Andy's practice thread

Hello everyone

On Kenneth's advice, I'm going to jump right in here and start a practice thread. For those of you who also frequent the Dharma Overground, you may have seen my two threads over there, relating to specific practise issues:
www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...ards/message/1109157
www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...ards/message/1400382

My (checkered) practice history:
August 2004 '“ September 2005: Several months of Christian mantra based meditation. Two 30min sits a day.
March 2007- October 2008: Zen meditation, mainly following the breath. Two 30 min sits a day.
October 2008 '“ February 2009: I discovered Daniel Ingram's book, and start Vipassana. Ramp up the time I spend sitting to 1hr 30 or 2hrs a day.
August 2010: Restarted practice after a long break away from it. Attempting to do two 1hr sits a day: I always do at least an hour.

[cont...]

Retreats:
2007: Ten day non-silent retreat with Ken Jones and Dave Scott (Liverpool Zendo)
2008/9: 7 day New Year's silent retreat with Ajahn Sundhara at Amaravati Buddhist monastery
2010: 10 day silent retreat at Gaia House with Leigh Brasington
2011: (upcoming) 10 day silent Mahasi retreat at Gaia House with Bhante Bodhidhamma

Having started personal instruction with Kenneth last week, I've been doing noting aloud. I am currently trying noting a mindstate followed by a physical sensation. Most of the time it seems to come down to 'Interest '“ touching. Frustration '“ tightness. Irritation '“ tightness. Interest '“ holding. Frustration '“ tightness.'

I have always had poor posture, and carry a great deal of tension in my shoulders. But in recent weeks, despite doing lots of things like pilates, qigong, meditation, daily stretches and everday awareness, it seems to have worsened. I even went to the doctor.

At the moment I'm reading Reggie Ray's Touching Enlightenment before sits, and in that he describes how he realised his long term back pain was a result of the build up of suppressed negative memories, specifically the memory of his mother not attending to him when he cried as a baby.

[cont...]

When he was able to deal with the memory, the pain and tension passed. So now I'm hoping for something similar.

I get a lot of weird shaking. It can be both neutral and unpleasant, but I generally welcome it because I associate it with deepening in meditation. My upper body starts to shudder, and my head swings from side to side. Yesterday it even swung around in a loop, like a speeded up version of the rolling head stretch you sometimes get in yoga classes.

I also get bursts of kundalini energy: chills running up my spine and then making my body feel tingly. Generally these are both physically and mental pleasant '“ producing calm, rather than joy '“ but sometimes I associate them with fear. And I've noticed that a lot of my tension is associated with fear or anxiety: a kind of holding back from whatever spiritual abyss I need to plunge into. I've got that feeling on at least two of my previous retreats.

So I note 'tension '“ fear. Holding '“ fear. Holding '“ trepidation.' And then I get the kundalini more and more.
Towards the end of my sits '“ I do noting for usually half an hour, after 10 mins walking and 20 of anapanasati shamatha '“ I start to really hate noting. So I note: 'heaviness '“ boredom. Tension '“ restlessness. Prickling '“ restlessness. Tension '“ irritation. Tension '“ aversion.' It's generally a pretty horrible phase and I'm relieved when the bell sounds.

The other thing to note is that I also experience disgust, sometimes in association with physical nausea in my stomach (and I'm not sick) and sometimes just in feeling and then visualising the build up of prickly sensations.

I get the impression that some metta would probably help me a lot. In fact, as soon as I've posted this, I will go and do some.

Thanks for reading!

Hi Andy!

I also had my first instruction from Kenneth last week.
You seem to have a little bit more meditation in your back than me (esp. the retreats).
Will be interesting to see what happens!

Good luck /Pejn

Thanks for the support, Pejn.

This weekend I experienced a sense of release in my lower spine, as if a space had opened up and it was filled with a very cold, pleasurable energy. It then rose up the spine, until my whole body was filled with tingles and my hairs were standing on end.

After reading a couple of article's on Nick's Hamilton Project blog, I've found it easier to note, now using a triple noting technique: "tightness-unpleasant-frustration" or "coolness-pleasant-fear". Doing the mindstate after everything else is much easier and more effective.

The shakes have died down a bit now, mainly because I've realised that they are the result tightening up. As soon as they start, I just relax a bit and they calm down.

Again, after reading an article on the Hamilton Project, I tried candle flame kasina meditation. Initially it was very promising, reaching access concentration quite quickly and soon getting very pleasurable sensations. I closed my eyes too early though, and it died down. After a while it became hard to use up all my mental bandwidth on the candle flame. I know Nick suggests changing what you're focusing on, from colour to shape to movement to the idea of a flame, so I'll try that next time.

Total meditation time this week: 10 hours.

"Again, after reading an article on the Hamilton Project, I tried candle flame kasina meditation. Initially it was very promising, reaching access concentration quite quickly and soon getting very pleasurable sensations. I closed my eyes too early though, and it died down. After a while it became hard to use up all my mental bandwidth on the candle flame. I know Nick suggests changing what you're focusing on, from colour to shape to movement to the idea of a flame, so I'll try that next time.

Total meditation time this week: 10 hours.

"

Hi Andy,


Just a quick correction, the Hamilton Project blog is also Owen and Clayton's blog too. They have taken a break from posting for a bit so it seems like it's just me posting.

About changing the focus for the kasina flame. It doesn't matter which you use. You could pick one and stick with it or mix it up. Whatever works for you is what you should do. At least now if you find the mind wandering you could try mixing up the focus and finding what works to keep focus on the kasina.

I only suggested that really to keep the mind from getting bored and wandering off with the faeries. Do whatever keeps your mind squarely on the kasina object. And it takes a bit of practice. Sooner or later it will click and your concentration levels will increase substantially. Keep at it!


Nick

Just did another hour.

In noting practice, my experience is split between tension-unpleasant-aversion around my neck and shoulders, and the cold-pleasant-rapture in the spine, which is also quite terrifying. As the kundalini chills ran up and down me, I had a weird vision of a dark figure at the end of a corridor turning around and facing me with an oversized white and black mask on his face. I opened my eyes with a jolt, as my entire body tingled and fizzed with coolness.

Okay, so I think I'm now able to do a bit of tentative mapping.

I'm now able to get to the 3rd ñana quite quickly, noticing pain, tension and stiffness in my body. Then after maybe 10 minutes, I experience coolness at the bottom of the spine, which rises and fills the upper body in a pleasant and uplifting way: the A&P. After that, it gets painful again (Dissolution). Next the cold rushes come back again, but in a way that feels scary (6th dukkha ñana). After a while I feel nauseous, my face tightens up and I experience strong aversion, which I suppose is the 8th ñana, of Disgust. Towards the end of my sits I experience a strong desire to be rid of the whole thing, which I suppose could be the 9th ñana, Desire for Deliverance. And tonight, I started to feel like everything that had happened before was coming back again, so maybe Re-observation.

The odd thing is, that while meditation is sometimes unpleasant, I rarely feel depressed, bummed out or fed up. In fact, I feel quite empowered to be getting on with the damn thing. So I'm not quite sure how much depth I'm experiencing with the dukkha ñanas, if that's indeed what all this is. But presumably I should count myself lucky. Although, the number of times I've "rolled up the mat" and stopped practising in the last few years suggests that I don't always react in such an equanimous way!

One other thing: this evening I didn't note particularly heavily, but rather just surfed the whole ñana wave, feeling everything and noting in a non-verbal way. I felt very conscious and in control of what I was doing, which is why I was able to notice the movement from one ñana to the next. I also used a technique which Kenneth taught me this week, using shamatha style practices to grease the wheels of vipassana practice: stabilising the visual field so as to plunge deeper into that strata of mind, and then pull back and keep noting.

[cont...] It seemed to work especially well after doing candle flame kasina practice, which I now love doing.

This weekend I have a mini-retreat lined up with Christina Feldman in London. My other half is away, so the flat will be empty when I come back in the evenings. I'm hoping to get several hours of decent practice in.

So I spent all today meditating with the London Insight group, in the first part of a two day session led by Christina Feldman.

I felt pretty dull all day. A few good moments of just resting in awareness, especially during walking meditation, but not much in the way of recognisable depth. By the end of the day I felt relaxed and peaceful, but not especially bright or clear.

Then I decided to continue the retreat when I got home this evening, listening to dharma talks, reviewing what I did with Kenneth earlier in the week, and just now sat for 45 minutes.

I started off with kasina concentration practice, using the candle flame. Kenneth had explained to me that entering the jhanas is very much dependent on where we allow the eyes to come to rest, and indeed whether we're able to stop them moving in the first place. In our session on Tuesday, Kenneth had me peer down my nose and rest my eyes in that place, with the eyelids shut. So this evening, as I was watching the candle flame, I decided to try and tilt my head back a bit, so that I was looking at the flame down my nose. A shift happened pretty quickly, with the flame taking on a more circular and defined quality. I closed my eyes and - for the first time - saw a mental kasina, bright and yellow, with a black border, resting directly in front of my right eye. (I have a stigmatism in my left eye - it is "lazy" - which may explain why it was hovering towards the right)

I tried to focus on this yellow circle. As I did waves of pleasant tingling sensations swept over my body, and I became very happy and joyous. Occasionally my eyes would shift and it would disappear for a moment. The only thing I can compare this to is blinking in a bright light - a silly comparison considering my eyes were shut the whole time. When I 'blinked' the kasina would disappear. I would then steady my gaze and find it again.

[...cont...]

Then the colour of the kasina changed from yellow to blue (think the colour of hyperlinks!) It was much easier to watch now. Later it changed from being a colour (blue or yellow) on a pitch black backdrop to being a dark black kasina against a greyish backdrop. The black kasina seemed to have rays of light coming out it sides, like a tiny solar eclipse.

Eventually I switched to vipassana, allowed my eyes to roam and quickly zipped through the A&P right the way up to Fear, where I got stuck for a while, and that's when I ended the meditation.

Noting feels a bit unwieldy at the moment. I feel I can just rest and be interested enough in the sights and sensations.

Cool report, Andy! Thanks! And best of luck with the rest of the retreat.

Thanks for the support Joel

Just did my hour this morning. A bit dull, and probably with too much expectation, trying to replicate what happened on Saturday night.

20 minutes of candle flame shamatha, but with no mental kasina this time, and lots of background thoughts.

40 minutes of noting out loud, in triplets of tactile sensation/feeling tone (vedana)/mind-state. I managed to note fairly consistently, and progressed through the first three nanas, a bit slower than before, reaching the A&P fairly late, after about 20 minutes or so. In fact, because it was all a bit slower, it was probably the first time I'd really noticed the pleasant effects of Mind and Body, in contrast to the A&P.

The downside of all this mapping is that I start to get too rigid an idea of where I should be and start anticipating or craving the different stage of insight.

More later...

Just did another hour.

Began again with candle flame shamatha. Better concentration that his morning, but still no mental kasina. (See how I'm still craving it?)

40 minutes of noting aloud. Lots of bodily tension, and pain, especially around the right shoulder blade and to the right of the spine. I stayed with that for a long time, only moving off it to occasionally note the very neutral sensations of the sitting position, the hands touching each other, the arms resting on the thighs, and the legs on the floor.

Eventually it did start to break up a bit, with a few cool rushes up the spine, including one biggish one which could've been the A&P. Then the tension came right back, and I stayed with it until I could feel it turning into fuzziness, buzziness and fizzing, as if it was dissolving, although unfortunately it never did. I then decided to drop the noting because the vocabulary I was using was quite antagonistic towards the tension. So I stayed with it for a while, just watching the fizzing.

The cold rushes up the spine came back, now more like what I associate with the 6th nyana (fear). I tend to imagine the fear rushes as blue and jagged, whereas the A&P ones are more purplish and smooth. Anyway, the Fear never really established itself as it did before, and perhaps I never actually reached it this time. I felt like I kept coming back to that awkward tension and imbalance of the 3Cs.

I then tried to start noting aloud again but in a less antagonistic way. Although I was frustrated and angry with the tension, I was also genuinely curious about it. It's something to watch after all. But this gentler approach actually made me feel quite weak in the face of it, and I started to feel dejected, sad and even lonely with the pain. I suppose that could've been Misery, but I wouldn't say for sure. [...cont...]

[..cont...]
I started to feel like maybe I was completely lost, deluded and nowhere as far along the path as I had presumed. Like being mired in the 3Cs forever. I realise that this feeling could have been just a manifestation of that particular stage of insight.

Still, I made it through the whole 40 minutes of vipassana, with no clock watching!

Hey Andy, I think we spoke briefly over on the DhO. Great to see you getting a practice report going and I sincerely hope you continue, I'm dealing with these same sorts of feelings and Dark Night hilarity myself so I wish you all the very best and hope you'll get through this as quickly as you need to.

Metta

"Hey Andy, I think we spoke briefly over on the DhO. Great to see you getting a practice report going and I sincerely hope you continue, I'm dealing with these same sorts of feelings and Dark Night hilarity myself so I wish you all the very best and hope you'll get through this as quickly as you need to.

Metta"

Thanks Tommy. Yes, I remember you were encountering the same weird physical jerkiness that I was having: shakes and lunges and general imbalance. I mean, I know we're supposed 60% water or whatever, but at the moment I feel more like a bag of fossils.

So, much metta to you too my friend. It's a real encouragement meeting fellow travellers along the way.

Hard work this morning. In the vipassana section of the sit, I started with my usual tactile sensation/vedana/mindstate triplet, and then moved to just noting mindstates.The last 20 minutes were very difficult. Restlessness. Frustration. Anger. Frustration. Boredom.

I know that Shinzen Young says that you can try to encourage the equanimous mind by noting in a equanimous voice - either mentally or out loud - and just fake it til you make it. I tried this today, and it's interesting to note when my voice became agitated or tight or gruff.

I didn't really pay much attention to the nyanas today, and couldn't really identify any stages that easily.

One other strange thing that I have noticed is that I tend to visualise outside spaces when I meditate. Usually it's the area of London around my office: the shops, the park, the different estates and tower blocks. I only ever visualise the view from a place I've actually been, and it happens completely involuntarily. Today I visualised the school grounds where I did walking meditation during my retreat at the weekend. I found myself moving around this remembered space, involuntarily, with the mental images just resting in the background of awareness behind the mindstates and physical sensations.

This morning, I sat well. I've gone back to doing ten minutes of walking meditation at the start of my hour which helps wake me up and get me in the zone.

I established good concentration with my candle, to the extent that afterwards, I was able to see the yellow mental kasina for a while and also something which has never happened before: a reddish black kasina floating infront of my face on a diagonal with my eyes and nose. I got this right at the end of my shamatha section, so I let it go in order to do vipassana.

Vipassana was much easier than yesterday. Last night I had one of the most painful sits I've ever experienced, everything crunchy, disgusting and tight. This morning, I was able to note consistently - noting mostly tactile sensations, thoughts and sounds, with a few mindstates and the odd vedana.

This evening was even better. After some initial tiredness and poor concentration I managed again to get the yellow mental kasina and red/black external one, albeit briefly. I felt very calm and happy as I ended shamatha, to the extent that cool rushes up my spine were coming as soon as I started vipassana.

I noted: pleasure, happiness, coolness, flashes, tightness, touching, interest, coolness, happiness, hearing, itchiness, coolness, movement, expansion.

I felt the bottom half of my torso, from the lowest ribs downwards suffused with cool blue liquid. I felt knots release and things expand. I noted 'spaciousness, pleasure' and sometimes just 'ahhhh' or 'whoa' when it became just too lovely.

I actually had to stop noting for a while and just dwell in it. It was that irresistable. With no idea as to what it was, I decided to try "suffusing" it around the body, as the suttas on jhanas say. I managed to move it up towards my shoulder blades, but didn't manage to get it infused through my shoulder and neck muscles where the tension is. [cont...]

Still, I could feel things 'unhook' and release, even if the tension didn't go away entirely. I could also feel tingles and cool fuzziness over my scalp and arms.

Eventually I got bored of all the pleasure and told myself to go back to noting. The coolness stayed throughout the sit as I noted other things.

When the bell rang, I realised I had come out in a cold sweat. Perhaps that was why I felt coolness, but it definitely felt internal too, as if my body was half submerged in brilliant cool blue liquid.

It was a relief to get a break from the tension and tightness, but whatever the state of my practice I feel amazingly motivated. Currently averaging two hours a day.

I did two hours everyday last week, except for Thursday when I was too tired to do the first sit in the morning.

Generally, it's unpleasant. Nausea, disgust, desire for it all to be over, tightness, lumpiness, prickliness, pain, tension, anxiety, fear, boredom, extreme aversion. The sit I did just now nearly made me want to throw up. Concentration has become poor and I can't seem to access any of the pleasant states or stages that I could do before.

Fortunately, I don't seem to be experiencing any emotional bleedthrough into the rest of my life, and I'm still motivated to sit twice a day. That said, I have experienced some heightened body pain - lopsidedness, crunchiness, and tension in the back and shoulders - and I've become increasingly squeamish about images of bodily pain, which I'm not usually that bothered by. I find myself scared of knives and sharp objects, but bizarrely only when I'm not around them: when I'm chopping vegetables I'm happy as Larry. I don't know whether any of this has anything to do my meditation practice, but since they've both arisen simultaneously with increasing difficulty with sitting, I thought they were worth mentioning.

After hearing Kenneth talk about the "20 minute yogi" the other day - someone who sits until the 3rd nyana and then gives up - I decided to extend the length of the vipassana section of my sits.

So just now I did 15 mins shamatha on a candle flame (pretty crappy concentration), and then 45 minutes noting. I was also trying to look out for what Kenneth calls the "bright itch" which soon enough appeared under the ball of my foot. I noted it fading in and out, in and out, until it was gone. As soon as I noted 'gone' a cool rush went up my spine and everything seemed expansive, with lots of bright flashes. It then bubbled down and I kept noting as before.

Later on, I got another itch which I stayed with until it was gone. I can't remember what exaclty happened afterwards, but I did get another cool rush up the spine, accompanied by a great deal of fear and nervousness. I could see dull blurry white lights a few inches apart fizzing and fuzzing just in front of my face (eyes closed).

This eventually bubbled down, the fear subsided, and I kept noting as before. More thoughts and distractions appeared towards the end of the sit, the noting didn't seem as good as earlier. I'd often catch myself noting physical sensations rather than the thoughts that were actually preoccupying me.

This evening, before the group video chat, I tried something suggested by AndyR at the Dharma Overground, in Nikolai's Noting thread over there:http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/1586280

It involves setting a timer for at three minute intervals, and switching the object of the noting for each three minute gap. So I started with sensations - sounds, sights and body sensations mostly - then the bell rang, and I switched to vedana, and then another bell and switch to mindstates, and then another bell and switch to thoughts. Once it was done with thoughts, I went back to sensations, and so on.

It seemed to work really well. Very energising and engaging with little room for daydreaming or distraction. It even made it fun! I decided not to focus on maps or think about where I was but just "practice my scales", noting, noting, noting.

Did 3 hours today. An hour in the morning doing "scales" as in the post above.

An hour after lunch doing concentration and a guided metta.

And an hour just now - 20 mins of shamatha, and then 40 mins of noting aloud, in no particularly structured way. I tried to note calmly, noting all the thoughts and especially the feelings of boredom, restlessness, aversion, distraction or the very dangerous impulse to look at the clock! I found that when I noted boredom, I'd get a rush of cool energy up the spine. Restlessness is associated with fidgeting with my posture and planning thoughts. Aversion is generally to unpleasant sensations in the body - tension, tightness, stiffness, numbness or nausea, as well as some thoughts too.

Nothing spectacular happened. The fireworks in my sits are getting smaller and smaller. I had big rush of energy up the spine around about the 15/20 minute mark, but it was over very quickly.

Today I experimented again with itches. About five minutes into my vipassana sit, I noticed a "bright itch" on my neck and thought that this would be a good chance to experience impermanence by watching the itch until it disappeared.

I should be so lucky! The pesky itch stayed put for the remaining 35 mins of the sit, at first painful, cutting and very frustrating to eventually dull, tickly and just irritating. I stayed with it, minus a few moments when my attention was called off my a sound or a thought. I got a pretty good sense of it's shape: about the size of a very small coin (5p here in the UK), with the majority of the itch concentrated along the bottom left of the coin's edge. I could feel it changing: it moved around the top edge of the coin straightened out, and then snaked away from the coin's circumference to look like a kind of tilda shape (~) with an elongated right edge. Then it shifted to a fuzzy lozenge, vertical against the coin's right edge.

But it stayed there! I felt one cool rush up the spine as I began to notice the vibrations in and around the itch, but it never disappeared completely.

Needless to say, when the bell rang, I was a very happy scratcher...