Hi Mike and siska, See below. --ED
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul> "Buddhist parallels In Buddhist vipassana meditation, the practitioner passes through the "Sixteen Stages of Insight" (nanas) towards Awakening. Steps five to ten are the "Knowledges of Suffering" (dukkha nanas): * Knowledge of Dissolution (bhanga nana) * Knowledge of Fearfulness (bhaya nana) * Knowledge of Misery (adinava nana) * Knowledge of Disgust (nibbida nana) * Knowledge of Desire for Deliverance (muncitukamayata nana) * Knowledge of Re-observation (patisankha nana) Western Buddhist meditators and teachers regularly compare this experience to the Dark Night, for example Jack Engler[6] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul#cite_note-5> : The 16th century Christian contemplative, St. John of the Cross, called this phase "the dark night of the soul" for the same reason: the night is dark because it is overwhelmingly clear that neither God nor the soul nor the self as we knew them are any longer to be found. There is instinctive recoil and withdrawal: nothing seems sufficiently worth doing or caring about without them. These parallel experiences across faiths have led to speculation that the Dark Night is a common spiritual or mystical state or stage which is independent of the specific belief system. The Buddhist author Daniel Ingram, who also invokes St. John, uses the term "maps" for the sequence of mental states: The Christian maps, the Sufi maps, the Buddhist maps of the Tibetans and the Theravada, and the maps of the Khabbalists and Hindus are all remarkably consistent in their fundamentals. ( ) These maps, Buddhist or otherwise, are talking about something inherent in how our minds progress in fundamental wisdom that has little to do with any tradition and lots to do with the mysteries of the human mind and body. Note that not all variants of Buddhism recognize these stages." --- In [email protected], mike brown <uerusuboyo@...> wrote: > > Hi ED, > > A couple of points. First, I think Siska was referring to the nanas (or nyanas) which are a bit different from the jhanas. Jhanas are states of absorption that one experiences as a result of concentrating (samatha) on an object of meditation (usually the breath). Nanas are (16) stages of insight (vipassana) gained when we look inside and become acutely aware of our sensate world. For example, by focusing our attention on bodily pain we can come to realise its impermanence > > and thus the 3 Characters of Existence (this is the 3rd stage of the nanas - the first 2 are: 1) body and mind and 2) cause and effect). The jhanas alone won't give you wisdom, only vipassana will, but they're useful for giving one the state of mind to go deeper into vipassana. > > Mike
