| | Forum: Dharma Overground Discussion Forum
For the past four or five days, I have been working with what is, for me, a new approach to meditation. Reading Dan Ingram’s book—I’m about 75 pages into it—has helped me to understand that one does not have to stick with a single approach, but that it might be necessary and advisable to vary one’s approach based on factors such as the strength and stability of concentration. Prior to this, my practice had involved resting in choiceless awareness; I have always been suspicious of any object, and also of any cognition during meditation. As I result I have never done any Insight practice. At this point I’m still not even sure exactly how to do it.
So for the past few days the practice has been to focus the attention as narrowly as possible on the breath, noting it rapidly as in ‘out, out, out, pause, pause, pause, in, in, in.’ I am focusing on the entire experience of the breath itself, including the sensations of the lungs filling and emptying and the abdomen rising and falling, of the air passing into and out of the nose, and whether the breath was happening on its own or as an act of volition. Regarding the noting, I am taking care not to allow the noting to precede the sensation itself.
I think this might be Meditation 101 stuff, but the increase in the strength and stability of shamatha has been remarkable. Meditative absorption, which had all but disappeared from the practice, seems to be gradually returning. This after just a few days of 1-2 hour practice!
I will continue to work with this more focused approach to anapanasati, but would now like to start working with Insight practices. Any advice or suggestions on how to begin? Does the anapanasati approach described above need any tweaking? Thanks! Joel |