| | Ok, my questions...
1) Over the past several days, I have noticed a feeling of attachment that I have developed toward some person (a girl) whom I greatly like. The feeling in itself has not affected my practice, in the sense that it doesn't bog me down, but there is a general sense of unease, unpleasantness and unhappiness over the realization that in all probability I can't be or spend time with that person, now or anytime in the future. During a sitting, which mostly involves developing some kind of concentration, the unpleasant feeling I just mentioned "goes away", so to speak, but it comes back anyway after the meditation is over. There is a sense of my being "incomplete" in the absence of that person. The feeling of attachment more or less stays in the background just beyond the horizon of my conscious thoughts. My question is, what practical steps could I take from an insight perspective to work around this feeling of attachment?
2) During a sitting, I bring my attention to the breath, then bodily sensations, followed by emotions, feelings and thoughts, after which I cycle back to my breath/sensations. I mostly remain mindful of my breath (nostrils) and sensations, with background thoughts appearing on regular intervals. Then after a while, I take notice of a particular thought and "reflexively" label it pleasant/unpleasant, following which it simply "drops" and my mind experiences a kind of a "release", if you will, during that split second. When a continuous chain of thoughts begin to drop that way, the release in my mind is sustained and then almost always pleasant sensations run across my entire body while my mind stays in that state of release for, maybe, several seconds before subsiding. Then the process repeats again until I decide to get up from my meditation. My question is, what kind of concentration "territory" is this? |