I'd like to know how important it is to utilize speed in noting practice. On a personal level I find that there is so much going on that I could note all sorts. I have followed advice to concentrate on the most prominent feature in my field of awareness and always return to the rising and falling of the abdomen adding sitting when the space between the arising and falling becomes very clear. Fine.
In MCT Daniel talks of intense speed in noting practice and it makes me think of a person on speed My question then is what speed should be aimed at? Should the speed increase naturally, or is it a conscious decision that the pratitioner makes? When noting more slowly, say once/twice a second, space occurs in which there is no mental chatter and perception becomes clearer. Intense speed, at least in my limited experience of 'speeding up' the noting seemed to create a sort of mental intensity that imposes the label on the arising object instead of giving it space to do its thing i.e. rise and fall. Am I missing something?
Any thoughts dharma bods?

Personally I never tried to speed up my noting. I knew from the very beginning that there was a lot more going on than I could note. Let's face it, while your mind is engaged in the process of finding/creating and (mentally) uttering a label to describe the event it has just become aware of, probably a dozen other events will go by unnoticed. I never let this bother me, but just tried to make sure that, as soon as one note was done, the very next event that happened to occur would be noted. I really think it's easier to practice noting at a comfortable speed, not trying to artificially speed it up, until your mind is naturally ready to drop the notes and just notice each event without having to go through the process of finding and uttering a label. The noting is just an auxiliary device to make sure you keep noticing. I really had a chance to notice events fast enough only after I had dropped the noting. Fast enough to get past the dukkha-ñāṇas, that is.

Just so there is no misunderstanding, I don't sit down on the cushion and automatically find myself in that perfect rhythm of maybe 20 Hz or whatever it may be (I don't really use a frequency counter in my meditation). I note, slowly at first, then maybe a little faster, but after a few minutes, there then comes a point when I feel that the benefits of noting (making sure the awareness stays with the present sensate experience) are outweighed by the disadvantages of noting (missing the majority of the sensate experience, because the activity of generating labels distracts awareness from the present sensate experience), so I drop the noting and get into said rhythm, where I spend just one "mind-moment" of "noticing" per mind-moment of "experiencing." This is perfect duality: always one "event" followed by one "moment of noticing that event" followed by the next "event" followed by a moment of "noticing the event" and so on.

What happens next is beyond the scope of your question, and I don't want to spoil it for you (if you haven't heard or read about it elsewhere).

Besides, this is just how I have experienced the progress of insight. Your experience might be different anyway.

I guess the bottom line is, Don't worry about increasing the overall speed of your noting. Just make sure whenever you are done noting one sensation to right away notice the very next sensation that comes up. This is something you actually can do. Trying to come up with notes fast enough to note every single sensation is a losing battle.

I generally agree with Dauphin's point, above, but write to acknowledge that at a particular point in practice intentionally accelerating a noting practice can make a very big difference in the meditation experience.

At the time DhO (I think it was Daniel) made the suggestion, I thought I was noticing sensory inputs as rapidly as I could. But with the suggestion, I ramped up my efforts. It quickly became apparent that one of the reasons the noting practice had stalled out at the rate it had was a degree of clinging that I was engaged in with respect to the events that I'd noticed. Even though I'd already abandoned the labelling practice at that point, in a brief and quiet way, I was still dwelling with the inputs once I noticed them, rather than releasing them as rapidly as they subsided in order to make room for other inputs. In order to speed up the rate of noticing, I had to speed up the rate of releasing the mental clinging to what was noticed.

And that made a very significant difference in the experience of the meditation itself.

Helpful?

OK. Thanks guys. I appreciate the input. Anyone else feel like chipping in?