Insight Instructions

Before practicing the investigations found in Cultivations 06-07: Insight Into: Anatta and Specific Conditionality, you need to prepare for insight by establishing all Seven Enlightenment Factors within your meditative attention.

Step 1: 

+ Mindfulness, balanced effort, tranquility, samadhi & equanimity.

• Your first step is to access equanimity by entering developing and abiding in the fourth samatha jhana. On emerging from fourth jhana, due to the abandoning of curiosity and joy, you will have five Enlightenment Factors within the structure of your attention: mindfulness, balanced effort, tranquility, samadhi and equanimity. 

Step 2: 

+ Curiosity.

• When your mind emerges from the fourth jhana, you need to arouse the Enlightenment Factor of curiosity by observing the rearising of the interaction between your mind with the six sensory fields. Your curiosity should be towards the anicca (impermanent) and anatta (autonomous) nature of both the jhana factors and the habitual mind.

Step 3: 

+ Meditative Joy.

• Arouse within your mind a pleasurable interest in this investigation, gently smiling into it with your eyes to bring joy to your mind. This will establish all Seven Enlightenment Factors into the structure of your attention.

Step 4: 

Loosen up your attention.

• Start to loosen up the unification of your attention so that it can swap to khanika samadhi (momentary unification) for vipassana-insight. Observe the anatta nature of your attention as it swaps from samatha- based unified attention to vipassana based momentary unification for insight into the Five Aggregates.

Preparing your attention in this way will allow your mind to deeply perceive the impermanent (anicca) and autonomous (anatta) nature of all experience and experiencing.

You are now ready to practice Insight Meditations 01-11.

It is your task at this stage to develop insight into anicca (impermanence, unreliability) and anatta (not-self, autonomous) nature of these aggregates until nibidda (disenchantment) arises.

Anatta is:

• The observable characteristic within the six sense fields of the autonomous, not-self nature of all experience and experiencing. This means observing how experiences of your body, feeling tone and mind all happen by them self, without your help.

To develop Sotapanna insight you apply the investigation of anatta to the below Five Aggregates that the Buddha said are associated with clinging.

The Five Aggregates are:

1. Form = all the views and judgements in regard to your body.
2. Feeling Tone = pleasantness & unpleasantness, or neither (worldly & meditative).
3. Perception = identification and dividing of the experienced world into individual things.
4. Formations = the process of conditioning joining experiences as a causal chain.
5. Awareness = the passive knowing of an experience in which the previous four take place.

Note: These five aggregates are what we tend to habitually cling-to as self. The aggregates themselves are not a problem, the problem is that they are habitually 'clung to'. 

It is the habitual clinging to these aggregates that gives rise to dukkha, because by their very nature they are anicca and anatta, therefore cannot be relied upon.

After sitting in meditation, follow these three steps:

Step 1:

First observe anicca (impermanence).

• The perception of anatta is developed by first intentionally directing your attention towards the characteristic of anicca in any of the Five Aggregates: form, feeling tone, perception, formations & awareness. This is done by precisely observing the moment an experience arises, and more importantly the moment it ceases. 

• In particular it is the increased clarity of the ceasing points, like observing the moment a sound ends, that deepens the perception of anicca as 'no solid ground'. 

Step 2:

Develop the perception of 'no-solid-ground'.

• As your attention becomes more accurate in perceiving the ending of each experience, a feeling of no-solid-ground will start to clarify. 

• This occurs because as awareness tries to rest on the end of experiences, they fall away creating a sense of free-falling. This is similar to the experience of walking down a flight of stairs and missing a step and free-falling to the next. It is through the growing perception of no-solid-ground, that the characteristic of anicca as unreliability and dukkha as suffering may be experienced. 

Step 3:

Develop the perception of anatta (not-self).

• It is as this point that you should develop the perception of anatta in the experience of any of the Five Aggregates: form, feeling, perception, formations & awareness. The perception of anatta is developed by making one slight shift in how you perceive experiences: you need to shift from noticing that experiences 'arise and cease', to noticing that experiences 'arise and cease; by themselves'. 

• It is the development of the perception of the anatta, autonomous nature of experience and experiencing, that develops the perception of anatta within the mind, leading to nibidda (disenchantment), and freedom from dukkha (suffering). This process is accelerated by applying the GOSS Formula and accessing the joy of letting go to reward the mind for disenchantment.

I observe vedana within my mind & body as the underlying feeling tone of pleasantness, unpleasantness, or neither pleasantness-or-unpleasantness that is produced by my mind as a way of sorting all experience into safe, dangerous or not relevant to me.

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Sorting Mechanism.

1. If the mind deems an experience to be safe and of advantage it will produce a feeling of pleasantness in relationship to that experience.
2. If the mind deems an experience to be dangerous it will produce a feeling of unpleasantness in relationship to that experience.
3. If the mind deems an experience as not important to it, then it will produce no feeling tone in relationship to that experience.

These sorting's are stored within long term memory as a future reference point for present perception.

This sorting mechanism works well from a survival point of view; however, the problem is that the mind is inherently deluded.

In its deluded state the mind can sort:

1. What is dangerous as being safe and release a feeling of pleasantness towards it.
2. What is safe as being dangerous and release a feeling of unpleasantness towards it.
3. What should be acknowledged as being of no importance and release no feeling tone towards it.

Since the mind inherently find pleasantness attractive, unpleasantness unattractive, and no feeling tone uninteresting, it habitually responds in a deluded way, deluding itself, and embedding that delusion through its response of attraction, aversion or indifference.

Worldly & Spiritual Vedana.

1. Worldly: produced by the mind when it grasps onto any experience.
2. Spiritual: produced by the mind when it lets go of any experience.

Worldly Vedana Potentials: Grasping.

Produced when the mind grasps onto an experience.

1. A worldly feeling tone of pleasantness creates the potential for attraction to arise within the mind.
2. A worldly feeling tone of unpleasantness creates the potential for aversion to arise within the mind.
3. A worldly absence of feeling tone creates the potential for indifference to arise.

Spiritual Vedana Potentials: Letting Go.

Produced when the mind lets go of any experience.

1. A spiritual feeling tone of pleasantness creates the potential for meditative joy & letting go to arise within the mind.
2. A spiritual feeling tone of unpleasantness creates the potential for disenchantment to arise within the mind.
3. A spiritual absence of feeling tone creates the potential for equanimity to arise.

It is helpful to understand that there are no positive or negative vedana.

Positive and negative are separate judgements from the mind, and this judgement can change dependent on the context of the feeling of pleasantness, unpleasantness or neither pleasantness nor unpleasantness.

Vedana is simply vedana. It is neither good or bad, right or wrong, positive or negative.

It is just as it is.

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I can categorize sensations - this one is pleasant this one is unpleasant, but these are just abstract categories.

To move from abstraction to experience I can offer an example that you may be able to relate to.

A banana.

When you mindfully eat a banana, you may notice that there are two experiences in your mouth.

1. There is the texture of the banana.
2. There is the flavour of the banana.

It is possible with observation to seperate the texture from the flavour.

• Sensation = texture.
• Flavour = vedana.

What is the overall flavour of sitting here reading this now? is it pleasant, unpleasant or neither?

Is this worldly or spiritual (is there grasping or letting go within your mind).

Physical pain = Sensations: hot, sharp, throbbing, moving, tight etc. + unpleasantness + aversion.

1. The unpleasantness is a preconditioned judgement to the experience.
2. The tension is a physical response to aversion.
3. Aversion is a mental response to the unpleasantness, not the sensations.

Within this is a potential for an aversive feedback loop.

A judgment of vedana can be applied to any experience within the causal chain that arises from sensory contact (six senses), from initial perception onwards.

The mind can even produce vedana to sort vedana, causing a feeling tone feedback loop.

All part of the chain of dependent origination, after sensory contact, has a vedana potential.

This is all you really need to see.

1. Notice the pushing away of experience, the aversion.
2. Notice the tightening within your body & mind from this aversion.
3. Notice the effort to not like, not want.
4. Gently soften and relax that effort in your body & mind.
5. Feel the pleasure of putting down that heavy weight, letting go.

You have now transmuted worldly unpleasant vedana into spiritual pleasant vedana, training your mind in the path of disenchantment and letting go.

While the perception of anatta is cultivated by noticing that experiences:

• Arise and cease; by themselves. 

The perception of conditionality is cultivated that these anatta experiences are:

• Within themselves autonomously constructing the conditions for other anatta experiences to arise and cease.

The perception of conditionality is developed by intentionally directing your attention towards the conditioned nature of things. This is done by precisely observing the specific conditions for experiences to arise, and the specific conditions for experiences to cease.

To truly experience idappaccayatā requires not only that experiences arise and cease due to specific conditions, but also that they arise and cease due to conditions, outside of themself. It is the 'outside of themselves' aspect that matures the perception of anatta and reveals the law of kamma.

"When this is, that is.

When this is not, that is not.

With the arising of this, comes the arising of that.

With the ceasing of this, comes the ceasing of that."

The Buddha  AN 10.92

Insight into Specific Conditionality is developed by observing any part of the below causal chain during meditation:

Observable Causal Chain:

Sensory contact > initial perception > ***feeling tone > layered percetion > like & dislike > craving > initial thinking > proliferation of thinking > speech > action.

How Each Link is Observed:

1)Sensory Contact: 

• By observing the presence of any sensory experience, contact with a sense organ and the awareness of it as an interdependent group.

2) Initial Perception: 

• By observing the understanding: "I know what this is" or "I don't know what this is" that arises directly after contact.

3) ***Feeling Tone: 

• By observing the presence of pleasantness & unpleasantness that is released after initial perception as a sorting mechanism for the mind.

4) Layered Perception: 

• By observing how your mind applies layers of past & future judgements over the top of the experience changing a simple sensory experience into one that has past and future relationships associated with it. 

5) Like & Dislike: 

• By observing the stance taken within your mind in relationship to the feeling tone present and layered perception as "I want" or "I don't want" or "I don't care".

6) Desire:

• By observing how attraction or aversion-based desire arises within your mind dependent on your mind's relationship to the feeling tone present.

7) Initial Thinking: 

• By observing the initial story based on attraction or aversion is overlayed on the layered perception to personalise what has been experienced.

8) Proliferation of Thinking:

• By observing the transformation of initial thinking into complex thinking loops as your mind seeks that access that which is pleasant and escape from that which is unpleasant.

9) Speech:

• By observing the desire to verbalise thinking in order to solidify and justify your minds stance towards it in regard to attraction and aversion based on past experience.

10) Action:

• By observing the urge to physically act in order to fulfill your mind stance and desire in regard to attraction and aversion.

***It is important to understand that from an arisen relationship to feeling tone, that each of these links from 3-10 have the potential to create the conditions for a back-feeding-loop that triggers another release of feeling tone (vedana) and potential causal chain.

Insight into Specific Conditionality is developed by:

1. Recognising each stage of the causal chain.
2. Understanding the conditions for that stage to arise.
3. Observing the conditions that stage creates by its arising.
4. Understanding the conditions for that stage to cease.
5. Observing the conditions that stage creates by its ceasing.

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How this unfolds as the experience of hearing a dog bark:

1. Sitting peaceful in meditation.
2. Hear a sound.
3. Dog barking.
4. Unpleasent feeling.
5. My neighbours dog.
6. I don't like it when their dog barks.
7. Aversion.
8. Increasing unpleasant feeling.
9. Wanting the sound to stop.
10. Irritation.
11. "I want their dog to stop barking".
12. Stronger unpleasant feeling.
13. Anger.
14. "How dare they allow their dog to do this, don't they care about my well-being".
15. Shouting: "hey you, stop your dog from barking."
16. Standing up and slamming the door in anger.

During mediation and in daily the causal chain of Specific Conditionality can be cut at any stage by applying the GOSS Formula:

GOSS:

1. Ground: be aware of the experience of your body to establish mindfulness.
2. Observe: observe when your attention wanders, noticing its autonomous nature.
3. Soften: gently relax interest in this wandering until awareness rests in your body.
4. Smile: smile with your eyes into the subtle pleasure of letting go of that effort.

Apply your GOSS formula to:

1. Abandon the desire to physically move.
2. Abandon the desire to speak.
3. Abandon the desire to proliferate.
4. Abandon the desire to think.
5. Abandon the desire to like or dislike.
6. Abandon the desire to believe perception.
7. Abandon the desire to react to feeling tone.
8. Abandon the desire to engage with seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, minding.

Note: The key is to notice the effort that supports the desire to (....) and to soften relax deeply into that effort. This is done not to make any experience within the causal chain go away but rather to relax the 'grip' of habitual attention so that the mind can no longer feed the process. this process is accelerated in GOSS steps 3 & 4 by tuning into, basking within the pleasurable feeling of letting go and the factor of joy that rises within the mind.

Creating a gap in the Causal Chain at Contact.

Seeing for example requires three things to create 'contact':

1. A sight
2. A working eye
3. Awareness

If any of these is absent, then you cannot see.

This also means that everything else in this conditional process can not arise. If you break contact, nothing else, including feeling, including thinking, including violence, cannot exist.

Unifying attention for jhana, as an example, removes awareness from the eye door, so sight is not possible. This is the same for hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and minding (thinking, likes, dislikes, views, opinions etc). 

Abandonment of the function of the sense door itself, while it works in regard to interrupting the chain of conditioning, also means that you cannot function of the world, because you need your senses for the world to exist. 

This is why you have to emerge from jhana so that you can eat and drink. You have to release the suppression of your senses by allowing awareness to engage with them. Otherwise, your body would die, since it is in the physical world and subject to its laws.

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Summary:

• Abandonment at this point, of the senses, while possible, is not a solution.
• The key to cutting the causal chain is understanding vedana: feeling tone and the inherent relationship of attraction or aversion of the deluded mind towards it.

The key to cutting the causal chain is understanding vedana: feeling tone.

Let's start with a reference based on my own experience in MIDL:

1. Bodily sensation is not pain.
2. Feeling tone is not bodily sensation.
3. Feeling tone is mental not physical.
4. Feeling tone is not always present.
5. Feeling tone can cease.

I have offered these to remove some of the common confusions in regard to vedana.

Abandoning at Feeling 

The next point in the conditioned process is feeling tone (vedana).

If we abandon our relationship towards feeling tone, we still have the use of our six senses, but everything else in the conditioned process can not arise. Notice earlier, that a person arises between feeling and perception. 

With the arising of a person, is the arising of all the conditioning in regard to that person, the arising of all suffering, of all habitual conditioning and delusion.

If I abandon my relationship to any feeling tone that arises from contact within the six senses, then I can still see, hear, smell, taste, touch etc. But everything else in the conditioned process collapses. 

The mind, in this moment, is free. 

When seeing I just see, when smelling I just smell etc. 

If through the development of wisdom, we can penetrate delusion (habitual not knowing) for long enough, to see the reality of feeling tone, then we can gradually change our mind conditioned response to feeling tone, and therefore change the arising of all suffering.

This is the understanding that arose for me in my own practice of MIDL: 

"Unpleasant feeling and pleasant feeling are impermanent, they are empty, impersonal. They are not found within any experience within the world, or within any experience within the mind. They are illusions produced by my own mind, a simple impersonal sorting system. They are produced through the minds delusion, so cannot be trusted."

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What abandoning at vedana looks like

As abandoning of identification with feeling tone (vedana) has weakened through abandoning (softening). The habitual attachment and aversion in regard to that identification has significantly weakened. As attraction and aversion has weakened, their intensity and strength has faded. 

With the fading of attraction and aversion, there has been a significant lowering of the production of pleasant and unpleasant feeling tone, produced by my mind. At times some feeling tone is present, at other times I experience all feeling tone cease.

This is clearly seen in regard to experiences that once were accompanied by strong feeling tone. 

Now this feeling tone has significantly is weakened or is no longer present. This is because, in my experience, feeling tone is a sorting mechanism produced by my own mind, and when my mind does not feel the need to sort experiences as good or bad, then it also no longer produces pleasant and unpleasant feeling tone.

In this way I can see the cessation of feeling tone in regard to sensory stimulation at the six sense doors.

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But I want to experience pleasant feeling!

And for the common question:

"But I want to experience pleasant feeling!"

Pleasant feeling can still be accessed, but it is not accessed by sensory stimulation, it is accessed through the engagement of attention. This means that it does not arise from the beauty of a sight, this is a judgement. What one person sees as beautiful; another may see as ugly. 

Pleasant feeling arises from the quality of the attention applied to seeing. Attention itself has feeling, beauty and pleasure built into it. If you give your full attention towards anything, through a wholesome mind, it will become interesting, and pleasurable.

The pleasant feeling that arises from the beautiful sight, is conditioned and impermanent, therefore it cannot be relied upon and will lead to suffering if grasped on to. 

The pleasant feeling that arises within the quality of attention, can be experienced again and again, regardless of whether the sensory experience is normally considered good or bad, if the attention is based in continuity of mindfulness and wisdom. 

Stream Entry (Sotapanna) is the first of four mature insights leading to the experience of Nibanna that permanently uproots specific fetters or 'that which binds' from the mind. These fetters are the direct conditions for all 16 Meditation hindrances to arise.

The fetters that are uprooted at Stream Entry are:

1. The view of self: which is removed with the maturity of insight into anatta.
2. The view of rites & rituals: which is removed with insight into specific conditionality.
3. Doubt: which is removed through experiencing the maturity of the Noble Eightfold Path, Path Fruition and maturity of understanding of specific conditionality.

Creating Conditions

The insight that gives rise to Stream Entry has very specific conditions for it to occur. It is important not to focus on your goal but rather in creating the perfect conditions for it to arise. The chemistry of the heart & mind is very precise and repeatable, this can be used to your advantage if you understand it.

When the conditions are right this will arise, have a slight variation in the conditions, and you will get something else. I will share some of these conditions in the order they are experienced, so that you may recognise and cultivate them.

Conditions for Sotapanna:

• Observable weakening of all 16 Meditative Hindrances within your mind.
• All Seven Enlightenment Factors present within your attention structure.
• Khanika samadhi to the level of the fourth vipassana-jhana.
• Deepening perception of anicca & anatta within all experience & experiencing.
• Growing disenchantment towards all experience & experiencing.
• Maturity of equanimity towards all experience & experiencing.

Note: Skill in fourth jhana can be developed using either founded on upacara samadhi (samatha-based unification) or khanika samadhi (vipassana-based momentary attention). 

Regardless of how you initially cultivate equanimity all meditators need to switch to cultivated jhanic unification to the level of fourth jhana using khanika samadhi for Sotapanna insight.

This is due to the necessary maturing perception of the characteristics of anicca and anatta within all experience & experiencing which can only be experienced within the arising & ceasing of the six sense fields.