Howard's Practice Notes # 2

Thanks Laurel.

9am, 30mins
Relaxation tape

1pm, 30mins
One useful thing about this whole hearted direct mode thing, is that once physical sensations are thoroughly suffused and embodied by ones awareness, they provide a marvellously stable platform of mindfulness upon which to do other stuff; like Dzogchen for example.

4pm, 30mins
I have an odd conundrum to share. In direct mode, all suffering that arises is instantly used to fuel your mindfulness. Also any distraction that may arise due to un-noticed suffering is less slippery because you are actively looking for the causes of distraction; because it is this that fuels direct mode. So mindfulness is stabilised very quickly and rock solid; rather like a hewn-from-granite Witness. But it is not Dzogchen as far as I can tell. But, like Dzogchen, you don't suffer. So what is it? Any ideas?

11.30pm, 30mins
More rock solid, direct mode. This practice really is bullet proof, any aversion, anxiety or discomfort is just fuel, marvellous.

*HEALTH WARNING*

I feel that I am very lucky to be able to practice direct mode. It allows me to deal directly with the first noble truth i.e. suffering/unsatisfactoryness, in the most confrontational manner, but there are risks to this approach.

I say this deliberately and I think I need to emphasise some of the pitfalls of facing directly into ones pain. At some point in my practice it became clear to me that physical sensations can be directly manipulated by an inclination of the mind. This should not be a controversial; after all if it were not the case, garden variety relaxation exercises would not work. But there comes a point where the technique drops away and the direct causal relationship is clear.

Pain warps your perception, it just does; so does pleasure or any other physical sensations for that matter. If you can manipulate your physical sensations then you can manipulate your perception. The temptation to do this is huge, but must be resisted as the laws of unintended consequences always apply and will bite you on the bum eventually.

If you discover a practice, like direct mode for example, where you take all your suffering stick it into a wood chipper and you get pure, solid, mindfulness out the other end the temptations can multiply. This is especially true if your find, like me, that the unpleasant sensation are the ones that give you the most stability.

The risk is that you can spend large parts of your life manufacturing unpleasant sensations to meditate on. This is really, really stupid; I know because I have done this more times that I can remember. I have trashed my life on several occasions doing just this.

It is very important to develop equanimity to sensations, alongside any more robust investigation of suffering. Some people believe that happy people are stupid, because they don't know or refuse to acknowledge the awful truth about life and so choose to embrace pain as more meaningful. This is just the kind of self-serving belief system that will get you into hot water, and exactly the kind of guff that you will start telling yourself if you start getting too keen on observing suffering.

Howard

30 October
9am, 30mins
More of the same. This morning I had the most disgusting headache, doing direct mode did not make it go away but it did draw off most of the poison.

3pm, 45mins
Typical, my wood chipper of mindfulness did not work, mainly because I had no strong sensations to feed into it. It was all soft floaty stuff; I had to do it the old fashioned way.

7pm, 30mins
Ping pong noting with a friend.

31st October
9am, 30mins
Direct mode with a bit of emptiness.

5pm, 45mins and 10pm, 30mins
As above, a bit rough around the edges though.

1st November
9.30am, 30mins
This is interesting. A couple of days ago I was doing this diamond hard direct mode Witness thing. It was very exhilarating, the next day I found it hard to focus, my mind was off all over the place ect. It was all very unsatisfactory. Today I'm scared of my own shadow; 'my practice is going nowhere;' and 'I'm going to get sick again if I'm not careful.' It sounds suspiciously like a progress of insight.

This is weird for several reasons. Last time I practiced from a progress of insight perspective I was in mid/high 2nd path Equanimity. Then I had a long period of fairly satisfactory 3rd gear practice. I got dissatisfied with that then I moved to Direct Mode and, I suppose, had a breakthrough. Either I slipped back into DN, which seems unlikely, or I got 2nd path and am now doing the weekly cycling thing. But data set is small, so there is no way to confirm this and this is in no way a claim to attainment. I don't remember any cessation event and I don't feel any different now than I did a couple of months ago. I have been making good progress of late but nothing feels 'hard-wired' like it did after stream entry.

I know what I have to do; just wait and see. If the whole progress of insight unpacks over the next few days and some kind of fruition happens, then I know this is worthy of further investigation. On the other hand if I have forgotten all about it by this time next week, then it was just some stuff that happened.

12.26pm
I am absolutely paranoid of all the little aches and pains and weird stuff that make up my illness. Nothing has changed since yesterday, objectively I feel the same, I'm just scared all the time. Hmmmm.

1.35pm
It all got impossibly awful, toe curling, butt clenching anxiety, all those jangly physical sensations have gone and now it's all just fine. Relaxed, spacious, all happening real fast too, super cool. It's all very disorientating, but in a nice way.

3.10pm
So I was nicely blissful for about and hour or so and then I got busy with some stuff and now I'm back to normal. No fruition that I could see. But back to normal does happen after fruition, right? Maybe I missed it, may be this is all mind fart. Let's see what happens next; which will be some sitting, actually.

3.55pm, 30mins
Well, that was interesting. For the last few months I have been doing big picture stuff, lots of emptiness and the mind in an expansive, all encompassing mode. Alternatively it has been all about confronting suffering directly and taking NO DAMN PRISONERS, HOO RAA!

Now all of a sudden, my mind is small and delicate, soft and unambitious. It resisted any attempt at an expansive practice. Witness was physically painful and I found the smaller and simpler I kept the practice the more comfortable I became. At one point It felt like I was slipping into Jhana. How very odd.

9.30pm, 40mins
I had some stuff to do after the last sit so I was not able to keep track of what my nyanas were doing. But when I came to sit when I got in I found my mind much the same as before. If anything my mind inclined to towards an even tighter focus. Eventually I settled on the breath for the rest of the session.

2nd November
10am, 30mins
This was all fairly normal (for me,) I got up to Witness after about 10 mins. My sensory awaremess was reasonably spacious. All very normal, oh well.

4pm & 10pm, 30mins
It looks like yesterday was a mind fart after all. These two sessions were back to normal. Fairly solid Witness, trending towards direct mode this afternoon and more towards Dzogchen in the evening.

3rd November
9am, 30mins
I got up to Witness really quickly and sort of hung out there.

4pm, 40mins
In and around Witness again, but this time I cultivated Dzogchen directly using 'ships in the harbour' and a similar thing I do for the vision sense. Nice, I needed some nice, as I'm feeling so awful today.

11pm, 40mins
I was in Witness again but mostly up in emptiness as well. Often I don't actually notice. Today I had a thumping headache that painkillers won't touch (a part of my illness unfortunately,) I was meditating away in Witness and then I noticed that I was not suffering from my headache. The pain was there but there was no suffering. So I looked and found I was in emptiness. My mind would drift off and I would fall out of it, then the suffering from the headache would start up and remind me to get back to work. Sometimes pain can be your friend (just kidding.)

4th November
9am, 30mins
The usual mix of Witness, Emptiness and Direct Mode.

5pm, 45mins
As above.

10pm, 30mins
Ditto.

5th November
9am, 30mins
Witness all the way.

4pm, 45mins
Lots of aversion, so this time it was all Direct Mode.

7pm, 90mins
I had my first session with Beth Resnick-Folk this evening. In practice terms it was a shock to discover how much my practice has drifted and become technique driven. I have lost the spontaneity and looseness that I had a couple of months ago. We did Mahamudra noting which I found very enjoyable to the extent that I continued for a while after the session was over. For the rest of the evening I was gently aware of the peace that is available all the time.

6th November
10am, 40mins
So I went straight into Mahamudra noting this morning. My connection with emptiness came and went and was usually triggered by generating compassion for any suffering that I was experiencing. Emptiness was initially experienced as a peacefulness, sometimes this was all that would arise and would be a one note salve to all the normal early morning grottiness. At other times gratitude, spaciousness and bliss would also arise.

4pm, 40mins
Mahamudra noting again. This time the experience was much more stable after some initial wobbliness. I have always associated 'ships in the harbour' with the hearing sense. I have no reason for this, it was just a simple misunderstanding. Now I see that is not sense specific and is much more useful to me as a result.

10pm, 40mins
I very peaceful 40mins

7th November
9am, 35mins
My cutting edge practice is always tenuous first thing in the morning. Today my Witness was strong and pretty much automatic, but Mahamudra was much more elusive. I would cultivate for a while, sometimes nothing would happen, then a hint, which if rested in, would grow. Then gone, when some distraction arose. Still I know that the ground work for the day has been done, it is highly likely that when I next sit down the process will be much more stable.

2pm, 40mins
Emptiness was much more stable this time, manifesting as a gentle peacefulness inherent in all (most) sensations. Mahamudra noting appears to be a much less structured approach to what I was doing before. I'm not doing stuff that produces sensations of emptiness anymore, but gently seeing it as inherent. The scaffolding I do use is more of a gently pushing the door, once the door is open, the thing almost does itself. Gentleness is very important at the moment, the sensations of self can easily drown out this sense peace, but adopting compassion to these feelings of self often leads directly to emptiness.

4pm, 40mins
My practice appears to lead mainly to an intense sense of peacefulness, but on this occasion also leads to an intense fatigue that is new to me. It feels very old, like laying down burdens that I didn't know I was carrying. That's about all I can say about it.

8th November
8.30am, 40mins
My first practice of the day is always a bit wobbly and yesterday I went straight into Mahamudra noting without stabilising mindfulness. The results were a bit patchy so today I spent some time working-up some momentum. This was much better, Mahamudra came and went much more naturally without having to be pursued as much. Towards the end a much more immersive emptiness arose that is unusual for me at this time of the morning. I'm doing 40mins instead of 30 first thing now. This is a small change, but is more satisfying.

12.15pm, 40mins
A much more stable awareness of Mahamudra arose this time. I spent several long periods with a strong awareness of peace, expansion, compassion, joy, gentleness, looseness and a strong luminosity at the end. At one point, it felt as if all of my lower five chakras were expanding simultaneously.

11.20pm, 40mins
I was very distracted tonight. I had a very interesting debate with someone at work about the existence of God. It's so rare to find someone who is actually willing to go there, great fun. It consisted in him saying something and me saying 'yes, but how do you know that for definite?' Classic. Anyway, memories of my manifestly erudite brilliance were still knocking around my brain several hours later. Interestingly this did not appear to hinder my access to sensations of emptiness one bit.

9th November
9am, 40mins
Of course the problem with last night is that I now feel honour bound to read some Pascal, who my co-worker is keen on and who is famous for his robust defence of Christian belief. The trouble is that he resolutely refuses to define his terms. At one point he goes on about the difference between the 'intuitive' and 'mathematical 'mind but at no point does he explain what he means by either term. How on earth am I supposed to engage with such and argument? I am aware that his writings are probably part of a wider dialogue with his contemporaries and that in the 17th century; debate on these issues was still constrained by the dead hand of the Catholic Church. But even so it's just basic good manners to agree some ground rules before going off on one. The meditation was fine by the way.

12.15pm, 40mins
I had some very strong sensations of compassion this time to the extent that my heart, solar and stomach chakras felt like they were exploding. These sensations naturally made sensations peace and spaciousness more available; which made sensations in general more poignant and intense; leading directly back to strong compassion. Heady stuff.

10th November
9am, 40mins
I had pretty strong sensations of space, peace and tranuility.

4pm, 40mins
I find that generating compassion towards sensations or rather the affect of sensations, automatically pulls me into spacious, empty experience. Now I'm noticing that compassion is becoming my default setting. So the feedback loop is shortened such that, I automatically generate compassion for sensations which automatically pull me into emptiness. I can see why the Tibetans bang on about compassion all the time; it makes perfect sense to me at the moment

11th November
9am, 40mins
I stabilised witness after about 5mins, at 15 a strong sense of the affect of sensations arose, to which I generated compassion. From then on Mahamudra came and went in varying degrees of intensity.

3pm, 30mins interrupted then 20mins
The first 30mins were taken up with a very clean, crisp sense of spacious peace. Then as a recollection of an unresolved issue with my landlord arose I became suddenly very angry and was unable to continue. After a couple of irate phone calls and feeling even more angry, I decided to use the opportunity to take a close look at this, what was now, rage. The odd thing was that even though the sensations of anger did not diminish I was perfectly capable of getting back into emptiness. The physical sensations were a shivering and contraction of the muscles of the chest, arms and stomach; also a constriction the central channel, right up to the brow chakra. These physical sensations were a constant, alongside sensations of peacefulness and spaciousness. Angry thoughts would also arise but the subside leaving the peacefulness. This continued for the whole 20mins and continues now, half an hour later.

11pm, 40mins
Deep, abiding, emptiness, lovely.

12th November
9am, 40mins
Really crappy, sometimes you've just got to buckle-up and get it done.

4pm, 40mins
Much better, stable emptiness.

13th November
9am, 40mins
Much better than yesterday morning, I had some stable emptiness arise at the end.

4pm, 40mins
I had a brief chat with Beth yesterday; my advice for the week is to notice any craving that I feel for emptiness. This was interesting and superficially simple. I have noticed this before and as I can see the suffering inherent in it, so compassion should arise as normal. The trouble is, now I have performance anxiety, so no Dzogchen for me until right at the end. Bummer.

10pm, 40mins
No performance anxiety this time, but noticing the craving for emptiness is a can of worms (naturally.) For a while, I had some very confusing sensations in the chest area. Not unpleasant exactly so difficult to generate compassion towards them. Anyway they cleared after a while leaving a strong experience of emptiness.

14th November
9am & 4pm, 40mins
I've backed off backed from trying to generate emptiness in a techniquey kind of way, pushing too hard leads to confusion. So today, I just started in 1st gear and let it happen. I appeared to progress to emptiness, more or less automatically. At some point peace and compassion arose, came went, then settled into a more substantial experience.

15th November
9am, 40mins
I had to drag myself to the cushion this morning; such was how little I wanted to meditate. But at some point around the half way mark, deep in some self-pitying rant I suddenly noticed hat my awareness was spacious, luminous and peaceful. What do you know?

2pm, 40mins
I backed off completely this time and made no special attempt to attain to anything; just first gear. To my surprise sensations that I would normally ascribe to Witness and Emptiness arose in no particular order, alongside and concurrent with, the more mundane sensations that one experiences in first gear. This was very relaxed and the most fun that I have had with my practice for a long time.

10pm, 40mins
I got up to Witness in ten mins and into emptiness after about 15. Little striving, quite loose.

16th November
9am, 40mins
I was very distracted this morning, happy memories but distracted none the less. Got some weirdly strong luminosity too.

2pm, 40mins
I had that thing where all three gears appear to arise simultaneously, a bit distracted though.

18th November
9am, 40mins
This one was pretty good considering that I didn't practice yesterday; emptiness arose pretty quickly and was fairly stable given the early hour. I'm still not going after it much; whenever I catch myself doing this it feels unpleasant, so I stop, no drama.

8pm, 40mins
I had a really strong, stable sense of emptiness arise early on and stayed for the whole session. It's not often that I feel fully immersed in the experience but it is happening more often. My vision in particular is fascinating; strongly backlit and attenuated somehow.

19th November
9am, 40mins
Emptiness came and went, I'm starting to see it as a normal component of conscious awareness, like gravity or the rain.

4pm, 40mins
Initially, I had big waves of compassion that were difficult to stay with; but eventually things settled down in to a strong, stable emptiness.

6pm, 20mins
This felt like a direct continuation of the previous session.

20th November
9am, 40mins
After a chat with Beth, my instructions for this week are to notice the preferring mind. There is no doubt that I 'go somewhere else' when I access Dzogchen; and that I prefer this. As I have said before, my experience of Dzogchen is more pleasant than sitting on any tropical beach that I have ever had the good fortune to visit. So it's a no-brainer.

I'm not sure what happened today though, I didn't notice much preferring going on, but Dzogchen as I normally experience did not arise, but also given that I was and still am in quite a deal of illness related discomfort, I did not and do not now, suffer from it. Cool right?

A bit latter
Seems like judgement comes before suffering and appears to be directly related.

Later Still
It seems that discrimination is suffering. The urge to separate off and judge sensations has a physical signature that appears to be identical to suffering. By the way, I'm still feeling Sh!tty by the way, but it doesn't seem important.

4pm, 40mins
This rather precise awareness disappeared around lunchtime. I was also advised to notice any prejudice I might feel towards any particular kind of awareness, particularly Dzogchen. As I feel intent as suffering, I tend to just stop doing it. Without intention I felt as if my practice drifted into a rather formless existential ennui, the sensations of which I attempted to objectify. I like Dzogchen and not going after it feels weird.

21st November
8.30am, 40mins
I'm looking for the mind that does not mind what nyana, or gear it is in. This is a bit vague at the moment but appears to be emerging. It leads me to a space that is a bit of everything but with an over al tone of gentleness and peace. Today at any rate.

3pm, 30mins
I saw a clear preference for Dzogchen today that leads me to ignore sensations that are not empty. So Dzogchen that appears to be complete is, in fact, not. Slippery stuff.

22nd November
1pm, 30mins
Now that I'm not actively cultivating Dzogchen so much my practice feels like first gear, except that some of the sensations noticed are empty.

10pm, 30mins
Dzogchen arose immediately this time with little or no prompting, this was accompanied by a strong sense of joy and gratitude which I suppose is an expression of preference. Interesting that sensations that a short time ago I would have seen as precious and special are now maybe a distraction and almost a hindrance.