No Man’s Land ☠️

Sometimes, the best way to understand what you SHOULD be doing in your meditation and spiritual practice, is to invert the question and ask yourself, what should I NOT be doing?

No Man’s Land ☠️ in the EBT, is a collection of hot zones, dangerous places you definitely don't want to be in. If you're in it, get out quickly, immediately. The use of the phrase and the poison (skull and crossbones) pictogram is to emphasize the point of the extreme danger you're in, and train your mind to recognize that perception quickly and take the correct evasive action. SN 47.20 is a prime example of how great an importance the Buddha places in this idea of training mindfulness to always remember and be alert to extreme danger, and to skillfully adopt perceptions with a heuristic to deal with danger instantaneously without wasting time thinking and exposing yourself to higher risk. Thinking and evaluation can come later V&V💭, 2💭🕵️. First order of business is to get out of danger. This is one reason I don't like B. Sujato‍'s translation of hiri‍ and ottappa‍ as "conscience and prudence". Whereas Bhikkhu Bodhi‍'s translation of "shame and fear of wrong doing" retains that strong visceral sense of imminent danger and need to get out quickly.
mantra: "You're in No Man’s Land ☠️, get out now!" is a skillful mantra to train your memory and reaction/reflex to imminent danger.

What is no man's land?

excerpt from smithsonianmag:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/legends-what-actually-lived-no-mans-land-between-world-war-i-trenches-180952513/

During World War I, No Man’s Land was both an actual and a metaphorical space. It separated the front lines of the opposing armies...

...

But it could also be the most terrifying of places; one that held the greatest danger for combatants. “Men drowning in shell-holes already filled with decaying flesh, wounded men, beyond help from behind the wire, dying over a number of days, their cries audible, and often unbearable to those in the trenches; sappers buried alive beneath its surface," wrote scholar Fran Brearton in her 2000 history The Great War in Irish Poetry: W.B. Yeats to Michael Longley. No Man’s Land, said poet Wilfred Owen, was “like the face of the moon, chaotic, crater-ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.”

Oxford English Dictionary, Nomanneslond, ca. 1350

In the Oxford English Dictionary, Nomanneslond, ca. 1350, comes from the Middle English, and was “a piece of ground outside the north wall of London, formerly used as a place of execution.” The phrase took on a military connotation as early as 1864, but it became an especially prevalent term during the First World War. The German equivalent was Niemandsland, while the French used the English term le no man’s land.

But it was during the Great War that a legend arose out of the real-life horrors that occurred in this wartime hellhole. Part Night of the Living Dead and part War Horse, like all oft-told tales, it had several variants, but the basic kernel warned of scar-faced and fearless deserters banding together from nearly all sides—Australian, Austrian, British, Canadian, French, German, and Italian (though none from the United States)—and living deep beneath the abandoned trenches and dugouts. According to some versions, the deserters scavenged corpses for clothing, food and weapons. And in at least one version, the deserters emerged nightly as ghoulish beasts, to feast upon the dead and dying, waging epic battles over the choicest portions.

zone 1: straying outside of 4sp🐘 sati'paṭṭhāna

Explicit declaration that straying outside of 4sp🐘 is deadly

SN 47.6 🐦 (the) quail: always stay in 4sp🐘, to avoid death
SN 47.7 🐒 (the) monkey: always stay in 4sp🐘, to avoid death
SN 47.20 💃🤷🤺 world beauty-queen, man with sword, balance bowl of oil. He'll cut off your head if you spill even one drop.

straying outside of 4sp is deadly, but stating in terms of jhanas instead of 4sp

AN 9.39 ... enters and remains in the first jhāna... second jhāna … third jhāna … fourth jhāna. At such a time the monk thinks: ‘Now I’m in a secure location and Māra can’t do anything to me.’ And Māra the Wicked also thinks: ‘Now the monk is in a secure location and we can’t do anything to them.’
MN 25 and MN 26 uses simile of deer hunter, similar to blinding mara from AN 9.39 but doesn't make distinction between four jhanas and formless.

zone 3: missing out on both pleasures of holy life and lay life

Exact matches

KN Dhp 155: simile, languish like old cranes in the pond without fish.
KN Dhp 156: simile, sighing over the past, like worn out arrows (shot from) a bow.
KN Iti 91: simile of fire stick with exrement on both ends, monks who miss out on both types of pleasures.
MN 66: lay man sees happy monk and thinks about ordaining, but can't let go of attachment to his poor quality wife, poor quality house, few material possessions, etc.
SN 22.80: Same passage as from KN Iti 91, different audience and anatta lakkhana sutta type of ending.

Close matches: Inspiring stories of conquering lust (See kāma 💘💃‍ for details)

Examples here of monks and arahants passing through the stage described above, missing both pleasures.
AN 5.75 AN 5.76 similes of warrior monks conquest over temptation from women.
SN 8.4 Ananda's advice to (future) arahant Vangisa obsessed with lust, just like the rest of us.

references

https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/43900/which-sutta-the-buddha-says-monks-missing-out-on-pleasures-of-lay-life-and-plea
https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/lb3qoa/which_sutta_the_buddha_says_monks_missing_out_on/

4👑☸ Cattāri Ariya-saccaṃ 四聖諦

No Man’s Land