Cessation, Jhana

At this intitial stage, there should be a very clear shift in practice compared to before attaining cessation. The meditator finds that their energetic system is wired differently and better now, and they seem to intuitively understand spiritual concepts and meditative practices much better. The insight into non-self is a key turning point in the path. Cessation is a repetitive experience for most people. I personally have cessations every day and have since attaining stream entry in 2018. By repeatedly having this experience, the meditator learns the patterns of these events and how they relate to basic processes in the mind.

Cessation is an unmistakable event where the mind completely stops, and doesn’t fabricate anything from the inputs of the senses or the thinking mind. All activity that we know makes up our conscious experience stops for an instant, and then restarts again. This is a profound experience and totally changes the way the mind experiences itself from then on.

For a cessation event to lead to non-self insight, there must be an intention for metacognitive awareness of the mind while it is happening. With this metacognition, the mind understands that the cessation of all fabrications that lead to all normal conscious experience, and the return of conscious experience, directly contradicts any belief that the self is a permanent autonomous substantial thing. Everything we know that creates our “self” can completely stop, then start again, and somehow, we just carry on our merry way. This is the same as death for the self-identity, and it registers like a “death” of some permanent essence of being that is the meditator.

During the cessation there is no suffering, and it’s the first time the mind sees that the self and everything we experience in normal consciousness is conditionally related to other things. What we experience as a contact from the ‘outer world’ in our senses is the link between “the world” and “the meditator” and the rest is mental activity related to the contact and the interrelated web of cumulative causes and conditions. We can actually see directly in this cessation moment, that the process of conscious experience can be stopped by removing one of the “conditions” upon which it arises. When there is a moment free of craving and with the seven factors of awakening present, then the meditator has the conditions in place for a cessation to occur. We directly sever one of the conditions that conscious experience depends on- and then normal conscious experience ceases for a moment.  Importantly- we don’t die physically – but the mind is recharged and the fruition glow is very, very pleasurable. The mind has this conditional nature to it- all we see is in relation to our mind’s perception of a very limited set of data. When the mind stops completely like this – it is such a relief – it tells the mind that the mind itself is responsible for all experience, including suffering, and that their mind experiences any experience at all based on conditional interrelated conditions.

Most of our conscious experience is mental activity that proliferates starting with one craving or aversion or one complaint, one painful tense spot or image in our mind, but the mind bounces around rapidly evaluating these different things coming in and experiencing liking and disliking. We can simply watch the process proceed in the mind and see how the craving and clinging is related to the suffering, and hold an intention to disidentify with whatever occurs.

A meditator will eventually be able to perceive increasingly subtle aspects of the minute mind moments around cessation in striking detail. The experience of cessation tells you something very profound about how basic cognition is structured. We can see that in the moment immediately before cessation, there is a quick flash of lights, or a confusing train of thoughts, or any other experience of the sense doors that makes for an object, but instead of experiencing the object in the typical way, which is to respond with craving, aversion, or ignorance, the object registers perfectly and the mind experiences that experience without mental proliferation. They cut the link of fabrication that is vital to conscious experience, and as a result there is a loss of normal conscious experience. The mind experiences the object as it is, and there is no intention of any part of the mind to engage at all. This leads to an experience of consciousness without an object – we are present and alert but nothing is experienced. We were there, then “we” weren’t there, then “we” were again.

So a lot of the time I just sit with objectless focus and that’s what my teacher recommends and praises, or I so simple mindfulness of breathing or meditation on mind practice from TMI. whatever approach I use, there is almost always a progression of flavors to experience that mirror the jhanas even if I’m not explicitly intending to practice jhanas. I start out in a very sharp perception with blissful sensations, and eventually perception widens and there is often a fruition or two. This is all standard stuff. 

Around fruition there often tend to be signposts indicating I’m in that territory. My mind gets spacey and slippery, unconstrained by objects. There are often moments where a certain perception will grab the mind and there is a sense of the mind getting intrigued by the discontinuity between one percpetion and the next and there is partial collapse moments where there is a sudden mental collapse around a perception and the a tension in the mind and feeling desysnchronous with experience. These moments will keep happening until there’s a sudden complete shut-down, almost matter-of fact in the immediate moment preceding the shut-down, where there is an object and the mind has no reaction of clinging or craving to that object, almost like an object registers and the mind fully perceives it and processes it peripherally, very rarely in the center of attention as attention isn’t really a thing in that territory. Right before the fruition there’s several types of phenomena depending on the door, often my eyelids will contract, often but not always there’s a moment of what appears to be a complete darkness followed by a feeling of being fully dead then coming back to life suddenly, several variations. Sometimes there’s a thought or image and I notice a strange paradox in it that seems to register in the gut, not through the thinking mind. I’m often distracted when it happens but afterwards the paradox is utterly clear and lucid. After the fruition there is the recognition of it being a frution and there is a few seconds and then an inpouring of subtle or overt blissfulness felt in the body, similar to third jhana. I’m usually clear and centered and the motication to continue meditating or do any kind of practice falls away for some time. 

Cessation is unlike any other experience in life. It is very much like suddenly dying and instantly coming back to life. It is an experiential break in the continuous experience of being a permanent being. Cessations have done a lot of good things for my mind, and they seem to be the fundamental experience that is a prerequisite for seeing that reality is mind, which is a conclusion that this log is based on. I would speculate that they are a death-like experience and totally change the way the mind perceives itself. 

In my experience, cessations are unmistakable, but not neccessarily a mind-blowing experience. They do leave a rather distinct impression on the mind. After stream entry, I had a phase where I had lots of very clear cessations that happened in a very similar way. The before and after phenomenology is what is most relevant for the insight I have gotten from cessation. 

For me cessations occur when my mind is naturally in a place of wide perception, with a holistic view of all phenomena. The mind is in such equanimity that notions of being a meditator doing a practice, or being an autonomous continuous self temproarily fall away. I get lost in a phenomenon or an experience and forget that I’m supposedly a permanent being. Often times cessation happens after being in a very contracted, self-involved mind state, and having that exhaust itself, the mind relaxes enough to see a paradox in the line of thinking. The mind sees the thinking as phenomena happening and something about the self-concept in the thought trips something in the mind and the subject-object duality collapses. This doesn’t happen via the analytical mind, it’s a gut-level, experiential seeing. There is a moment of discontinuity, utter death, out cold, which leaves a distinct impression on the mind, and after the moment there is almost always a flood of relaxing blissful sensations similar to third jhana and the mind is freed from the self-attachment in a very obvious, matter-of-fact way. When thoughts or images are the last phenomena before the cessation, this is how it happens. Whereas a moment before I was quite embedded in a narrative, after the fruition, the continuous self in the narrative was broken and the narrative loses all power. This has a distinct effect on the mind and is incredibly useful and renewing.

Sometimes the mind is at a higher level of energy and these ones are less common for me, but the visual field or a bodily vibration will be the last phenomena before cessation. In this case there is a quick succession of colors in the visual field (often flashes of light and dark) or a quick succession of body sensations and mental impressions, and the eyes tend to move down on the last sensation in a series (often, three flashes or strobes), and there is a discontinutity and upon returning the same inflooding of peaceful bliss. Somtimes when the focus before cessation is the visual field, after returning the various specks of light and static in the visual field will morph into sparkly little nimittas, or take distinct shapes and dance around.

The moment itself can take different flavors. Sometimes I have frutions that are a very clean break and the two ends are the same, and it is experienced more like a cip snipped out of a movie reel. Other times there is a falling sensation immediately preceeding the moment, and a discontinuity and a sudden “coming back” with a sense of disorientation. I think the falling moments are more likely the dukkha door and the sudden break-like moments are more likely the impermanence door. The common threads are the sense of complete death, the distinct, complete change in mental state before/after and the sense of well-being/blissful peace after.

At a certain point I started having cessations everywhere and anywhere, including walking. I have had numerous experiences of walking and having a fruition, and the walking simply continuing during fruition, long enough so that I would be clearly a step or two or more further along when I regained conscious awareness. I have had them working in the lab, driving, at the computer, etc. I have had certain experiences where I am listening to dharmically related content or someone describing something related to the self-paradox, and I will spontaneously have a fruition.