first ever practice journal!

I have to go play house, run errands, experience the duality of that stuff. Later!

Take for example the kind of feeling in one's stomach that relates to fear / anxiety / tension. This is the major body affect that seems to remain for me (the form of meditation I do has always produced a lot of physical unpleasantness, and mostly all that remains now of it in terms of how it can be experienced appears to be kind of stomach tension). When I observe it, I notice that whatever is unpleasant about it is happening during the *off* moment (or more precisely, during the string of fading-to-off moments). During the *on* moments there is just some kind of sensory thing which is completely unproblematic.

Does this match your experience?

EDIT: Hehe, we'll chat about this later then. By the way, feel free to throw your two cents in on my journal anytime; I have always benefited a lot from our conversations!

"
" 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.

"

I don't think I had a clear experience of dependent origination *then*. It's possible that it may not have occurred to me in those terms at the time. However, at that time, I had already figured out that all there is, is sense experience, and the mind grasping at, representing, and identifying with it via this vibration / "looking away" phenomenon. Recognizing that clearly happened around the beginning of the retreat; the new stage that I'm talking about happened around day 5, which (to me, in terms of where practice had gone) was an eternity later.

EDIT: Another point is, there is a difference between recognizing this process conceptually, and being able to see it experientially. The latter comes first; the former only comes if one thinks about the latter in those terms, which typically means much later for us pragmatic dharma folks, or until the experience really whacks us over the head in one way or another.

My working theory is that the latter happens at technical 4th path (when one sees that "self" is actually not-self, that is the recognition that the appearance of self is not an identity but an imputed identity based on distorting sense experience, whether thought of in these terms or not). Another reason to think that 4th is stream entry in the suttas...I believe they state that stream entry means seeing dependent origination. To give evidence for or against this, do you think that your experience of seeing it was 4th path?

Practice update. Really jarring cessation, and now 'I' am not really space anymore (perhaps to some extent the identification continues), but rather, 'I' am nothingness. In other words, the space-like nature of mind has very little to do with 'me', but 'I' identify as some kind of nothingness prior to space and prior to sense objects.

Resting in the identification with nothingness is not nearly as interesting or relaxing as was resting in the identification with space. It's like 'I' am some kind of thick invisible goop over experience. Ew. (EDIT: This has always been my impression of what the affective distortion of the nothingness arupa jhana is like; I never liked it at all compared to the other formless realms; and it has never been so strong as it currently is in my experience. It's not unpleasant, just weird. MCTB describes it as "turned away" from experience somehow, as if all the lights are off, which is phenomenologically pretty accurate. The *sense object* of nothingness, whatever that is, is not like this at all, though...it's peaceful.)

My working theory was that this progression would match the 4 arupa jhanas, but either I skipped over overtly identifying with consciousness, or I cut the identification but it but it wasn't so obvious, or I cut it the identification with it and space simultaneously. Or maybe after this, the identification with consciousness will be next.

I would like to see what the identification with neither-perception-nor-non-perception looks like when that's the most overt thing left. I want to see what it's like to believe that 'I' am nirguna brahman. I want to know what all the fuss is about, just out of intellectual curiosity. (Not entirely kidding.)

EDIT: This is actually a fun, trippy experience now that it stablized. People would pay money for drugs that make them feel this way.

It seems that the goop is not over experience, but centered over my head somehow, and distorting experience to look as if it's everywhere.

(Meditating while browsing the web...never thought I would ever have my mind under control enough for this to be possible, let alone effective. Wow. It does let me look at a range of phenomena related to cognitive activity that don't normally happen during meditation.)

Oh, want to write this down and share before I forget. Powering the mindfulness all day means that I've been noticing some weird stuff. For example, anytime I hear a loud and startling noise, attention shifts entirely or almost entirely away from sense objects, and towards the affective distortion. That experience is like getting a glimpse of some kind of formless, timeless, non-conceptual mega-self underlying the universe. I've had that in the past (before 4th path) and always thought it was cool and wondered if that's what 3rd gear was supposed to be like. Now, I think it's garbage.

Some forms of Zen are into stories about people becoming enlightened by hearing a startling sound, so I wonder if they're pointing to this experience.

The way that affect blocks out all the senses also seems like a glimpse at what total Visuddhimaga-style absorption into a nimitta would be like...except that it's not blissful, because it's not attained via concentration. If this is true, then that form of practice must be a form of wrong concentration, which explains the historical observation that people who learn it don't proceed towards enlightenment and just get (affectively) blissed out.

I am very interested in this question of vibrations.
I have been using the awareness of the presence of vibrations to measure what is preventing me from being in the PCE.
My working hypothesis has been that vibrations = affect.
I try to abandon affect by going straight to the sense experience which is the basis from which the affect arises.
Obviously vibrations differ depending on which of the insight knowledges you are in. (I currently believe that when we are not in apperecpetion we are cycling)
In the arupa jhanas these vibrations are very smooth and spacious, but still vibratory - isn't it in fact the case that anything that is perceived is vibratory because there is a subject perceiving an object - while in the moment of direct sensing there is in fact no perception (or awareness perceiving itself).
Would the soft body awareness you are describing End by a switching back and forth between appereception and arupa jhanas?
If it is I have been experiecning something similar today where the arupa jhana is flavoured by the apperception - (which is very nice) Or is it something else?
Nick, I remember from when we we talked a few weeks ago you desribed that even in PCE there is an overall vibratory body awareness which is independent of affective arising which issues from the chakras.
So the question becomes do all vibrations carry affect?
Does a vibration need to disappear to lose its affect, or can it be actualised/objectified the same as the senses?

"When I observe it, I notice that whatever is unpleasant about it is happening during the *off* moment (or more precisely, during the string of fading-to-off moments). During the *on* moments there is just some kind of sensory thing which is completely unproblematic."

Yes, this is very familiar. Any phenomena will break down into pieces and parts and become un-problematic when one concentrates attention on it, which I'm assuming is what you mean by "observe it.". This is usually called "penetrating" the object. In my experience it can be done with any object. I guess you could say the general flow and direction of practice is the application of that kind of vipassana-like investigation of objects that we once assumed were part of us. As we do that we peel back the layers of the onion.

Richard, as far as I can tell, the body appears "soft" in a situation similar to what you're describing; enough of the affect has been separated away from things that one can get a good glimpse of the sense object side of the vibration, and as far as I can discern, on the sense object side (i.e. in the moment of apperceptiveness as the other Richard and Bhante G describe), the body has that tactile quality. When enough affect is separated away, the arupa jhana affective qualities become more pronounced, and one sort of switches between apperceptiveness and them.

The cause of the vibration, as far as I can tell, is that there is the sense object, and then there is 'me' attending to and representing and identifying with the sense object; first the one, then the other, and as it happens extremely quickly in experience, perception seems to "vibrate". (As Chris says, we are all used to looking at our own mental representations, not the sense object side of the vibration, because when 'I' look at something then 'I' am looking at the affect rather than the sense object.)

Note that I believe I'm using "vibration" in a very different sense than Nick was (but he can feel free to correct me if this isn't so).

As far as I can tell, every vibration is affective.

As far as I can tell, the actual thing underlying the vibration is the sense object. More poetically, actualized vibrations are apperception itself.

Helpful?

Chris, I don't have a clear idea of whether we're agreeing or disagreeing. I think it's a terminological problem. I claim:

* Every vibration has a sense object side, and a mental representation side.

* These correspond to the "phases" of the vibration; pulsing in is moving towards sense object, pulsing out is moving towards mental representation.

* I see each vibration as being totally unproblematic on the sense object side, and suffering on the mental representation side.

* I observe this right now just because my mind has become more attuned to the sense object side. It requires no concentration. The mind just sees it.

* The unproblematic nature of the sense object side has nothing to do with seeing the vibration pulse rapidly, or breaking the experience down into tiny microscopic bits (though that can help to see the sense object side). It's just...unproblematic by nature.

* Do enough vipassana, and the unproblematic side begins to dominate experience.

I'll leave it to you to say whether we agree or disagree, because I'm not sure.

"My working hypothesis has been that vibrations = affect.

"

My experience and continued experience tells me 'vibrations' is the wrong word to use to equate to affect. There can be uniform vibrations experienced that have nothing to do with affect. Even in a PCE/AF they are felt.

I do think that specific vibrations emanating at specific points in the body act as factors that are compounded with other factors to give rise to affective feelings/sense of "being". Even without an affective feeling/sense of "being" arising, there may be gross vibrations at certain points. If they are appercieved then the tendency to allow them to be factors amongst other factors to condition the arising of affective feelings will cease. If there is no mental "bending" around such sensations (1) then there is no compounding of an affective feeling. Apperception cuts out the mental "bending" which leads to the compounding which leads to more becoming

(1) The term mental 'bending' comes from the Visuddhimagga

Thanks Nick and End, helpful clarifications.
Going to have a good look at it for myself.

1. By analysis of mind and matter: here 'mind' (nama'”mentality) is the three aggregates, that is, feeling, perception, and formations, because of their bending (namana) on to the object. 'Matter' (rupa'” materiality) is the four great primary elements and the materiality derived [by clinging] from the four great primaries.

Visuddhimagga, Dependent Origination XVII, 187

Any vibrations can be apperceived. What drops away when phenomena such as the funky vibrations at the chest seemingly acting as a support/factor for an affective feeling of anger is apperceived, is the mental 'bending' proliferating tendency (papanca). The mental 'anger' (the bending) will drop away, and all that remains is the physical factor until it dissipates. This is my own experience. I am not able to generate any affect for the past 11 days. Yet there are vibrations arising that are felt throughout the body, uniform and according to Goenka and U Ba Khin sub atomic particles arising and passing away at an extreme rate ones. There are, on occasion, residual vibrations that are unique in their 'flavour' at specific charka points. These are recognised as past triggers or factors for specific affective feelings that are not forming like they once did as other factors seem to be missing, at least thus far.

Nick, are you talking about a form of vibration that can be equally said to apply to any of the senses (e.g. the visual field), or just something bodily? (I'm talking about the former.)

Practice update. Went through identifying with the 8th arupa jhana (not as interesting as I expected), then some amazing cessation happened, and now my experience is...hard to describe. Not free, but some kind of almost-PCE.

I think I'll take a break from posting for awhile and figure this out.

"Nick, are you talking about a form of vibration that can be equally said to apply to any of the senses (e.g. the visual field), or just something bodily? (I'm talking about the former.)

Practice update. Went through identifying with the 8th arupa jhana (not as interesting as I expected), then some amazing cessation happened, and now my experience is...hard to describe. Not free, but some kind of almost-PCE.

I think I'll take a break from posting for awhile and figure this out. "

Something bodily. it's a felt sense of actual vibrations, in every corner of the body where there is living tissue. In and out. They are quite uniform, subtle and vibrate quite fast. At times when i used to sit courses, depending on the stage of insight I was in, the uniform sensations might seemingly vibrate faster, or were perceived to vibrate faster. This would often cause a lot of heat generated in the body. If you are referring to the visual field as something seen, a shimmering effect to objects like they might be vibrating, I am familiar with this. And also the eye sight might shimmer. This may be the same thing. This too I am familiar with. I am talking about both of these 'vibrations'. They have nothing to do with affect in my experience. What did have something to do with affect were the specific 'vibrations' that flowed at the chakra points. Gnarly bitter ones of varying degrees of bitterness and pressure, slightly tense ones, and even blissful ones when affectively blissed out and happy. This is where I saw the interplay of vedana (the feeling tone), craving and clinging. Practice tip: The feeling of being close, keeps 'you' around.

Edited: I sense vibrations within the body when sounds come in contact with the ear. At times directly in the ear drum, and they might set off vibrations in a chakra spot. The same for smells and tongue. All vibrations. Even thoughts are vibratory in nature.

"If you are referring to the visual field as something seen, a shimmering effect to objects like they might be vibrating, I am familiar with this. And also the eye sight might shimmer. "

What I'm talking about is something that becomes progressively less prevalent as my experience moves closer to a PCE. Anytime I have had a near-PCE, the thing I'm talking about has been nearly gone.

It's possible that it's a very particular way of perceiving affect that I have due to my extreme dry insight practice, or some other personal factor. This may explain the communication problem with Chris.

In any case, not posting to this thread for at least a day. Thus I resolve.

"What I'm talking about is something that becomes progressively less prevalent as my experience moves closer to a PCE. Anytime I have had a near-PCE, the thing I'm talking about has been nearly gone.

It's possible that it's a very particular way of perceiving affect that I have due to my extreme dry insight practice, or some other personal factor. This may explain the communication problem with Chris.

In any case, not posting to this thread for at least a day. Thus I resolve. "

Are you talking about the attention wave that somehow influences the mind's attention to jump about? It becomes quite clear when looking at an object in front of you. The mind may sort of section off parts of the object, not fully seeing it as a whole. This is the attention wave in action seemingly caused by the arising of affect/sense of "being" in my experience.

"I'll leave it to you to say whether we agree or disagree, because I'm not sure."

Well, it seems to me you're describing in your words many of the things I experience, so I think we agree on most of this. What I do wonder about, however, is your unique choice of words which contributes to the sense that we may be describing things that are, indeed, different. I note this even more this afternoon because I can read what Nick is writing and see immediately that he and I agree on the basic terminology and thus I can immediately see that his experience mirrors mine. With your comments, EndInSight, I have to stop and re-read them a few times and trace the meaning through - all due to your use of different terms that, at least IMHO, *seem* to describe the same things I am. But... I may be just reinterpreting your unique terms into my frame of reference.

The meaning of the word "vibrations" is one example of this, as is the meaning of the term "path."

Another issue I have is that talking about the perception of an object as taking place on the "side" of the object or on the "side" of the subject is misleading. It's all the same thing and takes place in n-space, by which I mean no "place" we can actually name or point to. An object as perceived by a human being is as much a process as it is a "thing," which is a huge reason we call what really happens "emptiness." The thing is neither here nor there (it does't actually exist in absolute terms), and yet it seems to be over there (object outside me) and in here (perception process inside me), but also nowhere, all at once. Empty, in other words. This is fundamental, IMHO.

Guys, I'm taking an indefinite break from posting on KFD. Any loose ends that haven't been tied up, will have to be tied up when I'm back, or not.

Chris, thanks for the conversation so far; there is more to say (there always is!), but, some other time.

As a message to everyone...the retreat I did last week was the hardest thing I've done in my life, not just meditation-wise, but *ever*. Not emotionally, not in terms of psychological resilience, but in terms of sheer unrelenting effort during every single moment of it. The territory to be covered before freedom is apparently vast, far beyond anything that we have maps of...and yet, to repeat, I am not a good yogi or meditator, and I found a way to cover huge amounts through willpower and dedication. If you happen to want freedom badly enough, you will find a way. The more you want it, regardless of which path you think you've attained or not attained so far, the faster it will be. Just don't confuse having it as a goal with ACTUALLY WANTING IT.

I also want to restate how deliriously happy this process has made me so far; not happy in reaction to anything, not as a temporary state, but as an apparently permanent condition that persists underneath all changes that I have encountered so far.

On that note...I renounce all claims to attainments that I've made, all claims to be following Buddhist practices or not, and all claims that what I'm doing is aimed at arahantship, nirvana, enlightenment, or anything at all other than freedom as I personally understand it. All I know is that, right now, I have not found what I'm looking for; everything else is just words and distraction, smoke and mirrors...so I renounce all of it.

Good luck finding whatever it is that each of you is searching for. I hope you find it soon.

Best of luck, EndInSight!

"The more you want it, regardless of which path you think you've attained or not attained so far, the faster it will be. Just don't confuse having it as a goal with ACTUALLY WANTING IT."

I have to weigh in here because that is definitely true -- but in my experience it is true *only up to a certain point.* When that point, that key moment, is reached the objective is not to continue seeking but to let go, and to let go of everything you hold sacred. Seeking eventually gets in the way and the only thing we can do to "fix" that is.... just let go and float in that freedom. Sorry, but I feel this has to be said.

The two wrong directions according to the Buddha: Desire for becoming and desire for non-becoming. Both lead to more becoming. Is your 'wanting' leaning to one or the other?

"This is where the Buddha ran into the central paradox of becoming, because the craving and clinging that provide the moisture do not have to delight in the field or the resultant becoming in order to bear fruit. If the mind fastens on a
particular set of possibilities with the aim of changing or obliterating them, that acts as moisture for a state of becoming as well. Thus the desire to put an end to becoming produces a new state of becoming. Because any desire that produces becoming also produces suffering, the Buddha was faced with a strategic challenge: how to put an end to suffering when the desire to put an end to suffering would lead to renewed suffering.

His solution to this problem involved a paradoxical strategy, creating a state of becoming in the mind from which he could watch the potentials of kamma as they come into being, but without fueling the desire to do anything with regard to those potentials at all. In the terms of the field analogy, this solution would deprive the seed of moisture. Eventually, when all other states of becoming had been allowed to pass away, the state of becoming that had acted as the strategic vantage point would have to be deprived of moisture as well. Because the moisture of craving and clinging would have seeped into the seed even of this strategic becoming, this would eventually mean the destruction of the seed, as that moisture and any conditioned aspects of consciousness the seed might contain were allowed to pass away. But any unconditioned aspects of consciousness'”if they existed'”wouldn't be touched at all."

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The Paradox Of Becoming. See chapter 5 for more details on the two wrong directions. www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/TheParadoxOfBecoming.pdf

This is where a 'lifestyle' approach (1) versus a 'goal orientated' approach must be considered. The goal orientated approach served me well to a point but then became a hindrance. When I switched from being goal orientated to just letting go of goals and doing what needed to be done anyway, 'I' stopped getting so pumped up about progress. That 'pumped up-ness' was actually hindering the progress 'I' wanted so much. Upon stopping this goal orientated approach, 'I' began to fade into the background enough for 24/7 attentiveness to sensuousness(2) to occur until it became automatic and out from control.

The 'lifestyle' approach bypasses the two wrong directions. 24/7 attentiveness to sensuousness bypasses the two wrong directions and leads to the discernment 'you' so desperately want to have while 'being' that 'goal orientedness' (3).

Continued below:

(1) The 'lifestyle' approach was triggered for me by the following advice by Tarin:

Me: Something seems to be reoccurring as I try to maintain attentiveness to sensuousness and that is whether this process/path to AF, is about "seeing" something in the right way, or more so about cultivating the right conditions (just being attentive to sensuousness) long enough for the brain to flip a switch (AF) because when the mind leans to the "seeing" something in the right way, I wonder, what am I not seeing and when it leans to the other way, I wonder if all it takes is just doing this continuously non-stop

AFer: it entails a commitment to live like this for as long as now lasts . its a lifestyle, not a means to an end, living like this is it.

Me: What do you mean?

AFer: living like this is the answer already, suppose no one had told you that af exists.

Me: oh man, I just saw what I'm doing.....so goal oriented...addictive personality shining through. If no-one told me AF existed, I'd just be cultivating the modes that make life happier and I'd be happier.

(2) Attentiveness to sensuousness is paying close attention to the sense doors and moving closer and closer to continuous apperceptive awareness thus cutting out all papanca (mental proliferation) tendencies.

(3) Goal orientedness = desire for a future outcome = a feeling of wanting = a feeling = 'me', as 'I' am my feelings and my feelings are 'me' and to relate it to what the Buddha said about the two wrong directions, 'me' is becoming. .

"(EDIT: Mindfulness in Plain English was written in 1990, not 2002. AFT seems to be from 1997. The resemblance is uncanny! Did Richard know about this?)"

It's not uncanny. It's just plain old-fashioned plagiarism. The use of identical phrasing, line after line, simply does not happen by chance.

You asked rhetorically, "Did Richard know about this?" Yes, of course Richard knew about this. It's perfectly obvious that Richard plagiarized Bhante G. Let's just call it what it is.