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Tarver's Practice Thread

Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
3/12/12 11:53 AM
[EDIT: Note to the reader: Please take everything in this Practice Log with a grain of salt. Although written as a faithful in-the-moment statement of intentions and chronicle of progress, the result includes any number of instances of boldly declaring one thing and then turning around and doing exactly the opposite. Such is the process! Good luck, and may your practice bear fruit.]

Just sat for one hour, with a timer. Decided that although my ultimate goal is stream entry, and that I gather that it is insight practice that will lead there, as far as I can tell I suck at insight practice so I am "just" going to do concentration practice today.

Posted an introduction yesterday, no response yet, but I am looking forward to sorting out what to do for insight practice. In that introduction I mentioned that on two occasions under the ideal conditions of a meditation course I have been able to maintain continuous conscious contact with my breath for an entire hour.

I just did it again, at home, and I would like to document this.

As soon as I set the timer and closed my eyes, I realized that it might be possible to stay with my breath for the entire hour today, right here, this sit! I became excited at the possibility, and almost lost it right there, but I just took note of the story-line and paid attention to the breath. At no point during the hour did I have that startle, that "what am I doing, oh yeah, I was supposed to be meditating" realization. My mind wandered many times -- perhaps hundreds of times -- along all kinds of stories, and I felt discomforts and shifted my shoulders, moved my head around, wrinkled my face, and moved my fingers, but I never opened my eyes or took my hands off my lap. Each of these distractions, however, only lasted as long as the next out-breath. There were several distinct phase transitions, and I thought "oh, that's different, I wonder what level that is?" but just dropped it and returned to the next breath -- that felt like swimming along in a lake and coming to a place where the water is a different temperature, but not letting it interfere with swimming. I made a kind of deal with myself, that if I lost contact with the breath, I would open my eyes and check the time. The only time that even started happening was right at the very end of the hour when I realized I might have dropped two or at most three breaths, and just as I was evaluating how to call it, the timer rang. There were maybe half a dozen other "incidents" along the way where my mindfulness became faint, but I never got farther than the last breath away from it. I was very aware of the "not too tight, not too loose" idea throughout, and I felt motivated by the prospect of writing up my experience and posting it here. I also remembered something Daniel said in the videos, that it is the experience NOW of the thought that something might happen in the future that is to be attended to. So whenever that or any other distracting thought came up, I sort of said to myself "thanks for sharing, that's really cool, I am grateful for the motivation you impart, and what a great reason to let you go and stay with what I was doing which happens to be -- ".

In summary, I don't think I did it very "well" because there were a few rough turns where I almost spun off the track, so to speak, but I am calling it a win and declaring that I was able to stay in contact with my breath for one hour at home today. Wow.

Feelings: excitement, pride, humble gratitude

RE: Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
11/17/11 4:56 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
Hi Tarver -


I would add that writing down one's present intention for doing the practice is very helpful (indeed I read it from Daniel's book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha), if not here (and privacy on this point can help some persons be more honest with themselves), then somewhere, as well as the events that led up to the practice and the goal (which you mention is stream entry).

It is very common to start a practice, get agitated, leave the practice, look for a new practice, get agitated, take actions based on agitation, get frustrated with self and one's own actions, go back to original practice, get agitated, leave the practice...

To regularly note why one is doing the practice is as much an insight practice as anything and can track a) the urge to practice, b) the patterns of living/thinking that lead to the urge, c) cause a sense of progress towards one's goal, and d) build intention (which intention sustains one through challenging practice efforts and/or helps one return to a practice).

RE: Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
11/18/11 7:21 AM as a reply to katy steger.
Having declared myself here, I am indeed experiencing an immediate and enormous jump in my practice.

Privacy is a big issue of our times, yeah. It seems to me that the benefits of getting into contact with like-minded people for mutual support outweighs the risks. Extroverts of the world, unite!

Skipping from one practice to another... excellent topic. I think of myself as very reluctant to do that, and yet looking back I guess that over a scale of years I have done so. On the one hand, I don't think I have given the Goenka technique a "fair trial" because the recommendation is to sit two hours every day between courses, and I have never done that. On the other hand, even though I find Goenka's explanation of the technique intellectually compelling, I have found it so grindingly hard even under the ideal circumstances of a course -- three courses -- that I seriously doubt my ability to play the first hand.

Another thing I have not tried is to attend a course as staff, a dhamma server. Not only would this be excellent dana, but I have also been told by reliable sources that those who do this experience a dramatic improvement in their practice, specifically in their capacity to integrate practice with the rest of their lives. In order to do that "clean", however, I would have to stick to the prescribed Goenka technique and not mix it up. Spiritual eclectics are not welcome to serve at Goenka centres.

Both posting here and potentially serving a course would be filed under "Sangha", and maybe that is the missing ingredient. I am blessed with the most incredible, loving, and supportive circle of friends I could even dream of wishing for, and yet specifically on the topic of mediation practice I find myself curiously isolated, right along the lines of the warning in the foreword of MCTB, come to think of it.

You also brought up the topic of regular exercise on my introduction post, but I'll answer here: your point is well taken, and although I am not entirely sedentary I would do well to exercise more, as would most people. Indeed, it says right in MCTB, "When we exercise, we are working on training in morality," and the first training supports the second, which supports the third. But I don't think that is quite it, because all vigorous exercise and yoga are strictly interdicted on Goenka courses, and lots of people make dramatic progress there. I am big and healthy and physically quite competent but I have always disliked yoga and exercise. Hmmm... there it is, aversion. Maybe I should investigate that...

Thank you for your responses.

RE: Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
11/18/11 7:15 AM as a reply to  Tarver .
WTS Tarver:


Another thing I have not tried is to attend a course as staff, a dhamma server. Not only would this be excellent dana, but I have also been told by reliable sources that those who do this experience a dramatic improvement in their practice, specifically in their capacity to integrate practice with the rest of their lives. In order to do that "clean", however, I would have to stick to the prescribed Goenka technique and not mix it up. Spiritual eclectics are not welcome to serve at Goenka centres.


I served abut 30 odd courses over a number of years. Highly recommended development of the paramitas all aimed at dissolving the 'me-ness'. It strengthened my practice manifold.

I wrote this for any yogis not wanting to mix techniques. Check also the comment section with other yogi quotes in order to maximise the efficacy of the sweeping method.
http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2010/11/going-for-stream-entry-on-goenka-10-day.html

Nick

RE: Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
11/18/11 8:58 AM as a reply to  Tarver .
Sat for one hour resolving to sit AA, which is to say adhitthana anapana. (Joke, but seriously. Why do Vipassana meditators die with a smile on their lips? Because there will be no more adhitthana sitting, at least for a while.)

Lost track of my breath exactly nine times (counted on my fingers), mostly at the beginning, and mostly briefly.

Motivation fluctuated wildly, with periods of restlessness and boredom, agitation, and a few intervals of calm.

Noticed that distractions were best met with compassion and gratitude, and a sense that they were sweeter left alone than indulged in.

I am suspending my practice for the weekend because I am attending a Leadership Training course with the ManKind Project, and the schedule is quite tightly structured. A component of the course is a 7-week follow-up to do "whatever it takes" to reach self-defined goals, with robust peer support for accountability. I am considering setting a goal (or, cringe, perhaps even making a commitment) of practicing 2 hours every day, and documenting that here.

RE: Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
11/18/11 9:06 AM as a reply to Nikolai ..
The article looks excellent, thank you, I look forward to reading it!

Perhaps the answer is in the article, but I will ask what is on my mind: with the goal of stream entry, am I better off sitting a course, say, a few months from now, or serving one?

To keep this line of questioning simple, let's suppose I just stick to the techniques I have been taught in the Goenka tradition, to "give it a fair trial".

RE: Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
11/18/11 9:13 AM as a reply to  Tarver .
WTS Tarver:
The article looks excellent, thank you, I look forward to reading it!

Perhaps the answer is in the article, but I will ask what is on my mind: with the goal of stream entry, am I better off sitting a course, say, a few months from now, or serving one?

To keep this line of questioning simple, let's suppose I just stick to the techniques I have been taught in the Goenka tradition, to "give it a fair trial".


I would go serve and get it out of your system or get even more inspired to utilize a further course to take it as far as possible. Understanding how to maintain one's practice while up and about, working, interacting with others will help one when the course ends to transfer momentum of practice to all avenues in life. Momentum is key. And we aren;t always sitting on our arses to maintain it. Give it a fair go in all positions and situations.

Nick

RE: Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
11/18/11 8:46 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
Hi Tarver,

here's another post from the same gold mine: http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/03/dharma-is-for-losers.html

RE: Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
11/25/11 7:39 AM as a reply to  Tarver .
Monday Morning

Slept well for nine hours, got my son off to school, and sat for one hour, "adhitthana anapana," resolving to pay particular attention to annica (impermanence). Lost track of the breath six times over the course of the sit, counting on my fingers, each time briefly for only a few breaths. If I caught myself even wondering if my mind had wandered, I "took the hit" and counted a lapse. I guess it is a manifestation of dukkha (suffering) that I am not satisfied with this, and wish I could sit the full hour with no lapses! The mental content of one of the lapses into thought was a realization of how pervasive dukkha and annica are in daily life -- my lips curled ever so slightly and involuntarily into a smile when I realized that I was using the very meditation instructions themselves to subvert the mediation practice. Sneaky, slippery, funny mind...

Just to see how it was, I sat this morning on the old fixed-height fixed-angle mediation bench I had made for myself and sat on for (six?) years, rather than the DanaBench prototype I have been using for the last two years. DanaBench is definitely better because it never "digs in" but there is something reassuring about a solid perch, too, at least initially.

I used earplugs as I almost always do. Occurs to me that I use padding on the floor, why not also padding for the ears?

Monday Afternoon

Sat another hour. Stayed in contact with the breath continuously. Four or five times my awareness became faint, but I caught it just as the last wisps of the short-term memory of the last breath were dissipating. Also, oddly enough, my mind started to follow a story away from the breath in just the moments before the timer rang, as if I knew the hour was up. There were some odd auditory phenomena, like a ringing that persisted for some time and then went away. Also, as the sit got long and boring I started to imagine the sound of the timer and doubting if maybe it had gone off -- of course there is no missing it when it does go off, but that's where my mind was trying to go. Upon reflection, I don't think I was in contact with the breath continuously per se, but rather consciously aware of at least one fragment of each breath. The image came to me of putting stickers on boxes coming down a conveyor belt, and my job being to make sure there is at least one sticker on every box.

Tuesday Morning

Before sitting this morning, I re-read the chapter in MCTB "From Content to Insight" so that I could watch for and report the "good stuff" and of course so that I could come off as The Dharma Dude, etc. Also, I upped the ante and resolved to observe not just "the breath" but specifically the points of transition between in-breath and out-breath, and see how many of them I could catch. Well, it was just like old times, off in story for many minutes at at time, in my judgment a very weak session. I did not open my eyes for the hour, but did move my hands to scratch and stretch and fiddle with the bench several times. Reminds me of an expression from carpentry "After tight comes loose" which means that if you over-tighten a screw or a nut you are liable to strip it and then it won't hold at all; I wanted to tighten up my observation to find those celebrated vibrations that everybody keeps talking about, and I gather that I am supposed to observe "faster" in order to get there, but this morning in trying to catch two moments in each cycle of breath rather than sitting content with just one, I am guessing that I exceeded my capacity to stay present and so kept drifting off. Of course, the way to get stronger at anything is to practice more difficult exercises, while also having enough successes to remain motivated to continue.

My previous experience is that the best way to guarantee drifting off into la-la land (and presumably wasting my time) is to try body scanning, so that is why my strategy is to stick very close to anapana/concentration, and attempt to edge ever so gently and gradually into insight territory from there.

Another image that keeps coming to mind is that of skiing down a slope. Suppose the hour of sitting is like a ski slope, and the first objective is to make it to the bottom without falling down, which corresponds to staying aware of sensations -- say, the breath -- without drifting off into stories or thought (or worse, getting up and wandering away entirely!) Having achieved that a few times, I would now like to do it without the meditative equivalent of flailing my arms, careening about on one ski, narrowly missing trees, etc. Eventually, I can try to get through all the gates, jump the moguls, etc., and someday start "competing" for time, style, and so forth. This is all very hypothetical, as I don't ski.

Tuesday Afternoon

Sat for one hour intending to notice each individual in-breath and each individual out-breath. Counted lapses of concentration or breaks of adhitthana, however minor, on my fingers. The final count was 19. "Progress, not perfection."

Also, found my heartbeat distracting at times, had to consciously ignore it and keep the focus on the breath.

Wednesday Morning

Sat for one hour. Blah. Kept fidgeting and forgetting why I was even there. Breath, what breath? Even opened my eyes 10 minutes in to check the time! Thought "OK, start again" but to no avail. Somewhat comforted by the knowledge of the stages, that the time is coming when the best practice will be to show up and practice at all, however poorly. I found any ambient noise intensely irritating and distracting, even though I don't think there was anything particularly noisier today than yesterday or the day before.

Any feedback, comments, or encouragement would be welcome. If this were the first few steps of a Marathon, I would want people on both sides of the road cheering me on. emoticon

Wednesday Night

After a very long and productive day, meditated for one hour. Tried to follow the breath and simply find the first jhana. Not very successful, probably due to fatigue. With 13 minutes to go, couldn't believe the hour wasn't up yet and opened my eyes. Switched to a reclining position with the knees up and completed the hour.

Thursday Morning

"Sat" for one hour in a reclining position. Attempted to follow the breath on a "nothing fancy" basis. Used a posture I learned many years ago from the Alexander Technique, on a thin mat on the floor with the head slightly elevated (folded towel) and the knees raised. Drift off too much, knees fall over and one wakes up; spine is extended; hands either on hips or belly or by my side. One hour is a very long time. If boredom is a manifestation of the noble truth of suffering, then perhaps I am earning merit by accumulating direct experience of this truth. On the one hand, the results so far of this experiment in sustained "serious" practice is that my concentration and stamina seem to be degenerating. On the other hand, everything I have read here and elsewhere and what little I know about neuroplasticity suggests that consistently "showing up" and plugging away at it will sooner or later lead to mastery. I am only a few days in. Looking forward to the possibility of sitting with a friend later today.

Thursday Afternoon

Sat with a friend. We did some light & gentle relaxation / movement / energy / intention-setting stuff and then set a timer and sat formally for half an hour. I was able to stay in contact with my breath (or at least a part of each breath) without at any time feeling like I had lost it for the entire sit. Far from rock-steady, with a few "close calls" but stayed with it nevertheless. Encouraging.

Friday Morning

Just to verify my concentration, I tried counting out-breaths from one to ten. Sat for 55 minutes, then 5 minutes of metta/tonglen. It was as easy as the proverbial shooting fish in a barrel. In fact, it was so easy, that it got really really boring and that's where the challenge was. About three-quarters of the way through the hour, there was some kind of state transition into a calmer, easier way of being. Was that a transition from access concentration to the first jhana? Who knows... Maybe I will try some body scanning next time and see if I can do it now that I am sitting two hours per day and have a bit of momentum.

My commitment is to sit 12 one-hour meditations per week, and this weekend I am taking a trip out of town with my Sweet-E so I am likely to "skip" a couple of sits, but still stay within my commitment to practice.

RE: Tarver's Practice Thread
Answer
12/2/11 1:06 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
Saturday

Sat half an hour this afternoon alone and an hour this evening with my Sweet-E in the hotel room. Started body-scanning, Goenka style. Surprised myself with how well it went. In the half hour sit I only managed one "round" scanning down and then back up, but picked up the pace slightly in the evening session. The main thing I am happy with is that I can sustain the effort without zoning out (much).

Sunday Morning

Sat one hour, body-scanning. Very aware of the difference between the idea of, say, my elbow and the actual physical sensations from that part of the body. After 40 minutes had only made it from head to toes twice (and not even back up). Worked very hard to pick up the pace in the remaining time, but find that if I go too fast I become quite vague about where I am and liable to lose focus and zone out.

I always follow the same "path" down the body lest I get lost. (Seems funny to say!) I start with the top of the head (cue Goenkaji: "Top of de head") and go down the face and front of the torso to the groin. Then back to the top of the head and down the entire back. Then left side of the head and left arm, and then right side. Finally I "go" into the left armpit and proceed down the left side of the torso and down the left leg, and repeat for the right. When I am done if I am feeling ambitious I come back up in reverse order, or if I am feeling conservative I start at the top again .

Sunday Evening

Meditated for half an hour on the train, just following the breath, anapana. Stayed with it surprisingly well given all the distractions, fatigue, etc.

Monday Noon

Sat for one hour. Settled in with a few minutes of anapana, then started body scanning. Took 25 minutes to make my way down the body the first time, top to bottom. Very frustrating. I know there is nothing wrong with my concentration -- if I can do adequate anapana on a passenger train, I should be good to go for some respectable insight practice -- and yet the body-scanning is really, really hard work and it is very hard not to zone out. I know that certain parts of the body will appear "blank" without sensations at some times, and I am perfectly prepared to accept that with equanimity IF I feel that I am sufficiently focused to register "due diligence" in that area. The problem (seems to me like a problem) is that if I hang around long enough in any area I eventually start to feel something -- a light tingle, a subtle contraction of a muscle, my pulse, whatever -- and as soon as I feel anything I move to the next adjacent area. When this goes well, it feels like a slowly rolling billow of sensations moving along my body. But this keeps slowing down and dissipating, and I start doubting whether I am giving adequate effort to a given area. Is it just quiet right now or am I not paying enough attention? Then I kind of "fall in" to a perceptual vagueness that I FAIL to notice, and next thing you know I have zoned out and when I get back all I can remember is roughly where on my body I was supposed to be scanning, and I pick up where I left off. Meanwhile, I have to ignore all the self-critical thoughts about how all the cool kids are probably blasting through this with Mahasi noting, while I am stuck with frumpy old Goenka scanning, but I shouldn't go changing techniques because that would probably make it even worse, etc, etc. And so it goes.

Monday Afternoon

Sat for one hour, and I think this is getting better. Articulating my frustration above was helpful. I got one scan of the body top to bottom in 25 minutes again, then I thought I would switch it up. I moved my awareness up and down my entire body (front, back, sides simultaneously) and it suddenly seemed fairly easy, though not nearly as precise as I would like. It was as if a "smoke ring" of awareness of sensation was moving up and down my body, taking about two minutes to go each way. Played with that for a while, then went back to the "standard path." Opened my eyes occasionally to peek at the timer to get a sense of how long things were taking. Managed to scan up my body along my "standard path" (described Sunday Morning, above) in five minutes flat at the end of the sit.

I hope this detailed account of my practice is helpful to others. Writing it is definitely helping me make sense of my experience -- not that narrative coherence is important for ultimate insight, but it is helpful for maintaining motivation.

My best guess right now is that I am somewhere in the first three stages along the progress of insight, Mind & Body, Cause & Effect, and Three Characteristics. The three characteristics are more obvious to me when I reflect on my sitting quite frankly than when I am actually doing it at this point.

Tuesday Afternoon

Back to blah. Procrastinated on my morning sit until well into the afternoon. Frustrated at failing to get traction on some other commitments, and the vagueness and lack of focus are evident in my practice. Decide to do one thing, and then next moment do something else. What's with that? Started the session following the breath, figuring "at least" I could work on concentration skills -- that is always helpful -- but I wasn't even very present with that. Finally came up with the following: on each breath, turn my attention to one of six major areas of the body: head, torso, left & right arms, left & right legs. Start each "round" with the head, and decide at the last moment which part to attend to, constantly switching it up. Catch any sensations I could, and transfer attention to another part on the next breath. Felt more like shoveling gravel than like examining something with a magnifying glass, but managed to keep that up for 10 or 15 minutes at the end of the sit. On days like today, I feel like meekly admitting that this whole meditate-seriously-until-stream-entry idea is really stupid and unworkable, and I should just drop back to accepting my lot in life and find some other plan to cope with the suffering that is life.

Tuesday Evening

Sat one hour, much the same as this afternoon. "This too shall pass."

Wednesday Morning

Meditated one hour before getting my son up to go to school. Tried 40 minutes of reclining posture, attempting to follow the breath, but kept spacing out and concluded that I was wasting my time. Then sat on an actual cushion (I usually use a bench) for the remaining 20 minutes. One resolution after another to make good use of my time pathetically dissipated into fiddly postural adjustments. Is this the stage of Dissolution? I have no idea where I am, except that I do know that these things are cyclical and that the certain recipe for failure is to give up.

Wednesday Night

Sat one hour after my son went to bed. To counteract vagueness, I wrote my intention on a card: "One hour of anapana, highly focused on the sensations around the nostrils. Adhitthana." Well, it went according to plan for the first half hour, then my focus fell apart, I started to fidget, open my eyes, get lost in story... I am clearly not enjoying any blissful jhana here -- I don't think I am at any risk of getting lost in the joy and pleasure of concentration practice, as per some of the warnings I have been reading.

Thursday Morning

Sat for one hour, with the written intention "Scan the body continuously, grossly if necessary, but as finely as possible, for one hour." What a difference having a clear goal makes! In terms of the Hierarchy of Vipassana Practice that Daniel has recently articulated, I would say that I was bumbling along at around HVP level 3, with a few intervals of level 4. Probably sitting with my friend this afternoon, and then meeting some DhO dudes this evening. Excited.

Thursday Afternoon

Logged one more hour of mediation. Embarrassingly low quality. Felt very unfocused so I tried a standing posture for about 20 minutes. To my credit, I stuck it out for the hour but not sure I accomplished much except the beginnings of a rather interesting headache right at the end. (Might sit with friend tomorrow; couldn't sync up schedules today.)

Friday Afternoon

Sat one hour, in a chair, following the breath. HVP-Level 3. Kept eyes closed, but adjusted posture many times. Deal was, follow the breath no matter what, and don't worry about posture. (I will call it "Supported Quarter Lotus" -- sitting in a kitchen chair against the backrest, with my legs crossed.) Right at the very end, with seconds to go, noticed that even though I thought I was just passively following the breath, there was just the barest wisp of intention preceding each breath, and I thought "Ha! There it is: Cause and Effect". Then the bell rang.

Statement of practice goals for December 2011
Answer
12/2/11 8:42 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
My experience and reading lead me to believe that although my concentration skills are good, they are not nearly good enough for what I want to do, which is to ascend through the stages of the progress of insight to stream-entry.

Therefore, I am setting the following goal for practice for the month of December: to refine my concentration skill to the point where I can reliably follow every breath for a period of one hour, reproducibly, at will. This corresponds to the Hierarchy of Vipassana Practice Level 5.

My practice commitment is 12 one-hour sessions per week.

Here are some things that are EXCLUDED from this stated goal, for clarity:

For tactical purposes, I don't care whether this is concentration practice or insight practice. Whether the breath is "solid" or resolved into component sub-sensations is not my problem this month. Staying with "the breath" (or any part of it) is.

Whether awareness is broad or narrow is not explicitly part of the goal, but I expect that if this works (ie, if my skill improves) I will need to keep narrowing my awareness to keep it challenging, and I anticipate doing so in the classic way, at the entrance to the nostrils.

Posture. Ideally, I would like to be able to do this "adhitthana" without moving, "without opening my eyes, hands, or feet", looking like a statue of the Buddha. For this month, I don't care. I may use a chair, or a bench, or a cushion, or a prone "Alexander" posture, or standing, or something else. (I have always despised walking meditation. Perhaps this is worth investigating at some point in the future...)

Access concentration vs. jhana. It would be nice to master the first jhana, and even nicer to master the second. Apparently, it is a lot less work than slogging through this on access concentration alone. Not my problem this month! Jhana can come or go, is welcome if it comes, but is not the stated goal. It is a highly desirable side-effect of the stated goal, but I am resolving not to let that desire be distracting.

Given my larger goal, awareness of the Three Characteristics is highly desirable. Therefore, dukkha manifesting as boredom is welcome here. Bring it on. Awareness of anicca and anatta are also welcome (perhaps inevitable) but not the stated goal for this month.

In fact, progress through the stages of insight is not the stated goal for this month. Awareness of the breath is the stated goal for this month.

At a respiration rate of 10 breaths per minute, there are only about 600 breaths in an hour. I will not count breaths (that's way, way too easy!) but I will count and report lapses of mindfulness. These will be counted on my fingers, reporting up to ten lapses or "more than ten" if that is the case. Any doubt that I may have missed a breath counts as a lapse. If this goes well, the number of lapses should trend asymptotically to zero.

Questions, criticism, or any other feedback would be most welcome and encouraging. Thank you.

Tarver's Practice Report 1
Answer
12/7/11 4:22 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
Friday Evening

Sat one hour in a chair. Shifted position occasionally. Followed the breath, mindfulness lapsing 8 times about evenly spaced. I never cease to be amazed at how seductively interesting certain thoughts can be, and how the mind just patiently keeps offering new combinations until something "sticks".

Saturday Morning

Sat one hour, much like last night, with 9 lapses. Failed to notice that the cat was still in the bedroom and managed to put it out without losing the breath. but then did lose it as I congratulated myself on this accomplishment. Funny, eh?

Sunday Evening

Sat for one hour with no lapses -- zero missed breaths. Not quite rock solid, a few times it got a bit thin, but not once did I feel that I had actually lost it. I knew a short way into the session that I could make it all the way through with no mishaps if I simply remained calm and focused. (Yeah, "simply.") For much of the session I could rather calmly examine the in-breath and the out-breath as very distinct phenomena.

I have been reading Ian And's General, All Purpose Jhana Thread and finding it very helpful. I have never found meditation particularly joyful, more like something that is good for me. At one point today, however, perhaps two thirds of the way through the hour, I noticed myself getting bored. I immediately recognized this as a manifestation of suffering, and felt joy at catching it. I felt myself smile ever so slightly, and as if I had hit a bumper I was bounced right back into mindfulness of the breath full on. Cool.

Monday Morning

Lots to describe today. Sat one hour, had no trouble at all staying with the breath. In fact, it was so easy (!) that I was able to develop quite a train of discursive thought before I noticed that I was about to fall off the breath, and cut it out. This is new, and a most welcome development. In fact, I feel that I need to find something more interesting to work with, or boredom will destroy my practice just as I have gotten it "really" going. The next step is obvious: while staying with the breath, develop awareness of the Three Characteristics. It feels like I am being pushed or drawn in this direction simply in order to find ways to execute the marching orders for the month -- to stay with the breath.

There was an ongoing low-grade commotion outside my door, a well-documented phenomenon. I was able to "read" the experience of it in real time as impermanence ("it isn't there most of the time") and suffering ("I don't like it") and even to a limited extent no-self ("those people aren't doing this to me, my body just happens to be here while they are coming and going"). Even while I didn't like it, it almost gave me something to push against, and keep my practice strong.

I started sitting on the floor with a BackJack, legs outstretched, with a bit of padding at the small of my back and under my knees. I actually leaned forward off the back rest and simply sat cross-legged on the mat for about 20 minutes of the sit -- not sitting straight upright, but closer to the classic "lotus". Also, it has usually been my experience that I run hot -- I typically dress like others would dress were it about 10 or 15 degrees Celsius warmer. At the Goenka courses I have attended (always in Winter) everybody else in the Dhamma Hall has a shawl or a blanket over them, socks, hats, etc., and I am sitting there with bare feet and a t-shirt. Today I felt like putting a blanket over my shoulders for the first time, ever.

Monday Afternoon

Sat for one hour. On a cushion. Without opening my eyes, hands, or feet. People, this is huge! Oh, and I don't think I lost the breath at any point either. I have never been able to sit for long on a cushion. After my first Goenka 10-day (at which I used a bench), I found that I could sit for short periods on a cushion, but for all of the decade I have been meditating I have been all about benches or other postures. (I am six and a half feet tall, around 250 pounds.) Today I sat for an hour on a cushion, and with strong determination rode it out. As for the breath, the funny thing is that the gaps between breaths have started to get subjectively longer and loooonger and loooooooooooonger. I know that playing by my own rules, I never hit a spot where I said "There, I have lost track of the breath and just noticed and need to come back now, count one lapse," but the timing is getting all strange and unfamiliar. Surely this is progress, but from what to where?

Tuesday Afternoon

Sat one hour. Concentration abysmal. I find this very funny, and not entirely unexpected as a rebound from yesterday's high. Sat cross-legged on a DanaBench set low for half an hour, then switched to a prone Alexander position. Five lapses in the first half hour, another five in the next 15 minutes or so, then a certain sense of relief that I didn't have to try any more -- struggled with that, kept applying "micro-resolves" which evaporated faster than I could make them. With five minutes left, said to myself "Self, surely you can do 5 minutes clean, starting NOW" and gave that up within three minutes.

Printed my Statement of Practice Goals for the month and put them in a plastic sheet protector so I wouldn't drift too far from my stated intentions, by the way.

Tuesday Afternoon #2

Sat one hour, with my friend. Concentration still lagging, but posture was perfect. emoticon

Thursday Morning

Sat one hour, kneeling with the DanaBench. Read my laminated Statement of Practice Goals for the month before sitting. Ten lapses of concentration occurred within the first 20 minutes, and I felt impatient with this clever technique I have cooked up -- it felt distracting, and I tried to follow the sensations of the irritation but then remembered my resolve to follow the breath this month, and then felt irritated by that. It was, in spite of all that, a rather good session (judgment noted). As I returned to the breath, I allowed my awareness to include my entire face, and especially any muscle movement associated with smiling. Thus do I flirt with the elusive jhanas.

I didn't write it up yesterday, but I had what felt like a profound insight sitting with my friend. I realized that I have lived much of my life "skewed" into fear, anger, and misery. I have heard so many warnings about being seduced by the "pleasantness" of following the breath, about the "joy" and "pleasure" of concentration states. Mostly I think, what are they talking about? Meditation is hard work. Life is hard work. Getting stuff done is hard slogging. If other people are more successful than me, it is because they try harder (can you spot the projection?) than I do. So I realized that correct equanimity for me, subjectively, actually feels awkwardly even precariously joyful -- vulnerably exposed to happiness. And then, beyond that there is a whole mirror image realm from the one I have been living in where the problem actually becomes getting carried away with and seduced by the joy. Turns out, that is not my problem. Turns out, that correct balance need not be burdened with effort. Who knew?

Thursday Afternoon

Sat 25 minutes with my friend G. Did a half hour of movement, stretching, and vocalizing before that. Was very conscious of the feeling of my face peripheral to my breath, with the feelings associated with joy, happiness, gratitude, and not exactly pleasure but perhaps contentment, especially as manifested in any tendency to smile.

I am about to apply to sit my fourth 10-Day Goenka Vipassana course at the start of February, and there is a very good chance that my Sweet-E will come and sit with, her first course. (The dog and the cat will be sent to their own respective 10-day courses elsewhere.) After considering the matter at great length, I have decided to sit rather than serve because I do not feel 100% committed to the Goenka practice. I could easily rationalize that what I have been doing is so similar that the differences are minor, but a fib is still a lie and would not be consistent with the first training, sila. As soon as I decided to sit rather than serve I felt relief at the freedom to explore my practice as I need to, but I also feel responsibility to constrain my exploration to the very nearest margins of what Goenka teaches because this is all still within the rubric of "giving it a fair trial." Also, if my Sweet-E can indeed come, then it will be great to have the symmetry of both of us sitting even if I will likely be in the front row among the men, and she in the back row among the women. And finally, this is after all a big push towards stream entry for me, and I have every reason to believe that the paramita of dana will flourish bountifully once I realize that attainment.

Thursday Afternoon #2

Sat 35 minutes following the breath, losing the breath, following the breath, losing the breath. Felt like a lot longer than 35 minutes! Descended to some pretty deep states of calm abiding for short intervals.

I wish I had some better clue about whether I am in access concentration, jhana, or momentary concentration. By process of elimination, I suppose access concentration.

Applied to attend Goenka course February 1-12, 2012. That starts in exactly 8 weeks. I have a lot of preparation to do!

RE: Statement of practice goals for December 2011
Answer
12/3/11 4:13 AM as a reply to  Tarver .
For tactical purposes, I don't care whether this is concentration practice or insight practice. Whether the breath is "solid" or resolved into component sub-sensations is not my problem this month. Staying with "the breath" (or any part of it) is.


Sounds very sensible. One thing i recently reread in MCTB was something about momentum --if you're mind has started on insight, then you may have a hard time doing concentration practices until you've mastered a cycle of insight --and vice versa. This certainly seems true for me personally -i can concentrate pretty good, but i don't think i get much jhana stuff going except maybe 1st before insight takes over --after that, doing anapanasati as you are planning the two kind of mix and mingle together, which is a pretty good combination.

I imagine you'll find your experiment rewarding.

Tarver's Practice Report 2
Answer
12/14/11 9:15 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
Thursday

Going easy on the formal sitting today because I am still recovering from and processing and integrating some very powerful "work" I did last night at my ManKind group. Although technically that is all "first training in morality" (Accountability, Mission, etc.) last night had a very strong "in the body" component that was distinctly A&P-ish, when I reflect on it. Felt some energetic stuff that reminded me of the Quickening in the movie Highlander... dum de dum, just another night out with the Circle of Men...

As for my formal practice, I am going to sit a "One Day" Goenka mini-course for Old Students on Saturday, so I will have plenty of hours this week to fulfill my practice commitment for the week even if I take it easy today.

And, having said all that about taking it easy, my friend G. dropped by for a bit more body awareness or whatever you could call whatever it is that we have been doing, and she invited me to look into my body "for evidence of life." Well, shiver me timbers, there were all those "sensations" that everybody has been making a fuss about. Within a few minutes (less than 20 minutes) I could easily pick out six clear "energy centres" up and down my body, and scan in and out of them, and actually had fun zooming around and playing with it all. There was from bottom to top, Power, Creativity, Love, Expression, Gratitude, and something kind of cosmic-gold-sparkly at the top that I can't think of a name for, but it doesn't matter because, well it just doesn't matter.

Friday Morning

Sat one hour with both Sweet-E and G. Very grateful for their company. Sitting with others is so different than sitting alone! Also the dog was with us, but he had trouble finding his breath for a while and kept shifting his posture, especially at first. Eventually the dog settled into some kind of soft jhana but then totally lost it with three minutes left on the clock, and got up and started wandering around. I used the dog (I hope skillfully) by deliberately generating compassion for it, noticing the smile on my face, and attempting to follow that back into mindfulness of breathing with the factors of fixed and sustained attention, joy, happiness, rapture, etc. Counting lapses of mindfulness of the breath seemed totally out of place at this session, so I did not attempt that whatsoever. I think I am on the right track, but I am not as good at it yet as I look forward to being. Note to self: these desires for the future are occurring in the present.

Friday Afternoon

Sat one hour with my Sweet-E. This was a few hours ago at her place, and I didn't log it right away so I am getting foggy on the details. I think I was attempting to harness the "joy" of smiling to help focus attention on the breath. I am constantly astounded that people talk about "liking" concentration practice, that it can be so joyful and pleasant as to be a problem due to being seductive, etc. The only reference I have for that is that I find concentration practice tolerable but insight practice so brutally difficult that I have seldom even attempted it for more than a few days outside of a Vipassana course. I have had a few glimpses (I think) of the first jhana, and maybe if I attain that reproducibly I will find a way to stick with serious practice on more than raw determination and/or the desire to escape the perennial off-cushion Dark Night cycling once and for all.

Tomorrow I am attending a Goenka one-day course. I look forward to hearing the instructions again. Now that I am steeped in all the fantastic info from MCTB and DhO and have been sitting two hours a day for a little while, maybe it will sound different or perhaps (please!) feel achievable. Even if it doesn't, I will continue the experiment right through to the full 10-day in February, but some early positive indicators would be encouraging.

Saturday

Attended the Goenka Vipassana one-day mini-course for Old Students. It was excellent. Everybody there was serious and Noble Silence was scrupulously observed, the modest gym at the Unitarian Congregation was packed to capacity, and on the whole it was really well done. I found the meditation itself fairly easy, although one of the sessions was long enough for me to struggle a bit, and I had a bit of one of those little breakthroughs that happen when one pushes oneself because others are present. (Answer: the pain was 99% in my mind!) I found the body-scanning easier and more sustainable than perhaps ever before in my life (!) so there might be hope for me yet. I also had a brief interview with the Assistant Teacher, and asked about anapana and the first jhana. It would not be fair to quote the teacher's answer because I can't remember it exactly and I don't want to misrepresent it, but essentially it boiled down to resolving the dialectic between figuring it out for myself and following directions. I should add that I really liked the guy -- he obviously knew what I was asking about, knew what he was talking about, and seemed helpful, relaxed, friendly, and compassionate. I can only imagine how psychically draining it could be to wear the projections of an entire room full of meditators of varying levels of skill, but this guy wore it well (or so I project). What this has to do with my practice is that I came away feeling validated, encouraged, and motivated. I have not yet sorted out how (if at all) this experience might affect my practice goals for the month. One thing the Assistant Teacher pointed out is that no sooner does one deliberately point one's mind somewhere and experience a sensation than the whole thing proceeds to change, so the process is very fluid -- and I am realizing upon reflection that what is true microscopically is true macroscopically as well with my stated goal and how I thought my practice would look for the month. These are great problems to have, and I am very grateful (which is primarily a facial sensation in my cheeks and around my eyes).

Sunday Afternoon

Sat one hour with my Sweet-E (and the dog). Used a cushion, and felt more stable and "solid" in the good way pertaining to posture than ever before with a cushion. Sweet-E even said I looked, whatever her exact words were, basically stable. Didn't feel I had to escape and move when the bell rang, just opened my eyes and felt just fine and sat without moving for a few more minutes. This is wonderful progress. I am feeling inclined to maintain a concentration practice for the balance of the month in congruence with my formally stated practice goals, centered on mindfulness of breathing. It felt appropriate to cultivate a whole-body awareness, however, rather than the narrow focus I thought I would need.

Addendum: I find myself very irritable and short-tempered after sitting today. Very odd and incongruous.

Sunday Evening

Sat half an hour with my Sweet-E. Felt vague about what I was doing. I really have been very sensitive today, volatile, reactive. Dark night? Duke of Bananas? Who knows?

Monday

Sat one hour, then later a half hour with my friend G. Didn't log it right away, so I don't remember details.

Tuesday Morning

Sat for 50 minutes, clipping 10 from my sitting time because I am going to a meeting that includes 10 minutes of meditation, I am running a bit tight for time, and I was eager for an excuse to get off the cushion. Starting to feel a bit of a droop in momentum. Physically, I am sitting better than I can ever recall in my life, and cognitively I know I am making fabulous progress. Emotionally, although I feel globally OK today, I felt kind of blah about my practice. Not bothering to count lapses because it feels distracting, but not staying with the breath continuously by any means. Don't want to start body-scanning because I want to shore up my concentration this month, but starting to suspect I am wasting my time because my concentration is good enough. Stick to my plan, or re-negotiate? I feel like I am gently easing myself though a funnel from wide thoughts about past and future, squeezing down into the present. One interesting thing about this morning's session is that I was able to exclude a ticking clock from my awareness (until I checked on it, of course!) as I am using ear plugs less often.

Tuesday Evening

Sat one hour with my Sweet-E, as an experiment, before dinner so she could sit with. Pets and my son coming home and the neighbors upstairs made it a noisy environment at 6pm, but the distractions gave me something to "push back" against. I was acutely aware of the difference between thoughts of the past and future vs. experience of the present. I am finding it easier to sit without moving (much) for the hour, and I think this is a simple muscle tone thing.

Wednesday Morning

Sat 40 minutes with G. Resolved to pay particular attention to the difference between thoughts of the past & future and the experience of the present. Careful what you resolve. My mind took me on a Technicolor tour of all the times in my life I have been unskillful with failing to be present with what was actually happening, and this was all the more unpleasant in that it kept (recursively) occurring to me that these were thoughts of the past, and not what I was there to practice. Planning to sit again briefly with G. later this afternoon, and then another hour with Sweet-E this evening -- but that's about the future.

Wednesday Afternoon

Sat another 45 minutes with G. and then an hour with Sweet-E. I have been sitting a lot with others under a variety of different circumstances, and it all feels distracting, but I am sure I am building my concentration skills.

Tarver's Practice Report 3
Answer
12/21/11 4:06 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
Seven weeks to go until Goenka Vipassana 10-day course #4. Objective: stream-entry.

Mid-Month Check-in:

The stated practice goals for this month seem a little odd and strained at this point. So far, I am meeting my commitment to practice times, but sitting with friends at all different times of day and sometimes under less than ideal conditions. The "theme of the month" is to develop concentration skills. My posture is improving palpably. Off the cushion I have put in many hours of study re-reading MCTB, looking things up and posting on DhO, following links and clarifying my understanding on technical issues, watching dharma videos, and now recently reviewing my annotated copy of the Mahasatipatthana Sutta and listening again to the recording of Goenka chanting same. Attended a Goenka One-Day sit for "Old Students". I have indeed been one busy dharma dude. Two parts of my stated goals that I have not been tracking closely are locating myself on the Hierarchy of Vipassana Practice, and counting lapses of mindfulness. I am two weeks away from the target of being able to follow the breath for an hour, at will. Upon reflection, part of the strain I am experiencing may be that my study includes reading about the progress of insight, whereas my practice this month has been largely, but not entirely, concentration. My formal statement of practice goals is not all that well drafted, with loopholes and inherent contradictions, but seeing those is clearly a sign of progress. I think I am on track with my stated goal, and making definite progress towards the larger goal of stream-entry in February 2012. Christmas will be disruptive to practice, but I will just have to work around that as best I can.

Thursday Morning

Sat one hour, on a cushion; broke adhitthana once or twice, fidgeting with my hands. Wrote on a card before sitting: "I resolve to follow the breath without interruption for one hour in this sit." Remained resolved, but got lost in thoughts briefly a few times. Rather than being content to catch part of every breath, I worked with following the breath as a continuity and remaining vigilant for any experience welling up in my awareness that wasn't that. Why is the present moment so elusive? Seems like my mind wants to be anywhere but present with what is happening right now. Felt like I came close to breaking a sweat with the "applied and sustained effort", but couldn't find any joy or pleasure to leverage, as per the first jhana. Feel tired after the sit. Am I doing this all wrong? Better do it "wrong" than not do it at all, I suppose. Ugh.

Thursday Afternoon

I was reading an article by Kenneth Folk which distinguishes effort from concentration. I decided to "take it to the lab" and sat down for an hour of kasina practice with a candle. (I tried a candle rather than a coloured disk because it seemed like more fun.) Very instructive, attempting to meditate with a primary object in a different sense modality. I sat fairly still but didn't constrain myself to any kind of adhitthana, and I kept my eyes glued to the candle flame for the entire hour with no more than about two or three lapses of perhaps a second each.* Here is the odd part: even with my eyes on the candle, eventually I stopped seeing it and my mind could wander off, even though I was still looking right at it. The lesson I gleaned is that intense effort is not possible to sustain for more than about half an hour, and in order to stay with the primary object it is necessary to relax into a more gentle form of concentration which is characterized by continuing to see what I am looking at. This throws a light on my experience of following the breath when I am not sure if I have "missed" a breath or not: I am all internally "pointing" at the breath, but lose concentration nevertheless, and stop feeling it in the same way as I can be looking right at a candle and yet not see it. Overt lapses like looking away are one thing, but the subtle lapses are actually hard to notice as they creep up. This may explain the strain I wrote about this morning in my stated practice goals. Now what do I do, I mean, besides keep practicing?

* I realized shortly after I wrote this that keeping "my eyes glued to the candle flame for the entire hour" with almost no lapses is actually very strong adhitthana, but in a sense modality that I am not used to taking into consideration!

Further Reflection & Strategic Review

It dawned on me this morning that my goal for the month is to develop concentration skills, not concentration states. This is actually something that the Assistant Teacher at the Goenka Daysit pointed out to me, but seems to have taken the better part of a week to sink in: practicing Vipassana also develops concentration skills. Another hint is that many people seem to be reporting that the (samatha) jhanas become obvious and relatively easy to sort out after stream entry. Therefore, I am going to switch my practice focus to full-on body-scanning Vipassana, with only occasional interludes of anapana, much as prescribed. I will continue to research and refine the distinction between "effort" and "concentration", as I think that holds the key for me to stay with the practice (any practice) and not waste my time on the cushion. This tack feels congruent with getting ready for the course in (less than!) seven weeks, and it is a calculated risk that two weeks from now staying with the breath for an hour if I so choose will be a fairly easily reproducible feat, even though I won't be practicing that directly for the balance of the month.

Friday Afternoon

Sat one hour with G., in addition to stretching and movement and the other things we do (she is helping me reform my diet, etc.). Made excellent use of the energy from other "stuff" in my life to power my practice, and sat the hour maintaining the body scan sometimes part by part, other times sweeping the whole. Noticed clearly that that the sense of the observer and the sensations on various parts of the body were obviously flip sides of the same phenomenon, as if this were as plain as the nose on my face. Is this observation of anatta? Wasn't particularly looking out for it before, but it was really clear today. I also wonder what the difference between dukkha and aversion is. Is not liking a sensation dukkha? That can't quite be it. I will look that up later, perhaps post a query if I can't find a good answer.

Also sat one hour with Sweet-E, remaining equanimous in the face of strong external distractions. Looking forward to doing some research tonight, as outlined above.

Saturday Afternoon

Sat one hour with G. Had a bit of trouble following sensations, so fell back to the breath a few times. Not worried by this -- I think it is a question of skill-building and perseverance, so I am just doing the best I can. My posture is so much better and more stable than it was just a short time ago; my mindfulness is sure to follow. Took an interest in the question, "Who is observing the sensations?" and I know the answer, of course nobody is, but I tried to observe that directly. This prompted the more interesting and seemingly problematic question of "Who is deciding which sensations to observe?" and again it seems really obvious to me intellectually that it is the integrated field of experience that is causally associated with my body that becomes more or less focused from time to time and under various circumstances, but again "I" tried to observe that directly. It would be lovely if, off the cushion in daily life, I could be more deliberate about what I want to do and when -- more disciplined in other words -- and I think what I am working on in my meditation may, as a desirable side-effect, point the way to "getting out of my own way" and getting on with what I need and want to do in my life.

Also sat one hour with my Sweet-E and a friend of hers who turns out to be an Old Student of Goenka's and currently a student of Shinzen Young. As for my practice, I am still a bit wobbly on keeping the attention present to my sensations and moving continuously through my body. The good news, of course, is that I am present to my sensations and moving my attention continuously through my body, which a few short weeks ago was much more than I could do.

Sunday Morning

Sat one hour with Sweet-E and G., my son having packed off to a friend's with the dog. All quiet in the house, except for the traffic, the people downstairs, the noisy power supply on one of the computers... aversion... aversion... First half hour, my concentration just wasn't there, and I could barely even do anapana. I faced this with equanimity as best I could, and just kept "starting again". About half way through the hour, the possibility of doing Vipassana showed up, and I was able to do some body-scanning. By the end of the hour I was almost effortlessly scanning up and down my body at about one minute per round trip, noticing subtle tingly vibrations wherever I "looked". The focus wasn't that tight, but there were no obvious "blank spots".

Also got some insight, perhaps, into the issue of suffering (unsatisfactoriness) vs aversion: Aversion and craving are deviations along a certain axis from equanimity/serenity/tranquility/samadhi, whereas dukkha is the inherent quality of anything I experience whereby there is always some way that it could be better -- there is always something to complain about, in other words, especially in the obvious cases of birth, old age, sickness, death, etc., but in all phenomena in fact.

Sunday Afternoon

I forgot to mention that I woke up last night in the middle of the night with an unmistakable feeling of Fear. I noticed almost right away that there was no proper object -- it was just a feeling, rather than a fear-of something -- and concluded that it was probably the Duke of Bananas playing tricks, and went back to sleep. What brings this to mind is that I am having some very pronounced Misery/Disgust reactions to cooking this afternoon. If this is what I think it is, at the rate this is going, then Re-observation is just around the corner. Batten the hatches, the storm's a-blowin' in... or it might just be a sprinkle. Never can tell, can we?

Sunday Evening

I have no idea if I am "on the map" or what, but I certainly had a very interesting experience this evening. Sat 45 minutes with my Sweet-E, and wasn't into it much at all at first. Just did anapana for quite a while. Suddenly, intensely unpleasant sensations arose on my arms and face. I stayed with it, stayed with it, didn't react, didn't react, observed, observed, observed... couldn't have been more than a minute or three, but it felt like forever. By the end of the sit, I was able to scan up my body all the way from feet to head on a single in-breath, all the way from head to feet on the out-breath. I could continue to do this for a few minutes after the bell rang, even. IF I am on the map, those would be re-observation and equanimity. If I am not on the map, that would merely be freakishly awesome progress. At this rate, I will have stream entry well before Christmas, which simply does not fit with my preconceived ideas of how much effort and diligence are supposed to go into this project, and therefore cannot possibly be happening this quickly and easily, sitting merely two hours a day. Whatever! Keep practicing, and as they say, "Keep an open mind."

Monday Afternoon

Sat for 1.25 hours, alone. Found a comfortable position on the couch with especially the small of my back supported and my feet over the coffee table; upright, yet eminently sustainable. Deliberately entered a broad focus awareness and played across the boundary of "zoning out" and found that I could apparently simultaneously perceive sensations from a large part of my body. Probably accessing second, third, or fourth jhanas, but will need to look it up and play with it some more to be sure. Was too "busy" stabilizing the awareness to spend much time drilling for the Three Characteristics, but did occasionally check for them, and of course the evidence was everywhere. Thoughts popped up in my awareness that were of the form of people I know, and it was transparently obvious that these were projected aspects of my own personality. Made no effort to stabilize and study these, as that's not what I was working on today.

Tuesday Morning

Sitting alone, I set the timer for an hour and a half, and opened my eyes with exactly one minute left to go. Quite possibly the longest timed, sustained meditation I have ever done on my own in my life. Went deep, very deep, right to the limit of my present skill and abilities.

First thing is that Big Issue is back. Big issue is ruining my life, ruining my son's life, causing this trouble, that trouble, blah, blah, blah. Went looking (perhaps hunting) for sensations that might be associated with Big Issue. Never turned up any specific sensations per se, but noticed the following: at one point my perception of "space" (such as it is, with eyes closed, etc.) seemed distinctly out of phase with itself as if my head, my perception of it, and my mind were fanned out like the cards in a hand of cards, such that my head was about a quarter or half a unit to one side, and my perception were offset to the other side. Clearly, the Duke of Bananas is playing tricks. Also clearly (thanks, Duke!) my perception of the content of Big Issue is out of phase with reality. That's what my lawyer and everybody have been telling me for many years. Go figure. Resolving this insight to Right Speech & Right Action may take some integration, but for now I will be damned if [Big Issue this, Big Issue that].

In other news, I spent part of this session cultivating an awareness of my entire sensory field bringing each sense modality on-line like the pilot of an aircraft going down a checklist ("Physical sensations -- check; visuals -- check; auditory -- check... What am I forgetting? Where was I? Who hid the list? Start over... Physical sensations -- check"), and then once it was all precariously balanced, looking for the three characteristics. All without "thinking too loudly" so as not to disturb myself. When this goes well, the subtlest rustle of intention ripples out almost (but not quite) imperceptibly into a gentle cascade of sui generis observable phenomena, which are observable not because anybody is observing them but because they are phenomena, obviously impermanent, and unsatisfactory at least insofar as I can't see them clearly enough for "my" liking.

Also, at some point in this session I was struck forcefully by the intuition that I should re-read Leslie Dewart's Evolution and Consciousness. Forthwith. Could a few of you really kind, smart, highly realized people who can read and digest and master every other kind of philosophy and technical material please get your hands on a copy of this book, and help me sort out the exact nature of the "switch that gets flipped" in the mind when somebody gets Path? Maybe we (maybe somebody, maybe I) can clarify and elucidate and propagate that one key nuance that will fit together with all the other important work that others are doing so that within this very lifetime enlightenment goes viral. Thanks.

Tuesday Afternoon

Sat for another hour, again alone. Not sure what I was doing. Alternately scanning up and down my body and drifting through some nebulous void. Kept forgetting the instructions.

Before sitting, I started re-reading Dewart's book. Remembered just at the end of the sit that I had asked him to sign my copy of his book, and that he dated it -- December 21, 1989, which is tomorrow, the winter solstice.

Wednesday

Meditated the better part of an hour informally, and then sat one hour formally. Set the timer for an hour, and opened my eyes with 10 seconds left to go. Had no trouble scanning the body freely, and made a point of going through it once in great detail. Towards the end, I spent a while cultivating the widest possible awareness, including sensations, sounds, images, and an awareness of as many of the Three Characteristics as I could remember. I am nowhere near Goenka's description of touching the body with the mind and having a sizzling of sensations as if touching a welding rod, but at the rate I am progressing, maybe I will see that soon, possibly within this very lifetime.

Tarver's Practice Report 4
Answer
12/28/11 11:16 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
Six weeks to go until Goenka Vipassana 10-day course #4. Objective: stream-entry.

Thursday Morning

Sat one and a quarter hours, attempting simply to follow the breath. Tried to observe the observation, but kept forgetting the intention. Was fairly stable for half an hour or 45 minutes or so, then started zoning out catastrophically. Was amused rather than discouraged, smiled, and got back to work as soon as I figured out what was going on. Got distinctly restless around 1 hour, and then resigned myself to the finality of my resolution to sit until the bell rang and had a few good minutes of samatha. Lost concentration entirely with two minutes left on the clock.

Thursday Evening

Sat one hour with Sweet-E, amid distractions. Neither of us felt very focused. It may be hard to maintain my practice over the next few day with Christmas events, but I will do my best. As I make the rounds of holiday gatherings, people are struck by my confidence, poise, and clarity. People are astounded that I am meditating two hours a day, yet millions spend that much time simply driving to and from work.

Friday Morning

Took the time to respond to another post that seemed important, but only sat for half an hour and not very strongly at that. OK, 'tis the season to break up routines and all that. All the best to everyone!

Saturday (Christmas Eve)

No practice.

Sunday Morning (Christmas Day)

Sat one hour with unbelievably weak concentration. Kept opening my eyes, shifting position, and even found it necessary to reach for the smartphone and check my email at one point. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Monday Afternoon (Boxing Day)

Sat for about 35 minutes, clipping the treetops at around Hierarchy of Vipassana Practice Level 2, at best. Oh, no! The Grinch stole my concentration...

Monday Evening

Sat another half hour with my Sweet-E, and settled into a deep, calm, relaxed state. Body-scanning would probably have been possible had I been motivated to do it, but it still felt like a holiday and I just plain didn't feel like working too hard.

Tuesday Afternoon

Sat one hour, following the breath off and on, otherwise lost in thought. Wonderful, constructive, positive thoughts about consciousness, dharma, how the self-presence of conscious experience may even be a "fourth characteristic" that accounts for the first three -- so either I am on the verge of articulating a philosophical breakthrough that will catapult me into enlightenment and pull the rest of the human race with me, or I have allowed Christmas to totally destroy my momentum and bust me back down to the beginner level of meditation and I am going to have to painstakingly reconstruct my practice, one breath at a time. Hard call.

Tuesday Evening

Sat an hour with my Sweet-E, and circled up to perhaps HVP-Level 3. Did a little bit of body scanning, just for demo purposes. Later, started writing an essay, which I intend to post on DhO as soon as I have anything coherent to present, suggesting that the self-presence of conscious experience (as exposited by Leslie Dewart in Evolution and Consciousness) may be a "Grand Unifying Characteristic" more useful for practice and rapid progress than the classic three (anicca, dukkha, anatta) because it implies, contains, and explains them in exactly the paradigm-shifting way that heliocentricity accounts for all the epicycles necessary for a geocentric model. In so doing, I may well have embarked on my most important life's work. My hope is that this work contributes to the alleviation of my own suffering and that of humanity as a whole.

Wednesday Morning

Sat for one hour attempting to follow the breath. While I was supposed to be meditating, I deduced that mindfulness consists of acquiring voluntary control over the assertiveness that characterizes conscious experience (one implication being that assertiveness may be at least at times involuntary(!), locking the experiencer into a reality of their own making, but not their own choosing, ouch). Some critical threshold of such voluntary control, coupled with a high degree of assertiveness and concomitant self-presence, presumably results in the emergent effect of "transcending the illusion of duality", aka enlightenment, which would render the experiencer effectively a master of reality in a pervasive and very cool way that would be very hard to explain to others who weren't able to experience things that way. The question is then how to direct my own practice in such a way as to achieve this effect in myself, and then find a way to teach it to others on a massive scale. Do I detect a whiff of A&P-ishness in my demeanour? Dewart seems to have that effect on me. I so wish I had gotten on with this while he was still alive.

Wednesday Evening

Sat for an hour with Sweet-E while my dearest son failed to keep the dog quiet in the next room. Increasingly over the course of the day, and then acutely during the sit, I have been sparring with the Duke of Bananas. I thought the hour would never end, and Sweet-E also said that it was a hard session.

Tarver's Practice Report 5
Answer
1/3/12 7:02 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
Five weeks to go until Goenka Vipassana 10-day course #4. Objective: stream-entry.

Thursday Morning

Sat one hour with my son, age 12. The fact that he actually survived the hour is great; he says he could follow three or four breaths in a row, and spent considerable periods of time sitting quite still. If we do it again, I may set him to breath counting just to get established. The aspect of my own practice that I am happiest with is my ability to maintain my posture on a cushion with almost no difficulty. I had been hoping to be able to follow the breath myself for an hour at will by the end of this month, which I am not yet able to do although there are still a few more days until the end of the month. It also seems, however, that the goal may have been a bit misguided as if attempting to complete a rally in first gear -- what seems to happen is that once the mind calms down, the focus of attention naturally tend to broaden. If there is insufficient mindfulness (self-presence) that becomes zoning out, but if there is sufficient concentration the nature of the focus matures and expands.

I will write up my goals formally at some point in the next week, but the time is almost upon me to take whatever samatha I have and get to work on the vipassana in earnest. I think introducing some vipassana a few weeks ago was a good idea.

Thursday Evening

Sat another 45 minutes with my Sweet-E, just following the breath off and on, sinking into a pleasant state of tranquility. Looking forward to reading the remainder of Dewart's book, and then re-reading MCTB seeking a synthesis of the two perspectives, both of which I have great confidence in.

Friday Afternoon

After running into something which I found personally upsetting, I sat two back-to-back hours with a short break in between. To keep it interesting, I crossed my legs right over left for the first hour, and then left over right for the second hour. Followed the breath. Oddly enough, my mood had not shifted much even after two hours of sitting, and I was about as annoyed going out as coming in. Very curious.

Saturday (New Year's Eve)
Only sat a bit less than half an hour, still experiencing a low mood; lots of schedule disruptions and logistics happening around the celebration of the New Year.

Sunday (New Year's Day)
Sat one hour with Sweet-E, and an excellent session indeed to kick of 2012. (Started writing a draft of my practice goals for the month earlier today, the gist of which is to focus on vipassana in preparation for the Course one month hence.) Was able to scan the body every which way with perfectly adequate concentration. Also realized the a potential commonality between what the Buddha was saying, and Ingram, and Dewart: the "dots" that line up are suffering, dualism, and absent-mindedness with respect to the self-presence of consciousness. I feel keenly focused and deeply committed to working very diligently this month to attain stream entry in February. I can't guarantee the outcome, but if I don't succeed it won't be because I gave it any less than my absolute best effort.

Monday Morning

Sat 75 minutes as per the draft practice plan for the month, which I will be posting shortly. Became restless at about 45 minutes, opened my eyes briefly, and crossed my legs the other way. I have been sitting just fine on a cushion (to my utter astonishment!) and I think this is excellent physical practice -- it is getting easier and easier. I am able to scan the body part by part and also at times with a free flow of sweeping, although today I couldn't quite get it to one pass (up or down) on any given breath (in, out, or both) but I dare say that from where I was a month ago this is astounding and wonderful progress.

One area where I am having difficulty is with my understanding of what exactly I am doing when I sit. It bothers me that I don't need to know what I am doing, that it is sufficient that I simply do what has worked for others. I guess that I am deeply attached to knowing what I am doing, and I fancy that I have the intelligence, perspicacity, and access to a few sources of theory that put me in a position to articulate a theory of what is happening that will in some ways be better than what is already extant. The flip side is that I am not buying Goenka's dogma about defilements and purification, and because I am sincerely trying to follow his instructions as they pertain to the practice itself, I find myself straining to "translate" them in real time into terms that are meaningful to me.

What I think I am doing is taking advantage of neuroplasticity to train myself to have increasingly voluntary control over my faculties of attention, especially as concerns that aspect of conscious sense experience whereby the object of experience and the act of experiencing that object are simultaneously integrated into a single experiential act which includes both aspects. In my understanding (or perhaps I should say Dewart's) this is already happening all the time, but because of weak (or deficient, or more neutrally, underdeveloped) self-presence, which is to say voluntary control over assertiveness, the object of experience dazzlingly overwhelms and the self-present quality gets overlooked; or when the self-present quality first gets noticed it gets mistaken for a subject-object split. Transcending "the illusion of duality" then is simply (ha!) a question of sufficiently developing voluntary control over the self-presence/assertiveness that is the signature characteristic of every conscious experience, paradoxically unbeknownst to most human beings who experience consciously all the time. And yet why should people know this? My favorite example is that we got along more or less adequately for countless eons without even knowing that the blood circulates until William Harvey sorted us out.

Tuesday Afternoon

At the family cottage with my son and a friend; they went out to build a fire, and I sat inside for 75 minutes. Got restless after half an hour, stretched briefly, got a sip of water, and crossed my legs the other way over for variety. No idea why that amuses me so much, but it does. Opened my eyes at exactly one hour, glanced at the timer, and got back to it. Took some time to build my concentration over the entire sit, but succeeded in getting some good scanning done. My skill at this is definitely building. What I am doing is starting with gross scanning, like head -- torso -- left arm -- etc, then front & back of head -- top and bottom of torso -- top and bottom of arms -- etc, finer and finer until I "lose it", then start again calibrating the coarseness. I find that I can pretty well always scan as coarsely as that, and presumably as my skill increases I will be able to track sensations finer and finer down to... whatever there is to be discovered.

Tuesday Evening

Sat just over an hour, once again while the gang was outside roasting marshmallows. Restless at first, then eventually settled in -- actually got up to deal with something in the room after I had set the timer. Towards the end of the session I felt drawn to a full-body awareness, very rapidly noting (or should I say, noticing) sensations all over the body, seemingly simultaneously. Felt very alert, sat very erect, felt very calm and present. I guess that was a "craving" exercise, being equanamous with something I "want", whereas the restless phase earlier in the session might have been an "aversion" exercise, being equanamous with something I "don't want", i.e., feelings of boredom, distraction, etc.

Also, got a phone call from the local Vipassana Centre to discuss my application, which after we discussed it I was told will be recommended to the Assistant Teacher for approval. Was warned against "mixing techniques". In addition, as an Old Student, I was invited to come to the Centre to sit (and possibly help with something) between courses to strengthen my practice. I have mixed feelings about this: it felt a bit too much like crossing a border and being careful to tell the truth, but avoiding any topics that might lead to misunderstandings. On the one hand, I am profoundly grateful for the institution of the Goenka Vipassana Centres which have made it possible for me to get to where I am today. I am sincerely making the effort to understand and apply the instructions provided by that tradition to get results. On the other hand, in spite of their Herculean efforts to steer clear of any dogma (or perhaps because of them?) I don't get the feeling that I am getting the whole story about what happens with insight practice, and had I not read MCTB and spent a month cultivating concentration, I don't think I would be in as good a position as I think I am in now. Maybe others can take the instructions as given and get somewhere with them, but it wasn't working for me. And on yet some other hand, maybe I am getting to the point where I am starting to appreciate certain nuances which would just be distracting or even deleterious at the start. Maybe it just isn't a perfect world. It's great to know that I am on for the Course, and maybe I can get up to the Centre for a day or two beforehand even, make myself useful, and get an even better running head start with which to hit the Course.

Statement of Practice Goals for January 2012
Answer
1/3/12 7:44 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
The principal practice goal for January is to prepare for the upcoming Goenka 10-Day Vipassana Course, February 1-12. The goal for the Course is to attain Stream Entry.

"Pariyatti" (Sufficient theoretical knowledge)
- Finish re-reading Leslie Dewart's Evolution & Consciousness, the best and most penetrating account of the human condition of which I am aware, with direct implications for virtually every aspect of human life including presumably practice.
- Re-read Daniel Ingram's Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, the most detailed and useful exposition of enlightenment and what it takes to achieve it of which I am aware.
- Re-read Goenka's Discourse Summaries and analysis of the Mahasatipatthana Suta, to assimilate and internalize the specific instructions and technique in which I have the most experience, and which I am planning to use to attain Stream Entry. Distinguish dogma from technique as clearly as possible in order to achieve equanimity with Goenkaji's pedagogy.
- Collate all the print-outs of the various articles and posts collected from the Internet into a binder, rank them for importance and/or topic, and review for best practices.
- Document such theoretical insights as arise from reading, reflection, and practice in my practice reports, but defer for now the project of synthesizing any coherent articulation of my understanding.

1st Training: Morality
- For this month, do just enough to get by.
- Keep the house in order, pay the bills, take care of my son, keep myself fed, and stay in loving relationship with my Sweet-E.
- Postpone any major new projects or initiatives.
- Avoid distractions, upsets, and triggers.
- Defer maintenance wherever possible.
- Maintain adequate sila to support the further trainings.

2nd Training: Concentration
- Work with what I have. Do not do any formal concentration practices for more than a few minutes, if necessary, to establish focus for vipassana.
- Maintain adequate samadhi to support the final training, both in the sense of stillness of mind on the cushion to do insight practice, and in the sense of global "focus" to align my priorities for this month in accordance with this plan.

3rd Training: Wisdom
- Practice vipassana -- awareness of and equanimity with body sensations -- as much as possible as per Goenka's instructions.
- Sit at least two hours daily; when possible, sit for 1.25 hours rather than one hour.
- Allow one or two days per week (presumably weekends and/or holidays) for only one sitting.
- When possible, sit formally on a cushion or bench in order to train physical endurance.
- Sit with a timer and avoid moving (adhitthana).
- Smile at discomfort with equanimity; smile likewise at progress with equanimity.
- Scan as finely as possible, or as coarsely as necessary, but keep scanning.
- Practice with others only if the intensity and integrity of practice can be maintained.
- Log my practice here on DharmaOverground, but avoid dwelling excessively on where I might "be" on the maps -- trust that I will make progress by keeping the focus on the practice.

Review these Practice Goals frequently to stay on track.

Tarver's Practice Report 6
Answer
1/11/12 11:30 PM as a reply to  Tarver .
Four weeks to go until Goenka Vipassana 10-day course #4. Objective: stream-entry.

Wednesday Morning

At the family Cottage. Got up before the others, dealt with the dog, stoked the fire, and tried to sit in the main room. Dog was distracting, so I moved to the bedroom and set a timer for 75 minutes. Never really overcame the restlessness, and called it off after only 65 minutes. Some sessions are like that. Maybe it was too cold, even for me? Maybe I haven't had a cup of coffee yet? Whatever.

In all the thinking I was doing while I was supposed to be meditating, however, I reflected on the idea of want / craving / desire, and that perhaps the standard dogma misses a key point. The conscious direction of final causality is so central to the human experience, that perhaps the source of suffering is not desire per se, but involuntary or somehow unskillful desire, maybe skewed by absent-mindedness or badly projected in a way that dooms the game to a loss right from the opening moves. I am suspecting that desire, like "ego" and suffering itself, is going to need an overhaul before the concept becomes really usable -- at least by me. Human consciousness doesn't come with any definitive owner's manual where one can look this stuff up. Maybe I will have to write it -- to throw on the heap of countless other attempts to do so...

Wednesday Evening

Sat another half an hour. Set the timer for an hour, but decided not to be any more heroic than that as it is quite late, it has been a very long day, and I am very tired. Felt drawn to that full-body awareness again, which feels distinctly easier and more restful and relaxed than the narrow focus of anapana or the constant effort of body-scanning vipassana.

Thursday Afternoon

Was really exhausted, possibly fighting off a cold, as is my friend who joined us at the Cottage. Slept about 12 hours. Took a cold shower to invigorate the ol' body, and managed to sit 45 minutes before I had to get up to attend to household matters. Tried something new, scanning from side to side rather than up and down. Feeling somewhat disorganized and off-balance, but also confident that these things come in phases and this too shall pass.

Also, I have been going over my Practice Thread the last few days to see if I had missed anything, and realized that I had not read very carefully the comments section of the link that Nickolai suggested here. It is indeed a total gold mine, collating comments from a number of DhO-ers, including and especially Tarin and Jill. Thanks again. I am now working my way through that material, including some of the podcasts which are loaded on the Android and ready to go. emoticon

Friday Afternoon & Evening

Went over to G's place and talked through some Issues but only sat for 15 minutes. Got home, and felt the need to push into it a bit so I sat for an hour and immediately reset the timer for another hour. Opened my eyes with exactly 15 minutes left on the second hour, and thought "that's quite enough" and rolled off the cushion. Spent about half of the first hour with my forehead on the cushion instead of my ass, and part of the second hour (3/4 hour) slumped against the wall, but there it is. Scanning felt too hard today, even full-body awareness was a slog. No idea what stage I am in, although Misery and Disgust are likely candidates, or maybe even Mind & Body as my spine just won't feel straight no matter how I sit. Made sure I logged two full hours of practice today, having gone and foolishly published my plan for the month. I am feeling a bit rattled that I only sat once yesterday, having spent many hours in the evening reading and reviewing things that seemed really important, watching the time slip away, never getting around to the second sit of the day. Doesn't matter how I feel, if I want that Duke of Bananas off my back once and for all, I have to practice no matter what -- indeed, especially if I don't feel like it. If I ever get anywhere with this, I will have earned it. "Master of the Present Moment" seems like a sick joke to me at this present moment, but I am sure that is as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not proper to any persistent self as everything else.

Saturday Morning

Sat for 75 minutes, but not continuously as I paused the timer and got up to pee (after duly examining the relevant sensations, of course). Not thrilled with my concentration as my mind keeps wandering, but apparently with practice the momentary concentration is supposed to add up and become quite strong. It really is remarkable how on different days (and even at different times during the same sit) the capacity to clearly perceive sensations on specific parts of the body fluctuates wildly, as does the ability to focus the mind sufficiently in the first place even to look. At times it is effortless, at other times all but impossible.

Applied to serve a 10-day Goenka Course on Jan. 18 -- tucked right in front of the one I am going to sit on Feb. 1 -- and included a link to this practice thread in my application. The question is, is what I am doing sufficiently close to what is taught in that tradition to qualify me to serve a course, given the enormous premium that is placed on not mixing techniques? It is probably like anything: if you stare at it long enough, it will resolve into little swirly fragments that can then be interpreted in any number of ways. I suspect that I scrutinize myself in way too much detail, and I hope that these efforts eventually result in liberation from whatever fraction of my cogitation turns out to have been superfluous.

I am now going to listen to Goenka chant the Mahasatipatthana Suta; I have indexed my printed copy with the time for the start of each paragraph, because I kept getting lost. Some passages sound literally like the phrase "mumbo-jumbo" over and over. When in doubt about the instructions, why not try to grok them in Pali? But seriously, before I get to the course I fully intend to learn all the relevant Pali vocabulary (which is all neatly listed in glossaries in the relevant publications) because, well just because.

Saturday Afternoon

Sat for 55 minutes whereupon the dog got restless, so I let me up and him out. I did my best to maintain equanimity in the face of the return of easy scanning in any direction I wanted, coarse or fine, so I just explored sensations in a matter-of-fact way for most of the "hour".

Spent much of the day working through the Mahasatipattana Sutta and the bulk of the Discourse Summaries. I am a little perturbed by the disconnect around what comprises Right Concentration. The Buddha clearly states that the first four jhanas are Right Concentration, whereas Goenka seems to take a different tack. Presumably this pertains to the wet insight / dry insight controversy. I guess that now that I have done what I had to do to get to the point where I can apply the technique more or less as specified, it doesn't pertain to me much in the short term.

Sunday Afternoon

Sat for an hour, but scanning was weak. Observed the fluctuations in the capacity to scan -- anicca. Kept getting distracted, however, by doubts about the 3 characteristics being truly fundamental. Most explanations I have read seem to start with one and derive the others. I am thinking that the cause of suffering is not craving, per se, but conscious craving in the form of narratives that "leave something to be desired" and hence never satisfy. Relief would come from realizing that any given perspective can be decomposed, and choosing ones (perspectives) that are fluidly adaptable -- optimized in real time, so to speak, with conditions. So why would training conscious control over proprioception help one realize the ultimate relativity of all narratives? Probably has to do with penetrating the felt experience of purposiveness aka final causality aka desire. Still, the dharma is shot through with reductionisms and metaphors that just don't hold up to examination. And, be that as it may, if I am to get myself enlightened I am going to have to pick or compose a story that I believe in just long enough to do what I need to do to get to where I want to go... there it is again, "where I want to go". Is that reducible to a sensation somewhere on the body? Even if it isn't, actually, maybe looking for it is skillful in this case.

Monday Afternoon

Sat two hours in quick succession with a very short break in between. Opened my eyes with one and three minutes left on the clock, respectively. I keep feeling like my spine could use stretching and "cracking" and wanting to fidget, so periodically I just twist and stretch with my shoulders from side to side, but try to keep it to a minimum and observe the sensations that comprise the urge to move. Cycles of wandering mind and "remembering the instructions" seem quite rapid, maybe a minute or two, but I am not opening my eyes to time anything. I feel frustrated that my concentration is not sufficient, like trying to work wood with dull tools: I want clean shavings, but I am getting smoke and powder instead. But I am trying to "play along" and apply the technique as I understand it, which is to scan the body as soon as I am able, and notice aversion when it arises.

Last night I drove a friend (also a Vipassana meditator -- Goenka "Old Student") from Toronto to Kingston and back to drop off some of her kids, so had lots of time to talk about practice and the dharma. Quite a few of my friends are Old Students.

Tuesday Afternoon

Sat for 52 minutes.

Tuesday Evening

Sat 59 minutes, more or less adhitthana, but not really trying very hard, if that makes any sense. Feeling paranoid about the tension between the Goenka tradition's interdiction of "mixing techniques" and the Pragmatic Dharma approach of dynamically adapting to what works best. "Chase two rabbits, catch neither" ...which is why I have decided to try and do it Goenka's way until the end of the Course in February, and then re-assess. If I can go serve and get some more perspective on the whole thing (and obviously be helpful and play it straight by the house rules) so much the better. Also, applied to attend a Goenka Daysit here in Toronto on Saturday -- it should be possible to shuffle the logistics with kid, dog, and Sweet-E to attend that, but for some reason I am finding all such considerations surprisingly onerous at the moment.

Wednesday Morning

Atypically, I am starting my practice report before I sit this morning because there is something highly significant to report. I have been turned away for both the Goenka Daysit on Saturday, and for serving the 10-day course next week. The response for the Daysit mentions a wait-list of 40 (!) which is entirely plausible, as I left it late to apply and the hall was packed last time. But I remain paranoid about what "they" -- the Goenka people -- think of me and my sincere attempts to practice, as I applied to serve scarcely two days after a call went out for servers because they were short of servers for this particular course, and the declining email very blandly says the "course is full and has a wait-list" without commenting at all on the substance of my application. Maybe I will get a call in a few days saying, can I come after all? Maybe the likes of me are exactly the kind of "wrong vibrations" that they don't want to pollute their atmosphere with? I am afraid of calling and asking, as I don't want to get dis-invited from the course I am accepted for, Feb. 1 (could that happen?) and also I don't want to create a hassle and waste the time of people who are (in my imagination at least) extremely busy doing things in a way that they whole-heartedly believe in and have found works for them -- at least I hope it works for them -- how many sotapannas are there typically on staff?. On the one hand, I am disappointed. On the other hand, this puts me firmly in the position of a "confused" outsider who, though attempting to do so, has yet to grasp all the merits of Goenka's particular approach to things, and therefore on my own ("You are your own master") to find my best way in light of such guidance and advice as I have been fortunate enough to receive to date. OK, now sit.

Sat for one hour. At 28 minutes, opened my eyes, shifted position (crossed my legs the other way) and resumed. In a fit of rebellious pique, I noted (yes, noted!) each in-breath and each out-breath. For the first half of my sit, I was squarely with the breath and other miscellaneous sensations on the body as they arose. For the second half hour I was much more lost in thought, working out contingency plans for strategy and logistics to get the kind of environment and technique necessary to get stream entry. Realized that I don't need Goenka. Will attend course Feb. 1 as planned unless the Goenka Inquisition ferrets me out -- what am I so paranoid about? There is no Goenka Inquisition! Almost nobody follows the prescribed instructions. Almost nobody sits two hours a day and remains utterly "pure". Almost everybody "mixes techniques" one way or another, just by virtue of being exposed to other ways of thinking about the dharma, or should I say dhamma. I am among a small minority that takes more than one course, and among a tiny minority that sits two hours per day for any sustained time -- and not even that long in my case. Perhaps I am taking this all way too seriously.

Wednesday Afternoon

Supplemental: Was cleaning out some papers and came across documents pertaining to the court case last year where I lost custody of my son. Broke right down and cried. Tried to observe the characteristic of dukkha. Also attempted to observe the thoughts about how I wish my practice were strong enough to shred this experience into the tiniest of little particles and make some good use of it. Who is this "I" who is trapped in this senseless, stupid, ridiculous clusterfuck, somehow entirely of my own making, and yet from which "I" can't escape? (Anatta?) In a few years my son will be all grown up, and in a few more years I and everybody I know will be dead (Anicca?) and in the meantime being bitter and resentful isn't helpful. Still, it is the dominant fact of my existence, it hurts like hell, and it feels utterly pervasively and absolutely real.

Wednesday Evening

What a day of paranoia and emotional reactivity! Got another note from the Goenka centre inviting me, as an Old Student, to come early or stay late for the Feb. 1 10-day to sit extra and/or help with something (which, ironically, will be hard for me to schedule as the time right close to the course is tricky). I have been just so hair-trigger touchy-sensitive about all of this. Yikes. What got into me?

Only sat 40 minutes out of the planned hour this evening after my son went to bed, and just suddenly knew that this was enough for today. Tried noting again. In my estimation, done right, there would be no verbalization -- just the assertive designation of the object of experience that always accompanies vocalization and indeed thought but is not so obvious unless one knows to look for it. If I weren't reading Dewart, I am sure I would mis-understand noting entirely. It has nothing to do with what Goenka criticizes as taking something other than naked reality for an object of meditation. I think I may be seeing the broad outlines of a colossal and tragic misunderstanding -- or another aspect of one -- that has been hampering humanity for eons and causing untold suffering.

If anyone has been following this thread and lives near or can get to the Toronto area, I am planning to head up to the family Cottage (two hours north of Toronto, right on the shore of Georgian Bay) for a small private meditation retreat January 19-23. My vision is to head up Thursday, sit intensively for three days, and return Monday. Would anyone be interested in joining me? No cost except to get ourselves there and back and feed ourselves. Message me privately please, if you are interested.

Feedback welcome!
Answer
1/4/12 11:12 AM as a reply to  Tarver .
Is there anybody... out there? [cue Pink Floyd] emoticon

Please feel free to respond to this post with any feedback, suggestions, tips, criticism, or other input.

Thanks!