| | Hello All - I haven’t been visible for a few weeks – partly because I was on retreat for a week; but subsequently we have had endless building work at the house which has been rather time-consuming. It also takes me a couple of weeks after retreat to come to terms to some extent with what arises.
On retreat I went through four or so complete cycles of insight, including one equanimity phase which had that kind of forgetful floating period of reverie before a marked few fruitions. But I have no idea quite what would be path these days, and at times lose touch with and interest in quite ‘where I am’… What I seem to be interested in is at a different level.
I noticed immediately on getting down to it on retreat that my awareness ‘snapped out’ into a complete open field. It happened as I was exploring what awareness it was that I shared with the other people meditating in the shrine-room. I had been working towards this kind of field awareness prior to coming on retreat, but it was quite clear that it had now ‘happened’. The almost crystalline quality of this sense of the field reminds me of a PCE experience some months ago. Clinging to particular phenomena as self usually ‘within the body’ didn’t go on during this – there was the same awareness of the phenomena to which or with which one might do this, but a lack of the interest required to make something ‘self’ of them. Within a day or so this sense of the open field would go with a sense of emptiness which seemed to be the focus of awareness, though of course there is no thing to focus upon. The phenomena of the field seemed as it were peripheral to it, though perfectly clear and apparent in themselves. Cultivating seventh jhana has been really helpful in allowing the mind to be comfortable with apprehending emptiness as an ‘object’. Eighth jhana is helpful in allowing the mind to rest in stillness with this and not react.
After a couple of days I noticed an uncomfortable tension which manifested physically in the back, and didn’t have an obvious cause. I found out almost accidentally that it was because I was seeing emptiness as separate from phenomena. If I came to emptiness via the three marks of phenomena, this tension was not there. I was also playing with apprehending formations, and with seeing more clearly the little loop-back phenomenon that makes a self out of part of the field. I’m not sure that that can actually be put clearly into words – but in that context of practice it seemed quite clear.
After retreat I was mainly aware of the free and open field, within which my life was unfolding. For much of the past few weeks I have been able to advert to this sense of empty open awareness which has a ‘quality’ of endlessness about it. On the night of the 8th September and morning of the 9th, I had a couple of sits in which ‘I’ seemed to completely collapse into the field; there were some pretty strong fruitions, and a strong sense of liberation. Since the retreat and up to this time I had been playing with the notion of seeing grasping and the attention-wave as empty of self – if one does this thoroughly, one would expect to collapse into the field. It seemed to me that the Wisdom Eye had opened – but who knows, eh? Since then the sense of the open field has oddly enough been less distinct as time has passed… I’ve been more attention-wavey, for whatever reason. The sense of being able to advert to endlessness hasn’t gone though – and I rather wish I could give it more of the time it deserves. Being busy with Nursing full-time and so on makes it pretty much impossible to get too precious about anything, though!
I have noticed that the sense of the dead heart which I went on about quite a bit has become something established and ‘past tense’. Now and again I find a faint sense of longing about something or other creating tension, as though my dead heart is trying to move when it has nothing to move with, and I just smile with it. It’s better to live with what is, and not cloud the mind with ‘what ifs’ – I’m glad that the horrid process of dying took place, now that it seems to be over, pretty much. Most of the time the heart is empty, and awareness is content to be just where it is.
I must nail my colours to the mast and say that I have experience of the three samadhis, and that this is an important element of my practice / experience. Before and (mostly) since, I find that particularly on retreat awareness can advert to emptiness through one of the three doors, and this be stable. I believe that the seventh and eighth jhanas are good preparation, and that the practice of adverting to emptiness encourages the opening of the Wisdom Eye – as no doubt do other practices. I suspect that the ‘content’ is the same as fruition, as I have had experience which is somewhat intermediate, where fruition and samadhi taste of each other. They are simply awareness being comfortable with itself, seeing phenomena as they are, not requiring anything, allowing infinite life to unfold. |