Howard's Practice Notes # 2

Sounds like you're making some great progress, Howard!
Thanks for the thread.

You're welcome.

12 September
8.30am, 30mins
I appear to be recovered from my bug thing but I'm going to continue to take it easy. I was on the boundary between 2nd and 3rd this morning. Witness was very strong and stable, maybe too strong as my trips in to 3rd were fairly short and partial. Debunking the observer was no good today, but looking between sensations did work a bit. I take back what I said a couple of days ago about this. When I look between sensations I'm not looking at the affect of them after all. It is a different thing, and its either there for me to use or it's not, I can't explain beyond that.

6pm, 30mins
This is weird, I've just spent 20mins of the last half hour in a place that a couple of weeks ago I would happily called emptiness. Now I can't, even though I had painful indigestion that did not bother me one bit, I had a little bit of craving that just would not dissolve and for that reason I cannot call it emptiness. The trouble is I have now experienced what it is like not to have a central reference point and now nothing else will do. Kenneth warned me that as my practice developed I would become less satisfied with my experiences and start to crave more and more refined states of mind. Right on the money it seems.

13th September
9am, 30mins
When I first started to access emptiness, Kenneth told me that the experience is variable; sometimes it's only possible to get half way in sometimes only 10 per cent. I like to think of it as like taking a bath without knowing in advance how much hot water there is. Sometimes you only have enough to submerge your legs, sometimes you can duck under completely. This latter situation is what I liken to the experience of loosening my central reference point. However, much more common for me is where my grip and craving of sensations loosens to the extent that no suffering arises, but 'I' am still present in some form. Today was one of these.

9pm, 30mins
10mins Witness, 20mins 3rd gear, hunting around for those last few sensations that are not objectified and therefore causing suffering. Sometimes it's just plain fiddly.

Howard would you say that Mahamudra is a practice that can be done over long sits or not? What is your experience with this? I am going to have a bit of extra time soon and I am considering whether to do MM or concentration (or something else) when I feel like doing longer sits. (more than an hour)

That's a tough one because I can only speak from my own experience. I found that it was not somethng I could brute force my way into. In fact "going for it" was actually counterproductive. For me, it took several attempts for it to click. There does appear to be a knack to seeing it clearly enough to get back to it with some reliabity and I found I needed time to assimilate my "failed" experiments. Is suppose the whole process of my first solid contact with tMahamudra, to some kind of reliable practice rouine took several months, and I had the expert guidance of Kenneth of course.

Also, my own proccess is "slow and steady," its the same with everything in my life, work, study, relationships, practice; so steady progress towards MM was very "me," you may not be wired the same way. That said, my first experience of MM was well worth the effort, it was one of those jaw dropping moments that make you feel that eveyting will be different from now on. Of course it never is, or rather, it never is in the way that you expect, but well worth the effort none the less.

To actully answer your question (sorry,) I think the length of sit that is required to access MM depends on several things. Certainlhy I have found that a strong and solid Witness practice makes getting into MM much easier. I've tried going straight from first gear and going via Witness and can say with some cerainty that the Witness route it quicker more reliable and less painfull. I can get into some kind of MM awareness in about 10 mins now. But Witness for me is now almost automatic (no applause please,) so a 30min MM practice is doable in my case. If you don't have a strong Witness and are maybe spending a long time in 1st you will probably need longer than 30mins. Then again my own prefernce is for longer sits, I only do shorter ones for the sake of expedience.

Some practice is always better than none and sometimes I have to setltle for a few shorter sits.

Another factor is the regularity and consistancy of practice. For example, I always sit first thing in the morning before eating or showering or anything else. The actual time I sit varies becasue I work shifts, but it is always the first thing that I do. This has a profound impact on the quality of my practice and things go south very rapidly if I miss this. Most of my practice is structured in this way and I am very lucky to have the level of control over my lifestyle that makes this possible. To read my posts you might think that MM is easy to access for me and I suppose it is at the moment, but only because big parts of my life are arranged so that my practice is supported. If you spend the exrra time that you have available to you in MM practice and do not get the results that you would like, the reasons for this may be more complex than you think.

Momentum is always important, you say that you may feel that you will be able to go for longer than an hour soon. My own is experince is follow you gut. When I was in 1st path EQ I used to set my alarm for an hour but have the snooze set for 15mins or sometimes even 30 becasue I knew that I wanted and needed to do more but not always how much. Sometimes you hit new territory and its easy and you maybe feel "in the groove," this is marvelous and should be taken advantge of. But for me, right now, 2 hours a day is plenty and feels like a sweet spot, I'm only doing less because I have been ill.

I sense that I've been going on a bit and should stop now. I hope this is of some use and don't forget that I have only made such good progress becasue I have had the excellent guidance and support of Kenneth on a regular basis.

Howard

Thanks.

15th September
10am, 30mins
It took a while to corral my mind into Witness but from then on 3rd gear was very easy and soothe to access. My central reference point disappeared briefly and overall this was a very pleasant half hour.
15.45pm, 20mins
A distracted but oddly joyous session.

16th September
9am, 30mins
Solid 2nd gear, nothing fancy.

6pm, 40mins
Solid 3rd gear, not bad considering how sick I feel.

17th September
8.30am, 30mins
Very fragmented and distracted 1st gear probably.

4pm, 45mins
Smooth solid 3rd gear for most of the time, nice.

18th September
10am, 30mins
My mind kept drifting off in Witness so I stayed in 1st gear as much as possible.

4pm, 45mins
I was in a solid 3rd gear experience again. I don't like too much metaphysical or poetic language when describing my experiences as I think it can lead too easily to unnecessary confusion, but today my experience can only be described as 'illuminated spaciousness.' There you see, that didn't help at all did it!

19th September
11.45am, 30mins
I had the most sublime 3rd gear experience today. If felt like my hearing sense was endless and all-encompassing and that all objects within my vision were back lit to the extent that the light was almost blinding. My vision also appeared to be limitless. My physical sensations became a buzzing mass of vibration with no boundary between my body and not my body. So far, so imprecise.

Vision
My visual field does indeed appear to be back-lit, like a plasma TV with the contrast turned up. However it also 'feels' limitless, this is obvious nonsense, I can't see through walls. There is an awareness of 'unknowable' sensations beyond the wall and this feel immensely relaxing, but there must be a physical sensation that is generating this. To be continued'¦

Hearing
This is rather different. My hearing feels limitless in that I am aware of unknowable sensations and again this is profoundly relaxing, so I will start to look for a physical sensation linked to this. But also there appear to be spaces between sensations that appear to expand my hearing sense; perhaps this is where the limitless feeling comes from.

Smelling and Tasting
No significant change

Touching/bodily sensations
My description of the body sense dissolving in to a mass of soft vibration is correct. There is no sense of spaciousness arising directly from this or rather it is not in the same league as the limitless stuff I get from hearing and seeing.

There is an interesting thing that happens with affect however. In 3rd gear the affect of sensations becomes stronger but more subtle perhaps pervasive is a better word. To the extent that is starts to drown out the 'normal' sensations of hearing ect. Since affect is felt by me as physical sensation, hearing, touching and to a lesser extent seeing is merged to some extent.

20th September
8.30am, 30mins
10mins 1st gear, 10mins 2nd gear, 10mins touching into 3rd.

6pm, 40mins
This was a very gentle journey from a fragmented and distracted 1st gear to a deep satisfying experience of emptiness, lovely.

21st September
7am, 30mins
All very distracted. Oh bum.

5pm, 30mins
Lovely, lovely Dzogchen; my favourite.

22nd September
11am, 20mins
This session was so awfull that I gave up in disgust.

4pm, 40mins
Emptiness from about the 3rd minute, strong and stable. It amazes me how variable the experience of meditation can be.

23rd September
9am, 30mins
Emptiness arose as soon as I woke-up today which was new and welcome. Upon sitting down it was just a case of tuning-in. I had this lump of anxiety that was fairly resistant but it eventually dissolved at about the 10 minute mark. From then on 'nowhere to go, nothing to do.' In one of my distracted moments I was wondering whether emptiness is beautiful or sublime or elegant. It is all of these things, but also absolutely not, because they are value judgements and there for dualistic.

10pm, 30mins
I was straight into emptiness again, but this time the sensations that I normally regard as self, were empty,

24th September
9am, 30mins
I was pretty distracted, so I didn't get much beyond 1st gear.

6pm, 30mins
I was still distracted, but was able to get all the way to 3rd gear, in between the showers, as it were.

25th September
9.45am, 30mins
I had a very strong aversion to practice this morning, but I know from experience that this bears almost no relation to the quality of the practice. So it was today with practice being a strong 3rd gear almost from the start. Interestingly as soon as I got up, the aversion to life in general and practice in particular re-surfaced. If anything it was stronger than before.

My reading habits have changed of late; I am beginning to understand the very real differences between Mahayana and Theravada practice. At the moment the practice of emptiness in all its various guises appears to be different trajectory of development to that of the more incremental maps and models approach. All of a sudden I understand stuff that was gobbledegook before. Brad Warner's guided tour of the 'The Great Heart Wisdom Sutra' in 'Hardcore Zen' is a particular winner. I suppose I had better go out and buy 'Zen Mind, Beginners Mind' again, that book has passed through my hands more times than I can remember. Does anybody have any other suggestions?

1pm, 30mins
So one part of my mind is telling at the other part saying (shouting,) 'You can't make me practice, you heartless B&stard!' This is usually a sign that I can and need to do a bit more. And it was lovely, solid 3rd gear. But as soon as I got up it was 'happy now you smug little Sh!t!' Can't win.

26th September
9am, 30mins
I was so distracted that I'm not sure this qualifies as practice.

4pm, 40mins
I did some ping-pong noting with a friend. This was more fun than I thought it would be.

27th September
9am, 30mins
I was up and down the gears a few times, much better than yesterday morning.

4pm, 30mins
There is this church I go to sometimes. It has an extraordinary atmosphere that makes it very easy to practice. Today I tried to analyse this 'atmosphere' and failed, actually. Oh well, It was very nice, so no harm done.

28th September
10am, 30mins
It took me about 5 minutes to get in to a fragmented form of emptiness. Often some sense data are clearly empty, some are not. The mix can often shift during the sit.

6pm, 30mins
It started well, but I was interrupted a couple of times which rather disrupted the flow.

29th September
9.30am, 30mins
I got into Dzogchen via debunking the witness today. Recently 3rd gear has been pretty much automatic, but I am becoming more and more dissatisfied with the partial nature of what I experience. I have a strong desire to hunt down the sensations that I regard as self, debunking the witness is the best way I know to do this.

7pm, 30mins
After lengthy chat with Kenneth, he thinks I have plateaued in Dzogchen and need to be pushed on a bit. So I am now doing 'direct path' practice, which involves cultivating a full body awareness 24/7. I have been doing this for the past couple of hours, on and off the cushion. I will keep you all posted.

A little later
This is already getting complex. Initially the practice seamed very simple, but it appears that the closer I look at physical sensations the more often I see that I my mind flashes on little pictures of bits of my body. This confuses the issue enormously. Kenneth gave be a couple of scaffolding tips to keep me on point. I am using these already, much to my surprise. First is called the five points; you hold the physical sensations of both feet, hands and head in the awareness equally, this forces the mind into a full body awareness and negates the need for it to visually flash on body parts. The second tip was to follow the dukka. Let the mind go where it hurts most, sounds stupid, but pain is unmistakable and difficult to confuse with anything else.

30th September
8.30am, 30mins
I woke early today and stayed in bet noticing my physical sensations; cycleing round from mindfulness to distraction to sleep. This felt fairly unsatisfactory, I think I would have done better to get up straight away and do some formal practice.
So I did the half hour and it was okay, I'm starting to notice that 'full body awareness' has a fair amount of conceptualisation going on in it. I can't see it clearly yet but I'm sure I soon will.

6.30pm, 30mins
Ping pong noting with a friend. Mostly first gear. Her experience of the half hour was completely different to mine, I don't know why I am surprised by this but I am. Prior to this I was trying to stay in the body as per instructions and was finding it progressively difficult. The process appeared to be releasing large amounts of emotional energy which triggered a manic phase. Formal sitting sorted that out.

1st October
9am, 30mins
The formal practice was more settled today. I remembered some more of Kenneth's advice, to any sensation, look to see how it feels in the body. It seems to work very well, it certainly simplifies practice. I noticed myself move through all three gears when doing this, rather like cycling through the nyanas when doing Noting.

Later
Its 1.30pm now and I have been trying to stay in the body since this morning. That manic energy has arisen again, this time I can track it down to a feeling of constriction of the upper torso. Actually its fairly familiar, I've just seeing it in more detail now.

6pm, 30mins
Observing the kaleidoscope of sensations that constitute my sense of my physical body. It's just an amendment to 1st gear practice, really. I noticed that I was in third gear a lot of the time.

2nd October
9.30am, 30mins
I tried staying in bed and meditating again this morning but it is much the better option to get up and move around. I managed to establish mindfulness during the ten minutes that I spent pottering around before sitting down. I don't think it changed my effected my sitting practice that much, which was fairly focused, which moved up and down the gears, like yesterday.

Starting last night I started trying to be mindful when watching telly. This proved to be surprisingly easy. I seem to be on a one or two minute cycle of mindfulness and distraction. The same is true this morning; I'm still off sick so I will have plenty of time to explore this. I'm in two minds as to whether to up the sitting practice seeing as the off the cushion is going fairly well.

4pm, 30mins
I have extreme and crippling anxiety all day which made it very difficult to stay in the body. When I came to sit I was able to 'inhabit' the sensation and stopped suffering from it at this point, so I'm assuming 3rd gear. As soon as I got up the anxiety was just as before.

3rd October
10am, 30mins
The same as yesterday morning, tried meditating in bed, failed, got up, sat, unpleasant sensations, embodied them, 3rd gear, yada.

1pm, 40mins
Ping-pong noting with a friend, 3rd gear, yada.