Villum's thousand and one mistakes

"I need to find a way to sit that doesn't kill my knees as much, working on that too. "
How do you sit now? Have you tried a bench?

When the pleasure gets fairly high, see if you can begin letting go of the attention wave, beginning with all the head tensions (including the Witness).

Don't let go of them by trying to dissolve them, let go of them by not looking at them (which is the same as not creating them). The stronger the pleasure. the easier it is to keep the mind from moving around to look.

If this works, you can go back and forth between this and cultivating pleasure. (The tensions stand in the way of concentration, so if you can suspend them to some extent, it will help you in cultivating more pleasure.)

EDIT: The key thing to realize is that all tensions have a sense of "looking at them" built-in. So, no looking means no tensions (rather than there being tensions which you've tuned out).

""I need to find a way to sit that doesn't kill my knees as much, working on that too. "
How do you sit now? Have you tried a bench?"


Been sitting japanese style, parallel legs, with a pillow between them. Gonna go back to burmese style, which seems to work better.

Have been waking up every two hours while sleeping at night lately. First i thought it was a medication thing. Discussion in last night's virtual sangha made it seem likely that it was actually the A&P waking me up. After checking tonight, it does seem likely that it's fruition/A&P and that i'm cycling at a frequency of 2 hours while sleeping. It might still well be the medication (new antidepressants) that causes me to wake up in the A&P.

30 minutes trying to jhana. Got interrupted then. Will get an hour in later tonight unless something doesn't work.
I'm working on how to cultivate the pleasure "born of withdrawal from sensual desire". Today, after some discussion with mumuwu, i assumed this to be the light joy/pleasure that comes from releasing tensions, and tried to cultivate that through not attaching to it and through releasing things in all the ways i know, and trying to tune into stillness without attaching to it. This approach seems to have promise, restlessness was less than the other approach, and there was no urge to stop sitting, and no looking at the clock.

Edit: Afterglow is better too, a bodily pleasure that has qualities of lightness and joy. Stillness is noticeable in a way it wasn't last time.

35 minutes. Powerful witness presence kept distracting. Also, it seems i'm still reviewing. witness experiments and other stuff earlier today seem to indicate that, at least. Still a nice afterglow, but not like earlier today, when i was a bit more successful. I suspect it's the same review phase as the one that seemed to start 21 of november. I think that would roughly correspond with my waking up every 2 hours while sleeping, too

30 minutes of trying to do EiS jhana, then i thought someone was at the door and gave in to subtle aversion. Slowly building the discipline for longer practice. I'm getting closer to the description from the simile of the bathman. Still want to get up to an hour straight sitting soon, as this practice requires time to develop the benefits.
Hoping things get better after review, too, but trying not to depend on it and just continue with the practice.

Edit: Note to self: Remember that i know how to ground and release the sense of time passing, and the sense of restlessness.
Witness is coming up very strong throughout practice these days. Hoping that will pass, as it constantly disturbs trying to keep at what i could call non-attending awareness, ie. everything being present without being particularly attended to or attended from.

1 hour yesterday, 35 minutes just now. Still can't keep up a stable non-vibratory pleasure. It gets easier as i go, but i don't really see the pleasure increasing. It gets easier as time passes, but during the sit i seem to keep starting over as most of the pleasure fades due to some distraction. Key so far seems to be an attitude of still detached appreciation, as well as tuning into stillness throughout the body.
Tips greatly appreciated.
Edit: For example: attitudes or ways of relating to the pleasure in order to cultivate it
Jhana sutta: "There is the case where a monk, secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters & remains in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born of seclusion" any hints as to how to be secluded from sensuality and unskillful qualities, which is seemingly enough by itself, is also appreciated.

Edit: notes to self: the pleasure-body does not seem to have clear borders in the way the tension-body has. I should cultivate pleasure in the entire pleasure body, through and through. new pointer: a still no-mind that is sensitive to pleasure. another: try to cultivate the incandescent pleasure of solid stillness, once it is recognized.

"It gets easier as time passes, but during the sit i seem to keep starting over as most of the pleasure fades due to some distraction. (...) any hints as to how to be secluded from sensuality and unskillful qualities, which is seemingly enough by itself, is also appreciated."

These things may or may not be related.

I have found that it is extraordinarily helpful to regulate what goes on before sitting...certain kinds of prior stimulation tend to generate all kinds of cognitive clutter that inserts itself into meditation-time every once in a while.

Depending on the stimulation, and depending on the person, some of it could be related to sensuality or desire, which would be distracting in two ways, whereas other types could simply be distracting in themselves.

So, investigating what happens right before sitting, and its effects, could help. (I think this is related to an advantage that monastic life has with respect to these practices...a monk does not have the same range of prior stimuli available to be distracting.)

I would tend to agree. Computer games are especially bad. Reading the suttas worked well just now to start a sit. Will look at things that disturb. and try to have a little coffee ceremony before sits.

Computer games are desire-promoting in a way that very few other things are. (It's worth putting some vipassana time into if you haven't already.)

articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/15/news/la...n-addiction-20111115

40 minutes. Either that was the wrong sort of pleasure, or review cycling was disrupting my jhana. i was trying to cultivate something i call the unarisen(understood as non-vibratory to me) nature of pleasure, accompagnied by the perception of light. In order to make vibrations harmless i saw them as passing in the moment they arose. This causes tensions to open up and partly release. I believe it is a dzogchen trick.
Didn't really succeed in cultivating that much pleasure, but the experience was somewhat peaceful, even though there were constant vibrations, arising over the body-as-a-field-of-light-and-coolness.
I wouldn't call this a success in what i'm trying to do, as i didn't cultivate that much pleasure, and when i got somewhere, vibrations increased, either because the pleasure was vibratory itself, or because of some reaction to the pleasure.

EiS: I'm not sure i have the vipassana skills to investigate that in a way that would give me any benefits. Would be nice if you could give a quick explanation: If you were to investigate the desire-that-comes-from-gaming, what would you look at, in what mode of mind, what would you be trying to ascertain, and what would you expect to gain from it? If it's too much of a bother to answer, dont worry about it

Edit: i think that was the Wrong Concentration - i notice that the mind tends towards absorbtion - towards locking-on. There is definitely a stillness, but the mental glue of desire/interest is strong (a factor which i suspect is one of the primary elements of the ADHD/inattentive diagnosis i have)
Edit 2: Seems i just refound right pleasure - which is a joy, bliss and lightness like a weight being lifted, naturally unbounded, and seemingly available through any sense door. Solidity is not an association you want, rather something like a mist of perfume and freedom and happiness and openness.

I'm considering whether the practice of ignoring vibrations to focus on the nonvibratory pleasure and stillness is problematic. It seems like might create an implicit opposition, and thus aversion, strengthening vibratory arisings and leading to tension. There is some ways of cultivating pleasure and stillness that seem not to have this effect, but i've only managed to do this reliably when focusing on only the stillness, and i might have forgotten how to do even that.
However, it also seems that enough pleasure stops the arising of vibratory phenomena - strong enough pleasurable vedana (if that is what i'm cultivating) seems like it does not give rise to craving et.c. Earlier, it seems to stop at the sort of becoming that goes beyond bodily tensions, grounding things. However, the grounding and the stillness (non-craving) might be caused by seperate kinds of cultivating pleasure, as i have not practiced enough to reliably discern between them.

30 minutes. Think i figured it out. The trick is to fill the body with something like the clouds of bliss that come up when you release something. This seems to strengthen to a sensation like clear cool sweet water.It seems very easy to keep sitting in this version. Also, this kind of bliss seems to automatically open up tensions. I did not, however, get to stillness, so i'm not sure this is the right kind of pleasure.
Working on the filling the body with bliss part - there are certain areas that tend to get ignored, especially around the neck. My jaw and throat tend to turn invisible.
OOPS: duh. I'm pretty sure that was PL1 that i accidentally accessed directly. That was why likely why the "witness" was so prominent. That was a fun mistake. Starting over tomorrow
Edit:Might have been right direction anyways. Will compare and contrast tomorrow.

Pure Lands for comparison 1: the pure lands seem composed of a very refined form of pleasantness similar to perfumed air. The pleasure of clear cool sweet water is available there, but seems nonvibratory by comparison.
I'm unsure of how vibratory the pleasure of the pure lands really is, or whether the pleasure is due to refinement of becoming to the degree that a nonvibratory pleasantness can be sensed beneath.

My preliminary conclusion from trying to look is that the pleasure of the pure lands is vibratory and thus not really pleasant if you look close enough, and that nonvibratory pleasure *may* be easier to find from there, due to the seemingly thinned becoming.
I am unsure of all of this, as the sutta jhanas i have been trying to practice seems to have somehow disrupted my absorbtion skills. There is a constant tendency to go back to full-sensory open focus and seek a more calm pleasure

Jhana practice will be resumed shortly, wanted to try an experiment based on the Udana sutta:
www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.055.than.html
So i sat, repeating 'It should not be, it should not occur to me; it will not be, it will not occur to me' releasing all things that came up, and the beliefs it's based on.
It developed sort of like my sutta jhana practice, except a lot messier, as i kept releasing things. Perceptions of bodily form, hopes of attainments, fears coming up, tensions, the importance of anything that came up, the importance of pleasure, of perceptions of self, of beliefs in the permanence of vibration-based states. The sweet water pleasure came up in spots, and later something different. I ended up in something where the perception of space seemed to be the primary thing/background, disturbed by a sleepy leg, and various tensions and vibrations still coming up.
This perception of space did not seem to be the one based on the shape of the attention wave, but rather a spaciousness that seemed to be simply there, primarily visually.
Preliminary conclusion: powerful practice, can in principle be done at any time. For me currently it is probably more useful as a non-sitting practice, as i suspect a stronger and more still jhana is required for it to come into it's own as a sitting practice.

Edit: the Udana Sutta ain't kidding about the fear that comes up. perhaps not such a good walking-around practice, as it tends to make me confused.

I am silly happy because everything is perfect.
*love*. I am filled with love. What a silly idea.
I do not think it is anything special. The thought keeps coming up, and i keep finding it silly.
It might be a very refined form of despair, but i find that idea silly too.
I will now make hot chocolate
*happy*

Something may have shifted yesterday, as the usual answer to "who am i", "villum" is pushed aside by "God".
Also, i'm not sure i even care about getting fourth path anymore. What is an attainment anyway?

55 minutes jhana attempt. Did not got very far, as strong affective clingy stuff, especially around the head kept distracting me and hiding the pleasure. A sweet light freedom/joy began to arise in the last bit of the practice, but couldn't get very far with that either.

Edit: it occurs to me that doing this with closed eyes continues to be a mistake, at least in the beginning of the sit.

Notice that everything is present
Notice that "My god... it's full of stars"
Notice that the body is a field of energy points
Notice that "My god... it's full of stars"

30 mins attempting to jhana. got mild pleasure and calm abiding. Continually surrendering to resting in the pleasure seems a viable path, and one that is likely to become easier. breathing pleasure into the body continues to seem like an important technique.

50 minutes trying to jhana, then caught up in an impulse and ended prematurely. quite nice sit otherwise. Filled the (most of) the body with a nice restful joyous feeling that was present beneath tension. Continuous surrendering and trying to be attentive in the way where the entire body is present, even the parts concealed beneath subtle vibrations. Near the end of the sit, icy pleasure of a of a more solid sort, like icy restful water, appeared in the shoulder. Close to what i have come to identify as piti, but very cold.
Shortly thereafter, i somehow flinched out of the sit, after which what seems like this same piti, only less cold, has begun to appear in the body. This seems to indicate some non-resting element to the way i sit, where this piti seems more available when not meditating. I will experiment with adjusting my meditation in accordance with this possible insight.

Edit: i suspect the icy part is due to it being cold in my apartment. There is a tendency to pleasure not being felt in the head, unless i take specific steps, either through breathing through the area, or through connecting it with the rest of the body. This might be related to significant "tensions" in the neck that tend to render it invisible to ordinary attention unless forced, and (probably related?) to the head not being included in my concept of "body"

Some further notes: it seems i was right that there was some non-relaxation going on in the way i approached jhana, a sort of effort that went away as i ended the sit. I did a shorter untimed sit, and was able to tune into the relaxation that happens as the last sit ended. Resting in stillness seems to be key to allowing the pleasure to build, as does a very calm breathing pattern.
I know it can go deeper than this short sit, but this is exquisite, this is joy, calm and sweetness and a drink of water in the desert.

Mapping things and having fun
Now, i've previously concluded but nowhere documented that the Four Yogas of Mahamudra seem to line up with certain things in pragmatic dharma. The first yoga will not concern us here (it seems exclusively concerned with concentration training), the second yoga, the Yoga of Special Insight, seems to line up with getting the four paths. The third yoga, the Yoga of One Taste, seems to line up nicely with the area from fourth path to "early AF", the shift involving the ending of the inner life that Owen and Nick experienced this fall. The remains of the path would then line up with the fourth yoga, the yoga of nonmeditation. Now, it seems to me we can fit in MN 106: Conducive to the Imperturbable on this map.
www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.106.than.html
Been talking about this sutta with Mumuwu. It talks about certain permanent attainments involving a sort of permanent formless jhanas. There is the base of the imperturbable, from 4th to 6th jhana, the base of nothingness, the 7th jhana, the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, the 8th jhana. and Unbinding, perhaps aligning with the themeless meditation that can be reached from the actual 8th jhana.
I'm cutting out a lot of reasoning in this post, but i think this lines up with the map i've just been drawing. The the base of the imperturbable lines up with the yoga of special insight (KFD five to seven), the bases of nothingness and base of 8th line up with the yoga of nonmeditation. Unbinding lines up with (depending on how it is defined) Unbinding. Now, mumuwu seems to like aligning the base of the imperturbable with just KFD 6 and 7, but i'm gonna include KFD 5 for the pattern's sake.
continued...