Greetings Goof,
Goofaholix wrote:To me "the dark night" refers to a process of slowly realising these things are part of the problem not part of the solution and letting go of the attachments to them, which is often painful or leaves one in a period of disillusionment.
Slowly we realise we are creating a new kind of Dukkha with our attitude to practise and let go of it, it's not that there was anything wrong with the practise to start with it's just our attitude to it that changes.
Yes, the "attitude to it", as you call it, changes. Maybe someone should tell Ron Grouch...
Ron Crouch wrote:The reason that I give this advice is because there is what I would call a “point of no return” on the path, where the meditator has to finish. Unfortunately, this point comes right at the Dark Night, and if you don’t finish the path you remain stuck in the Dark Night. That sucks. You cannot go back to sleep, so to speak, and yet you aren’t fully awake. You know something is wrong, and feel terribly out of sync with reality. If you stop meditating at this point you stop making progress and stay in misery.
The reason to meditate that most experienced meditators give is “to end suffering.” And though it is correct to understand this to mean the suffering of life itself, there is also a deeper meaning: that the reason to meditate is to end the suffering inherent in the path itself. Advanced practitioners want to awaken because they are tired of being on the path, tired of being stuck in the twilight between awake and asleep. If you aren’t prepared to work your way through that twilight, don’t begin the path, and do not take up a meditation practice.
The Buddha's teaching on
Right Effort can help to ensure that the attitude is appropriate to the circumstance and that mindstates are wholesome, and that one's realisations are encouraged to
support Right Effort and the other factors of the path, rather than oppose them. "Dark nighters" aren't meditation heroes to me... they're people who have lost the forest for the trees, mistaking meditation techniques for Dhamma. More fool them.
Of relevance here:
Five Piles of Bricks: The Khandhas as Burden & Path by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... andha.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
In particular, this sentence...
"If used unskillfully, though, these perceptions and fabrications can simply replace passion with its mirror image, aversion."
Metta,
Retro.
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."