Pulsar wrote: ↑Fri Nov 25, 2022 9:17 pm
Radix wrote
Without having attained stream entry, how could you possibly know that ("know" as in "know for yourself")?
I have not said that I have attained stream entry on this forum, nor have I said that I have not attained stream entry.
You don't have to reveal your status in open forums. I'm saying that per the doctrine, there are things one simply cannot know prior to attaining a particular stage.
So I have had glimpses of what it is like not to identify with a self.
Is a glimpse not sufficient to know the truth Of the process?
No.
One could, for example, use drugs, or experience great pain, like when breaking a big bone, and in that state "feel one isn't identifying with a self", but that would not be the right kind of insight into anatta, for it wasn't arrived at the right way.
When an insight is arrived at the right way, it lasts and the experience can be repeated at will. The same cannot be said for insights arrived at via drugs or traumatic states.
to have some faith to go forward?
I suppose one can use those "glimpses" as faith to go forward. But it's also important to note that one's justifications for a particular pursuit (in this case, for "Buddhist practice") are likely going to be ad hoc, rationalizations, with a self-serving bias, and a hindsight bias.
Is it not within our capacity to stop for brief periods this process, by contemplating accurately on what goes on in the defiled mind?
But if your mind is defiled, how do you know you're contemplating accurately?
I am satisfied with brief glimpses of what needs to be perfected.
While I'm not. Case in point: Last year, I became violently ill. I didn't know it was even possible to feel that sick. I thought this is what dying feels like (except that dying will surely feel many times worse). I vomitted, I had diarrhea, my intestines hurt, I had a metallic taste in my mouth, and I just felt violently ill all over. And yet while all this was going on, there were brief periods where I felt somehow detached from the whole thing. I could describe it as a "glimpse into not-self". I was taken to the hospital, where they established I had a GI infection. They gave me an infusion of what had to be some very potent drug because I soon didn't feel any pain anymore and actually felt a bit cheerful, even if drowsy. The drug was so potent that I didn't feel the chronic pain in my knee that I otherwise have 24/7. And in that drug induced state, I also mentally kind of drifted away and felt there are only sensations, but no I. Sure enough in a few days, the drugs wore off, the pain in my knee came back, and my intestines were sore.
Drugs and trauma are definitely not the right way to arrive at insights, drugs and trauma ("drama", ha ha) are just too volatile, too unpredictable. But what is the right way? How can one possibly know this in advance? And how does one know that some particular method (a combination of knowledge and its application) has rendered the right result? One could be doing fine with a certain method, even for years, feel confident, and then something happens (like a GI infection) and everything crumbles. That's why I say, let's just go with the doctrine, and "I'll know it when I'll know it".