Ah, Eric! Great to hear your experience of this. Our paths have some common elements!
Re "clunky". I totally get that. I hadn't really put it together but I have noticed that sometimes Im noting like 1.5secs AFTER the event! And yes, in the DN stages.
Eric:
But putting all that aside, cultivating jhana does help to create the conditions for more effective just sitting and looking, and walking around doing choicless awareness.
Right. You may find what I just said to Katy in email interesting. I think it relates to this quite well.
Me:
I've found that noting "touch, sight, sound" when walking around is useful IF attention to the senses is getting diverted by internal talk. At first I thought I didn't need to do the "Focus In" practice (image, talk, feel) as i am highly unvisual and don't experience much internal talk anymore. After some practice though, I've stared to find that doing this the other way round may be even more effective. Pay attention to the senses, note "talk,image,feel" when the mind gets pulled away. It suits my "anti-verbalisation" bent a little better.
The same thing appears to work well with my anapanasati and body scanning practices. Don't note the sensations (i've already trained fairly intensively on that) but do note when the mind is pulled away. It keeps verbalisation to a very effective minimum. I need to practice this a bit more to really judge its worth though.
In summary: It seems that for me noting is most effective as way to stay present in my favoured practices. At least so far. I still suspect it may come in very useful in noting mind states, aggregates, hindrances et al in equanimity.
Eric:
I've starting doing inquiry, something I'd never tried before, and it's a good platform for that as well.
hehe! I've been thinking about this for a little while also. Not done any serious work with it but often find myself asking "who is walking?", "who is eating?" etc. Doesn't seem to get me anywhere though...
ADDED: Re "highly unvisual" --the noting of image/talk/feel has made me realise that where once I thought i pretty much NEVER experienced visual images, this is not true at all. I've been noticing a LOT of it. Not sure if I've just been missing these things, or if something in my practice has made them start to happen....