Andrew Mayer:
2013-12-12
Shorter session today. Half an hour as I have 40 minute public sit on Thursday evenings.
Reread Nikolai's response and decided to take the intention of "gapless" practice into the meditation today.
Started with "have I begun?" as I sat down.
Focusing on the breath.
Rise-rise-rise-rise-rise
Fall-fall-fall-fall-fall
Lots of distractions. Am I meditating? Bring them in.
Examine them.
Distracting thoughts. Bring them in. Focus on the thoughts.
Faster faster. More sensations. Bring them in. Make them all part of it.
Expanding the field. Faster Faster. Take it all in. Move beyond response and feel the bare sensation.
Go faster than the echo can respond. What wait for the response? Why do I need to "validate" the sensation instead of just moving onto the next one?
Rise-rise-rise-rise-rise
Fall-fall-fall-fall-fall
What am noting? Noting the noting. Noting the sensations. Up and down the body. Feeling the full field of self.
For a moment everything is clear, as if I'm hanging in the air at the top of a leap. Sensations. *Is this flickering?*And then crashing back down.
Gapless practice. I am back, but where is back. This is meditating.
Focus on the breath.
Then thoughts creep in. Little movies. Little thoughts. Distracting stories.
Gapless practice! This is what is happening. Note the distractions. Return to the breath.
Somewhere outside a saw starts up. Visualizing the saw. Note the visualization. Hear the silences in between. Note the silences. Hear the shape of the sound. Note that.
Back to breathing. Rise-rise-rise-rise-rise Fall-fall-fall-fall-fall
Quickly the thoughts come back. Thoughts flow into narratives. I try to speed up, but things fall back into thoughts. Try to return to breathing, but things turn back into thoughts. Is this meditating?
Balancing between thoughts, the feeling of having thoughts, reacting to thoughts, noting the reaction to thoughts.
*Gong!* The time is up.
Am I still meditating?
Nice. Experiment with making the *Gong!* simply a sign to change positions not a sign to stop 'paying attention'. Take the 'paying attention' intention from the act of sitting in meditation posture to all postures and situations.
One thing to contemplate is that there are no interruptions to practice as long as the mind does not habitually assign that meaning (of 'interruption') to some arising and passing phenomena or lack there of some aspect of the field of experience deemed 'special' by the mind. These movements, or rather all movements of mind, can be part of practice. This is where the big baseline shifts gain a foothold in my own experience and practice.
There are only 'gaps' in practice if there are aspects of the field of experience ignored or averted from or craved. To avert from some aspect of the field of experience is to ignore the links in the chain of cause and effect. If craved, one is ignoring the links in the chain of cause and effect.
If nothing is ignored, and there is curiosity for EVERY movement, every arising and passing phenomena of the entire field of experience, that is when cause and effect chains that bind are able to unravel and lose their sequence of links. They stay firmly linked when those links are ignored. And to not ignore them is to not ignore the ENTIRE field of possible experience. There are no interruptions to 'meditation'. Even a change in posture. We assign meaning to and thus create 'things'. Those 'things' then are given the designation of 'interruption'. We create interruptions ourselves. Simply shift perception to the opposite. They are not an interruption, but a continuation of 'paying attention'. Any posture, any phenomena, any compoundings can be paid attention to. "Regardless of evaluation, this phenomena of 'thought', 'thoughtloop', 'image', sensation with a mental feeling tone of unpleasant, pleasant, neutral, whatever, visual fodder, audial fodder, tongue fodder, smells, regardless, all are NOT more sacred or less sacred than other phenomena. We assign habitually mental shape, concept, name, and weight to previously unborn, unsegregated, uncreated, not conceived aspects/distinctions of the whole field of experience. Then assigned with evaluation of good, bad or meh!, they can become 'interruptions' unless we shift the naming and shaping (by not being ignorant of this link in the chain of binding and interruption)
This will get the fireworks going in my experience and shift perception.
Nick's cent.
Edited because I got carried away, representative of current baseline
Carry on!