jgroove's practice journal

"Well, if you are spacing out as opposed to being just plain tired, I would try to do more deliberate breath counting. I don't seem to need to do this much anymore, but I almost always start with it and certainly did a ton of it before. When you say "cycles of four or eight would be doable", do you mean 4x10 or 8x10? Because doing 8 cycles of 10, and not losing count, is pretty good (IMO) for not going into la-la land."

A cycle of 4X10 or 8x10 without losing count? Not a chance I could manage that, at this point. I might be able to do 4x4 or 4x6 on a really good day, and then start over after drifting off.
I think I'll add more breath-counting to the mix. Thanks for the suggestion, Tomo!

"A cycle of 4X10 or 8x10 without losing count? Not a chance I could manage that, at this point. I might be able to do 4x4 or 4x6 on a really good day, and then start over after drifting off.
I think I'll add more breath-counting to the mix. Thanks for the suggestion, Tomo! "

I don't see much point counting just to 4 or 6. 10 is a pretty good number to target, and counting is an excellent way to notice when you are gone (after the fact, of course). Remember to not beat yourself up if you don't make it to 10, just go back to 1. Good luck.

Sat on Friday night and early Saturday morning. More "night training" Saturday night/morning--apparently energy-related insomnia [?] that forces me to just get up and go sit. I did this at about 3 a.m. and then got up again at 6 or so and sat some more. Sat on Sunday for about an hour in the morning. Sat for two hours just now. Did as much noting aloud as I could but found that I would slip into silent noting as well. There was some spacing out, too, certainly.

The sitting on Saturday seemed to involve some new territory. The pressure at the third-eye area is clearly some kind of predominant object, so I've been just staying with that. At a certain point, it felt like I was "seeing" out of this energy center; there was an intensification of darkness and a softening of the pressure. I don't know if this was jhanic territory or just access concentration, but there was more absorption kind of stuff going on where the body sensations were less pronounced than the sense of spaciousness. Overall, the sitting was extremely easy, which is quite unusual for me. The difficulty returned this morning as both hours were gut-it-out sessions, for the most part.
In looking at predominant sensations, I'd say the stick in the road mostly seems to be a stick. I get glimpses of the lack of solidity underlying it, maybe, but objects do not appear to be breaking up in dramatic fashion.
I tried to simplify the labels and get rid of the content-related adjectives I've been using, while keeping to a certain level of detail with mind states.
A lot of "negative" mind states this morning: sadness, doubt, boredom, frustration, irritation (especially with a certain eagerness to get back online, write up a report, etc.).

15 minutes candle-flame
60 min. noting aloud
More insomnia last night. Almost stayed in bed this morning but resolved to sit. Surprisingly less sleepiness than one would expect. Also resolved to note aloud once per second to the best of my ability, rather than to allow myself to note silently. Kept up the pace fairly well. Not perfect.

tingling, tingling (hands, wrists, legs)--at times unpleasant, but also neutral and pleasant; pressure (body contact, rise and fall, third-eye); release (softening of pressure at third eye); seeing, seeing (blackness, pixels of light, flashing, visual imagery); hearing, hearing (all kinds of vehicle noises outside, also internal dialog and imagined conversations, sounds, etc.); pain, aching (unpleasant), warmth-softness/pleasant (leg on cushion, shirt on body); intending to straighten-straightening(spine)/pleasant.
Anticipation, wanting (to quit, to shift, for pain to end); planning thought, imagining, recollecting, doubt, frustration, boredom, satisfaction (at maintenance of discipline). Intending to stay (with predominant sensation)/staying; looking, investigating, curiosity, alarm (prompted by loud sound).

Wed. and Thurs.: 1-2 hrs noting each day
Today:
15 minutes, anapanasati
60 min. noting aloud
5-10 walking
60 minutes noting aloud
30 minutes anapana, silent noting

60 min. noting. A lot of sleepiness this morning. Frustration at the sleepiness, drifting, spacing out. Noting all of the above. Noted the usual range of sensations: pressure (bodily and at third-eye/center of head), warmth, coolness, tingling, pulsing, swaying, itching, aching, 'falling asleep' (limbs), intending to straighten, straightening, hearing, hearing, seeing, seeing; some silent noting of the rise and fall of the abdomen; remembering (in case of late noting as well as more involved recollections), imagining, thinking, wanting (to hear bell, to be able to get up, etc.), investigating/looking, etc.

60 min. noting
Little or no sleepiness. Noted pressure (contact points, third eye), swaying, some pulsing or flashing, seeing, seeing (brightness/pixels, darkness), hearing, hearing (dogs outside, hiss of radio, "sound" of arising internal dialogue), imagining thought, planning thought, remembering thought (late noting of already faded sensations, recalled events), solidity/pleasant (feeling of spinal column), spaciousness-this, this/neutral (sense of space), itching/unpleasant, intending to stay (w' itch), warmth/pleasant, coolness/neutral, wanting (to shift, swallow, experience an increase in subtle sensations), aching/unpleasant (limbs as they fell asleep, pain in ankle, pain of contact points with cushion), weight/touching (of shirt on shoulders, back).
Tried to see whether I could notice the arising and stopping of sensations that Nikolai mentioned in his stream entry thread. Also tried to notice whether, in staying with a sensation, there was an immediate return to the centerpoint and then back again. This did seem to be the case. Intending to relax, relaxing (at third eye). rising, rising, falling, falling.
OK, over and out...

60 min. noting aloud
noted third-eye pressure, pressure of contact points;. felt off balance: noted 'off balance, wanting to shift, intending to shift; shifting, shifting'
solidity (feeling of back, spine)/pleasant; sleepiness, wanting sleepiness to end (unpleasant), visual thought, imagining, recollecting, planning thought, reporting thought, fear, hearing/hearing (sinister voice after drifting into hypnogogic state), hearing, hearing (outside noises, hiss of iPod/timer radio, ring in ears); seeing, seeing (darkness, brightness 'pixels'); energy/pleasant (third eye/crown); seeing, seeing (brief emergence of clear visuals in mind's eye); coolness/neutral, warmth/pleasant; softness, pleasant; swaying, swaying; dreaming/drifting

Sleepiness became so intense that I decided to stand: intending to stand, standing, standing; solidity (feeling of knees/legs while standing); softness, warmth, pressure (feeling of feet on carpet while standing); touching/warmth/pleasant (shirt on skin); coolness/pleasant (air on skin); aching/unpleasant; itching (unpleasant); intending to stay with itch; itching, itching; rising, rising, falling, falling; tingling pleasant (as feeling returned to legs after standing)

Hi there thanks for the notes. I try and sit sometimes late at night after work and will try the standing trick to ward off sleepiness. BTW do you note aloud for the whole 60 min?
Just need some inspiration to taking past 30 min aloud.

Cheers

"Hi there thanks for the notes. I try and sit sometimes late at night after work and will try the standing trick to ward off sleepiness. BTW do you note aloud for the whole 60 min?
Just need some inspiration to taking past 30 min aloud.

Cheers"

Hi Keith.
In this particular session, I noted aloud for as much of the 60 minutes as I could manage. I sometimes will briefly note the rise and fall of the abdomen in silence and then go back to noting aloud, and of course I'll fall silent whenever I get embedded/distracted/spaced out. I have a pretty strong resistance to noting aloud and have to force myself to do it for the entire 60 minutes. It's easier to note in silence, but I do believe that doing so can easily translate into more spacing out and wandering, particularly if you happen to be dealing with sloth and torpor at the time. The standing thing, BTW, really was helpful this morning. You get a new set of sensations to note in the bargain!
Thanks!
Joel

attempt at 60 min. noting aloud--fell silent and drifted off many times

pretty much overwhelming sleepiness--slipped into a dreamlike state almost immediately and struggled to pull myself out of it over and over again throughout the sit. This brought up a lot of stuff. Among the labels used were: 'frustration,' 'wanting to quit,' 'boredom,' 'irritation,' 'sadness,' 'dissatisfaction,' 'unhappiness.' 'wanting to go sleep.' A very strong desire, overall, to get up and get the hell out of there.
Constant, kind of annoying third-eye pressure. Noted pressure (contact points, third eye), aching/unpleasant, itching/unpleasant, visual thought, hearing (dialog-like auditory thoughts, various noises), seeing (brightness, darkness, dreamlike imagery that seemed more vivid and visual than normal), touching, warmth/pleasant, softness/pleasant; tried standing and the whole process of noting the intention to stand and the subsequent action; just as sleepy while standing. Some amusement came up at the difficulty. Tried to note and notice aversion and/or accept or 'open to' the sleepiness. no dice--fell back into wandering, drifting right away. rising, rising, falling, falling; tingling/unpleasant (leg falling asleep, etc.)

absorption and near-absorption kind of stuff going on last night during 45-minute sit at weekly sitting group. Over and out...

jgroove,

How much sleep are you getting (if I may ask)?

I've had that dreamlike imagery when sleepy too. I'm pretty sure it was during the dukkha nanas a few months ago. There was a lot of weird, horror-movie-like stuff.

Hi mumuwu.
I think sometimes the presence or absence of sleep has nothing to do with the level of sloth and torpor. However, I will say that the night before last I woke up at 3 a.m. and pretty much never went back to sleep. The same thing happened to my wife, oddly enough. I slept about seven hours last night, but it's probably the case that lack of sleep is playing a role here with all of this sloth and torpor. Rather than let myself off the hook and just say "I'm too tired to sit," I'm trying to make myself do the 60 minutes...
EDIT: On the horror movie stuff: I drifted off and saw a monster that looked exactly like ET, only it had yellow eyes, long sharp teeth and claws like Wolverine from the X-Men. YIKES!

I had a cup of blood thrown in my face (lol).

Perhaps you should do a sleep practice for a while

Best of luck!

"I think sometimes the presence or absence of sleep has nothing to do with the level of sloth and torpor. "

That's my experience. Sometimes there's a connection with lack of sleep, but I've gone into sits full of energy and anticipation (not a good idea, I know) and become completely overpowered by sloth and torpor (btw, I love that phrase, just have to figure out a way to drop it into a normal conversation).

Hi Dadriance.
I guess if you said, "Gee, I might like some Starbucks. I'm noting a large degree of sloth and torpor right now," your friends might think you were a Buddhist Geek! Maybe we could go all MCTB with it and just describe it as S&T.

30-45 min. noting on Friday night
30-45 min. noting this morning
whispered noting as kids/wife were asleep during both sessions

Subtle sensations typically are best described as "pressure," but I've noticed more vibratory sensations again: fast pulsing and fluttering sensations, at times in the chest, but there's almost a sense that these sensations are happening behind or below the more solid third-eye pressure, kind of like they're lurking below the surface. Not much S&T this morning!
The kids have a baseball game this morning but I might go to the Atlanta Soto Zen Center after the game and sit for most of the day during the "zazenkai," or maybe I'll just find some woods somewhere.

Noted out loud for 30-45 minutes last night and this afternoon. The weekend turned out to be busier than I thought. More sloth and torpor, like getting shot with a tranquilizer dart almost. Difficult to deal with.

Great night's sleep last night. Went to the cushion feeling alert. Resolved to note aloud for entire 60 minutes with balanced, sincere energy.
warmth/pleasant (sweater on body, contact points at cushion, hands on legs/legs on hands), pressure (third-eye, center of head, contact points at cushion; hands on legs/legs on hands), coolness/neutral (air on skin, cold bottom of right foot on left leg), weight (of sweater on body), swaying, rapid nodding of head, swirling motion of head (sometimes noted as 'kriyas' or just 'nodding, nodding' or 'swaying, swaying'), energy/movement (sense of shift in 'pressure' from third eye at brow to higher up or to center of head), seeing, seeing (brightness, darkness, pixels), hearing (birds, dogs, cars outside, ringing in ears, white-noise sound of iPod timer), absorption (relatively brief moments in which body sensations faded to background and center-head pressure/spaciousness became predominant), reporting thought-self-judgment/disliking (unpleasant), imagining, remembering thought, daydreaming; investigating, looking (staying with aches, pains, pressures at third-eye/center of head or contact points on cushion); 'see how it intends to look,' 'see how it looks' (paying attention to visual field or other sensations).
See how it wants to straighten, straightening; solidity/pleasant (feeling of straightened spinal column), 'intending to smell,' smelling/pleasant (incense), wanting (to quit, to clear throat or sinuses, to shift aching, falling-asleep leg), boredom, wandering, daydreaming/visual thought; aching leg/unpleasant (strong aversion), intending to stay with aching, falling-asleep leg, staying, staying; itching/wanting to scratch, pressure-burning/unpleasant (contact points becoming painful), timer thoughts, reporting thoughts, wanting to quit, wanting bell to ring, agitation--bell rings--(hearing, hearing) relief, gratitude

Noted aloud for 60 minutes again on Wednesday morning. Sat for another 45 minutes on Wednesday night at our weekly sitting group. I feel like I need to do a better job of objectifying and disembedding from the mind states related to sloth and torpor and the resistance that comes with noting aloud: aversion, irritation, frustration, wanting to quit ... the whole array of stuff related to wanting the practice to go one way, but not having it go in that direction at all.
If you're still basically pissed off about what's going on and wishing it wasn't that way and would end or change, you're pretty clearly embedded--there's no sense of having any freedom in the midst of that "hell."

Sounds very similar to where I am. I've been realizing how much energy I spend trying to make my reality fit my ideas about reality, instead of accepting, and how much suffering this creates for me and everyone around me. I'm hoping that admitting the problem is the first step.

"Sounds very similar to where I am. I've been realizing how much energy I spend trying to make my reality fit my ideas about reality, instead of accepting, and how much suffering this creates for me and everyone around me. I'm hoping that admitting the problem is the first step."

it always helps me to remember -- look AT not FOR

"If you're still basically pissed off about what's going on and wishing it wasn't that way and would end or change, you're pretty clearly embedded--there's no sense of having any freedom in the midst of that 'hell.'"-Jgroove

It sounds like what I call "stacked aversion," Joel. You are bargaining here; it's as though you are saying "if I can stop feeling averse to my aversion, my aversion will go away." Maybe so, but whatever is happening is happening nonetheless. All you can do is note what is happening. If you are bargaining (it's inevitable that you will bargain at times), note "bargaining thoughts." If there is aversion, note aversion. If there is aversion to aversion, note aversion. If there is desire for deliverance, note desire for deliverance.

The noting practice you are doing right now is 100% relevant to the end of suffering. The cause of suffering is tanha. Tanha is the tendency of the mind to want anything other than what is happening right now. It happens almost constantly, turning away from upleasant sensations and turning toward pleasant sensations whether existing or fantasized. By noting, you expose this. By exposing it, you see how painful it is. The tendency of the mind to avoid pain, which is so spectacularly unsuccessful at the more superficial levels, is absolutely effective when applied to the root. The root is tanha. When you see how painful it is to "want" anything other than *this*, you will stop doing it. The job is twofold: you must make your mind and body transparent in realtime and you must build the physio-energetic infrastructure that allows you to keep your attention grounded continuously in your experience. Both of these are accomplished through noting. You are doing it right. Keep doing it.

"Stacked aversion"--yes, that sounds about right.
I will keep at the noting aloud.
Thank you, Kenneth.

"
The noting practice you are doing right now is 100% relevant to the end of suffering. The cause of suffering is tanha. Tanha is the tendency of the mind to want anything other than what is happening right now. It happens almost constantly, turning away from upleasant sensations and turning toward pleasant sensations whether existing or fantasized. By noting, you expose this. By exposing it, you see how painful it is. The tendency of the mind to avoid pain, which is so spectacularly unsuccessful at the more superficial levels, is absolutely effective when applied to the root. The root is tanha. When you see how painful it is to "want" anything other than *this*, you will stop doing it. The job is twofold: you must make your mind and body transparent in realtime and you must build the physio-energetic infrastructure that allows you to keep your attention grounded continuously in your experience. Both of these are accomplished through noting. You are doing it right. Keep doing it."

I think there are or have been entire vipassana teachings just based upon watching the tendancy to avoid pain. Sunlun Sayadaw focused on this with long sittings in which yogis were to sit still no matter what.
And, I remember (I'll have to get this book again) in Kornfield's "Living Buddhist Masters" one of the masters was a strict woman who just seemed to only teach an awareness of one's desire to change posture due to a desire to escape subtle pain and suffering.