Richard zen: How about meditating as a way to watch the mental talk and watch how it makes you feel and how you feel makes you act in certain ways?
Are there mental habits that you would like to decondition? Are there mental habits you want to condition? When the mind is busy does it hurt? When it's less busy does it hurt less?
+ response to to
NikolaiSo in meditation at least, I can get to the point of being equanimous of the emergence of thinking mind. Observing the gaps has been very instructive in formal sitting, though right now I am still in a distractible phase, but that should settle down.
The thing about gentle curiosity that while it is an awesome state of mind, my deliberate attempts to encourage it in everyday life didn't get very far. I have, for example, HAIETMOBA flashing up on monitor on a regular basis, and various other bells, alarms and whistles to encourage such states of mind, but I think what stops it being effective is underlying emotional currents that give rise to conditioned behaviours and associated avoidance strategies.
I think, in hindsight, the heart of the "intellectual problem" is trying to use the conceptual mind to figure it all out (obviously), which ultimately (so I have been told) is a dead end - and the addiction to thinking (as a conditioned habit) makes it almost avoidable to stop doing it (and to be writing posts like this, which I know is a substitute for "real" practice).
But underlying this is the problem of avoidance of life as it is, which is a result of my/our conditioned habits and strategies I/we adopt in managing emotions. And when I examine that avoidance closely enough, it always seems to be fear as the base, though it is often very hard to appreciate that fully (as a murky undercurrent of experience).
So that leads me to two quotes, from an aro book I have been reading and I resonating with me right now:
Spectrum of Ecstasy: Embracing the Five Wisdom Emotions of Vajrayana Buddhism by Khandro Dechen, Ngakpa Chogyam
(reading this and having also had a peek at some audio talks by Ngakpa Chogyam he has very quickly jumped up into my favourite buddhist teacher list. I am starting to see to really appreciate David Chapman's arguments that Tantra is the ideal vehicle for the modern world).
Regarding the practice of trek-chod:
So: first you familiarise yourself with the view. Then second, you internalise the view through experience. Third, you prepare to ‘catch yourself out’ in the act of conforming to pre-set emotional patterns. Fourth, you stare into the face of the arising emotion. In order to do this it is necessary to relinquish intellectual analysis. You have to abandon intellect as soon as you recognise the emotional pattern. It is enough to recognise the pattern; there is no need to dwell on intellectual analysis once that faculty has performed its useful task. The intellect is valuable within the sphere of intellect. But outside that, it becomes increasingly useless. Intellect is a valuable tool; but unless we learn when to use it and when not to use it, the view with which we have familiarised ourselves will just become another unhelpful addition to the giddying whirlpool of our conditioned responses. To relinquish analysis allows you to stare directly into the face of an emotion. You can accomplish this by focusing on the physical sensation of the emotion as the subject/object of meditation. Your whole field of attention needs to be immersed in the wordless sensation of the emotion as it manifests in the body. If the emotion you are trying to embrace is one of sorrow, you will tend to feel this as a very real and uncomfortable sensation just beneath the rib-cage. This is what is commonly known as ‘heartache’. But if you are able to surrender the words – the conceptual scaffolding – then the sensation ceases to manifest as pain. If you can then maintain the presence of your wordless gaze, the emotion becomes a free energy. At first, thoughts seem to be thrown up by the centrifugal force of the sensation; but, if these thoughts are allowed to fly past and disappear into space you will discover that it is the cyclic nature of thoughts rather than the sensation itself that is the cause of your ‘dis-ease’. When you can simply be with the sensation of your emotion and experience it fully at the non-conceptual level, you will notice a dynamic reversal taking place. The spinning energy that seemed to be generating rivulets of words and ideas has a vast still centre; like the eye of a hurricane. From that experience of stillness it is possible to perceive that the obsessive spinning is not caused by the emotional sensation, but that it is in fact the cause of it. When you realise the empty nature of the sensation of emotional pain, the pain dissolves into an ecstatic sensation of presence and awareness.
So this. Using the intellect up to a point, and then letting it go. And the practice of looking at bodily responses to emotions is a pretty standard one in various forms of buddhism. It seems to make sense. And I suppose there is a good reason why "Feel the fear and do it anyway" is one of best selling self help books ever.
And another quote, about strategies we adopt in response to our perception of our enlightened state:
Q You said that duality wants to watch itself becoming enlightened, that it wants to get as close to the enlightened state as possible without surrendering its dualistic position. Why is this?
Ngak’chang Rinpoche Because the enlightened state is terminally seductive.
Khandro Déchen Because we are beginninglessly enlightened, so our enlightened nature will continually sparkle through our neurotic condition
NR That is unavoidable. Absolutely unavoidable . . . even though we may be hell bent on maintaining duality. When our enlightened nature sparkles through, there are three possible responses: attraction, aversion, or indifference. It’s the attraction aspect of our neurotic state that wants to get close to the enlightened state, because we have the idea that it just might be the most fabulous reference point7 in the universe. But it’s also the enlightened state itself, the fact that we could be continually teetering on the edge of self-liberation, that actually provides the pull or draw. The aversion aspect of our neurotic state also wants to get close to enlightenment, but it wants to get close in terms of its inherent suicidal tendency. With indifference either option seems fraught, so we retract and hope that we will not remember the possibility that presented itself. It’s very tricky stuff. It’s incredibly sneaky – duality is alarmingly clever. Aversion wants to stay alive – which is also why it wants to commit suicide in enlightenment. Enlightenment beckons like some tremendous height from which we might fall. There’s a sense of vertigo. We’re hypnotised by the interplay of mortality and immortality – of existence and non-existence. Attraction wants to dissolve into a subtle objectification of the enlightened state, in order to achieve immortality. Unfortunately, as soon as you start to engage with a dualistic approach to non-duality, the discussion becomes a trifle psychotic. KD There’s no way out of this paradoxical language problem, apart from abandoning the approach of obsessive form-orientated intellect. Silent sitting meditation is actually the only answer
So part of the reason I am conflicted in beliefs about before/after notion of "enlightenment" is my experience of the sparkling through. Particularly in my experience of the A&P, what I found was very intense and simultaneous experience of the attraction (great desire) and aversion (great fear) and their culmination. And in everyday life, particularly when practice is going "well" (i.e. pleasurable and/or spacious sits), I feel that bubbling undercurrent of the enlightened state. And that bubbling undercurrent has an emotional dimension, which leads to the conflicted sense of desire and aversion which leads to semi-deliberate indifference.
So I have been trying to experience that more directly recently by relaxing into it and attempting to experience the non-conceptual texture of the desire and fear and manifested in my bodily felt sense, and that underlying sense of potential for an ecstatic sensation of presence and awareness grows. There is vibrancy and alertness.
It also made me realise, having been down these roads before and where I am in relation to recent experiences, that equanimity is probably about right now (or rather, peeks into it), though I seem to have got there through engaging in content rather than good concentration/insight (despite all Daniel's advice in MCT

. Whether that is true or not, dwelling on it and over thinking it (as I am want to do) is probably best avoided, as it becomes just another avoidance strategy.