2/6 When it comes to meditative technique Culadasa fleshes out some of the key distinctions he sees as important when practicing Shamatha &/or Vipassana, but most importantly (IMO), he covers the roles that attention & awareness play in them both.
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3/6 Then Culadasa talks in depth about a series of synchronous personal events that lead him to uncover self-destructive behavior that persisted post-awakening. From my perspective, this points to some very tangible ways to start tackling some of our far-too-common 'guru' abuse.
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4/6 One of those synchronous pillars also hints at the psychotherapeutic potential of using a plurality of distinct personalities to understand and work with trauma & general mental health - a topic I've been deeply intrigued by for years now.
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5/6
@OortCloudAtlas notes that some of this personality work seems to be found in Vajrayana. I'm no expert, but I get the sense that tantric practice has a lot to say about psych dev. Yet, it seems to be primarily focused on post-stream-entry. Thoughts/Corrections?
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Replying to @JaredJanes
It's not so much that Vajrayana is for stream-enterers specifically, but that it's made for non-monks; people with lives, mates, jobs, kids, etc. So the psychological component is much more fully and usefully addressed, IMO.
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Replying to @OortCloudAtlas
That makes perfect sense, I suppose I was referring more narrowly to much of the emotional work I've found in Vajrayana (mostly Trungpa writings & Aro Lineage) starting with an understanding of emptiness that I'm not sure exists pre-stream-entry. Would love
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Replying to @JaredJanes @OortCloudAtlas
This poses difficult epistemological problems. There's the textbook answer, but it's not clear what it means in practice. Some vague conceptual and/or everyday experiential understanding of emptiness might be adequate as a base; how would we find out?
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That aside, "stream entry" (whatever that means—it's pretty unclear!) now seems like a relatively low bar, or much lower than it was historically, since modern Mahasi-derived practice leads to it fairly quickly in many cases.
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Mahasi Sayadaw is a higher bar than many internet forums would make one believe. It's actually a pretty high bar, and maintains the standard theravada fetters model.
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Yes… this is one reason I expressed doubt about the meaning of “stream entry.” There’s serious epistemological questions there (as well as ontological ones of course). Lots of people say they’ve achieved it; what does that mean, and how could anyone know?
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Also, most contemporary American meditators work in watered-down “Mahasi-derived” systems rather than following his prescriptions in detail (which is probably what you were pointing out?).
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That could be fine as when a burmese sayadaw or Goenka says "effort" they don't mean what your boss or high school teacher means.
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