Jake WM:
Following and noting the breath feels clunky during my sits recently. Doing open awareness noting without using the breath as an anchor feels like I am not doing the practice correctly.
Does it matter if I use the breath as an anchor? I am leaning towards just sitting, noting anything that arises. The problem with this is that my attention shifts constantly, for example: feeling > hearing > hearing > hearing > thinking > thinking > feeling. This feels like I am not concentrating enough on one particular object, not giving myself time to investigate it clearly.
I have no teacher and little guidance, and do not trust my decisions these days. Looking for some reassurance that I am doing the practice correctly just to restore some faith to keep my practice going strong.
The breath is a great anchor and it saves me a lot of the time because it's simple and concentration on the breath is a factor of awakening. I think that you need to look at the 4 foundations of mindfulness and pick different foundations to work on. It's helpful to notice some of the repetitions in it. Most of the important hindrances, mind states and fetters are different names for
greed/lust/desire and
hatred/aversion.
Delusion would mesh well with ignorance in dependent arising. By treating objects as separate from cause and effect (inherent existence) this leads the brain to try and grasp or avert away from those objects with a push and pull of "objects/self object". Another simple way is to include any desire trance or aversion reaction and note it as "fixation".
Note "absent greed", "absent hatred", "absent delusion". When those things are absent you are about as free as you can be. When those experiences start up again you can note "greed", "aversion", and "delusion" and let them be because mindfulness by itself prevents stories from feeding those states. Continue noting anything else arising but in daily life focus particularly on greed, hatred, and delusion. Delusion about objects -> Do I like or dislike them? -> greed or hatred.
I like Daniel's old quote below:
Things happen due to conditions.
Intentions cause actions.
Sensations cause mental impressions.
Start with those. Notice them again and again and again, thousands of times, arising causally, lawfully, with conditions leading to more conditions that lead to more conditions.
It is that simple, but beyond the theory, you have to get good at seeing it in real-time, in your field of experience, in your body, in your mind, and, when you get really good at that, it is clear: intentions arise causally, lawfully, not due to some self. Mental impressions arise lawfully, causally, not due to some self. All is seen as it is, happening naturally, based on the laws of reality, not on the whims of some imagined independent entity that is somehow outside of lawful causality. This is a transformative insight.
Helpful?
Daniel