| | It was so great to meet everyone and so great to talk about the human experience, and so great to be in NY. I'm glad I was able to join.
As I left the restaurant and walked to the subway, my mind was racing and my body was tense with anxiety. I stood on the subway platform and started to notice the anxiety and relax the tensions in my body.
I didn't speak much when during the dharma conversation.
It is so difficult for me to talk about these things these days. It has been for a long time. I guess that's why I haven't posted anything on these forums for so long either.
I try to speak or write or think of something to say about this stuff, and the thoughts just don't. They just don't. And, that's sorta how it goes.
Last night, Jesse asked about how to get out of the dark night, and answers started flying from the more experienced meditators at the table. I felt so excited, so intrigued and so desirous. It sounded so tempting, so good... the way it so often does. The golden egg... "stream entry".... oh like a shining beacon of glory. I don't even know if I need to get out of the dark night, or if this even applies to me... but I want it, whatever it is. They talk more, and then I'm convinced that I must have passed stream entry long ago without knowing it. I can totally relate to the feeling of cycling constantly through fractal like variations of all the nyanas (though never with any "fruitions" and rarely with any peaks/climaxes of any kind.) They talk more and I'm convinced again that I must not have passed stream entry.
I think about it more, and I know with certainty that I suffer. I suffer a lot, and fairly regularly. I also quite often feel great happiness, joy, peace, equanimity, love, freedom, relaxation, and occasionally some kinds of bliss as well. And, then I suffer again, with such great agony and torment.
When I suffer, I watch. That's my practice. I observe the experience, the sensate experience with calm abiding presence. If possible, I try to relax and still my body. Waves move through me like contractions of the tensing psyche. Things change. They always do. Sometimes I watch the suffering itself and just observe it from moment to moment to moment (perhaps a few times per second) and watch it ebb and flow. I watch it disappear and reappear. Say what you want about suffering, it is always so dynamic, so shifting, so changing, so unpredictable. It is hard to get too worked up about something which isn't even going to be the same one second later.
I got emotional when my old friend and housemate entered the conversation. It is still triggering different emotions inside me. I wanted so badly to get this golden egg... "stream entry"... and I worked so hard to get instruction from Kenneth, and followed his instructions with so much rigor, so much diligence, so much hard work... to the point of utter agony and exhaustion. Days and days of agony and exhaustion striving to implement the instructions from Kenneth exactly as I had been told. And I didn't get this magical stream entry. I got told to find another teacher. lol. Yet, my friend, with all his good fortune in life, finds Kenneth, brings him to our hometown, and gets the golden egg.
I left the dharma meetup last night wanting so much to continue with my practice. With great desire, I can't help thinking that if I knew what it would take to get stream entry, I would do that very thing and conquer the beast myself. Right now, I continue to practice with no certainty that it would ever get me stream entry (or maybe if I have already done it, which would be a good laugh.) Instead, I keep practicing because my mind is like a caveman... simple words: "meditate = good." I don't understand it or know why it is good. I just have done it enough to know that I should keep doing it.
I didn't learn much practical from the discussion to add to my practice. The tips for how to get stream entry were part and parcel of the instructions already on my palate. My practice sounds much like what was being described throughout the evening. Watch sensations arise and pass. Watch with clarity and discernment, with great detail and inclusiveness, watch the self arise and pass as mere sensations. Leave no bit out, and watch the watching too. Observe, allow, let go, relax, repeat.
Momentum was mentioned, but my thoughts break again. "I want this magical thing called momentum. Yes... momentum is the secret... if only i could get this elusive momentum thing." I go on long retreats - my mind gets very quiet, very still, very subtle and refined. My thoughts turn to the dharma and become filled with interest in the three characteristics, yet what is this elusive magic secret they call "momentum?"
So, now I have written some thoughts. I look and it seems funny. Thoughts doing their thing. I notice the self, the ego, the projecting of my being into reality. An endlessly striving self. So insistent, so quick, so mechanical.
I want to tear it all apart. Tear it all down. I feel violated by the illness of my brain. And happy.... at peace.
It's so weird. Am I weird? Surely, I must be weird.
Thanks for the meetup everyone. Perhaps I will be inspired to post here more again.
- Daniel J. |