Author: kevin_stanley
Forum: Daniel's Practice Hut

I'm in the early stages of developing concentration. I've been working daily at attending to the breath, and for the last few days I've been using a candle flame as well. From the descriptions I read in MCTB, I would guess that I'm now regularly hitting 1st jhana for at least brief periods, sometimes for several minutes at a time. On a few occasions I've gotten a kind of trance-like and automatic feeling, and my visual field has distorted with my breathing in a way that makes me think I may have hit 2nd jhana.

Then a few nights ago something weird happened. I had been trying to sit, but I was really sleepy and I gave up after a short time, less than 10 minutes. I went to bed and fell asleep. I was still kind of in the practicing mindset as I went to sleep--I remember directing my attention to my breath as I drifted off. Some time later, I'm not sure how long it was, I partially woke up--not completely, but enough to have been thinking and to remember it. I had this intense body-bliss. Mostly in my upper torso. The quality of the feeling was almost orgasmic, except steady; not pulsating. Like a glow of bliss, if that makes any sense. I was able to consciously tune in to it, although that seemed to "scare it away" a little bit--but it was still pretty intense. It then slowly faded out over several minutes.

So my question is: what was that? I guess I want to believe that by falling lightly asleep while practicing I circumvented the distraction of my thoughts and made it to 3rd jhana. But I'm also open to other interpretations. Like "it was just a dream, and it doesn't say anything about your progress."

Another question arises: does anyone here use lucid dreaming in his/her practice? I'd love to hear your thoughts/experiences.

Author: KunstderFuge

I've been lurking for a while, but your post coincided with something related that happened to me yesterday, so I thought I'd throw it out there in hopes that it might be useful. My experience also concerns experiences I had in the realm between sleep and wakefulness, but I'm not sure what kind of experiences they were. I am a newbie (4-month) Soto Zen practitioner, doing about an hour of zazen every day. Like yourself, I'm in the early stages of concentration; I'm now able to get access concentration pretty consistently and at times can get solidly in what seems (from descriptions here and in MCT to be the first jhana. The most intense feeling of jhana occurred the night before last, before I went to bed. About four hours after bedtime I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. I looked at the clock and it said 3:59; I closed my eyes and started clearing my mind in the usual way, only to launch quickly into what I can only call (rather grandiosely, but I can't think of another word for it) a series of three discrete visions. When they were done, the clock read 4:22, which surprised me (it felt longer). As for content I could go on at length but don't want to be too long-winded, so will say simply that they seemed so obviously and didactically Buddhist, so like the things I’ve read about in Dharma books but haven’t had much direct meditative experience of yet, that I wondered if I had somehow contrived them.

But it certainly didn't feel contrived. Which brings me to the non-content-dependent (formal) characteristics of these "visions" as best I can articulate them:

1. They weren’t dreams, visualizations, daydreams, hallucinations, or those free-associated drifting images you get when you’re in the drowsy threshold state between sleep and wakefulness. Instead, they were . . . (con't)

Author: KunstderFuge

. . . 2. strong, definite, bounded, and not subject to narrative drift -- i.e., there was no story or action being enacted, the visions didn’t lead anywhere;
3. non-volitional -- I wasn’t steering, at least as far as I could tell, and yet
4. they were clearly understood and framed by my waking mind as not-real, in the way that dreams usually aren’t. I knew all along that all I had to do was open my eyes and the vision would disappear. It was sort of like turning on the TV: you get to choose whether the TV is on, but not what’s being broadcast. I did this three times, and got three separate "shows." And finally,
5. they felt significant, by which I mean that they announced themselves, in a way I can’t put into words, as being more than mere mental noise. In their wake I felt immensely energized, effortlessly sustaining unprecedented (for me) levels of concentration for the duration of two hours of zazen despite a very short night’s sleep. I feel more normal today -- if anything, rather scattered. I wonder if this general kind of state ring any bells for anyone. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me recently, but I’ve never had these things stacked three deep.

[edit] oops, forgot sign off with my actual name.

deep bows, Phil

Author: kevin_stanley

I'm very curious about the content of the visions. Can you give a sense of each (or a full description if you've got the time and patience)? I'm especially interested in whether they imparted any new information or insights--was this like an acting out or depiction of something you had already read or realized, or were there revelations for you?

Author: KunstderFuge

OK, this is sort of what it was like:

In the first vision, the world (a woman I didn't know walking down some street) had slowed down. The image was bleached out to a low-contrast near-monochrome, like overexposed film, and was advancing at a stuttered pace, frame by frame, the point of perspective changing subtly in each frame, as if I were in motion too. It wasn’t that I was actually watching a film – it was that reality was now coming to me in this form. It was weird but not unpleasant. I wondered how I was doing this, since a slowed-down strobed moving point of perception seems lie the sort of thing that requires processor speeds my brain doesn't have. Then I opened my eyes, and the vision vanished. I closed them again and almost at once started in on a second vision, this time in which the entire world around me (an anonymous woman again, maybe the same one, plus some background) dissolved in what looked like a sandstorm—an infinite series of fractally complicated waves constituted of a fine granular texture. This was overwhelming and a little scary. I wasn’t viewing a sandstorm (just as in the first vision I wasn’t viewing a film), I was viewing reality dissolved into grains and churned up into a roiling flux. This was the most intense of the three. I opened my eyes (with a certain emotional feeling of repulsion—“enough!”) and then closed them again. This time I had a vision of a body (curiously abstract, featureless and smooth and seemingly made of some plasticine-like substance) squeezing another such body as hard as possible. I was somehow both the squeezing and squeezed body. There was a feeling sad desperation and futility about this, since I was only grasping at myself, which seemed like some kind of weird isometric exercise whose sum could never come to anything other than 0, and it was as if the whole effort was coming apart already from the very beginning, the seeds of dissolution present in the very impulse to action.

Author: KunstderFuge

The Buddhist import of the last one was so obvious (clinging!) it seemed suspiciously pat and made-to-order. But what words don't convey was the sheer weirdness and vividness of these "visions," and inasmuch as there is any "point" to them it was made in a way I would never have imagined. Even with the third one it was like reading a poem on a conventional subject that hits you with a fresh metaphor. In any event I really don't know what the first two might mean. These were experiences unlike anything I've undergone. The second was actually a little like an episode, a long time ago, when I ingested a powerful but short-acting psychedelic drug while listening to some music and both music and space around me dissolved into an undifferentiated field of wiggly particles (particulate wiggles?). What any of this means I have no idea. I didn't mean to threadjack with my own trippy experiences, but there are common features: jhana stuff, liminal waking states, and unusual subjective manifestations.

Phil

Back to the top with Kevin's question: that is the A&P, aka 4th ñana, aka second vipassana jhana.

More emphasis on the Progress of Insight chapter will help, as well as emphasis on insight practices. The content can be fun but rarely leads anywhere. I have had more weird experiences than I could possibly count, more weird visions, energetic experiences, raptures, and much more, countless lucid dreams, many OBE's (travels), and the bottom line is that at some point it talking about it all just sounds like people describing their acid trips.

The fundamental stage/insight aspects, however, are of relevance, were markers for my practice, helped me realize where I was, and all came and went.

Thus, read the Progress of Insight chapter in MCTB, realize that meditating in dreams, rapture, etc is all A&P stuff, and go from there.

Author: Yuliya_link

Several years ago I used to do sungazing practice. I would stand barefoot on the earth or sand in any weather year around for 15 min to up to one hour and look directly into the rising sun (I would start about 15 min before sunrise, and then depending on how bright the sun was) in New York City on the beach. After about one year into the practice I had my usual session - but that was one of rare days when the sky was clear and no clouds were covering the sun, than I drove home from the beach and I went back to sleep I fell asleep and then it happened. I don't remember it very clearly now. I used to be able to describe it much better. But it was a state of a mental orgazm. Not bodily. Orgazm was in my brain. That's as much as I can say now. After it was over - I was totally conscious and shaken. I don't know how long it lasted maybe only seconds. I had one strong impression: you know these pictures, they look like a masaic, like geometrical forms of different colors, and then if you look in the right way - you will see a face or some other image. And after you see this image - you wonder how you didn't see it before - it is so clear and so easy to see and so obvious.

Author: Yuliya_link

So, that was my feeling: I felt like I was able to switch my mind somehow to experience something easy and obvious, that I couldn't see or experience before. But I lost it - I couldn't remember what it was. I only knew that it was obvious, that it was effortless, like seeing something I didn't see before... So, I was walking around dazed all day long. And then I tried to tell some selected people about it, but nobody could say anything, and it still took me years to get to read Daniel's book and learn something about process of insight, A&P event e.t.c. But even then, I didn't think that A&P event applied to my experience. I settled for it being just a weird dream. Now, when I decided to check on new threads over there and I read Kevin's post and then Daniel's post, I am starting to think that it was A&P event. And if so - maybe that's why I feel like I have to do it, that I must do it.

Sounds like the A&P to me. See this page for more of this sort of thing: http://www.interactivebuddha.com/theAandP.shtml

i have a question-can you pass strong reobservation in the dream like A&P?how many strong reobservations can you hit on one path?they look the same-bones crushed like pop corn,fingers sometimes grow into the bedsheet etc'.i did have last reob. in inclining position and right after it was over i had a dream with very strong equanimity massage in it-it wasnt A&P area-how A&p can come right after such crushing?in the dream i "desided to get out of bed since i couldnt bear any more the horrible crushing of all my bones and saw my little son in the kithen and i knew he is in kindergarden but somehow desided not to get exited and accept this calmly(knowing miself i supposed to get deadly scared by seeng somebody at home knowing i didnt pick him up yet from kindergarden.after that the timer went off and i realized that i had dream about my son but what about reobservation?and the massage of the dream as i see it was that i was equanimouse in very weird situation thats unusual to me espatially being in the dream-conciousnes tends to be even more tender on that stuff.and another question maybe out of this thread-i never meditated with open eyes'but resently trying kasina found out that i can see unstability of objects -they sligtly move,come in and out of existence as well as mind moments-in the beguining it felt weird but now i got used to it-is it fit before stream entry?

Not disputing that any of this is the A&P, but in reading this thread, it struck me that these experiences and questions were very close to what I was asking about in the "Imagination" thread, in wanting to know where this kind of thing fit in the Buddhist system. So do all these things Daniel mentions - energetic raptures, visions, lucid dreams - is that all the A&P - every time it happens?

And if so, does the imagination have something to do with the A&P, or vice versa?

Thanks. I'll re-read the Progress of Insight chapter as recommended.

I've recently started doing insight work, trying to increase the resolution and speed at which I can detect sensations. I'm starting with the "which index finger can I feel now?" technique, and it feels like I've got quite a bit of work to do before I'm really experiencing the beginnings and endings of all the finger sensations. It feels all smooshy and imprecise right now, more like sloshing than flickering.

What you experienced was a suggestion from the conscious mind being played out as the mind relaxed into restful slumber. You can also accomplish this by making a conscious suggestion to the mind before nodding off to sleep (such as "I will sleep restfully, and awake alert and refreshed"), and nine times out of ten you will awake the next morning alert and refreshed and not groggy. All you did was subconsciously make a suggestion to the mind, and the mind followed through with the suggestion during the dream state. ("I was still kind of in the practicing mindset as I went to sleep--I remember directing my attention to my breath as I drifted off.") You perhaps became aware of a lucid dream moment ("I partially woke up--not completely, but enough to have been thinking and to remember it. I had this intense body-bliss.") and that is what you recalled the next morning. Lucid dreaming gives the distinct impression that you are awake throughout the experience, and no doubt you are, yet it feels like a dream state.

What you want to do when attempting to enter meditative absorption is just to maintain your mindfulness (sati) throughout while allowing the mind to relax its way into deeper and deeper tranquility. This does not mean falling asleep. In jhana, the mind is bright, lucid, alert, established, and concentrated, and you are aware of these features of mind.

Don't try to be so concerned with identifying the level of jhana you are in (although I know it is usually a preoccupation of a beginner). You can always review your meditation afterwards to figure out where you were. Just endeavor to concentrate on allowing the mind to become more and more still, to relinquish "directed thought' and "evaluation" (vitakka and vicara) as you enter the second level allowing the pleasant sensation of the breath to drive the descent, and then to relinquish elation/rapture (piti) in the third, and eventually, joy/happiness (sukha) in the fourth level. There's no need to try to consciously attempt to release these final two jhana factors as the mind will do this automatically. Just focus on the stilling of mental formations and activity and allow the pleasantness of the breath to drive you deeper into the peacefulness of the state.

Once you are able to see how to enter the jhanas at will, the more time spent there (usually at fourth jhana), the stronger your concentration will become, both inside and outside of actual meditation. In other words, you should be able to become aware of a noticeable increase in your ability to concentrate in your mundane waking life, as well as when you enter into meditative contemplation. This translates into an ability to more easily be able to maintain your mindfulness (sati) during waking consciousness as well as during contemplation when you begin to work on the realization of the knowledges in satipatthana practice.