Culadasa: It’s far too common. So awakening is just the beginning of a process of much deeper spiritual development. And the Eightfold Path properly understood, the dharma as a whole properly understood, gives us the guidelines that we need to develop that. As an awakened person, mindfulness is naturally much more powerful. And you’re capable of this kind of personal spiritual development so a much greater degree than somebody who’s not awakened. But, I mean, people would love to believe this, that all of a sudden like a snap of your fingers I’m awakened and now “Hey, I’m there, I’m done,” and it’s just not the way it works. [laughs] It’s wonderful if you reach this huge, wonderful new level that you’re not going to really fall back from, but there’s still so much further to go.

Taft: And how would you suggest someone go about treading that new path, post-awakening? What is the methodology there?

Culadasa: I think one valuable guideline is in the Ten Fetter, Four Path Model that is provided in the suttas. Now this is something that I don’t think is often very well-understood, but it is one of the most brilliant pieces of guidance that has ever been generated, you can really thank the Buddha for spelling it out in the terms that he did, in terms of overcoming the fetters. A stream entrant has overcome certain very specific fetters, which are attachment to the ego self, but they still feel like they’re a separate self. But they know that this is an illusion, they have an ego—you need an ego to function, without an ego you can’t keep your laundry separate from somebody else’s. But the ego has become transparent and actually they’re in the perfect position to cultivate a strong, healthy ego that serves not only themselves but everyone else. So the first fetter that’s overcome is this attachment to the ego self, and so it’s seen for what it is and it becomes something that can be dropped when necessary and used when appropriate. The second thing that they do is that they overcome the belief in—the way it’s usually stated is rules, rites, and rituals, and I would translate that as they overcome the belief in magic. They have experience a profound insight into paṭiccasamuppāda, into dependent arising. And I’m not talking about the links of dependent arising. The links of dependent arising are a different pedagogical tool for teaching how the human mind works and how we shape ourselves. I’m talking about it in the fundamental sense of causality: that there is nothing at all that stands outside the realm of causality, of causes and conditions. Everything is a result of causes and conditions. So there is the falling away of the belief in magic, and magic is essentially believing that there is anything of significance or value that lies outside of the laws of causality. I’ll just point out that the kind of philosophical logic that you can apply to this would bring you to the conclusion that anything that was not part of greater causality would be irrelevant because it could neither produce effects nor be affected by the realm of causality. So that’s just something in passing [laughs]. There could be something like that, somebody could believe in something like that and I’d say that’s fine, you know, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t have any relevance [laughs]. So that’s the second fetter and then the third fetter of course is doubt. Up until the point of stream entry there can be, and there will be, and there actually should be a question in a person’s mind, “Is this real? Or am I pursuing a fairy tale?” And as a matter of fact a lot of people find upon stream entry that they were following a fairy tale, you know, partly due to the fact that westerners like to call awakening “enlightenment.” The Tibetans have really contributed to this enormously and made enlightenment into this thing that somehow you have all these supernatural powers and you can walk through walls and all this other kinds of stuff. Awakening doesn’t do that. And so the falling away of doubt about things like that is a good thing [laughs]. But the doubt that you want to fall away is the doubt that can impair you, that can hold you back, that keeps you from throwing yourself 100 percent, totally, wholeheartedly into the continued practice of the dharma. So these fetters fall away. If we look and see what remains, craving hasn’t fallen away. The inherent sense of being a separate self, even though the ego self has become transparent, we still feel like separate selves as stream entrants, right? And we still experience craving and we’re still driven by it. Maybe not as strongly as before, but we’re still driven by it. Now, the second path, the Buddha defined in terms not in the way of the falling away of another fetter, but another very important step that happens that allows for the falling away of the next fetters, and this is a tremendous weakening of the power that craving and self-attachment have over you. They actually may strive to find some sort of self to account for the sense of being a separate self. They’re in a position of knowing the self that they thought they were is an illusion, but at the same time feeling like they’re a separate self, and so especially if they are attached to notions of reincarnation and things like that, they may find themselves striving to find some kind of other version of self to fill that gap, or to explain that. And of course consciousness is one of the favorite things that people cling to for that. But the result of it is that there’s a remnant of self-clinging, and then there’s also craving. So now what happens if a person continues to practice the Eightfold Path in its entirety, including meditation and as a part of their meditation there should be a repetition, to the degree that they’re capable, and it’s not always the case that a person can do this, but to the degree that what led them to stream entry was a practice that was structured enough that they can create the same causes and conditions that arose that allowed them that breakthrough to awakening, then they can have what’s referred to as a fruition experience. And if they repeat this, the more often they repeat this then the more they consolidate the insights that brought them to stream entry. So continuing to practice the Eightfold Path in its entirety, including meditation, is a very important thing. What it’ll do is it will eventually lead to a place of a recognition, and this tends to happen—it tends to be kind of a shocking realization when it happens— sometimes very uncomfortable, a person can become very miserable when they realize this, they realize that in everything that they’ve done, well, almost everything that they’ve done, there are exceptions, but in almost everything that they’ve said and done and almost all of their thoughts, what is behind so many of their emotions is craving, and that wherever there is craving there is suffering. Even where the craving is very, very subtle, that there is suffering and that there arises within them this huge wish to overcome craving. They see craving as the problem it is. This empowers them in the face of craving. This disempowers craving itself, because when they experience craving and they recognize it from a place of mindfulness, they can work to uproot craving. Now, it doesn’t happen that everybody approaches second path from the point of view of craving, because some approach it from the point of view of self-attachment. They’ll have a similar shocking realization, it’s actually going a little bit more to the root of things, but it’s not necessarily any more effective. But they’ll realize that there is this undercurrent of self-attachment that is almost always there, that only rarely does it fall away. But on those rare occasions when it does, there is a kind of peace and happiness and comfort that is not there the rest of the time. There is an even greater liberation than the one that gave them the glorious afterglow that a lot of people experience when they achieve stream entry. So it corresponds pretty much to the experience I described of people recognizing the ubiquitousness of craving, they recognize the ubiquitousness of self-clinging. The same thing applies that they actually attain second path through the realization of this, which empowers them to be more mindfully aware of self-clinging and its presence and to not be so tightly bound to it. This then sets them on the second path and the work through the second path to uproot self-attachment and craving. And it’s interesting, one of the things that people often spontaneously do but can be guided to do by a careful teacher—and there’s a certain danger in this, too, that’s why it’s really valuable for somebody to have a teacher in their progression through these paths—there is the tendency to actually seek out situations that elicit craving, or that elicit self- attachment in order to confront it, in order to overcome it, in order to uproot it. You can see how there’s a certain danger in this, but this is also the most powerful and effective way to get to the place of achieving third path, which is defined as a falling away of desire and aversion for things of the sense realm. There still remains desire and aversion in their subtler forms of desire for being and desire for non-being and the corresponding aversion, but they are now liberated from the kinds of craving for things of the self realm. They can enjoy life fully but they are not enslaved by the compulsions to pursue the pleasant and to attempt to destroy or avoid the unpleasant, which are actually the causes of a kind of suffering. So there’s a much greater freedom from suffering. What they remain—they’ll have this inherent sense of being a separate self, this feeling, okay, this feeling of somehow I’m still a separate self. And they still do have these remnants of craving which are related to that sense of being a separate self, I mean, you can probably see—it’s not hard to understand how as long as you have that sense that you are a self, that there can be related to that desire for being and desire for non-being. Or aversion to being or aversion to non-being. It’s a subtler form of suffering but it’s a very real form of suffering that is still present for somebody who is on third path, and it’s something that they need to work through. I think maybe I’ll cut this description short just by saying, the work of third path and the attainment of fourth path is when that inherent sense of self is transcended and the fetters associated with it are eliminated as well. So there’s no longer this craving for being or non-being. One of the fetters is conceit, it’s the conceit “I am”, that is removed entirely. And there is the restlessness of spirit that until a person has approached fourth path they’re not even that aware of but there’s this inner agitation, this subtle discomfort that is associated with being in this place of the conceit “I am”, and the cravings for being and non-being. So that is how the fourth path was defined by the Buddha, and that’s the arhat. I’ll just add one more thing to this. The Buddha stopped there. The process of spiritual development on this path does not stop there by any means. It is not the case that you get to a place where you’re an arhat and that’s done and okay that’s the end of the process.