Bill H Practice Log

15/40 anapana/MM
concentration OK, although after a bit the staying on the object part improved enough so I started to detect just how jumpy the mind seems to be.. Needs some work.

MM tensions, release, unpleasant stuff then got into the looping unpleasant tension rising up the body, quite often passing through the mouth and eyes, got very intense at some point the tensions were actually painful, sharp. Listening opening up, near the end feeling how the act of trying to listen can cause some sort of opening into the whole 'fizzing soda' of existence

dharmatreasure.com/2005/09/question-answ...d-for-enlightenment/

"Exactly how much concentration is needed to attain enlightenment?
Stable one-pointedness in the degree corresponding to what is known as '˜Access Samadhi' to some and '˜Jhana Light' to others. Other aliases this samadhi is known by include '˜samatha', '˜the first proximate stabilization of calm abiding' and '˜shi-neh'."

75 min anapana - just trying to stay on the object.
Initially it was obvious I was in dukkhaville, cycling of unpleasant states occuring while I tried to hold on to the breath at the mouth opening. It became clear to me after trying to do this for a while how retraining the mind to not spin off while this was occuring is a good idea - I couldn't block it out, nor would I want to at this point but the dispassion generated by not allowing the mind to spin in that stuff and returning to the object felt valuable, as the mind became slowly a bit more OK with that stuff occuring, and was able to refrain from following it, staying on the breath. At some point I could tell it settled down, and I think I drifted back down to 5th nana, perhaps, as there was a calm lazy period, then after a while I found myself sitting on the breath, while all this psychological 'stuff' started to becaome apparent in the background of the mind, self doubt and fears of inadequacy, still generating some dispassion towards it by retraining to stay on the breath, there were even some images and feelings/memory fragments from childhood rising, still staying on the object - 2nd nana maybe, I've been there quite a bit before, same stuff seems to come up every time. Continued to settle into the breath, but it is clear to me that I have alot of work to do to stabilize the mind...

55 min anapana
working on the hindrances...
Never got any bliss or even deep calm but interestingly, working on the continuity and stability of the object (breath at mouth opening), what I would see is I would be somewhat stable, then the feeling would become more sensitive and I would detect instability, try to correct it and then some deeply held belief or thought pattern would come up strongly and I would see it clearly, and then it would pass, and concentration would get a bit more stable.

55 min anapana - a bit harder, some drifting a few times, lots of daydreams occuring with staying on the breath, lots of dredging up old beliefs and conditioning - its becoming very clear now, all the 'stuff' spinning in the deep recesses of my mind, how it prevents stability and joy, some of it is ptsd-like stuff from childhood, some of it mental strategy for dealing with life, etc - its amazing how clear some of this stuff gets when I try to stay with one object. I guess this is what I need to do (until I dont..)

55 min anapana.
some 'stuff' in the beginning, mind wandering a bit here and there, slowly settling in. Started to get more continuous halfway, kept at it, then near the end getting very calm, slightly pleasant, closer to the end finally hit the breath directly, with no filter between (still thoughts and distractions occuring) - and brightness of the breath, faint feeling of joy which seems to pervade space somehow after the sit. If I recall correctly if I can stabilize that I should be in some level of access...

44 min anapana - concentration solid, some dullness and sleepyness in the beginning which I was able to counter by including the whole body in a loose way, and trying to brighten up the object a bit. Some drifting the middle, still some wandering to see through and overcome, got more solid again and then towards the end started to drift and stopped.

50 min anapana this morning, some wandering, more distractions, developing that faculty where I can stay on the breathing and notice the first impulse to spin off and follow some thought arising, for the most part able to stay on target...

55 min anapana, I would say 2/3 of the sit was dealing with mental distractions and staying on task, maybe a third of it was staying on the object and making sure I didnt slip into dullness or agitation. Near the end the mind started to get so still it was almost shocking (which of course disturbed the stillness somewhat) - I can see how the progression goes in the stages of concentration, how as you get better at it there is a feeling of 'hey this is better than before', but then after a while you become more sensitive and move up a bit more, etc.

I have been holding/anchoring attention on the breath all day, and what I notice more than anything is all the myriad ways I continue to try to keep myself from being present. Somehow when I do more open awareness I dont see the movement away from the moment as clearly as when I just try to keep doing anapana lightly during the day.
It is also becoming more clear to me how/what training in Sila is for, how doing 'wrong' is usually a choice away from being present, and thus is training in the wrong direction.

2x30 min anapana this morning. Have a cold so going past 30 minutes seems difficult.
Mind very distracted the first sit, second started to get continuous and calmer the second half of the second sit. Metta to my arthritis for waking me up early to sit

30 min and 15 min anapana, object and surroundings getting brighter, object more stable. Got interrupted by a phone call at the 15 min mark the second sit, will try more later.

30 min anapana - solid but still had a few wandering moments...

yesterday was a loss - very sick.

30 min anapana this morning.
Stayed with the breath, mind trying the whole time to spin off, was able to keep it on there mostly.. Did get a shift to deeper calm about 20 min in, although near the end there was some restlessness and interruption.

55 min anapana @ lunch, finally enough energy to do the whole sit.
Started out seemingly continuous, then noticing all sorts of mental processes I dont normally see, like 99% of the mind is doing something else - after a while got more settled, had short periods of more of the mind starting to actually pay attention directly to the sensations of breathing, enough so that I saw how a large chunk of mental processes would stop creating random thoughts, both gross and subtle, and quite down.

Still amazed at how I could think concentration is good, feels solid and then suddenly notice its not as solid as I thought, seeing a deeper layer of mental process and a more subtle level of distraction, feeling just how little processing power is being used on what I previously thought was good concentration.

55 min anapana this morning.
Stayed on the breath continuously almost the whole time, watching the amount of bandwidth being used up by the breath, which for the most part wasn't very high - Watching the mind twist and turn in all sorts of ways as I stayed with the object, memories, planning, etc, seeing how it resists not paying attention to thinking about a self, and how there is a tension that develops where I am on the breath and a good part of the brain doesnt want to be there, wants to have awareness on the dream of the ego - feeling the tension in the middle of the head, in various parts, staying on the breath the whole time as solidly as possible.

That is such an apt description; thanks for the post.

55 min anapana @ lunch. Very tired from waking up at 3am due to pain, Not a very productive session although it seems to me I may be trying to hard - I will have to play with the amount of effort next time and monitor a particular kind of tension that seems to develop in the head to see if that is a result of pushing.

after playing around a bit I realize that it would be more beneficial to try to cultivate all the factors of the first jhana simultaneously, instead of just trying to bore into the breath hoping for the other factors to arise... It seems fairly easy to slightly incline the mind to a state of mild joy (right now anyway), by remembering what first jhana is like, (since I had it happen accidentally a few years back for a half hour or so) - so at the very least I should try to cultivate some joy in addition to using applied and sustained thought. Another thing I played with was doing anapana and then suggesting the unused parts of the mind look for mahamudra, which initially seemed promising as well (got into a lightly joyful open and clear awareness anchored on the breath spot). The combo of mahamudra in the background and anapana in the foreground seems to be more promising, brighter, and exciting somehow.. Interesting.

50 min concentration - Wow. Discovered something very special I had forgotten from many years ago.
I set out to discover what/how I could create joy/relaxation of body/mind, not just how I could drill into the object at the anapana spot but in what ways can attention and the breath be changed so that the state is closer to the first jhana, with more joy, etc, to help improve concentration....

So what I found this morning, and it may or may not hold for any other sit, so we will see:

I couldn't immediately incline the mind towards joy and acceptance of the present moment like I could last night. I tried remembering the first jhana, I tried checking for the ships in the harbor a few times, but nothing seemed to do much so I settled into the breath in a relaxed way which initially seemed to work to create a fairly stable focus with very little tension of effort involved, so that was a start. So then I started playing around with attentional width. At first I thought about the trick of staying on the breath and then adding in awareness of positive vedana whereever it might occur in the body. This seemed helpful but contrived, which is OK for my purposes but didnt seem to get me where I wanted to go. Then it occured to me that according to U. Culadasa there is an 'ultralight' version of the jhanas that is accessed from the 6th stage of samatha (lighter than the Brasington jhanas) where one becomes clear, stable, focused, and imperterbable and then shifts attention to the breath as it effects the entire body at once, attending to all the sensations of the body - the bandwidth gets used up and if the mind is stable enough one enters absorption and the factors arise. So I decided to check out what it would feel like to shift attention to the entire breath in the body, everywhere, looking at anything that changes with the breath in the body, and the whole thing shifted - it felt extremely wholesome, not sure how to describe(cont)

it but it was like some part of the brain was saying 'yes' to this kind of whole experience of the breath, some sort of almost loving bliss pervading the body, not intense, very mild but there and this feeling like I was healing myself in some way, is the only way to describe it. It did also feel like the mind had an easier time staying with the 'object' even though attention tended to move around. I felt very different after this sit, remembering that this is how I used to feel when I was 17 and started to sit with no instructions other than following the breath...Not sure what it is but it feels very very special, not like normal concentration, not jhana of course but special in some way, some sort of wholesomenesss, unification, something I cannot quite put my finger on like some part of the being wants that wholeness, not even sure what it is.. Weird.

55 min anapana @ lunch. Wasn't able to reproduce anything like the morning.. Staying on the breath, having thought loops and conditioning try to derail, although it was more like the stuff was running and as I got closer to the breath the hindrance pattern became more recognizable, a combination of a self-identity and a stratregy spinning out of it, seeing how it prevents a more solid hold on the object. Like my Zen teacher told me a while back, having difficulty with concentration is a good thing because I will have to discover what is getting in the way to improve...

"Like my Zen teacher told me a while back, having difficulty with concentration is a good thing because I will have to discover what is getting in the way to improve..."

I like this. I guess that could apply with difficulty in gaining insight too.

55 min anapana (at the nostril this time, seems better) - Mind a bit unruly this morning. a few episodes of mind wandering, mostly on the object though, more solid near the end, starting to see and be able to let go of certain thought patterns like striving, worry, self doubt, settling into a simpler space, fewer thoughts coming and going and fewer thoughts about things not happening now. More peace, slow progress.

Last night had been lying on the couch following the breath for a few hours and got strongly into this peaceful space where the mind was no longer thinking thoughts(mostly) that were about unreal things (past, future, or self) and there was this sense of serenity and snugness, peace in just being with the breath and being temporarily out of the habit of needing more than what was there in that moment.

55 min anapana at lunch, still having some mind wandering, need to work on that still, less solid at lunch, had a difficult sometimes painful amount of tension in the head, couldn't seem to see if there was a cause so I just stayed on the breath. At one point it felt like the third eye was going to pop - very intense pressure.

neglected to mention that I had been riding some mild joy all morning, continuing to ride the breath while working. Noticed that in this state, as mild as it was, I automatically was doing metta for people who normally rub me the wrong way.

did another half hour of anapana and immediately the tension in the head showed up strongly, this time somewhere behind the mouth in the middle of the neck, and later in other places. I stayed on the breath for a few minutes, allowing the focus to shift to the tension a few times to see what would happen and then just stayed with the breath while gently querying this tension every so often , including it in the experience and inviting it to do its thing...
After about 10 minutes the tension broke open in a wave of vibrating energy washing through the upper body and head, associated with some 'stuff' - and then the rest of the sit continued like this, with the sense of the breath and the background energy of the mind feeling relaxed, interspersed with strong tensions and energy releases associated with thought patterns buried deep within the mind.. It was wild and energetic and psychologically healing, or felt that way anway, while somehow being a calm focus on the breath at the same time... I guess thats what they mean by 'purifying the mind stream'. Pretty intense .