Are there reconized phasesone moves trough on the path to the LIGHT

[Surya]

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?
 

[Apech]

1 hour ago, Surya said:

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?
 

I think the Secret of the Golden Flower gives stages.   And just as a point of interest the Ancient Egyptians liked to map out the process (though many would dispute that this is what they were doing).

 

I would question the idea that the goal is the Light in the first place …. I would review how you think about the goal a little I think.

[stirling]

5 hours ago, Surya said:

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?

 

What system is this in reference to?

[old3bob]

6 hours ago, Surya said:

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?
 

 

students of various yogas go through stages which are recognized.  

[Nungali]

12 hours ago, Surya said:

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?
 

 

Of course . This is , in the west, the 'degree system'  . Most are based , at first, on the 'primal three' representing birth life and death .  Its similar in indigenous cultures too ( that I have encountered ) . usually 'out of '  (as a 'pendant to ' ) the 2nd degree - life  are   a few  other degrees related to it  involving 'magick' ,  some attribute those to the 'post 3rd degree '  . 

 

It can be easily mapped .   Not only can it shed light,  where you are and what is next   -   that should be its purpose .

[Nungali]

10 hours ago, Apech said:

I think the Secret of the Golden Flower gives stages.   And just as a point of interest the Ancient Egyptians liked to map out the process (though many would dispute that this is what they were doing).

 

I would question the idea that the goal is the Light in the first place …. I would review how you think about the goal a little I think.

 

It can be a metaphorical goal .... or  an overall term that 'suffices for this stage ' .  For example we had a   'Tracing board '  for use in instruction / as a 'mandala'  / 'reminder'  . 

 

( Tracing boards are a teaching device and attempt to show the lesson of the degree'  or the related 'knowledge lecture' in artistic symbolism   eg .  Frieda Harris' versions from the first three degrees of Co-Masonry 

 

                     )

 

 It had a large circle  with  divisions for  'the six paths of magic and yoga ' , each colored accordingly  , the color as it sent to the center of the diagram labeled 'enlightenment '  was  white , as it went further out from the center to the circumference  it darkened until it was black - labelled  ignorance .

 

For example the 'Love' sector for   'Invocational Magick / Bhakti Yoga  was white in the center , toning into the blue of 'love ' and getting darker  until it came to 'obsession '  . 

 

So in this simple schemata , 'the light' , at that stage , was what one was 'aiming for ' .  

[Tommy]

In Zen, there are the ten ox herding pictures. Which might represent the stages towards enlightenment. Personally, I have found that wondering about where you are along the path is only going to reenforce the ideas that you are making any progress. It is self delusion. While I have seen changes in my sitting practice, I do not think of it as progress. Cause I am still where I started. One can not polish a roof tile into a mirror. One can not change into something one is not.

 

Don't get me wrong. I have myself wondered if I  made any progress and at what stage I am at. But, have learned that what is important is where you are now. If ever I can release this thinking mind then I hope to experience my true nature. Where would this nature be? I really do not know. The truth eludes me.

 

I do wish you well and hope you find whatever it is you really want.

Edited Saturday at 05:26 PM by Tommy

[Mark Foote]

3 hours ago, Tommy said:

In Zen, there are the ten ox herding pictures. Which might represent the stages towards enlightenment. Personally, I have found that wondering about where you are along the path is only going to reenforce the ideas that you are making any progress. It is self delusion. While I have seen changes in my sitting practice, I do not think of it as progress. Cause I am still where I started. One can not polish a roof tile into a mirror. One can not change into something one is not.

 

Don't get me wrong. I have myself wondered if I  made any progress and at what stage I am at. But, have learned that what is important is where you are now. If ever I can release this thinking mind then I hope to experience my true nature. Where would this nature be? I really do not know. The truth eludes me.
 

 

 

I believe the ox-herding pictures were originally eight, in China. The last two, the blank slate and the marketplace scene, would therefore be later additions. Speaking of uncertainty as to what constitutes the light...

 

Tommy, I'll bet you could relate to my latest post--here's the first part  of it, and a link:

 

“The Place Where You Stop and Rest”

In one of his letters, twelfth-century Ch’an teacher Yuanwu wrote:

 

Actually practice at this level for twenty or thirty years and cut off all the verbal demonstrations and creeping vines and useless devices and states, until you are free from conditioned mind. Then this will be the place of peace and bliss where you stop and rest.

 

Thus it is said: “If you are stopping now, then stop. If you seek a time when you finish, there will never be a time when you finish.”

 

(“Zen Letters:  Teachings of Yuanwu”, tr. Cleary & Cleary, Shambala p 99)

 

 

In my teenage years, I became keenly aware of the “creeping vines” of my mind. I read a lot of Alan Watts books on Zen, thinking that might help, but I soon found out that what he had to say did nothing to cut off the “creeping vines”.

 

I was looking for something Shunryu Suzuki described in one of his lectures, though I didn’t know it at the time:

 

So, when you practice zazen, your mind should be concentrated in your breathing and this kind of activity is the fundamental activity of the universal being. If so, how you should use your mind is quite clear. Without this experience, or this practice, it is impossible to attain the absolute freedom.

 

(Thursday Morning Lectures, Shunryu Suzuki; November 4th 1965, Los Altos; emphasis added)

 

 

I began to try to sit zazen, based on the illustrations in the back of “Three Pillars of Zen”, by Philip Kapleau.

 

Zazen is almost always taught to beginners as sitting with a straight back and paying close attention to inhalation and exhalation. With regard to the straight back, Moshe Feldenkrais wrote:

 

“Sit straight!” “Stand straight!” This is often said by mothers, teachers, and others who give this directive in good faith and with the fullest confidence in what they are saying. If you were to ask them just how one does sit straight or stand straight, they would answer, “What do you mean? Don’t you know what straight means? Straight is straight!”

 

Some people do indeed stand and walk straight, with their backs erect and their heads held high. And of course there is an element of “standing straight in their posture.

 

If you watch a child or an adult who has been told to sit or stand straight, it is evident that he agrees that there is something wrong with the way he is managing his body, and he will quickly try to straighten his back or raise his head. He will do this thinking that he has thereby achieved the proper posture; but he cannot maintain this “correct” position without continuous effort. As soon as his attention shifts to some activity that is either necessary, urgent, or interesting, he will slump back to his original position.

 

(“Awareness Through Movement”, Moshe Feldenkrais, p 66)

 

 

For many years, whenever I sat at a zendo with a teacher who walked the room during a sitting, the teacher would invariably stop behind me and correct my posture. I generally couldn’t maintain their correction to the end of the sitting.

 

With regard to close attention to inhalation and exhalation, Shunryu Suzuki described such attention as only a “preparatory practice”:

 

… usually in counting breathing or following breathing, you feel as if you are doing something, you know– you are following breathing, and you are counting breathing. This is, you know, why counting breathing or following breathing practice is, you know, for us it is some preparation– preparatory practice for shikantaza because for most people it is rather difficult to sit, you know, just to sit.

 

(The Background of Shikantaza, Shunryu Suzuki; San Francisco, February 22, 1970)

 

Shikantaza, or “just sitting”, is emphasized in the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, the school to which Shunryu Suzuki belonged.

 

(“The Place Where You Stop and Rest”)

 

 

 

Edited Saturday at 08:06 PM by Mark Foote

[Cobie]

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

I believe the ox-herding pictures were originally eight …

imo there should only be six. As that’s the way Laozi is depicted when leaving on the water buffalo. 
 

 

 

Edited Saturday at 09:26 PM by Cobie

[Cobie]

 

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

Speaking of uncertainty as to what constitutes the light...

imo they add stuff when they don’t understand the original and start philosophising about it.

 

 

Edited Saturday at 09:37 PM by Cobie

[Cobie]

 

 

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

… correction …

imo enlightenment is the moment you stop listening to others and start listening to yourself.

 

 

 

Edited Saturday at 09:34 PM by Cobie

[Cobie]

 

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

… slump back …

 

it’s called wuwei 

 

 

Edited Saturday at 09:15 PM by Cobie

[Tommy]

3 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

Tommy, I'll bet you could relate to my latest post--here's the first part  of it, and a link:

 

“The Place Where You Stop and Rest”

Thank you for the reply. I understand creeping vines as the continual narration of self even as the silence has begun. It never lets go. And trying to move it only brings it further to the forefront. Only allowing it to stop on its own does the attention focus. The physical effort to maintain a straight back aids in the efforts to keep attention on the quiet. When it slacks, the mind begins to take over. Sometimes sleep to come. This can not be forced. Practice it over and over again then it may take root. Follow the quiet and silence. Creeping vines and my mind holds onto a song I heard earlier. I can't stop it. Only thing to do is to let it go. Let it play until it loses it control. Return to the silence, .. to the stillness. Much like letting go of a ball on a hill. It goes because that is what it does. So, yes, I can relate but I still do not know this place to stop and rest.

[stirling]

50 minutes ago, Tommy said:

Thank you for the reply. I understand creeping vines as the continual narration of self even as the silence has begun. It never lets go. And trying to move it only brings it further to the forefront. Only allowing it to stop on its own does the attention focus. The physical effort to maintain a straight back aids in the efforts to keep attention on the quiet. When it slacks, the mind begins to take over. Sometimes sleep to come. This can not be forced. Practice it over and over again then it may take root. Follow the quiet and silence. Creeping vines and my mind holds onto a song I heard earlier. I can't stop it. Only thing to do is to let it go. Let it play until it loses it control. Return to the silence, .. to the stillness. Much like letting go of a ball on a hill. It goes because that is what it does. So, yes, I can relate but I still do not know this place to stop and rest.

 

This is the essence Tommy, yes. "We" cannot manhandle the mind, we must just drop our control of it. It is like a bar of wet soap - you can hold it and let it rest in your open hand and it will stay there... still, BUT if you grasp at it it will shoot out of your hand. The more you allow for stillness to well up of its own accord the more frequently it will.

[Lairg]

28 minutes ago, stirling said:

We" cannot manhandle the mind, we must just drop our control of it. 

 

So the human is expected to control its physical and emotional impulses but not its mental energies?   Are philosophers included?

 

What about heart energies?  Are they to be controlled?  Or is the heart to be still?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[stirling]

2 hours ago, Lairg said:

So the human is expected to control its physical and emotional impulses but not its mental energies?   Are philosophers included?

 

What about heart energies?  Are they to be controlled?  Or is the heart to be still?

 

Have you ever truly been in control of physical impulses? Emotional impulses?

 

Emotions and thoughts arise in the same way anything else does. Trees, the wind, calculators and persian carpets appear and disappear, arising and passing moment to moment in consciousness. No "self" controls these things. They are impermanent. Almost everything is.

 

One thing isn't.

 

"Heart energies"? They are construction of the mind, like all cosmologies, systems, levels, phases, paths, etc. 

 

Enlightenment is a moment when the unity/emptiness/dao is realized. It changes the understanding of everything you could imagine. It undoes the idea that you are a separate person that acts in space and in time. It is the realization that there is nothing else to do or realize. It is an understanding that dissolves all old assumptions and ideas about reality. 

 

Interestingly this space of unity/emptiness is available, though attenuated, to ANY meditator who has become skilled in allowing the mind to become still. It is worth finding a teacher who understands it if you are curious to understand it. 

[Lairg]

If you say so

 

 

Edited Sunday at 04:23 AM by Lairg

[Lairg]

15 minutes ago, stirling said:

Have you ever truly been in control of physical impulses? Emotional impulses?

 

No wonder the courts are full of petty criminals

 

 

[stirling]

37 minutes ago, Lairg said:

If you say so

 

What I say is unimportant. If you are curious you can find it out for yourself. That is the beauty of practice. 

[stirling]

42 minutes ago, Lairg said:

No wonder the courts are full of petty criminals

 

Of course... all of them caught in the delusion that there is increase or decrease. 

 

Quote

...all dharmas are marked by emptiness; they neither arise nor cease,
are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor
decrease. - Buddha, Heart Sutra

 

It is entirely possible to understand if there is a desire to gnow. 

[old3bob]

 

to gnow or not to gnaw, that is the question...

 

btw, without will one is like a leaf in the wind of  uncontrolled mind, thus control is needed but not a heavy handed egotistical type of control.

 

Edited Sunday at 11:58 AM by old3bob

[Mark Foote]

On 7/26/2025 at 9:08 PM, stirling said:

 

 

Emotions and thoughts arise in the same way anything else does. Trees, the wind, calculators and persian carpets appear and disappear, arising and passing moment to moment in consciousness.
 

Said the man whose avatar  is flying on a carpet... 

 

[Cobie]

 

On 27/07/2025 at 1:51 PM, old3bob said:

… not a heavy handed egotistical type of control.

 

Yes, (e.g. in DDJ ch. 3) 虛心 (xu1 xin1) I empty my mind of all unwanted contents.

 

On 27/07/2025 at 1:51 PM, old3bob said:

… control is needed …

Yes, my Soul takes control. 

 

 

Edited Monday at 07:17 PM by Cobie

[Mark Foote]

On 7/26/2025 at 1:15 PM, Cobie said:

imo there should only be six. As that’s the way Laozi is depicted when leaving on the water buffalo. 
 

 

I think the sixth image is a reference to Gautama's third concentration:
 

… free from the fervor of zest, (one) enters and abides in the third musing; (one) steeps and drenches and fills and suffuses this body with a zestless ease so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this zestless ease. … just as in a pond of blue, white, and red water-lilies, the plants are born in water, grow in water, come not out of the water, but, sunk in the depths, find nourishment, and from tip to root are steeped, drenched, filled and suffused with cold water so that not a part of them is not pervaded by cold water; even so, (one) steeps (one’s) body in zestless ease. 

 

(AN 5.28, tr. Pali Text Society vol. III pp 18-19)

 

My experience:
 

The water-lilies I believe represent the influence of the legs, the arms, and the head on activity in the abdominals, and consequently on stretch in the ligaments of the spine. The feeling of a combined influence of the extremities in the abdomen could be said to be like lilies of three colors floating under the surface of some body of water.  The exact influence of each extremity remains unclear (zest ceases), yet with a sense of gravity and a stretch in particular ligaments, I can arrive at an ease.
 

Gautama declared that the sages abide in the third concentration. I remind myself that the activity of the body in inhalation and exhalation tends toward coordination by the free placement of consciousness, and look for ease.

(Applying the Pali Instructions)

 

 About the third concentration, Gautama said:
 

“… by the fading out of rapture [zest], [one] abides with equanimity, attentive and clearly conscious, and [one] experiences in [one’s] person that happiness of which (it is Said): ‘Joyful (easeful)  lives [the person] who has equanimity and is mindful’.”

 

(MN 59, Vol II pg 67)

 

The "consciousness-informed body" being the ox:

 

 

 

I like the flute-playing. Also sort of like allowing the inflation of the air sack to displace the fascia behind specific vertebrae, whilst the three abdominals and the ligaments of the spine dance:

 

From my latest post on my own site, beginning with a quote from a neurobiology paper:
 

A key aspect of the bodily self is self-location, the experience that the self is localized at a specific position in space within one’s bodily borders (embodied self-location).

 

(Journal of Neuroscience 26 May 2010, 30 (21) 7202-7214)

 

In Gautama’s description of the first concentration, concentration begins when a person lays hold of “one-pointedness”, something Gautama also referred to as “one-pointedness of mind”. Translated into the language of the neurobiologists, concentration begins when consciousness is retained at the “specific position in space” of “embodied self-location”.

 

The zest and ease of the initial concentration are a result of the effortlessness of the automatic activity initiated by gravity where one-pointedness of mind takes place. To drench the entire body with the feelings of zest and ease such that “there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded” ensures that the consciousness retained with “embodied self-location” can remain “one-pointed”, even as the “specific position” of “embodied self-location” shifts and moves.

 

There can come a moment when the experience of consciousness retained with “embodied self-location” becomes the experience of “embodied self-location” retained with consciousness.

 

 

“Embodied self-location” retained with consciousness:

 

 

But wait--there's more, including the six ginzu steak knives!

Gautama described the "excellence of the heart's release" through the extension of the mind of compassion throughout the four quarters of the world, above and below, all without limit, as the concentration of "the infinity  of ether".  Similarly, the excellence of the heart's release though the extension of the mind of sympathy was the concentration of "the infinity of consciousness", and the excellence of the heart's release through the extension of the mind of equanimity was the concentration of "the infinity of space", or "the infinity of no-thing".

 

 

Bearing in mind that Gautama also said:

 

“Lack of desire even for the attainment of the first meditation has been spoken of by [me]; for whatever (one) imagines it to be, it is otherwise” [Similarly for the second, third, and fourth initial meditative states, and for the attainments of the first four further meditative states]. 

 

(MN 113, tr. Pali Text Society vol III pp 92-94.)

 

 

 

[Cobie]

@Mark Foote thanks for the likes for my posts above (the wuwei cat feels a bit left out ).

 

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

I think …

 

I agree with that bit; it’s clear from your posts, you think a lot. 
 

As for the rest …

it’s way beyond me. 

 

 

 

Edited Monday at 10:37 PM by Cobie