first ever practice journal!

I should also stick in

8.1) The *reason* that Richard's promotion of AF works to attract people who would not be attracted to traditional Buddhism is specifically that it dismisses all forms of spirituality and offers a purported alternative path to happiness. If he credited Bhante G, it would undercut his own claim to be offering something that isn't traditional spirituality, and so it would no longer be as effective as it has been. (And Bhante G's explanation of how perception works is a damn useful one, worth repeating.)

12) Now is the time for reconciliation! Ask yourself whether you want to be genuinely happy and at peace, ask yourself whether your practice is aimed at that or aimed at something else, and make the decision for yourself that you think is best.

12.1) We as a community have the right tools to get this done, and part of the right attitude (disregarding traditional taboos about talking about attainments). All that's left that we would need is bodhicitta. If you have enough, you can get it done. If you want it more than anything, you will surely be able to find a way to realize perfect happiness for yourself.

12.11) Generating bodhicitta is a practice that should be adopted. The suttas emphasize it. We've lost any formal equivalent to that, but it's easy to reinstate, since the particulars depend on the individual. Richard's "pure intent" is one form of this, and he thinks it's the foremost thing, for good reason.

I really do think that you're making some excellent points here, when it comes down to it this is supposed to be about pragmatism. The map is not the territory and all that stuff, we all want to see the end of suffering for all sentient beings and the outcome in question, whether we're calling it AF or Arahatship, makes this a real possibility. At one point I may have said "it SEEMS to make this a real possibility" but having had a glimpse of it in a full-blown PCE was enough to change my mind and destroy any doubts I may have had.

Yes, Richards writing style can be really f*cking annoying, but if you actually apply the techniques he describes, just like we do with vipassana, then it becomes clear that he's not just bumping his gums. I was openly critical and downright rude about AF at one point, but now I see no reason for there to be this animosity and it's great to see people like End In Sight, Nick and the Hamilton Project guys doing some real work to cut away all the crap and show how we all just want the same thing: Happiness and peace.

I'll end by saying that I am neither a Buddhist or an Actualist, I subscribe to no specific belief system and base my opinions of my own practice towards the end of suffering. I do not wish to give the impression that I'm taking sides, I just want everyone to get to where they want to be, however they choose, so long as it harms no one else in the process.

Peace. Now.

There is still, objectively speaking, a design aesthetic that can be judged as good or bad. Instructions or writing that we are turned off from and don't follow is bad design. Writing that gets us the prize is better design. I think the design that evolves in the next couple of years is going to smoke everything that came before. The American religion is science and money and I think books like The Buddha's Brain and many of Kenneth's talks are a glimpse of the future. My guess (and hope) is that Richard's writing and even MCTB are version 1.0 and won't be so relevant in a couple of years.

Very weird cycle. Every little tingle in the body, every little visual vibration strobe (uncountably many per second), is an attempt to claim that sense as 'me'. I see that. It's like 'I' am plastered all over the universe.

That's f*cked up.


Also, just wanted to clarify this: "9.1) My own practice, which I adopted only because I came to believe that AF was arahantship..."

I decided to go for AF because I want the end of suffering, period. I also think that AF happens to be arahantship (and the evidence, such as Bhante G's book, gets stronger all the time). The *particulars* of the practice, though, are influenced to some extent by actualism (more so when I started)...because I think it's all aiming at the same thing. In other words, I adopted the particulars because of the belief that they're aiming at the same thing.

EDIT: And to clarify how there can be so many moments per second...it's not that there are a million well-distinguished things racing through my mind, so much as it is that every vibration cycle is made of uncountably many moments that I can recognize are all discrete, even though any individual one is too short to focus on. The "fading out" of a vibration, for example, is not an analog thing (unlike what MCTB says), but a stream of an enormous number of tiny individual moments.

That cycle seemed to do some really serious damage to fundamental ignorance. Most affect has withdrawn from the 5 senses, and they are very clear and very pristine and very wonderful. There are still vibrations, but they are SLOOOOOOOOOW and flowing, and seem to correspond with the perception of space. ('I' seem to be identifying as space...not something that's obvious to me in direct experience, as it was obvious that all the other previous vibrations were identifications, just a very good guess).

When I rest in the vibration unmindfully, 'I' am the space-like nature of mind. It's super-relaxing and kind of trippy.

EDIT: A random observation that the rest of you might be interested in. Most "physical" uncomfortableness is actually affective. The more cycles I go through, the more affect is destroyed, the more awesome my body feels, permanently. (Each cycle improves things permanently, but the nanas are a cause of some variability in the moment-to-moment experience.) The sensation of the body minus affect is hard to describe. It's a kind of delicate softness. One of the consequences of this seems to be that dark nights have mostly lost their negative qualities. The dark night of the last cycle, for instance, was like being in the third jhana...rather good!

EDIT 2: One affect that has apparently not been done away with is the feeling of unpleasant sleepiness.

"I'll end by saying that I am neither a Buddhist or an Actualist, I subscribe to no specific belief system and base my opinions of my own practice towards the end of suffering. I do not wish to give the impression that I'm taking sides, I just want everyone to get to where they want to be, however they choose, so long as it harms no one else in the process.

Peace. Now."

Palabra.

General practice overview. I go through many, many full cycles everyday (ending with a pathlike cessation); each one makes some kind of perceptual difference, but the difference may or may not be describable. I only write about the cycles that stand out to me in some way.

One weird thing I've noticed is that the edges of my visual field are almost always more out of sync, and more vibration-y, than the center. Occasionally I've gotten it back into sync with everything, but it always reverts (sometimes after a major cycle).

I've wondered idly whether AF changes one's writing style. Am I going to be stuck writing like Tarin? Am I going to be stuck writing like Richard? What a strange prospect! I kind of doubt it, but hey, you never know...

Bhante G's overview of meditation seems to be spot-on. The more I medidate, the more cycles I go through, the more my experience consists only of sense objects, and the less it consists of mental / symbolic representations of sense objects. The big transition for me (what I called anagami) was when the sense objects became permanently distinguished from the mental representations of them. That changed everything. (cont)

"The king said: 'What is the characteristic mark of reasoning, and what of wisdom?'

'Reasoning has always comprehension as its mark; but wisdom has cutting off.'

'But how is comprehension the characteristic of reasoning, and cutting off of wisdom? Give me an illustration.'

'You remember the barley reapers?'

'Yes, certainly.'

'How do they reap the barley?'

'With the left hand they grasp the barley into a bunch, and taking the sickle into the right hand, they cut it off with that.'

'Just even, so, O king, does the recluse by his thinking grasp his mind, and by his wisdom cut off his failings. In this way is it that comprehension is the characteristic of reasoning, but cutting off of wisdom.' (Questions of King Milinda)"

Also, the amazement at how much traditional Buddhist stuff is accurate never ceases. Just recently I recalled that I read this in the past, and it was a surprise to recognize that it describes my method of meditation very accurately. Grasp the mind, separate out the defilements, and destroy them.

"The big transition for me (what I called anagami) was when the sense objects became permanently distinguished from the mental representations of them."

Yes, this is indeed a critically important transition and, IMHO, not described, emphasized or discussed enough. This one thing alone, if pointed to regularly, would go a long way toward moving folks along the path.

Sorry to interrupt... carry on.

Hey Chris, I'm interested in comparing notes on this. What does your body feel like underneath the mental representations of it? Mine feels, as I said yesterday, at peace / at ease / physically pleasurable / "soft", all the time.

It feels like a bunch of vibrations with no form. Abounding "in" it are sensations like pressure, heat, cold, tickling, aching. All of those "higher level" sensations are really just different vibration types. If I touch something (like this keyboard, for example) the difference between the touching and the touched is really sort of immaterial.

Is that responsive?

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. I notice that my sensory body has no vibrations, no (unpleasant) aches, etc. It does of course have heat, coldness, etc. I'm not sure whether it has pressure. Most instances of pressure that I've found are mental representations.

Could you describe how you reached this turning point and what it was like for you?

For me, the most important feature of the turning point (separating mental representations from sense experience) was recognizing that in the sense experience there is happiness...and so I always have a share of happiness in my moment-to-moment experience (which increases as I continue this process).

"Could you describe how you reached this turning point and what it was like for you?"

I've described that here a bunch of times: I was sitting on my front porch and heard the chirp of a bird. For some reason on that one particular chirp time seemed to slow down dramatically and I could see the steps, the pieces, of the flow of perception (dependent origination), from the time the sound made contact with my ear/mind to the identification, the judgment about it, and so on. It became intimately obvious to me in those very few thousandths of a second that that process was the source of all of "this." Everything works that way as experience plays out, over and over and over with enormous pace and frequency. That was the beginning of the end of believing the world was solid, I was solid. It was all down hill from there

Maybe the difference between our experiences is what we are seeking. I have always wanted to know what I was, how the universe was "constructed," so to speak. My journey has been mostly about that investigation, not about ending suffering per se. I wanted to know what the true nature of mind is.

I can only speculate that what occurs to a practitioner upon that very first realization of the separation of way you called "sense objects became permanently distinguished from the mental representations of them" is something related to what they're seeking, what is critically important to them. So for me it was "Holy sh!t, Batman! The universe is a mind map!" For someone seriously desiring the end of painful sensations and suffering I could see how it might be, "Holy sh!t, Batman, all my troubles are mind made!"

Those two realization are really just two sides of the same coin -- the nature of our experiential reality.

I don't remember having read your description before, so thanks for sharing again.

It's possible that differences in what we're looking for condition what we're likely to say about what we find. But, do you think differences in what we're looking for condition what we realize? Again, I'd like to ask you what you see in your sensory body. In mine, there is nothing vibratory. Absolutely nothing. I recognize every vibration in my experience as a mental representation of some other thing.

EDIT: This koan seems to describe what I mean.

Two monks were watching a flag flapping in the wind. One said to the other, "The flag is moving."
The other replied, "The wind is moving."
Hui-neng overheard this. He said, "Not the flag, not the wind; mind is moving."

EDIT 2: Another way to put this is, I realized that what MCTB calls the impermanence characteristic is actually the suffering characteristic.

I have always experienced and still do uniform physically felt 'vibrations'(1) throughout the body wherever there is living tissue. This level of subtly resulted from many goenka vipassana courses. There has been however the sporadic grosser 'vibrations'at the chakra points which would seem to be supporting factors for affective emotions/sense of "being". My 'sensory' body is one big mass of physcially felt 'vibrations'. There are no mental representations of the body. Apperception seems to cut that out.

(1) 'Vibrations' are just that, vibrations. A buzzing vibey sense of arising and passing away. Like ants crawling, electricity flowing, like sitting on a vibrating bed.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing, Nick.

EDIT: A chance to say something about what's important about practice threads. If I am wrong, it's good that it gets written down publicly. It shows what is discernible at various stages of progress, and what isn't discernible at various stages of progress, which is the most important thing for trying to figure out how all this stuff works. So, I would invite *anyone* who thinks I'm describing something incorrectly or making a false claim to call me on it, for the sake of this kind of documentation being as accurate as possible.

I see what Nick sees He and I are describing almost exactly the same thing, I think.

"I realized that what MCTB calls the impermanence characteristic is actually the suffering characteristic."

Yes, and all three characteristic meld into one thing at some point. They are but facets of the jewel of experiential reality.

Chris, what practice were you doing at the time you made this transition (if any)? What do you think contributes to this realization?

I was doing vipassana. As for what contributed to the realization, it's obvious to me that it's due to paying attention by looking closely, day after day after day after day after day, second after second after second. There is a conceptual leap that's necessary and that's the hard part. Once you realize what it is you're supposed to be looking for the rest is almost inevitable. Getting to that leap, getting over the habit of a lifetime of paying attention to the object itself as it is represented in the mind ('cause that's all we do, all the time) is the trick.

It just jumped out at me that one day.

BAM!

Then the "Holy sh!t, Batman."

This koan:

Two monks were watching a flag flapping in the wind. One said to the other, "The flag is moving."
The other replied, "The wind is moving."
Hui-neng overheard this. He said, "Not the flag, not the wind; mind is moving."

For me this is pointing to a fundamental non-duality. If that's what you were getting at about your experience of your body than we agree. If not, then we don't

But that's a digression....

Chris, let's go back to the beginning. When I say "vibrations" I mean the perceptual thing the mind does where it looks "away" from the sense object and at its own representation of the object. During the dark night nanas, for example, the "looking away" overpowers the sense object more than usual and so there can be feelings of dissociation from the world (e.g. 'I' can't see the world), or feelings of being stuck in a little cocoon of 'me'-ness separate from sense experience (e.g. 'I' am clearly the looking-away and not the sense object).

For a long time I thought that these vibrations were some kind of thing going on in sense experience, but now I see that these vibrations are attempts of the mind to represent, identify with, and grasp at sense experience.

Things like coldness, etc. in my body are perceived as sense experiences interspersed with moments of "looking away". The sense experiences do not seem to be made of vibratory anything (except insofar as the sense experiences may rapidly change, which is not the sense of vibration that I mean). The vibratory stuff that I used to think sense experiences were made of now appears to me as the motion of my own mind.

So, what do you mean by vibrations?

EDIT: Also, I did not have a clear experience of dependent origination that ushered in this new perspective. However, dependent origination makes sense to me, so I may just not have thought of it that way at the time. I'm going to aim my practice in that direction for awhile and see if anything comes of it.

For your interest, here is a link to Richard talking about possible plagiarism in his work. See the last couple of paragraphs on the linked page for why he says he did it.

actualfreedom.com.au/richard/listafcorre...istaf60i.htm#15Feb06

P.S. Not defending him here. Just got sent this link.

Buzzing. On/off/on/off/on/off with a frequency that is usually similar to that of a 60 Hz AC power source. You asked me about sensory experience so that's what I'm describing. Again, go back to what Nick said. It seems to be the same thing. These experiences are without any doubt the mind attempting to represent and identify "things" in the body (or in line of sight, or in range of hearing, or...). As far as I can tell we're in the same ballpark describing different aspects of the same thing.

" I did not have a clear experience of dependent origination..."

Yeah, you did. You just didn't think of it that way, EndInSight. If you read the Pali Canon sutta I linked to in this topic yesterday you'll see that this is exactly what we're talking about right now - the way perception works. How the mind creates "things" (objects), and thus the subject-object duality and the very basic misperception/ignorance that flows therefrom.