Reply To: Revealing Nirodha Samāpatti – Delson Armstrong

#51787
Christian
Participant

As someone who has experience, I need to address certain things to make clear because you need to live through certain things to be able to relate to it.

1) This person is a jhana practitioner (anariya), I can tell just by looking – it’s a skill that is gained through many years of meditation. As army men can recognize army men, as criminals can recognize criminals, at a certain level there is a shift in the way presents himself. The person did not attain Nirodha Samapatti which is exclusive to Arahant, let’s get this first straight. When I attained arupa jhanas I thought it was nirodha too because of the last jhana, this misunderstanding comes from not understanding Dhamma properly. I think at the level of Sotapanna one should realize no matter how high or low the experience is and see thru it for what it is – even if the person lacks theoretical understanding, one sees “this is it” and “this is not it”, people who are anariya yogis/jhana achievers do not have this distinction and can not see the true nature of experience which makes them wrongly call things for what they are. So when such a person attains the highest he can, he thinks of himself as “enlightened” – this happened at the times of Buddha when he was looking for teachers.

2) Not having carvings is different than realizing Nibbana and not having the desire to be reborn. His idea of not having carvings is the result of him having cravings fulfilled by jhana – not being free from them because of understanding Dhamma. It’s very easy to overestimate your position when you have wrong views. If you experience a certain level of sense pleasure and high you will be content for a long time ie. not having carvings in a mundane way but in reality they are still there. This is why is important to have real wisdom, insight, and experience because you easily can misunderstand your own experience without proper realization. That’s why it’s important to have real Dhamma, if you go through key aspects of this site and understand what is said here you will know his experience is anariya experience, still, I’m not downplaying it but it’s not permanent the solution so do not confuse it with Dhamma achievements.

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