Reversing the Stack— A Nondual Practice Map, with Michael Taft

In this episode, host Michael Taft remixes his map of deconstructing sensory experience, and talks about how to use it to work in nondual traditions. Essentially the idea is to reverse the stack by starting out with Stage 4 (pure awareness) and then working your way up to stage 3, etc. Michael also spends some time talking about maps of meditation, problems therewith, and why he is already reworking this map after a short time.

Show Notes

0:25 – Introduction

2:11 – Michael’s reasons for opposing maps, and creating the Deconstructing Sensory

Experience map

5:05 – Critiques Michael has heard about the map since first presenting it, and his responses

10:13 – Brief review of stages 1-4 of the map

14:41 – The logic behind putting cessation as stage 5 in the previous map; why it’s now

removed from the map

18:19 – How each stage is useful and no stage is lesser than the others

21:13 – Description of stage 4, pure awareness; how this stage is viewed in other traditions

25:43 – Reversing the stack, using this model bidirectionally

29:56 – The observer trap and how reversing the stack overcomes this problem

34:34 – Outro

Note: this is only a map, only a model. Just like a menu is not food, this model is not claiming to be reality. It’s just a handy way to help you orient your practice.

This model doesn’t count for nondual meditations, high-concentration/jhana practice, etc. It is only to help you with your vipassana practice.

These are not discrete or digital stages. They are analog, and shade into one another. Each stage is desirable and useful for various things. No stage is somehow better than another.

In vipassana practice, however, we are usually attempting to tranverse the stack from stage one to stage four.

When doing nondual practices, we transverse the stack from bottom to top (4 -> 1) and do what we might call “nondual vipassana” or something akin to many Mahamudra practices—which is what this episode describes.

Level 1 - Conceptual - Thinking about sensory experience objects using words.

Level 2 - Phenomenal Object - Contacting the phenomenology of sensory experiences in the form of objects.

Level 3 - Flow / Change - Contacting the phenomenology of sensory experiences as vibration, waves, or change.

Level 4 - Pure Awareness - Noticing awareness itself with no content.

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