I've just finished reading MCTB and it left me with some confused questions. I'm not really sure what I want to ask, but here it goes:
1. There is the Six Sense Doors, including the five conventional senses plus those mysterious "thoughts". Now, if any thought I have I precieve as a speaking voice, visuals, feeling, etc., isn't there is only five doors?
2. Can I trace down any conceptual thought (whatever that is) into a bare sensation? If so, can we say that all thoughts begin with sensual/physical sensations? or maybe it can also go the other way around?
3. can I distinguish between gross sensations arising clearly from an external stimulation and more subtle sensations that are more doing with some more subtle processes of the mind and have nothing to do with my physical body?
Daniel writes:
Coming directly after a physical sensation arises and passes is a separate pulse of reality that is the mental knowing of that physical sensation4. I've tried to precive this second pulse but I'm not sure if did. Is this statement meant to be a hard fact or like a conceptual guideline?
5. Does "
directly after" mean there is no possibility of sensation B arise before the mental knowing of sensation A?
6. Is it possible I perceive the mental knowing in my subtle body
before the arising of the physical sensation?
7. If the physical sensation have a clear emotional content, or I'm dealing with something that is in between a thought and a sensations, does it still have a mental knowing? I mean, does everything arise in the mind can have this mental knowing?
8. Is it that the mental knowing is a separate mind, usually busy with memories, fantasies and planing, and that mindfulness means the working together of the knowing mind and the perceiving mind?
9. maybe the mental knowing come when the sensation meets it's higher fractal?
10. A sensation can be visual, auditory, etc. It can be something in between, like hearing my finger, all kind of synesthesia. sensation can also be hot, cold, dry, wet, seeming close or far, big or small, strong and weak. it can be moving, even moving while staying in place or be a movement. It may have verbal quality, like a word or syllable, isn't it? It can also be happy, angry, blueish, dark...the mind is really crazy! does all those changing, not-me qualities are content? isn't so is space, awareness, existence and being? can we put all those qualities in some kind a hierachical model, something like the five aggregates, the five elements, the abhidharma?
10. When noting sensations, do I coercing on the mental knowing a certain tempo and emphasis? when naming the sensations, do I freezing them with a cetrain relation to "myself"?
11. Sometimes I find myself looking frenzely for more sensations, with the eyes going everywhere. I thing I'm using all my ammo without targeting. should I ambush for the next sensation, go looking for it, or disintegrate the current one for smaller particles? any tips for accelerating the rate?
12. when contemplating on the Three Characteristics or whatever I choose to contemplate on, should I do it from time to time, generating a certain spirit for the investigation, or should I really intentionaly contemplate with each arising sensation, 10 time in a second all three together?
that's all for now