Prasadachitta wrote:
Hi Ron,
Thanks for the long reply. What is it that the dark night mind thinks it is grieving the loss of? I wonder if there is some particular variety of common self view which results in this kind of experience. One that is not as prevalent in everyone. Im just speculating in order to make theoretical room for a description of the insight process which I do not personally recognize. I am familiar with a sense of remorse (what is called "hri" in Buddhism) over being aware of how foolish my mind has been but that is tempered by a sense of relief that I have the opportunity to recognize and be aware as well as relief that there is no substantial self who owns that ignorance.
Prasadachitta
If this isn't familiar to you don't worry - that is why I wrote about it in the first place and am engaging on forums like this.
Most teachers simply do not tell students that these insight stages exist and are part of the insight path. To me this is a big ethical lapse in our dhamma communities. Many students are led to believe that if they experience suffering when meditating then they are doing it wrong - when the texts themselves say something very different. Direct experience of dukkha is critcal to insight. When students are going along in the stages prior to the dukkha nanas everything is fine, they are relaxing, developing right view and increasing concentration. Their overall lives are improving. But when you get to these stages, and you have not been told that they are coming, it can be pretty awful - and that is an all too common experience these days.
If you want to verify for yourself that they are part of the path please read them in the Visuddhimagga. They start on page 666, in the chapter entitled: Purification by Knowledge and Vision of the Way
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... on2011.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
But to answer question more directly, what the meditator is grieving is the self as identification with "formations". Essentially, that is everything experienced by the body and mind. One's sense of having a body, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, memories, stories of who we are, plans - everything formed by the five senses and the mind. We see directly, for the first time, that literally everything taken as "me" is literally coming and going moment-to-moment and really isn't a self. Here is a direct quote describing the insight stage of dissolution:
15. Herein, dissolution is the culminating point of impermanence, and so the meditator contemplating dissolution contemplates the whole field of formations as impermanent, not as permanent. Then, because of the painfulness of what is impermanent and because of the non-existence of self in what is painful, he contemplates that same whole field of formations as painful, not as pleasant, he contemplates it as not-self, not as self. (pg 670)
And to be clear, this is not a cognitive understanding of non-self. That comes way earlier in the initial insight stages when one is first developing right view. This is an actual experience of non-identification with ALL phenomena in a moment-to-moment manner:
“‘He contemplates as impermanent’ here not by inferential knowledge thus, “Impermanent in the sense of dissolution”, like one who is comprehending formations by groups (XX.13–14), nor by seeing fall preceded by apprehension of rise, like a beginner of insight (XX.93ff.); but rather it is after rise and fall have become apparent as actual experience..."
Or check out Mahasi Sayadaw's explanation of it in the progress of insight:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... html#ch6.7" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"...the knowledge will come to him that whatever part of the whole body is noticed, that object ceases first, and after it the consciousness engaged in noticing that object follows in its wake. From that the meditator will understand very clearly in the case of each successive pair the dissolution of any object whatsoever and the dissolution of the consciousness noticing that very object. (It should be borne in mind that this refers only to understanding arrived at through direct experience by one engaged in noticing only; it is not an opinion derived from mere reasoning.)
I hope that addresses your question. I urge you and everyone who might read this to go to the VM and actually read it directly to better understand what the insight path is.