SuttaCentral
In Samyutta Nikaya 54.9 the Buddha’s instruction to the monks was to take up anapanasati meditation to counter the effects of too much focus on foulness of the body. Anapanasati is a life-affirming subject so a balancing factor was applied.
The story of the monk who saw a skeleton is recorded in Visuddhimagga 1.55.
The story of the monk who saw a skeleton is recorded in Visuddhimgga 1.55.
Thank you. I tried but couldn’t remember where I heard it from.
Just to propose a framework for the understanding of the term (I’m missing such a type of explanation/rendering/framing in the opening post):
From wikipedia, section “notes”:
Ronald W. Pies:
The phrase, “dark night of the soul” is often used informally to describe an extremely difficult and painful period in one’s life, for example, after the death of a loved one; the break-up of a marriage; or the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness. For many, the loneliness, isolation and fear associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is, indeed, a dark night of the soul. There is nothing wrong with these informal usages, and they have obvious links to the concepts of demoralization and despair, as we have defined them. But they differ significantly from the original meaning and context of the phrase, as first conceived by the Spanish mystic, John of the Cross (1541-1597 AD).[9]
Thanks for this post, I found it interesting reading. I have never heard of the “Dark Night Stage” before, and the concept is intriguing.
I don’t think I have ever experienced this. The closest would be many years ago when I was in my twenties and I was watching a woman buying a Christmas gift from a department store. I don’t know how I knew, but somehow I sensed this woman wasn’t rich (perhaps from the clothes she wore) and yet she was spending money on a present. To most of us, what she purchased would have been insignificant in terms of price, but I gathered it was a significant purchase for her, just from the way she was hesitant about it all, and her sense of half regret in giving the money.
That seemingly inconsequential observation triggered a whole flood of thoughts in me. With a wave of realisation that flooded me, I extrapolated from her condition, the act of purchase, the sacrifice (?) she was making, the happiness that the gift will no doubt bring … all that into a realisation of the impermanence of it all. Everything, the gift, the happiness, the regret, her life, my life, it was then that I truly understood what dukkha and samsara was.
This was quite a lot for someone in their twenties to process, seemingly in the prime of their life, and at the beginning of their adult life. I think I spent most of that Christmas somewhat depressed, and I never really accepted it until much later.
Anyway, to go back to your post, I agree that eventually the meditative states may well blend into the “normal” state, into our daily lifes, our conscious thoughts, and eventually our subconscious thoughts and perhaps into our dreams.
My best illustration of this is the āruppamānasaṁ (non-material thought) state of nevasaññanāsaññāyatanacitta (the consciousness pertaining to the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception).
When I first read about this, I couldn’t even figure out what it meant. But when I first experienced it, I suddenly realised what it was. It’s effectively “no thoughts” - our mind is in “idle gear” with each mind-moment not generating any conscious thought process at all, therefore we are neither “perceiving” nor “non-perceiving”.
After I have experienced this, I was also able to experience this in my subconscious and indeed in my dreams. I have lucid dreams (I am aware that I am dreaming) for most of my life, but lately, in the last year or so, I discovered I can partially control my dream. Ie., I can pause, rewind, fastforward and replay my dreams. I can also change the dream subject and guide my subconscious to a different path.
What I discovered was I can achieve the nevasaññanāsaññāyatanacitta state in my dreams. Effectively my subconscious becomes stuck in an “infinite loop” not generating any thoughts at all, but my conscious mind is aware of this and monitoring the thoughts not forming. It’s a very interesting state - neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
Anyway, thanks again for the interesting post.
No need to speculate.
The OP is almost certainly referring to Daniel Ingram’s colorful riff on the Vsm’s “Knowledge of Dukkha”
THX Venerable 
- but I think I’ll stay as a lay w.r. to Ingram’s text, so I’m not aware of his constructs. Anyway I found it interesting that the label/the meme “dark night of soul” is somehow common - and even since centuries - when I looked around.
Ayoniso manasikāra 
Hello. Well dosing the fundamental meditation techniques: mindfulness according to the 4 frames of reference, bhavana on certain key- topics, breathing meditation and metta can help. Of course it can be counterproductive to practise too much asubabhavana (yet now & then I felt great lightness of being while practising it).
Asubabhavana can (should?) be preceded and followed by focusing on breath or any other meditative support (kammatthana) susceptible of relaxing the heart-mind and consequently the “body of flesh” ( between quotation marks since manomaya kaya is also a “body”).
Hi…dark night of “the soul”… What’s such “soul” ?
* Buddhist meditation.
Yes, of course that is true!
Why not ask the term-creating specialist:
(the conceiver of the term has a wikipedia-entry as well)
If you like to take another definition: then you likely diverge from the use of the term and the author’s understanding/intention …
I neither diverge nor converge for both would imply waste of time & energy.
Since John of the Cross was a Christian very concerned with the fate of his soul, and the Buddha spent a lot of time explaining how there isn’t a soul, there probably is not a lot of overlap.
Yes, that’s for sure. (And I think the asker of the question was of course aware of it - but what do I know … :-)).
Anyway; while the christian/abrahamistic discourse on “the soul” has its theological frame which makes it quite different from the Buddha’s discourse, one should not forget, that below such a theological framing there is a wide area, where people subsume their experiences, psychic dilemmata, their personal suffering, their observing of causes & conditions etc. under the keyword “soul” without having it exactly into the theological framing. And this area is then one, where Buddhists can show empathy and brotherly/sisterly discourse on the daily life’s sorrows & happinesses.
Hi
Precisely. That’s why i mentioned on my other comment “manomaya kaya”, which is what really keeps on becoming.
It doesn’t seem entirely clear to me what ‘manomaya kaya’ means in the suttas, although it is probably borrowed from the Vedic/advaita manomaya kosa.
In the suttas it seems a type of subtle rupa, not permanent and not to be confused with atman.
There was a discussion here about Daniel Ingram and the things he has said and has claimed. Since you mentioned him, I would recommend reading it.
with metta
nothing to do with atman. Manomaya Kaya : let’s call it mental body, a samsaric subtle body engendered by tanha. Or call it “psyche” as in ancient (very ancient!) Greece. Such aggregate can be improved in order to reborn with a better / more evolved / purified
life( from a buddhist viewpoint.) Or can be totally “disintegrated” by attaining Nibanna.
Now back to the soul (from a western perspective) as an emanation or “divine spark” of some divinity, many don’t notice all the absurd contradictions triggered by such concept/belief, and here’s one example: why would something coming from an omnipotent knowing-everything being need to be perfected?
As for the hindu Atman : the hindu atman from a non-dual angle has nothing to do with the Christian / monotheistic soul-concept.
Lots of stories of Buddhist practitioners going crazy, experiencing overwhelming trauma, commiting suicide no? I.e. asuba suicides when the Buddha had a holiday?