Villum's further mistakes

Very insightful Villum. Yes to hide from the world is a trap I've fallen in to myself at times. Maybe in a way now as well not that much going on except work and practice and surfing the net. Certainly not out there saving sentient beings.

Good luck with your change. Cleaning up always feels good afterwards, a no brainer.

Keeping apartment orderly is going so-so. Better than before. I'm still caught in the more general patterns i complained about - Hiding from the demands of the world (in my case, looking for a job among other things). And i can experientially confirm that a guilty conscience is antithetical to being at peace.

Still, i want to emphasize the more general point - True peace seems to require (some degree of) right action. Freeing your mind is insufficient, i find. Mind and behavior are not seperate. What, then, is right action (bhikkus)?
First, right action is action which for you/me is compatible with mindfulness. Right action is action that is compatible with being at peace with the world - Acting to acquire things that will make up for your lack of peace of mind is likely not right action. Acting to fulfill or make irrelevant the various demands and claims of the world (ie. of secular life) without pride or resentment is right action. Acting with openness to the present situation is right action. Honesty, compassion-without-getting-caught-up, friendly openness to all people/beings, willingness to act effectively in response to the present, fulfilling your responsibilities without accepting the present situation as the present situation - all of these are sila, the first training. And it really is part of the path, as far as i can see. It really does lead to peace and clarity of mind. Insight practice and consistent noting (i should work on that) will clear up a lot of this on it's own. But the first and last training is actually important. And i've been neglecting it.

It's probably the best fruit of practice when it helps you pay attention to acting rightly in regards to real world stuff - like getting a job and cleaning your apartment and being friendly to people and so on. I like your posts on that.

Something I've been doing lately (my practice being Christian contemplative) is the ritual of beginning the day with prayers of intention for "right action" and ending the day with an evaluation of anything I did that was not so (such as speaking to someone abruptly or having a disdainful thought about someone, and so on). It's an interesting practice, I find, and seems to be beneficial.

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How Direct Mode works, a theory: Remaining focused on Body-Conciousness, Name-and-Form cannot arise within the field of body-consciousness. Doesn't explain all of it, letting go of agency and such, but i think that's the core mechanism.

".
How Direct Mode works, a theory: Remaining focused on Body-Conciousness, Name-and-Form cannot arise within the field of body-consciousness. Doesn't explain all of it, letting go of agency and such, but i think that's the core mechanism. "

Wondering to yourself how direct mode works? - GROUND IT

There i was feeling so clever, and you have to come along and ruin it

How can one ground "wondering how direct mode works" if one does not know how to ground?

Dont we need some sort of conceptual understanding? Or even words, KFD metaphores, madhyamika stanzas, dzogchen verses, suttas, etc. to describe and thus understand how grounding works?

Part of the technique is to not try to intellectualize it. It is simply to look at the anxiety underlying the need to intellectually analyse it, feel it in the body and return to enjoying the present moment.

It was sort of a joke - you'd get it if you were to re-watch Kenneth's vids

"Now look around. See like an artist. Notice the brightness and immediacy of colors. See how shapes and patterns captivate the attention. Wood grain patterns are fascinating. That translucent green plastic yoga ball is a visual feast. The visual texture of fabrics is delightful. Feel your body again and ground the anxiety. If excitement arises, see it as an energy disruption. Ground it by placing your attention on it. Speculation arises; is this practice valuable? Ground it in the body. Look around at the clarity of the colors and the shapes. Feel the anxiety. Ground it. Doubt? You just sprung a leak. Feel it in the body and ground it. Panic that the simplicity of this experience calls into question everything you thought you knew about enlightenment? Feel it in the body and ground it. If you are suffering, you are not doing this practice. Ground the suffering as a sensation in the body and be as you are. This practice doesn't go anywhere. It's over. You are the happiness you seek. You are enlightened in this moment and there is nothing further to be done. This is the direct path. Feel the panic? Ground it..."
kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/3rd+...Tolle%2C+and+the+PCE

Yeah, I've seen the vids and read that thread so many times. I admit I didn't know you were joking, but now I know

Regardless of whether I got the joke or not, I still think speculation, debate and/or philosophical or ontological analysis of how grounding works, is very very helpful. We've heard so many times that Direct Mode, Dzogchen, 3rd Gear, etc. is beyond concepts, and to say conceptual analysis helps one practice the state beyond concepts, might sound like heresy.

Of course we can just ground this conversation, or even ground your previous post and say all this is suffering, tension, or that its not DM or that I don't get it. But I think there are a lot of people out there that would certainly benefit from this type of analysis because, IMO, due to the simplicity and ordinariness of grounding, it is the least understood way of abiding.

Maybe we can not ground for a second, analyse (and yeah, maybe suffer a bit with all this conceptual analysis) and get to really cool sentences, statements, logical arguments, etc. Who knows, maybe all that jargon might help someone ground

PS: Sorry to use your thread Mr. Villum

Sure that's all fine. If you are doing the practice at the time, however, that sort of thing is a great excuse to stop doing it. I know it has been a big pitfall for me. That's all I was getting at.

Yeah, same for me.

I still need to ground more in order to engage with people without stopping grounding itself.

The following may well turn out to be wrong (mostly reminding myself)
It seems to me at the moment that there is no 6th sense-door. mental phenomena are reinterpretations of ignored 5-sense impressions.. If the seen are not fully attended to (allowed/not interfered with may be more accurate), what is not seen gets reinterpreted as something else by the mind, such as tensions, songs heard in the sound of trains driving by, thoughts, will, et.c.)

Further, these impressions can easily be mistaken as belonging to another sense-type than the one they originate from (i'm thus claiming that there is a fact about where a specific "mental impression" originates from) such as smell or vision-impressions being interpreted as "touch".
All these re-used sense-impressions get mixed up and get attached meanings and importance, leading to the emergence of thought, will, being et.c..

Practice implications: if able, ask "how is this sensed", and allow perhaps test with the 5 sense-doors to check of what kind a specific mental impression is. Tracing back is also seems possible, not through a "mental tracing back", but through allowing the impression to unravel into it's origin. It seems to me that learning to see the originating sense-types of mental impressions tends to lead to the unraveling of the confused sense-mixes that arise as mind, existence, inherent meaning et.c.

Note: Even if i'm right, attempting to apply these insights might not be useful to everyone. If all it does for you is make you spend time thinking instead of meditating, it's probably not useful.
Note2: "Unraveling" has been a recurring theme of my entire meditative career, for some reason. I don't think it's particularly good or bad, but it's shaped my methods and goals.

Even if not exactly right, the view expressed in the previous post seems useful for me to not attach too much importance to thoughts.

Here's one for the meditation experiences list. Don't think it's a nana. Feels like it might be a component of relatively early dependent origination.

Sensing strange undefinable shapes overlapping with body. They have an oppressive heaviness, a sense of weight and pressure. The weight has a heavy emotional feel, like doom and the closeness of death, like things far too heavy to ever lift. Phenomenon seems to be experienced primarily as a combination mental seeing/touch, with small elements of taste and hearing. Seems like something vaguely remembered from childhood nightmares, it will carry me down and down and down into depths unknowing.

I'm fine, btw. equanimity somewhat present. But yeah.