Why does noting work? [Newbie question]

Hello! First post and I'm looking for some advice.

For the past week, I have been diligently noting out-loud for an hour and a half a day.

Anxiety has decreased, clarity has increased, and life just has a smoother texture to it. When I note, I don't seem to be stuck in my emotions and reactions like I used to be.

So while I am quite convinced of the effectiveness of noting, I am baffled to why it works so well. Why does naming a sensation reduce suffering?

Kenneth uses words like "objectifying" and "disembedding" to explain the practice of noting, but those words are not adequate reasons for my ultra-rational mind.

Whenever I note, my mind rebels, grasping for answers and explanations. My mind needs to know the "why" and"how" of noting or it refuses to cooperate with the practice.

What's an explanation that could get through to my thick skull?

Let me ask you this. If you notice an itch, you may say I am itchy. If you objectify this itch by noting 'itching' you are now looking at it as something else other that you. Are you an itchy person? Are you the itch? Or is the itch something that arises separately from you? Can you be the subject and the object at the same time?

Noting breaks things down. You can see the itch arise and pass away, you can see how it is not you. You may also see that the itch causes you to want it to go away (aversion). This is the suffering we speak of.

So in other words noting allows you to see the 3 characteristics in real time without even trying to. Does this make sense?

tarverator.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/how-noting-works/

My blog post is very terse, a mere stub, but it points to a comprehensive explanation. Summarized, the principal function of speech is not to communicate but to organize experience; communication is a nice side-effect. Noting uses the properties of speech to organize experience on purpose, systematically, as a practice. Vipassana has stumbled upon this use of the properties of speech quite without understanding the underlying mechanism (in my judgement -- this explanation is not yet mainstream, and few yet understand the real relationship of speech and thought). From the point of view of the explanation of the evolution of consciousness referenced in my blog post, noting re-traces or trains a certain developmental phase of cognition which we all go through but evidently benefits from strengthening. Conventional explanations of "how noting works" are elaborately metaphorical and poetic -- sometimes brilliantly so, from a pedagogical point of view -- but don't have much philosophical or psychological rigour, again in my judgement.

An important key to successful noting is to abstain from any form of verbal predication. This is usually implicit in the instructions, but let me spell it out: Insofar as every note is "half a sentence", let reality supply the other half. So whereas if you were speaking "normally" you might say "I feel a pain," or "there is a pain" in noting you drop everything except the one word designating what you are talking about, letting the context "fill in" the rest. (Technically, I mean to stay at the level of pre-thematic speech, but you won't know what that means unless you read Dewart.) The experience of organizing your experience in this way naturally precipitates a developmental process which culminates in our everyday waking consciousness.

Yeah, but it sure does work, eh!?

Hey there, Makeitrein,

Noting definitely works! That's for sure. =] How does it work? Why does it work? Hmm...

You have touched on How it works a bit, imo. "clarity has increased" <- Noting brings awareness & clarity to processes that normally we are only vaguely or dimly aware of, imo. Here's how I think of it, this is just my opinion based on my experience doing vipassana noting. I consider noting in part to be a feedback mechanism.

I think Kenneth may have described it in this way around KFD. See:

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/Detailed+Noting+is+Better

In most people's experience, the processes of perception, reaction, aversion, clinging .. and the arising / passing of sensations are all going on in the background with little awareness brought to them, while said person's mind wanders / fixates / clings to either some small section of experience, to thoughts of past / future, fantasizing, etc..

Noting body sensations not only acts as a feedback mechanism against distraction / wandering mind, but noting requires you to take an active interest in actually KNOWING the QUALITY of experience or sensations... that means it forces your to apply vipassana or awareness to your direct experience here and now.

So in my view, vipassana noting has two primary functions to perform:

1) To minimize wandering / distraction by constantly bringing the mind back to the object of investigation.

2) The requirement to label the "quality" of experience requires the practitioner to "penetrate" or directly "know" the nature of experience. This is vipassana. Noting facilitates clear seeing / knowing / vipassana.

The reason that noting can make the Three Characteristics more apparent is that the 3C's are actually Buddhism's interpretation of empirically derived categorical concepts, which line up like this:

Suffering - Finality (purpose)
Impermanence - Causality
No-Self - Reality

These are not properties of things per se, but properties of our minds. More specifically, properties of fully-developed conscious experience. It is easy (historically has been the norm) to project all of this onto "the world" and talk, for example, of the "3C's of all phenomena," or the Marks of Existence, etc.

Now, as it turns out, these categories are not fully developed at the earlier stages of the development of consciousness, like in the case of a young child just learning to speak. Noting mocks up that developmental stage, kind of re-enacting the conditions in which the interaction of speech and experience produce consciousness. Done as a practice, this can (evidently!) improve the functioning of consciousness well above and beyond the everyday norm or baseline.

Touching on tarverator's post a bit, for me vipassana noting has as it's ultimate objective the purpose of facilitating pre-linguistic, non-conceptual, penetrative direct experience into the NATURE of phenomena / sensations.

In the Mahamudra tradition, I have often come across language such as this: "putting the mind in order". What I took away from this was that actual Insight; direct experiential Realization into the NATURE of experience, dissolves delusion / ignorance obscuring the nature of experience to give way and allow the real nature of reality and it's natural order to be seen clearly and this leads to the mind "conforming" or shifting into conformity with things as they truly are.

So while putting things in order, or "organizing experience" has validity to me, it's in terms of the natural order or nature of experience being revealed through direct, non-conceptual, pre-linguistic knowing, rather than forming some intellectual or conceptual understanding or framework. Noting should break down conceptual frameworks IMO, not reinforce them. That being said, right view is important going into the practices.

metta!

Justin

I can't resist saying that it just helps to keep one continuously aware and thus prevents one from being lost in thought, lost in fantasies of the second arrow.

There's another thing going on as well imho in addition to all the above - if you read the book 'the brain that changes itself' what you will learn is that the brain has a specific way of organizing input that is essentially like using a 'map'. IF two things are seemingly experienced simultaneously then the brain will 'map' them as being one object and not two. When we start to notice faster sensations what can happen is that as we begin to perceive things faster we may have periods of time when we perceive them as separate objects and then the brains 'map' for experience will reshape itself and we will start to perceive these things as two objects instead of one. Specifically emotions glued onto thoughts.. Its a pretty awesome practice when you look at it from all these angles.

What a great thread. I have heard only fragments of these answers before. Thanks!

Noting reveals the process of dependent origination, which is how experience is processed by mind. Seeing dependent origination working, in action, is the key to waking up.

Whenever I note, my mind rebels, grasping for answers and explanations. My mind needs to know the "why" and"how" of noting or it refuses to cooperate with the practice.
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Maybe you are looking for conceptual answers when only experience will do. Noting resistance as been very useful for me.
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Kenneth uses words like "objectifying" and "disembedding" to explain the practice of noting, but those words are not adequate reasons for my ultra-rational mind.
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Disembedding inplies being at peace with. Being at peace with all the crap that comes up every day is a very big deal. Can't think of anything bigger.

The relationship between noting and experiencing is complex. Here are two articles (non-Buddhist) that might interest you.

www.webmd.com/balance/news/20070626/putt...nto-words-eases-pain

www.focusing.org/ecmpreface.html