On the Dharma Bus: Liam's Practice Thread

Hello all, I'm Liam, who some of you will know from the DhO. First up, my thanks to everyone here (and there) for all the advice and perspectives they've freely offered.

It's getting to the point in my practice in which things aren't necessarily easy or straightforward anymore, with a little knowledge being a dangerous thing, so I'm making sure to document what's going on in order to keep perspective, put my thoughts in order, and cast about for a little advice from co-travellers. KFD seems to be particularly good for yogis who are starting out as well as those further on, so I'm experimenting with a practice thread here to see whether it might be of use to others as well as myself.

To recap: I appear to have been doing accidental insight practice since I was a nipper and started sporadic mindfulness exercises in various guises in my teens. This triggered various unitive experiences, moments of 'perfection', awareness of 'presences', 'reality check' moments in which observer status was prevalent, and so on. In 2009 I started anapanasati and body scanning as part of the clinical mindfulness approach and very quickly moved onto my first retreat with the Thai Forest tradition, taking the Five Precepts, being fascinated by the experience of the body breathing itself after furious beginner's mindfulness, and generally becoming enamoured with the whole of Theravada.

Going on longer retreats and doing plenty of internet research brought me to the pragmatic dharma thingeybob, at which point **** got real and I realised I'd most likely had the insight disease for some time. I dropped devotional practices, but am (still) attempting to reconcile the 'compartmentalised' MCTB approach with the powerful compassion of mainstream Buddhism and the perceived effect of greater insight on the way I'm living life generally.

It seems possible that I hit the A&P at some point in my late teens or early twenties, with a spot of depression muddying the existentially worrying waters of the dukkha nanas, but dropped back to the pre-nana stage due to concentrating on content and less on awareness of the world. The fulcrum is moving somewhat now and I'm attempting to find balance. It also seems possible that I'm still in 2nd nana. Retreats have, after the first one, always come to solid pain or a sense of unease towards the end, and I've slacked off, worrying about content. Now I know that this is a sign that I need to keep on trucking.

After some jhana practice I decided to hit the dry insight approach and have found the inclusiveness, awareness, rapidity and so on of my noting increasing pretty quickly up to now, which has been encouraging, along with various pleasant and unpleasant side effects that are difficult to separate from non-insight related factors. I am aware that the best approach is just to note like a mofo every day and not worry about the maps, but if I'm being honest the whole 'where am I?' thing is a gentle nag in the back of my mind the whole time.

The current state of play: much noting during my commute, inclusive of thoughts, emotions, mind-states, bodily sensations, external sensations, not-noting, intentions, and other stuff. Speed of noting is 1-10 notes per second, average 3, depending on whether I'm going monosyllabic or not. Pleasurable, game-playing noting with hints of equanimous states, and awareness of many bodily pains and heat, is giving way to more difficult but more inclusive noting, less inclination to sit, more dozyness and so on. I could very easily attribute any of these things to outside circumstances.

I'm trying to encourage myself to sit much more on my days off, a daily sitting routine complicated by a nurse's 'all day or all night' shift pattern. I have a two-week Mahasi retreat coming up at the end of November and I want to be ready for the exhausting-sounding routine. I also want to do a retreat 'right', following instructions to the letter.

Another objective is to try and integrate my small but important insights, traditional Buddhist emphasis on the middle way, and my changing thought-patterns together so that I'm walking my talk a little more, though some in the pragmatic dharma scene would say 'shut up and dance' to that (i.e. meditate on the cushion, be ethical off it, the two never shall meet).

Thanks, and I hope to be of some help here

Welcome, Liam! Looking forward to reading your journal.

Apologies for the cross-post. I'm experimenting as to whether my practice log might be of more use to others and myself on KFD or DhO.

On the way in to work last night, I resolved to maintain mindfulness in the transition between parts of my commute. Slower, polysyllabic noting of sounds and movements was used to get things going. The effort to use labels based on the four sattipathanas blocked out distracting mindnoise. Greater awareness of bodily and aural vibrations arose, requiring monosyllabic noting ('dit... dit... dit...'). The faster I noted, the top half of my body rocked back and forth more. Accepting noting of back pain and sources of irritation, and some falling into automatic body scanning followed.

This speeded up to a mental buzz ('ditditdit'). Pulsations of warmth danced across the hands and face. I usually have difficulty including thoughts into noting, which are automatically noted polysyllabically even during fast noting and so act like 'speed bumps'. Instead, they were rapidly accepted and assimilated monosyllabically and the noting accelerated to another plateau. It was difficult at the time to estimate, as it felt like more sophisticated/convoluted thinking mechanisms were being bypassed.

I realised the speed of noting was limited by the use of a syllable with two consonants that I was pronouncing mentally- pointing out in passing that I was beginning to note the beginnings and ends of sensations as being in fact separate sensations- and so I began to use a soft 'd' sound, almost a 'duh'. The mental impression was like the sound of a rapidly oscillating motor ("d' d' d' d' "...). There was uncertainty about whether I was doing false noting at this speed, but I had the sense of noting the intention before every movement of my body as I squirmed once in my seat.

The enjoyment of the noting was dropping away as I was forced to concentrate harder on noting, feeling very awake and coolly putting strong, unstrained effort into the practice.This was pleasant too. The awareness was focused as it was clear that only one sensation could be experienced at once, but there was a sense of it occurring against a background, as this focus was bouncing around in the greater field of the six sense doors with less slowing down in transferring from a phenomenon of one door to the next.

As I switched trains I was able to maintain mindfulness, but with less intensity as I had to walk, with my awareness coming to 'centre' and sitting back to watch the jump between experienced phenomena. Awareness of awareness? It got to the point at which the noting fell away almost of itself and there was noticing of phenomena, with some visual flickering occurring as I walked. As I sat back down on another train, things geared up again. There was a veneer of evaluating thought floating on top of this which saw the noticing as a mental 'highlight' that was somehow separable from the experience of the phenomenon and yet masquerading as part of it. I attempted to drop this highlighting. Was this an attempt to experience the bare phenomenon? I dunno.

This has a sense of a pass through the first vipassana jhana and into some sub-nana of the Arising and Passing Away to it. Do other pre-path yogis have these long passes from 1st nyana to later nyanas in one sit? Am I falling back a lot between sits to earlier nyanas then pushing on again, while those who do daily hourly sits progress more slowly and smoothly upward in a given sit? Also, is there any difference in terms of stream entry realisation between those who sit in a quiet room noting subtler sensations and my seeming preference to note in more grossly stimulating environments?