Robert McLune:
First sit. 40 minutes of (what I think is) samatha meditation.
I sat in a chair. I have an injured lower back and kneeling is hard; any kind of sitting on a cushion on the floor is impossible. On the odd occasion I've meditated in the past, I worried about that, but not now. I'm assuming for now that the most important aspects of posture are sustainability coupled with to sending one to sleep. Sitting in a chair qualifies as far as I'm concerned.
That's fine. I sat on a zafu for the first six months I did this, mostly because I thought it was more authentic, but now I just sit in a chair with the zafu supporting my lower back. :-)
Is sitting on the chair supportive enough for you? You can recline if you want, like laying in bed or on the floor. There's no hard and fast rule about it. If I'm going to fall asleep, I fall asleep. I saw people on retreat pass out while standing, so there are no guarantees.
All I'm trying to do is develop the concentration Daniel talks about in MCTB:
There's no need to be rigid about it. I bet even Daniel would agree that a lot of this stuff develops organically, and that concentration will arise along with the other factors of awakening.
The main idea here is to realize what's happening as it's happening, to see the true nature of things. For that you need a little bit of concentration ... a little bit of curiosity ... a little bit of tranquility ... a little bit of enthusiasm. Don't get hung up. Just imagine that you're bird-watching ... or watching cells under a microscope ... or observing a comet through a telescope. Take a patient scientist's attitude toward the thing.
I chose 40 minutes because that's the most I've managed before, and I kinda wanted to make a bit of a statement to myself about effort. In the past I've tried to first build a habit of sitting and too 5 minutes to be enough. I imagine it *is* enough for some people, but that approach never resulted in a long-term practice. So I decided to be a *little* bit tough on myself. I know by many of your standards, 40 minutes is a blink of the eye, but it's not for me. And as I say, I have sat for 40 minutes in the past, so this isn't really pushing myself.
That said, I always have and did again today find this *hard*. Uncomfortable. Not at all soothing or relaxing. For a while I just focused on the breath on my nostrils. Then I tried Mahasi-style noting of my moving abdomen. But throughout it was tense. Bum was sore. Lots of distractions, some minutes long and off into daily concerns. And overall I had a sort of "gritted teeth" feeling, as if I *was* grinding my teeth even though I wasn't. I am overweight and have sleep apnea, and along with that I have some of the symptoms of Restless Leg Syndrome. If you know what that's like, then that's pretty much how it felt. I read absolutely no significance into any of this. And throughout, as soon as I became aware that I'd gotten distracted, I noted and moved back to my primary object -- breath or abdomen. But still, not fun.
A few times I experienced what some have said in the past may be 1st jhana. It's a deeper sense of focus, combined with the feeling that I'm going cross-eyed behind my closed eyelids and also a pattern of swirling pink, purple and orange brightness in my vision (albeit with closed eyes). When it has happened in the past it has been pleasurable. Today, if it was pleasant it wasn't able to override the more general feeling of tense discomfort.
This sounds perfectly normal to me.
When I'm dealing with very difficult sensations and a frequently wandering mind (which is what it sounds like you're describing here), I just go to wide open noting. I drop the sensations of the breath, and I drop all models and notions of progress or regress, and I just note whatever predominates.
This is the bootstrapping technique. :-) I sometimes amuse myself here with the image of a car that's broken down in a field and getting out and pushing (noting) it.
"Okay, there's daydreaming ... now there's soreness in my back ... now there's tension ... now there's a mental image ... now pressure ... now hearing ... hearing again ... now pressure ... now thinking ... thinking ... hearing ... seeing some stuff behind my eyelids ... wanting this to be over already ... discomfort ... where's that discomfort? ... pressure ... feeling ... feeling ... hearing ... seeing ... thinking ... thinking ..."
I often do this out loud. I actually had a session today where I was staring at the clock, noting, "wanting this to be over ... wanting this to be over ..." And I'm not at all a n00b. Some sessions are just like this.
A big part of the psychological benefit of this practice comes from just being able to sit with unpleasant sensations and not do anything with them or about them. You're struggling with sensations. There are sensations from the body that are unpleasant. There are thoughts about those sensations that get woven into a story, and that story is very uncomfortable. And then that story leads to more unpleasant sensations arising. This is basically what dependent origination is about. It's also basically what Daniel's chapter on Content vs. Insight is about.
Your job, as a yogi, is to go to the root, to watch the sensations as they unfold, before they turn into stories and theories, and to just see their true nature. This is hard, because the preeminent tendency of the mind is toward content, not toward insight. It's toward stories or theories about things. It's toward memory and narrative, as though these things are simply There, as though they're Realities, when in fact they're constructed in many, many, many steps -- each one of which tends to offer its own little bit of pain.
Have patience with it and with yourself. It seems as though you've put off sitting for whatever reasoning and have had to circle around the thing a lot. And now you see why: it's because there's discomfort and frustration there. Okay. So be with that, and see it for what it is.
And by the way, I have studied philosophy. A lot. I have letters after my name in the subject. :-) I can tell you with a high degree of confidence that the part of you that wants to theorize about this and the part of you that wants to sit down and Get It Done are not the same. This doesn't mean they have to part ways or that there's no place for your intellect in this. It just means that, like every other person, you're made up of different motives. Make an ally of the part of yourself that can approach this like a scientist rather than a theoretician. Also bring a helping of empathy to the practice so that you can flow and move with the consciousness as it does its thing. You're not going to bring your experience to understanding, but you can bring your understanding to the experience -- if that makes any sense.