the dearth of direct experience
In Advaita and pseudo-Buddhist circles much is made of something called Direct Experience, and its related activity of Direct Pointing. This latter term bears an apparent relationship to the Zen notion of Direct Pointing to the Nature of Mind, but lacks Zen’s fey and ironic relationship with language and concepts. It is presented quite humourlessly as the most direct path to Insight (more direct than vipassana meditation, even). Direct Experience is so worthy of being ‘pointed out’ because it is undeniable and always available ‘in the moment’ – if you ‘see’ it or ‘have’ it, Insight is unavoidable, and therefore it is much to be prized. But positing Direct Experience is rather like introducing The Unconscious – they are both symbolic terms which are taken as more ‘real’ than what can actually be experienced, and which disempower our current experience, rendering it weak or irrelevant somehow.
Within the Pali tradition we have the experience of the six sense-bases, and the notions of mindfulness and unmindfulness with regard to them. More specifically within mindfulness, the lakśana of impermanence is the meditative gateway to the vimokkha of signlessness. This can be summarily expressed as the meditative appreciation of the difference between tathatā and the constructed meanings that make up experiencing. In the Perfection of Wisdom tradition, this is expanded into the sphere of activity of the bodhisattva, who has assimilated signlessness, and is (for example) directed to give gifts unsupported by any sort of sign or meaning. Meanings are known to be purely notional and relative, and so nothing is thereby granted the actual or absolute existence which could disturb equanimity. This is the highest mindfulness – alternatively, to be lost in our constructions and meanings (especially unintentionally) is to be unmindful.
Living beyond signs and meanings is a functional assimilation of the sphere of signlessness through a deep appreciation of the nature of experience. Anything we call ‘experience’ is constructed within the dualistic delusion of ‘us’ ‘having’ an experience of ‘something’. So Direct Experience is just another construct, involving in its wake a mass of views. Even the present moment, that touchstone for ‘direct experience’ devotees, is not to be found (ask Nagarjuna) – it too is a construct. If we insist that only present-moment experience is a correct basis for behaviour, we would become solipsistic and antinomian quite quickly. We would give up our complex imputations of the existence of other people, as we do not directly experience them, and could simply do whatever felt ‘alright’.
In their most extreme form present-moment and direct-experience-based approaches maintain a belief that certain rare sequences or kinds of mental events are absolutely correlated with transitions between the four stages of the Insight path beloved of the Theravadin tradition (or with the snapping of the Fetters of delusion, if you are a member of the Church of the Ten Fetters). This view owes much to the analysis of mental events that arose in the Abhidhamma, well after the Buddha’s passing. However, it is interesting to see that even such a hard-nosed proponent of this approach as Daniel Ingram finds grounds to doubt its validity, even within the broader context of insisting upon it. In his discussion of the difficulty of establishing fourth-path Insight (MCTB pp. 315-6 – ‘That there are arahats who have opened the wisdom-eye but had it fade and those who have opened it and had it stay open is rarely mentioned but worth knowing.’), and in his discussion of the phenomenon of Twelfth Path (MCTB pp. 289-90), Ingram acknowledges experiences which do not fit this model. He (and the associated tradition) also neglects to explain why the completion of one’s second Cycle of Insight invariably mean that second Path is achieved, whereas nothing like this occurs later on the Path. If we take Ingram’s experience seriously (and I suggest we do), these concerns suggest that the relevant sequences of mental events do not always have the significance (and effect) that they are believed to have.
ditching the light-switch fallacy
Indeed there are quite sound Dharmic reasons not to take any particular conditioned mental events (nor any phenomena, actually) as a correlate of the unconditioned. When you put it this baldly, it rather speaks for itself. However could one believe such a thing, unless it was smuggled in as an unquestioned assumption? It is self-contradictory to regard the unconditioned as conditioned by the conditioned (or by anything else, for that matter!) It is also worth saying that the opposite view, that there is no relationship between the two, is also suspect (and more complicated to refute, too, so I won’t!). Perhaps there is a level beyond which one is blabbering on meaninglessly about the mysterious relationship between Samsara and Nibbāna, and the attempt becomes counter-productive. Having done one’s necessarily limited best with the ordinary mind in terms of Right View, it becomes necessary to meditate in order to really see the Truth…. the ordinary dualities of language and conceptualisation cannot hold it.
The implication which Ingram does not draw, and which I will here, is that progress in vipassana is not correlated in any lock-step fashion with sequences of mental events, or with the rather looser formulation of any particular sort of experience, direct or otherwise. If this link falls, then also the notion that irreversibility on the Insight path can be solely indicated by any particular conditioned phenomena also falls. I will hereafter call this suspect lock-step view the light-switch approach to spiritual progress. I would define it as the view that particular sequences of conditioned mental events are sufficient and necessary indicators of transitions between stages of the Insight path. Holding to the light-switch fallacy is not the same as believing that certain kinds of practice and certain associated mental events might be relevant, or in the right territory. I am not being absolute the other way (that would be a harder position to support than the one I am criticising!).
One can see how seductive (and even to a limited point useful) the light-switch model is. One really wants to get one’s head straight, to know what to look for, and to be sure about when the realm of safety has been obtained… The alternative is less easy to comprehend, and might initially seem to add to one’s confusions about the nature of existence. But nevertheless, I will sketch out a different approach, which seems to me less subject to the flaws of the light-switch model, and which does better justice to the observable patterns of vipassana experience.
A progressive model of vipassana
In the famous simile of the Dharma as like unto the Ocean (in Udana 5.5) the Buddha points out that the Dharma offers a gradual progression to final gnosis, in the same way that the ocean gradually deepens from the shore. At the shoreline, the pattern of the ocean’s movement is also very like the gradual progress of our being in Insight. If we bring to mind the to-ing and fro-ing of the waves as the tide gradually encroaches on a sandy shore, we have a metaphor for progressive overall development within vipassana arising out of an ongoing and cyclic process. More than this, we can distinguish an experiential difference in our practice in the two phases of flowing and retreating. There is the passage through to the acceptance of a truth initially, which finally comes to full and unshakeable establishment; and then a process of assimilation which washes back and thoroughly soaks all the nooks and crannies of the territory that the wave was too urgent for initially, and had hurried past. To change midstream to a gardening metaphor – it is like the difference between hacking one’s way through the undergrowth to the open vista on the other side, and then taking breath before turning back to clear the rest of the garden, now that you have the full measure of it. This ebb-and-flow model seems to me much more true-to-life than the light-switch model; and as well it constantly requires you to question and deepen your experience through meditation, and is therefore much less susceptible to the various problems of false claims. It does not require you to treat any conditioned phenomena as a sign of the irreversible absolute, and is in harmony with the Buddha’s teaching on the progressive nature of the Dharma.
I use a simile of ebb-and-flow, through and return, because these two aspects of vipassana practice are so salient and pervasive in practitioners’ experience. Ingram’s Cycle of Insight (not his really!) can of course be assimilated to this model without any difficulty, though claims about the status of various cycle-completions can be set aside without harming the value of this harmonisation. The first of these two phases, the through-phase, is obviously the deepening phase, with one’s faith changing from what is deeply intuited to what is incontrovertible within the (meditative) depths of one’s being. Though one can mistake one’s horizon, there comes a point (usually meditative initially) of full arrival at an appreciation of a dharma-truth. There is a sense of completion, after which begins the return-phase.
The latter phase usually involves the exploration of those aspects of one’s psyche which were left behind, feel unresolved, or were not obviously relevant until this new perspective arose. One’s new viewpoint and trust lead to a questioning – if such-and-such is now the case, do I need to keep suffering with this, or still feel I need to hang on to that, or maintain a dependant allegiance to the other? The predominant tone of the return phases though is that even when it is turbulent one’s fundamental faith cannot be questioned, simply because it is no longer controvertible (despite your best efforts!). One can eat worms without doubt, perhaps even quite joyfully. Indeed, one can meet very difficult previously unbearable aspects of one’s being without the old identification during the return-phase, and so now release them fully. Being doubt-free in this regard, the work being done seems to have a kind of inevitability about it. There is also no particular deepening of the Insight from the previous through-phase during such an assimilation process (though one may see more of the implications of that insight, and be able to express it more effectively to others). Hence, the predominant tone of the through-phase is the establishment of Wisdom, whereas that of the return-phase is the activity of Compassion.
As an example of this process of through and return, take the appreciation that we are whole and entire in ourselves, and do not need another human being to complete us. This latter is a plank of the Romantic myth that is so corrosive for practitioners, and the contrary appreciation of our wholeness is an aspect of the Dharmakaya. It can be allied with the Vajrasattva Sadhana, though need not explicitly take that particular expression. The process of moving towards our wholeness may require quite a lot of us, and have many phases before it is fundamentally established. However, once it is incontrovertible, we will be less insecure and doubtful, and no longer be able to believe related insecurities as they arise thereafter. Indeed, in not believing them, we will be much more inclined to go into the heart of our existential loneliness, as a compassionate non-believer in its absolute reality now. The thoroughgoing lack of identification means we can fully experience and release this unhelpful old neediness, which in fact we had run from before. Previously we had borne with it, largely acted it out, with perhaps some psychological insights into its aetiology and the consequences for our lives. Wisdom enables us to move from adaptation and coping with what seems ineluctable, to the actual (compassionate) destruction of an asava. These outflows do indeed poison the waters of our being if we do not purify them at source.