Jim's practice journal

45 mins samatha/vipassana

Had another session this morning where I wanted to set my zafu on fire at the end.

Seemed like I moved pretty easily through 1st and 2nd jhanas. Started out feeling relaxed, secluded, absorbed, with many pleasurable sensations on the surface of the body. The mind started feeling quick and light, the attention moved outward a bit, and thoughts seemed to fall away. Very pleasurable.

Very soon after that, though, the energy fell off, attention became diffuse and foggy, and I felt like I was about to fall asleep even though I had just drunk a large cup of coffee. Fought this a bit but then finally relented and sank into the dreamy, nebulous stuff. "If I fall asleep, I fall asleep." Lots of dream imagery, some of it chaotic. Kept noting through it. Crazier and crazier stuff, then suddenly a lot of energy and locked into the visual field where there were crazy visuals, and then sleepy again, barely able to concentrate, bleeeech.

It never really let up. Pretty much kept going like that until the end of the session.

I decided to continue noting as I got ready for work and drove to my job, since I knew from past experience that the dark night does not end just because you get off the cushion, and a mind left to its own devices in that state will come up with lots of Sad Stories, and I just wasn't interested in Sad Times this morning, so I noted and noted.

I actually felt pretty good by the time I got to work. I'm not sure where I was on the path at that point, if at all. It actually felt like late-3rd/early4th ñana, because the mind was pretty nimble, and it was obvious that experience was breaking up into time-slices, and nothing really felt solid. It's a great place to be.

Almost sounds like you went up to Dissolution and then started arcing back down to 4th nana.

Yeah.

Sat 45 mins. Began by focusing on the breath and bringing the eyes to the tip of the nose. This immediately resulted in feels of peace and pleasure, especially along the surface of the skin. Pleasure came in surges, and these surges became more frequent as I focused on them. At some point I raised my eyes from the tip of my nose and simply basked in the pleasure. I focused on the pulsing in the center of my chest, which came at the middle of every inhalation.

After awhile, the pulsing and the waves of pleasure died down. The attention naturally widened, and the objects of attention became more general and vague. I was noticing feelings of coolness at the surface of the skin, especially in the face and hands. As the attention gradually widened, there was a point at which things started to feel a little creepy, like it was unclear to whom or for what all 'this' was happening, or what 'this' even meant. But I just allowed the attention to remain at a medium scope, letting the weirdness work its way through, and after a couple more minutes, things calmed down a bit.

For the next 10 minutes or so, things were nebulous and hard to define. Waves of attention moved through the body, off to a sound in the distance, in and through a thought, and back to some portion of the body, which at this point felt thin, brittle, and not solid. I daydreamed a little more here, so I started to note sensations, just to make sure I was still with it all.

At some point maybe 25 mins into my sit, I opened my eyes and rested my gaze on a spot in front of me. I realized at this point there was a growing vibration at the surface of my entire body, and that there was mild movement/vibration in my visual field. I allowed the attention rest at the surface of the body, and the vibration increased in intensity and resolution, until it was very fine and everywhere. A light static seemed to encroach upon my visual field. I closed my eyes, and there was a lot of chaos behind the eyelids. After a few more moments, the chaos/static/vibrations broke like a passing storm, leaving in its wake peace, calm, openness, balance, lightness, and tranquility.

I sank more fully into this openness, expansiveness, and lightness. I let the attention rest on the experience of space, which seemed to make the experience widen even more. In this space there were the bodily sensations, occasional visuals, sounds, thoughts - all just arising and passing, one after another, nothing hanging around very long. Space seemed to open up more and more, as though the observer were pulling away from things, from the planet, from the mind, from visuals, from the solar system and galaxy, etc. This all happened naturally without any experience of effort or manipulation.

At this point I began to inquire every few moments, 'Who am I?' and felt the bewilderment in its wake. 'For whom or what is this occurring?' More sensations occurring in space and time.

Just as I was really experiencing this in its profundity, my computer made a loud beep which scared the **** out of my. Before I knew what happened, I was out of the chair, turning the speakers off, and sitting back down. I laughed. I went back to my spacious experience, but not with the same depth I had before.

It occurred to me at the end of my sit that space is merely a means whereby the mind presents the boundaries of things to itself, but that mind is not to be found in this space or even 'outside' of it, since it makes no sense to speak of anything as outside of space. Rather, outsideness is expressed through space, along with all the boundaries defining things, including the illusory sense of a separate, permanent self.

Yeehaw!

One day, deep in mediation, it came to me that space was but a way to compare objects. It's relative. It's a construct. Almost immediately thereafter came another, related realization -- time was but a way to compare experience, occurrence, process. It, too, relative and a construct.

Yeah.

I feel like I've seen these things a few times on the way through the first two paths. Would you say getting the third path requires seeing this over and over until the brain finally gets that this is the way things are and stops seeing them the other way?

Jim, I see those experiences as related very deeply to non-dual awareness. I know that's not helpful as an answer to your question, which presumes a cause and effect relationship that doesn't seem to hold for the appearance in my practice of non-dual awareness. The Theravada four paths seem to come as the result of process, a "doing" sort of thing engendered, I think, by vipassana and concentration practice. This other thing seemed to just show up one day. Boom! There it was.

Walked/noted for 30 mins. Passed through a spot 13 mins in where the attention seemed spot-on and quick. Warmth, tingling up the body, pressure in the head, tension dropping away - and then it broke, and there was 15 mins of daydreaming and frustration.

I was watching in a lose way what things were like when I was scattered all over the place, and then I watched in a gentle way how things felt when I felt like I was concentrating, "on", in the present moment. The difference is not one of will power. Even when I felt present, I was still aware of things going on in the experience that were outside of the illusion of control. In fact, just observing in this general, gentle, inclusive way, it was pretty clear there was no control to be found anywhere. This is kind of a basic thing, but it's valuable to come back to again and again.

But what I observed this time which I hadn't really noticed before is that the decisive factor is tranquility. The mind calms down, it alights naturally on the present moment in all its complexity. Mind gets stirred up, feels incomplete, whatever - it runs off and does something else. Part of what makes meditation feel almost intolerable at times is that sense of restlessness, of having to be there, in however a vague way, with that general, unsettled nature of the mind, and seeing again and again that there's no controlling it. The mind wants something or thinks it wants something or thinks something else will make it happy, and then "I" - the constructed sense of self that thinks it wants to meditate - get to have a front row seat for how utterly dissatisfying all this running around is.

Anyway, I don't see a controller. I don't even see an observer. Observation comes and goes like anything else. Consciousness is another khandha. There's no self in there, either. It's just agitation vs. calm. It's stillness vs. a painful buzz.

Excellent!

"
But what I observed this time which I hadn't really noticed before is that the decisive factor is tranquility. The mind calms down, it alights naturally on the present moment in all its complexity. Mind gets stirred up, feels incomplete, whatever - it runs off and does something else. Part of what makes meditation feel almost intolerable at times is that sense of restlessness, of having to be there, in however a vague way, with that general, unsettled nature of the mind, and seeing again and again that there's no controlling it. The mind wants something or thinks it wants something or thinks something else will make it happy, and then "I" - the constructed sense of self that thinks it wants to meditate - get to have a front row seat for how utterly dissatisfying all this running around is.

Anyway, I don't see a controller. I don't even see an observer. Observation comes and goes like anything else. Consciousness is another khandha. There's no self in there, either. It's just agitation vs. calm. It's stillness vs. a painful buzz."

apperception, I get a sense this talks to experiences I have had recently but its full meaning seems just beyond my grasp. Your sentence "Part of what makes meditation feel almost intolerable at times is that sense of restlessness" really spoke to me. Can you read my last post on fr jack:mahamudra and then say more?

jack

Sat 45 mins this morning, samatha but really trying to get the balance between samatha and insight. Figuring out how to practice insight/do noting but not in the usual Carl-Weathers-In-The-Movie-Predator style I'm used to.

Techniques:

(1) Feel the body breathing. First feel the breath in the abdomen, then below the abdomen, then above the abdomen, then in the groin, then in the chest, then the neck, then the legs ... finally just feel the breath all at once in the whole body. Return to this body-breathing as a refuge when the mind gets agitated.

(2) Listen to silence. With eyes closed, what does the closet door sound like? What does the space between me and the bathroom sound like? What do the upstairs neighbors (I don't have any) sound like? Return to this as a refuge when the mind is agitated.

And then when the mind is settled, do the noting from there.

Results:

(1) Uncertain about nanas or jhanas. At one point went to listening and felt the mind expand a bit more than I thought it would. Thought I might be on the edge of EQ. I wasn't. That bit of confusion derailed the practice a bit, so I went back to one of the refuges for awhile.

(2) Got caught up in play of colors/lights behind eyelids for awhile, medium-tight focus, straight-ahead. Starting doing insight in here, not by noting, but just by noticing the anicca and annoyance in it.

(3) Focused on sensations in the hands for a bit, watching the impermanence of the vedana. "I bet this neutral sensation will turn into something else soon." Lo-and-behold. Realized it's very easy to see anicca if you track the vedana of a sensation. Next time want to practice doing this with the whole body and maybe the whole experience if I can.