Hello All - I haven’t been visible for a few weeks – partly because I was on retreat for a week; but subsequently we have had endless building work at the house which has been rather time-consuming. It also takes me a couple of weeks after retreat to come to terms to some extent with what arises.

On retreat I went through four or so complete cycles of insight, including one equanimity phase which had that kind of forgetful floating period of reverie before a marked few fruitions. But I have no idea quite what would be path these days, and at times lose touch with and interest in quite ‘where I am’… What I seem to be interested in is at a different level.

I noticed immediately on getting down to it on retreat that my awareness ‘snapped out’ into a complete open field. It happened as I was exploring what awareness it was that I shared with the other people meditating in the shrine-room. I had been working towards this kind of field awareness prior to coming on retreat, but it was quite clear that it had now ‘happened’. The almost crystalline quality of this sense of the field reminds me of a PCE experience some months ago. Clinging to particular phenomena as self usually ‘within the body’ didn’t go on during this – there was the same awareness of the phenomena to which or with which one might do this, but a lack of the interest required to make something ‘self’ of them. Within a day or so this sense of the open field would go with a sense of emptiness which seemed to be the focus of awareness, though of course there is no thing to focus upon. The phenomena of the field seemed as it were peripheral to it, though perfectly clear and apparent in themselves. Cultivating seventh jhana has been really helpful in allowing the mind to be comfortable with apprehending emptiness as an ‘object’. Eighth jhana is helpful in allowing the mind to rest in stillness with this and not react.

After a couple of days I noticed an uncomfortable tension which manifested physically in the back, and didn’t have an obvious cause. I found out almost accidentally that it was because I was seeing emptiness as separate from phenomena. If I came to emptiness via the three marks of phenomena, this tension was not there. I was also playing with apprehending formations, and with seeing more clearly the little loop-back phenomenon that makes a self out of part of the field. I’m not sure that that can actually be put clearly into words – but in that context of practice it seemed quite clear.

After retreat I was mainly aware of the free and open field, within which my life was unfolding. For much of the past few weeks I have been able to advert to this sense of empty open awareness which has a ‘quality’ of endlessness about it. On the night of the 8th September and morning of the 9th, I had a couple of sits in which ‘I’ seemed to completely collapse into the field; there were some pretty strong fruitions, and a strong sense of liberation. Since the retreat and up to this time I had been playing with the notion of seeing grasping and the attention-wave as empty of self – if one does this thoroughly, one would expect to collapse into the field. It seemed to me that the Wisdom Eye had opened – but who knows, eh? Since then the sense of the open field has oddly enough been less distinct as time has passed… I’ve been more attention-wavey, for whatever reason. The sense of being able to advert to endlessness hasn’t gone though – and I rather wish I could give it more of the time it deserves. Being busy with Nursing full-time and so on makes it pretty much impossible to get too precious about anything, though!

I have noticed that the sense of the dead heart which I went on about quite a bit has become something established and ‘past tense’. Now and again I find a faint sense of longing about something or other creating tension, as though my dead heart is trying to move when it has nothing to move with, and I just smile with it. It’s better to live with what is, and not cloud the mind with ‘what ifs’ – I’m glad that the horrid process of dying took place, now that it seems to be over, pretty much. Most of the time the heart is empty, and awareness is content to be just where it is.

I must nail my colours to the mast and say that I have experience of the three samadhis, and that this is an important element of my practice / experience. Before and (mostly) since, I find that particularly on retreat awareness can advert to emptiness through one of the three doors, and this be stable. I believe that the seventh and eighth jhanas are good preparation, and that the practice of adverting to emptiness encourages the opening of the Wisdom Eye – as no doubt do other practices. I suspect that the ‘content’ is the same as fruition, as I have had experience which is somewhat intermediate, where fruition and samadhi taste of each other. They are simply awareness being comfortable with itself, seeing phenomena as they are, not requiring anything, allowing infinite life to unfold.

I was wondering what was going on with your practice. Since your heart chakra went kapoof, I am curious to know better what that entails. What kind of affection is left, and what kind went away. Would you care to share the specifics?

In any case, thanks for the report Vajracchedika.

Thanks for your questions Bruno and Jeff (though Jeff's has disappeared from the thread for some reason...) Very useful, and if I may say a good example of how DhO can be really helpful with practice!

Bruno - appreciating what the difference is is how shall I say ?ongoing? and so what I can say will be rather imprecise. Immediately, I am easy at being just 'here' without having a response or judgement as to whether I like 'here', so there's equanimity as a basic state. Some sense of conflict has gone, such that I don't need to strive for something or aspire to some other particular state. During the process of dying I was aware that I was in a sense having my nose rubbed in exactly those aspects of the everyday that I implicitly aspired away from. Now I can see that everything important unfolds precisely out of the very present, whatever that happens to be, and not somewhere else. A particular view I had and have had for decades explicitly caved in during the process - that Art is redemptive in some way by re-presenting what happens from another 'higher' point of view. Now, any particular expression of Art is merely a (fairly low, on the whole) point of view.

At a more 'emotional' level, I seemed to lose all interest in cultivating even the formless jhanas, and that has continued. In terms of affection - I'm not even sure what a person is at the moment, so am not sure whether any fixed response has a place - I'm generally quite open and appreciative/inquisitive - a kind and friendly relating enables better things to happen does it not? I suppose, to be a bit clearer, relating is distinctly a process in the moment, taking quite a bit of skill to negotiate (I mess it up quite a bit), and though selfhood looms here or there to 'fix' things and mess up the flow, equanimity is the basic backdrop. One responds to change and needs and growth, and so on, rather than to a fixed notion of who a particular person is.

I had an experience early this year of 'emptiness meeting emptiness' in an episode of communication with another practitioner - that is how it seemed to me - and that has become I suppose the gold standard. That does only happen (so far) from time to time with other practitioners. Mostly people are too closed in the loop of self-view to live in the open-ness. That kind of communication is like being in a shared awareness without the limitations of a 'me' or a 'you'. I manage it from time to time in silence with my patients, though I may only be imagining that they have some sense of it.

Jeff asked some questions about self-view and the attention wave, and the attention-wave as 'self in action'... I cannot remember them precisely, but they were quite provoking. Before the marked experience of collapsing into the field I report above, every day or two during sitting a sense of my self 'having' this experience would suddenly become apparent, would draw my attention as something seeming quite quaint, and then collapse in the awareness with fruition. In that few weeks after retreat, the attention-wave was clearly part of the field and of the same value as anything else in the field - awareness wasn't particularly interested in it, and there was a sense of all that was 'beyond' it. So the attention-wave can exist without obvious grasping onto self-view.

However, what is the attention-wave? I wonder whether it is the difference between fourth path and PCE. I suspect that it is an old habit that could stop. What gives me pause is that I do not see how I could function in the flat-out busy directed work environment I have without the attention-wave, that is without obvious direction and manipulation of attention. I have more faith that I can manage action with the attention-wave in a way that is clean-ish because when I sit during my lunch-hour for 15 mins or so my awareness often opens out pretty dramatically and there is usually fruition. So even though I am a bit frazzled at one level, and don't feel that aware compared to states during sitting practice, there is something wholesome about the way I am acting which immediately bears fruit.

Anyways, thanks for the Qs; am currently still rather clogggggged up with the attention-wave!