Dark Night of the soul


Is that we can say that there are two Buddhisms. 

There is the Buddhism that most people believe in at the ordinary level. It's the Buddhism that they bring in, that's the first teachings, the baseline or the starting point. And that, you could say that everybody that comes to the actual teachings of the Buddha, the noble teachings, has to come through their own way of getting there, bringing their own baggage along with it. And as that baggage accumulates, it becomes a form of Buddhism itself. And that we can label that actually is culture. Like, for instance, you have Tibetan culture or a type, a Thai Buddhism, a Chineese Buddhism, an Indian Buddhism, and now we've got the new kid on the block of Western Buddhism, along with Zen, Chan  and all of that kind of stuff. 

Now, because it's the westerners who were going into the Dharma, so as a collective kind of label, all of the western people are bringing a lot of their own stuff. And the question then just got raised, "Well, what about the Dark Knight of the Soul?" And an answer to that is, "Spot on, that's quite Western of you." Right, that's a brilliant, clear, and interesting point, and it seems to be now a major item on the list of what is Buddhism in the West. And we can say first off that we know exactly where the phrase came from, and those who really know, know exactly what the meaning of it is, and yet it's misapplied quite easily with Western Buddhism in their misunderstanding of the actual teaching of the Buddha. 

So, what is then the Dark Knight of the Soul? 

It first off came from Saint John of the Cross, and many, many of the Christian Saints and Mystics will have a dark night of the soul, and sometimes that Dark Night of the Soul starts in the Middle Ages and they die with it years later. Then, in fact, one of the newer examples of this is Mother Teresa, who got quite a lot of bad press from Christopher Hitchens? And he was kind of spot on about her, but he was there just watching what was going on, where later we found out truly that she was in The Dark Night of the Soul because of her memoirs that weren't published until about 20 years after she died. Where she really was going through a dark, dark night in the sense of here she is, a very, very high-class, high-quality, well-known nun, a world example of it been talking to Jesus day in and day out, and he did not answered once. "He never came up, he never answered my prayers. Why does Jesus and God not answer me?" Okay, which actually, if you think about it from the perspective that she's in, is it becomes the Dark Knight of the Soul because she has thrown everything into Christianity. She called on Jesus and he does not answer. She has thrown absolutely 100% of all of her faiths, her reason, and everything into this thinking this is the way to go, and she's getting no results.  she's got no option. She is in the depths of despair, so depressed and so in the depths of got no way out, got no help coming, and she don't know what to do. Pretty dark night, huh? That's where that comes from, and it's quite common in Christianity, quite more common than a lot of people want to recognize. Now the problem with the Christian version is that they've got nobody to run to, to actually get some help, because their teachers and their fellow monks and nuns in their order is either that they too are in the depths of it or about to slide into it. They can't go to the teacher and have the teacher bring them through the Dark Knight of the Soul.

The Easy way out is the Buddha's way out of The Dark Knight of the soul is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and boogie on down the road. No help coming, no possibility of any help coming. But in Buddhism, there was never any help coming in the first place. So why should we call it a Dark Night of the Soul? We've grabbed a term out of medieval Christianity and applied it to something that is completely different within the Buddhist. So, this is a real misapplication of the term because with the Dark Knight of the Soul, that's just a lot of God, just a phrase or just the phase we go through the world. The real Dark night of the soul is this kind of heavy duty, okay? So with that as context, we can then look at, well, where does this idea of The Dark Night of the Soul come from within the context of Buddhism? Where, what in Buddhism is there this got this application? And the answer to that is, um, let us say, a 5th Century A.D blog that is a portion that was added to and put into the Viisuddhi Magha. And that it is basically known in Western Buddhism as the 16 stages of insight. 

Those 16 stages of insight is not something that comes out of the time of the Buddha. It's not the teaching of the Buddha. It's a teaching that can get in the way of understanding the teachings of the Buddha. And that here's kind of the point, that in the practice that they do, they actually are practicing only a part of the eight fold Noble Path, most notably Sati and Ditty, to wake up and take a look, and they called this 'noting'. But they don't do all of the Eightfold Noble Path, especially the third item on the list, right Noble effort. Once you see the dukha, make a change. Now, this right effort to remove unwholesome thoughts, in fact is all over the sutas (MN 117, MN 19, MN39 MN 118 and many more). Unwholesome thoughts are also called hindrances. So if you've been practicing correctly and you've got no hindrances, where is this Dark Night of the Soul? The real teachings of the Buddha are good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end when it's taught properly and the right phrasing, in the right context, in the right timing. 

Where's the Dark night of the soul in there? Okay, it is not. But by the time it got into the Method of noting and seeing and looking and labeling over and over again, you begin to see everything begin to dissolve and fall apart. But the student at that level is not ready for such terrifying kind of things, and they become frightened, which, by the way, I've already gone through the first five or so stages of the 16 stages of insight, arriving at stage 6) fearfulness, 7) misery, and then  8) disgust, 9) despair. All right, here's your Darkness out of the Soul right there. It's written right in the literature: despair. Ah, but that's only step 9), followed by 10) a strong, strong desire to get out of your own self-made misery. 

Except for one thing, and that is everybody who I know comes to Buddhism before they learn anything about it, they come because they've already got this kind of "I want out of here." I already know enough about Dukkha. I want out. See, most ordinary people, they don't even understand what Dukkha is. In order to get on the Noble Path, you've got to understand Dukkha a little bit in the sense of "ouch, this is me, and it hurts." But most people go one step further and not even stay on that point. "Ouch, you stop hurting me." And that's where the rest of the world is. They're in the blame game. They want it to be somebody else. If we need a God, we need a Jesus, we need a devil, we need a savior, we need the king, we need a slave. The actual Dark Night of the Soul is seeing  there is no help coming.

We need somebody else to fix us. And the entire teachings, by the way, of the second Noble Truth, the whole point of the teaching of the second Noble Truth is it's your own greed, your own delusion, and your own stupid ignorance that's causing your own problems. Yeah, and when we say, "Oh, please come in," often, often in the Burmese practice, there's kind of precedence or importance of the three characteristics over the four noble truths. 




Once we understand the right way to go, we're obligated to go that way. We do, in fact, open up, see what's going on, so that we can become conscious of it. And when we let our conscience be our guide, we watch where we're going in the present moment. So going back to the 16 stages of insight now, the next step along the way after we have that strong desire to get out of the Dukkha that we, by the way, manufactured for ourselves in the first 10 or so steps of the Mahasi method with all that noting, we start to take the right effort. "I gotta get out of this, I got to do something." 

And what is done then is the right effort. In fact, in English, the way that is normally described is 11) redoubling our effort, start putting the right effort that needs to be put in, and this is step 11, followed by step 12), which is the Four Noble Truths. The Mahasi method waits until step 12 out of 16 to introduce the Four Noble Truths. Hey folks, something strange here, isn't it? That they keep having you to look at Anita and Dukkha and Anicca and Dukkha. Maybe you'll find Anatta, Dukkha and Anatta and it's like digging your grave with your own shovel. 

Is it just an analogy for life before finding the Four Noble Truths, before figuring it out? Actually, that is terrible. That's what it is. It's a metaphor for what we do. It's like the path towards that or the story that's made before figuring something out. Yeah, yeah, look at the fact that almost everyone goes through the first 11 steps of the 16 stages of Anapanasati before they ever even hear about meditation. 

In fact, they begin to go searching and find out about Anapanasati and meditation simply because they've seen through enough of it to recognize that there's a bunch of shadows, there's a bunch of lies here going on. Things are falling apart, I don't like it that way. Okay, there's your Anicca and Dukkha already there, built into us. And so, the way that we should actually introduce the teachings of the Buddha is with exactly what the teachings of the Buddha were. And the Buddha says, "I teach only one thing, and that is Dukkha, Dukkha Nirodha." The way that it winds up being practiced in Western Buddhism, that I won't have to call that Mahasi anymore because that's basically it, is Dukkha,more Dukkha. Look at Dukkha, there's some Dukkha. I see Dukkha. That Dukkha is connected to this Dukkha. Let's chase that Dukkha right down to the Dukkha hole. And we do that for hours, waiting for the bell to ring, and we never get around to the actual teachings of the Buddha and the Eightfold Noble Path. To find that step three, what is the right Noble effort? What do we actually need to do that takes the effort? And the effort that we need to take is once we see the Dukkha, is to come out of it immediately, sidestep it, don't let it hit you. See it flying through the air with the greatest of ease only and missed you a mile.

Tibetan Buddhism is 70 percent Tibetan culture and 30 percent Buddhism, and it's a little bit less in Thailand and so on, and so on. But the amount of mental identification in the West is just so much stronger than it is in any of these places that I've been before. We were so used to using the mind for everything. 

And so, could it be that, yeah, just this method, just stepping out of DUKKHA. The Four Noble Truths is really saying Dukkha, really, really understanding and seeing the source of it, really experiencing what it's like to be free from it, and really figuring out that all of it is in this Noble Path when we can actually see that in the here and now. We actually then are fully capable of understanding personality view, which is now the Anatta, that you are not solid, you are not bound by your personality, that you can change, you can learn, you can grow. 

But you see, almost all of the religions that want to make money off of you, they want you to have a thick soul. That it can't change. You gotta go to Jesus to get your soul fixed. You can't do it yourself. Okay, so in fact, you could say that the entire teachings of the Buddha is a DIY instruction kit of changing. And what are we going to change? The absolute easiest thing there is to change is this thought, because they just go bye-bye-bye. There's just one thought after another. You know how the human mind, one image after another or one verbal thought after another, they just roll on by. So if they're there and so intangible, you'd think it'd be easy enough to change, now wouldn't you? In fact, all you have to do is remember to change it, and the remembering to change it, in fact, has already changed it. 

Now you're remembering to change it, that's the thought. And so this is where the Mahasi or the Western Buddhism has forgotten how important the quality of the Noble Path is, in the sense of the right effort to remove the hindrances. Now it's very explicit in the actual Anapanasati Sutra (MN 118) of using the word "gladdening the mind." Now the interesting part about it is that it's not talking about gladdening the mind in the sense of just the thoughts, because that's more the content of the mind. But rather, changing the state of mind. And when you change the state of mind, it will change the thoughts. And quite often, the reverse is true too.

You change the thoughts you're having, and it'll change your state of mind. For instance, "Oh, I hate this" is in one kind of state of mind. And then the next word would be, "Oh, never mind," and now my state has changed. And so, the whole point here is by actually making the change from unwholesome into wholesome actually means we're going to actually put a positive spin on things. Another way of thinking about it is that we're no longer going to be judgmental or seeing what's right and what's wrong, or what we would mean by a critical mind. And go back to the original job of mommy. Mommy gets really critical with a five-year-old, but her original job was to be nurturing. And this is what we need to do, is we need to start nurturing ourselves, letting ourselves be okay the way that we are. Everything is all right right here, right now, warts and all. And we don't have to sit there and enumerate the warts, which they want you to do in the Mahasi method. 

Just say you're already okay, forget about it. Let the past go and be here now with some really wholesome thoughts and some really wholesome feelings about what's happening right here, right now. Now, that's the actual Noble Path and Four Noble Truths, and that we can start on that as soon as we recognize, "I have seen enough Dukkha already," and now I'm going to start dealing with it directly by shoving it aside, throwing it out. 

So here's a little example of this. Imagine that you're out on the road, and along down the way there, you see a big, big truck coming. It may be even blowing its horn, telling you, "Here he comes!" Now, the Mahasi method is to stand there and take it like a man, Mr. Popeye style, with, you know, Popeye the Sailor Man, and we just stand there and we just stop that truck, right? And it runs right over us. 

Or we can take the Western Buddhism's way, they call it by the way, "Choiceless Awareness." "Oh, I see that truck coming, I'm just going to get terrified and stand right here terrified and all, watching that thing bear down on me," and then it hits me. "Choicelessly aware." This is not so choiceless, is it? Because we're full of terror. 

And then there is the Buddha's way, the Anapanasati way, and that is just step aside, just get out of your own way, just move an inch or two and let it go, rushing right on by. We don't have to get hit, we don't have to stand in our own way. So this is the major change in the technique.

Some Teachers say: "We need to know every kind of Dukkha before transcending it. We must first be "Knower of the World," (Loka-vidu)."  what that actually means is that we can see what culture is, we can see how it's got both benefit and Dukkha built into it, and we can see that as culture. And when we go into the Dhamma, the more we see the Dukkha that's built into the culture, but we can see the Dukkha from the beginning. How far do you go in detail of how much Dukkha do you have to know? Because  it's like having to name every fish in the ocean. Actually, there is only a few. That is greed and ill-will experienced ignorantly, that's Dukkha. 

If you don't have something that you like and you want it, that means that it must be good and you would be better off if you had it. This kind of thought process goes through the mind zingo at 100 miles an hour.  We begin to throw all of the culture into it. We become cultured. Culture bites. They're no longer little barbarians; they become civil, I guess is the word that they use, which means burdened down with the ball and chain so that we can't go wild the way that we actually are. 

And so, we grow up being a victim. In fact, this burden that we're carrying of society, the Buddha refers to that, in one of these woefull states, as the domesticated animal, the wowfull animal state. It means you've got to do what you're told to do, and you don't get a reward for it. You just do what you're told to do. You've got a promise of a reward, you've got a whole bunch of stick and the promise of a carrot, but carrots are not around, just the stick, and you've got to do what you're told to do. And most of us grow up living our lives just like that, and we kind of get used to it and come back to a kind of a zero state that falls into fear and anxiety quite often. 

So, what we're going to do here with Anapanasati, according to the Buddha, is we're going to begin to change that one thought at a time, one feeling at a time, one mind moment at a time, one here and now at a time. 

We're going to decide that things are changed and this second is not the same as the last second. Let's do it again, let's practice the right effort to change, rather than our old choice of Dukkha. And so, over and over and over again, we keep practicing, and we get good at it. And that's where the success comes in. And that success, then, the Buddha was known, by the way, as a lion. He was a lion; he did not go to somebody else's show. Wherever he went, he was the center of attention. That's in the Suttas, by the way. It's in the lion's roar, Suita MN 12. So, if we understand that what we're doing is we're gaining our mojo, we're coming out of being a victim of society, blaming society, and having to put up with society, it's to transcend society. Get your mojo, get your strength, get your mind so straightened out that society cannot affect you. You become buoyant. The heavier you are, the deeper we sink into society. And the lighter we are, by throwing all those unwholesome thoughts out and having only happy, happy thoughts, we rise above the world. That's the Lokuttara, the "above the world" that translates, by the way, into the supermundane that we use sometimes, the supermundane of Lokuttara means to be above it all. 

There is a story that everyone is an emperor of their own pile of dirt. The question is, are you going to be buried under your own pile of dirt, the victim? Are we going to be clawing our way out? Or are we just going to sit on top of your own world? Your choice, your attitude, this moment, are you going to be on top of your own world, or are you going to be buried under your own dirt? This is the dark night of the soul, being burried under our on pile of dirt.

So, that's the actual teaching of the Buddha.  In that 16 stages of insight, the Dark Night of the Soul is when we've dug ourselves pretty deep in our own pile of dirt. And the whole idea is to not even try to climb out. The night is dark. 

However correct practice is just right now, come out. And when you find yourself back under your own pile of dirt again, just come back out. It's your thought, your mind. Learn to control it, learn to change it. This is real mental training. And the first training that we're going to put through is wholesome thoughts. One wholesome thought after another, after another. See the beauty in the world, see that you live in a paradise. Begin to take a really positive, Pollyanna attitude about things, and that will mellow into satisfaction at a really deep level. So, we have to practice. And then, where's the Dark Night of the Soul? Here, no Dark Night of the Soul. We feel really good. I can see that the Dark Night of the Soul is one really disparaging thought after another.

Right Sati, practice it often. Remember that each breath is a long breath, and each breath should be exhaled as a long, easy, joyful breath. That's where we start—building that foundation so that we have it every time, twice every breath cycle. Sometimes, there can be confusion about the fourth tetrad, thinking it's something special or an event. But the point is to settle down, to see straight, to bring our feelings into the present, and to calm the mind by gladdening the mind. 

"And then we can see all of this initial Dukkha, not just stuff that's in the Anapanasati Sutra. Yeah, that's right. Here's the point: if you're going to teach a baby to swim, would you throw them into deep water? Or how about starting in a wading pool where they can stand up or touch the ground? That's how we want to begin, giving ourselves some skills, and then we can dive into deeper waters. Those skills are the body, feeling, and mind. And then we'll dive right into looking at what's really going on, which is the nature of constant change. Anything we don't like changes, and then we feel bad. So part of understanding this nature is that we've already cultivated a steady mind that can vividly see how vibrant the paradise that we live in is."

"Now, to tie this in with Mahasi's teachings, I was instructed on a Mahasi retreat to note things three times. But I thought it was weird because by the first time, you've already noted it. It's already gone. It's like, you've got something, yeah, exactly. And each part of it is just not clinging onto the issues that are coming up and letting the new moment come up without interference."

"And here's the point, here's the point that's actually quite useful for folks, and that is the word 'noting' is kind of a bad translation because the Western mind thinks of noting as like taking a note, a sticky note, telling a verbal, almost telling the story. But it's more like, you can actually see things in movement out of the corner of your eye, and you don't have to spend any time with it at all. There's so much happening that comes into our field of view, and we want to start paying attention to the more that is happening, rather than getting stuck on one thing, focused and concentrated. In fact, Anapanasati, the Buddha's teaching, is about samadhi, which does not mean concentration. It means waking up and taking in all that is available to be vibrantly alive in the here and now, in our senses. It's about being present and not overly focused or concentrated on some object of meditation."

So this is another example of how Western Buddhism sometimes gets a hold of this word 'concentration' and thinks, 'Yeah, I know how to do that!' But that's not what we're practicing. We're practicing continuously waking up into the present moment, taking a look at what we're doing, making a change, and congratulating ourselves. And then waking up again, taking a look, making a change, and congratulating ourselves over and over again. And when we do this, the mind becomes unified, and we become friends with ourselves. We stop with all these critical thoughts and start nurturing because the wholesome thoughts we're having are now wholesome thoughts about how nice everything is. And now, you're already forgiven of your sins. All you have to do is recognize that you're forgiven already. Your past is good enough. We don't have to go make up for the past or fix anything. It's dead, it's gone. And so, we can just dispense with the past. We don't need it now.

That doesn't mean that we can't have any memories. It's not about losing all of our memory. We're talking about using the past to determine how we feel right now. And it's better to feel the way we want to feel because we've felt bad a lot in the past. It's kind of like a toss-up, a merry-go-round. Sometimes we feel good, sometimes we feel bad. So, if we go into memories, we're going to get some bad along with the good. But if we practice Anapanasati correctly in the here and now, then we're having all good thoughts to build up into our Sankhara base. We begin to build up wholesomeness in our life. We begin to change our patterns and, therefore, change our habits. Our neural pathways begin to change. And this is liberation. The liberation, actually, we have to point something out: freedom is just another word for 'nothing left to lose' [Music]. Are you willing to go through that? I mean, how bad do you want Moksha? Because what it means is that you're free because you've got nothing left to lose. You've already chucked it all. And what is that? All the stuff that we're carrying around from our past. So, we have to let go of the past and be here in the present moment so that we can be free to make the kind of choices about how we want to feel right now.

And in the beginning, there's a time that comes by for good meditators. There's no God kind of feelings, and then later, it's like, 'Ah, kind of finished.' But always, it's our choice because we've been practicing. So, that's what I advise you to do: practice well, over and over and over again.

The story of the pilgrim and the Pilgrim's Progress. When the pilgrim is progressing, he's not in the Holy place. What does the pilgrim do when he finally reaches the holy site? Well, in the Middle Ages, they just pick up and go to the next holy site. They spent 99% of their time on their way to a holy site, and once they got to the holy state, they didn't stay. Once you find yourself in a holy site, there you are. But don't make any decisions about it because you probably won't stay. Sustain it, get it going, but let it go when it's gone. And you'll find it soon enough again. But when you think that you have arrived without actually understanding that the arrival is not in what you've done, but in the fact that you've wound up being in a paradise, in a holy space. These guys want to attain something. They work really hard for it. They put labels on themselves, only in the West, for people to take pot shots at them. The highest part of Western Buddhism, you see in Asia, they don't do much of that. For one thing, the monks don't claim much of anything, but a whole lot of western people will claim it about them. 

That's all there is to the teaching of the Buddha, and it is marvelous. It gets even more marvelous once you get into the flow. They actually speak of that flow, it's called the sotopana, the stream-enterer. And yet, in Western Buddhism, it's just another thing to cling to. So, that's the issue about Western Buddhism. 


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