‘Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha’ (MCTB) By Daniel M Ingram (356 pages)
Below I pulled out passages (and added a few of my own comments) from the book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. I have pulled out sections that I thought were different than what we have been learning and also those passages that present previous things in a new or well written way.
One can buy the book on Amazon or download a PDF at
There is a free (registration required) audio book at
Foreword and Warning -
This book is for those who really want to master the core teachings of the Buddha and who are willing to put in the time and effort required. It is also for those who are tired of having to decipher the code of modern and ancient dharma books, as it is designed to be honest, explicit, straightforward and rigorously technical.
I have also included a modicum of social commentary, some of which has a definite bite to it.
As a highly regarded senior meditation teacher and scholar (who will remain anonymous) said to me after skimming through an earlier draft of this book, “Most Buddhists are just aging Boomers who want to do something to feel better about themselves as they get older and are not really interested in this sort of thing.”
We need to be clear about our intentions. Do we want to understand our own mind at a very deep level or just feel better. Understanding our own mind at a very deep level takes a ‘seeker’ personality. However, few people are like that, most just want to feel better. That is perfectly fine, and that is why I try and structure the teaching here to do both. ‘Meditation and Beyond’ means simple meditation techniques and philosophy to just feel better now and the ‘Beyond’ part is geared toward making oneself ‘accident-prone’ for the Enlightenment accident. I hope that those interested in just feeling better find the deeper stuff at least interesting for curiosity sake. MCTB is for the dedicated seeker but I think it is interesting to non-seekers.
1.INTRODUCTION TO PART I
Basically he (Buddha) was saying, “Get to know your actual reality really, really, really well, and try to do right by yourself and the world.”. ” As we all know, this is not always as easy as it sounds, so that is why I include all of the additional commentary.
We will begin with an introduction to the Three Trainings, morality , concentration and wisdom . (Breaking down the Noble Eightfold Path into the three Groups) The Three Trainings encompass the sum total of the Buddhist path.
2.MORALITY, THE FIRST AND LAST TRAINING
The reason that it is the first training is that immoral actions confuse and stir up the mind. It is harder to relax and meditate with guilt and concern about what one has done (and what may be done to us in return).
The reason it is the last training is that The second two trainings (Concentration and Wisdom), those having to do with attaining unusual states of mind and those having to do with ultimate realizations, have limits, in that we can master them absolutely. However, this cannot be said of the first training. There is no limit to the degree of skill that can be brought to how we live in the world. Thus, morality is also the last training, the training that we will have to work on for all of our life. We may be able to attain to astounding states of consciousness and understand the true nature of reality, but what people see and what is causal are the ways that these abilities and understandings translate into how we live in the world.
Realize that defining bad and good is often very much a question of perspective, but don’t fall into the paralyzing trap of imagining that it is useless to try anyway. It is better to try to do your best and fail than not try at all.
Thus, we are assuming that what we think, say and do have consequences. When undertaking training in morality, we are assuming that we can control what we think, say and do, thus creating consequences that are beneficial. Rather than accepting our current level of intellectual, emotional and psychological development as being
beyond our power to change, we consciously and explicitly take the empowering view that we can work with these aspects of our lives and change them for the better. We assume that we can change our world and our attitudes towards our world. We take responsibility for our actions and their consequences.
Some people unfortunately seem to think that the primary message of training in morality is that they should continuously cultivate the feeling that they have taken up a heavy yoke of responsibility and self oppression. In fact, some people seem to revel in that unfortunate feeling. Those more fortunate will think, “It is so much fun to try to live a good, healthy and useful life! What a joy it is to find creative ways to do this!” There are few things more helpful on the spiritual path and life in general than a positive attitude.
Thus, the related and all too common pitfall is that people stop having fun and trying to be successful in worldly terms. There is absolutely no reason for this. If you can have fun in healthy ways, have fun! It’s not just for breakfast anymore. Also, success is highly recommended for obvious reasons. Pick a flexible vision of success in the ordinary sense for yourself and go for it! Play to win. This is your life, so make it a great one. There is no reason not to try, so long as you can do so in a kind and compassionate way.
3.CONCENTRATION, THE SECOND TRAINING
The essential point about meditation is this: to get anywhere in meditation you need to be able to really steady the mind and be present. That's just all there is to it and it is largely a question of just doing it. There is an important shift that happens in people's practice when they really make the commitment to developing concentration and follow through with it. Until one does this, not much is likely to happen in one’s meditative practice! If you decide to do a concentration practice, stay on that object like a rabid dog until you have enough stability and skill to let the mind rest on it naturally.
The first formal goal when training in concentration is to attain something called “access concentration,” meaning the ability to stay consistently with your chosen object with relative ease to the general exclusion of distractions. This is the basic attainment that allows you to access the higher stages of concentration and also to begin the path of insight (the third training), so make attaining access concentration your first goal in your meditative practice. You will know when you have it.
Sharpening your concentration may help almost everything you do, and can provide a mental and emotional stability that can be very useful. Concentration can also lead to some very nice states called “jhanas” and other names. These can be extremely blissful and peaceful. Being able to access these states of mind can be ridiculously enjoyable and can increase steadiness and stability of mind. These are of value in and of themselves and also serve the important function in the Buddhist tradition of providing a disposable foundation for insight practices, i.e. the third training.
Now, it must be said that concentration practices, like all practices, have their shadow sides. For instance, high and unusual experiences can become addictive and seductive, causing them to receive more attention and focus than they deserve. They can also lead to people becoming very otherworldly and ungrounded, very much the way that hallucinogens can. They can also bring up lots of our psychological “stuff.” This last limitation could be a benefit if we are in a mood to deal with this stuff. Perhaps the most important limitations of concentration practices is that they do not lead directly to the insights and permanent understandings that come from training in wisdom, as much as we might like them to. That brings us to the third training…
4.WISDOM, THE THIRD TRAINING
The third training in the list is wisdom, in this case a very special kind of wisdom that I will often call “ultimate” or “fundamental” wisdom. This may also be rendered as “understanding” or “insight.” The whole trick to this training is to understand the truth of the sensations that make up our present experience. The great mystics from all traditions have reported that there is something remarkable and even enlightening about our ordinary experiences if we take the time to look into them very carefully. Those that undertake training in wisdom have decided to do the experiment and see for themselves if this is true or if those old dead dudes were just making it all up.
The primary agenda for doing insight practices is to increase our perceptual abilities so that the truths mentioned by the great mystics become obvious to us. Thus, rather than caring what we think, say or do, or caring about what altered state of consciousness we are in, when training in wisdom we actively work to simply increase the speed, precision, consistency and inclusiveness of our experience of all the quick little sensations that make up our experience, whatever and however they may be.
Thus, the essential formal insight meditation instructions are: find a place where the distractions are tolerable, pick a stable and sustainable posture, and for a defined period of time notice every single sensation that makes up your reality as best you can. Just as with concentration practices, more time and more diligent practice pays off. These simple instructions can easily seem overwhelming, vague or strangely trivial to many people, and so I am going to spend a lot of time laying out a large number of empowering concepts and more structured practices that have helped countless practitioners over thousands of years to follow these basic instructions.
While the Three Trainings all contain some similar elements, there are some important contrasts that must be made between them. The gold standard for training in morality is how kind and compassionate our intentions are and how well we lead a useful and moral life. The gold standard for training in concentration practices is how quickly we can enter into highly altered states of consciousness, how long we can stay in them, and how refined, complete and stable we can make those states. The gold standard for insight practices is that we can quickly and consistently see the true nature of the numerous quick sensations that make up our whole reality, regardless of what those sensations are, allowing us to cut to a level of understanding that goes utterly beyond specific conditions.
Sounds simple, and while it is, it also isn't. There are many types of insight that we may derive from experiencing the world. Usually, we might think of training in wisdom as having to do with relative issues like how to live our lives. In this sense, one might just try to be wiser. Perhaps we could skillfully reflect on something that went badly and see
if perhaps in the future some wisdom gained from that experience might change the way we live our life. This is an ordinary form of wisdom, and so the insights we derive from such reflections and observations are insights into the ordinary world.
On the other hand, these sorts of reflections can only take us so far, and to really get what the Buddha was talking about, we need to go far beyond these conventional definitions of wisdom and attain to ultimate insights by doing insight practices. Many people try to make insight practices into an exercise that will produce both insights into the ordinary world and also ultimate insights. I have come to the conclusion that we should not count on ultimate teachings to illuminate our relative issues or vice versa, and so I feel that it is extremely important to keep the relative and ultimate wisdom teachings separate. Failure to do so causes endless problems and makes progress on either front more difficult rather than easier.
A brief note of caution here: occasionally, when people begin to really get into spirituality, they may get a bit fascinated with it and may forget some of the useful relative wisdom they have learned from before. Caught up in “ultimate wisdom” and their “spiritual quest,” they can sometimes abandon conventional wisdom and other aspects of their “former life” to a degree that may not be very wise. They falsely imagine that by training in insight they are also mastering or transcending the first training, that of living in the ordinary world. (I like the following quote) We awaken to the actual truth of our life in all of its conventional aspects by definition, so make sure that yours is a life you will want to wake up to.
In summary, by seeing deeply into the truth of our own experience, profound and beneficial transformations of consciousness are definitely possible. You guessed it, we’re talking about enlightenment, The Big E, awakening, freedom, Nirvana, the unconditioned, and all of that. The arising of this understanding is the primary focus of this book. There are actually lots of interesting insights that typically occur even before awakening. Again, there are no magic formulae for producing ultimate insights, except for the Three Characteristics.
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5.THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS
The Three Characteristics are so central to the teachings of the Buddha that it is almost inconceivable how little attention the vast majority of so-called insight meditators pay to them. They are impermanence , unsatisfactoriness, and no- self . I cannot possibly stress enough the usefulness of trying again and again to really understand these three qualities of all experience. They are the stuff from which ultimate insight at all levels comes, pure and simple. They are the marks of ultimate reality. Every single time I say, “understand the true nature of things,” what I mean is, “understand the Three Characteristics.” To really understand them is to be enlightened.
IMPERMANENCE
All things are impermanent. This is one of the most fundamental teachings of the Buddha and the second to last sentence he uttered before he died: “All phenomena are impermanent! Work out your salvation with diligence!” In his last words, he said everything you need to know to do insight practices. Things come and go. Nothing lasts for even an instant! Absolute transience is truly the fundamental nature of experiential reality.
What do I mean by “experiential reality?” I mean the universe of sensations that you actually experience. There are many gold standards for reality. However , when doing insight practice s, the only useful gold standard for reality is your own Sensate experience.
Thus, the gold standard for reality when doing insight practices is the sensations that make up your reality in that instant .
I mean that sensations arise out of nothing, do their thing, and vanish utterly. Gone. Utterly gone. Then the next sensation arises, does its thing, and disappears completely.
We can experience this, because the first set of vibrations we have access to isn't actually that fast. Vibrations. That's right, vibrations. That's what this first characteristic means: that reality vibrates, pulses, appears as discrete particles, is like TV snow, the frames of a movie, a shower of vanishing flower petals, or however you want to say it. Some people can get all into complex wave or particle models here, but don't. Just look into your actual experience, especially something nice and physical like the motion and sensations of the breath in the abdomen, the sensations of the tips of the fingers, the lips, the bridge of the nose, or whatever. Instant by instant try to know when the actual physical sensations are there and when they aren't. It turns out they aren't there a good bit of the time, and even when they are there, they are changing constantly.
We are typically quite sloppy about what are physical sensations and what are mental sensations (memories, mental images, and mental impressions of other sensations). These two kinds of sensations actually oscillate back and forth, a back and forth interplay, one arising and passing and then the other arising and passing, in a somewhat quick but quite penetrable fashion. Being clear about exactly when the physical sensations are there will begin to clarify their slippery counterpart that helps create the illusion of continuity or solidity: flickering mental impressions.
Coming directly after a physical sensation arises and passes is a separate pulse of reality that is the mental knowing of that physical sensation, here referred to as “consciousness” (as contrasted with “awareness” in Part III). By physical sensations I mean the five senses of touch, taste, hearing, seeing, and smelling. This is the way the mind operates on phenomena that are no longer there, even thoughts, intentions and mental images.
This mental impression of a previous sensation (often called “consciousness” in Buddhist parlance) is like an echo, a resonance. The mind takes a crude impression of the object, and that is what we can think about, remember and process. Then there may be a thought or an image that arises and passes, and then, if the mind is stable, another physical pulse. Each one of these arises and vanishes completely before the other begins, so it is extremely possible to sort out which is which with a stable mind dedicated to consistent precision and to not being lost in stories. This means that the instant you have experienced something, you know that it isn't there a ny more, and whatever is there is a new sensation that will be gone in a n instant. There are typically many other impermanent sensations and impressions interspersed with these, but, for the sake of practice, this is close enough to what is happening to be a good working model. If you are not experiencing it, then stabilize the mind further, and be clearer about exactly when and where there are physical sensations. Spend time with this, as long as it takes. The whole goal is to experience impermanence directly, i.e. things flickering, and what those things are doesn't actually matter one bit!
How freeing! Interpretation is particularly useless in insight meditation, so you don't have to spend time doing it when you are on the cushion. Throughout this book I recommend reflecting on spiritual teachings and how to bring them to bear on our life, but not on the cushion. Thoughts, even supposedly good ones, are just too slippery and seductive most of the time, even for advanced meditators, though if you can avoid getting lost in their content they are as valid a stream of objects as any other. Try to limit yourself to a few minutes of reflection per hour of meditation. This should be more than enough. There are simply no substitutes for this sort of momentum in practice.
How fast are things vibrating? How many sensations arise and vanish each second? This is exactly what you are trying to experience, but some very general guidelines can provide faith that it can be done and perhaps point the way as well. Begin by assuming that we are talking about one to ten times per second in the beginning. This is not actually that fast. Try tapping five to ten times per second on a table or something. It might take two hands, but it's manageable, isn't it? You could obviously experience that, couldn't you? That's the spirit! There are faster and slower vibrations that may show up, some very fast (maybe up to forty times per second) and some very slow (that are actually made up of faster vibrations), but let's just say that one to ten times per second can sometimes be a useful guideline in the beginning. Once you get the hang of it, the faster and slower vibrations are no big deal. Alternately, depending on how you practice, conceiving of this as like a shower of raindrops, a pointillist painting in motion, or 3D TV snow might help. Reality is obviously quite rich and complex, and thus the frequencies of the pulses of reality can be somewhat chaotic, but they actually tend to be more regular than you might expect. Also, there are not really any “magic frequencies.” Whatever frequency or pulse or whatever you are experiencing at that moment is the truth of that moment! However, in the beginning you should go for faster vibrations over slower ones and then try for wider ones over those that are narrower.
Don't worry if things look or feel solid sometimes. Just be with the solidity clearly and precisely, but not too tightly, and it can start to show its impermanence. Be aware of each exact moment in which you experience solidity and its beginning and ending. Remember that each experience of solidity is a separate, impermanent sensation! Many people begin practicing and really want to solidify something like the breath so that they can actually pay attention to it. They become frustrated when they have a hard time finding the breath or their body or whatever. The reason they can’t find it is not because they are a bad meditator but because they are having direct insight into how things actually are! Unfortunately, their theory of what is supposed to happen involves really perceiving something solid and stable, so they get very frustrated. You should now be able to avoid a lot of that frustration and begin to appreciate why knowing some theory is important.
It is also worth noting here that the frequency or rate of these vibrations may change often, either getting faster or slower, and that it is really worth trying to see clearly the beginning and ending of each vibration or pulse of reality. These are actually at least two different sensations! It is also useful to check out exactly what happens at the bottom, middle, and top of the breath if you are using the breath as an object, and to examine if the frequency stays stable or changes in each phase of the breath. Never assume that what you have understood is the final answer! Be alert! Explore carefully and precisely with openness and acceptance! This is the door to understanding. One last thing about vibrations: looking into vibrations can be a lot like any other sport. It can be thought of the way we might think of surfing or playing tennis, and this sort of game-like attitude can actually help a lot. We're “out to bust some vibrations!” as a friend of mine enthusiastically put it. You don't know quite what the next return or wave is going to be like, so pay attention, keep the mind on the pulse of the sensations of your world just as you would on the wave or ball, and keep playing!
I highly recommend this sort of speed in practice not only because that is how fast we have to perceive reality in order to awaken, but also because trying to experience one to ten sensations per second is challenging and engaging. Because it is challenging and engaging, we will be less prone to getting lost in thoughts rather than doing insight practices. Our minds have the power to perceive things extremely quickly, and we actually use this power all the time to do such things as read this book. You can probably read many words per second. If you can do this, you can certainly do insight practices.
If you can perceive one sensation per second, try for two. If you can perceive two unique sensations per second, try to perceive four. Keep increasing your perceptual threshold in this way until the illusion of continuity that binds you on the wheel of suffering shatters. In short, when doing insight practice s, constantly work to perceive sensations arise and pas s a s quickly and accurately as you possibly can . With the spirit of a race car driver who is constantly aware of how fast the car can go and still stay on the track, you are strongly advised to stay on the cutting edge of your ability to see the impermanence of sensations quickly and accurately.
I will relate four of the many little exercises that I sometimes do that I have found useful for jump-starting and developing insight into impermanence.
In one of these exercises, I sit quietly in a quiet place, close my eyes, put one hand on each knee, and concentrate just on my two index fingers. Basic dharma theory tells me that it is definitely not possible to perceive both fingers simultaneously, so with this knowledge I try to see in each instant which one of the two finger’s physical sensations are being perceived. Once the mind has speeded up a bit and yet become more stable, I try to perceive the arising and passing of each of these sensations. I may do this for half an hour or an hour, just staying with the sensations in my two fingers and perceiving when each sensation is and isn’t there. This might sound like a lot of work, and it definitely can be until the mind settles into it. It really requires the concentration of a fast sport like table tennis. This is such an engaging exercise and requires such precision that it is easy not to be lost in thought if I am really applying myself. I have found this to be a very useful practice for developing concentration and debunking the illusion of continuity. You can pick any two aspects of your experience for this exercise, be they physical or mental. I generally use my fingers only because through experimentation I have found that it is easy for me to perceive the sensations that make them up.
The second exercise is similar but with the front and back of the head. I did not copy it here.
Third exercise:
In another exercise, which is quite common to many meditation traditions, I sit quietly in a quiet place, close my eyes, and concentrate on the breath. More than just concentrating on it, I know that the sensations that make up the concept “breath” are each impermanent, lasting only an instant. With this knowledge, I try to see how many individual times in each part of the breath I can perceive the sensations that make up the breath. During the in-breath I try to experience it as many times as possible, and try to be quite precise about exactly when the in-breath begins and ends. More than this, I try to perceive exactly and precisely when each sensation of motion or physicality of the breath arises and passes. I then do the same for the out-breath, paying particular attention to the exact end of the out-breath and then the beginning of the new in-breath. I don’t worry about how I am breathing because it is not the quality of the breath which I am concerned with or even what the sensations are, but the ultimate nature of these sensations: their impermanence, their arising and passing away. When I am really engaged with bending the mind to this exercise, there is little room to be lost in thought. I have found this to be a very useful practice for developing concentration and penetrating the illusion of continuity.
In the last exercise, I take on the thoughts directly. I know that the sensations that make up thoughts can reveal the truth of the Three Characteristics to me, so I have no fear of them; instead I regard them as more glorious opportunities for insight. Again, sitting quietly in a quiet place with my eyes closed, I turn the mind to the thought stream. However, rather than paying attention to the content like I usually do, I pay attention to the ultimate nature of the numerous sensations that make up thoughts: impermanence. I may even make the thoughts in my head more and more intense just to get a good look at them. It is absolutely essential to try to figure out how you experience thoughts, otherwise you will simply flounder in content. What do thoughts feel like? Where to they occur? How big are they? What do they look like, smell like, taste like, sound like? How long do they last? Where are their edges? Only take on this practice if you are willing to try to work on this level, the level that tries to figure out what thoughts actually are rather than what they mean or imply. If my thoughts are somewhat auditory, I begin by trying to perceive each syllable of the current thought and then each syllable’s beginning and ending. If they are somewhat visual, I try to perceive every instant in which a mental image presents itself. If they seem somewhat physical, such as the memory of a movement or feeling, I try to perceive exactly how long each little sensation of this memory lasts. This sort of investigation can actually be fairly easy to do and yet is quite powerful. Things can also get a bit odd quickly when doing this sort of practice, but I don’t worry about that. Sometimes thoughts can begin to sound like the auditory strobing section of the song “Crimson and Clover,” where it sounds like they are standing at a spinning microphone. Sometimes the images in our head can begin to flash and flicker. Sometimes our very sense of attention can begin to strobe. This is the point! The sensations that imply a mind and mental processes are discontinuous, impermanent.
Again, this practice requires steadiness and determination, as well as precision. When I am really engaged with this, there is no time to be lost in the content of the thoughts, as I am trying too hard to be clear about the beginning and ending of each little flicker, squawk and pulse which makes up thought. This can be an especially fun practice when difficult thoughts are distracting me from a physical sensation. I can turn on them, break them down into meaningless little blips, little vibrations of suchness, and then they don’t have the power to cause me any trouble. They just scatter like confetti. They are seen as they are: small, quick and harmless. They have a message to convey, but then they are gone.
When I am done with this exercise, I return to physical objects and their arising and passing. However, I have found taking on the sensations that make up thoughts to be another very useful exercise for developing concentration and penetrating the illusion of continuity. It doesn’t matter if they are “good thoughts” or “bad thoughts,” as all mental sensations are also dripping with ultimate truth that is just waiting to be discovered, and thus I can proceed in my investigation with confidence regardless of what arises. Whether our illusions are penetrated using physical sensations or mental sensations is actually completely irrelevant.
Hopefully these exercises will give you some idea about how one might practice understanding impermanence. Impermanence is a true mark of ultimate reality, so just understanding this again and again can be sufficient to drum it into our thick heads, debunk the illusion of continuity, and once this is drummed into our thick heads we are free. This can be a subtle business, so be patient and persevere. Remember all three trainings. Following flickering sensations and understanding the other two characteristics of suffering and no-self that they manifest can be a powerful and direct cause for deep insights and awakenings.
For five years of my practice I was basically a One Technique Freak, and that technique was noticing how sensations flicker. I would do it as often as I could, i.e. basically whenever I didn’t have to be doing something that requires concentration on the specifics of my life. I would be riding an elevator, just trying to see when I could feel each foot, or lying down to sleep and noticing how many times I could experience the sensations of my breath in each second. I also tried to notice this aspect of things for every single sensation that occurred during my formal practice. I used lots of objects, usually those that were presenting strongly at that time, and would use some variations on the above techniques as well as some others that I will mention shortly to keep me from getting stuck, but the aspect of my world that I tried to notice, things flickering, was always the same. I found that by making this sort of commitment to understanding one of the most basic assumptions of insight practices I was able to make fast progress and gain the ultimate insights I was looking for.
Here he is focusing directly on our sensations of the world being impermanent. I believe most serious meditators see the vibratory nature of our experience eventually. However, I think this direct approach might be more helpful than just telling someone to “experience impermanence” as one of the three characteristics during mindfulness.
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TBD