Mike Kich:
It also doesn't matter if I'm trying to do samatha or vipassana meditation - either way I just can't stay with it long enough, whatever it may be at the time, in order to really get something from it. By getting something from it, I mean the ability to progress beyond access concentration if I've decided to do samatha, or the ability to feel like I'm actually getting somewhere or noticing something if I'm doing vipassana. I notice the impermanence and the suffering aspects of what I'm describing for example, but it doesn't seem to yet get me anywhere...
It's not a matter of technique, because I've sampled from more than several, from straight meditation on the breath to noting practices (the switching awareness between your two index fingers as quickly as possible and watching the shift) to trying to pay attention to vibrations of all kinds both in the body and in the mind...
What are you trying to stay with when doing noting practice? What if you just note whatever comes up? If you find your mind has wandered, note that, too.
Easier said than done, I know... I had some really, really annoying sits where I would beat myself up for not being able to see "it" or see the sensation in just the way I wanted to. But that very (and very intense) annoyance is what had to be investigated.
What exactly happens when you sit? Like where does your attention go when you can't stay with something?
On another point, could someone try to explain to me how it is exactly that after the cessation of suffering, aka Enlightenment, individuals still undergo mental and physical suffering??
Arahat as defined in MCTB is apparently not the end goal. From what I understand from their reports, there is still suffering (like unwanted emotions), but it's just seen for what it is in some way and it doesn't affect you in quite the same way as a result of that... Actually Free people say they experience no suffering, though.
It sounds hopeful when people speak about the attainment of equanimity (I'm still not sure if this relates to the sort of emotional feeling of equanimity or if this means something else unrelated),
I don't think it's a matter of gaining emotional equanimity and then that causes the insight stage. It's more, you see things in an all-inclusive way that softens their impact, and that causes emotional equanimity. Like when I first got to it, the very things that pissed me off a second before stayed exactly the way they were, except they didn't piss me off anymore because I understood something or other about them.