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Bored in Equanimity Waiting for First Path?

In the chapter about Equanimity in Daniel's Book, there is a sentence I've read countless times by now:

From this point enlightenment is likely to be attained quickly as long as the meditator continues to simply practice and gently fine tune their awareness and precision, paying gentle attention to things like thoughts of progress and satisfaction with equanimity.

 

It seemed encouraging enough the first few times around, but after a while, I got impatient with equanimity. It's pleasant enough, but ... So I tried Kennethsdry insight technique for attaining path a couple of weeks ago. In response to sending him a long description of my experiences with the dry technique, he recommended adding a bit of light, fun concentration to my daily practice, using the breath or a kasina object. I chose the breath, because I'm familiar with breath meditation. A few days later, the "kasina" thread resurfaced, with Guillermo describing his experiences. I'll give this a try after all, I thought, constructed a brown paper kasina using scissors, a saucer and brown paper, and sat staring at it for half an hour one morning. Apart from the usual side-effects of overdoing kasina practice like this the first time (see Guillermo's post for details), and learning that I can see "eyelid colors" even with my eyes open, nothing much seemed to happen.

Until that evening, that is. When I sat for meditation, I directly entered 4th Jhana, hard, and "shut the door" behind me for what felt like a very long time, and probably was about fifteen to twenty minutes, before it deflated. With "hard" i don't mean "one-pointed, to the exclusion of everything else" hard, but still distinctly hard.

Worried that I might "get stuck in Jhana" at this point, I asked Kenneth about it. He explained that the more active, forceful, "dry" technique would yield entry through the dukkha door, while letting 4th jhana/equanimity ripen would be the route through the no-self door. I had some concerns about not investigating enough and sliding back, but these were dispelled: "remember that after a certain point, viz. high equanimity, vipassana and samatha are merged. Vipassana always happens automatically." (from the "No Dog, Some Dog and the Simplest Thing" thread).

After reading a few more of my enthusiastic messages about me hitting hard 4th Jhana yet again several more times, Kenneth asked me if I would write up my thoughts on how I improved my level of concentration to balance out my level of investigation. Here's a very simple analysis of my practice up to now:

 

How long \ WhatInvestigation-heavyConcentration-heavy
past 2 yearsNoting-style sitting meditation, daily
past twelve monthsNoting-style walking meditation, whenever I walk, and also dedicated walking "sessions"
past four monthsKeeping a body part in mind during the day, recalling how it feels as often as I can
past four weeks
Gazing at a kasina


Even taking into account that investigation will exercise concentration, the lack of balance is quite obvious. Kenneth alluded to the Liebig Minimum, which is a model of plant growth, how short supply of just one essential nutrient will limit growth even if all the other essential nutrients are plentiful. Liebig himself used the image of a barrel with staves of uneven length: the capacity of the barrel is limited by the shortest stave.

It's the same story as with the five spiritual faculties. If Wisdom and Faith are out of balance, or Energy and Concentration, progress is not smooth. Same with concentration and investigation. If one is in short supply, growth is stunted, a plateau can result.

I hope this will help some of those who, like myself, are sitting in equanimity prior to first path. I'd also love it if those with more experience would chime in.

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