Hazel Kathleen Strange:
I have obtained and read - once - Daniel's book and have a question about A&P. I think I experience arising and passing away, but it is not in the explosive terms described in the book. I experience myriads of shimmering vibrations, quite soft, nothing is steady and when I look at things or people they are not steady either, just full of tiny shimmerings. This is as near as I can get with words. This can happen on the cushion, on the loo and most frequently after a long walk with the attention on sensations in the body. In between there are lots of more uncomfortable sensations, especially in the head and jaw which are there in the foreground when formally sitting and there in the background all the time and it only takes slight attention to bring them
to foreground. There is also a sort of beat in the body as if the ground is not steady which I thought was the heartbeat, but when I checked it is much slower than than my pulse.
hi hazel,
welcome to the dho.
in your introductory post, in
this thread (post now deleted), you indicated that you spent many years practising with enthusiasm in a well-known vipassana tradition. you also indicated that you have already passed through the stage of arising and passing away and experienced its culmination, which daniel ingram calls 'the arising and passing event' (and which culmination, in the tradition you practise(d), is mapped to the following insight stage,
bhanga nana - the stage of dissolution). however, you did not indicate that you have reached the stages of path and fruition, and indeed, nothing that you wrote demonstrates that you have. hence, it is no surprise that you do not experience grand, powerful vibratory phenomena, as the arising and passing event only tends to occur once - or at most a few times - within a path, and spending years diligently working on one path - going through its stages again and again - tends to wear down its explosive and/or exciting vibratory qualities. as far as i am able to tell, you have spent your years of enthusiastic meditation working on, but not completing, first path (the path of stream-entry), and so more quiet experiences of arising and passing away are the case for you.
as for a dharma diagnosis: the quality of experiences you have described both here as well as in your now-deleted first post indicate that you are in the insight stages between the stage of arising and passing away and the stage of equanimity regarding formations, collectively known as 'the knowledges of suffering' (which ingram refers to as 'the dark night'). to be more precise, i think you are hovering somewhere around the later stages of desire for deliverance or re-observation, owing to the nature of the aches you experience, the fine and unsteady vibrations you are sensitive to, and the difficulty you have continuing to sit still past a certain point. however, for further confirmation, would you please describe in greater detail the pulse you find in your body which you mistook for your heartbeat? this will help determine whether you are in the first or second half of the 'dark night' stages, which discernment you may find useful - there are different interesting things to look at about each.
some good details to provide: where in the body do you tend to experience the beat? how prominent / fascinating / distracting / attention-catching is it? does your attention beat 'with it', or 'against it', or anything of that sort? does its occurrence ever pervade your other sense experiences besides touch - do you ever hear (or 'hear') this beat, or see (or 'see') it strobe?
one further question: when was your most recent retreat or period of intensive practice?
Hazel Kathleen Strange:
I am so grateful to Daniel for the book and all those who extend their help to others. I have had years of pat answers to my questions and answers that do not fit my experience at all and it is illuminating to have some explanation of what is going on. The oft repeated exhortation to 'be happy' in the Goenka courses never seemed to fit.
understandably... 'be happy' doesn't fit very well for most practitioners stuck in the dark night.
tarin
ps- as many of the stages of insight were discussed in this post, here is a quick english-pali reference for those stages, for whomever may be reading who may find it helpful to have:
the stage of arising and passing away - udayabbaya nana
the stage of dissolution - bhanga nana
the stage of desire for deliverance - muncitu-kamyata nana
the stage of re-observation - patisankhanupassana nana
the stage of equanimity regarding formations - sankharaupekkha nana
the stage of path - magga nana
the stage of fruition - phala nana