keith:
Hello all,
I'm new here, and I am guilty of writing off Theravada as "lesser" until recently. I've always had a nagging desire to get "one-pointed concentration" and then apply that to Vipassana practice. I am here because I can't help wondering where I am at, hearing people talking so casually about access concentration, "crossing the A&P," and more. So here are some things I've been through and where I am currently at.
Without my whole life story: I really started off doing Kriya Yoga (as made famous by Yogananda), energy work (all seated). There are 5 separate exercises through, whereas people tend to think it is just the breath/spine thing. I started in 1998 and did it for about 2 and a half years.
I had some insights. I felt the chakras, well I had trouble feeling the muladhara and svadisthana, but everything above those I could feel, especially the heart chakra (I'm not the hippy, love and light type--so that's not a brag)
I saw my "personality" fall to pieces in an experience very much like a house of cards. I felt like everything, EVERYTHING I thought I knew about everything was just an opinion.
I entered timeless dimension/or maybe spent a long time in eternity (words, ya know?) ...for a few seconds. I know because I was holding my breath.
It's been a long time, but I went through my share of ups and downs with it. I still seem to go in cycles, up and down. Then I stopped until late 2012 or early 2013 (?).
I had gotten the second initiation in 2004 but only got 8 days into it before quitting again. So I zipped through that level, which increases by 10 reps every 10 days until you are doing 200 reps per day for 10 days, then you are done with that level. Then I got the next initiation, which adds a mantra. Same schedule. I zipped through that too. The routines started at a minimum of 45 minutes with no meditation, but I would always follow them with at least 30-45 minutes of formless meditation/watching thoughts without latching on (or attempting to). By the 200s it was between 3-4 hours per day, and I didn't miss days.
Then I got the final initiation for that stage, which added a physical component ("striking" if anyone is hip to my jive). This schedule was different. You started with 36 reps, and added 36 reps per for 36 days. They don't have to be consecutive. I got them done in 2 or 3 months. By the end I was between 6 and 7 hours per day.
I had my ups and downs.
I had a period where I felt "the mind is spacious."
I had fairly violent full-upper body convulsions, back and forth/up and down.
I went into some spontaneous postures (nothing mindblowing).
I went into my recent dreams often.
I lost time quite a few times too. I wasn't asleep. This is how I heard about "the jhanas." The guy who runs the meditation group that I go to sometimes said that was his only guessas to what was going on, but he was vajrayana and didn't know anything about it. I had always approached my yoga through a buddhist framework. My teacher was non-sectarian and my mentor (who I was closest with) had risen to the top of a few paths, and got the most from Buddhism before meeting our teacher.---So, from yoga terminology I knew dhyana. This may have been absorption, but there didn't seem to be any concentration. There was nothing. I would just come out of it with 45 minutes missing. Like I said, not sleep either. No clue.
So, in 2016 I finally took refuge and I've been working on shamatha since then, without much progress. I came across the "Deconstructing Yourself" podcast, which led me to Culadasa first and The Mind Illuminated, then Tucker Peck, then Daniel Ingram and MCTB2.
So I'm pretty sure I went through some stuff during my yoga days. I don't know if it was purification of karma, or maybe nothing lasting at all. I'm pretty sure that all that time on the formless meditation was a waste.
It took a long time for me to be able to give up the goal attainment mindset and stop striving. Through those years of hard work during the yoga I never once fell asleep, but once I stopped and finally reall started working on shamatha (I had always hated working with the breath, probably because Joseph Goldstein's presentation didn't work for me) I fell asleep for the first time.
I was SO happy! I have depression and anxiety, so this was a good step for me as a human, if not a meditator. For all you Dark Night people, I am pretty sure the depression came first for me...but maybe not?
I also gave MBSR a real chance, and it did help me relax--while I was relaxing, but it doesn't really phase my anxiety off the cushion.
So, even if it takes me a while to calm down, I get into the breath, but I don't get into real concentration before I get too dull or fall asleep. I also see Daniel's point about insight being the name of the game anyway, if the situation is urgent, which it is.
So, after listening and reading some stuff, I have decided that I have been wasting time not doing insight practices. So I am working with the breath. I have Mahasi Sayadaw's giant book too. Noting is too slow for me, and I think it gets in the way. By the time I note "hearing," I l have already heard three other things, felt two, and thought twice as well.
So my question is: in Culadasa's and Ingram's maps (preferrably Ingram's), where do you think I am, and what practice do you think I should be doing?
If I don't get any better advice I am just going to give Culadasa's system a try. I would prefer Daniel's but I haven't finished the book, and he said early on in the book that noting is the highest practice. If noting without "actually" noting is okay, then I'm with it. Otherwise I am tripping over my own notes.
Please and thank you.
(p.s. I have a deadly condition that could go south at any time, and would like to get shit done in this lifetime...because I can't count on another!)
Hi again,
I wanted to add a couple things. and on reading my post again I want to clear a few things up.
I just happened upon a podcast, which opened up some doors, which led to me taking a fresh look at Theravada and this new-to-me movement of pragmatic/realistic/reality testing/opening up about experiences/demystifying dogma and otherworldly attainments/etc. stuff. I love it. I’ve only met a few people in real life who are willing to talk like this.
It cracked open some pathways in the old brainy brain and gave me a fresh perspective. I'm admittedly excited, though I wasn't in a stale place in any way beforehand.
Some experiences I left off, just in case there is a doctor in the room:
Early on, I was just walking through my yard to go inside and something snapped (“shifted” would probably be the cooler word) and it was like I was seeing the world for the first time, anew, everything was ultra-vivid and fresh. I heard every individual bird call, smelled every smell, etc., stronger than ever before, all as if for the first time all over again. That has happened another 2 or three times since 1998/1999. Mild versions have happened more.
A couple months ago, as I was driving, something snapped again and the separation between me and the rest of the world that I was experiencing disappeared. I could understand how people could describe it as there being “no self,” but I could also understand people describing at as everything as self, aka “I am that.” I was still there and able to think, but experientially I was the entirety of my experience...or there was no me, only experience (but I was still there to notice it, as freed up as I was).
Back to some backstory.
So my pranayama work did things and produced insights on and off the cushion. I think that my time meditating afterwards may have been better served working with the breath early on though, whether doing concentration or insight practices, rather than "formless" or "choiceless awareness" meditation.
I may be wrong, but I know now that my current level of concentration is much stronger than I thought and I had mythologized "One-pointed concentration" to a point where I was never going to attain that in my life, which was a prerequisite to Vipassana practices from what I had learned.
I stopped the Kriya and took refuge because I got to some "dark" (no reference intended, that's just how I always described it) territory, scary dark--not depressing. There was fear, like literally going into a dark forest alone.
I took refuge and switched to only meditation in 2016.
Looking back, and I may be stretching here, admittedly:
I was restless for a while, dissatisfied.
I went through a period where I didn't want to do any practice whatsoever.
I decided to go finally go “back to basics” and work on shamatha (I had always hated working with the breath, as my introduction to it came from the IMS and Joseph Goldstein…and, at least in my memory, the instructions were to count the breaths up to ten over and over again, starting over every time you got lost. So, when I was young and just starting out I hardly ever got to ten and just ended up getting pissed off.).
I went at shamatha loosely this time, relaxed, not to tight—and this was on purpose. I was very goal-oriented when I was young, and still am to a good extent, plus I am hard on myself. So, I loosened the reins at first, which allowed for some daydreaming and gentle returning to the breath.
I gradually tightened up, never rigid though.
Throughout the process I began to relax, sometimes going to sleep.
I can get into the breath now. One thing that got me excited was when I read something Daniel wrote about sinking into some bodily bliss (don’t quote me here) halfway through the outbreath and going through another shift at the bottom of that breath. I had been going through at least that deep shift halfway through the outbreath. Our terminology might differ a little, but the point resonates.
When I started experimenting with noting it took me less than two sessions to outpace the verbal noting (mental, not spoken, I know). Point being, I am much better at it already than I would have guessed.
Break.
I have always been interested in this enlightenment thing as the grandest of all experiments, and my life’s deepest purpose. I’m blooming a little later than I would have chosen, but it is as it is.
My interest/goal, and best guess about what enlightenment actually means has always been to see reality clearly. So, coming back from a Zen, then Bodhichitta/Mahayana type, then Vajrayana view—now coming back to what tends to somehow end up feeling like “back to basics,” which are actually the Buddha’s original teachings…this stuff has really clicked for me.
I’m excited to get into this style of Vipassana, whereas in other traditions and schools the term has different connotations and types of practices.
Keith