Bypassing steps to awakening?

Q&A: You have just outlined a discreet number of steps in different systems of practice. Can some of these be bypassed?

Master Culadasa explains more about the process of awakening. In particular how it is more pleasant to have shamata before insight. (Especially the knowledge of fear, misery and disgust.) This segment precedes a discussion on emptiness.

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Student: Are blind to a discrete number of steps in different provisions. And it seems like some of those steps in certain circumstances can be bypass or jump to the kind of the lines and

Culadasa: then on the practice. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I'll repeat the question. She's the question was that I had prescribed. A sequence of steps and different systems of practice.

And that, what you said is it seems that some of these steps while it was very there's differences in these descriptions, and they don't all include all the same steps, which suggests that some of these steps can be bypassed in different systems. That is true, depending on the system of practice that you follow and you don't necessarily experience all of, exactly the same things now, what you do, or a very good example of this one that was worth mentioning the Buddha.

If we look at the sutures, one of the searchers teaches us that whenever. Somebody is awakened that seem to happen. And one of the following ways, either they attained summertime and Sonatype corresponds through the the stage beyond the night stage and convalesce. She was rendering, I believe.

At so first you achieve Simon and then you attain insight. Following which you achieve awakening. Secondly, is that a Yogi May 1st attending in Stripe following which seventy-five is cultivated. And that way it's either awakening or some guitar and insight may be attained yolks together in some way.

And it was various ways it could be yoked together, but they are attained together. Yup. We began to awaken. And if we refer to these three possible accreditors, we'll see, we'll be able to understand a lot of the differences in the sequences. What happened in particular, whenever we're pasta is developed before some of the top, there are some difficult, painful stages that a person goes.

So for example, and the second path, when it is practiced by somebody who is first cultivating the analytical meditation on emptiness prior to developing summertime, they go through a very unpleasant state that is where they experience a lot of discomfort, suffering things like. Likewise and the terror of Auburn tradition with the 16 knowledges and the middle part of the purification by knowledge and vision of the way the Yogi who has, is doing a, what's called a dry insight practice.

And it's not yet live at all. Some of the top, we'll go through a series of knowledge. Better known as the dude Ben Yana. It's not, it's knowledge and deep suffering, so that they're the suffering knowledge. And they're given the most descriptive names possible, but knowledge of fear and knowledge of misery and knowledge of biscuits.

And so this is a reflection of the word Pasina before summer. The reason thing when your son, Natalia, profound, tranquility and equanimity, you already have a lot of equanimity in place. When you have a mind that is in a state of joy. Joy is a mind that is predisposed to seeing things in a positive light when you do dry inside, or when you do the analytical meditation on empty.

It leads you to a situation where you have intellectually and you have an intellectually understanding that wow, things really are empty and the self, but I Clayton too, is an illusion, but at the deepest level, and you're still firmly believing and the cell. What you have is a self. That has no solid ground to stand on a cell that is living at a world, occurred with no way Alec.

So the intellectual mind has opened Pandora's box. The gut-level emotional mind says, oh, this is happening to me. I am condemned to be in this horrible state. So when you're still attached to self and and you're intellectually understand reality, it can be very disturbing, very painful. If in your meditation practice, you've seen the fleeting Nessus of everything, the impermanence.

And if you realize that to try to grasp it to any of that, and only cause you harm and there is no ground, the sand on them, then a feeling of fear, right? And then when you realize that this is all there is, this is no way there is no way out, then it turns from misery with SKUs. And this can, I think the stage, I think in both the second path of the five path system and of the 16 knowledge system.

They use the same terminology to describe the danger that a Yogi is in and that's thought badly. This is called the rolling up the mat state, the LV cam, because this is so terrible. Abandon the practice, roll up the mat. And the typical thing they do is they leave the retreat go to a bar to try to, try to lose themselves in sensory.

Distractions to the greatest, possible degree. Very unfortunate thing. If they stay with the practice, if the Yogi and either of these physicians stays with the practice, then they'll come to the point where the emotional mind will become exhausted and it's misery and it's discussed and they and, it's if you.

You know what it's like when you reached a point of emotional exhaustion in a way, if it gives you to finally give you some peace, a little bit of clarity, missing that clarity, then the person can write the resolve it. The only way out of this is to have refuge, Buddhists and white Knight that indeed was teaching is real in B.

There is something at the end of the path and therefore I'll go back. I'll re enter the fray. I will resubmit myself to to the practice until I achieve the goal. So now. If a Yogi has developed really strong Sama taught, then this is a tremendous buffer to say, being able to confront these insights with equanimity with tranquility and a mind and a state of joy, even when it sees the unpleasant, doesn't see it as vain.

And so it's much easier to pass through there. The one other path and approach that is beneficial is the more that a person can loosen their attachment to the view of cell, because it is the attachment to the personality view is really responsible for the suffering. Your mind generates the emotion of self.

When, you know it, but computer processes, the information and the result that is generated is bad news. We've got her suffer and so suffering is turned off and the bad news in this case is the attachment to the personality view so that the more the person and overcome their attachment to personality view we can that attack.

Before the full brunt of exam sites smell and the less disturbing it's fine to be for them. Now, if that's done in combination with Sonata, they have a advantage pretty easily. It's pretty clear sailing and all of these and all of these methods though. And I mentioned this earlier, there's the union of Sonata and insight that is necessary to reach.

Because you need the acronymity of the summit and you need the equanimity of the insight together to have enough acronym. It be that craving ceases. Equanimity is the opposite of craving. You could even say equanimity is the absence or fading. Equanimity is non-reactivity non grasping the pleasant, non trying to avoid the.

When the pleasant, unpleasant and neutral all confined to with exactly the same non-reactivity that is acronym NP, and other words, there is no craving. So you need to combine that equanimity to insight. And so I'm a tall typically, and we systematic practices. You need to combine inside of the boat to give you the ability to step out of.

When the cessation of craving or courage, what is revealed is Nirvana. Nirvana is association of Craven. The cause of Nirvana is the cessation of greatness. When craving is gone, Nirvana can be experience. Yeah, it can't be in a sense of the object of consciousness for a period of.


Added at Sept. 26, 2020
Original file name skipsteps18oct09.mp3

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