Commuter Van Practice

Maybe i should add that life is really good now and I'm not particulalry frustrated or impatient.
All these details about practice and places on the map are just something to talk about and be interested in and I am confident that all will be revealed at the proper pace.

"It seems like this and Ingram's website are more focused on the experience of yogis at stream entry and beyond and desussing the details of that experience and there isn't much interest in the day-to-day nitty gritty of pre-stream entry practice. this is not meant to blame, this is the way it is I think, so it is up to me to figure out how to get what I need, and I will."-telecaster

Mike, I just want to echo what Chris, David, and Tim said, each in their own way: we're here for you, and we have been through or are going through the frustration you describe. I have pages and pages of old journals detailing my dissatisfaction with the pace of my practice. It won't always be this way.

I think of a gardener, sitting in his garden, watching his plants grow. Sometimes he discovers a new blossom and is filled with joy. He calls everyone he knows to come over and see the lovely bloom, singing praises to nature and raising his arms to the sky. Finally, his efforts have been rewarded, and it will be smooth sailing from now on. Another day, a deer jumps the garden fence and eats half his plants. He calls everyone he knows to come over and see the mess, shaking his fists and cursing four-legged animals. All of his painstaking work has come to naught, and the future looks bleak. Next day...

All of this is normal at this stage. Later on, practice smooths out and becomes ever more stable. You are doing it right. As David says, if you have touched equanimity once, you can do it again in each sitting, or with a few hours or an afternoon to build some momentum. Little by little, the plant grows. There is no regression, there are only the normal ups and downs of any growing thing. Keep on as you are doing, with your focus on concentration rather than investigation. Every day brings incremental progress.

Kenneth

"I'm a little confused about the dark night and eventual equanimity and stream entry and am finding it hard to get any kind of useful advice on same. It seems like this and Ingram's website are more focused on the experience of yogis at stream entry and beyond and desussing the details of that experience and there isn't much interest in the day-to-day nitty gritty of pre-stream entry practice."

[This post was originally written on my phone and posted, but it did not show up. So I am retyping a longer version, but please excuse the duplication if the other eventually shows up.]

Mike,

I am totally with you on this as I am, for the most part, in pretty much the same place on the path as you. No question, the friends here and on DhO are extremely knowledgeable and helpful (I am very grateful for all the expert help I get whenever I post a specific problem), but the usual discussions are at a level above where some of us practice, so it is hard to just leech on discussions and get help. You need to ask for help to get it, which is not (of course) a bad place to be, but I sometimes find it hard to frame the questions and, more often, just need "try a little of this" kind of help.

I would be willing to share "practice notes" with you, if you like, or maybe start a p-SE meditation journal? The latter, I think, might be helpful so that each can benefit from a "yeah, I see that too" kind of experience, and experts can chime in (if they wish) when they think it might be appropriate.

Lastly, I too want to reiterate how much I appreciate the advice and good intentions of the people here. Thank you very much.

Hi Mike and Tomo,

I'd also like to add that I work with students one-on-one by email and/or telephone. At this point, I'm accepting students at all levels. Later, as the schedule fills up, I may prioritize advanced students, simply because there are more teachers available who can help beginners and intermediates, and few who can help advanced students.

Starting in January, I'll have more time to spend on one-on-one sessions, as I'm just now finishing up grad school. I just added a page about private instruction here:

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/Personalized+Instruction

Kenneth

"I'd say do the thermometer - or at least notice that you are progressing through the levels and falling back down again with what you are practicing now."

I have been wanting to ask this for a while now, and this seems like a good time. David (and Kenneth), is this statement literally true? If we are pre-SE practitioners, do we have the skills to see each stratum, over and over, in each sitting up to the point on the path we currently are practicing at? Does it start at "Mind and Body" always? Is there an A&P event, always? Should I be looking for this? Can I realistically expect this if I am only sitting for, say, 30 minutes?

Re: Tomotvos latest question:
that's one of the things I didn't get. I addressed it on a thread and didn't get a reply to my followup question, which, along with other things, made me feel there wasn't a lot of interest in pre-SE practice. I wish I hadn't said anything though. Anything that is even a little negative can get a bigger reaction on the internet. I should know this by now. My mistake.
It is true that every one here is really helpful but it was also seeming to be true that pre-SE wasn't a big draw. I should've stuck to the first truth.

Hey Tom and Mike,

Yes, I think that a pre-stream entry yogi can notice the characteristics of the different insight stages up to the highest level they can reach. For me, practice always started at stage one - mind & body, and worked it's way up. Crossing the A&P won't always be big and dramatic. The first time crossing it is usually the whopper. After that, it was more like an energy build up and release, followed by a fizzle-like dissolution when entering the dark night.

Whether or not you will be able to glide through all of the stages you've experienced within a 30-min sit is hard to say. The best thing to do is try, and then let us know what you notice. I've always been a big fan of setting intentions prior to practicing - it seems to help results come along. You may want to trying saying to yourself, "during this sit, I resolve to notice the distinct characteristics of whatever stage I experience," and then start to practice. It's worth a shot.

Once we get a good idea of where your at on any particular day, those of us who have successfully completed 1st path and beyond will do what we can to help get you there!

~Jackson

In medicine we are quite interested in the sensitivity and specificity of symptoms and tests. Sensitivity being the probability that a symptom correctly identifies the disease process (e.g. the percentage of people who are gain weight who actually have hypothyroidism...low sensitivity). Specificity measures the proportion of negatives which are correctly identified as not having the condition). These two measures are closely related to the concepts of type I and type II errors. An optimal prediction achieve 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. After reading Daniels book, and meditating for 10 years, i thought..gee i am totally missing the mark...where am i? i feel no vibrations...what is a vibration..128C tuning fork fast? 256? 512? Is the sensitivity improved from path 1 to path 2? Does the specificity improve over time? Do i have to have this symptom for 13 months to believe it is real? Can we codify these symptoms among all practitioners at various stages of thier development to see which has the greatest sensitivity and specificity so we are not waiting 13 months to drop a poor meditating habit? So many things could be done to improve the efficiency and decrease the frustration of the process!

For what it's worth, here's one more person's perspective.

The fundamental miracle and the root mystery is no more and no less than existence itself. Just existence.

That miracle is the context for all of these strivings and progress.

The heroic discoveries and attainments of today may eventually become the high school or elementary school curricula of tomorrow.

But the miracle, the mystery, of existence still remains.

Practice, including bare-bones no-nonsense vipassana practice, can be approached as a form of communion with that miracle.

The miracle is already here. All we're doing is steeping in it.

"For what it's worth, here's one more person's perspective.

The fundamental miracle and the root mystery is no more and no less than existence itself. Just existence.

That miracle is the context for all of these strivings and progress.

The heroic discoveries and attainments of today may eventually become the high school or elementary school curricula of tomorrow.

But the miracle, the mystery, of existence still remains.

Practice, including bare-bones no-nonsense vipassana practice, can be approached as a form of communion with that miracle.

The miracle is already here. All we're doing is steeping in it. -Nigel Thompson"

Genius.

"I have been wanting to ask this for a while now, and this seems like a good time. David (and Kenneth), is this statement literally true? If we are pre-SE practitioners, do we have the skills to see each stratum, over and over, in each sitting up to the point on the path we currently are practicing at? Does it start at "Mind and Body" always? Is there an A&P event, always? Should I be looking for this? Can I realistically expect this if I am only sitting for, say, 30 minutes?"

Those are good questions. One reason Mahamudra trains concentration first is that it feels that without training concentration, one's ability to examine the contents of mind is faulty - like trying to look at a microscope slide through a microscope you can't focus.

That being said, I defer to Kenneth in regards to this, but my thought is that even experienced meditators can miss various things the maps describe, and that inexperienced meditators can take shortcuts to various territories. Part of becoming an experienced meditator is examining your experience to see if it conforms to certain patterns. That is, in this case, trying to see each stratum of mind is part of learning.

The territories can be travelled through at different rates as well, so sometimes it's easy to miss them. So it may not seem to start at Mind and Body, and the A&P might be passed over if one went directly to 4th jhana and then switched to an event perspective, etc. Theoretically, with skill one could see all 20 strata in 30 minutes or less - but it might take some people longer.

So the maps are not very sensitive or specific... but they are the best thing we have until we know how to look at this with Quantitative EEG or some other imaging, etc.

Good answer, David!

"Those are good questions. One reason Mahamudra trains concentration first is that it feels that without training concentration, one's ability to examine the contents of mind is faulty - like trying to look at a microscope slide through a microscope you can't focus.

That being said, I defer to Kenneth in regards to this, but my thought is that even experienced meditators can miss various things the maps describe, and that inexperienced meditators can take shortcuts to various territories. Part of becoming an experienced meditator is examining your experience to see if it conforms to certain patterns. That is, in this case, trying to see each stratum of mind is part of learning.

The territories can be travelled through at different rates as well, so sometimes it's easy to miss them. So it may not seem to start at Mind and Body, and the A&P might be passed over if one went directly to 4th jhana and then switched to an event perspective, etc. Theoretically, with skill one could see all 20 strata in 30 minutes or less - but it might take some people longer.

So the maps are not very sensitive or specific... but they are the best thing we have until we know how to look at this with Quantitative EEG or some other imaging, etc."

Thanks David. That pretty much lines up with what I expected, even while hoping for something more definitive. But I will be certainly making a point of watching for the strata for the next few sits, to see where I end up.

". Theoretically, with skill one could see all 20 strata in 30 minutes or less - but it might take some people longer.

"

Actually, to be completely clear, that's not theoretical. I can go up and down all 20 strata in about 15 minutes, and Kenneth tells me he can do it in about 10. Still, it took me about a week to get to that point, and that's not hitting the jhanas "hard", let alone the skills of advertment and all that. I'm thinking it would take most people much longer. When I first started trying to see them all it took me about a 3 hour session to get all the way up and down, and I was pretty tired afterward. So I'm thinking that most pre-stream entry people could see only a few jhanas. 2nd path might be able to see 8. 3rd path people could possibly see all 20.

In general, the faster one does it, the "softer" one hits the jhanas - you sacrifice some clarity.

The other thing is that certain people are going to be more sensitive and specific than others - and part of this is training yourself to be a good instrument.

While shortcuts are possible, proceeding through the strata in order is the most direct and natural way to do it, and most people aren't going to skip through the strata without intent to do so or some kind of anchor that brings them there. So the map tends to work, so long as one pays attention to every aspect of the experience.

A pre-ST person should be able to see the strata that they have already accessed, and as they practice noticing it, it should become more and more clear to them. - so you just have to examine your experience to see if some of the issues in reading the map is the case - "Was there a phase that happened pretty rapidly in between this one and that? etc" Did I have a certain state in mind that I just went to?

"Actually, to be completely clear, that's not theoretical. I can go up and down all 20 strata in about 15 minutes, and Kenneth tells me he can do it in about 10. Still, it took me about a week to get to that point, and that's not hitting the jhanas "hard", let alone the skills of advertment and all that. I'm thinking it would take most people much longer. When I first started trying to see them all it took me about a 3 hour session to get all the way up and down, and I was pretty tired afterward. So I'm thinking that most pre-stream entry people could see only a few jhanas. 2nd path might be able to see 8. 3rd path people could possibly see all 20.

In general, the faster one does it, the "softer" one hits the jhanas - you sacrifice some clarity.

The other thing is that certain people are going to be more sensitive and specific than others - and part of this is training yourself to be a good instrument.

While shortcuts are possible, proceeding through the strata in order is the most direct and natural way to do it, and most people aren't going to skip through the strata without intent to do so or some kind of anchor that brings them there. So the map tends to work, so long as one pays attention to every aspect of the experience.

A pre-ST person should be able to see the strata that they have already accessed, and as they practice noticing it, it should become more and more clear to them. - so you just have to examine your experience to see if some of the issues in reading the map is the case - "Was there a phase that happened pretty rapidly in between this one and that? etc" Did I have a certain state in mind that I just went to? -haquan
"

Yes, yes, and yes. Thanks, David, this is wonderfully clear and accurate.

I'm not yet sure whether 3rd Path people can see all 20 strata. The jury is still out on that one. Insufficient data.

Kenneth

"A pre-ST person should be able to see the strata that they have already accessed, and as they practice noticing it, it should become more and more clear to them. - so you just have to examine your experience to see if some of the issues in reading the map is the case - "Was there a phase that happened pretty rapidly in between this one and that? etc" Did I have a certain state in mind that I just went to?
"

So let me beat this to death by twisting the question around a bit as: would actively looking for the various strata up to your current "ceiling" be a way to formally practice? Or is this just another variation of obsessing about "the path" and your place thereon, and therefore impede your progress to higher levels? I like the "training yourself to be a good instrument" in this context; it makes sense. But there is something to be said for keeping your eye on the goal and not getting distracted in fine-tuning stuff you can revisit later.

"Would actively looking for the various strata up to your current "ceiling" be a way to formally practice?"-tomotvos

No matter how elementary or advanced your practice is, you are accessing strata of mind. So, actively looking for strata of mind really just means actively looking at what is happening each time you sit. Good developmental practice, IMO, depends on paying attention at both the micro and macro levels. By micro, I mean the phenomena arising in this instant. By macro, I mean these same phenomena as seen in relation to what comes before and after (e.g., the 2nd nana comes between the 1st and 3rd), and your knowledge of the maps. One traditional way of saying this is that you keep your eye on the mountaintop even as you carefully place one foot in front of the other on the way there. Another way to talk about it is to look at the way young desert tortoises learn the territory around their burrows. At first, they just circle the burrow, staying within a few inches of it. This way, they learn to recognize it from all angles. Next, they circle the burrow from a slightly greater distance. This continues over days, weeks and months, as the tortoise becomes familiar with every rock, bush, hill, and depression from every angle. The tortoise is forming a very accurate map of the territory, which it files in its memory. Adult tortoises can venture hundreds of yards from their burrows without getting lost, because they always recognize the territory they are in. In order to amass this complex and accurate map of their home and surroundings, all they had to do was pay attention when they went out walking. You can learn the topography of your own mind in the same way. The key is to pay attention the whole time..

About the jhanic arc: how nanas (strata of mind) and jhanas (strata of mind) interleave?
You don't really go to the 4th jhana this way:
1,2,3,4 (and back: 4,3,2,1)
and visit also the unstable nanas, maybe without perceiving it?
Because there is no rest in the nanas, and you just move away and if you are focused on jhanas (shamata) you miss the transition?
Or there is also a jhana-to-jhana transition?
A bit inquisive, but it is just to write down my remaining doubts...

It seems also that being able to distinguish all the strata is more profitable than struggling for the Big Event at the end of the 1st Path... cause it's developmental. The more you map the territory, the more you develop.

And the insights? Once I believed they were stages:

"- But I have no insights! - You are in equanimity. Thank you for the question." - K. Folk

This is one of Kenneth's one-liners, every time you finally understand something that a few hundred pages of some Sayadaw were not able to clarify...

Insights are simply our way of understanding the unfolding of consciousness?
You could keep as an insight something that another meditator see simply as white noise?

Thank you for all the intellectual wisdom provided here. No other way to put it.

Umberto

I've been using my van time for months now to note my sensations, as detailed as possible.
Today, just before getting into the van, my wife and I had a very volatile discussion and I had to run off and get my seat while leaving her in tears. Great. The conversation and our feelings were about bigs things having to do with my kids and her role as a stepmother and it was awful to just leave in the middle of it.
Anyway, my practice this morning then, was about paying attention to HUGE swaths of pain and fear and tension and anxiety going through my body - not subtle vibrations.
I got really curious about these feelings. I know that these are the sensations the avoidance of which can cause endless problems.
Here is the question I got to: do these negative emotonal feelings actually "hurt?" And, I think the answer is no. Broken down and really felt, noted, and experienced they seem to be just "sensations." My reaction to the feelings, the sense that they are unacceptable, that I can't handle them, that I need to push them away -- that is what seems to cause the pain.
I know a lot of this is common knowledge or even cliche, but it is interesting to really sit inside the "pain" and see what is happening.
Eventually I could see how certain mental images would preceed a bad feeling and then certain mental images would come just after.I could see that almost all of these feelings were located in my abdomen, my chest, and my left shoulder and arm.
I could see that a complete submergence into and acceptance of the feeling made it go away pretty quickly, often with a hit of insight into the problem itself.
By the time the 90 ride was over I was mostly experiencing sensations at the level of vibrations again, but, of course, I still need to deal with my family issues and there will be more difficult feelings to come.