Hi all
I am Rich. I got seriously ill about 5 years ago and through that became a Buddhist- or rather realised I was headed that way for a long time.
I had a couple of "big" experiences almost twenty years ago. One was a complete feeling of emptying (after years aof investigating all sorts of 'spiritual' methods and becoming filled with constant questioning). The second was a period of time when I lost awareness of the world, this body and the sense of "I". There was just free floating awareness. When my "I" came back there was a major panic- probably about the realisation it wasn't needed! The result was almost a day of seeing the world entirely differently but the same. Things were more 'alive' and 3D. Sensations I hadn't liked (like exhaust fumes) were just the same as before but somehow just 'right'. I was walking on air and blissfully happy.
I think the Zen sickness of attaching to this (wanting it back) while perfectly natural, wasn't seen through.
More recently, however, I started with mindfulness. Still having trouble being aware of the vibrations and speed of things some mention here. What I have noticed is the little moving towards and away in the mind(attachments and aversions)- subtle little mental tensings or reachings. This has led to similar states as the aftermath of the one mentioned above- 3D, subtle change in light perception/quality, noticing things being 'right' as they are. At these times the sense of an "I" is still ther but it is somehow more tranparent as if I am dissolvign into the rest of things but not quite. As the state faded recently I noticed the aversion to it going and it immediately reinstated itself.
The other good thing is that when it goes I am not feeling averse- in fact while the state is 'nicer' than ordinary perception I feel more equanimity than before and am not fussed about which one is there.
I have also just completed my first Zen sesshin. I am finding koan work interfering with the previous mindful practice results. It seems I am going back to normal- more stress, mind running here and there etc. However, at sesshin I also noted visual makkyo (which I am told denote concentration development) and had a brief experience of that night's rain falling inside of me (still a me there though). I have been told to try to keep "mu"ing all the time- failing well at that! I do keep it better in meditation and feel some stilling. However, I still feel more concentrated doing other practices eg Just sit with dignity- allowing whatever comes and goes without giving it more attention or trying to exclude it- I think this is classic shikantaza but have read a few descriptions that differ so am not 100% sure.
Please feel free to critique this post, offer suggestions etc. I am grateful for any hints and tips.
In the meantime I wish you all the best.
Rich

Welcome to DhO

Yes the "I" will do everything to ensure its continuation

cheers
Jeff

Thanks for the welcome Jeff. Good to be here.

Can I ask folks for advice on where they would recommend I focus practice please?
I am studying Zen with my Dharma teachers and sitting with mu while working on my third or fourth koan.
This kind of practice seems unnatural to me, although I understand the point of it. Losing the experiences of becoming more transparent, suffering reduced/eliminated and the states I was experiencing has been frustrating- either this is because I was genuinely discovering something and/or just another ego thing.
This prior practice was more of the mindfulness side of things- without the noting (bare attention), although I found myself noting the subtle aversions and attachments from time to time. Previously trying to notice the reported very quick changes and vibration level (which I came to via reading Goenka) hasn't been successful. I also find the concentration methods very hard, but my teacher reckons that the arisign of the makkyo I have had is a good sign its going in the right direction. However, to mu all the time seems beyond me. Sometimes I even find it very difficult to focus on this while doing simple tasks. Writing this for example and muing is at the moment beyond me.
Its even tough a lot of the time in formal sitting. I went to sit with the local Thich Nhat Hahn group the other day- a very undisciplined group and spent most of the time in a very critical mode. I just sat muing, doing "critical zazen" and being aware of that. My teacher was Ok with that but I am still unsure myself.

So thats me lots of doubts and confusion.

Al the best to everyone

Rich

do you intend to carry on with your zen training, or are you looking to switch practices/techniques?

either way, you would do well to attend to the mindfulness itself (or the three general characteristics of phenomena commonly recognised by all buddhist schools) and to pay little or no mind to the fabrications/stories/interpretations/narratives that are ordinary enough, just where they are, and yet are not particularly useful to explore for the purposes of making insight progress.

have you read MCTB? if not, i highly recommend it, as it is one of the most helpful dharma books to which a practitioner could have access (and in which, by the way, what i've above referred to as 'fabrications...' is simply termed 'content').



thank you for taking the time to describe your practice. writing detailed and descriptive accounts helps others form a more accurate idea of where you are at and what suggestions are likely to be helpful.

what makyo have you experienced lately?

tarin

Hi Tarin

Thank you for taking the time to reply to me.

I do intend to carry on the Zen training (at least for the forseeable future) but I don't think having another practice should be detrimental at the same time, although this is frowned upon in some circles.
After all I started mindfulness, concentration and metta work together.
I am always open to suggestions though.

Yes I have read MCTB through once and am familiar with most of the ideas therein but will be reading it again and digesting the details more. I think that by noticing the aversive and attaching tendency of the mind I was making progress - and just paying bare attention to what came up- ie noticing wordlessly things like narratives and other delusory stuff. Of course I claim no knowledge apart from what my own experiemtns show and am aware I will encounter new things that may upset the preconceptions I currently have. This is why I am open to feedback and criticism- as best as an ego self can be!

Thank you for your other comments. I had hoped a detailed list of practice would be useful in terms of suggestions.

The makkyo I recently experienced involved hallucinations of golden buddhas- small ones- and also the wood patterning on a chest I had to meditate in front of one day starting to move and reach out from the chest and form snaking patterns like the wood blocks in the puzzle that are made up of sections with 90 degree bends in different directions, if that makes sense. Of course faces and images in walls come up as they seem to for many, plus a huge eye, now and again too.

All the best

Rich

my only suggestion here is 'less visual, more bodily' ... if you want to sit with your eyes open (and so visual stimuli will be prominent), attend more to the sense of seeing itself than to the objects seen.

have you done any hara breathing?

tarin

Hi Tarin
Thanks for your reply.
As you know the Zen sitting is done eyes open so I would be interested to hear exactly what you meant by "sense of seeing" please.
I breathe using the lower abdomen but am not sure what else you might be referring to by hara breathing.
Cheers
Rich

what i mean by 'the sense of seeing' is, literally, what it is to experience seeing directly. to perceive is to be engaged in a lively activity and is what is meant by paying attention. yet, such attention is likely to tend toward proliferating stories and fabrications, from persistent reflection and mental commentary on one hand (when concentration is weak and/or scattered) to outright hallucination on the other (when concentration is powerful and/or focused). those proliferations are to be avoided. how may these proliferations be avoided? by otherwise engaging the proliferating tendency. how may the proliferating tendency be otherwise engaged? by applying the mind further. to what further apply the mind? to the apprehension (of more) of what is happening. what more is happening (that is not yet engaged)? the apprehension of (the apprehension of) perception itself.

to apprehend perception directly is necessarily also to apprehend that apprehension occurring, and to experience in such a manner is to experience cleanly and clearly, entirely engagedly and encompassedly, incuding the bodily sense of such experience. to see not just what the eye sees but what it is to see is therefore to see cleanly and clearly, entirely engagedly and encompassedly, including the bodily sense of such seeing. seeing in this manner engages the energies which otherwise fuel the proliferating tendency, and so avoids such proliferation. further, experiencing seeing as a bodily sense leads to deeper insight into what the body is, and what perceiving is.



hara breathing is a technique often employed in zen meditation wherein the focus of attention is maintained (anchored) at the lower abdomen, a few finger widths below the navel, at a space that feels like the bodily centre of gravity and which expands and contracts gently in accordance with the breath. is this where you are focused when you 'breathe using the lower abdomen'? what is your breathing practice like?

tarin

Hi Rich,

welcome here!



I know that. Feels to me like I look at the first time at something, or, never really looked at it before. Things seem to bee more "here". It´s like I looked through a dirty window before and now through a clean one...

Cheers
Sven

Hi Sven
Thanks for the welcome

Hi Tarin
I have a conceptual "finger" on what you mean I think but I am not sure I can do this yet. I just see/hear/feel.
With regards to the breathing- yes that is the standard Zen 'following the breath' focus. As I have been working on koans for a while- the method is to mu in sync with the breathing and mind on the tanden spot.

However, after reading about Vimalaramsi's take on things and playing with that method- which certainly seems to make a lot of sense with the original suttas- I have been feeling that the koan path might not be for me. Vimalaramsi's method is much closer to what I was doing prior to Zen and then I was experiencing a number of useful daily fruits- pain becoming sensation/even joy at one time whilst in the midst of this strong sensation (that was formerly pain), spontaneous bursts of joy, more patience, unbidden changes in seeing (the 3D, clear, "different" light etc stuff) etc.

I wasn't noticing anything in that previous meditation type except for the slight movings of the mind towards and away from experience- and the craving/aversions when thus seen tended to fall away (although still so many to go..ha ha!)

All the best and thanks gentlemen

Rich

then see by gazing very intently, hear by listening very closely, feel by being very sensitive. your feelings will lead the way to knowing your body. your sense of delicate harmony will lead the way to knowing your ear. your fascination in vision will lead the way to knowing your eye. knowing your eye will be the means by which you discern freshness and ephemerality. knowing your ear will be the means by which you discern stillness and resonance. knowing your body will be the means by which you discern organic sensation and aliveness. knowing your senses in such a direct way will open the way to apprehending the mind's apprehension (an example of which would be seeing that the eye sees).

apprehending the mind's apprehension will be the way by which you approximate (that is, bring together) reason. approximating (that is, bringing together) reason is the way by which you discern, and determine, appropriate judgement. discerning, and determining, appropriate judgement is the way by which you know how to act and what to do, and so how to proceed in your path (the means you employ, which methods to employ when and where, etc).



the point of this is to get the mind involved in the mu'ing to release at the same time the mind involved in breathing tends to release. do you understand?



vimalaramsi's method of jhana instruction is excellent. i particularly like the emphasis on using bodily feelings to incline into absorption, and using the tranquillising effect of natural breathing to facilitate this. if you would find it helpful to communicate with another person who understands that approach to jhana, ian and is someone around here who can likely guide you well. another person perhaps worth contacting is chuck kasmire, who used to be a regular poster but hasn't been around for a while; look for him in the list of members.

what may be worth also understanding is the similarity his method of jhana induction has with the method of mu breathing. both aim to foster conditions in common; both are intended to (eventually) produce the condition of tranquil yet alert, open-ended yet hyper-focused, one-pointedness. this one-pointedness has been demonstrated to bring jhana to fruition.



if you can do that relentlessly and see the instances of moving towards/away from (the cravings and aversions) as they occur in your mind on a moment-to-moment, second-by-second, sub-second-by-sub-second basis, without faltering to the occasional discouragement or confusion you may experience owing to the bewilderingly sheer breadth of territory you will likely encounter in the process of this practice, you will be on a very straight path to liberating insight.

tarin

Hi Tarin

As always many thanks for your reply and I hope this message finds you well.



My 'model' at the moment (using seeing as an example) is that there are visual stimuli out there, these stimuli [via the sense contact and brain[ get interpreted as objects, colours, movement, brightness, contrast etc etc. and give rise to the world of objects. Using the brain slightly differently there have been moments when the discrimination into objects has dropped momentarily as this is an 'add-on'. Of course dropping the 'thought overlay' results in just experiencing the colours, movements, objects etc.

Beyond this I wouldn't know what your intriguing paragraph means, so would be good to know if there are any overlaps in models?



Yes, we are working to 'release' the mind from all object/subject relations. Mu seems to just be the object to ball the rest (of objectivity) up with- hence becoming mu we lose the self/other....
The reason I am having trouble with this is that the Zen and Theravadan models have not been compared and contrasted as far as I can see in a useful way.
In my Zen school we are just pushing for the 'big' kensho - many of the Zen folks I know/'know of' aren't particularly mindful/careful/responsible, just focussed on that big kensho. The Theravadan models give the moral basis for practice and life, expounds on levels of insight and from my experience gives gradual and useful results. Now I know I overgeneralised on the Zen faults but the practice of mu, counting breaths and following the breath just don't seem to give me the 'happy abiding' on a daily basis that the Chah and Vimalaramsi schools do (at least). Given we do not know our lifespan I would rather a practice that leads towards enlightenment but each day provides some benefits for myself and those around me in terms of serenity, happiness, right action/responsibility etc.



Thank you. I will do



Aha. some overlap between the two models. Many Zen folk (from different schools) that I have spoken to dismiss Theravadan Jhanas and Zen kenshos as entirely different. My own feeling was that this was probably not the case. My own validated experience (by Zen men) seems to be very much like one of the 'higher' jhana descriptions- awareness with no object/no self- nothing but pure awakeness [the self had a major panic on its return]. I would like to hear more on the similarities/differences from your perspective if and when you have time.



I think, if we are talking sub-second change, then I am still on the grosser levels of big chunk craving/aversion. Still this is having results and by and by I guess the fine distinctions will start to appear?

Cheers, Tarin. All the best

Rich