Bad news: left the retreat early (Monday 3/19 was the end, it's now 2am, but I drove home). Good news: 99% sure stream entry. Details following.
Day 1Breath concentration. Specifically, concentration on the flow of air through the "nostrils". Day full of irritation because I was set on following his instructions, but I couldn't do any of my concentration tricks that helped me get good and deep before. So it was pretty poor all day, with TONS of posture adjustments.
Day 2Breath concentration with the added emphasis on feeling the touch of the air through the nostrils. I didn't realize he didn't want us to do that the first day, so day 2 very closely resembled day 1.
Night of Day 2 + Day 3So anyone who's done one of these knows he has you work all day then does a 1-1.5 hour long discourse to explain what is going on and what's coming up. They're pretty entertaining. The night of day 2 he was explaining the new concentration practice we would be using. Basically concentration on any sensation within the "limited area" of the triangle with the base as the upper lip up to the top of the nose.
Here's where things picked up. Finally I was doing something that was like what I was expecting for vipassana (although he pronounces it vipashina, as do the assistant teachers and others experienced with it - not sure what's correct, actually). This took off quite quickly. My nose was awash with sensation. Pressure, tingling, itching, bugs crawling...you name it, I probably had it.
Same thing the next morning of day 3. Tons of sensations. Going strong. However, by the afternoon, I started feeling bored with the same thing. I couldn't really stand the constant moving my legs and just crappy practice much longer, and impulsively I switched over to noting. Things really flew from there. It was basically the last 3 or 4 hour sits of the day, and I hammered the noting hard. After Goenkas discourse, I had sensations all over the body, super prominent, and for the next half an hour or so I began a fateful sit. Things were flying, and about 10 minutes in (this is all by memory, so give or take a little time) I hit what I later realized was the 4th nana. I kinda sorta wasn't sure, and I remember thinking "is this it?", as in "so what". So, I don't think I took more than a few seconds before pounding away at the noting again. Next thing I know, every sensation in my body is lit up and the best way I can describe it is an Eric sensation tornado. They were just spinning around like crazy. This was probably the only time during that whole sit where I took a few minutes just to observe. No noting. But, not knowing what it was, I stopped it consciously so I could continue noting. It probably would have been neat to let it play out and see what would have happened (I didn't get the lights show or anything), but I was deadset on making progress at that point. Looking back at it, I probably only had 10 minutes of actual A&P time before the event. I still think that was a little strange.
Day 4Morning starts out and I'm feeling a little bit guilty about all the noting I had been doing, but that was short lived. I tried to do the concentration stuff we were still doing (still on the triangular area around the nose), but it sucked all of a sudden. The second sit of the day, all of a sudden I felt my heart beating out of my chest. I could feel my heat beat flowing all the way down both arms. Very interesting. Next thing I know: FEAR. Started out fairly gradual, but for the rest of the day I had fear. Sometimes just anxiety, some times so much tightness in my chest it was painful. Not fun, but I knew what had been done. I started doing body scanning and just waiting for the misery to kick in. Nope, just fear. Goenka's got us doing body scanning in the afternoon, and I have just fear and pain (both knees and my butt). Lots of both. Not fun doing his power hour, or sit of strong determination, or whatever. I had been moving about every 10-20 minutes or so before hand because my aversion to pain was so strong, so this really sucked. Definitely wasn't able to make the full hour, and was pure torture.
Day 5So, at this point, I should mention that I've been reading/listening to a lot of
Thanissaro Bhikkhu. He really drives home the point of building discernment and questioning (I'll try to post some specifics later). So in addition to what I had been discussing in previous posts to this one, I was also developing my questioning and probing skills. I can't explain how helpful that was today. So I'm sitting there with the pain and fear, and finally I get a chance to talk to the assistant teacher (AT). He was actually extremely helpful, and helped me realize that both the pain and the fear had at least one thing in common, and that's the self's projection into the future.
So, while basically sitting there waiting (scanning pretty ruthlessly) for misery to kick in (I had felt just the tiniest bit of sadness, but nothing even close to misery), I started questioning which eventually lead to a practice I'll call "moment capturing". Basically, I stopped scanning and was trying to see exactly the sensations of fear and pain (pain was predominant at the time) exactly as they are, in a single moment, without any of the self's future projections. I can still remember walking up to the meditation hall, across a bridge, basically taking screen captures of all my internal and external sensations.
So I'm sitting there, trying this out while the pain and fear were pretty strong. All of a sudden I'm in equanimity. I don't remember how many times I tried it, but it wasn't many. I really had no idea what had happened. I didn't think I was at re-observation, let alone misery, so I was pretty doggone surprised to find myself in this open, spacious, peaceful environment. I could "see" the pain in my knees, but it wasn't bothering me. Then some bright light, not really strobing that I can remember, but kinda gently moving from side to side. I thought, "well this is nice", just being aware of everything, when it hit me that this could be equanimity. Not missing a beat, I starting asking questions like "who am I?" and "what's the center of all this?". I remember Daniel describing turning the attention to the watcher, and basically turning awareness in on itself. So I tried doing just that. I had no recollection of the discussion of formations, and wasn't really looking for them, so not sure if that made this easier or not. But anyways, I basically contorted the internal watcher to try and see in on itself. I probably stuck with this for half an hour or so, and all of a sudden something happened that I don't really have a good recollection of, but I want to say it was like three bars flashing at me suddenly, accompanied by, or extremely quickly followed by a strong pain of fear.
Rather quickly, I believe, that dropped me out of equanimity. I remember thinking that my sense of self still seemed rather in tact, so I just sat there for a few minutes before Goenka starting singing at me to signal our next break. However, when we walked out into the small break room, I definitely noticed something very different. I'm not sure what it was, but everything seemed very alive, and I couldn't help but look at everyone's faces in the room (which almost everyone was looking down or around). It was very pleasant, but I chalked it up to my first time through equanimity.
So, I went back to my room and grabbed MCTB (I had actually gotten it out of my car a few hours earlier to see if I couldn't get any help with why I seemed so stalled with fear - definitely against the rules). I read enough to that was was fairly convinced that I had just experience equanimity, but needed to reproduce it before I believed it. So I sat there, and tried to do my moment capturing. At that point, I had just sat down, so there was very little pain, but the fear/anxiety was quite predominant. So I tried capturing that, and after a few tries,
whooop, back up into equanimity. But then I dropped out pretty quickly because I was so focused on my fear, and that was enough to pull be back down. So I tried again, and a little quicker
whooop, back into equanimity. Same thing. I dropped out again fairly fast. Over the next half an hour, I did this over and over and over - maybe 50 times or so.
By the end, it was nearly effortless to jump up into equanimity and sometimes started happening on its own. I also realized that the fear was sucking me out of it, other things would, like the desire to explain this new found ability to people on this forum. The desire to be able to use my knowledge to get me back into equanimity later also sucked me out of it. There was clearly a difference between the smooth background texture of equinimity, and the pulsy, almost flashy texture of the third vipassana jhana. I could see quite clearly the difference between the two as I hopped back and forth. So, wanting to validate that experience, I stopped meditating briefly and opened up MCTB. Then a weird thing happened. I noticed a shift in the background, with my eyes open and reading a book. I had clearly just moved from the 3rd Jhana to the 4th. I hadn't tried that at all. I closed the book and my eyes, and it was clear as could be.
So, after all of this, "break time" was over, and back for a power hour. This was a very interesting power hour for me. When I first sat down, I was immediately in what I thought was equanimity. Knees felt great, no fear. Not a huge surprise after the previous bit of work. But after I sat there for a few minutes, trying to "look into the watcher", I realized I had some weird sensations present, as well as a fair amount of desire, which I thought would just zip me out of equanimity. Then, I consciously tried to pull myself out by developing some fear. No dice.
After a bit of puzzling over what was going on, it struck me that I was back in the A&P. I wasn't sure how or why, and because I had spent so little time in the A&P last time, but this was the first time being in it since the night of day 3. Peculiar, I thought, but I knew how to deal with that. But what happened next shocked me. As soon as I started noting sensations, wham, I moved up into the 3rd Vjhana (I definitely am coining this hilarious, and potentially dangerous term, VJhana - I hope no one takes offense). Almost immediately after that I was into equanimity. The time it took from recognizing the A&P to being in equanimity was less than 15 seconds, and that's being conservative. So then, I opened my eyes, looked around for a little while to make sure this was all real, closed my eyes and was back into A&P. Then right back up to equanimity. I can clearly and distinctly see the vibrating, painless nature of the A&P, jumping up to the buzzing, painful and fearful 3rd VJhana, up to the clear and peaceful 4th Jhana. I'm cycling through them as I write. They may be slowing down slightly, but not much. I had a wave of fear earlier while writing this that put me into a slight panic that I screwed up and came home too early, but then it was gone and back to being pretty wonderful.
It's already long as it is, but I've been up for 24 hours straight (they're just now probably realizing I snuck off in the night - not sure if that was the best decision, but I couldn't sleep out of excitement and didn't want to have to drive home tomorrow exhausted. Either way I was planning on leaving...). I'll explain more tomorrow, particularly if people have questions or need any clarifications. I don't really think I need confirmation, but if you'd like to do so, I suppose that 1% of me wouldn't mind, because I know there's probably been plenty of people who have walked this path for much longer and probably thought similar thoughts that I'm thinking.
Sorry this is so disjointed. I'm not going to edit it, so I'm sure it's garbage writing.
Things to keep in mind- Even during breaks, I was still trying to go strong. Not always successful, but outside of a few power naps right after breakfasts, I was doing my best to keep some sort of concentration/awareness going.
- I got into this more as an intellectual curiosity rather than anything. Never been a
- I joined the "old" students and did not eat any fruit during the tea break at the end of the day. Basically I only ate at 6:30 and 11am. I first tried this as an experiment, because I figured maybe there was a reason why monks had that requirement. But I would say, with the exception of the last night, almost all my major progress happened at the end of the day, after I hadn't eaten for 5 hours or so.