Drunken Vipassana Fist: An Introduction

This is a style of noting I discovered, early on in my career as a yogi, which was extremely effective for me, getting me stream entry and second path very very quickly. A few people expressed interest when it came up in my practice journal, so this is the thread in which I'll share the details.

I have no idea whether this will be helpful for anyone else, and I am not personally recommending that anyone try it. It's merely a description of what I did, and how it might hypothetically work out for other yogis. If you do decide for whatever reason to try it, ask your doctor first; it's physically stressful.

The idea behind this style of noting is to take a mind state that is normally dysfunctional, off-balance, scattered, and full of hindrances, and transform those qualities into a means of doing extremely fast, precise vipassana. Watch this video for inspiration:

Those who I think will be most interested in the method are

1) Yogis who are already predisposed to racing thoughts, who have trouble keeping their minds on any one object, and especially on any one train of thought in non-meditation contexts,

2) Yogis who resonate with the idea of a rite of passage. Anyone who manages to get path using this method will probably feel like they had to go through some bizarre Buddhist hazing ritual to do it, and

3) Beginning yogis who are not progressing as fast as they would like, and who are interested in the fact that I made quick progress with it, and yet never made any progress using other methods for a long time before I tried this.

As will be obvious, the method itself is not exactly pleasant; I had to give myself permission to feel really, really odd during practice in order to do it.

This is what I did. The basic requirement is to note as fast as possible. Here is an exercise that will clarify what I mean.

1) Start off by repeating the word 'that' as fast as possible in your mind, like a mantra. You will be able to generate the word extremely fast, maybe on the order of ten times per second or more.
2) Recognize that each time you generate the word in 1, whether or not you noticed it, there was an instance of seeing happening.
3) Repeat the word 'that' in your mind as fast as possible, except that for each instance of it, you specifically notice any part of your visual field before going on to the next instance (trying to keep the speed as close as possible to the speed in 1)
4) Then, reverse the order, noticing the visual field and then noting 'that.'

When your speed at 4 is a respectable fraction of your speed at 1, that's noting as fast as possible.

Anyhow. Before sitting, I had a LOT of caffeine. Enough to make me pretty wired, but not so much that I had uncontrolled anxiety or anything like that. But really wired, perhaps beyond what would be productive or useful or desirable in any other context.

At the beginning of the sit, I would take something in my visual field (generally eyes open) as an object, and either silently note it as fast as possible or, if vibrations were obvious, would silently note or notice the vibrations as fast as possible. The choice to note or notice would depend on how confident I was that I could notice without losing track of what I was doing, and whether noticing could go a lot faster than noting. (During A&P, for example, the vibrations are so fast that noticing was clearly the better choice.) Sometimes I would use 'seeing' as the note, sometimes I would use 'that.'

In trying to note as fast as possible, I would bear down, clench my fists, furrow my brow, and TRY as hard as I possibly could to see something additional to note, either faster vibrations, or other phenomena (I'll explain how to note other phenomena in a bit). I would approach it as if it were a matter of life or death, as if I had to expend every last bit of energy to stay one pace ahead of Mara. And my body would react as if I really was trying to perform some all-important physical feat: My heart would race at 160bpm, my entire body would tense up, sweat would drip down my sides, and and I would feel this immense sense of energy or physical momentum, which of course I had no outlet for, since I was meditating.

The combination of caffeine, physical stress, and pushing myself ever-harder would generate an enormous, abnormal amount of restlessness. Staying with a visual object was impossible. Staying with anything at all was impossible. My mind would jump from thing to thing to thing, like a crazy drunken monkey.

What I found was, if my mind would jump fast enough, then the jumps would not be distractions or opportunities to get lost in thought, because they would happen too quickly to stay on any one train of thought, they were utterly unpredictable, and they would often lead to subtle mental objects which were especially interesting objects for vipassana that were hard to see otherwise. And the jump-moments themselves would be really obvious and salient. So, every jump would be an opportunity to note whatever object my mind wanted to attend to, IN ADDITION to the default attempt I was making to note seeing. And the more my mind would jump, the harder I could try to see and note all the jumps, the more tension and stress I would produce, the more restlessness I would have in my mind, the more it would jump from object to object while I was noting the visual field in the background...and you see where this is going.

So, my method used something in my visual field as a default thing to note, and my mind would jump around crazily between that and bits of narrative, bits of running commentary on how meditation was going, all kinds of odd and stressful physical sensations, bits of visualizations of all sorts, the feeling of trying to note faster, the feeling of not finding anything to note, etc. and I would just make sure to note as much of the circus as I could along with the visual field. I almost always used generic labels for my notes ('that') because finding a suitable label would take too long and the objects were so unpredictable and rapidly-arising.

Occasionally I found it useful to switch the default object from the visual field to something else that was coming up that was difficult. During the DN, I would switch around between feelings of disconnection, misery, unpleasant body buzzing, and things like that. I also found it useful to sort of direct my attention in one way or another, trying to note any interesting or new phenomena, such as 'spaciousness' or 'observer' during Equanimity. But I had to make peace with the fact that it was impossible to control my attention in any significant way (the majority of objects would be the circus of random stuff, no matter what) and was satisfied to direct it in a limited way towards the stuff that might not get enough attention otherwise and seemed to be calling out for some, for the sake of insight into them.

At times it was helpful to bear in mind 'if I can see it, it isn't me.' I also made a rule that I was not allowed to note an emotion or mental state unless I thought I could see it clearly (during DN there was a lot of stuff that turned out to be a composite of multiple objects).

Eventually I made my way to Equanimity, spent a lot of time furiously noting, eventually decided to take a break (laid down, closed my eyes, tried to be mindful in some generic way without falling asleep), fell into a kind of reverie with no mental content and no ability to will or note (high equanimity / neither-perception-nor-non-perception) and got stream entry from there. There was no sense of time in the reverie or in cessation, but from the clocks I judge that it took about 30 minutes. And I got second path after a few more days of ultrarapid noting (albeit without generating as much tension).

I want to reiterate that this method is not especially fun, probably can be destabilizing, and that the mental state produced by high levels of concentration from ultrafast noting set in the context of so much restlessness is really bizarre. But it got me to be able to note FAST, beyond anything I could do in any other way that I knew of. That seemed to be the crucial thing for me. And I also think it contributed to my ability to note fast without using this method.

If I were running a martial arts school for this, I would award a black belt for the following technique. There can come a point where restlessness is so high that it seems as if the mind's wheels are spinning but it isn't generating any thoughts or doing much of anything at all besides spazzing out (as if moving so fast has made it dysfunctional). The sense of 'wheels spinning' is actually a series of subtle mental objects which are not present or not obvious normally. It's as if, with enough restlessness, the mind gives up on attending to normal objects, and now focuses on subtle ones. There is a sort of finesse to being in this state for more than a few moments without messing it up by forcing the mind to do something else, but if you can learn to do that, you can notice the subtle objects rush by at outrageous speeds'¦this is extremely powerful vipassana.

And, if you can do this at will without generating a trace of physical tension, you can open up your own school and have your students call you sifu, with my blessing.

Some people may think that the method I've described works because eventually you run out of steam and give up. But the ability to note ultrafast really is, in itself, powerful vipassana. If you master the 'wheels spinning' technique, you can do that and watch the nanas whiz by'¦as I described in my journal, even when working on later paths (where this method isn't likely to produce any new insight by itself), I found I was able to avoid lengthy drawn-out DN hells by using techniques like this to get a review cessation by force, anytime I found myself in the DN and didn't seem to be learning from it.

Very interesting approach. This kinda reminds me of a magick technique, with a bit of the whirling dervish vibe to the frantic noting. I'm going to give this a go as it sounds like an interesting experiment, thanks for posting about this in such detail.

Thanks - thats extremely interesting. Makes me think about sampling rates and whatnot, reminds me of the two fingers thing - hmm. I would call this 'woodpecker style' Starts to get me thinking about what really makes the mind faster anyway?

Yes, real interesting. Fast noting seems to be most effective for me. Never tried Ultra fast Effortful noting. Were you able to do this with a full time job and multi relationships, or did you find it too destabilizing for that much public practice? How much daily sitting time did you find optimal for this technique? Thanks!

Hi End,

That's some great stuff. Last week, in the throes of reobservation, nothing was working for me. Noting was like trying to hit individual rain drops in a storm with a tennis raquet. I started playing with something I remembered from MCTB (I'm pretty sure it was from there), alternating attention between a spot at the front and back of the skull. As I increased the speed, it went from moving the attention from front to back to a really fast general in-the-skull vibration which I could follow. I think I needed the speed to eclipse all the other crap.

Eric

I wonder if this is similar in a way to Owen's 'annica samadhi'

WSH: Don't know what annica samadhi is, but give me a link and I'll give you my opinion.

Kacchapa: I was at a transitional point in my life when I started this practice so I don't know how it would work in the context of a stable job / living situation / relationships / etc. The most destabilizing part for me was dealing with the rapid progress on a psychological level (it changed my view of myself and the world really quickly and really drastically, and I think more integration time would have been easier for me, though all things considered I wouldn't ask for more if I could do it over). On the other hand, no one I knew told me I did or said anything strange or unexpected. All things considered I think a formal or home retreat is the best context for this practice, not something you do for a few hours after work each day. As for how much time...I sat as long as I needed to sit with no preconception about how long that should be. I'd say that's part of the do-or-die attitude; really feeling, in your bones, that you must absolutely get this done. That's a strong source of the kind of mental energy that the practice harnesses.

If any of you brave (foolish?) souls actually do try this technique, I'd love to hear how it goes and what you think of it.

Hi, Eis!
Very interesting.
I get the do-or-die thing as opposed to a just a couple of hours.
Of course it's up to me to try it out to see what would happen, but do you (or anyone else) think it would be counterproductive to just do miniversions once in a while?
I mean note like a madman for an hour or two as a replacement to "regular" noting.

I personally have no idea. If you try it on a limited basis, let us know whether you found any benefit from it!

Hello EIS. You mention it took a few days to get second path. How long to get first path?
Thanks, Jacki.

About the same period of time. I don't remember exactly how long at the moment, but it was surprisingly fast.

Also, a clarification. Where I wrote:

"And, if you can do this at will without generating a trace of physical tension..."

By "physical tension" I meant tensing of the muscles (especially in the forehead), scrunching of the eyes, etc. The ability in question is being able to make your mind spin (and noting the components of that) through mental effort alone (which will include mental tension of some kind), without obvious physical side-effects (which would feed-back into extra, unnecessary mental tension if produced).