Kyle's Practice Journal

Hi All,

In case others stumble upon this and want to know a little about me here's a quick and dirty overview:

I'm 30 years old and will be starting medical school in August. I've been meditating for over 12 years off-and-on with different teachers and techniques (e.g. Alan Wallace, Shinzen Young, Thich Nhat Hanh, vipassana, zen , dzogchen, samatha, to name a few). I think I had an A&P experience early on in my practice (vivid out of body experience, beautiful lights, angelic beings) and spent many of the past 12 years in the Dark Night. I recently came across Daniel's hardcore Buddhism book, its precision and straightforwardness was very refreshing and resonated with me. It put most of what I've experienced in context for me in a way that I've never had before. I just got done with a 10 day Goenka retreat, where I think I spent most of my time in 3 characteristics territory observing intense sensations in the right side of my neck, shoulder, and arm move around, pop, burn, twitch, twist, etc.

I recently spoke with Kenneth and he suggested I should work on concentration practices. I did a 40 minute sit tonight using an orange bowl as my kasina object. I've never done this type of practice before. I had some trouble with my eyes being dry and that irritated me a little. As I stared at the bowl, which was sitting on top of a desk chair, it would float, disappear, reappear, and a misty fog would cover my entire field of vision ...the chair and other objects in my periphery at times would also float and disappear too. When I would blink the object would shift and usually reappear and then it would disappear again within a few moments. This cycle of reappearing after a blink and disappearing again happened many times. That's all I got for now.

-kyle

Hi Kyle,

I've been doing kasina practice off and on for a while now and my early experiences mirror what you reported. One thing that seemed to kick my practice up a notch or two was whenever I perceived the kasina object to be disappearing, I tried to keep it in sharp focus and hold it. Usually whenever I do that the object appears to move to the forefront of awareness and stands out in vivid, intense detail. It almost seems as if the object has moved to center stage under a bright spotlight. Once I've sort of stabilized the object in this way I begin to feel myself entering what I believe is 1st jhana and place part of my awareness on the sensations that arise (which are always very pleasant in my experience). Once "there", I begin to back off and relax just a bit and let the meditation take its own path. It feels to me as if you have to grab onto 1st jhana, but the subsequent jhanas seem to just pull me along without any effort on my part.

Hope this helps - thanks for sharing your practice experience!

John

Thanks for this info John. The kasina mediation is still very new for me so this doesn't quite make sense yet but hopefully it will soon. I will keep your suggestions in mind.

I have a question for you. When you say "I begin to feel myself entering what I believe is 1st jhana" what does this mean? Do you enter it or not? I've seen somewhere Kenneth describe 1st jhana as taking acid....you'll know if you have entered it. Curious as to your thoughts and your choice of words.

-kyle

So I've done kasina mediation as my primary sitting for the past few days. For my first kasina sitting (described above) I took my glasses off. Since then I have left my glasses on as I stare at my object and this is more comfortable for me. I've utilized the 3 transmission model for my sit. I start with my best attempt at non-dual awareness...Big Mind, no boundary, complete surrender, merging, opening to the vast expanse. I stay with this for as long as I am able to hold it (usually 5 minutes or so), but once I "lose" it and there is a definite sense of a watcher I downshift to my best attempt at 2nd gear...everything as object with a distinct sense of "I". I try to penetrate the sense of "I" by finding where and what it is, but this awareness is hard for me to maintain very long (usually only a couple of minutes) because I start getting wrapped up in some of the objects. At this point I know it's time to downshift to 3rd gear and I open my eyes and begin staring at the kasina object. I've been able to keep my attention close to the object for 5 to 15 minutes at a time. It usually dances around, along with some of the other objects in periphery. After about 45 minutes to an hour I disengage the object and end my session.

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In another vein (somewhat), the past two nights I've had a helluva time sleeping and I'm not one to have trouble sleeping. Two nights ago I awoke in the middle of the night and could not fall back to sleep and the whole time my body was very tingly, jittery, numby, anxious, nervous feeling (similar to the feeling you get when your leg is starting to fall asleep)....my skin was crawling and I wanted to tear it off. It was extremely frustrating and nerve-wracking. Last night the same thing happened but this time as I tried to fall asleep. I tossed and turned hoping it would go away but to no avail. I decided to get up and sit for awhile to see if it would help. I wanted to work directly with my bodily sensations to try and see what was going on. I stayed with them as closely as I could and they persisted for about 5 to 10 minutes and then went away as I was able to access a level of calmness where these sensations didn't appear. At this point my attention was directed mostly to the familiar movements that tend to occur in my shoulder, back, neck region. This stuff did it's little dance and I watched. After an hour I was ready to get up and go back to bed. Still couldn't sleep though and within 15 minutes the sensations described above came back. I watched them closely and they seemed to be vibrating at a very high (and extremely annoying) rate. I stayed with them the best I could and eventually they went away and I was able to get some sleep. That's it for now.

-kyle

"I have a question for you. When you say "I begin to feel myself entering what I believe is 1st jhana" what does this mean? Do you enter it or not? I've seen somewhere Kenneth describe 1st jhana as taking acid....you'll know if you have entered it. Curious as to your thoughts and your choice of words.
"

Hi Kyle,

I probably shouldn't have qualified the statement - I definitely know when I've reached the jhanas. I'm still pre-path and I am not able yet to clearly distinguish between 1st and 2nd jhana, etc. with any confidence. But There's no question when I'm "there" - it is definitely an altered state of confidence and yeah - it's a lot like being on a hallucinogen sometimes. Not that I'd know that from experience .

What I mean by keeping the object in sharp focus is that rather than just "vegging out" and allowing the kasina to freely move about and do its thing, I bear down on it, very lightly - don't struggle or try to overpower it - but just see if you can make it stay in focus. This works pretty well for me, YMMV.

Practice well,

John

My three gear practice has continued with my primary 1st gear practice working on samatha using breath or kasina object. Practice has continued similar to as described above with this interesting thing happening last night.

Was noting breath as I laid in bed when my head area suddenly began expanding and then my awareness was sucked into a black hole/tube into a vivid lucid dream like state. I've had some experience working with lucid dreaming so I treated the state similar to that, tried to see what was going on, see if I could alter the objects in my experience (I could), and explored around. I was still aware of my body though because I could "exit" this state and feel my girlfriend move next to me and then return back to the state. I could also feel my body which was filled with very pleasant and enjoyable sensations.

Very interesting experience. Any ideas what this might have been?

Kyle, I had a very similar beginning to a vivid lucid dream, occuring during a period when I was working on samatha a lot, including prior to "sleep." Black hole, entry into "tube" along which there were various "doors" through which I went, and had some pleasant encounters. I was simultaneously very aware of and resting/flowing on the breath. The following day I had (I think) an A/P experience that lasted about a day and a half.