fr Jack: Mahamudra

"This morning I did 40 minutes ping pong noting plus 20 minutes mm ping ponging. Went for a 45 minutes walk this evening doing mm meditation with limited success. Then I watched Shinzen Young teaching mm at . Right after, I did 30 minutes mm with very little noting. What I took from Shinzen was relaxing and letting the conscious mm process that I had internalized take over. I reached that nothing spot and wanted to stay there without any effort. It was as if worries, knee pain, etc. were going by as a stream with emptiness holding them all. Nothing could touch 'me'. Previously I had to consciously recognize phenomena, accept them, look for the positives and consciously listen to the ships. It was work in a sense.

I've learned a lot from this thread. Thanks.

jack"

Beautiful, Jack.

A day or so ago I was doing ping pong mm noting. My partner and I agreed that he was to go back to verbal free form noting for 5 minutes in the middle in order to keep his concentration up and I would continue to do mm. While he did free form noting, for me it was if the openness grew much smaller and the stream of the hearing,hearing of hearing my partner grow larger. Then when he went back to mm noting, my openness grew much larger and the other much smaller.

jack

My mm practice has proved to be very satisfying. I would not have stuck with it if I hadn't done mm ping ponging with a partner at first. We ping pong together first thing every morning. The format changes but the one we have been using lately is 10 minutes 1,3,4 noting followed by 20 minutes free form noting followed by 30 minutes mm. Then I do 30-60 minutes of some kind of meditation at night.

Awareness of openness comes in and out when I do mm. At its best, phenomena still occur but they are pervaded by openness. All thoughts of ships in the harbor or the slight strain of listening disappear. A few times openness seems to shift into another mode. Everything is bright and vibrant. A deep stillness exists while phenomena still floats by. Unfortunately these times are short. Other times openness is there above while a stream of phenomena floats by below. Doing mm while out walking has been especially successful. In the mm process I have been surprised by the power of Accepting. I have also been surprised by the subtle phenomena I become aware of that I am not aware of while doing free form noting.

On another note, I spent decades not moving and keeping my eyes closed while meditating on the cushion. Now at times I move, look around in all types of meditation except samatha but still am mindful. The depth of the meditation remain the same or deeper. Interesting.
jack

Doubt comes up much more often in my mm practice than my other meditation practices. This morning after 5 minutes of mm practice a strong sense of doubt hit me, which I gave a positive spin by noting concern.

Very few times does boats in the harbor or being in space come up. Its just openness/emptiness. Sometimes openness disappears and the 4 Foundations are there. Other times openness/emptiness is there to different degrees and the 4F's float by. It's a size thing, openness might be very large and 4 F's very small. Other times the opposite. But, then something happens like it did this morning and openness pervades everything. Background becomes quiet and whatever comes to the foreground is very clear and sharp. I am aware of every thought and sensation. But this later state doesn't last very long.

Am I on the right track?

jack

IMO yes, sounds like things are going smooth. Its great that you keep noting the 4 Fs, concern, doubt, etc. That's right noting.

One other thing I do with doubt: when asking a question, the question itself has an open quality attached to it. Why? Because there is no answer yet. When one answers, we impose concepts to whatever we're observing, so instead of desperately trying to answer or find the answer, we can investigate AND abide within the nature of questions, doubts, etc.

What I do is:
1. I genuinely ask a question like, for example, "who am I?" I sincerely feel my curiosity, my sense of wonder, as if I were an anthropologist, investigator, scientist, etc.
2. I repeat the question (without answering) while observing myself to cultivate curiosity without answers.
3. I let the question mutate to other questions: who am I? what am I? What is this I'm feeling? How am I feeling myself?, etc. (this is actually in a way similar to AF's HAIETMOBA).
4. After a while, doubting becomes open observation without answers (concepts), it feels like a wordless noting. Little by little this takes you into emptiness and MM.

I hope this helps.

- Alejandro

1 hour ping ponging every morning with 1/2 4F noting followed by 1/2 mm. 30 minutes at night 4F noting. The first several months of doing mm every day went great. After that, the openness/emptiness part became very mundane. In the last 1 1/2 weeks, my mm sessions changed. An example is this morning. I spent almost all the time either accepting all the crap going on in my head or transforming them into positive experiences. If I wasn't ping ponging I would have ended the mm session and gone in to read the paper. I found myself grasping after the great experiences I used to have. Then I would accept the grasping. My ping pong partner suggested I take 10 minutes during the mm session, go to mute and do 4F noting to clear my head. My thought was to slog through the mm sessions the best I can thinking my present problems will pass. I also thought I would do more samatha work at other sessions. Any suggestions?

jack

I have been doing a mahamudra practice for over 7 months now. Fascinating stuff. It is never the same from day to day. The best way to describe what is happening lately is a awareness of that which is beyond phenomena. A stillness is probably the best way to describe it. I am still aware of phenomena but the stillness/openness/emptiness is beyond that. "Beyond" is not quite the right word but the best I can come up with now. The "problem" is this awareness doesn't stay very long. Then I have to strive to reach it again. Once reached I surrender to it but after a few minutes it goes away again.
Twenty some years ago I heard a teaching on meditation that fits. When your practice is young it is like standing at a railway crossing watching a train go by. Sometimes a train car catches your interest and you follow it with your attention, eventually bringing your attention back to what is in front of you. As your practice matures you spend more and more time just on what is happening in front of you. You start to notice the space between the cars. Eventually this space becomes the foreground of your attention and the moving train becomes the background.
Yesterday I meditated 3 hours in the morning and 20 minutes at night. The morning started off with ping pong noting with my Skype partner. We did 30 minutes single word 4 Foundations noting (pressure, for instance) followed by 30 minutes of multiple word 4 Foundations noting (pressure, neutral, for instance). We broke for 30 mintes while I did walking meditation outside in the rain. I stayed in the witness throughout the walking. We then got back on Skype. I did 30 minutes mahamudra. This was followed by 30 minutes ping pong noting. We have decided to do this every Saturday morning. Great stuff. At night I went on a long walk and spent 20 minutes of it doing mahamudra practice.

Jack

My mahamudra practice seems to always be changing. I've recently found KF's accepting, listening and MM ping ponging techniques to have been in the past very valuable but are intrusive now. For one thing, too much striving. Now I have adopted Shinzen Young's do nothing meditation () for the last few weeks. Prior to that, I was using listening and accepting to access openness/stillness and then surrendered once 'there.'. After several minutes, I would be back where I had to strive to return. Then I would surrender again. Now in this do nothing meditation I let everything go without any intention. Accepting and listening were a very valuable part of the process and seems to have been necessary to get where I am now. I have no idea if I am on the right track now.

jack

This morning, I did 1 hour ping pong noting with a partner followed by 20 minutes solo mm. Lately my mm practice is a few minutes of accepting then I am 'there.' A great stillness takes over, no intentions are there and I am still open to sensations and thoughts but they are surrounded by this stillness. A sense of 'I' goes in and out. Am I on the right path?

I think you are on the right path my friend. The "do nothing" technique is 3rd gear basically. However, to get the most out of it, I'd suggest you go for the "I", "identity", "I exist" or "self" feeling. The objective is to include the self within the contemplation itself. There are many ways to do this, but lately what I do is ask myself: "what am I doing right now?" I usually answer: observing, watching, meditating, sensing, feeling, etc.

Then I don't do anything, I just "stare" at the answer, I stare at what I'm doing and if my action changes I let it change.

Sometimes I ask the question and get answers like: wanting to control, wanting to eradicate tension and pain, wanting to get enlightened, etc. These answers are very tricky because they usually lead us to dualistic fixation: the more we want to control, eradicate, manipulate, achieve something, the more we get stuck and create tension (instead of doing nothing as the technique suggests, we do many things and get nowhere).

What to do when we bump into our desires to control? Nothing, we stare at them. But be careful, there is a very subtle trap here: when I say "stare" I don't mean that we find a new place to stare at things (that would create a new duality, a new fragmentation from phenomena and we want to avoid that). To stare within right view, the right way, we let ourselves BE the answers of the question.

Example:
1) What am I doing? Answer: watching, wanting to control, etc.
2) Hence, at this precise moment I am the "watching", the "wanting to control. I am that sensation.
3) Then I just continue with the "doing nothing" technique and, if really abstain from controlling, then "watching", "wanting to control", etc. will rise and cease. The ceasing sometimes feels like a change.

In this sense, we will let ourselves change. The changing happens by itself.

Example: from being "watching" naturally and spontaneously we change to something else, like, "disappearing" or "investigating".

Don't worry abt. getting to emptiness. Emptiness is always happening and it'll reveal itself.

EDITED for clarity

I hope this helps Jack.

Thanks for the response, AP. The way I would approach the "I"/self is to not include this as an effort/controlling within the MM practice itself. I would depend on other practices to get this in my subconscious or whatever. Then I would "do nothing" during MM and depend on my past other practices to bring it in. How does this sound?

Sounds good to me. The tibetans do this by "taking refuge in the Buddha". This means they surrender themselves to Buddha Nature over and over so that later one is surrendering naturally. At first it feels like one is "doing something", but this is just to "get this in your subconscious".

In order to surrender, one has to be present, so basically you are here and at the same time letting yourself go over and over. Then suddenly, you realize you don't actually have to do something to be present because you are always present, and also, you realize you are surrendering all the time, naturally and spontaneously.

Mindfulness plays a big role here, without mindfulness of the I/self, the I/self assumes (again) that it exists inherently. How does one bring mindfulness into the I/self? Find your presence: I'm here.

Mindfulness of the I/self = Knowing that I am here.

Then what you do is merge "Knowing I am here" with "do nothing" and "surrendering".

During MM practice, I find myself switching between KF' "ships in the harbor" with its gentle striving/doing and Shinzen Young's "do nothing" practice. Both seem necessary. If I find myself daydreaming with little concentration, I will switch to doing nothing. If I am "there", I will stay doing nothing.

I seem to have two modes of striving/doing something during MM practice. In the first, for example, I will consciously switch to "ships in the harbor" In the second, I am aware of switching without my "I" being involved. I am doing something without managing the doing.

Also interesting is that after 30-45 minutes of MM practice, I find my body and mind is very relaxed, much more relaxed than doing 4 Foundations noting or even samadha meditation.

Jack

Check out Shinzen's focus on rest and focus on positive. Mahamudra noting seems to include elements of both. Do Nothing is a special instance of focus on rest (you can read more about it in the linked doc).

www.shinzen.org/Retreat%20Reading/Focus%20on%20Rest-Summary.pdf
www.shinzen.org/Retreat%20Reading/Focus%...Positive-Summary.pdf

"Check out Shinzen's focus on rest and focus on positive. Mahamudra noting seems to include elements of both. Do Nothing is a special instance of focus on rest (you can read more about it in the linked doc).

www.shinzen.org/Retreat%20Reading/Focus%20on%20Rest-Summary.pdf
www.shinzen.org/Retreat%20Reading/Focus%...Positive-Summary.pdf "

mumuwu, you might be right but I am getting something different from Shinzen's categories. Focus Rest to me means samadhi, a state of rest, a dropping of the hindrances. Focus Positive is cultivating positive mind states. Do Nothing, which Shinzen calls mahamudra, is something else. It carries one to a state of emptiness. It also to my understanding does not directly cultivate postive mind states unless it is Kenneth's method.

Sometimes when I do Do Nothing (sounds funny when I say that), I get to a mahamudra place. Other times I just day dream. Then I gently introduce Kenneth's "ships in the harbor" striving. I suspect but don't know if I do Do Nothing for several hours I would, reach that MM space. I'm still not clear on when to stive and when to drop any striving.

I would appreciate comments on this.

jack

Kenneth's mahamudra noting is based on using the ships in the harbour (noted as listening) as an anchor while noting anything positive that arises explicitly (happiness, contentment, spaciousness) while noting negative things with "release".

You might want to check out how vipassana and shamatha are approached and integrated in the mahamudra system. That will allow you to simply cut through any obscurations.

Have you read "Clarifying The Natural State"?

Also - what happens if you contemplate what it would be like to have no experience at all, to be dead, void, cut-off. Then notice what it is that lets you know you are having an experience, that you aren't dead, void or cut-off. Notice you are aware - always - already - without effort.

Mumuwu, is there anything on the Web that talks about vipassana and samadhi in mahamudra? Would you recommend my buying "Clarifying the Natural State"? I'll try your contemplation exercise. Thanks for the suggestion.

I have been doing "ships in the harbor" daily for over 6 months now and Shinzen's Do Nothing for maybe 2 months.

jack

I couldn't find anything online that really went into detail on it. That book is a practical guide to mahamudra meditation and includes lots of different exercises. It starts with various types of shamatha. Vipassana revolves around studying thought as it arises to see that it is empty and insubstantial. It does the same thing with emotional obscurations. When seen in this way, they don't actually disturb the calm abiding, but merely arise and self liberate within it.

Best of luck with your practices, the ones you are doing are quite potent.

mumuwa, here are two on-line guides :http://www.mahamudracenter.org/MMCMemberMeditationGuide.htm
garchen.tv/teachers/garchen/teaching/mahamudra/mahamudra.pdf

How to they compare to :Clarifying the Natural State? The two above aren't what I am looking for.

jack

Both are far too long for me to go through and give you an accurate answer. Judging by the table of contents, they seem a lot more complicated and less nuts and bolts than clarifying the natural state.

You can look at the table of contents and some of the book here:
books.google.ca/books/about/Clarifying_t...1aEVAzwC&redir_esc=y

What are you looking for?

mumuwa, thanks for sticking with me here. I have ordered Clarifying the Natural States by interlibrary loan. What I am looking for is when to use "ships in the harbor" and when to use Shinzen's Do Nothing.

I am about 1/2 way through Ken McLoud's 6 session class on mahamudra which I downloaded from the Web. In the last segment he talked about shamatha and vipassasa. He said see where they meet and camp out there. Another good point he mentions several times is we need the capacity gained by training to handle each stage of the practice. A lot of the time we need to just keep plugging away to build up capacity and then it comes.

jack

My suggestion would be to do listening to the ships until the effort of listening is seen to be stressful at which point just do nothing. Then whenever you notice the urge to manipulate attention arising again in your experience, drop it.

In my opinion, to listen to the ships in the harbor, you have to do nothing.

I don't think they are the same, however...

Kenneth's technique:
"We are in New York City and so if you listen very hard, very carefully now, maybe you can hear the ships in the harbor.

But then on the other hand, you notice, not a chance!

There's no chance you're going to hear the ships in the harbor. There's all this traffic, we're in the middle of a building, we're a couple of miles from any ships, so you can't hear them. And yet, if you try or if you open to the possibility that you might hear them'¦ let's do this again. I'm just opening to the possibility that I might hear the ships'¦"

Shinzen's technique:
1. You don't need to position your attention in any particular way.
2. Let whatever happens happen, but as soon as you notice that you are doing anything intentionally, stop.

Kenneth's technique may lead to the same place, but you do have to do something, that is listen for a non-existent sound. 'While looking again and again at the mind which cannot be looked at, the meaning, which cannot be seen, is seen vividly just as it is.'

In Shinzen's technique, if you notice the intention to listen for the ship's in the harbour, you would drop that intention.

That being said, Shinzen's technique is designed to bring us to using "Nothingness as our focus space (True Self, NoSelf, Source of Thought, etc.)" which is also the focus space in Kenneth's technique. So - they do lead to the same sort of experience. Shinzen's focus on vanishings is another technique he recommends for this as are 'Not this, Not this'(neti neti) and the practice of Self Inquiry (constantly asking who is experiencing)."

www.buddhistgeeks.com/2011/07/mahumudra-...ships-in-the-harbor/
www.shinzen.org/Retreat%20Reading/Return...o%20the%20Source.pdf