Hello Eran,
Eran G:
You're welcome; you'll be billed one week from each of my replies.
Eran G:
I guess my problem comes from the long (temporally speaking) feedback loop. It seems like it takes a lot of time before one realizes how well a certain practice or approach works, especially when talking about daily practice.
The speed of progress relies heavily on how quickly you can execute the loop (efficiency) and the quality of your analysis/decisions (effectiveness). So, when you say that the loop is currently quite long in terms of the cycle's duration, the question that immediately comes to mind is "where's the bottleneck in the loop?" I presume, from what you wrote-- quoted above-- that you're having trouble at the "observe" step. The observe step, in the context of meditation, relies heavily on a few factors: one's concentration strength, one's knowledge of the cycles/stages, and one's memory of one's own meditative experiences.
One's concentration strength -- the more of this you have, the easier it is to observe your experience and distinguish one experience from another. For instance: "This looks like the dark night, because of (x), whereas 3rd nana usually is more like (x). Knowledge of the cycles/stages -- this is useful because, upon observing one's situation, one can recall what the recommended strategy is for that territory. For instance: "I'm pretty sure I'm in the dark night, and MCTB says (x) is a good approach." Memory of one's own meditative experiences -- this is useful because you may have already encountered this situation before, and you can thus apply the strategy that got you past that issue previously. For instance: "Last time I was in the dark night, I did (x), and got through it quickly."
Note that the feedback loop is a relatively intuitive/common sense tool you'll employ naturally as you become more acclimated to the various territories, techniques and so forth. I suspect that everyone who's achieved any attainment in meditation has used them in some way. Similarly, the more natural it becomes, the easier it becomes, and the better you get at it. Also note that you can think about these loops on multiple levels. For instance, you may use this process heavily during your sits, in a very fast style to blaze through the insight cycles. And after that sit, you may walk around the house and think about a bigger feedback cycle, with the time frame being the past month of meditation rather than the whatever-minute blocks during your sit. Finally, all of this analysis -- whether micro or macro-- when done correctly, aids each of the others (and thus aids your practice and progress).
Eran G:
Can one really expect some kind of noticeable effect in a handful of sittings outside of retreat context? And what kind of effect are we talking about here?
In terms of "what kind of effect," it really depends on what situation you're asking. I meditated about an hour a day (sometimes 2-3 hours on weekends), while also thinking about these matters every available waking moment available (not a whole lot, had a 9-5 corporate job and a difficult relationship at the time) for approximately 10 months to get from "normal" to arhatship. In retrospect, it seems to me that it probably could have been done faster than that. In terms of single sits, the insight cycles (and sub-cycles) can arise very rapidly and thus the feedback cycle can also be very rapid. I can recall days a year or so ago, as an early anagami, where I was changing techniques from vipassana to "who am I" inquiry to heart-based intention every 2-3 minutes (sometimes faster, sometimes slower). I would use a technique and then watch and see if anything changed. If I observed what seemed (based on prior experience) to be beneficial, I'd keep going. If nothing seemed to be happening or it seemed detrimental, I would swap to a different technique. That is, in essence, the loop-- it does not have to be complicated in practice.
There are other natural questions that arise when one is engaged in this, as well. For instance, if I was using vipassana and it worked, I would also ponder "what part of this worked, why did it work better than last time, what is the situation it is working in and why" and so forth. If it stopped working, the same line of thought occurred. This is a large part of the "orient" step. The "decide" step is based on the prior two, and might just be as simple as "well, hell...what I'm doing now doesn't seem to be working...I'll try (x) instead." Or perhaps slightly more sophisticated, as in "well...based on my 'observations' and 'orientations,' it seems that tweaking my approach (this way) will yield better results."
Was this the right approach to take? Seems to have worked for me, but I have no idea if it would work for someone else. I stress again: I have no idea what will work for you, that's the whole purpose behind careful analysis and using one's own experience as a feedback loop.
I think the rest of your questions-- not quoted above-- were answered throughout this post. Let me know if not, and I'll address them directly.
Trent