“Terror and delight”
“…when the path of insight is analyzed carefully, stages with predominantly two contrasting affective tones can be discriminated, what the Visuddhimagga, the classic textbook of Buddhist psychology, calls experiences of “terror and delight”
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…experiences of terror, on the other hand, derive from the investigating aspects of the mindfulness practice and from the insights that precipitate out of such practice. They are characterized by clear perception of the impermanent, insubstantial and unsatisfying nature of the self and the field of experience. These experiences are profoundly disturbing; they evoke discomfort, fear and anxiety, require the meditator to relinquish fundamental beliefs and identifications, and tend to be fragmenting and anxiogenic.
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The experience of terror, however, and the fruits of the insight practices, have little to do with the ego ideal. There is no satisfaction of a yearning for perfection in these experiences, no evocation of grandeur, elation or omnipotence. Rather, these experiences directly challenge the grasp of the deeply buried and highly treasured ideal ego. They confront the “illusory ontology of the self” (Hanly, 1984, p. 255), expose the ego as groundless, impermanent and empty, and overcome the denials that empower the wishful image of the self. When faced with these experiences, the meditator has nothing to fall back on; he must surrender his most closely guarded identifications, relinquishing them as “not me” and “not mine.” As described in the Visuddhimagga, He sees the non-existence of a self of his own … he sees of his own self too that it is not the property of another’s self… . He sees the non-existence of another’s self, thus `There is no other’s self anywhere’ He sees of another that that other is not the property of his own self thus `My owning of that other’s self does not exist’ So this mere conglomeration of formations is seen … as voidness of self or property of a self…. (Nyanamoli, 1976, p. 763)
— “Psychotherapy without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective”, Dr. Mark Epstein M.D.
