first ever practice journal!

I just had another thought about dukkha and traditional Buddhism; I'm not sure that I actually understand the traditional Buddhist view, because while I can see how pleasant physical sensations could universally have a dukkha component, it's much harder for me to imagine how the other sense-consciousnesses can. Things like seeing don't typically appear to have any vedana whatsoever. And the traditional (Theravada? Suttic?) view is that dukkha is a characteristic of phenomena generally. So I can see how pleasure and neutral-feeling can be dukkha, but not other experiences.

Hi EndInSight,

My experience is that although seeing, hearing, and thinking do not directly have vedana, there is always a tactile sensation arising with them. And the tactile sensation has the vedana component. So it's possible, for example, to speak of a pleasant thought or a pleasant visual object. You can test this by looking at photos of beautiful people alongside photos of suffering or destruction; the former is pleasant while the latter is unpleasant. This is because of the interrelatedness of seeing and the tactile sense.

Hi EndInSight

Thanks for writing up you progress. I found it really useful and insperational. I like the way that you seemed to really undersand what you were doing and then apply the noting in a specific and targeted manner. For example when you described bombing bare rock......great analogy.

Two questions occured. I am only really starting my practice in earnest and have been noting and using the meditation instructions provided on this site. Your inital noting sounds pretty feirce, yet it obviously got you stream entry and provided you with a highly effective tool for disembedding from the more subtle stuff. With the heartrate up and high inensity, it sounds like apsorbtion and mellowing out in states, was not useful at that stage.........Do you have any reflections that might help me, or if you could offer advice to yourself then, would you have changed anything??

Secondly, at a deep level I feel compelled to do my best to try and climb this ladder. Of all the alternatives and with death marching owards, it seems like the best use of my time. It sounds really hard though and everones journals are littered with difficult stuff that comes up on the way. Do you think the difficult stuff could be bypassed or subdued with Metta/Karuna or even devotional stuff. Or do you think, its like tearing off a plaster......best just to it over with??

Thanks.

Ed76, hello.
I don't know what the more experienced guys will say, but my feeling is that you can wriggle around as much as you like but in the end you just have to face into it. Remembering to do that in a skillful and compassionate way is the challenge of course. I am conscious that the question was not directed to me so I will say no more.

Cheers
Howard

I find metta practice harder than everything else; I always end up in tears. So my sense is there's no escape.

Hi Ed76,

Yes, I found that high-intensity noting was really powerful, getting me 99% of the way to stream entry (I only got cessation after I let up on it while I was taking a break, but it got me all the way to the cusp of high equanimity) and 100% of the way to second path, without any real setbacks. The only real reflection I have on it is that I think it works only if you have a certain mindset towards practice.

The basic idea is that you can note in a way that generates negative mental energy of a certain type, which lets you note faster, which generates more negative mental energy...and eventually you get path or you explode. The basic idea is this: when someone has too much caffeine, they get "jumpy" (their attention bounces around hyperactively between objects in an unpredictable and uncontrollable way). "Jumpy" is a kind of restlessness, which is normally a hindrance, but doesn't have to be: every time the mind bounces to a new object, that is an opportunity to note that object. If you bear down, grit your teeth, and FORCE yourself to note as fast as possible, you can generate a lot of internal tension and turmoil which comes out in part as restlessness...you can't stay on an object because you keep being drawn to the feeling of contraction in your head, the furrowing of your brow, the constriction of your guts, the pounding of your heart, and a thousand disconnected bits of internal narrative thoughts, none of which you can stay with...the more restlessness, the more "jumping", the faster you can force yourself to note (or notice) because you note with each jump, the more restlessness....on and on. (Drinking extra coffee on top of this really helps.) (cont)

(cont) I think this practice only works if you give yourself complete permission to feel really, really odd and uncomfortable during practice. And to do that, you have to be 100% committed to the goal of getting clarity about the world, and not to directly trying to feel better. (If you think clarity will help you feel better, that's OK, but clarity has to be the first thing.) Noting really fast will ultimately generate a good deal of concentration, but when it's set in the context of so much restlessness, it tends to lead to very bizarre mental states, and magnifies the qualities of the various nanas also. Think "jitter samadhi" instead of jhana.

Also, it's not like I worked this out before I did it. I just started noting in this heavy-handed way, got the restlessness positive feedback loop going, it seemed to be working, so I kept going and going...I think my mind is more jumpy and fragmented than most people's, so it might come more naturally to someone who has a mind like that.

(Also, I should say that I eventually learned (around 3rd path) how to note / notice this fast without generating any tension. The tension is just training wheels, and eventually I took them off.)

So, give it a try if you like, but only if what I described sounds appealing to you. I wouldn't do it differently if I had to do it over; I got stream entry on day 3 of using this method, and second path about 3-4 days later. (cont)

Hello Laurel

"I find metta practice harder than everything else; I always end up in tears. So my sense is there's no escape".

Not all that long ago I remember a period in my own practice that was were I had exactly the same response to any kind of metta or compassion. My situation was fairly extreme in that I had a succession of personal crises that were very difficult to manage. The practice advice I received at the time was to cultivate compassion toward all those who I felt had harmed me. The result was like jumping off a cliff into a maelstrom of grief and despair. But I felt I had no other option but to continue with the practice, after all when the going gets really tough, formally verbose people become very quiet all of a sudden and the advice just dries up.

But eventually something extraordinary started to happen. These intense emotions became disconnected from my "stuff" and appeared to arise entirely independently. Then these sensations became almost purely physical and the excruciating and uncontrollable sobbing became just physical spasms, no more or less disturbing than a window banging in the wind.

Later on in the process, the physical sensations broke down further into desecrate processes that appeared to be much more loosely related than I would have believed possible. I have continued in this vein ever since. I'm not even sure if there is an end to it. So in a sense, I agree with you, there is no escape, but I'm not entirely sure that that is a bad thing. Of course, if some one had said that to me when I was in the middle of it all, I would have marked them down as a dangerous nutter.

I'd love to know how this pans out for you, I thought it was just me. I've never really shared this and would love to know how it unfolds for others.

Metta

Howard

Love this, thanks.

"I think this practice only works if you give yourself complete permission to feel really, really odd and uncomfortable during practice."

The question of what to do about all the suffering that comes up is a good one, and poignant. My own experience is that, past stream entry, the majority of the suffering that came up had to do either with dark night nanas during review cycles right after paths or pathlike moments, or (less commonly) dark night nanas during "new" cycles that didn't really give me any new insight once I completed them. And I think what helped me deal with it all is that I had a technique (ultrafast noting) that would move me between nanas very rapidly when I was in a generic review cycle. What I mean is, when I sat down to note whatever came up after stream entry, I could go from review-A&P to review-equanimity to cessation in under an hour, when I had gotten to 3rd path I could do it in under two minutes, and by late 3rd path I could do it in under ten seconds. And so I used it all the time to force myself out of the DN anytime I ended up there when I wasn't learning anything from it. Lots of times I would force myself out, get cessation, and end up back there again a little while later...but each time I could keep forcing myself out, and eventually the cycles would recede and I'd be back to feeling normal. This never produced any insight during 3rd path at all (the cessation was always a review, not pathlike), but it did keep the suffering constrained to minutes or hours (or once, a day or two), and not weeks of horror as some people seem to experience. And I will say that some of what I felt during those dark night stages was horrific in ways I can't easily describe, so I was very glad to have had a way to control those periods.

So the general advice I would give is, as soon as you get stream entry, consider trying to figure out how to meditate up to equanimity and get a cessation in the most efficient way, and then work on doing that faster and faster over time. What works for you may not be what worked for me, so experiment. (cont)

(cont) I think cultivating metta and karuna may help, but that depends a lot on your personality, so you would be in a better place to evaluate that than me.

The only advice I would give my past self would be, after stream entry, to just go for 4th path, stop worrying about whether you'll be crazy afterwards, stop worrying about whether it will be a drastic personality change, stop worrying about whether it takes a long time or a short time, and in general stop worrying about anything that isn't helping you make progress. In some sense, 4th path is the only sane place to be, the only place where you can be a regular person not consumed with worry about the delusions that made you want to practice in the first place, and without the basic everyday human existential unhappiness. All the other paths are nice to visit, better than what came before, but not places you'd want to live.

I'm curious if (and how) your experience of Dark Night effects off the cushion changed as your practice progressed. Could you elaborate a bit on this?

Hi EndInSight

Thanks, there is some great stuff there. I am reading MTCB (although I skimmed it online a year or so ago) He talks about getting that bolder up and over the hill as the best way to go. This sounds a bit like thats what you did. Just really went for it.

The feedback loop you developed between noting/tension/faster noting etc sounds like a powerful tool and yet it also sounds quite psychologically dangerous. Almost like self induced anxiety/stress.

I'll be honest with you, I got into meditation as I thought I would help me transcend stress/suffering and anxiety. Where as I understand the need to stay present to suffering....I also expreince a reluctance to deliberatly induce psychological suffering, despite the ultimate rewards.

Anyway, it obviously worked for you and so its useful to hear. Im also aware that however I spin it, suffering will catch up with me eventually. Years of smoking the weed and mild/moderate background anxiety have made a bit cautious regarding my psychological health. Im alright these days, in fact the noting practice has been great a grounding me in the present. I want to progress, but I dont want to end up in a worse state than where I started out.

Having said all that......getting stream entry in 3 days wow!.....It defintly sounds worth a shot. So you were just noting, what ever came up, as quick as possible?......silently and repetitively? eg multiple notes per inhalation.

thanks for the advice!

Hmm - interesting log. This may be worth an experiment since my psychology already leans in that direction. I did get a super hard first jhana once by force(tried insanely hard for an hour, gave up and 10 min later looked at something intently and got sucked into it for a half hour), I haven't tried again though. I wonder if the force causes the mind to go on autopilot?

Ed76, I'll explain the method I used in detail in another post, in case you or someone else wants to give it a whirl.

I just caught up on this thread. Thanks for sharing - very interesting stuff.

Thanks - thats awesome.

Thoughts about practice for today.

*Lying down is not a good way for me to get into direct mode. I can do vipassana and samatha just fine lying down (in some ways better than in any other position), but to get state 6 when I'm not already there it's best to be sitting or walking around (reclining is OK).

*The general progression seems to be like this. When I recognize that bodily grounding isn't happening, ,I ask "where are the emotions I'm having located?" Eventually there is a shift where the perception of "internal space" is suppressed, and emotions are seen to be body sensations. If I hold my attention on my body in a certain way (similar to Kenneth's :"lightning rod" practice), eventually there is another shift where this recogntion "clicks" and tends to stay in place for awhile. If I don't wait for the click, the whole practice unravels as soon as I get distracted. If I do, there is a sense of effortlessness about it even if I don't give the practice 100% attention. So, reminder to myself, always wait for the click.

*Direct mode comes in degrees. Doing the lightning rod practice is like the very beginning of DM. When it clicks, that's going a little further into it. State 7 is even further into it. I have been beyond that point, but don't have a theory of it yet. I'm also not sure how State 8, narrativity, plays into it. I do imagine that there is an apex to DM (probably what people call a PCE), but I haven't been there yet; there is always a little, barely perceptible something which disqualifies my experience from being a full-on experience of DM. Even so, the region between regular experience and the DM apex is extremely powerful and worthwhile to me. (cont)

(cont) *It seems that DM ends only because of greed, hatred, and delusion; what makes it end are things like e.g. having a thought occur to me, and then recognizing that it's about a subject that I *enjoy* thinking about and so *want* to think about (greed). This pulls me a little bit out. Then I have more thoughts like that, and follow up on them. Eventually DM is a distant memory. Without things like that pulling me out of it, I imagine it would never end except by choice.

*Traditional Buddhism recommends renouncing the world and detachment from worldly things. I don't think this is just a helpful suggestion that makes it easier to meditate. To be more successful with DM, it seems like I have to employ a very broad kind of renunciation, renouncing such minor-seeming things such as the interest in or willingness to pursuing a train of thought because I like it. This puts traditional Buddhism's rules and suggestions about morality and behavior in a very different light for me. This also brings me to think about greed, hatred, and delusion in their gross forms, which are not abandoned via path attainment (in contrast to the subtle forms which are, and which I spent a lot more time thinking about in the past).

*For the purposes of cultivating DM I think it helps to say, "for the duration of formal practice today, I resolve not to indulge my greed, hatred, or delusion, insofar as I can control that, and no matter how inconsequential indulging them seems."

"renouncing such minor-seeming things such as the interest in or willingness to pursuing a train of thought because I like it."

Hi....I'll look forward to hearing about your teachnique.

I'm only commenting because I have just found a great teaching on this very thing. Pema Chodrons talk Gettting Unstuck. She talks about Shenpa as the quality that differentiates arising thoughts and thoughts where we get stuck, hooked or in this case embedded.

A little insight into the process has really helped me, as I get hooked really easily. Identifying Shenpa as opposed to the content (eg wow that was good meditation or whats this guys problem)...helps me stay a little more grounded.

I explain my technique here: kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4647646/-

It's not a recommendation to try it. I don't know if anyone should try it. I don't know if it's effective for everyone, or just for me. But there it is.

Went to Kenneth's class on Tuesday, he made a general suggestion that four foundations-style noting was a good way to shut up distracting / narrative thought. The basic idea is to figure out what speed of noting and foundation or combination of foundations takes up all your available mental bandwidth; at that point, there's no distraction or narrative. So I tried it. My basic observation is that there is no choice of speed and the various foundations that has any effect like that for me. Slow noting (one per second) leaves an enormous amount of free, undedicated bandwidth that gets allocated to whatever. Faster noting (2-4 per second) leaves time for partial narrative thoughts, like "what?" or "huh?" or "but..." or "...and this!" Breakneck speeds (10+ per second) generate more thoughts as the speed increases, but isn't compatible with the foundations for me anyway.

By contrast, Owen suggested in another thread that I should try noting and letting go of the result. This suppresses narrative thoughts, but only because it leads to an EE. And it isn't the noting that does it, but the "letting go." And "letting go" here does not mean "having equanimity towards the result" or "not manipulating experience" but assigning no processing time to the result. Which is equivalent to my normal method, which is to hold my attention vise-like on my body and senses and away from thinking (which means not processing thoughts) until the EE starts...except my normal method is more efficient for me.

One conclusion I draw is that, for me, noting is good for vipassana, but bad for everything else.

Another conclusion I draw is that it's important to know your own mind and what's effective for it, implicitly or explicitly. Not all minds are constructed the same way. (cont)

(cont) What works for one may not work for another. The more nonstandard a mind is, the more likely that typically useful techniques will not work, and really uncommon techniques will. If you have such a mind, you've got to find the effective techniques for yourself, and you may have to invent them yourself too.

In my case, I'd say my mind is definitely the nonstandard type. For example, I have a form of synaesthesia; that's just one of potentially many differences from most people. Lots of people seem to have success with Kenneth's four foundations-style noting; I apparently don't. Techniques I've described that work brilliantly for me (breakneck noting for insight, the "attention-vise" thing for direct mode) are ones that I imagine that most people wouldn't like, or else they would have figured them out themselves in the past and been praising them to the heavens already. These differences probably relate to variations in functional neurophysiology, not to technique implementation.

So, know yourself, especially if you think your mind is very different from the standard; the more you are able to tailor techniques to your own idiosyncrasies, the more effective they'll be, and the less time you have to waste working to get to whatever goal you've set out for yourself.

My practice has been sort of nonexistent for the last few days, so as penance I forced myself to sit for 30 minutes before bed last night.

Sat down on the couch, struggled for awhile to get to state 6, eventually it "clicked," then flitted between 6 and 7. The feeling of the couch against my body, the sounds of the dishwasher and a TV in the background, and the subdued sense of seeing the unlit room were exquisite. Recognized afterwards that I need to do more penance, maybe to the tune of 30 minutes each day no matter what.

I'm learning more about what disappears as direct mode deepens, and also better strategies for prolonging it. Once state 6 "clicks," the main impediment is sense-pleasures (in this case the mind sense); thoughts occur to me which are enticing, which I want to continue thinking about, and if I indulge that want, I don't get to state 7 or fall out of it. It isn't sufficient to objectify the thoughts as I'm indulging them; it's sensuality itself (deriving mental pleasure from the senses) which is the problem. So I have to act like a good Buddhist and guard my sense doors, which in this case means anytime a pleasant train of thought occurs to me, I force my attention off of it and onto something else (body, visual field, dishwasher sounds) as a way of refusing to continue. It doesn't seem to be the first few involuntary thoughts like that which are the main problem, but the willingness to indulge those thoughts over time, so cutting off the thoughts after about a second or two appears to be sufficient for where I am in this practice.

This practice requires more challenging mental gymnastics out of me than vipassana did. To "be mindful" and not get distracted in vipassana is relatively easy, especially because distractions typically have no special appeal and are not "indulged," but just happen, and typically have no enjoyable aspects for me. (cont)

(cont) But the kinds of narrative thoughts that I generate during DM practice which entice me are all enjoyable and pleasant, and so I viscerally WANT to continue them, and have to exert a kind of special self-restraint so as not to continue on with them. It's like when Mara temped the Buddha by offering him his three daughters; but as a small fish in this pond, all Mara offers me so far is the opportunity to ruminate on how great this practice is and what I'm doing tomorrow.

Ruminating on those things isn't nearly as good as direct mode, but direct mode is good in a non-visceral way, and so doesn't have any "pull." The mind has to represent what's good about it in a purely cognitive way, and that purely cognitive way has little influence on my default inclinations and desires except when that mode of perception is ACTUALLY HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. As wonderful as it is, it seems that the formal commitment to 30 minutes a day of DM practice is what is required for me to actually do it consistently, because absent any emotional pull on my mind, I lack the inclination. Rejecting sensual pleasures during DM practice is relatively easy; choosing DM practice over sensual pleasures during the day, before state 6 is solidly established, is much, much harder.