Culadasa: 5 Insights that leads to Awakening - Leo, what are your thoughts?

[ardacigin]

Leo told that he is not really familiar with Culadasa so I'm curious what he thinks about some of Culadasa's insights into awakening explained in detail in this video:

Also, I know that many people don't know Culadasa in this forum, so let me know your thoughts about him after watching the video.

Culadasa has over 40 years of experience in meditation.

The insights are as follows:

1- Impermanence

2- Emptiness

3- The causal interdependence of all phenomena

4- The nature of suffering

5- The illusion of a separate self

Of course, Culadasa is also aware that these are not all the insights.  He says that there are many aspects of insight penetration towards love, compassion and reality besides these 5 insights. 

He is not a materialist like Shinzen Young. He considers himself as a nondualist.

The lecture is fairly long like Leo's videos. He goes in depth while explaining it with clear definitions. He also describes what awakening is. I think anyone who likes Leo's style will also like Culadasa.

Let me know your thoughts below.

 

Edited August 1, 2019 by ardacigin

[Preetom]

1 hour ago, ardacigin said:

 

The insights are as follows:

1- Impermanence

2- Emptiness

3- The causal interdependence of all phenomena

4- The nature of suffering

5- The illusion of a separate self

Leo has kinda outgrown those nihilistic and negative expressions and now all about absolute positives. 

1) gods permanent presence

2) fullness/wholeness

3) instantaneous imagination

4) no suffering/ absolute love

5) there is only god

?

Anyway thanks for the video. Will check out tomorrow!

 

Edited August 1, 2019 by Preetom

[abrakamowse]

56 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

He is not a materialist like Shinzen Young.

Shinzen Young is a materialist? Really?...

[ardacigin]

10 minutes ago, abrakamowse said:

Shinzen Young is a materialist? Really?...

He is one of the more materialistic spiritual teachers out there due to his scientific training. He doesn't consider awakening as an absolute truth (as his teacher Sasaki Roshi does). Shinzen thinks that the investigation of truth must be done in the domain of science with scientific methods, not through direct experience in consciousness. He also makes a distinction between objectivity and subjectivity. These are dualistic notions coming from his scientific training.

He feels the need to make the distinction that all of his insights pertain to the sensory experience, not reality. I guess that Leo would say that this attitude towards the sensory experience is a result of insufficient insight towards the nature of perception. Leo thinks that some of Shinzen's insights are not fully matured and materialistic in essence.

Culadasa views reality and truth more in tune from Leo's perspective. There is a truth to be gleaned about the nature of reality. That truth can be gleaned with consciousness work. That truth is not materialistic but non-dualist in essence.

 

Edited August 1, 2019 by ardacigin

[abrakamowse]

@ardacigin Thanks! I didn't have idea about that.

[ardacigin]

1 minute ago, abrakamowse said:

@ardacigin Thanks! I didn't have idea about that.

You are welcome. Let me know your thoughts about Culadasa after watching the video.

 

[abrakamowse]

7 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

You are welcome. Let me know your thoughts about Culadasa after watching the video.

 

Ok, I will. 

[Leo Gura]

Those 5 insights are of course all true and very important to realize.

But there's also a lot more stuff to realize.

The "mechanics" of God are not addressed well by Buddhism.

[Enlightenment]

What is, is Infinite perfect and perfectly satisfying. We're all one. What do you think about his view on Ultimate Reality @Leo Gura

Edited August 1, 2019 by Enlightenment

[Consilience]

@ardacigin Your other post inspired me to look into this guy’s work, so much so that I went on ahead and invested into his book The Mind Illuminated. It feels like Im finally starting to build consistent progress with meditation. I severely downplayed the importance of stable attention when it comes to contemplating reality or the self. And moreover, severely overestimated my concentration ability. 

 

I think investing the time required to master attention will pay off down the road, thanks for bringing this guy up on the forum. His work has been very helpful thus far.

[Leo Gura]

@Consilience There basically is no serious meditation without serious concentration ability.

[ardacigin]

12 minutes ago, Consilience said:

@ardacigin Your other post inspired me to look into this guy’s work, so much so that I went on ahead and invested into his book The Mind Illuminated. It feels like Im finally starting to build consistent progress with meditation. I severely downplayed the importance of stable attention when it comes to contemplating reality or the self. And moreover, severely overestimated my concentration ability. 

 

I think investing the time required to master attention will pay off down the road, thanks for bringing this guy up on the forum. His work has been very helpful thus far.

That is why I'm writing these posts in the first place. I'm glad some people are actually listening and starting the practices. I also find that stable attention is very important in working with techniques like self enquiry as it helps to build instrospective, peripheral and extrospective awareness to a high degree. 

Concentration matters in this path. Don't listen to folks who say 'just sit and try to be aware. Don't effort so much.' The Soto zen mindset. 

That mindset will be true in the future. There is a time to put effort and there is also a time to ease up on effort. The beginning stages of meditation musn't be about easing up effort. It must be about developing stable attention with awareness through effort.

This Soto zen mindset will become MUCH more effective once you get to a stage of attentional development called 'effortless attention'. This is a neurological marker of advanced samadhi practice described in stage 7 in Culadasa's meditation manual. All practice after this stage is called insight practices. Things like self enquiry falls into this category. 

But the way to come to this is put in the effort and build the stable concentration. Culadasa says that once you master this skill, you'll become a better meditator than most meditators with decades of experience who hadn't developed stable attention and consequently struggled having any tangible mystical insights. 

The samadhi practice thins out sensory experience so that you can penetrate to its non-dual nature with insight practices like noting or self enquiry. 

Edited August 1, 2019 by ardacigin

[Bill W]

2 hours ago, Preetom said:

Leo has kinda outgrown those nihilistic and negative expressions and now all about absolute positives. 

 

57 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Those 5 insights are of course all true and very important to realize.

 

Looks like Leo needs a new personal secretary. 

[abrakamowse]

7 minutes ago, Bill W said:

 

Looks like Leo needs a new personal secretary. 

[noselfnofun]

@ardacigin thanks man some sick posts recently I've been meaning to get involved but to busy atm. Have u ever tried float tanks? Im currently working at a float center and get as many free floats as I like and its improving my sits dramatically. floating everyday along side SDS's has made me advance two stages up. I really recommend it tho it's so dam expensive if u don't have a tank or don't work for a place that sells them, I'd be interested to see how u find floating along side a serious pratice as almost no one I know uses it for that reason. 

Edited August 1, 2019 by noselfnofun

[ardacigin]

55 minutes ago, noselfnofun said:

@ardacigin thanks man some sick posts recently I've been meaning to get involved but to busy atm. Have u ever tried float tanks? Im currently working at a float center and get as many free floats as I like and its improving my sits dramatically. floating everyday along side SDS's has made me advance two stages up. I really recommend it tho it's so dam expensive if u don't have a tank or don't work for a place that sells them, I'd be interested to see how u find floating along side a serious pratice as almost no one I know uses it for that reason. 

Float tanks can put you in certain deep jhanic absorptions and concentration states naturally with little effort. I assume this because I've never experienced it personally and I don't live in an environment where I can have access to it easily. Definitely recommend it though. From what people who've tried it say that float tanks tend to reduce the sense of self with inducing less sensitivity to where the skin ends and the 'outer' world starts. That can also potentially induce profound relaxation and insight experiences of no self.

Also since we are talking about insights, do you remember my earlier posts on my own insight experience of no self in profound relaxation? Well, it's been about a month since that experience and I've come to see its permanent effects in my life.

My sense of self is reduced from its baseline. Just like how concentration can be developed as a baseline, so can the separate sense of self one identifies with gets reduced as a baseline. It is like a small piece of this constructed identity is gone and a crack has been opened with a higher baseline in equanimity. I assume that when a sufficient piece of this sense of being a self goes away, stream entry occurs permanently.

I still feel the same experience with or without concentration the day of my insight experience. This sort of thing never happened to me before. There is a deeper intuitive side of insight penetration that doesn't exist in 'only concentration' practices. Or in meditation highs.

I still mostly feel like a self interacting with other separate entities in the hopes of pursuing happiness and running away from pain. (The survival game as Leo talks about). I still suffer just as much as the next guy. Maybe slightly less and with more equanimity. But I know that when I take a step back and expand the awareness, this whole worldview starts to be seen as a mental construction.

The self is not fixed and singular. It is multi-parted and impermanent. It has a vast continuum of intensity and depth. It is an activity that moves and morphs around because it is a mental construct as much as anything else. It can be reduced or emphasized depending on one's state of consciousness.

Anyways, these are my current follow up experiences since that last awakening experience. There are permanent changes going on and my practice is going really well.

As I've suspected earlier, this is not stream entry. Probably some parts of my mind has integrated this insight to a sufficient degree but apparently the majority of the mind system hasn't deeply intuited no-self to a permanent degree. 

Culadasa says that with deeper practice from stage 7 to stage 10, these insights will get integrated by more parts of the mind and then stream-entry will occur. The permanent deal. I'm still in stage 7. Sometimes peaking to stage 8. Had 2 very deep insight experiences into no self. And I can't wait to see where this will all lead me. 

My current experiences suggest the possibility of this technique really working in the long run. So that is why I want more people to try Culadasa's methods. 

Edited August 1, 2019 by ardacigin

[Esoteric]

@ardacigin Hey. I've started reading Culadasa's book. Very good so far. One of those books you wished you read at the beginning of your path.

I am going HARD on concentration right now. I also mix in Leo's concentration video. So I came up with the idea of using a vibration wrist clock. So you can set the timer for how many minutes you can focus and increase when you have mastered your set time. So you can use it out in public and work (and at home where there are no distractions of course) and when it's done it just vibrates on your arm without drawing attention. I recommend this for people. It makes it a lot of fun. I see great improvements already and you get used to being centered even in chaotic environments.

[abrakamowse]

@Esoteric What's the name of the book?

[Esoteric]

@abrakamowse The Mind Illuminated

[abrakamowse]

@Esoteric Thanks. I'm going to watch the video. Seems good stuff ...