Hi Florian and Eric,
Sorry about my late reply, I tried this out for a couple days, but got clobbered by a head cold and skipped this experiment until it passed. It has passed and I got back to experimenting tonight.
[quote=Eric Bause: From Pa Auk Sayadaw's "Knowing and Seeing"]...Just be aware of breath at the most obvious place it brushes against or touches, either the top of the upper lip or or around the nostrils. (p 42)
This was my interpretation of things for the most part. Whenever I'd talk with friends trying anapanasati, I'd ask the "so where are you focusing" question and in leu of a satisfying response, went with the breezy feeling in my nostrils or on my upper lip. There's plenty of hairs to get pushed which are plenty sensitive enough. However, what Florian's exercise is getting at has my interest.
Florian Weps:
Here's a little exercise for moving attention around: with eyes closed, where is "behind me"? (attention leans to "back there"). Okay, where is "in front"? (attention swings around to "up in front"). Where is "below"? "Above"? "left, right"? That was the warm-up. Now: where is the tip of the nose? where is the upper lip? (these are easy, because there are sensations there, right?) Now, do the "behind, in front, etc" with the tip of the nose as reference point, with the lip... This way, you can zoom in on the spot.
As I try things, I'm getting pulled into 1) body sensations and 2) dreams
1. When I think "what's in front of me," well, almost nothing comes up and I think it's because that's my normal experience of the world. So, when I think "what's behind me" I get a sense of "behind me" orientation, but I also feel a dull fluidy feeling in my back somewhere. This is what I'm calling the 'chi feeling,' since it's identical in feeling to what I get with microcosmic orbit training in tai chi. If I take this from "behind me" to "above me," I'll get a feeling of fluid traveling to my scalp.
Since I'm trying to hone this feeling of orientation, I'm actually looking for the stuff not in my body, but this feeling in my body is strong and pulls me back in. Maybe I'll find that it's necessarily linked to orientation (which'd be interesting for sure), but my goal for the moment is to find something separate from it.
When it comes to the gateway orientation, the breezy feelings in my nose and on my lip are too seductive for the moment and they win my attention.
2. Visualization is my buddy for now as I try to find the non-bodily component of this. Things seemed to be going nicely tonight until I found myself staring at the back of a tractor-trailer and realized I was dreaming (13+ hours of driving this weekend!). Dreaming was stronger than me and even when I'd get back to visualizing this spot, I'd only get a breath or two in before I was dreaming again. I'm probably underslept for now and we'll see how things go tomorrow, but I suspect that visualizing is going to fall easily into absorptive dreaming for me until I get used to it.
I expect these challenges to keep coming up, so it's just a matter of beating them. I'll keep you posted as I develop this now that I have a clear nose to work with again