Another try at stream entry

Okay, let's see how long I'll stick with daily meditation this time. Starting assumption: if I keep starting up meditation practices, some day I will continue a practice long enough to hit first path instead of petering out at one of the myriad rolling-up-of-the-mat stages.

Yesterday's meditation went great for about the first 30 minutes of developing concentration using the letting-go approach to jhana. Then bugs started landing on me during the transition from third to fourth jhana. I did not handle it well, and the resulting mental agitation kicked me back down to the first jhana. I exhausted my attention span trying to make it back up the jhanas again without properly handling the agitation. At this point, I decided a walking meditation outside would be appropriate. Yet for whatever reason, I did not actually do the walking meditation, but rather got on KFD and combed the 1st Gear and Three Speed Transmission pages. Then I tried noting, which worked fine for about 10 minutes. Some time around Misery, my attention span again ran out, and I ceased to make forward progress despite 45 more minutes of noting, with a few 5-minute breaks when the distress became too great to push through. ("Irritation. Frustration. Pain. Confusion. Irritation. Frustration. Distraction. Disgust. Pain. Irritation." and so on and so forth, which is par for the course the first few days of a new meditation practice.)

Some time after that, I did in fact do a walking meditation with some Direct Mode practice, which was quite pleasant and restorative. I had resolved to continue being mindful and equanimous while I took a post-walk shower, but after the first minute I just thought of unnecessary things the whole time, not noticing that I'd become distracted from the goal. At least I felt better.

Lesson: when it's time for a walk, take the walk sooner rather than later.

Today, it was very difficult to get started. I've been unusually agitated and restless ever since yesterday's noting. After reviewing Ayya Khema's treatment of the hindrances in Who Is My Self, I decided to focus on letting go of craving for pleasurable meditation. I was finally able to establish access concentration, and eventually a light first jhana. However, unlike yesterday when the jhana pretty much did itself, today I had to do the jhana.

What I mean is that yesterday, I was able to "let go" my way through the jhanas, which smoothly transitioned from one to the next as is typical of combined shamatha-vipassana. In contrast, today I just sat in access concentration for about 10 minutes with no jhana arising. So I forced the first jhana to arise by using willpower, which was tiring enough. Then I tried to make the second jhana arise, and the entire meditation fell apart.

Lesson: I'm not sure. It's all pretty confusing. I've typed up about 6 different paragraphs for this post and deleted them because they make no sense. I don't understand why I'm so stuck in content all the sudden, or why my attention span is shot to hell for no apparent reason. Seems like Dissolution.

Today's realization: post-meditation syndrome spells PMS. perfect.

Hi Adam,

Sometimes it is best to keep things simple, especially if things gets rough and unpleasant. I would suggest concentrating your efforts on noting both on and off the cushion and doing it aloud and with a partner if possible. This way you can be 100 % sure that you are present and not getting sidetracked.

If sitting becomes uncomfortable and unpleasant, make use of this precious opportunity and investigate everything that arises with vigor. This is the time when you can really make progress. How does unpleasantness feel? Where it is felt in the body? How does it progress? What makes it so unbearable? Note like you have never noted before and you might even forget to suffer

May the force be with you,
Antero

" I did not handle it well, and the resulting mental agitation kicked me back down to the first jhana. I exhausted my attention span trying to make it back up the jhanas again without properly handling the agitation. "

+1 on what Antero said!

You might also look at some of your assumptions about practice before going really hardcore. In reading your report, I would infer that you think a good meditation is one where you go up through the jhanas within a particular time and then you hold at your cutting edge for as long as you are practicing well. I would also infer that you think that the style of practice should change to address the types of events that come up during the practice. And it also seems like you feel a ~hour or more sit is required to make progress. Maybe the other thing is you think that you can focus on the sensations you want to have such as the letting go of craving for a pleasurable meditation. And lastly, it really sounds like YOU can establish access concentration, YOU can "let go", and YOU can make a jhana arise.

There are some folks that just wouldn't say this and let you burn yourself out and then give up and surrender... but I can't help but say that your "make it happen, control the meditation" approach is going to lead to a lot of suffering.

Why not start with shorter sits and just note what naturally arises? No need to have any particular experience or have a meditation go anywhere specific...

The experiences you need to have to make progress will arise on their own. You don't need to do ANYTHING except be there (i.e., gently note) for them. The experiences you need are the sensations that appear in the moment. Not even a jhana, but >the sensations< of a jhana. The sensation of anything that arises.

Sounds like you have plenty of access to interesting states. Now the most important thing is to gently be aware of them and observe the finer details of the sensations as they arise. States are not insights. Insights come from allowing ANYTHING to arise naturally and simply seeing how that happens. If you "try", your own effort just adds noise and confusion. Things are already arising, you don't need to try to do anything at all. It's already happening. This natural happening is what people overlook. So just gently look (and gently note).

Good luck!



(p.s. Just think of those zen dudes that wake up by looking at a flower or watching a candle get blown out -- they're just paying attention to what happened in front of them. Meditation is the chance to look at minutes and minutes of zen flowers and zen candles.)

+1 on what Antero and betawave said!

Here's another fun one JAG: when you are aware of being unmindful, you are mindful. So, even if the horse throws you, it's a pretty small, gentle movement to get back in the saddle. The trick is to realize how little you have to do!

Agree with Antero and Betawave.

Thank you everyone, it's very helpful to hear the perspective of someone who's been there before.

Betawave, your comments are right on target. I do feel that a good meditation is moving up to my cutting edge ASAP and staying there as long as I feel like it, or at least an hour, whichever is longer. It's tough to remember that "good meditation" means "I followed the instructions" instead of "It felt good because I had hard jhanas / made progress / got to Equanimity." Tougher still to drop the compulsion that "I should do good meditation."

Also, trying to control my experience seems like a big ass-kicking challenge every time I go through the Dark Night. The trap of "maybe if I surrender enough, I'll stop suffering" (bargaining) gets me every time, even though I know it's coming. It seems that the "I" who knows it's coming and tries to make it not suck so much is the reason it sucks.

So, gently persistent noting is the new game plan. And Antero, thanks for the suggestions on how to investigate the unpleasantness. So far, I've noticed the suffering itself and the bodily feelings that go with it quite well. (I've had mindfulness therapy for anxiety and depression, so I'm well-trained to notice certain bodily feelings; they're cues to pick a coping mechanism that will alleviate whichever negative emotion is bothering me. ... This explains a lot about my difficulties with vipassana.) This leaves a lot of room to miss other facets of the experience, so I'll try to notice those things.

Honest disclosure: The selfing machine is totally thinking of ways to use y'all's advice to prevent suffering the next time I sit down. There must be some way to note that...

Here's another fun one: you can't 100% prevent suffering from happening and the suffering you experience has already happened.

You nailed a distinction between therapy and meditation: therapy is more about addressing problems by adjusting behavior/situation or substituting one healthy thought for another unhealthy though, whereas meditation is more about just seeing and having insights into how things arise. (Of course, the line isn't clear cut as I'm saying.)

A good test for whether someone is ready to do meditation is whether they can follow the instructions a least some of the time (and you can, so no big deal there). But to see it through does require a certain amount of commitment and balance. You have to let yourself feel what arises without out covering it up or trying to change it. The rawness of what arises will "teach" you all by itself.

It takes a mature mind to be able to sit with the rawness. No one needs to be perfectly mature to start (otherwise we'd all be doomed) and we should only bite off what we can chew, knowing that there is some growth that needs to occur, and yet there will be ups and downs as we learn to figure out how much to bite off.

That said, it can happen in an instant, so no need to try and script how it will go.

Haha, it's good that we're not all doomed by the fact that we aren't already there. It's nice to remember that the suttas often called meditation "development" or "becoming," because the point is to develop faculties that we obviously don't have yet and that aren't inborn.

Every time I've sat today or yesterday, I've fallen asleep. So I've done some noting and some choiceless awareness during unoccupied moments in daily life, like waiting at the doctor's office or while cooking. This whole "off-the-cushion vipassana" thing is a lot more manageable than it seemed a year or two ago -- the first time I heard of it, it seemed totally overwhelming. Now, it's the opposite -- far easier to note for 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there than to do an hour long reality-exposure flooding session. (Not that flooding can't be highly effective at times.)

I wonder though... with all this not-self business, how does anything ever get done? Therapy left me with the impression that the best thing I can do is to strengthen and improve self-control, self-discipline, self-actualization... Losing a sense of agency is very threatening. Who would make this body do aversive things like paying bills or washing dishes?

It's silly to question that, because enlightened people clearly have houses with electricity and phones, and I assume they eat off clean plates. But this self is quite assured that its work ethic and decision-making abilities are the only reason such tasks get done.

Anxiety. Muscle tension. Worried thoughts. Caffeine craving. Confidence. Surprise. Happiness. Intention to type. (Yep, I can do this during daily activities. And maybe some walking or standing vipassana can take the place of sitting.) Fidgeting. Taste.

" Losing a sense of agency is very threatening. Who would make this body do aversive things like paying bills or washing dishes?

It's silly to question that, because enlightened people clearly have houses with electricity and phones, and I assume they eat off clean plates. But this self is quite assured that its work ethic and decision-making abilities are the only reason such tasks get done.

Anxiety. Muscle tension. Worried thoughts. Caffeine craving. Confidence. Surprise. Happiness. Intention to type. (Yep, I can do this during daily activities. And maybe some walking or standing vipassana can take the place of sitting.) Fidgeting. Taste."

What if paying bills and washing dishes weren't aversive? "But I can't imagine being the kind of person who doesn't find that aversive," you might say. Which is a good way to notice what you cling to about your own identity. Awakened people hold corporate jobs, run businesses, have families. The mystery: how on earth do things happen without your illusory ego micro-managing the process? Because they were happening anyway, you were just caught up in being averse or attached to them while they happened, and imagining the ego/sense of agency/self was responsible for making them happen.

Re: sleep, it's often just a phase of meditation. One can meditate through it by doing standing or walking meditation, or sitting in a cool place on the edge of a hard chair, etc. At a point (eventually) one may find one continues meditating even while sleep comes and goes (ie awareness is maintained through the change of states of consciousness) though that takes some time.

visiting family in another city. No significant mindfulness to speak of for the past week. Just part of it, i suppose. Now I'm at a blues festival, which is a great place to be mindful. Noticing many different sounds, the wandering of attention, a few varieties of thinking, and plenty of touch- and volition-related feelings of fatigue. Also noticing my body language repeatedly shifting to "anxious/closed/tired" automatically, as well as volitional changes to "confident/relaxed" along with the various emotions that accompany these changes. mind feels strained trying to type on a phone on the sunlight, which is followed by increased fatigue sensations.

also, there's more spaciousness around all these sensations. They're a small bit less engrossing. attempts to conceptually interpret/diagnose/map it, which peter out rapidly upon thoughts of the futility of trying to map in real time.

Again, very little meditation to speak of for the past week. (okay, month.) But I just attempted a brief 15 minute pure-shamatha sit because I'm on deadline to finish writing a 10 page report by tomorrow afternoon and there are only 5 pages so far, and writer's block is rearing its ugly head. So a little non-insight jhana seemed appropriate to refresh and restore the mind.

Things I noticed (despite trying not to notice anything but the primary and secondary objects): I can't do pure shamatha when taking the middle-of-the-eyebrows pressure as the object. It flickers too much. It's wonderful for insight -- all kinds of interesting things happen there. But it wasn't what I asked for.

I was reminded that the vedana linked with a touch sensation is not located anywhere in the body. Trying to "look at" vedana is an extreme balancing act. I was good at it last year, but lack of practice has caused the attention-control muscle to atrophy. (Yeah, I get that trying to control insight practice is begging for suffering... but it works great for pure shamatha. It's not the only way, but it's one way.)

... I forgot the other stuff that happened during the meditation. Anyway, my mind was all refreshed and clear and compassionate, but then I still procrastinated writing the paper by spending an hour writing this post. What a waste of time! I could have spent those 15 minutes doing a CBT worksheet and then I'd have spent the past hour working on the paper instead of avoiding it.

Clearly, this is a sila problem, and practicing samatha was misdirected. I mean, shamatha practice generally improves my behavior if I happen to be practicing it daily... but I'm not. So CBT it is. Daniel's approach to the 3 Trainings seems "bad" because it's "compartmentalized"... but it helps. Work in each arena according to its own rules, not the other arenas' rules.