| | How to examine Vastness and Equanimity and Boundless Space and Boundless Consciousness and all sorts of other wondrous mind states is a great question, one that you have to figure out for yourself, but perhaps this will help.
Imagine that you were in a great space, such that everywhere you looked, that was what you found. You looked up and it was Vast, you looked down and found the same thing, you noticed things as individual sensations and also noticed that it was in a Vast field of awareness. All seems well. However, you will notice that Vastness is a quality, and as such, is implied by sensations, and while investigating such wonderful things as that Vastness seems to be the last thing you would want do to, it is actually also made up of sensations. Each time you look up and find Vastness, that is a new stream of sensations, transient, luminous, etc. The looking is also made up of a stream of sensations, as are the things in the Vastness, but looking more closely, or broadly, or completely, or evenly perhaps, you will find Formations.
Formations include space, include object, include looking and the sensations that seem to make up attention. As you find your attention moving around the to the objects in the Vastness, realize that actually that space is arising and vanishing in great volumetric swaths, like great 3D blobs, and attention is part of that, so notice all the way through the center, through the objects, in a way that includes all that and space as well, realizing that even space, consciousness, and equanimity all are just a part of the formations, and the formations change every instant, and arise and vanish completely. What happens when all this synchronizes is very good, so look for that. Everything has the Three Characteristics, even Vastness. |