Rob's Practice Notes

The warm welcomes I received encouraged me to commit to starting a practice journal sooner rather than later. After reading some practice notes from this site to get an idea of how to do this, I'll do my best to stick to plain description as much as possible. I may provide some extra background in my first few posts so people can see where I am coming from.

This morning: I woke up and started noting pretty much as soon as I was reasonably awake, which surprised me actually, because I only picked up noting again a few days ago after seeing how strongly Kenneth recommends it. I played with noting about 6 months ago after reading Dan Ingram's book, but I found following the strict Mahasi style ("reaching reaching, lifting lifting, chewing checking") was driving me nuts. This time I am working out a more limited vocabulary, mostly based on Shinzen Young's framework -"feel, image, talk" for focus-in noting and "body, sight, sound" for focus-out noting. Occasionally more description words come up and that's fine with me, I am trying not to get too hung up on the vocab. I mostly pick the thing that is most dominent in my awareness. This is from rough memory, but it goes something like this:

"body" (when I feel myself against the bed), "sound" (as I hear my wife begin to awaken), "breath" (as I feel myself breathing), "sound" ( as my wife gets out of bed), "body" (feeling myself against the bed again), "body" (as I roll over), "sound" (as a car passes outside).

The pace is moderate, not rapid fire, and often after I label if my awareness stays on that object I'll just focus there without the label for a few seconds before either repeating or noting the next shift in the object of awareness.

When I cooked breakfast the noting became less frequent as I focused on the various tasks at hand and as I listened to a Youtube Dharma talk by Shinzen Young (mostly about noting).

One thing I have noticed when I note consistently for a few minutes is that my awareness broadens so that I become aware of all senses pretty much equally. I find myself either picking one to label while I notice the whole picture all at once, or I need to start more rapidly trying to include them all almost as one word - "SoundBodySight...BodySightSound." Still not sure how the handle this yet, so going with the flow for now.

After breakfast my wife and I sat for 20 minutes. I focused on the breath at the nostrils shamatha style. Most of my meditation background is in 'open presence' or 'just sit" styles, always having struggled with more narrowly focused breath meditations. However, I have of late been unsatisfied with my progress so I figured that perhaps my resistance to more one-pointed style was holding me back. Today I was able to get focused on the breath pretty quickly and although some thoughts came up, I mostly let them come and go on there own. I did, however, get stuck 3 times at at typical sticking point for me. I have found that when I get locked in on the breath, within a minute or soI feel this shift in my consciousness where I get more open and get this 'dreamy' feeling. The dreamy feeling is quite pleasant, but I then tend to lose focus pretty quickly, get lost in thought, and then lose the dreamy feeling after I space out.. I then need to refocus and build up the concentration again. I am not sure how to handel this except by using more effort to stay with the breath when that dreamy feeling arises.

I could say more about practice issues while at work, but I'll leave that for another day. All comments much appreciated!

Sat this morning for 15 minutes, less than usual but I was running late for work. Again did samatha breathing with the focus at the nostrils. I locked in on the breath pretty quickly, My goal was to stay with the breath even if I fell into that dreamy feeling. This feeling arose after maybe 5 minutes and I worked to stay with the breath, pulling myself back as soon as I felt myself begin to go off. I have read in a book called "Aligned, Relaxed, and Resiliant" by a Rolfer named Will Johnson that every thought is manifested by some movement or tension in the body, so I recently became aware my eyes move when I start to space out. It's subtle movement, a slight downshift to the right and I am totally gone. So I have been keeping some awareness on my eyes to watch for this and keep me present. This worked reasonably well, though it did diminish the dreamy state somewhat. Overall, the feeling of the meditaton was quite plesant, and I didn't want to stop once it ended. I should add that I notice a distinct sense of relaxation comes over me when I get that first shift of consciousness into that dreamy feeling. Today I felt my shoulders relax and let go noticeably.

After the sit I kept up the noting today. I seem to do better in the mornings before work, but once I get to work I find it hard to maintain. I have a fairly technical job, so it's hard to focus on anything other than what I am doing (though I suppose at least I am present in the here&now as I focus on the task at hand). I did remember to note while going to the water cooler or off the the rest room. I found that if I note my footsteps for 10-15 seconds, it gets me back in the groove and I can start noting a wider array of sensory events.

"step, step, step, step step, step step, sound (hearing my footsteps more than feeling them), sound, sound, sound, sight, sight, touch, sound, feel, image, sound..."

Formal sitting for 25 minutes today. Really worked on sticking with the breath even after I felt the shift toward dreaminess. I noticed that although I was able to lock on the breathing fairly well after about 5-10 minutes, my sense of awaness rarely felt stable because I have a tendency to follow my breath in and out, which, even if I do it subtle ways, creates a sense of 'movement' in my focus. I tried staying right on the anapana spot under my nostrils, which helped when I could do it but it was a challenge to stay there. I also noticed that I tend to space out and day-dream at the end of the out breath, It's like I follow the breath out and once it disapears, I am left with no object of focus and I just fall into dream land. I need to work on sticking to the anapana spot and applying extra focus as the out breath comes to an end. Overall, meditation is still quite pleasant and I always seem to be sorry when the bell goes off.

Hi Rob,

I would often get into that dreamland state for years. i never did anything about it except let the mind embed in it. Made no progress cos of it. But then i took up noting the "spaceyness". "Wandering" and Spaced out" would become notes I made often. Soon enough, i got a good handle on it and made quick progress to 1st path.

It seems you like the anapana spot. I think I might know how you could keep from drifting off into dream land if you aren't noting.
One way, which I believe could help yogis stay with the breath, would be to not allow the mind to wander off and get sidetracked by overloading the mind with enough work to do that it has no space to wander and get distracted. When we observe an object of concentration like the breath, I speculate that we don't often lend a full 100% of our attention to that object. Perhaps 60% on the object and 40% caught up in pleasant sensations, a thought of an non-existent future or past, lost in some fantasy or story or distracted by sounds or bodily discomfort. The mind is giving fuel to the strong tendency to proliferate stories, mental reactions, judgments, fantasies, memories and just plain old mental masturbation.

So, what if you gave the mind no fuel to do that? What about giving that fuel to an 'extra' job for the mind to do? When you observe the incoming and outgoing breath, you sense its touch at the entrance at the nostrils and above the upper lip. Along with this awareness, you could also become aware of the very act of perceiving the breath. That is, you are aware of the object, the breath as it goes in and out naturally, but you are also aware that that the mind is perceiving the breath. Try it! It actually works wonders in maintaining the mind in one spot and it is then able to truly pay 100% attention to the object.

"When the meditator breathes in a long breath, he comprehends that he is breathing in a long breath; and when he is breathing out a long breath, he comprehends that he is breathing out a long breath." The Buddha, The anapanasati sutta

In the quote above, the Buddha advised to "comprehend" when one is breathing in and when one is breathing out. If the yogi is just aware of the touch of breath but does not pay closer attention to comprehend how it comes in and goes out, the mind is left with a lot of space to start wandering and getting distracted. And this is what I mean when I say you could pay attention to the very act of perceiving the process of breathing in and out. This gives the mind more to do and less space to get distracted and thus will hone your concentration skills to greater heights.

Here is a quote from Tarin Greco at the DhO which talks about this way of percieving:

"What I mean by 'the sense of seeing' is, literally, what it is to experience seeing directly; to perceive is to be engaged in a lively activity and is what is meant by paying attention. Yet, such attention is likely to tend toward proliferating stories and fabrications, from persistent reflection and mental commentary on one hand (when concentration is weak and/or scattered) to outright hallucination on the other (when concentration is powerful and/or focused). Those proliferations are to be avoided. How may these proliferations be avoided? By otherwise engaging the proliferating tendency. How may the proliferating tendency be otherwise engaged? By applying the mind further. To what further apply the mind? To the apprehension (of more) of what is happening. What more is happening (that is not yet engaged)? The apprehension of (the apprehension of) perception itself.

To apprehend perception directly is necessarily also to apprehend that apprehension is occurring, and to experience in such a manner is to experience cleanly and clearly, entirely engagedly and encompassedly, incuding the bodily sense of such experience. To see not just what the eye sees but what it is to see is therefore to see cleanly and clearly, entirely engagedly and encompassedly, including the bodily sense of such seeing. Seeing in this manner engages the energies which otherwise fuel the proliferating tendency, and so avoids such proliferation. Further, experiencing seeing as a bodily sense leads to deeper insight into what the body is, and what perceiving is."

Hope this helps
Nick

Nick,

Thanks for this very detailed and helpful advice. I will need to play with this to get a sense of how to go about paying attention to the act of perceiving, (paying attention to the attention?), in addition to the breath itself. The concept of occupying the mind with more activity to keep it focused strikes a cord with me, and it makes me wonder if my prior preference for more open styles of meditation in some way was preferred because I was paying attention to more (I was basically opening and paying attention to all sense fields). I will certainly work with this and report back. Also, I have never used noting for formal sitting practice, but rather used it for daily life practice, so your mentioning that noting really helped you makes we want to experiment with bringing noting into my formal sits.

Thanks again!

-Rob