# Two paths to awakening

I've been on the spiritual path (first Hindu, then Buddhist) for decades, and have only recently reconciled two modes of practice that long stymied me due to their apparent irreconcilability. I call these modes "subject-first" and "object-first."

In the subject-first mode, one investigates the nature of subjectivity until a specific and powerful insight dawns. In the object-first mode, one investigates the nature of *appearances*. The subject-first mode is typified in Advaita Vedanta and many Mahayana Buddhist schools. The object-first mode is commonly found in Vipassana and other Theravada-based practices.

Practitioners tend to have more affinity for one mode or the other. Nonetheless, it is possible (indeed, easy) to get stuck at some point along one's path, whichever it is. At such points, it can be fruitful to adopt practices or insights from the other mode. Unfortunately, those insights often sound so foreign to one's own intuitions that its insights can sound downright delusional. Thus, a fruitful avenue for practice becomes blocked.

The purpose of this guide is to help practitioners become aware of (some of) the relationships between the modes, so that such blockages may be reduced.

May this be of some benefit. May all beings swiftly attain supreme enlightenment. :pray:

---

Before I go on, some caveats:

- I am not enlightened. I am nowhere close. I may have had some (but certainly not all) of the insights described below.
- This guide is *nowhere near* exhaustive. There are (many) insights beyond what's written here. There are entire paths (like that of devotion) that have very little overlap with the practices described here, or can be complementary to them. This document is *in no way* meant to minimize those.
- This is not meant to be a practice guide or a replacement for one!
- **This is not original work.** It is due almost entirely to my interacting with and reading the work of Soh Wei Yu and his mentor John Tan, to whom I am deeply indebted.
- Soh's blog can be found [here](http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/).
- He has a Facebook group [here](https://www.facebook.com/groups/AwakeningToReality).
- The entire (unedited) E-Book _Awakening To Reality_ (henceforth **AtR**) can be found on the sidebar of his blog. Current version is [here](https://app.box.com/s/157eqgiosuw6xqvs00ibdkmc0r3mu8jg).
- Chris Jones has put together a useful guide to its stages [here](https://blissful-void.github.io/AtR-Practices/).
- Any mistakes here are my own.
- This document is a work in progress. Comments are welcomed.

---

## Object-first

I'll start with the path that I have (much) less familiarity with.

There are three major living traditions of Theravada Buddhism. Two come from Burma (the U Ba Khin / S.N. Goenka tradition and that of Mahasi Sayadaw), and one from Thailand (called the Thai Forest tradition, which has more than one sub-lineage). The insight practices from those schools are all called "vipassana[^vipassana]," though their instructions (and possibly goals) differ somewhat. These practices usually come after some familiarity with breathing meditation to stabilize the mind (though the breath can thereafter *also* be used as an object for *vipassana*).

[^vipassana]: Broadly speaking, Buddhist meditation has two aspects, in Sanskrit called *vipashyana* (clear seeing) and *shamatha* (calm abiding). Most schools of Buddhism begin with the *shamatha* aspect (often via breathing meditation) and then introduce the *vipashyana* aspect. *Vipassana* is the Pali translation of *vipashyana*.

Vipassana instructions from the U Ba Khin / S.N. Goenka tradition [go like this](https://www.dhamma.org/en/osguide):

> Move your attention systematically from head to feet and from feet to head, observing in order each and every part of the body by feeling all the sensations that you come across. Observe objectively; that is, remain equanimous with all the sensations that you experience, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, by appreciating their impermanent nature.

Notice how the focus is on *sensations* -- that is, particular *contents* of perception. [Vipassana instructions from the Mahasi Sayadaw lineage](https://buddhismnow.com/2013/09/12/vipassana-as-taught-by-the-mahasi-sayadaw-of-burma/) have a slightly different focus, called *noting*:

> The first [stage] is a simple noting or naming of the object. This simple labelling, naming, noting—whereby attention is pointed at the object—is known as vitakka and is likened to a bee flying towards a flower. ... We just keep pointing the attention at the feeling of movement, the sensations. This attention, as it grows in strength, will eventually take all the energy out of thinking to the point where there is just the noting word.

Note again the focus on "the object."

On these paths, practitioners are instructed to investigate how all of one's experience is subject to [*the three marks (or characteristics) of existence*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence) (an important aspect of the Buddha's teaching):

1. Anatta (not-self)
1. Anicca (impermanence)
1. Dukkha (suffering)

I won't elaborate on them here. Instead, we'll cut right to the chase.

The different traditions do not seem to agree on the end goal[^kornfield]. In the Mahasi tradition, nibbana (nirvana) is equated with the *cessation of consciousness*[^mahasi-cessation], a kind of oblivion [^kenneth-cessation]. Descriptions from the Goenka tradition are hard to come by[^Goenka]. And the Thai Forest descriptions of their goal seem to fall more on the *subject-first* side[^chah], which we will cover later.

[^kornfield]: Teacher [Jack Kornfield](https://www.inquiringmind.com/article/2701_w_kornfield-enlightenments/):
> So here we have different visions of enlightenment. On the one hand, we have the liberation from greed, hatred and delusion attained through powerful concentration and purification, emphasized by many masters from Mahasi and Sunlun Sayadaw to Rinzai Zen. On the other hand, we have the shift of identity reflected in the teachings of Ajahn Chah, Buddhadasa, Soto Zen and Dzogchen.

What exactly is this "shift in identity"?
> This involves a simple yet profound shift of identity from the myriad, ever-changing conditioned states to the unconditioned consciousness--the awareness which knows them all.

As we shall see, this sounds very much like the "I AM" realization, and not all of the abovementioned traditions stop there.

[^Goenka]: This is the closest I could find. http://www.buddhanet.net/bvk_study/bvk21e.htm

> Goenka: Enlightenment is ..... observing oneself and eliminating conditioning. And doing this is Vipassana, no matter what name you may call it. Some people have never even heard of Vipassana, and yet the process has started to work spontaneously in them. This seems to have happened in the case of a number of saintly people in India, judging from their own words.

[^mahasi-cessation]: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress.html
> the meditator's consciousness leaps forth into Nibbana, which is the cessation of all formations, taking it as its object.

[^kenneth-cessation]: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5664311#_19_message_5666324
Meditation teacher [Kenneth Folk](https://kennethfolkdharma.com/), who spent twenty years training in the Mahasi tradition, including three years of intensive silent retreat in monasteries:
> [T]he Mahasi tradition teaches us to systematically develop the ability to access nibbana, aka cessation or fruition. Many people, including myself, have trained in this way, and their reports are remarkably consistent; there is no experience in nibbana. You simply lose consciousness. ... What I am saying is that from the point of view of the person to whom it happens, nibbana and oblivion are indistinguishable, an observation that to me is so blindingly obvious that I'm surprised anyone is willing to dispute it.

What are the pitfalls of sticking exclusively to this approach? Teacher Daniel Ingram gives a beautiful answer [here](https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/11355316):

> J.C.: Why the need to experiment with all sorts of practices? Why the need for the switch to Zen, Vajrayana, prayer, Catholic devotional practices, martial arts, magickal practices, and so on?
>
> Why not just continue to observe exactly what's going on in the present moment and see the Three Characteristics?
>
> Why isn't that enough?

Ingram answers:

> Well, it could be enough, sort of. The Three Characteristics are profound, very profound, staggeringly profound, and not easily grasped in their entirety. It seems perfectly reasonable to grasp them in their entirety by observing them, but there is a problem, actually, that last line contains a bunch of problems that are not obvious until you see them clearly.
>
> I will go by the words in that last line to illustrate the problem.
>
> "Continue": there is no continuing. There is nothing to continue, no past that could be continued, no future to continue into, and this moment is entirely ungraspable. No sensation could ever actually grasp or continue. Everything is fresh but perfectly ephemeral. The notion of continuing, from a high insight point of view, is a serious problem. Instead, there has to be a deep non-grasping, a perfect and flawless appreciation of non-continuing, a deep never could be a continuing, a deep nothing could ever be continuing, a deep sense of not only discontinuity, but of the utter flowing, vanishing, empty transience of anything that seemed to be able to continue. One must figure out how to go beyond continuing, beyond grasping, beyond that strange mental illusion that such a thing could ever occur or have occurred.
>
> "Observe": there is no observing. There can be no observing. There is nothing that can observe at all. Everything is just occurring where it is, naturally, straightforwardly. There is no observer. There can't be any observer. There never was any observer. Deeply understanding this is required. There never was any observation. Observation can't finally do it. One must figure out how to shift out of observing to just phenomena occurring.
>
> The qualifier "in the present moment" is a problem in some way. This almost always involves some subtle or gross pattern of sensations that we refer to mentally when we say "now", or "the present", which are not actually stable, not actually a present, not actually anything but more empty transience, yet we make them seem like a stable present. This is very subtle, deep, profound. Even "the present" doesn't withstand scrutiny, and we must be careful with this sticky concept, as it can itself become a sort of a solidified thing, part of the illusion of continuity, observation, practitioner, etc.
>
> So, while it is true that deeply comprehending emptiness, non-continuity, non-observation, and even non-present, can occur by just continuously observing this present moment, we must be careful, and sometimes it takes people shifting out of their trench of "good practice" to do something that is out from good practice and instead is just the unfolding empty wisdom dharma. Various people find various methods to make this subtle shift, and one size definitely does not fit all, so best wishes sorting out what will help you work out your salvation with diligence.

Okay, now let's look at things from the *subject-first* perspective.

---

## Subject-first

> *I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.* ―Hafiz

The Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta and [many Mahayana Buddhist schools](https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/5bo1np/turning_the_light_around_and_shining_back/) tend to emphasize turning the attention *back toward itself*, in order to discover "who is looking":

> *Calm yourself, quiet your senses. Look right into the source of mind, always keeping it shining bright, clear and pure.*
>
> -- Daman Hongren, 5th Ch'an patriarch (7th century)

> *By the enquiry ‘Who am I?’ The thought ‘Who am I?’ will destroy all other thoughts and, like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then there will arise Self-realisation.*
>
> -- Sri Ramana Maharshi, Hindu sage

> *[B]y allowing your attention to turn naturally and gently towards the one who is aware of this state—the one who is not thinking—you discover the pure awareness of rigpa.*
>
> -- Ju Mipham Rinpoche, 19th century Dzogchen master [^rigpa]

If done well, there comes a day when the practitioner has a *eureka* moment. Soh calls it the "I AM" realization, and puts it this way:

> It is when at a moment where all engagement in thoughts subsides. In that gap, there is this sudden realization of doubtless Existence itself, that even without a thought, just I / Existence / Consciousness. And you realize that is the Luminous core of Existence itself.

Practitioner Sim Pern Chong describes his initial *I AM* opening like this:

> In one ‘awakening’ meditation, I came to a state of no thoughts. Such experiences are very hard to describe. This is because the explanation process itself, is within the medium of thoughts and concepts. It is impossible to describe a state of no thoughts using thoughts! Anyway, in the void of no thoughts, one naturally assumes that everything must be an unconscious blank. However, that was not the case! What came next was quite a revelation to me. In the void of no thought, I perceived myself to be a Presence... Here's how I will describe myself.
>
>> "The Presence is all pervasive, yet un-intrusive. He seems to be in all things and observes with utter passiveness. He exists beyond concepts, beliefs and do not need any form. Therefore, I understand him as eternal.
>>
>> He also seems to be the subtler state of myself. I also got the feeling that he existed in all my lifetimes or even more. If I were to name him, I will describe him as The Eternal Watcher.”
>
> You can say that I was completely blown away by the experience. The ‘discovery’ of the Eternal Watcher was a very important event that completely changed the way I understood consciousness. It also made me contemplate very deeply and seriously about the possible existence of the Divine. These spurred me on an ardent search to understand and make sense of it all.

This realization usually shakes a practitioner to her core. She discovers a remarkable sense in which consciousness *precedes* her metaphysical beliefs (such as space and time), and thereafter she can no longer conceive of it as being dependent *on* them. More generally, the practitioner's entire metaphysical foundation begins to crumble, as she discovers in a very direct way the sense in which it is fundamentally untrustworthy[^metaphysics].

[^metaphysics]: This "crumbling of one's metaphysics" alone seems more than worth the price of admission. Without it, one might practice and attain remarkable states and *still* give up, suspecting that all such states -- and enlightenment too -- might be merely illusions generated by one's (very physical) brain. But after this awakening, one sees *with flawless certainty* that there is much more to reality than meets the six sense doors.

I suspect that this also accounts for why Theravada Buddhism tends to be more popular amongst scientific materialists: one may not be forced to relinquish this worldview quite as early or as suddenly on that path. But however one travels, all such metaphysical baggage must be dropped at some point on the path if suffering is to be truly eliminated.

Unfortunately, the mind-shattering power of this realization frequently makes a practitioner adopt *consciousness* as a metaphysical base. It can be *very* hard to shake a practitioner out of this, as John Tan describes here:

> [It is] a conviction so powerful that no one, not even Buddha can sway you from [it] because the practitioner so clearly sees the truth of it. It is the direct and unshakable insight of ‘You’. This is the realization that a practitioner must have in order to realize the Zen satori. You will understand clearly why it is so difficult for those practitioners to forgo this ‘I AMness’ and accept the doctrine of anatta.

While this realization is extremely precious, the Buddha explicitly denied the existence of any such construct, so many Buddhist practitioners consider it to be useless (or worse). But this is a mistake. Soh explains:

> I noticed that many Buddhists trained under the doctrine of anatta and emptiness seem to be put off by the description of “I AM realization” as it seems to contradict anatta. This will prevent their progress as they will fail to appreciate and realize the depth of luminous presence, and their understanding of anatta and emptiness remains intellectual. It should be understood that the I AM realization does not contradict Anatta realization but complements it. It is the “original face before your parents were born” of Zen, and the unfabricated clarity in Dzogchen that serves as initial rigpa, it is also the initial certainty of Mind discovered in the first of the four yogas of Mahamudra[^baby-rigpa]. ... [it] is a direct taste and realization of the Mind of Clear Light. The view gets refined and the taste gets brought to effortless maturity and non-contrivance in all manifestation as one’s insights deepen. ... [T]here is no forgoing of this ‘Witness’, it is rather a deepening of insight to include the non-dual, groundlessness and interconnectedness of our luminous nature.

[^baby-rigpa]: The Dzogchen tradition sometimes calls this "baby rigpa". Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche:
> *The moment we recognize undivided empty cognizance, that is rigpa itself. But it is not fully grown -- it is not an adult state of rigpa -- it's baby rigpa. The level of recognition we are at now is called baby rigpa.*

In Mahamudra, it is sometimes called "beginner's vipashyana". [The Royal Seal of Mahamudra](https://www.amazon.com/Royal-Seal-Mahamudra-Realization-Coemergence/dp/1559394374):
> *All phenomena of subject and object are unoriginated, nonabiding, and unceasing. To know this crucial point and to have the experience and conviction born from deep within that they are devoid of true essence or nature is what, at this point, should be defined as vipashyana. It may happen that, for some time, vipashyana does not arise to such a degree. However, as followers of the practice lineage, we acknowledge the following **beginner’s vipashyana**. The essence of one’s mind is an unidentifiable void; it is the primordial cognizance that has not been fabricated. In the mind that is aware of itself and lucid by itself, these two, void and cognizance, are inseparable. To gain the experience that the mind has ascertained that it is so is a beginner’s vipashyana. By sustaining just that much at the beginning, we are confident that unmistaken vipashyana will gradually arise.*

Much of AtR is about how the view gets refined. It describes the following common progression:

1. In I AM, Awareness is Realer than real. It is one's true Self, the background or container of all perceptions (i.e., "the world" and one's individual self) that flow through it[^kornfield]. The Thai Forest tradition calls it the "one who knows," where the *pure mind* is seen as distinct from, and unsullied by, its passing contents[^chah].

While flawlessly convincing to the practitioner, this mode of experience contains a subtle (but profound) error:
> From a letting go perspective, "a watcher watching thought" will create the impression that a watcher is allowing thoughts to arise and subside while itself being unaffected. This is an illusion; it is 'holding' in disguise as 'letting go'.

[^chah]: [Ajahn Chah, Thai Forest master](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/chah/the_teachings_of_ajahn_chah_web.pdf) (emphasis mine):
> We sit in meditation, staying with the ‘one who knows.’
> ...
> This is what we call separating the mind from the feeling. If we are clever we don’t attach, we leave things be. **We become the ‘one who knows’**. The mind and feeling are just like oil and water; they are in the same bottle but **they don’t mix.** Even if we are sick or in pain, we still know the feeling as feeling, the mind as mind. We know the painful or comfortable states but we don’t identify with them. We stay only with peace: the peace beyond both comfort and pain.
> ...
> In its natural state, the mind is the same – in it, there exists no loving or hating, nor does it seek to blame other people. It is **independent, existing in a state of purity** that is truly clear, radiant and untarnished. In its pure state, the mind is peaceful, without happiness or suffering – indeed, not experiencing any vedana (feeling) at all. This is the true state of the mind. **The purpose of the practice**, then, is to seek inwardly, searching and investigating until you reach the original mind.
> ...
> We say that we separate mind and feeling in this way but in fact **they are by nature already separate. Our realization is simply to know this natural separateness according to reality**. When we say they are not separated it’s because we’re clinging to them through ignorance of the truth.

2. It is seen that all perceptions share the same "taste" as awareness. That primordial luminosity or presence is seen to be not just a *background*, but inherent to the perceptions themselves. In other words, one's entire experiential field is "made of consciousness."[^Harris] AtR calls this "one mind." This is the first realization of *non-duality*, and is extremely profound. However it, too, contains an error.

> Such a person may have realized that their consciousness was never divided from manifestations, that all manifestations are none other than consciousness itself. However the karmic (deep conditioning) tendency to conceive of consciousness as an inherently existing, unchanging source and substratum of phenomena, remains — except consciousness is now seen to be undivided from its manifestation, so one subsumes everything to be modulations of Pure Consciousness.

The error lies in a subtle elevating of the subject over objects:

> Awareness is still understood to be a one-way dependency: transient forms are none other than (expressions of) changeless awareness but changeless awareness is not equivalent to transient forms.

[^Harris]: Here is [Sam Harris](https://youtu.be/zk0YLGVn4_s?t=24405) explaining his understanding of Dzogchen. Note the similarities with stage 2 (although true Dzogchen goes beyond this):

> Q: Saying the phrase "consciousness and its contents" seems to invite a duality, and to reify consciousness as a *thing* that one is. Can you clarify this so as to avoid making this mistake?

> A: Consciousness is this knowing quality of mind... One can clearly differentiate the consciousness from its content in the sense that consciousness is the space in which everything is appearing, and whatever is appearing is the contents... But the duality collapses when you recognize that the contents are, in some basic sense, made of consciousness. ... **The claim that is often made that consciousness in some sense transcends its content... it *does*; it's the prior condition of anything that's appearing**, but anything that does in fact appear is also of a piece with whatever consciousness is in itself.

3. Finally, the desire to elevate "Awareness" collapses. With it goes all sense of subjectivity and all lingering traces of duality. There is no longer a Self; no background or any reified ground of being -- just the spontaneous, traceless display of self-knowing phenomena; a magical display dancing for its own sake. Although phrases like "*our* nature" or "*the mind's* nature" may still be used, they must be understood in context, so as not to mistakenly impute a self/Self or ground.

This can occur either as a peak experience (which AtR calls "no mind"), or else as the deep, penetrating insight that *reality has always already been this way*.

It is this third (permanent) realization that AtR describes as full realization of *anatta* [^anatta].

[^anatta]: Note that there are different kinds of "no-self" experiences that a practitioner might believe are *anatta*. AtR describes some [here](http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2020/04/different-degress-of-no-self-non.html). Briefly, they are:
1. Non-doership
> You no longer feel like a doer or controller, all thoughts and actions are just happening spontaneously on its own accord.
2. Impersonality
> The dissolving of the construct of 'personal self' that [leads] to a purging of ego effect to a state of clean, pure, not-mine sort of "perception shift", accompanied with a sense that everything and everyone is being expressions of the same aliveness / intelligence / consciousness.
3. Awareness-as-everything (AtR's "One mind"; Advaita's *Brahman*)
4. Anatta proper.

From the Buddhist perspective, Advaita Vedanta stops at 2[^advaita], and 3 is part of what makes Buddhism unique. AtR also convincingly makes the case that many *Buddhist* teachers and institutions mistakenly stop at 2 (or even 1), believing it to be what the Buddha was pointing at.

[^advaita]: Though it should be pointed out that Advaita Vedanta arose millennia after the Buddha's death, and so his critiques of Hindu philosophy may not apply to all of its variants. Indeed, there is reason to believe that Advaita and Tibetan Buddhism had considerable interchange in 13th century India, where the lines between them may have become blurred in the *Mahasiddha* tradition.

---

## Reconciling the two paths

So how can these two paths be reconciled?

The primary pitfall of the subject-first path, as described above, is believing the *I AM* realization to be ultimate. This can often gum up a practitioner for *decades* -- or longer. Among other techniques for getting un-stuck, AtR suggests certain vipassana-style practices[^atr-vipassana]. Eventually, one realizes *anatta* as described above, which includes the realization of the other two marks.

[^atr-vipassana]: See the section *Vipassana, John Tan’s Style* as well as *The Intensity of Luminosity* in AtR.

Let's take a look at how things can play out from the other direction.

Daniel Ingram has been a sincere practitioner (and teacher) for decades, primarily practicing *vipassana*. By his account, he was stamped as *done* by a lineage-holder in the Mahasi tradition in Burma some time around 2003, and authorized to teach it. In 2009, he felt confident that the Tibetan Buddhist realization of the mind's true nature (*rigpa*) did not go beyond his own[^Ingram-rigpa]. Then, in 2011, [he encountered a practice](https://www.integrateddaniel.info/my-experiments-in-actualism/) that would deepen his realization. He describes the result here (emphasis mine):

[^Ingram-rigpa]: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/188392#_19_message_188392
> *Kenneth [Folk], who says Rigpa and arahatship are two different phenomena, seems to think that with arahatship, one has the best platform to stabilize Rigpa, whereas I claim that arahatship is Rigpa, stabilized and done without other options.*

*Rigpa* is the Tibetan term for (nondual) knowledge of the mind's true nature. *Arahat-ship* is the end goal of Theravada (which both Kenneth and Daniel by that point claimed to have attained).

> [I]t did do something totally remarkable, and that was create the ability to sit totally at rest, totally at peace, just like that, and I don't mean in some stage or state, not in some jhana, just by the field being nice to itself. That simple thing was well worth the work it took to get it. **It doesn't sound as fancy or as flashy as all the other stuff I have done, but it is more valuable than them all.**

This kind of *total simplicity* lines up well with certain aspects of how the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition might describe *rigpa*[^rigpa]. He goes on to say:

[^rigpa]: The Tibetan traditions often approach from the "I AM" side. [Here is a classic description](https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/mipham/mipham-lamp) of the opening of *rigpa*:
> Therefore, when mind experiences this kind of dull state that lacks any thought or mental activity, by allowing your attention to turn naturally and gently towards the one who is aware of this state—the one who is not thinking—you discover the pure awareness of rigpa, free of any movement of thought, beyond any notion of outside or inside, unimpeded and open, like the clear sky.
>
> Although there is no dualistic separation here between an experience and an experienc**er**, still the mind is certain about its own true nature, and there is a sense that, “There is nothing whatsoever beyond this.” When this occurs, because you can not conceptualize it or express it in words, it is acceptable to apply such terms as: “free from all extremes”, “beyond description”, “the fundamental state of clear light” and “the pure awareness of rigpa.”
> ...
> You could also say that the state of mental blankness we looked at earlier is indescribable, but it lacks decisiveness, since you are completely **unable** to describe it in any way. Rigpa, on the other hand, is in essence indescribable, but at the same time it has a decisive quality that cuts through any doubt about what is indescribable. So there is a huge difference between these two kinds of indescribability, like the difference between blindness and perfect vision.

Note the similarities with the "I AM" practice and realization. The full realization of rigpa, however, goes far beyond this[^baby-rigpa].

> I was just talking to a heavy Vajrayana [Tibetan Buddhist] practitioner about all of this at Buddhist Geeks, and she made the comment that I had attained to Vajrayana results with Theravadan methods.

AtR interprets what happened like so:

> As for whether I AM phase can be bypassed, the answer is yes, but one will tend to overlook certain aspects. For example Daniel Ingram’s [book] MCTB does not go through I AM (…) before the fourth path, however, as [John Tan] wrote in 2009, “… I think what lacks in the approach of MCTB is an effective way to allow practitioners to have adequate experience of the vividness, realness and presence of Awareness and the full experience of these qualities in the transience.” … This is also the reason why Daniel needed to go through Actual Freedom practice to bring out the luminosity aspect further even though he had certain insights into anatta in MCTB 4th path.

Daniel describes his current experience in [this fantastic video](https://vimeo.com/250616410):

> [W]hen you try to actually see every single one of [the sensations], at first it seems impossible, right? Because there are so many sensations coming in. Except, then you have to start realizing that the sensation coming in *is* the awareness of itself. You already knew it. When the thought arose, or when the sound arose, or when the physical sensation arose, or when the visual arose, that *was* the knowledge of the sensation.
> ...
> All of [the Buddhist schools] at their best are actually pointing to the immediate, high resolution, full-on, natural vibrancy of our complete, direct, immediate, transient, causal, natural, intrinsically aware experience. And when I say "intriniscally aware," I mean that each of the qualities intrinsically know themselves. I am positing no stable awareness or field of luminous light that is actually some stable, transcendent truth or anything like that -- *lest anybody be getting the wrong message*. I posit a field of transient, totally natural changing experiences in which you will find some fundamental pain if *anything* pretends to be a watcher, a doer, a controller, a stable entity.
> ...
> One can flip over to a totally different way of perceiving reality, in which everything just stands for itself, occurs on its own, knows itself as it is, and you lose that annoying sense that "oh, there's this limited thing [in here] that can't possibly keep up with all of *that*." When instead you flip over to this way of being where all the sensations that made up that seemingly annoying attention center thing, as well as all the rest of the sensations, are simply doing what they do, showing up as they show up, knowing themselves as they know themselves, automatically, that is an *extremely* different way of perceiving reality, and *vastly* better.

To be clear, I am not claiming (nor do I think *Daniel* is claiming) that this constitutes complete enlightenment (i.e., *full Buddhahood*), or anything close to it. For example, realizing the emptiness of time goes *vastly* beyond recognizing impermanence or "transience"[^emanations]. Nevertheless, this is surely an important milestone along the way, and would be a major accomplishment for any practitioner.

[^emanations]: Leave alone Mahayana claims of Buddhas being omniscient, or able to emanate themselves in (or as) countless realms simultaneously. But discussing such matters takes us too far our intended purposes here. As for *emptiness of time* vs impermanence, Nagarjuna had this to say:
> *[In a relative sense] everything is impermanent, but [in the absolute sense] nothing is permanent or impermanent.*

Rob Burbea comments:

> Of course at a certain level teachings about impermanence and the arising and passing of things are enormously important. And as we have seen, these concepts and perceptions can serve to form helpful provisional ways of looking that may eventually lead to more profound insights. But in itself, a view of impermanence is not a view of the ultimate and true nature of things.

So we see that both paths have their pitfalls, and there are aspects of each that can assist with the shortcomings of the other[^shortcomings]. For its part, AtR strongly advises practitioners to go via the *subject-first* route[^skipping-i-am]. Of course, in the end, this is a very individual decision.

[^shortcomings]: Though it is interesting to note that [some practitioners](https://www.facebook.com/groups/AwakeningToReality/permalink/4304722269569170/?comment_id=4325732757468121&__cft__[0]=AZWXS09C3HHj7o3TxuhiC7Mei6zvVZMaA9caJQzbyglsi8Ucn3YywKRv1eA4xIHit99MGQe0NHQ69TPzqB5LhTUKOkqakRj6RZYWhcbbY_n3Z_wOckJiMbGyuMTm2LQBQRw18AsSgahXc9rXN_jIciMv&__tn__=R]-R) have noticed that at some point on the *subject-first* path, the Progress of Insight stages (as described in MCTB) stop occurring, as do cessations (again, prized as being *nibbana* in the Mahasi lineage[^mahasi-cessation]). This suggests that for a student with a proclivity for (and perhaps some realization from) this path, the *object-first* path may prove particularly frustrating: having had one's first taste of awakening according to these traditions, one may somehow be prevented from accessing attainments in nominally-related traditions -- further reducing their interest or trust in them.

[^skipping-i-am]:
> Some people wonder if it is necessary to go through the I AM realization before they realize further stages of insight like Anatta (Stage 5). While possible, it is easy to miss out certain aspects like the luminous Presence. One can have non-dual experiences but it is dry and barren without the luminous taste of Presence-Awareness. Furthermore, as discussed towards the end of this document, the stages are not to be seen as purely linear progression nor as a measurement of importance -- even the first phase of I AM Realization is important as it brings out the luminous essence.

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## Conclusion

The path to enlightenment can be tricky. This is especially true when different traditions emphasize different aspects, and often fail to recognize (or even demean) the insights from others. Hopefully this guide helps practitioners on two popular paths reconcile some of the frustrating differences that appear between them, thus removing needless obstacles.

:pray: