is to stop existing, essentially die but really truly die, so that person stops suffering. At least that was my understanding of what Nirvana is trying to be. Is that correct or wrong?

Also, I notice a strong obsession with suffering. Yeah, I do suffer here and there, but I don’t make a big deal out of it. I am not even sure I would want all the pain and suffering gone permanently from my life. It feels to me that some discomfort is actively needed in life at least to serve as a backdrop to pleasure. Am I crazy for thinking so?

2lsusr4mo

You've got the death thing right. The homunculus in your brain dies, but the brain keeps on functioning. This feels so much like death that it is sometimes called the Great Death. (You may enjoy this conversation thread.) When you dissolve discomfort you also dissolve pleasure (for some definition of pleasure). You're not crazy about that. What's left are experiences devoid of judgment, like biting into an apple for the first time, or getting suddenly splashed with water when you're not expecting it but don't mind either. As for the obsession with suffering, I think that's actually an obsession. Instead, it's a more accurate model of the world. Consider temperature and heat. Before physics, it made sense to think of heat and cold as opposites. You could have more cold and less heat. But now we know that heat is a thing, but cold isn't really a thing. Cold is just the absense of heat. That's why the Kelvin temperature scale has an absolute cold but no absolute hot. Buddhists talk about experience in terms of suffering for the same reason physics write equations using heat (Q) instead of cold (−Q).

8Adele Lopez4mo

Would your pre-interest-in-buddhism-self have felt cool about this? Did you previously have something like an order-of-magnitude more suffering than pleasure such that this was worth it to you? Otherwise, I have a hard time imagining why someone would want this; what was your reason? Or was it only something you found out once you got there?

8lsusr4mo

Absolutely. I've always been a happy person, but in a tense way. Now I can be at peace while being sad too. That said, people tend to get into this stuff when they've hit rock bottom—and I'm no exception. In case that answer doesn't suffice, I'm going to answer your question with metaphor. I used to have a messy home. On rare occasions I would organize it. Even after organizing it, my home was still unpleasant to look at. Then I got into extreme minimalism and threw away most of my belongings. Now the messiest my minimalist room can get is has less clutter than the cleanest my belonging-filled room could get. Pleasure is like the feeling I got after organizing a cluttered room. It's much better to have a room that cannot get extremely messy in the first place.

[-]Tomás B.4mo*178

What if The Gift of Pain is true of mental suffering? Does being liberated from mental suffering prevent people from adjusting/protecting themselves in healthy ways?

I met one prominent rationalist figure who stuck me as very obviously a psychopath. He claimed to be enlightened. Is enlightenment incompatible with psychopathy?

If enlightenment is not incompatible with psychopathy, it is said psychopaths don't feel empathy for their future self. I would imagine this frees them of those forms or mental suffering in which you embody the pain (in the present) of hypothetical future yous. Are psychopaths born partially enlightened? Does it only count if achieved through mental introspection? Brandon Sanderson is famously incapable of feeling mental pain. Is he enlightened?

Many people who claim to be enlightened behave remarkably similar to how they did before they became enlightened. I had complete aphantasia until I did LSD at 18. I concluded from this that the visualizing part of my brain was there the whole time but was not part of that slice of myself I called "I". One theory of what enlightenment is I have had is it is opposite of what happened to me on LSD, that of de-identification with those parts of one's mind that can suffer. Is this true? If true, is the suffering really gone?

8lsusr4mo

Meditators often describe "dissolving pain into vibrations". When this happens, you still get the sensory inputs that (normally) cause pain. You still take action to prevent the damage they cause to your body. You just don't create the conscious experience of pain-suffering. I feel it's like surgery. In the immediate aftermath there can be a vulnerability period, but after it integrates you're in a healthier place. I don't know, but considering the base rates of "enlightenment is rare" and "psychopaths often lie", I would be skeptical of his claim to enlightenment. Probably the psychopath is wrong but not lying. Psychopaths can do things without noticibly harming themselves that normal people can't, and this person is probably mistaking that for enlightenment. According to Steven Byrnes model of awakening, awakening ought to be possible for psychopaths. How such people would behave, and whether awakening would affect their psychopathy, I have no idea. Some people end up awakened without formal introspective practice, so "no" it doesn't only count if achieved through mental introspective. There's more to it than not feeling mental pain. Given that, plus base rates, Brandon Sanderson is probably not enlightened. Identification is a cause of suffering, but is not the only cause of suffering. Consequently ending identification eliminates identification-originated sufffering, but not other kinds of suffering. The suffering is really gone. You're not just disassociating from it.

5clone of saturn4mo

You seem to be missing the point here. Presumably we have the capacity to suffer because it facilitated our survival somehow. How are you so sure you don't need to hear the message suffering was sending you?

[-]Kaj_Sotala3mo120

You seem to be missing the point here. Presumably we have the capacity to suffer because it facilitated our survival somehow. How are you so sure you don't need to hear the message suffering was sending you?

FWIW, my current model is that "meditation removes your capacity to suffer" is not quite right. Rather, suffering is an error signal indicating that something like a prediction error is happening. Meditation reduces suffering by causing those prediction errors to get fixed.

You know how, when trying to understand a complicated phenomenon, it's often too hard to start out with a full model of it? So you start with one that has lots of simplifying assumptions, and then see if you could gradually drop those?

I think that it's similar with the brain. Evolution has hardwired it with some priors about the nature of reality that help bootstrap its reality- and self-modeling and motivation. Those assumptions are reasonably close to correct, but somewhat off. Among other things, what lsusr calls "desire" seems to involve creating temporary false beliefs. E.g., if you think "ugh, I really want this boring day to be over", I think that is on some level implemented by the brain trying to over... (read more)

7clone of saturn3mo

I'm still not convinced it's a good idea to get enlightened, but thanks for the detailed explanation.

1Bunthut3mo

According to predictive coding, believing you'll take an action just is how you take it, and believing you'll achieve a goal just is how you intend it. This would mean if you desire more than you can achieve, you experience prediction error, but if you desire less than you can achieve, you just underachieve with no psychological warning.

3lsusr4mo

Because suffering isn't a raw sensory input. It's downstream of raw sensory inputs. I still get the raw sensory inputs.

5Said Achmiz4mo

Why do you believe that only raw sensory inputs are adaptive or have some evolved function? That seems extremely improbable—indeed, it contradicts large swaths of what we know from evolutionary psychology.

2lsusr4mo

Of course not. Lots of neural action beyond raw sensory inputs has a raw function.

1rsaarelm4mo

We could try to figure this out by teaching lots of people to get rid of suffering and then watching them to see if it fucks them up.

[-]Huera4mo164

[Re-asking a question i phrased awkwardly]
You have previously described your pre-enlightenment state as being full of suffering you were unaware of. Do you have externally legible reasons to think that your current perspective is correct and the perspective of your past-self about his experience is not?
Or, how a different commenter phrased it:

You're like:
T=0: "I'm fine"
T=1: Meditation
T=2: "Oh, I actually wasn't fine, it was a torment!"
Hypothesis 1: You suffered but somehow this information never arrived to verbal thoughts
Hypothesis 2: You didn't suffer, but after T=1 your perception changed and now the same things make you suffer.
Why do you think it's the first one that is correct?

8Kaj_Sotala4mo

Not a conclusive answer, but I've had cases where I've gone "oh I didn't realize how bad I was feeling" for more mundane reasons. Like not realizing how tired I was before I managed to take a nap, not realizing how hungry I was before I got some food, and not realizing how uncomfortable I found some social situation before I got out of it. It seems like a default tendency of the mind to suppress awareness of discomfort it can't currently do anything about.

5Huera4mo

Thanks, I think this could be what is happening. But: 1. Your examples that illustrate confusion/mistakes about one's mental state are, how to put it, small-scale. I feel like there's a huge leap between "Sometimes a person doesn't realize how tired they are for a few hours (maybe days)" or "Some fraction of people who get depressed don't realize it for months (maybe years)" and "Basically everyone's default state is suffering they're unaware of, and they don't realize this during their whole lives". Maybe you could come up with examples where misconceptions about one's mental state are more severe, longer-lasting or more common than in my depression example, but I think there would probably be a huge gap between that and the "default state is suffering" hypothesis. 2. My understanding is that the typical reported experience of high school is mostly negative valence, but as people grow up they start to look back on that time in their lives ever more fondly. I don't have a great model of how this works psychologically, but, when it happens, I'm inclined to think that the changed perspective is wrong. That the high-school-version of a person was more correct about his mental state than the current-version. All of which is to say that when one thinks "My past-self was unaware (or mistaken) of important parts of their conscious experience", in most cases, this is correct, but in the high school and constant-suffering cases, it seems likely to me that one is wrong.

1tslarm4mo

Are you confident that those are cases where you were actually having the feeling, but were unaware of it? I think sometimes it's more a case of "my body needed [food/sleep], and this explains why I was feeling [irritable/weak/distracted/sad]", rather than literally "I was feeling [hungry/tired] but didn't notice it".

6Kaj_Sotala4mo

I'd say it was something like "feeling [weak/confused/etc.] but having temporarily forgotten what not having those feelings is like, so thinking that I feel normal".

2tslarm4mo

I'm also interested in an answer to this question. I read the exchange here, and I found lsusr's response very reasonable in isolation, but not really an answer to the main question: if past-you didn't think he was suffering, and present-you disagrees, why should we take the side of present-you? To me, it's natural to trust hindsight in some domains, but when it comes to the question of what you were directly experiencing at a specific time, the most natural explanation of your changed opinion is that you either have adopted a new definition of 'suffering' or are recalling your memories through a new lens which is distorting your view of what you were actually experiencing in the moment. (I think the latter is quite common, e.g. when we nostalgically look back on a time that now represents hope and excitement, but actually consisted largely of frustration and anxiety.)

2lsusr4mo

What do you mean by "externally legible"? "Understandable by someone who has not had the experience" or "provable, despite being a difficullt-to-verify internal mental state"?

5Huera4mo

[EDIT Actually, nevermind. After reading answers downstream of this comment, it's clear to me that when I asked about 'suffering' I meant something quite different from your conception of suffering. I'm no longer confused about why you would say that non-enlightenment is constant suffering, but I don't see why it would be worth getting rid of.] The latter option would be a very tall order. What I meant was that among Hypothesis 1. strikes me as very implausible a priori, for reasons I mentioned in my answer to Kaj. So, do you have an argument that it is not as unlikely as I think, that would be, indeed, "Understandable by someone who has not had the experience".

[-]Rauno Arike4mo130

I have a fairly uncommon psychology, well-described by the following quote by Tyler Cowen:

You know, I feel I’ve been very fortunate in life and I think I have about the most even temperament of anyone I know. I literally don’t have unhappy days. It would be hard to say I’ve had zero in life, but I think I’m almost weirdly never unhappy, in a way that’s good for productivity but maybe almost inhuman and to be a little bit feared or looked down upon or not thought well of.

In other words, I don't feel like I suffer (by my definition of suffering, which is mainly about the feeling of pain and discomfort) almost at all, and my current self doesn't endorse moving toward a state where the little suffering I experience disappears at the expense of no longer feeling pleasure, which you mentioned is a side effect of enlightenment (though again, our definitions of pleasure may differ). Should I nevertheless meditate and try to attain enlightenment? I can imagine several responses from you:

Given my psychology, striving toward awakening might indeed not be worth it, but it is for most other people.
My definition of suffering should be different, and dissolving this other kind of suffering is mor

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8lsusr4mo

You seem like you're doing fine. There are many potentiallyl worthwhile things to do in the world, and sitting quietly with your eyes closed is just one of them.

[-]Said Achmiz4mo135

What do you mean by “suffering”, exactly? Could you describe what, specifically, it is that used to happen to you, but no longer does?

7Vaniver4mo

A related question is "what things might be mistaken for suffering, but are not suffering?" If I find myself in turmoil over a decision, does that mean I haven't achieved 'stream entry', or is that a common occurence post stream entry?

4lsusr4mo

The feeling you get when you accidentally touch a hot object may be mistaken for suffering but is not suffering. It depends what you mean by "turmoil". Hitting stream entry doesn't mean you always know the best course of action to take in all circumstances. As a degenerate example, no amount of meditation will teach you the optimal design for a rocket engine.

5Welton Rodrigo Torres Nascimento4mo

The Buddhist idea of suffering is somewhat different from the current idea of suffering. For an occidental person suffering probably means physical pain or mental discomfort (as in my dad died, or my neck hurts). For the Buddhist, suffering is a more broad concept. Thinking your life will be better if you make more money is suffering. Generally speaking the notion that your life or the world ought to be different from what it is (even if what it is feels obviously wrong), is suffering. So the first stage of the thing is the realization (the insight) that, actually, (in a way that makes little sense right now but is completely obvious then) everything is just fine. I’m not enlightened (and probably have no idea what it actually feels like in deeper stages), but have temporarily experienced this first insight myself. It’s bollocks, hard to understand when it’s gone but something sticks with you. It brings the idea that what you really need to be happy is not a change outside in the world, but a change of perspective in you. In other words, I now know that nothing needs to change so that I can be completely satisfied with my life. It’s already perfect the way it is (hint: from a normal perspective is it NOT). All I have to do to be perfectly happy is to attain this perspective again, so I stopped thinking that my life will be better when X happen. It releases a lot of anxiety and make life a much better experience. All I have to do is regain that perspective, but unfortunately I have no idea how it happened in first place (inside a bus on Buenos Aires) and how to reproduce it (going back to BA didn’t worked out lol).

5Said Achmiz4mo

This seems more like referring to a completely different thing, which is not suffering, but calling it “suffering” for some reason. Are you saying that when Buddhists (et al) say that “enlightenment”/“awakening”/etc. reduces or removes “suffering”, they in fact mean that it reduces, not “suffering” as the word is used by normal people in ordinary English language, but rather this different thing (“the notion that your life or the world ought to be different from what it is”)? If so, then saying that “enlightenment” (etc.) reduces or removes “suffering” seems like an incredibly misleading thing to say!

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo*100

It's all bad transactions.

"Suffering" is what translators chose to use for "dukkha", which literally means "bad axel" as in a rough axel that makes it hard for a wheel to turn. A better translation is "friction".

"Enlightenment" is also a bad translation of "bodhi" pushed by German Romanticists for ideological reasons that have nothing to do with Buddhism. A better and more literal translation is "awakening" or "to wake up", chosen because the metaphor is that, prior to awakening, one is asleep, as in not aware, of one's life, confused by the delusion of belief in a separate self.

The actual claim is perhaps more precisely stated as living life with the deep understanding that the self is not separate from the world eliminates mental friction that causes psychic pain.

(My immediate caveat on this claim is that it's about momentary consciousness, and one may not be awake in all moments of consciousness, even if an awakened person can, in theory, be awake in every moment if they put in the effort to be awake.)

4lsusr4mo

The situation is such a mess. When writing about this stuff, I'm forced to pick between using the standard translations vs making up my own terminology that breaks the conventions. The meaning of "emptiness" is so counterintuitive I don't use that term at all.

2Said Achmiz4mo

Makes sense. The obvious follow-up question is: what do you mean by “psychic pain”? EDIT: Also, would you agree that using the term “suffering” for these purposes is not a good idea, on account of its misleadingness?

5rsaarelm4mo

As far as I've understood, a big idea with dukkha is that you have an intense desire for things to not be the way you perceive them to be, even though you might not have any concrete means of changing things, and the psychic pain is your constant awareness that reality isn't the way you want. "Regret" and "yearning" both seem like good words to describe types of this, though you probably want to imagine the more extreme versions of both, not just mild wistfulness. If you've looked into predictive processing, this sounds familiar. The low-level story might be something like being stuck with persistent predictive errors where you can neither update your model or act to change your circumstances.

5Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo

That's correct, the standard model of dukkha is that we have desires that can never be fulfilled and this is painful. When we wake up to our own non-separateness from the world, though, many of those desires fall away because they were powered by a false belief that the world could be other than how it is in the present moment. To have no such desires is to attain nirvana ("blowing out" or "extinguishing" as in extinguishing a flame).

2Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo

psychic pain: mental anguish, emotional distress, etc. I mostly agree that "suffering" is confusing and it would be better if we used a different word, but also at this point it's become jargon among English-speaking Buddhists (not that they all necessarily understand what it means, but most serious practitioners do learn about dukkha and then learn that "suffering" is just the word we use for "dukkha" in English), and like all jargon it's misleading to a lay audience but understood by those who learn it.

8Kaj_Sotala4mo

I'm curious to hear more about this since I don't find this to be the case at all. As I mentioned elsewhere in the comments of this thread, certainly the definition of "suffering" that I currently have has gotten a little different from what it was when I hadn't yet meditated... but I do think that it overall still lines up with the common-sensical definition of suffering. Such that it's a fair to summary to say something like "the practice leads to drastically reduced suffering" and that a past version of me who was shown various meditation-induced mindstates I've had would agree that those mindstates definitely involve less suffering. I find that the differences from the common-sense definition mostly only become apparent if one is pressed for details of what exactly the suffering-free states are like.

5Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo

"Suffering" is confusing because it's imprecise. It just means "to experience pain", though with a connotation of happening for a duration because the "fer" part of suffering means to bear as in to carry. But dukkha refers to the pain we create for ourselves by expecting the world to be other than it is. So while awakening does reduce suffering, it doesn't eliminate it because awakening addresses dukkha, not, for example, physical pain signals from injury (though dealing with physical pain gets a lot easier when you're not also dealing with dukkha, to the point that "pain" can start to look like something categorically different from what "pain" was pre-awakening).

2Kaj_Sotala4mo

Thanks! That makes sense to me, though I still think that it's close enough when talking to non-meditators, at least if one says that the path offers a "drastic reduction in suffering" rather than an elimination of all suffering.

5Said Achmiz4mo

Alright, makes sense, so tell me if I’m understanding the claim: You’re saying that once one has gained this “deep understanding that the self is not separate from the world” (which is what happens when one has “awakened” a.k.a. “become enlightened”), one no longer experiences mental anguish or emotional distress (etc.). Right? Or still wrong?

7Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo

Basically, yes, although two notes. I'm not sure that I've been precise enough about the kind of mental pain that's alleviated, because there are some emotions that are painful but are not dukkha, like fear and grief. So if you read this and think "awakening means not feeling sad or afraid" then that's wrong, but awakening does mean that feeling sad or afraid is not distressing in any way beyond the initial emotion (the experience of fear becomes like "fear is happing to me" rather than "I'm afraid"). Second, and this is partly the fault of how we talk about things in English, but also just to reiterate that it's also slightly wrong to say that one becomes enlightened or awakened in that the normal understanding of what that means is slightly off. This is not a switch to a different persistent state, but rather a switch to a different, stable, self-reinforcing pattern that is nevertheless not necessary total. An "awakened" person may not be awake in every moment, especially in the first months and years after they switch from identification with the self to not identify, because the new pattern of mental behavior is not completely stabilized and integrated (our minds are made up of many mental habits, and each of those habits has to get the awakening update, and new habits can potentially form that are not awake if one isn't continuing to apply effort to stay awake).

7rsaarelm4mo

Well, yes. It's a translation of a word that's used somewhat like technical vocabulary in meditation tradition. Article about the translations, Dukkha is a bummer.

3lsusr4mo

It looks like you've had a taste of kensho. This state of consciousness can be reliably reproduced via shikantaza + ethical living.

3lsusr4mo

At its coursest level, suffering is the feeling that the world ought to be something other than what it is.

9Said Achmiz4mo

If this is what you mean by “suffering”, then you are using the word in a radically different way than how it is normally used. I would suggest that choosing a different word would be more useful and more honest.

4Kaj_Sotala4mo

I think most common-sense uses of 'suffering' still match this definition. If you are in physical pain, you feel like the world ought to be one where you don't have the pain. If you're jealous of someone, you wish the world was one where you had whatever they have. If you are bored, you feel the world ought to be more entertaining. Etc.

[-]Said Achmiz4mo1410

No, I don’t think that’s right.

For one thing, this “ought to be” business isn’t quite right. I prefer the world to be such that I am not in pain. (This itself is a needlessly fancy way of saying that I prefer not to be in pain.) I may or may not have opinions about how the world “ought to be” w.r.t. me being in pain.

More importantly, these two separate things may^[1] co-occur, but they’re not the same thing. If I am in pain, I may indeed also believe that the world ought to be such that I would not be in pain. On the other hand, if I believe that the world ought to be such that everyone is equal before the law, it is absolutely not within the bounds of common usage to describe that view as being, or even being connected to, any “suffering” on my part.

The fact is that if you ask people what they mean by “suffering”, they won’t come up with anything even sort of like “the feeling that the world ought to be something other than what it is”; and if you ask people to pick a word that fits that description, they won’t come up with “suffering”.

This is one of the relatively rare cases where looking in the dictionary is helpful—we are discussing common usage, after all. Let’s look at couple ... (read more)

7Musclyneck4mo

I think part of the point though is that (Buddhists believe) people are actually suffering during states of being that they would describe as "doing just fine". And that (oversimplifying the view to a culty frame) the 99% of people who aren't Buddhist or similar are clueless that this "doing just fine" state is actually suffering. So, the standard self report definition isn't actually relevant (to this point, under this view.) I think that there can be some light in this, an example that comes to mind is someone with phone addiction-- as soon as they get home from work, they use their phone throughout dinner, the whole evening, and into the night. An observing family member watches this and thinks, this person isn't ever able to just sit and slowly eat dinner, or relax, or do anything, they are compelled to spend hours crouched over their device shining light into their eyes without moving, they are compulsively stimulating themselves to the exclusion of anything lasting. The person in the addiction is just having a nice night watching interesting videos and chatting with friends while still getting to eat dinner and decompress from work. They genuinely feel they're doing just fine. But ten years later after they leave behind the phone addiction they might say, "yeah I was suffering, if I had ten minutes without entertainment or something to do my mind would start to get agitated and painful. Now I know it was because xyz that I didn't want to stop and take things in, in that place. But I didn't know that I was one day going to be able to actually relax. I thought that /was/ relaxing. From what I'd known since childhood that type of night felt standardly good." It's like an archetypal dynamic... "YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY DISTRESSED AND PART OF YOU KNOWS IT and you can fix it by doing what I say" vs "No I'm doing just fine there's just different ways of doing things and you're not being kind by not respecting my internal experience" ... But... In this case maximalized

4Kaj_Sotala4mo

Possibly the exact phrasing that lsusr used may not be the best one. And I feel hesitant to make claims of what anyone else's experience of suffering is. I do however feel confident in saying that whenever I suffer (in the common sense meaning of the word), it involves some degree of desire (sometimes very slight, sometimes extreme and intense) that something be different, that this desire seems to be the cause of the suffering, and that the way this desire and suffering behave seem to generally line up with the way that Buddhists talk about these things. I think this is related to the desire/motivation distinction lsusr was making in a different comment. It's possible to consider a world where everyone is equal before the law better than one that is not, and even to work toward such a world, without that involving suffering. At the same time, it's also possible to think of the way that people in the current world are treated unfairly and feel anguish and suffer due to the thought. So if you just believe that the world ought to have equality before the law but don't suffer due to it, then one might say that you are motivated to have such a world. If you feel that the world ought to have equality and also experience suffering because not everyone is treated equally, then you have desire for such a world. Desire causes suffering but mere motivation does not, and the original definition we're discussing was inexact in not making that distinction. (I tried to sketch more of the ways that this desire - or craving as I called it - behaves in this article. I'm not sure if I'd completely endorse every detail there anymore but I think it's at least gesturing in the right direction.)

1Musclyneck4mo

Right the delineation is associated with motive-root identity. It's definitely embedded in the English language... Considering the word "insufferable", spending time with someone who is sufferable, you can accept it, bear it, spend the whole time wishing you were somewhere else, but not with such agitation as with someone who's insufferable. Suffering is both unbearable and urgently agitating, but usually ongoing and outside of your control. One aspect of it is your emotional focus toward the problem... Why is it like that, why can't I change it, ... You "suffer" more the more you think about it. Commonly with respect to other people in the community not improving, or other people in the relationship or family not being considerate. Also obviously chronic pain.) I think a fear/disgust/contempt of Buddhism commonly has the fear that we will tune out important internal motives (to change) by tuning out this frustrated despairing agitation. With this delineation: ( One side is: This despairing agitation ("suffering") does point to a motive which you need to solve for, however it is a lens on the motive and is holding you back from seeing clearer the motive and your capacities. For example, when you "ignore" a toothache by tensing the whole side of your face to not jiggle the tooth, and now your whole side of your face throbs, but you're ignoring it so stringently that the part of you identified as a worker can't understand why you're finding it hard to focus. The other side is: There is a third variable besides suffering and motive which is actually the thing which is lensing and holding you back from realizing your motive. Engaging fully with this third, is comforting, because it can make you feel you are making progress, while still blinding you to the reality that the progression staircase is built on the same foundation. (For example the dril candles.) ) my thinking is to consider both these sides (suffering keeps you trapped/suffering is part of grow

3lsusr4mo

I'm using standard translations, like how a physicist's meaning of the word "impulse" is different from the colloquial meaning of the word "impulse". This has tradeoffs to this approach.

7Viliam4mo

Standard? Yes. Honest? No. It's like Christians saying that they talk to God, and when you keep pushing for details, it turns out that "talking to" in this context actually means "imagining that you are talking to", which of course is much less of a miracle, and much less of an evidence for the religion. And they seem annoyed when you push for the details, so I believe the confusion is not an innocent misunderstanding; it's by design. Physicists do not organize seminars for lay people saying that they will teach them how to control their impulses... only to admit when pushed for details that their "impulse" is actually something quite different from what most non-physicists imagine when they read the word. If for some reason the physicists felt the need to organize public seminars about impulses, they would probably start proactively adding disclaimers to avoid this kind of confusion. Honest communication would be something like: "You know that when something bad happens to you, whether it's serious or trivial, it is often followed by this bad feeling when you are unhappy about how things are. Luckily for you, a few hundred hours of mental training can make that bad feeling mostly disappear from your life! Trust me, it will make a greater difference than you are probably imagining after reading this description." But I guess this suggestion will be about as popular as telling Christians to advertise their faith by saying: "If you read this really big book and pretend to believe everything it says, you will get an imaginary friend you can talk to. And a big community! Trust me, the average positive impacts on well-being are large, even the scientists who are not members of our community can confirm that."

5Kaj_Sotala4mo

For what it's worth, I think the Buddhist sense of the term is close enough to what people intuitively care about that I don't think it's dishonest to not go into the exact nuances of technical vocabulary. At least I have personally felt totally satisfied with all the suffering reduction I've gotten so far (though I'm probably not awakened) and I don't feel like "suffering" being a slightly more nuanced term than I originally thought means that any of the meditation teachers would have been ripping me off in any way. The analogy that I'd use is that of a physicist who gives a popular-science explanation of a physical phenomenon that skips all of the math that your average listener wouldn't understand. It makes the explanation incomplete but it doesn't make it dishonest. In the case of the physicist, trying to include all the math would just confuse the listener, just as trying to explain the exact technical distinctions tends to just confuse people without sufficient meditative experience.

[-]Viliam4mo1714

Dunno, maybe I am unfair here, but it feels like peeling the layers of an onion, and what you find below them turns out to be yet another layer of onion.

I mean, the actual Buddhism (in the sense of "Buddhism of people who grew up in a traditional Buddhist country, in a religious Buddhist family") is a belief in heaven(s) and hell(s), not much different from e.g. Christianity. Buddhist monks are supposed to have actual magic powers, etc.

Oh wait, that's all just a metaphor, just something those silly non-Western people believe! Actually, heaven(s) and hell(s) are just states of mind. There are no actual magical powers. No literal afterlife. When Buddha said that, he was certainly joking... uhm, using metaphors so that his teaching could make sense to the stupid followers. The actual meaning of Buddhism is psychotherapy. And skills that are extraordinary but at the same time totally scientific. You can control your mind, get rid of suffering, increase your productivity.

Actually, when I say "increase your productivity", that's just a metaphor! What I meant was that you will become happier in a difficult to describe way. Many people don't get more productive at all, sometimes it's actua... (read more)

9Kaj_Sotala4mo

I think you're not being unfair but you're also responding to an amalgam of things that different people have said, and yes some of those people do have bad epistemics and do make unfounded claims that are very reasonable to criticize. I'd like to think that I'm not engaging in those kinds of onion layers, though. My position is something like, yes lots of Buddhists do believe in weird supernatural stuff, but they still seem to have developed some meditative techniques and theories about how the mind works that seem accurate. (Though they are not the only ones, as contemplatives in many different religions seem to have converged on similar claims and techniques. This seems like suggestive evidence that the techniques do something real that can be separated from the supernatural metaphysics, if religious people with drastically clashing metaphysics can still arrive at similar techniques and conclusions [while disagreeing about the metaphysical implications].) And in my experience, following those practices does help in reducing something that's in my opinion reasonable to round into "suffering", at least as measured by tests such as "if my past self got to compare his mindstate at the time to my mindstate now and asked 'would you agree that future!Kaj's mindstate has less suffering than yours", he'd say "yes definitely, please please tell me how I could achieve the same". Obligatory caveat is that this is not only because of meditation, there have been a lot of other things like therapy, improvements in external circumstances, etc. etc. too, and that all of these also seem mutually synergestic, such that it'd be impossible for me to say which parts of my suffering reduction have been due to meditation specifically. But I have also had several occasions when I have e.g. just come off a retreat or finished a particularly good meditation session when I've had some experience like "oh wow I wouldn't have been able to even imagine this kind of a state before and it'd

6Huera4mo

If the distinction between the Buddhist meaning and the typical meaning of 'suffering' was explained[1], I don't think I would have ended up confused enough to ask my question. The Buddhist conception of suffering was different enough to mislead me, at least. 1. ^ In a footnote, for example.

2Rafael Harth4mo

I agree but I don't think the Buddhist definition is what Lsusr said it is (do you?). Suffering is primarily caused by the feeling that the world ought to be different but I don't think it's identical. Although I do expect you can find some prominent voices saying so.

6Kaj_Sotala4mo

I should've been more exact. There are lots of Buddhist schools and teachers, and they disagree with each other on many things. So one shouldn't talk about "the Buddhist sense" of any term. When I said "the Buddhist sense of the term", I meant something like "the sense of the term that lsusr is using it in, which matches my own understanding from meditation practice as well as the (largely Theravada-influenced) teachers I've learned from". If you pressed me on an exact definition for suffering, I probably also wouldn't spontaneously give exactly that definition (in fact, I did already mention to Said that it's missing at least one important distinction). But at the same time, I do feel like it's close enough to what the core of suffering in my experience is that when lsusr said it, I immediately went "yes sounds right to me". (Duncan Sabien would probably say that the definition that lsusr gave is a sazen - "a word or phrase which accurately summarizes a given concept, while also being insufficient to generate that concept in its full richness and detail, or to unambiguously distinguish it from nearby concepts".)

4Rafael Harth4mo

Fair enough. I'm mostly on board with that, my one gripe is that the definition only sounds similar to people who are into the Buddhist stuff. "Suffering mostly comes from craving" seems to me to be one of the true but not obvious insights from Buddhism. So just equating them in the definition is kinda provoking a reaction like from Said.

2lsusr4mo

Thank you for pointing out that the term "impulse" in physics has a very different meaning than in regular speech. A better example is the physicist's use of the term "cold", which intersects the layman's intuition but is both more precise and general. To a layman, cold is just whatever causes that sensation you get when you touch ice. To a physicist, cold must ultimately be defined using ideas like entropy because (among other reasons) you can't touch a Bose–Einstein condensate with your fingertips. The technical definition was arrived at after deep investigation into the fundamental nature of temperature. I believe that my definition does overlap with the conventional kind in conventional circumstances, if you really pay attention to what's going on in your brain, including disambiguating things like pain vs course suffering, desire vs motivation, etc. When you get to very low levels of mental anguish, precise definitions are necessary, because for unconventional circumstances the conventional intuition breaks.

[-]ceba4mo110

Has your executive function improved? how well does your everyday behaviour align with your carefully considered values?

do you disinguish between 'automatic' behaviours and intentional ones? (accidentally driving home on autopilot when you mean to go somewhere else would be evidencd for 'yes')

Is your life direction changed compared to unenlightened lsusr's?

5lsusr4mo

No change. (I started with good executive function, in case that is relevant.) Better alignment. I've always wanted to be nice to people, but I'm way better at it now. I've also become (effectively) vegetarian. That question becomes harder and harder to answer over time. Yeah. I put a lot more resources and effort into self care. I also quit my startup to get a regular job.

[-]uugr4mo112

Why do they call it 'stream entry'? Also, what is stream entry?

9Kaj_Sotala4mo

I believe the metaphor is that that you've stepped into a stream that will now carry you forward toward the ocean (enlightenment). Whereas before you had to actively practice in order to make meditative progress, now you've hit a point where the stream will continue carrying you forward even if you put in no effort of your own.

4lsusr4mo

This is true. After stream entry, you're on the train and you're not getting off; you're going to have more insight cycles.

5lsusr4mo

It comes from the Pāli sutras. "Stream entry" is the standard English translation of the Pāli sotāpatti. Stream entry is the first and most important stage of awakening. Most of your suffering falls away. It also functions like levelling up. You've made permanent progress that won't backtrack.

[-]niplav4mo*70

What is the amount of time you'd maximally spend (in terms of hours, fraction of the remaining duration of your life, &c) to attain the attainments you have now again, compared to baseline before awakening/starting to meditate/five years ago? Answer may include infinities or undefined or NaN, or be a vector.
Same as question one, but now with a monetary value, again answer may include infinities or undefined or NaN.
Have you noticed a reduction in sleep need compared to baseline?
Are there any other relevant changes in presentation/subjective experien

... (read more)

5lsusr4mo

Undefined. I have no clue because awakening is a tranformative experience. It's not like a pretty necklace you can throw away. It's a wrecking ball through your value system and perception of reality. And that goes both ways. Much of insight is noticing how precious certain things are (like calling my mom on the phone). If I lost my insights then I would forget how precious these things are, and that would decrease my motivation to get back to where I am right now. Moreover, the time I spent meditating was a tiny fraction of the total cost. The real cost was the sacrifices—relinquishing attachment to things. That was awful to go through the first time, but I'd do them again in an instant if I had to. Maybe all the money I have in the bank, but I wouldn't want to go into debt. I'd rather just do the meditation again than pay that large of a lump sum. Surprisingly, all this insight stuff improved my financial situation rather than weakening it, because it oriented me toward living better, and that includes earning a decent income. Yes. Approximately 1, maybe 2 hours. I'm autistic. That means I'm oversensitive to raw sensory stimula (loud noises, bright lights, rough clothing). More importantly, I've been socially handicapped for most of my life because I have had difficulty reading people. Over the last year, this has changed. Firstly, my sensitivity to intense stimuli got much better (still not fully cured to human baseline). After that, my social handicap fixed itself across several months. Now I can read expressions and intentions at at least the neurotypical level. This has done wonders for my quality of life.

[-]Tomás B.4mo61

I appreciate this post by the way. I have always been impressed by your intelligence and writing ability, so you being into this stuff updates me slightly towards it being real.

2lsusr4mo

Thanks!

[-]soycarts4mo*60

I feel quite deeply enlightened without having extensively read much "enlightenment literature" (e.g Daoism) — is this valid in your world view?

I plan to write up some thoughts and propose that with a few rational principles combined with certain deeply-felt life experiences, enlightenment is pretty accessible to most people.

3lsusr4mo

How do you define being "deeply enlightened"?

3soycarts4mo

I'm still working on an exact definition, but maybe: Enlightened: Possessing a robust, nuanced world model,[1] while maintaining deep perceptiveness and openness to novelty[2] and moment-to-moment felt experiences. 1. ^ With signal derived, for example, from 1) successful prosocial interactions, 2) positive feedback to creative expression, and 3) alignment with world outcomes (by either making, and acting on, correct "bets", or being unharmed by unsuccessful bets). 2. ^ In the form of ideas or experiences.

5Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo

Just to be clear, this is not what Buddhists mean by "enlightenment" (as I argue in another comment, "enlightenment" is a terrible translation). Perhaps a person who is enlightened would have a robust, nuanced worldview and maintain deep perceptiveness and openness to novelty and moment-to-moment felt experiences, but those would be downstream effects, not enlightenment itself.

2lsusr4mo

It's perfectly possible to end up in these states without reading anything at all. That said, I think you're using "enlightenment" differently than I am.

1soycarts4mo

Thanks both for your responses! I would appreciate any insights into what is missing from my definition — I guess my "robust, nuanced world model" terminology is quite vague, but I'm getting at having accurate, but changeable representations of what your world objectively is, allowing a harmonious flow-state with the world where there isn't actually space for personal suffering or attachment to outcomes. I feel that these effects are not downstream of enlightenment, since immediately in every moment there is deep-perceptiveness and world model comparison and updates occurring. A more spiritual friend defines enlightenment as "the universe experiencing itself". I claim my definition is a highly operationalisable and instrumental definition of enlightenment: for example I advised a friend who was beating themselves up about waking up late: "In my model there's no space for negative self talk saying things like 'I hate that I'm so lazy' — what exists just is; put another way there is no need to assign sentiment to the vector between different states (e.g a world where you wake up early, vs. one where you don't). The world you live in and your actions align in some way with your core values and beliefs — you can reflect deeply to observe your core values and beliefs (and adjust these if you wish), and observe your world model and consider how it may be updated to bring you closer in alignment with these values and beliefs."

5Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo

Not knowing you, but taking my best guess based on my model of what the mind of a person who wrote the words you wrote would look like, sounds like you are somewhere along the path but not yet to the point of having all the awakening insights. I say this because many stages along the path can look like full awakening because they are awakening but do not yet confer full understanding that persists outside the moment of insight because the habit of living awake is not yet fully stable. Basically if you were enlightened I'd expect you to say slightly different things in a way that conceptualized your experience differently. If I were to go way out on a limb and speculate, my best guess is you are somewhere on 3rd path.

3lsusr4mo

I could be wrong, but your model tastes of dualism to me whereas enlightenment is non-dualistic.

[-]rnollet3mo50

So, what if I want to get started on my own path toward enlightenment? What should I do? What should I avoid?

6Gordon Seidoh Worley3mo

Just happen to see your comment while responding to another one, and I have thoughts on this as another person who has meditated a lot, died the great death, and knows this self is not separate from others. First, notice if it's something that calls to you. Enlightenment is not something you attain, it's something you do, and it will radically transform your life while also making you completely normal. Although not everyone takes the same path, most people who wake up come to it because they couldn't stay away no matter how hard they tried. In terms of what you should do, I highly recommend practicing as part of an organized community. Thus have I heard that spiritual friendship is the whole of the path. Picking one can be a bit tricky. I recommend visiting a few and pay attention for a feeling of coming home. If you don't feel at home, keep looking. Don't try to force it. You'll know it when you feel it. You're also looking for a teacher who can be your mentor in all this. You should respect them, and also feel like you can learn from them. Be careful of overly charismatic teachers, as they have the highest risk of abusing their position. Also avoid teachers who offer quick solutions, because awakening rapidly without integration can lead to major psychological problems. Also avoid any teacher who doesn't emphasize moral training, as it's a necessary to keep you grounded as you shed the complex belief machinery of the separate self. Also avoid obvious cults, but know that if you're not familiar with religion, your cult detection might be too sensitive.

3lsusr3mo

This is good advice, especially "pay attention for a feeling of coming home". I'm tempted to recommend books too, but all of them come with tradeoffs.

6rnollet3mo

If you had time for writing a bit about the pros and cons of a few books, I would be very interested.

6lsusr3mo

This is a good idea for a separate post.

1rnollet3mo

Thank you for this detailed answer. Some more questions: I am not sure exactly what you mean here. From what I am reading, it is very difficult to know what it is without having experienced it. So how am I supposed to know? Do you have examples of motivations that would not be right? (I would say that I personally feel very curious as to what it looks like, and that I would be significantly sad to learn that I can’t even try to get there.) I expected that. Then: 1. What are the standard keywords I should look for? What I mean is that I know quite nothing about the surrounding culture. Would I be looking for a “Buddhist church”? A “Zen temple”? — Are those the same? — A “meditation school”? Something else entirely? 2. What if there is no such community in my city? Is there a next best thing that still permits me to start that journey, or is your advice to not try that without a local community?

5Gordon Seidoh Worley3mo

You can't know for sure. All I mean is that if it's something that seems appealing to you. Something that, when you read about it, intrigues you. Something that you find hard to ignore. If you have no interest, you'll likely lack the sustained motivation it takes to see it through, and as is often said, better not to begin, once begun, better to finish. That said, once properly begun (viz. you achieve stream entry), you'll have the motivation whether you like it or not! If you are completely content with your life as it is, just forget about all this awakening stuff and go enjoy your life. But if you find that you are discontent, even if it's just in the quiet moments when everything is otherwise peaceful, then you may find something in practice. Depends on what lineage would work best for you. I can't tell you the answer to that; you'll have to figure it out for yourself. Zen is the most widespread in the West of the traditions that might actually help you wake up. It also doesn't require you to believe any supernatural stuff, though you will find traces of the supernatural in Zen, even if just as metaphors. Nothing in Zen requires a belief in the supernatural; it is an entirely naturalistic practice. You can find Zen sanghas by searching for "zen center". There's a growing number of western Theravada groups in the last couple decades. These tend to tolerate a bit more woo and are sometimes mixed in with other practices like yoga. I don't know a lot about them, but I know they're out there. Probably can be found if you just search for "meditation" on the map. There are also Vajrayana groups. These will have the most supernatural stuff and are also the hardest to become part of. Again, I don't know a lot here, but I know they exist. What you want to avoid are temples, churches, and missions. These are either from traditions that focus more on devotional practices and don't emphasize awakening (or deny that it is even possible for humans) or are serving the rel

5lsusr3mo

Note: The Zen practice center I go to is officially listed on Google Maps as a "temple" even though it's not really a temple (the way Gordon is using the word "temple").

5Gordon Seidoh Worley3mo

Thank you! This is an annoying thing about how things are named. Many groups choose to call themselves "centers" because people are put off by religious words, but others don't, and there's no clear standardization of terms for what it is that you want because in the West we've created a category of thing that didn't exist before: a place where lay people engage in what were traditionally monastic practices. So a "center" is not a monastery, and it's not a temple, but it's also not exactly not either of those things, either. Realistically, you're probably just going to have to go and see how it is.

[-]leerylizard4mo42

I've heard enlightenment described as separating oneself from a mindset you are fused with.

An analogy I've seen is when you're so immersed in a video game or story that you're invested and emotionally involved as if it were real. But then you take a step back, realize that it's not your entire existence, and its salience / importance goes back to a reasonable baseline for fiction. The deep emotional investment is gone though you may still appreciate the story.

Is that analogy accurate in your opinion? Am I mischaracterizing it?

2Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo

Where's the mindset that's separated from the self? It's true that enlightenment involves disidentification with the self, but this is importantly different from separating from anything, let alone your thoughts. The video game metaphor you offer is a good one, though.

2lsusr4mo

These are good analogies. Your videogame metaphor reminds me of this post by Valentine.

[-]Valdes7d30

I know I am late to this party, but maybe you are still taking questions? I have one about "no self".

A car is made of parts. In a way there is no single part that is the whole car. The parts come together in a way that allows the function of a car to be performed and so we say that the whole is a "car". In a sense there is no car, only parts that work together. The "car" concept is an abstraction. Likewise we could say "there is no rock, only a collection of atoms". The rock is an abstraction.

Is this what is meant by "there is no self"? If not, what is the difference? If yes, why is this so important?

3lsusr7d

Basically yes. But it doesn't feel like that to most people. By default, it feels like the self is a real indivisible thing. By doing insight practice into (no) self, you get your internal subjective state to match the no self reality.

3Valdes7d

Thank you. Deeply understanding that the self is just as much an abstraction as a car feels important indeed. From the perspective of what is meant by "there is no self", would I be right to say the self "exists" just like any complicated abstraction such as a car, a state, or a landscape; no more and no less?

3lsusr7d

Yup. To continue with your metaphor, not all abstractions are created equal. There are good abstractions, like "car" which make your life better, because it simplifies the world well without much loss of important data. There are also bad abstractions like trauma, which make your life worse. To continue with your metaphor, "there is no self" is to say that the self is a bad abstraction that causes harm by modeling the world badly.

[-]sam3mo30

Occasionally when meditating I stumble into a state that afterwards makes me wonder if it was a taste of “enlightenment”

Can you tell me if the following wordsalad approximates any part of what enlightenment feels like to you?

Sensations are all located somewhere in a 3d slice
I “am” the space in which these sensations are located
Sensations which would otherwise be painful are okay, because they’re just another part of the slice
Painful sensations are okay despite actually feeling the same - their content is the same, but something about my relationship to the

... (read more)

2lsusr3mo

That looks to me like an accurate description of kensho, which is a taste of enlightenment. It indicates you're going in the correct direction and is a good source of insight.

1tryhard10003mo

In your mind, in what ways does "being in the state of kensho 24/7" differ from "enlightenment"?

2lsusr2mo

Kensho is insight. Enlightenment is the fruit of insight. Kensho is a state of consciousness that provides insight into your world model. Enlightenment/awakening typically comes from having a world model that has (usually) been modified via such states of consciousness (and other thinngs).

[-]xpym4mo30

Could any "enlightened" person self-immolate with apparent equanimity? Could you? If not, how far are you from being able to, and is it possible for everybody to reach that state?

4lsusr4mo

Concentration and enlightenment are different things. Concentration lets you self-immolate with apparent equanimity while concentrating. Enlightenment lets you self-immolate with equanimity while not concentrating. There are degrees to awakening. Few are at that level of enlightenment or concentration. Right now? No. Absolutely not. The closest I've gotten are "I once touched a hot lid while cooking and didn't feel pain-as-suffering" and "I ate some very spicy food and sat in a chair unable to do anything useful, but felt no suffering from to the experience". (Both were automatic, requiring no concentration.) It's important to distinguish stage of awakening from pure concentration ability. If you want to self-immolate, that may require more concentration than mere awakening. I'm just guessing here, though. I don't know if I'll ever be able to self-immolate with equanimity—merely apparent or not—and have no intention to do so. In any case, my practice is more insight and integration focused. I'm not maxing out my concentration stat—at least right now. Theoretically? More-or-less. In practice, no. In any case, I feel questions like this about whether "everybody can" do something are too philosophically messy to give a definite answer to.

5xpym4mo

Thank you for engaging! Neither do I, of course, it's just that this is the most salient example available to me of a "superpower" that the meditation-adjacent cluster apparently can grant, without needing to rely on hard-to-verify reports about altered inner states. Most of my skepticism about this cluster is due to its serious practitioners never seeming to achieve impressive "worldly" feats at a noticeably higher rate than non-meditators do. The stuff about elimination of suffering is a bit too vague and wishy-washy for my taste, and I seem to be lucky enough to naturally have a temperament not particularly prone to suffering anyway. Well, as a mildly curious outsider, my impression is that there are two major points of view on this - the traditional one is that enlightenment is far out of reach for mere mortals, you need to undergo many cycles of reincarnation and karma accumulation to even have a chance of sniffing it etc, whereas the modern perspective is that it's in principle available to basically everybody in this life, given the right attitude and practice, which I gather is the one you agree with.

5Gordon Seidoh Worley4mo

For what it's worth, here's a list of "powers" I got either after awakening or along the way to it: * the ability to see ultraviolet light (this is not exactly true, but things that reflect lots of UV light "glow" for me in a way other objects don't (most noticeable with flowers)) * a greatly increased ability to tolerate loud sounds, like at a concert or party (previously I found loudness mindbreakingly painful) * far fewer tension headaches and migraines * the ability to make myself do anything (no crippling fear) * cured me of boredom (I am literally never bored) * cured me of narcolepsy (I still dream a lot, but I no longer have sleep attacks) * cured me of OCD * greatly improved cognitive empathy And surely more that I've forgotten. All of these are some version of either improved perception or better homeostatic regulation. Some people report other "powers". Other than occasional fantastical claims about levitation that I've never seen, they are mostly like mine, either improved perception or better regulation.

5Said Achmiz4mo

This is fascinating! Do you know of others who have gained this ability? Has anything been written about this (by you or anyone else)? This seems like something which should definitely be investigated seriously!

4rsaarelm3mo

Huh, apparently this is a thing. Retinas can see into UV, but UV light is normally filtered out by the lens. Young adults can see UV light Claude Monet got cataract surgery in his 80s and might have started seeing into UV with the filtering lens gone. Medical article about cataract surgeries and UV protection No idea how you could start seeing UV by rewiring your brain if your eyeballs still have the original lenses though.

4Gordon Seidoh Worley3mo

Yeah, I don't know. I was also surprised when I first learned this was possible after I went looking for info when I noticed the glowing thing, but it's the best explanation I have for what's going on. My best guess is that what's actually happening is that I'm noticing how things that reflect UV light are brighter than other things because they are reflecting more total light even if I'm mostly failing to see the UV light itself (or there's something wrong with my lenses and meditation just made me able to notice what was already going on and I was previously ignoring?).

7rsaarelm3mo

How did you connect the objects you see as glowing with UV light specifically? Couldn't the glow be a hallucination or a perceptual rewiring like the persistent "breathing wallpaper" LSD users can start seeing, or some different physical property entirely? Can you see UV light emitted by machines that should be invisible like a person in the newscientist link claims he could after he got an artificial lens?

5Gordon Seidoh Worley3mo

Mostly because I first noticed the effect with objects I knew reflect a lot of UV light, like flowers, which gave me the idea, and then I did a little experiment and sure enough stuff that should reflect a lot of UV light glowed more than stuff that doesn't. As I say, I may be wrong to say I see UV light, and instead what's happening is I see something that correlates with UV light. I didn't have any devices that emit UV light only to test with. Just hasn't been that important to me to test, since this is just a random thing of little consequence other than it's a small example of a perceptual "power" I got from meditation, and if I'm wrong about the UV then it's something else going on causing me to notice some other quality of light I was ignoring before.

4lsusr4mo

I got a few of these powers too. Specifically "a greatly increased ability to tolerate loud sounds" and "greatly improved cognitive empathy". I might have "cured me of boredom" too, but it hasn't been long enough to be sure yet—and I don't know if this ability would withstand much worse life circumstances like prison. In addition to that subset of Gordon's powers, my anxiety has lowered enough I stopped biting my fingernails after a lifetime of doing so. (An older genetic relative of mine who bites her nails and doesn't meditate has not experienced this.) This nailbiting thing is very recent—it started only about a month ago—so there is a chance it'll revert. I've also just chilled out, in a way that makes me a better listener and causes other people to like me better. This one is recent too, but it's so common among meditators I'm not worried about it sticking.

3xpym4mo

What's your opinion on the "serious practitioners never seeming to achieve impressive 'worldly' feats at a noticeably higher rate than non-meditators do" issue? Some of the features you listed sure sound like they should be a big help with that, and yet the primary meditator stereotypes seem to still be the layabout hippie and the ethically dubious cult-leader guru.

4lsusr4mo

There's two people I know in meatspace that have been doing this stuff for decades and to whom I look up for inspiration and guidence. They're super humble since they have no need to prove anything. I've never seen them express the slightest stress or mental tension. Zuiko of them is an old woman who's hands hurt and are failing due to arthritis and she seemed more concerned with just listening to me than talking about her problems. In fact, she barely mentions her health issues unless I specifically ask. I have a friend who didn't even realize she was highly awakened until after I pointed it out to him. To paraphrase Nick Cammarata: "If you want to be a billionaire, try getting enlightened first and then check to see how much you still care about becoming a billionaire." This awakening stuff tends to disassemble the status-seeking and ladder climbing motivational systems that cause people to get famous. I'm a more empathetic dancer due to meditation, but I doubt that'll make me world famous.

6gwern4mo

Sounds like a(nother) good example of the downsides of lacking pain/stress.

5xpym4mo

Ok, but does the desire to do the greatest good for the greatest number also dissipate?

1lsusr4mo

I haven't asked.

4xpym3mo

This feels like a major sticking point, though. If it does dissipate, then the fact that meditation has a profound effect on your values in a way you likely wouldn't endorse in advance seems like something its promoters should be upfront about. If it doesn't dissipate, then we're back to the conundrum that the various significant improvements ostensibly acquired through meditation don't appear to translate into unusual efficiency at accomplishing real-world tasks. Money is the unit of caring, after all, so becoming a billionaire is instrumentally convergent even to somebody free of status-seeking and ladder climbing motivational systems. Or, alternatively, becoming a prominent scientist that cures cancer seems like the sort of thing that can cause people to get famous.

2lsusr4mo

Ah, I misunderstood your question about whether everybody can attain enlightenment. I take the modern perspective that most people can attain awakening, and there's no such thing as reincarnation, since incorporeal souls are not real.

[-]Kaj_Sotala4mo30

To the extent that you've read my posts on meditation/enlightenment, how accurate do you think my models are and is there anything important that you think they're missing?

5lsusr4mo

I've only read a little bit of your Multiagent Models of Mind series. None of what I read seemed wrong to me. Is there anything in particular you recommend I take a closer look at?

4Kaj_Sotala4mo

Thanks! Nothing in particular.

[-][anonymous]11d10

@lsusr As someone who experienced enlightenment, I am curious about your thoughts on axiology. Do you think that there can, at least hypothetically, be a world with conscious beings that is better than a completely empty world? You can imagine this world to be as good as you want and you can fill out the details in any way you want.

4lsusr11d

To clarify: I do not claim that I have experienced enlightenment. Just awakening, stream entry, etc. A plane of existence that does not interact with conscious beings is a priori unobservable, because there would be no one to observe it. In that way, world without conscious beings is value-equivalent to no world at all. In my opinion, there is positive value in the world I live in. That said, it is possible to imagine worlds with negative value too. This isn't much related to Buddhism or special insight. It's just philosophy.

[-]Iraneth20d10

Hello! Thank you for writing this and sharing your experience in other posts. Sorry if I missed the AMA window or if you've answered this elsewhere.

What meditation technique do you credit with allowing you to reach stream entry?

You talk about following the breath and arriving at mushin elsewhere. You also mention TMI and MCTB. I started out in zen, counting and then following the breath and then (attempting) shikantaza. I've also experimented with noting practice. Given the importance of consistency, what would you recommend? I understand everyone is different and I need to find what works for me. Guidance from a noble friend is always helpful.

2lsusr20d

The meditation practice I used to get to stream entry was Zen (shikantaza). While The Mind Illuminated was important to my personal intellectual journal, I didn't find it personally useful to getting stream entry. MCTB was useful for some general principles too, but it's more like an quirky reference book than a simple instruction manual. Regardless of what technique you're using—even Zen—you need to reach access concentration before you can drop into an altered state of consciousness. For me, just counting to 10 isn't enough to build that much momentum. It takes more like 30 minutes of focused attention on the breath [with, perhaps, 1-2 short breaks to move my legs] before I can drop into a state of mushin. In fact, I personally avoid counting altogether because the act of counting is too attention-grabbing. As for consistency, I recommend starting short (1-5 minutes) and building up to longer sits over time. This shouldn't be too hard, because you should feel like you're getting something out of the shorter sits. If you're not getting anything out of the shorter sits, then you're unlikely to be motivated to do longer sits. I also recommend joining the most hardcore[1] meditation center in your city. It doesn't matter what lineage they are. They could be Zen, Therevada, Vajrayana or even Sufi. By "hardcore", I mean that you want to maximise time meditatingtime talking. Guided meditation counts as "time talking". Chanting and bowing are neutral (they count as neither talking nor meditating). As for books, I recommend The Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice by Philip Kapleau Roshi. I found the more cryptic stuff like Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki useful too, but your mileage may vary. The same goes for the translated poems of Ryokan. Feel free to email me if you want more personalized feedback. ---------------------------------------- 1. I assume you live in a Western country. If you live

[-]hive24d10

Are you enlightened or is this just a story you tell yourself?

"There are stages."

In the light of the first trick question. What stage do do you consider yourself to be at?

2lsusr23d

Different people use the word "enlightened" to refer to different things, and it's unclear to me which definition you're using. What do you mean where you use the word "enlightened"? For that matter, what do you mean when you say "just a story you tell yourself"? This trick question seems like an attempt to drag a useful discussion about directly observable qualia into the wasteland of undefined words. As for what stage I'm in right now, that's a moving target. It's usually several months after time t that I understand what was going onn in time t. Since I'm in the midst of insight cycles, I don't think it's a good source of data for me to describe the exact stage I'm at this moment. On the other hand, decribing changes that have stabilized for a while does make sense.

1hive23d

Thanks. That actually answers my question. By "enlightenment" I mean the way things already are. People usually maintain a story of who they think to be. Some of those who claim some form of enlightenment just shift to the story of "me but enlightened" instead of also seeing through that story. Hence why it was a trick question.

Or, more precisely, reduces suffering by one or more orders of magnitude. There are stages. ↩︎

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