Daniel M. Ingram:
Say more about what you experienced in meditation, how fast you could note, how fast you could perceive things, what sorts of mediation experiences you had, the order of them, etc. and also what the teachers said at various points.
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for the reminder to focus on what happened in meditation. It's a bad conditioned habit to avoid talk of meditation when the progress seems stalled or non-existent.
During strong sits during the middle of the retreat, I would often start out with lots of tension in the body, spent 20-30 minutes bringing mind back to sensations, then I would spend the next few minutes or sometimes 10-15 minutes with much boredom, lots of yawning might occur during this stage, sometimes tears would come out for no real reason except extreme tiredness. Then the mind would suddenly shift to a more motivated, driven state in which there was a determination to see every phenomenon and relinquish it. When this period matured, there would be an investigation into the sense of self, expectation, aversion. Sensations might be relatively unpleasant at this stage, but sometimes there would be slight rapture, and most of the time strong equanimity in the mind. Then the sensations would sometimes start getting really unpleasant, the body would feel terrible, like it were falling to the ground, being pulled to the ground, ripping apart. Restlessness would become intense at this point sometimes, but during the best sits I could overcome the restless thoughts in a few minutes. Then as thoughts subsided, I would start investigating into sense of self, pride, subtle expectation, restlessness, subtle aversion. Sometimes I would open up ear sense door and rest in awareness without strong aiming during different times in the sitting. Sometimes the mind would wander again and then I would return focus to sensations again.
The noting would become progressively faster as the sit went on, until the restlessness sets in, at which point sometimes the noting mind would seemingly get weak. I don't know how many objects, but I could rest in awareness and feel many objects at one time both in the body and in the mind. How is perceiving things different from noting things? Sometimes I wouldn't label, just recognize as soon as I noticed something and drop it.
Does this sum it up a bit? I am quite unskilled in reporting my meditation experiences because there is a tendency to forget or want to forget everything that happens as soon as it happens. The idea of trying to put into words what I experienced and trying to remember and reflect could be stressful for me during the retreat.
The teachers said at various point: More effort, more aiming (when the mind was wandering), stay focused on the primary object (when I told him I was opening up awareness once concentration developed), don't accept unwholesome states, don't give up.
Does this help at all? I don't know anything anymore I've realize. There is still so much self-centeredness in the mind which makes me feel quite unstable as a person. It's as if I've put all my eggs in one basket (meditation) but sometimes there is this utter, overwhelming resistance toward anything meditation or Dhamma. It's the weirdest thing.