The Hard Side

21. The ñāṇa of distress

The finding of the document — and one of the most important of the entire series.

What it is

The classical scholastic tradition describes stages of insight (ñāṇa) that follow a specific sequence.

And a group of these is explicitly dysphoric.

The sequence

After certain initial stages, the practitioner passes through:

And the phrase that names them

In contemporary English-language teaching, these dysphoric stages are often called “the dark night” — a term borrowed from the Christian mystical tradition, now established.

Why this is extremely important

Notice what the tradition does here.

It does not say “if you feel bad, you are doing something wrong”.

It says: if you do this practice correctly, you will pass through fear, misery, disgust and the desire to flee — and this is stage six, not failure.

That is: the anguish is mapped, named, placed in sequence, and anticipated.

And the clinical instruction

The traditional recommendation for these stages is clear and counter-intuitive for anyone expecting “do more”:

• Continue the observation without panic — the stages pass
• Or, if it is too intense, reduce the intensity: change of object, more movement, lighter practice
• A teacher is needed — and this is explicitly cited as one of the points where guidance is essential
• And there are antidote objects: loving-kindness, reflection on good qualities, practices that produce pleasure

The honest note

The detailed sequence comes chiefly from the scholastic tradition, not from the earliest texts in this form.

And there is disagreement about how universal it is — whether all pass through all, in this order.

But the essential stands: the tradition recorded distress as a predicted part of the path, with names and instructions, centuries before there was any clinical literature.

22. And the modern data

And now the point of convergence.

What the research shows

The literature on adverse effects of meditation has matured significantly in the last decade.

The most extensive qualitative study — with interviews of practitioners and teachers from these very traditions — documented a wide spectrum of difficulties, classified into categories: cognitive, perceptual, emotional, somatic, sense-of-self, social.

And among the most frequently reported:

• Fear and anxiety without object
• Sense of disconnection from self or world
• Emerging traumatic material
• Hyperarousal and insomnia
• Intense bodily discomfort — energy, pressure, involuntary movements
• Changes in perception — visual, auditory, of spatial sense
• And loss of functionality in some cases

Meta-analyses of frequency give rates that vary significantly depending on definition and population — but they are not negligible, and the phenomenon is now considered recognised.

And the convergence

Comparing the two catalogues — the scholastic of the 5th century and the clinical of the 21st — the overlap is significant.

Fear. Misery. Disgust. Desire to flee. Sense of dissolution. Anxiety.

And the risk factors that modern research surfaces — intensity, duration, isolation, absence of guidance, pre-existing trauma — are exactly the conditions in which the traditional teaching requires a teacher.

How to read it

Two things, and they are different.

First, the tradition was right that it exists. It recorded a real phenomenon, with a precision modern research recognises.

Second, the tradition did not have the tools to manage it in every case. The interpretation of symptoms exclusively as spiritual stages can prevent people from appropriate help — especially in the case of emerging trauma, psychotic episode, or exacerbation of a pre-existing condition.

And the synthesis I propose

The tradition offers something the clinical literature does not: a framework in which distress does not mean “something is wrong with you”. And the clinical literature offers something the tradition does not: differential diagnosis.

The anguish may be a stage. It may also be something else. And knowing which requires, today, both bodies of knowledge.

23. Safety

The specific risks

1. Intensive retreats without screening.

Many programmes accept participants with minimal or no screening of history — psychiatric, traumatic, pharmaceutical.

And the conditions are, exactly, the risk factors: ten hours a day, silence, isolation, restricted sleep, minimal food, no communication with the outside.

2. The difficulty of leaving.

In some programmes, there is explicit or implicit pressure not to leave, with the argument that the desire to flee is part of the process.

And sometimes it is (chapter 21). And sometimes it is the right instinct.

A system that explains in advance why your desire to leave is a symptom has removed the organ with which you would recognise that you must leave.

3. Asubha in the wrong person.

Chapters 6 and 8 said it: the tradition has explicit contraindications, and it is precisely these that are omitted in the modern dissemination.

Practices of aversion toward the body, in a person with eating disorder, body dysmorphia, depression or self-destructive tendencies, can cause real harm.

4. Psychotic episodes.

There is documented case literature. The risk factors are the known ones: personal or family history, sleep deprivation, isolation, intensity.

5. And the silencing.

Perhaps the most serious: in many environments, there is no way to report that something has gone wrong, because the frame interprets every difficulty as progress or as your own inadequacy.

The reaction from within

And it is important.

There is now organised effort — from researchers who are themselves practitioners, and from teachers — for the development of support for people with difficulties, the training of teachers in recognition, and the dissemination of better screening practices.

And there is growing recognition that intensity is not always the right thing: increased interest in gentler approaches, in practices that build safety before insight, and in explicit adaptation for people with a history of trauma.

And the principle that follows

If the practice makes you function worse in your life, the problem is not that you are not trying hard enough.

And the tradition itself has the argument: the Middle Way (chapter 2). Excessive effort was rejected from the beginning, by the founder himself, after personal failure.

24. The political problem

It is not sidestepped.

The facts

A system whose first ethical rule is abstention from causing harm to living beings has, in the 21st century, been linked to organised violence.

In Myanmar: nationalist movements with leading monk participation promoted anti-Muslim rhetoric and legislation. In 2017, military operations against the Rohingya population in Rakhine caused mass killings, rapes, village burnings, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people to Bangladesh.

International investigations have characterised the events in the gravest terms of international law, and there are pending proceedings before international courts.

In Sri Lanka: monks have participated in leading roles in nationalist movements and in incitement to violence against Muslim and Christian communities, with documented episodes of mob violence.

And the analysis

The easy thing would be to say “this is not real Buddhism”.

I will not say it, for the same reason I did not say it for any other tradition in this series.

The structure of the argument is always the same and always dishonest: when a tradition produces harm, its defenders say it was not the tradition, and its critics say it was only the tradition.

The more precise formulation is:

Religious identity functioned as national identity. And when this happens, the content of the teaching ceases to be the determining factor — it becomes a flag.

And there is a historical dimension: the colonial period closely bound religious and national identity in these countries, and contemporary movements inherit that connection.

And the internal reaction

It exists, and it is important.

Buddhist teachers, monks and communities — within and beyond these countries — have publicly condemned the violence, often at personal cost. There are declarations, appeals, and monks who have been persecuted for their stance.

And the separate issue: women

It must be said, because it is structural.

The founder ordained women, and there was a full bhikkhunī order with its own code (chapter 17).

The line died out in Theravāda, probably around the 11th century, for historical and not doctrinal reasons.

And the issue today:

• From 1996 and 1998, full ordinations have been revived, with the participation of monks from traditions where the line survives
• Today there are thousands of ordained women, chiefly in Sri Lanka
• And some national monastic hierarchies do not recognise them — rulings have been issued against their validity, and there have been real penalties against monks who supported them, up to expulsion
• In some countries, women who practise monastic life have an intermediate, ambiguous status, with fewer resources and less recognition

The disagreement is active, internal, and unresolved.

And the general conclusion

It is the same one that emerged in several of these texts:

The internal consistency of a system does not protect it from producing harm — and the existence of explicit ethical rules does not guarantee their implementation by the institutions that guard them.