| | Howdy!
I just got back from my first retreat. What a cool experience. How cool that it's free! How great of an opportunity, to have 10 days to just go for it, with minimal distractions and all necessary basic physical needs provided for! Very good opportunity, highly highly recommended.
So I'll just dive in to recounting some stuff. I decided to "use and abuse" as Nikolai called it, practicing in my own way rather than strictly adhering to the technique being taught. Taboo, definitely, but as someone basically stated in another thread, you're going for yourself and you only, you are the only one who is getting the benefits, and you should do what will help you do what you're trying to do. If you're relatively new to meditation and vipassana, it's not a bad idea to have a technique locked down so you have a solid framework to work. But as I've also read somewhere, I realized that I needed to be like a thief to get insight, using all my resources to maximize my time spent.
First off, I'll point out the dissonance of worlds that started pressing on my mind. In the Goenka course, the stress was on working purely at the level of sensations in the body, and cultivating equanimity towards them. The theory seemed to be that as you continue to do this, more and more sensations will be seen, and that the mind will tend to get sharper and sharper, and that sankharas will continue to be weeded out, and one will progress and progress, until it comes to the point where the whole field of mind and matter has been explored and the mind jumps to nirvana. I generally agree with the premise of working at the sensate level, versus the content level. But there are definitely some problems with this world when you compare it to the "MTCB" world, where the model basically says: there are a definite number of stages, and to get enlightened, you just go up all those stages, get to the last one, and let awareness sync up with the 3 characteristics to get your hit. Then the benefits are locked in. I am curious as to how the sankhara model of enlightenment meets with the "bust stages and get your hit" model. I see equanimity towards sensation as a good tendency, and probably a large portion of what getting enlightened is about, but in MTCB, the stress is more placed on the idea that the permanent and truly beneficial shifts happen at path, that the whole point is to get the paths and then work from there. I experienced some doubt/guilt with mixing techniques and for a few of the first days, switched to only Goenka style scanning. But then I had a shift in perspective where I realized, I am here to apply maximum effort and efficiency to attaining path, so I'm going to note the hell out of everything, still developing equanimity.
A few problems I have with the Goenka course...
-Body scanning seems to be more beneficial in the 1st vipassana jhana, building up concentration to get to the A&P, as the 1st VJ is more physical. I remember thinking... screw this physical pain and stuff, bring on the mental territory (screw just working in 1st VJ if your concentration is good enough to cross A&P and get into 3rd VJ, where some of the most difficult work takes place)
-After noble silence ended, I talked with some of the helpers who had taken a large number of courses, and I got the impression that none of these people were getting path and that there was so much doubt and general non-expectancy as to the possibility of that happening. I don't know what the later courses are like, but there wasn't really any talk of the end goal, besides some reference to the idea that eventually, the whole mind-matter complex is explored and the mind transcends the field and finds something beyond it.
-Goenka mentioned 7th and 8th jhana in a discourse and said something that sounded like he was saying that no one attains those anymore, that they were "lost" or something. B.S.! Another full time meditator said that if the breath, heartbeat, and brain activity don't completely stop, you're not in jhana. I say this: You have toddlers banging on keys and then you have Horowitz at the peak of his powers. You don't say that only Horowitz at the peak of his powers is piano playing, and that all else is just approaching piano playing and not actually playing piano. B.S.!
-Lots of talk about how getting enlightened was the work of multiple lifetimes, that developing the paramis was important since they had to be completely filled before one could think about hitting the end goal
-Subtle dogma about how enlightenment works and how strict adherence to the traditional words of Buddha are key, that no other traditions do the work that causes enlightenment
-Asking Goenka to teach you the technique, A.K.A, talking to a tape recorder... I could have said "please teach me how to eat horse poop", and he still would have responded "Good good, you are on the holy path, I shall teach". Small point, but I'm sure it turns some people off.
-The idea that if the morality training given by Buddha wasn't followed exactly, meditation would collapse and not be possible. Eh, not really true
-Little points here and there that I didn't agree with. Not that they were a big deal or anything, but the idea that you can't meditate with glasses on since the sensations are artificial or something, you can't meditate outside since the wind will throw off your sensations, you can't meditate in the sunlight... stuff like that. All sensations are sensations, IMO
-Very strong insistence that sitting on the floor was fairly necessary, that the pain was sankharas coming to the surface, that it was necessary to investigate in order to eliminate craving and aversion. I agree to some extent, especially with the fact that the 1st VJ can cause a lot of physical discomfort and that investigating and cultivating mindfulness to these things will make you move along. But oh, how much pain I had, every single sit. My knees and butt (I don't have a butt, this might have been part of the problem) still hurt, and they basically were aching 24/7. I was bouncing between EQ and reobservation the whole time, but when I'd get to EQ and the hall sits would come, the pain would just be so overwhelming that the subtle sensations escaped me and I found myself completely absorbed in the task of just watching gross physical pain and being mindful of it. Which honestly should not be the main focus in 4th VJ! I set my cushions down in the hall and got a drink, and when I came back, an old man had taken them and was using them. I wasn't going to take them from him, since he has enough physical discomfort to work with, I'm sure. I was left with the very last cushion that remained, which was extremely hard and uncomfortable. They gave me pads to put under my knees and then a back jack, but the pain in the knees never left and the back jack put even more pain on my ankles. It was clear I wasn't going to get a chair though, so I just dealt with the cards and did most of my deeper practice while in my cell. This was honestly the biggest bummer about the retreat. 3-5 times a day, my practice was severely knocked down from panoramic awareness and integrating the whole field at once, investigating finer sensations of awareness/space/effort/investigation, to just sitting in agonizing pain, watching focus tighten to gross, solid sensations of throbbing terribleness. This was such a big turn off that I might not ever go to a Goenka course again, because it was just so damn inhibiting and my knees are still in a lot of pain. My biggest warning shouldn't be this, but unfortunately, it is this: do a lot of cushion sitting, tons of stretching/yoga, and get used to sitting on a rock, because unless you have your own cushion, you might be sitting on a lump of what feels like lumber. Shitty, shitty, shitty. Not necessary for deep practice, to put yourself in pain that is probably damaging the body itself. Even when I was getting into jhanas, including 5th jhana, the pain was still extremely visceral. Hitting a formless realm but still feeling throbbing pain... that is a sign that the physical setup requires changing, something that you might not be granted on a Goenka course.
As far as practice goes, like I said, I was bouncing between reobservation and equanimity. I came to the conclusion that I haven't gotten path. The mindfulness was good but not indicative of the kind of mindfulness that is reported by people post 1st path. Jhanas weren't very accessible, but this probably has loads to do with the pain problem. My biggest question is how to actually go from EQ to stream entry. I know I'm close and I'll keep up practice. Maybe it just requires more chewing and then it will naturally happen.
Random notes...
-Re-observation. Everything is vibrating chaotically, the mind can race with negative thoughts if left to do that. Even the field of vision is jarring and shaking. A cricket got trapped in the bathroom, and I nearly puked just from hearing that all night while in reobservation. So many visions of insects crawling while in reobservation. Reobservation will require layers and layers and layers of surrender/gentleness/goodwill, and a very calm and delicate touch of observation. You get to it the first time, you surrender, and then you get to low EQ. The peace is so great and you're happy. But then you drop back, and it's even worse, having gotten your head above the water. One surrender works, but then when you dip back down, it seems that deeper and deeper levels of surrender are necessary, to the point where EQ and reobservation start to blend, where you have the same sense of equanimity in reobservation, with no strong intention of moving to the next stage. The reobservation-EQ-reobservation-EQ loop seems very important to me, teaching some of the deepest hitting lessons about equanimity to pleasant/unpleasant/neutral sensations. But my biggest question... how to break this loop and get path? It got easier and easier to move between the two, but I still have stream entry in my sights. I understand that surrender is key, and that the levels of surrender and equanimity get deeper and deeper in this loop.
-Mind drops to a very subconscious level in EQ. Weird visions. I remember seeing a giant snake that was a cactus. Giant fractal patterns that fill the field of vision. Odd, detailed images. Weird thoughts that don't make sense. "Your dad called, he has hangnails" was one that kept on popping in my head. Odd, distorted images, faces, physics appearing, with great detail. Sense that no one was causing these visions and thoughts, that they were just floating into and out of the field of awareness.
-I held out well through the mental highs and lows. I definitely had some moments where the whole world seemed to be a big steaming heap of misery, that life was pointless. These thoughts still happen in reobservation even when you start getting deeper EQ, but eventually you start to take the perspective of EQ with you into reobservation, and eventually you can start to feel the same detached feeling to thoughts and sensations in EQ in reobservation, a seemingly important development. I can see some insane potential to go mad in the EQ-Reobservation loop though, with sublime peace juxtaposed with the epitome of madness/chaos/jarring vibrations. Definitely a strong lesson to be learned here. But I do see getting SE to be the solution. But how to break the loop...
I'm curious as to how people's experience of SE happened, what practice was going on, what actually made it click, whether or not it was expected or out of the blue, what important insight occurred before it happened, particular things to investigate, etc... because that's where I'm at. Hovering in EQ as a baseline, looping from reobservation to EQ in sits. It's getting manageable and "under control" as far as the mental content and emotions that happen in this loop, but at some point, I'd like to get 'er done.
Cheers! |