Q&A Essential Diagnostic Guide:

Consider how the stages of calm/staying relate to the 9 stages of stabilizing any meditation. The student needs at least a concentration level 4/9 while concentrating on the view in order to stabilize the view at the coarse level, and at least a concentration level 6/9 to have some degree of automaticity. Therefore the calm/staying phases of delight (7), contentment (8) and equanimity (9) are necessary in sealing for an experience of effortless automaticity. 

Check that the sense of body and self is open/empty. Ocean and Waves meditation unfolds from a very subtle basis of operation — the non-dual, unbounded field awareness. The student will not be able to practice automatic emptiness if the body/self structure is still causing even a subtle level of grab. So check whether the sense of body/self is spacious, unbounded, wave-like, and already released.

Check that the student’s awareness is bright enough. Sealing practice and automatic emptiness require a strong continuity of aware, awake presence. If the student is trying too hard and narrowing their attentional system, they will lose the wide-open, wide-awake capacity needed for sealing. So check that there is an awake, vivid, panoramic quality of awareness rather than a tight or effortful tunnel.

Check that the student understands that sealing practice is non-conceptual. They need to understand that one taste practice, sealing practice, cannot be done conceptually. It is not about being aware of something and saying “it’s empty” or mentally repeating “empty, empty, empty.” The conceptual mind cannot see the fundamental openness of things. Sealing has to be done by direct knowing, by direct recognition of emptiness as the nature of whatever arises.

Check that they have an accurate understanding of the view — that things are already empty. To the extent that they are completely awake, they will immediately recognize unfindability. They need to understand that emptiness is already the case, not something they produce through technique. So check that they are not trying to fabricate emptiness or manipulate experience into emptiness.

Check that they are not trying to get rid of experience. Two things can happen in sealing: either experience will be made calm upon arising (meaning it will not arise at all because of the degree of emptiness), or it will arise and be set free as empty. In the second case, experience continues but without any grab. A thought of doubt can arise and be recognized as empty, and the mind continues to generate empty thoughts without any contraction around doubt. So check that they are not suppressing experience or trying to stop experience.

Check that the student understands the process of sealing in terms of range. The whole process of sealing with respect to range is a process of slowly checking background windows in the operating system that aren’t shut down — beginning with coarser windows related to the self and its beliefs, then windows related to beliefs about the nature of practice, and eventually reaching the subtlest constructions of trying to make something happen or stop something from happening. This whole process of sealing is the process of refining emptiness.

Check that obstacles reported in sharing are being looked at directly as empty. If a student mentions any obstacle arising in practice, that is exactly where the diagnostic needs to go. You then need to ask them whether they have looked at that obstacle as empty, as open, as unfindable. The searching practice here needs to expand until it becomes automatic — so check that they are not avoiding the obstacle but directly recognizing it as empty.