Opinions welcome - Discussion
Hi,
I'm gonna give a description of the development in my practice in the three months since those previous posts, in case anyone can relate to it, and maybe find some inspiration or clarification, while also hoping to get some elightened opinions for my own benefit
Sorry in advance about the length of this, but I honestly think there are interesting bits to be found.
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So, since that advice Shargrol gave me - basically, that I should just relax and let things happen naturally - I chilled out quite a bit regarding meditation. I even started to slack off a bit, losing interest in any special experiences, although I kept some continuity of practice. But I had many interesting openings in daily life, moments of profound significance and beauty.
Actually, this seems to have been a regulard feature in my life for the past few months. "Feeling great and healthy naturally" sums it up nicely, but there has also been a deep appreciation of the beauty of existence and a sense of dots connecting in the depths of my being. Depth and totality of meaning, silent joy, firy silence : that's been the norm of my existence, with a lot of equanimity and acceptance of suffering, and in retrospect, a pervasive sense of ease and mastery.
On a macro level, there has been a regular feeling of being connected to childhood. For some reason, I have a very bad memory of my personal history, of events in general. I habitually remember what I want to with great precision (I'm renowned for my mnemonic abilities ^^), particularly symbolic stuff, but strangely enough I have few memories from childhood. Yet these past few months, some have come up, and in particular, emotional memories (that is really rare for me, though some people like my brother are very prone to that) : Proustian moments of enlightened reminiscence, which conveyed a clear and moving sense that unobstructed joy and simplicity, such as the one that was the baseline of my normal experience as a boy, was directly accessible - since I was obviously experiencing this kind of mental-emotional state in the moment.... - and a very real possibility for life... And this triggered a lot of compassion, for myself and others, upon realising how simple happiness can be, and how needless our sufferings really are, how confused and pointless... Just writing this now brings tears to my eyes.
I reckon all this is quite typical of someone who is well established in equanimity, as I believe was my case. But there has been a profundity of meaning to experience, a poetic quality and emotional depth which is worth mentionning. This particularly interests me, as during those past months I finished writing my master's thesis, which deals with precisely that : the connections between esthetic moments and meditative experience. Let me tell you about such a moment which really stands out in my memory (yes, i remember it !! surprising I know).
I was taking a nice walk - well, soaring, really - in the forest, going up a hill. I felt very happy and satisfied, softly vibrant, and was kind of absent-mindedly pondering this stuff that i've been talking about. Then some verses by Augustine came up in my mind, the famous poem inspired by his experience of "conversion" :
"Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi ! et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam."
It's a beautiful poem. It goes on, but the verse I quoted means : "Late have I loved you, O beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you." Realizing once more how profound and universal the truth of these realms of experience, the awesomness of the fact that texts hundreds and thousands of years old are accessible to us, today, and that they sing the same old song (although theoretical models differ ^^)... Just like that : sacredness. And much release, much gratitude. I actually fell down on my knees and looked up to see the scintillating folliage above my head, the luminous patches of white sky merging with the greenness of the leaves into a shimmering texture, and I felt like I was a character in Pierre Michon's book, Vies minuscules (small lives). Let me quote that too.
This book tells in a half-imaginary, half-factual way the story of different people, who have existed, but not left any mark in official history. At times, this book takes on a truly mythological dimension. It's quite amazing, you'd think you are reading something from the great religious texts. The passage is at the end of a chapter narrating the life of a countryside priest, whose parish is made mostly of people from an insane asylum, among whom the author of the book has spent some time as a patient. The priest was also a drunk. He died in a motorcycle accident, in the forest, after an evening of drinking with peasants at the local bar. Michon imagines how it happened : "He carressed very soft little snakes. He was still speaking. The cigarette burned his finger : he took his last drag. He got hit by the first sunlight, wobbled, held on to fallow dresses, to handfuls of mint ; he remembered women's flesh, children's gaze, the delirium of the innocents : all this spoke in the song of the birds ; he fell down on his knees in the overwhelming significance of the universal Word. He raised his head, thanked Someone, everything took its meaning, he fell back down dead."
Haha. I didn't die. But this kind of grandiose stuff was what I had in mind at the time (april, may) and gives a good idea of my general state. I know, I know, this is not sensate level phenomenology. But these phenomena were occurring for me at this level, so, whatever... It's interesting to mention them in my opinion, because it raises the question of meaning, meaning, what is meaning, and what is its connection with insight ?
Anyways, things changed a lot since then. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a close monitoring of events, as I was busy with other things and just not really focused on practice. Actually, my meditation felt pretty sloppy during the months of may, june. I would regularly get absent-minded. I didn't know if that was maturing or just bad practice. At times I would give myself advice like : "think about death to get some motivation !" But life was very easy and my meditation somehow profound, though the states had lost a lot of their attractiveness.
At the beginning of July, though (around the 4th) I started to notice some new things. I realized, while my father was paying me a visit, that there was something a bit different. Like I was in an unnaturally good mood, but not a grandiose thing like described above, a simple, clean joy. In particular, I was surprised at how quickly emotions were moving along, how unsticky they were. That's something that stood out on its own with no reference to anything. It appeared to me specifically in a situation where some comments made by my musician dad on my new composition would usually have brought on negative emotions : in this case, they kind of did, but it just left quickly without leaving a mark. It seemed obvious there was a bit more natural space and fluidity around things.
Then I started to notice that whenever I started to pay attention, to my body, for instance, I would experience fine tingling and vibrations all over, and could confidently and straight away pick out a frequency of 5-15 Hz on average. This was consistent. I should mention that before this, i'd never really understood that frequency thing. Now I got it : it was just a matter of sensing the internal rythm of whatever you were experiencing. I also felt really really calm, internally silent, and started to realize the I could get absorbed into whatever I wanted quite easily. Suspicion was aroused, because I was now picking up that this matched a remark from Kenneth Folk I wrote down in my meditation journal a few days before (interesting timing...), about the fact that signs of SE are : one is immediately in the A&P, and has access to jhanas...
Then I remembered an event which occurred at the end of june : during one of these "sloppy" meditation sessions, I experienced a kind of jolt, which immediately brought to my mind the thought "was that it ????" That got discarded immediately, as I tend to be quite on the look out for scripting and am definitely not one of those who identify things too quickly as this or that. In fact it's quite the opposite, I tend to question things excessively : the first time I got hard second jhana, I thought it was access concentration (granted, I was practicing with ajahn brahm instructions). I decided immediatly that this blip was that I had just fallen asleep and woken up ;) ;) So I just forgot about the event, which occurred twice more in the next few days. Now, around the 6th of july, I thought : could this have been it ?? I was very skeptical, since it seemed so anticlimactic (especially because I didn't experience a clear bliss wave afterwards). But again, this matched some descriptions (some of yours, for instance, Shargrol), and my mindfulness at the time was definitely not very high...
I decided to OBSERVE what was going on !!!
Whether it was due to my budding belief in the SE theory, or just what was happening naturally, I realized that I was experiencing some kind of return to normalcy. Compared to the past few months, everything just felt ... normal. Which was really weird. Aspects of my life appeared more simple, more naked, it seemed my outlook was somehow more honest. I also at times felt less clarity than before in my daily experience, as if life got "thicker", more "raw", as well as diminished reactivity... Meditating appeared pointless (i didn't stop though, but it was like... half-assed every time for a while !). In contrast with what I described above, where life felt so profound, easy, mystical at times, where I would spend hours listening to dharma talks (Rob Burbea !!), reading the DhO, thinking about meditation and deep philosophical questions and readings, now I had a trend off feeling like going out, having a drink (stopped drinking with no looking back over a year ago !), finding a girlfriend........
I would, at the time, always begin a sit in what i'm taking to be the AnP. During some sessions, I was noticing very clear Dukkha Nanas, much more clearly than usual, but sits were otherwise quite equanimous, very inclusive and "normal". But for some reason, I really couldn't bring myself to meditating really seriously, like, to check all of that....
Yes, the meditative spaciousness, seemed to have really become a baseline, yet experience somehow seemed thicker and this, in the perspective of SE, started to make sense to me : it dawned on me that things had to redensify to be penetrated again in the next round, otherwise there would be no need for further practice, right ?? That idea was seductive because it felt so "real", not something I could have made up given my initial expectations as to what SE might be like. Yet, I felt a certain disappointment. Nothing spectacular. Maybe it was the least interesting SE of all time ? Another sign of strange "realness" to me is that, contrary to previous attainments (2nd jhana, 4th jhana in particular), I had no spontaneous inclination to announce it to people. Well, because I doubt it, certainly, but also something else... As if this time, it was really serious and I shouldn't talk about it. In fact, I've been quite a bit more silent than usual these last weeks, I would say.
I started to experiment with Jhanic absorption, half-seriously, and with a sense of incredulity. Yet, the first time i did a bit of shamatha after thinking I might have gotten SE, it felt like I immediatly jumped into a jhana, and got to a very equanimous space reminiscent of a light 4th, in a matter of minutes, just before a session of work on my memoire.
The next day (11/07), taking the train to paris, I started to pay attention to the breath, and it was right there in exquisitely fine detail, completely granular and textural, effortlessly seen. It quickly (minutes) started to get a slow-motion quality, and it was also the first time I realized that I could use it as a vipassana object (before that, I exclusively used the breath for shamatha). I realized that, while maintaining a perfect attention to the slow motion of the breath, I could also sense pulses of sight/sound/body sensations all around, fluttering at a clear frequency of 20+ Hz. None would grab my attention though. That was a characteristic of sits at the time : I could really quickly have a lot of reflexivity, the kind that happens in EQ, where things are instantly seen as what they are in a powerful, all-encompassing way, which to me corresponds to what Husserl calls the "splitting of the self" ;);)
Accompanying this was a sense of profound bodily stillness and slow motion which could be maintained while moving and with eyes opened. The slow mo effect, as well as fast vibration, were also present in sight, if I remember correctly. All this was very easy, unremarkable at the time, but I realized afterwards that I certainly had never had such fine (for me) perceptual abilities. Also, at the end of this "session", I remember a sentence about the balance of energy and surrender, and realized I could decide to increase energy very easily, while surrendering deeply. How did I know how to do that ? No idea, but it provoked a kind of accumulation of pressure in a spot the base of my skull, near the back of the neck, where the sense of self started to recede, and which started to actually hurt, and i felt like it was gonna break and I was gonna die if I kept watching it ^^ I realized that this "spot", in fact, the "over there" of my field of experience, was connected in some way with the experience of the infamous "blips", "clicks"....
Later (the next day ?), at my job as an usher in the paris Philharmonic, I closed my eyes in the empty room before the show, and started to follow the breath, and felt that within minutes I got to an equanimous space which would usually have taken me a while (30 min +) of directed effort to get to... Did I just get to 4th shamatha jhana using only absorption ? That had never happened, as I'd only been able to access the 4th jhana, interestingly, through insight practice ^^ (Btw, Rob Burbea has interesting things to say about this connection...) Yet, as it was so natural, it felt unspecial, which was a bit confusing. Shouldn't all that be a bit more spectacular, i thought ? Though, i have to admit there were moments of elation and giggling during that period when I thought, "holy shit, this might be real !!!!!! YES !!!!!" But where were the fireworks ??
I also started to experience really unexpected things. Intense bouts of negativity, for instance. At my job : I started to see only the aspects I disliked. I experienced great aversion to people : feeling that everyone is really, really stupid and mean ; a feeling of internal "exile", and, a sense of alienation as well as hostility (paranoïa) emanating from my colleagues. Interestingly, this reminded me of similar feelings I'd had in my childhood. And it appeared to me that perhaps all this negativity was but an exacerbation of feelings which are usually unnoticed or only partially acknowledge, perhaps, and that somehow there was nothing to fear from them - especially if they were the same as some childhood feelings.... And when I saw that, the negativity disappeared completely, not to come back. Poof. Big heart opening and relaxing...
This happened a few times during the two week when i was working in the philharmonic in Paris. I found it extremely interesting to read some accounts on this very forum of people who would say that second path is basically pure ill-will and finding anything that comes out of anyone's mouth stupid, or plain wrong.... I can relate, though this isn't my permanent experience by a long shot. On 14/07, I wrote : "I've experienced intense negativity these past few days, both ill-will and its counterparts, self-contraction, fragility. These have only seemed to change when it was accepted/seen-through, but when it did it just vanished." I had also experienced mild nausea regularly in the two weeks since the supposed event. Now, I think all this might be related to daily life cycling.
When I began meditating, three and a half years ago, one 15 min session of meditation would make a huge difference in my days. It would transform my experience, honestly, it was great. During the months of may-june, it felt like even two hours of meditation made little difference in my daily life experience, except perhaps make it a bit more spacious. Like equanimity was complete. Now, it was the same, but in the opposite way : when I sat down to meditate, I felt like a complete beginner, despite the fact that I could access states and things which were certainly not there when I started... I wrote down (this will seem to contradict my earlier writing) : "it seems that gross reactivity and the return to normalcy of life, implies that there begins the possibility to do some real work again... interesting... And if it weren't that way, it would be the end of the path. Either new things are coming up, psychologically, reactivity, habit patterns appearing more clearly, etc., OR, things that were not apparent before are showing up. It's quite humbling. Very humbling. I'm not a spiritual superhero... I have very basic, human issues and flaws that it seems I wasn't even really seeing, or refusing, before... well..."
Writing this liberated something. Like it sealed some understanding. With that deep sense of humility (and having slept only a few hours), I for some reason decided it was time for some Jhana practice. Having read a cool formulation by Burbea about them ("first, we let go of the hindrances, then different varieties of pleasure and collectedness arise, then perception starts to fade until the 8th jhana"), I reconnected with the energy I had in october 2018, when I was really going for Jhanas. I sat down, remembered the brahm routine, relaxed, let go of hindrances, keeping the list of them close to my mind as a mental check up. And it seems my mind just knew what to do and I just had to trust it : very cool. Energy truely was aroused at will, kammacchanda was identified and let go of live. There was a part of me that knew : "Ök, this is first, and this is second jhana. Fuel the bliss !! Right !! Oh, woow, that is nice. Well done. Ok, time to move one ! This one will be a bit confusing. Here goes ! remember it will be murky. Ok, time for fourth now.... spacious, feels kind of normal." Here a tinge of doubt arose : "is this real or a script ?" This was immediately seen as doubt & agitation, and I knew : "ok, arouse energy just like this ! And trust yourself" A kind of mantra appeared : "let go of the perception of diversity.... there's only space... it's all the same..." And sure enough, as I kept recalling to stay with the breath, the body started to disappear. Not completely, but still.
It's all a matter of confidence, intent, right exertion, and keeping with the breath. Wow. They were pretty hard Jhanas too... very impressive and easy. I gues it took about 35-40 min to get to that j4.j5 or whatever it was... I'd never before, as I said, been able to access this through pure concentration practice.
Somehow, I was doubting the truth of this (have I demonstrated clearly enough that I have a problem with skeptical doubt ??? one of the best things about this kind of detailed write-up is to make this kind of stuff emerge.... It wasn't obvious to me that i was doubting things in excess, but now that I see it like that....), partly because the doing as well as the knowing of what was going on during that jhana session seemed outside of my conscious control or monitoring. Key insight, I believe. (So, I also have a problem with control ? Is that why I'm not clearly experiencing repeat fruitions ?) This, interestingly, resonates deeply with what was understood earlier : I felt sobered up, mor "real", more out of control, as if it was starting to really dawn on me that this process is NOT personal. Yes, sobered up about this whole thing. Hung over ? This is starting to sound like a Rumi poem, isn't it ?
That shamatha session really showed me in a direct way what letting go means... The whole effort/surrender thing made much more sense now... And I intuited that this new (?) section of the path would be very much about surrender.
Later that day, I went for a walk near the river, and something happened which occurred in exactly the same way the evening of the day I first got up to light formless realms in EQ through vipassana a couple of months back : it seemed like my mind tuned into the background sound of the water (there is a small water fall in my village which makes this beautiful noise) and kind of merged with it in a totally spontaneous way, giving rise to a sublime state of mind, velvety, a diffused spatial experience of a jhanic kind, coupled with the soft touch of the late-afternoon breeze on my skin... Becoming smooth, airy movement... Completely unexpected, a beautiful gift. So simple, just hearing, and touching, yet so fulfilling... Later still, I noticed that the spatial aspect was quite prominent generally in experience. For instance, writing my meditation journal entry, the spatiality of the sound produced by my pen moving from left to write as I wrote was exquisitely clear... And more surprisingly, when I had dinner, taste itself had an unprecedented dimensionality to it, as if that old goat cheese was just surrounding, not only the flavour of the pasta, but ME, it felt like it was around me !! The goat cheese space invasion : a new meditation side effect !!
On 15/07, I again remarked that whenever I turned my attention to the body, I could sense buzzing and spontaneous tingles. I also acknowledged that I was going through a phase of pretty high sex drive, with a kind of impulsive and reckless energy. Which seemed like a real step-back, not unfamiliar though (I have been known to party a lot and such, used to smoke and drink a lot, and generally had excessive tendencies ;) ). I was afraid that it was "coming back." And when I realized it could be linked with the 4th nana being a prominent aspect of life these days, I experienced a relief, which upon noticing it, produced this insight (yes !) : this opening, liberation, means that I had been identifying with these sexual pulsions which were seen in a negative light. Which means I was in self-contraction, self-clinging ! Thank you, Rob Burbea. Right there, I thought : I am entertaining a view regarding SE, first, I thought it would change more things ; second - this is important -, i've the notion, which comes from reading a lot of stuff on the DhO, that basically aspects of my existence which were seemingly hidden or repressed or whatever will start to come up, and that basically, sankharas in the Goenka sense are gonna start to liberate. And I had associated this sexual stuff with that, with ME, with MY snkharas bubbling up to the surface, etc. Both these views were creating conflict and suffering. And it appeared to me that the solution was : a bit of the Diamond Sutra. Not me, not mine, not self. Have compassion for this non-self which thinks it is a self....
Later, (did this, like the previous insight before the jhana session, liberate something ?) I noticed that I was spontaneously noticing a bunch of little things about my behaviour in daily life, about a lack of mindfulness in my behaviour, a lack of care, which, though I don't necessarily do anything about it, was at least clearly present and represented an increase in baseline vigilance. This has actually been consistant since the beginning of July.
On 16/07, I wrote down that writing things down, though very beneficial, sometimes could have the negative side-effect of "killing things", that is to say, of labelling experiences, deactivating them, rendering them automatic. Understanding it all might be preventing one from approaching experiences in a fresh and playful, engaged way.... Anyways...
On 18/07, I observed that for a few nights in a row, I'd had trouble going to sleep because of an unsettling intensity to experience. After my evening meditation, things would be pulsing (even my phone screen for instance), lots of vibrating sensations would arise, and I even felt mild nausea at times. In the evening as well as morning of this day.
Starting that date, I started a week long singing workshop, in which we would sing for 7-10 h a day, basically doing nothing else than sing this composition we were to perform on the 24th, and so I stopped meditating, basically, as well as journalling. Well, this kind of singing could be considered like a meditation retreat in itself, I believe. But I do have things to report. Firstly, it was the first time I saw my brother in a long time, as well as othr people I knew. It felt upon seeing them and spending time with so many people constantly for a few days that, really, something had changed with me. Something was more light, more fluid, more mature. Secondly, the first day of singing, I realized I had never had such ease reading (I'm not a great sight reader), had really progressed in a few ways though I hadn't sung in months and months (understanding something new about rythm, generally singing better) and had a really pleasant and smooth time concentrating and all... Felt more confident in many ways, too. At the end of the first day, I felt a bit fed up and mildly negative emotions, so I went up to my room and lay down for a few minutes... And it felt like an oferflow of energy got liberated : I immediatly got intensly pleasant and very smooth piti all over my body, and these five or ten minutes of rest were simply amazing... The singing might have something to do with that of course.
I immersed completely in the singing and the life around it for about a week. I must add for the sake of really frying my reader's brain out with excessive amounts of information, that I seem to have a much more spontaneous relationship to things these days (july). Like, I won't hesitate to tell people things I would normally not have said, knowing full well that it is completely ok to do so, part of being a social animal. Or even raising my voice, in a non angry, but very natural way... Well, i have no good exmple in mind, but basically i've noticed behaviour things that seem closer to how I would have acted as a kid, less filtered, less processed through my ideas of what right behavior or speech are... Quite unexpected I must say.
Ok, here comes the final stretch. Resuming formal meditation practice : on the 27th of july, I did 45 min of vipassana, fast noting, followed by three 10 min light kasina sessions. After 5 or 10 min, it seems that everything gets noted from a distance, pretty fast. A kind of jhana comes up, my hands disappear, and as I tune into the intense pleasure I get from being aware with such finesse of what's going on in my body, a rather strong absorption happens. It happens three times during that session, but it never becomes full, because each time it seems that some details in the sense field cannot be overlooked and become distracting. Perception is extremely detailed, and globally the meditation is rather pleasant from beginning to end. But I would say - if you insist that I map it ! ;) -, that it didn't go beyond the fourth nana : coming out of the meditation, i was perceiving fast pulsing vibrations, 10-20 Hz, with a level of detail in perception that I've rarely experienced.
The first Kasina session was in the same vein : an extremely detailed nimitta in its first phases, white dot, not red, with a bunch of stuff happening inside of it and around. An ability to maintain continuous focus on the dot that is really something. Inside the dot, very clear pulsing happens in phase with the breath. And surprisingly, it doesn't even go to the black dot phase !! There is a kind of black dot with a pulsing white thing inside which grows and gets smaller with the breath, but then that's it, it all goes away and I open my eyes. The same thing happens in the next two rounds : the black dot is maybe a bit more clear, but it doesn't go farther, though concentration is good. What the heck ??
It also seems, generally, that when I meditate (and not), that somehow the sense field is bigger or I smaller, that more things are there to be perceived, that reality is more solid ... I still have pretty easy access to jhanas, but it seems to me, contrary to what is commonly expressed, that they are now colored by vipassana, not the other way around ! Vipassana had always had jhanic aspects for me, and now jhanas have vipassana qualities... funny things ^^
All in all, meditation is kind of confusing. Sometimes it seems nanas happen, and I get to EQ, but these don't seem as all-encompassing as before, they seem polluted. Yet, it's becoming quite obvious that individual guidance is gonna be necessary, as I never really mastered with certainty the phenomenology of these stages and states..........
Sometimes meditation is nebulous. Sometimes i'm clealry in a rather strong A&P. Sometimes I feel daily life cycling, especially DN which manifests as psychological negativity....
I have felt almost distressed regarding all this at times.
My last blip was during a meditation session last week, and this time it really doesn't feel like I drifted off. I definitely saw it happen and it clearly was not a sleep-jolt, a head-nod, nor a loss of attention followed by a snap-back. I was, I'm pretty sure, in "relaxed" and unfocused EQ when it occurred, and it was just like a really unremarkable "blip" which seemed to be connected, as I mentionned earlier, to that kind of "space" in the head where I get pressure build ups when I'm in equanimity, and that seems so connected to the sense of self in a mysterious way. But i still can't, and have never, been able to get a repeat fruition "on-command", if that's what these things are at all. I would say at least a half-dozen events of that kind happened during july... And in fact, in retrospect, they were happening in june already. Or something similar....
To be completely honest, my intuition right now, is that I am basically in A&P territory of 2nd path. There.
Anyways, I'm trying not to obsess about all this, and since I'm going to Panditarama Lumbini for 30 days in september (Yes !!), I guess new developments, confirmations, clarifications and such will be apparent soon enough. Maybe i'll realize this was all a dream : it feels like that at times ^^
I praise anyone who had the curiosity to read all of this. I'm glad to be able to share this important aspect of my life, which is unfortunately not something one can discuss with many people. I hope someone gets something out of it. All informed opinions are welcome
Best regards & well wishes,
Olivier
I'm gonna give a description of the development in my practice in the three months since those previous posts, in case anyone can relate to it, and maybe find some inspiration or clarification, while also hoping to get some elightened opinions for my own benefit
Sorry in advance about the length of this, but I honestly think there are interesting bits to be found.
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So, since that advice Shargrol gave me - basically, that I should just relax and let things happen naturally - I chilled out quite a bit regarding meditation. I even started to slack off a bit, losing interest in any special experiences, although I kept some continuity of practice. But I had many interesting openings in daily life, moments of profound significance and beauty.
Actually, this seems to have been a regulard feature in my life for the past few months. "Feeling great and healthy naturally" sums it up nicely, but there has also been a deep appreciation of the beauty of existence and a sense of dots connecting in the depths of my being. Depth and totality of meaning, silent joy, firy silence : that's been the norm of my existence, with a lot of equanimity and acceptance of suffering, and in retrospect, a pervasive sense of ease and mastery.
On a macro level, there has been a regular feeling of being connected to childhood. For some reason, I have a very bad memory of my personal history, of events in general. I habitually remember what I want to with great precision (I'm renowned for my mnemonic abilities ^^), particularly symbolic stuff, but strangely enough I have few memories from childhood. Yet these past few months, some have come up, and in particular, emotional memories (that is really rare for me, though some people like my brother are very prone to that) : Proustian moments of enlightened reminiscence, which conveyed a clear and moving sense that unobstructed joy and simplicity, such as the one that was the baseline of my normal experience as a boy, was directly accessible - since I was obviously experiencing this kind of mental-emotional state in the moment.... - and a very real possibility for life... And this triggered a lot of compassion, for myself and others, upon realising how simple happiness can be, and how needless our sufferings really are, how confused and pointless... Just writing this now brings tears to my eyes.
I reckon all this is quite typical of someone who is well established in equanimity, as I believe was my case. But there has been a profundity of meaning to experience, a poetic quality and emotional depth which is worth mentionning. This particularly interests me, as during those past months I finished writing my master's thesis, which deals with precisely that : the connections between esthetic moments and meditative experience. Let me tell you about such a moment which really stands out in my memory (yes, i remember it !! surprising I know).
I was taking a nice walk - well, soaring, really - in the forest, going up a hill. I felt very happy and satisfied, softly vibrant, and was kind of absent-mindedly pondering this stuff that i've been talking about. Then some verses by Augustine came up in my mind, the famous poem inspired by his experience of "conversion" :
"Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi ! et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam."
It's a beautiful poem. It goes on, but the verse I quoted means : "Late have I loved you, O beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you." Realizing once more how profound and universal the truth of these realms of experience, the awesomness of the fact that texts hundreds and thousands of years old are accessible to us, today, and that they sing the same old song (although theoretical models differ ^^)... Just like that : sacredness. And much release, much gratitude. I actually fell down on my knees and looked up to see the scintillating folliage above my head, the luminous patches of white sky merging with the greenness of the leaves into a shimmering texture, and I felt like I was a character in Pierre Michon's book, Vies minuscules (small lives). Let me quote that too.
This book tells in a half-imaginary, half-factual way the story of different people, who have existed, but not left any mark in official history. At times, this book takes on a truly mythological dimension. It's quite amazing, you'd think you are reading something from the great religious texts. The passage is at the end of a chapter narrating the life of a countryside priest, whose parish is made mostly of people from an insane asylum, among whom the author of the book has spent some time as a patient. The priest was also a drunk. He died in a motorcycle accident, in the forest, after an evening of drinking with peasants at the local bar. Michon imagines how it happened : "He carressed very soft little snakes. He was still speaking. The cigarette burned his finger : he took his last drag. He got hit by the first sunlight, wobbled, held on to fallow dresses, to handfuls of mint ; he remembered women's flesh, children's gaze, the delirium of the innocents : all this spoke in the song of the birds ; he fell down on his knees in the overwhelming significance of the universal Word. He raised his head, thanked Someone, everything took its meaning, he fell back down dead."
Haha. I didn't die. But this kind of grandiose stuff was what I had in mind at the time (april, may) and gives a good idea of my general state. I know, I know, this is not sensate level phenomenology. But these phenomena were occurring for me at this level, so, whatever... It's interesting to mention them in my opinion, because it raises the question of meaning, meaning, what is meaning, and what is its connection with insight ?
Anyways, things changed a lot since then. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a close monitoring of events, as I was busy with other things and just not really focused on practice. Actually, my meditation felt pretty sloppy during the months of may, june. I would regularly get absent-minded. I didn't know if that was maturing or just bad practice. At times I would give myself advice like : "think about death to get some motivation !" But life was very easy and my meditation somehow profound, though the states had lost a lot of their attractiveness.
At the beginning of July, though (around the 4th) I started to notice some new things. I realized, while my father was paying me a visit, that there was something a bit different. Like I was in an unnaturally good mood, but not a grandiose thing like described above, a simple, clean joy. In particular, I was surprised at how quickly emotions were moving along, how unsticky they were. That's something that stood out on its own with no reference to anything. It appeared to me specifically in a situation where some comments made by my musician dad on my new composition would usually have brought on negative emotions : in this case, they kind of did, but it just left quickly without leaving a mark. It seemed obvious there was a bit more natural space and fluidity around things.
Then I started to notice that whenever I started to pay attention, to my body, for instance, I would experience fine tingling and vibrations all over, and could confidently and straight away pick out a frequency of 5-15 Hz on average. This was consistent. I should mention that before this, i'd never really understood that frequency thing. Now I got it : it was just a matter of sensing the internal rythm of whatever you were experiencing. I also felt really really calm, internally silent, and started to realize the I could get absorbed into whatever I wanted quite easily. Suspicion was aroused, because I was now picking up that this matched a remark from Kenneth Folk I wrote down in my meditation journal a few days before (interesting timing...), about the fact that signs of SE are : one is immediately in the A&P, and has access to jhanas...
Then I remembered an event which occurred at the end of june : during one of these "sloppy" meditation sessions, I experienced a kind of jolt, which immediately brought to my mind the thought "was that it ????" That got discarded immediately, as I tend to be quite on the look out for scripting and am definitely not one of those who identify things too quickly as this or that. In fact it's quite the opposite, I tend to question things excessively : the first time I got hard second jhana, I thought it was access concentration (granted, I was practicing with ajahn brahm instructions). I decided immediatly that this blip was that I had just fallen asleep and woken up ;) ;) So I just forgot about the event, which occurred twice more in the next few days. Now, around the 6th of july, I thought : could this have been it ?? I was very skeptical, since it seemed so anticlimactic (especially because I didn't experience a clear bliss wave afterwards). But again, this matched some descriptions (some of yours, for instance, Shargrol), and my mindfulness at the time was definitely not very high...
I decided to OBSERVE what was going on !!!
Whether it was due to my budding belief in the SE theory, or just what was happening naturally, I realized that I was experiencing some kind of return to normalcy. Compared to the past few months, everything just felt ... normal. Which was really weird. Aspects of my life appeared more simple, more naked, it seemed my outlook was somehow more honest. I also at times felt less clarity than before in my daily experience, as if life got "thicker", more "raw", as well as diminished reactivity... Meditating appeared pointless (i didn't stop though, but it was like... half-assed every time for a while !). In contrast with what I described above, where life felt so profound, easy, mystical at times, where I would spend hours listening to dharma talks (Rob Burbea !!), reading the DhO, thinking about meditation and deep philosophical questions and readings, now I had a trend off feeling like going out, having a drink (stopped drinking with no looking back over a year ago !), finding a girlfriend........
I would, at the time, always begin a sit in what i'm taking to be the AnP. During some sessions, I was noticing very clear Dukkha Nanas, much more clearly than usual, but sits were otherwise quite equanimous, very inclusive and "normal". But for some reason, I really couldn't bring myself to meditating really seriously, like, to check all of that....
Yes, the meditative spaciousness, seemed to have really become a baseline, yet experience somehow seemed thicker and this, in the perspective of SE, started to make sense to me : it dawned on me that things had to redensify to be penetrated again in the next round, otherwise there would be no need for further practice, right ?? That idea was seductive because it felt so "real", not something I could have made up given my initial expectations as to what SE might be like. Yet, I felt a certain disappointment. Nothing spectacular. Maybe it was the least interesting SE of all time ? Another sign of strange "realness" to me is that, contrary to previous attainments (2nd jhana, 4th jhana in particular), I had no spontaneous inclination to announce it to people. Well, because I doubt it, certainly, but also something else... As if this time, it was really serious and I shouldn't talk about it. In fact, I've been quite a bit more silent than usual these last weeks, I would say.
I started to experiment with Jhanic absorption, half-seriously, and with a sense of incredulity. Yet, the first time i did a bit of shamatha after thinking I might have gotten SE, it felt like I immediatly jumped into a jhana, and got to a very equanimous space reminiscent of a light 4th, in a matter of minutes, just before a session of work on my memoire.
The next day (11/07), taking the train to paris, I started to pay attention to the breath, and it was right there in exquisitely fine detail, completely granular and textural, effortlessly seen. It quickly (minutes) started to get a slow-motion quality, and it was also the first time I realized that I could use it as a vipassana object (before that, I exclusively used the breath for shamatha). I realized that, while maintaining a perfect attention to the slow motion of the breath, I could also sense pulses of sight/sound/body sensations all around, fluttering at a clear frequency of 20+ Hz. None would grab my attention though. That was a characteristic of sits at the time : I could really quickly have a lot of reflexivity, the kind that happens in EQ, where things are instantly seen as what they are in a powerful, all-encompassing way, which to me corresponds to what Husserl calls the "splitting of the self" ;);)
Accompanying this was a sense of profound bodily stillness and slow motion which could be maintained while moving and with eyes opened. The slow mo effect, as well as fast vibration, were also present in sight, if I remember correctly. All this was very easy, unremarkable at the time, but I realized afterwards that I certainly had never had such fine (for me) perceptual abilities. Also, at the end of this "session", I remember a sentence about the balance of energy and surrender, and realized I could decide to increase energy very easily, while surrendering deeply. How did I know how to do that ? No idea, but it provoked a kind of accumulation of pressure in a spot the base of my skull, near the back of the neck, where the sense of self started to recede, and which started to actually hurt, and i felt like it was gonna break and I was gonna die if I kept watching it ^^ I realized that this "spot", in fact, the "over there" of my field of experience, was connected in some way with the experience of the infamous "blips", "clicks"....
Later (the next day ?), at my job as an usher in the paris Philharmonic, I closed my eyes in the empty room before the show, and started to follow the breath, and felt that within minutes I got to an equanimous space which would usually have taken me a while (30 min +) of directed effort to get to... Did I just get to 4th shamatha jhana using only absorption ? That had never happened, as I'd only been able to access the 4th jhana, interestingly, through insight practice ^^ (Btw, Rob Burbea has interesting things to say about this connection...) Yet, as it was so natural, it felt unspecial, which was a bit confusing. Shouldn't all that be a bit more spectacular, i thought ? Though, i have to admit there were moments of elation and giggling during that period when I thought, "holy shit, this might be real !!!!!! YES !!!!!" But where were the fireworks ??
I also started to experience really unexpected things. Intense bouts of negativity, for instance. At my job : I started to see only the aspects I disliked. I experienced great aversion to people : feeling that everyone is really, really stupid and mean ; a feeling of internal "exile", and, a sense of alienation as well as hostility (paranoïa) emanating from my colleagues. Interestingly, this reminded me of similar feelings I'd had in my childhood. And it appeared to me that perhaps all this negativity was but an exacerbation of feelings which are usually unnoticed or only partially acknowledge, perhaps, and that somehow there was nothing to fear from them - especially if they were the same as some childhood feelings.... And when I saw that, the negativity disappeared completely, not to come back. Poof. Big heart opening and relaxing...
This happened a few times during the two week when i was working in the philharmonic in Paris. I found it extremely interesting to read some accounts on this very forum of people who would say that second path is basically pure ill-will and finding anything that comes out of anyone's mouth stupid, or plain wrong.... I can relate, though this isn't my permanent experience by a long shot. On 14/07, I wrote : "I've experienced intense negativity these past few days, both ill-will and its counterparts, self-contraction, fragility. These have only seemed to change when it was accepted/seen-through, but when it did it just vanished." I had also experienced mild nausea regularly in the two weeks since the supposed event. Now, I think all this might be related to daily life cycling.
When I began meditating, three and a half years ago, one 15 min session of meditation would make a huge difference in my days. It would transform my experience, honestly, it was great. During the months of may-june, it felt like even two hours of meditation made little difference in my daily life experience, except perhaps make it a bit more spacious. Like equanimity was complete. Now, it was the same, but in the opposite way : when I sat down to meditate, I felt like a complete beginner, despite the fact that I could access states and things which were certainly not there when I started... I wrote down (this will seem to contradict my earlier writing) : "it seems that gross reactivity and the return to normalcy of life, implies that there begins the possibility to do some real work again... interesting... And if it weren't that way, it would be the end of the path. Either new things are coming up, psychologically, reactivity, habit patterns appearing more clearly, etc., OR, things that were not apparent before are showing up. It's quite humbling. Very humbling. I'm not a spiritual superhero... I have very basic, human issues and flaws that it seems I wasn't even really seeing, or refusing, before... well..."
Writing this liberated something. Like it sealed some understanding. With that deep sense of humility (and having slept only a few hours), I for some reason decided it was time for some Jhana practice. Having read a cool formulation by Burbea about them ("first, we let go of the hindrances, then different varieties of pleasure and collectedness arise, then perception starts to fade until the 8th jhana"), I reconnected with the energy I had in october 2018, when I was really going for Jhanas. I sat down, remembered the brahm routine, relaxed, let go of hindrances, keeping the list of them close to my mind as a mental check up. And it seems my mind just knew what to do and I just had to trust it : very cool. Energy truely was aroused at will, kammacchanda was identified and let go of live. There was a part of me that knew : "Ök, this is first, and this is second jhana. Fuel the bliss !! Right !! Oh, woow, that is nice. Well done. Ok, time to move one ! This one will be a bit confusing. Here goes ! remember it will be murky. Ok, time for fourth now.... spacious, feels kind of normal." Here a tinge of doubt arose : "is this real or a script ?" This was immediately seen as doubt & agitation, and I knew : "ok, arouse energy just like this ! And trust yourself" A kind of mantra appeared : "let go of the perception of diversity.... there's only space... it's all the same..." And sure enough, as I kept recalling to stay with the breath, the body started to disappear. Not completely, but still.
It's all a matter of confidence, intent, right exertion, and keeping with the breath. Wow. They were pretty hard Jhanas too... very impressive and easy. I gues it took about 35-40 min to get to that j4.j5 or whatever it was... I'd never before, as I said, been able to access this through pure concentration practice.
Somehow, I was doubting the truth of this (have I demonstrated clearly enough that I have a problem with skeptical doubt ??? one of the best things about this kind of detailed write-up is to make this kind of stuff emerge.... It wasn't obvious to me that i was doubting things in excess, but now that I see it like that....), partly because the doing as well as the knowing of what was going on during that jhana session seemed outside of my conscious control or monitoring. Key insight, I believe. (So, I also have a problem with control ? Is that why I'm not clearly experiencing repeat fruitions ?) This, interestingly, resonates deeply with what was understood earlier : I felt sobered up, mor "real", more out of control, as if it was starting to really dawn on me that this process is NOT personal. Yes, sobered up about this whole thing. Hung over ? This is starting to sound like a Rumi poem, isn't it ?
That shamatha session really showed me in a direct way what letting go means... The whole effort/surrender thing made much more sense now... And I intuited that this new (?) section of the path would be very much about surrender.
Later that day, I went for a walk near the river, and something happened which occurred in exactly the same way the evening of the day I first got up to light formless realms in EQ through vipassana a couple of months back : it seemed like my mind tuned into the background sound of the water (there is a small water fall in my village which makes this beautiful noise) and kind of merged with it in a totally spontaneous way, giving rise to a sublime state of mind, velvety, a diffused spatial experience of a jhanic kind, coupled with the soft touch of the late-afternoon breeze on my skin... Becoming smooth, airy movement... Completely unexpected, a beautiful gift. So simple, just hearing, and touching, yet so fulfilling... Later still, I noticed that the spatial aspect was quite prominent generally in experience. For instance, writing my meditation journal entry, the spatiality of the sound produced by my pen moving from left to write as I wrote was exquisitely clear... And more surprisingly, when I had dinner, taste itself had an unprecedented dimensionality to it, as if that old goat cheese was just surrounding, not only the flavour of the pasta, but ME, it felt like it was around me !! The goat cheese space invasion : a new meditation side effect !!
On 15/07, I again remarked that whenever I turned my attention to the body, I could sense buzzing and spontaneous tingles. I also acknowledged that I was going through a phase of pretty high sex drive, with a kind of impulsive and reckless energy. Which seemed like a real step-back, not unfamiliar though (I have been known to party a lot and such, used to smoke and drink a lot, and generally had excessive tendencies ;) ). I was afraid that it was "coming back." And when I realized it could be linked with the 4th nana being a prominent aspect of life these days, I experienced a relief, which upon noticing it, produced this insight (yes !) : this opening, liberation, means that I had been identifying with these sexual pulsions which were seen in a negative light. Which means I was in self-contraction, self-clinging ! Thank you, Rob Burbea. Right there, I thought : I am entertaining a view regarding SE, first, I thought it would change more things ; second - this is important -, i've the notion, which comes from reading a lot of stuff on the DhO, that basically aspects of my existence which were seemingly hidden or repressed or whatever will start to come up, and that basically, sankharas in the Goenka sense are gonna start to liberate. And I had associated this sexual stuff with that, with ME, with MY snkharas bubbling up to the surface, etc. Both these views were creating conflict and suffering. And it appeared to me that the solution was : a bit of the Diamond Sutra. Not me, not mine, not self. Have compassion for this non-self which thinks it is a self....
Later, (did this, like the previous insight before the jhana session, liberate something ?) I noticed that I was spontaneously noticing a bunch of little things about my behaviour in daily life, about a lack of mindfulness in my behaviour, a lack of care, which, though I don't necessarily do anything about it, was at least clearly present and represented an increase in baseline vigilance. This has actually been consistant since the beginning of July.
On 16/07, I wrote down that writing things down, though very beneficial, sometimes could have the negative side-effect of "killing things", that is to say, of labelling experiences, deactivating them, rendering them automatic. Understanding it all might be preventing one from approaching experiences in a fresh and playful, engaged way.... Anyways...
On 18/07, I observed that for a few nights in a row, I'd had trouble going to sleep because of an unsettling intensity to experience. After my evening meditation, things would be pulsing (even my phone screen for instance), lots of vibrating sensations would arise, and I even felt mild nausea at times. In the evening as well as morning of this day.
Starting that date, I started a week long singing workshop, in which we would sing for 7-10 h a day, basically doing nothing else than sing this composition we were to perform on the 24th, and so I stopped meditating, basically, as well as journalling. Well, this kind of singing could be considered like a meditation retreat in itself, I believe. But I do have things to report. Firstly, it was the first time I saw my brother in a long time, as well as othr people I knew. It felt upon seeing them and spending time with so many people constantly for a few days that, really, something had changed with me. Something was more light, more fluid, more mature. Secondly, the first day of singing, I realized I had never had such ease reading (I'm not a great sight reader), had really progressed in a few ways though I hadn't sung in months and months (understanding something new about rythm, generally singing better) and had a really pleasant and smooth time concentrating and all... Felt more confident in many ways, too. At the end of the first day, I felt a bit fed up and mildly negative emotions, so I went up to my room and lay down for a few minutes... And it felt like an oferflow of energy got liberated : I immediatly got intensly pleasant and very smooth piti all over my body, and these five or ten minutes of rest were simply amazing... The singing might have something to do with that of course.
I immersed completely in the singing and the life around it for about a week. I must add for the sake of really frying my reader's brain out with excessive amounts of information, that I seem to have a much more spontaneous relationship to things these days (july). Like, I won't hesitate to tell people things I would normally not have said, knowing full well that it is completely ok to do so, part of being a social animal. Or even raising my voice, in a non angry, but very natural way... Well, i have no good exmple in mind, but basically i've noticed behaviour things that seem closer to how I would have acted as a kid, less filtered, less processed through my ideas of what right behavior or speech are... Quite unexpected I must say.
Ok, here comes the final stretch. Resuming formal meditation practice : on the 27th of july, I did 45 min of vipassana, fast noting, followed by three 10 min light kasina sessions. After 5 or 10 min, it seems that everything gets noted from a distance, pretty fast. A kind of jhana comes up, my hands disappear, and as I tune into the intense pleasure I get from being aware with such finesse of what's going on in my body, a rather strong absorption happens. It happens three times during that session, but it never becomes full, because each time it seems that some details in the sense field cannot be overlooked and become distracting. Perception is extremely detailed, and globally the meditation is rather pleasant from beginning to end. But I would say - if you insist that I map it ! ;) -, that it didn't go beyond the fourth nana : coming out of the meditation, i was perceiving fast pulsing vibrations, 10-20 Hz, with a level of detail in perception that I've rarely experienced.
The first Kasina session was in the same vein : an extremely detailed nimitta in its first phases, white dot, not red, with a bunch of stuff happening inside of it and around. An ability to maintain continuous focus on the dot that is really something. Inside the dot, very clear pulsing happens in phase with the breath. And surprisingly, it doesn't even go to the black dot phase !! There is a kind of black dot with a pulsing white thing inside which grows and gets smaller with the breath, but then that's it, it all goes away and I open my eyes. The same thing happens in the next two rounds : the black dot is maybe a bit more clear, but it doesn't go farther, though concentration is good. What the heck ??
It also seems, generally, that when I meditate (and not), that somehow the sense field is bigger or I smaller, that more things are there to be perceived, that reality is more solid ... I still have pretty easy access to jhanas, but it seems to me, contrary to what is commonly expressed, that they are now colored by vipassana, not the other way around ! Vipassana had always had jhanic aspects for me, and now jhanas have vipassana qualities... funny things ^^
All in all, meditation is kind of confusing. Sometimes it seems nanas happen, and I get to EQ, but these don't seem as all-encompassing as before, they seem polluted. Yet, it's becoming quite obvious that individual guidance is gonna be necessary, as I never really mastered with certainty the phenomenology of these stages and states..........
Sometimes meditation is nebulous. Sometimes i'm clealry in a rather strong A&P. Sometimes I feel daily life cycling, especially DN which manifests as psychological negativity....
I have felt almost distressed regarding all this at times.
My last blip was during a meditation session last week, and this time it really doesn't feel like I drifted off. I definitely saw it happen and it clearly was not a sleep-jolt, a head-nod, nor a loss of attention followed by a snap-back. I was, I'm pretty sure, in "relaxed" and unfocused EQ when it occurred, and it was just like a really unremarkable "blip" which seemed to be connected, as I mentionned earlier, to that kind of "space" in the head where I get pressure build ups when I'm in equanimity, and that seems so connected to the sense of self in a mysterious way. But i still can't, and have never, been able to get a repeat fruition "on-command", if that's what these things are at all. I would say at least a half-dozen events of that kind happened during july... And in fact, in retrospect, they were happening in june already. Or something similar....
To be completely honest, my intuition right now, is that I am basically in A&P territory of 2nd path. There.
Anyways, I'm trying not to obsess about all this, and since I'm going to Panditarama Lumbini for 30 days in september (Yes !!), I guess new developments, confirmations, clarifications and such will be apparent soon enough. Maybe i'll realize this was all a dream : it feels like that at times ^^
I praise anyone who had the curiosity to read all of this. I'm glad to be able to share this important aspect of my life, which is unfortunately not something one can discuss with many people. I hope someone gets something out of it. All informed opinions are welcome
Best regards & well wishes,
Olivier
Thanks for your replies guys.
So, I'm coming back from a 9 day long retreat, and have really fresh new stuff to report.
In fact, though the retreat was labeled as "shamatha", it was actually dzogchen with a strong emphasis on shamatha. The teacher was Doug Veenhof, a student of Alan Wallace, and what we were taught is the first in a system of eight phases leading towards full enlightenment according to the presentation of Dudjom Lingpa, a 19th century dzogchen master...
We started with plain shamatha, moved on to a very interesting presentation of mental stillness as the "union of movement and immobility", then progressively added some very mild vipashyana, ending up with "cutting-through" practices. A lot for one week. I must say I was rather disappoited with the teachings in the first days, but when we started moving on to more advanced topics, it got more and more fascinating, until I started experiencing totally new things, leaving me to question everything I've learned about meditation so far... I've had LOTS of understandings during that retreat, on many levels.
For now, let me stick with the most self-centered considerations ;)
On the second day, I decided that I was too good for that teacher who seemed like a mushroom grower to me. Being extremely motivated and really bored with the really long talks that taught me nothing and the small amount of actual practice (4-5h of actual meditation per day), I resolved to skip all teachings and prayers and such, to do my own meditation, and join the rest of the retreatants for the times of practice. On that day, my meditation was amazing : responsive, rich, creative, balanced, fast, profound... I went through a very clear POI : in the end of the morning I reached a profound A&P, incredibly beautiful and quite intense, with lots of understandings, creative bursts of poetry about eternity popping up spontaneously in my mind, seeing how the shimmering dance of the shadow of a prayer banner was telling me something so deep about the sun, from which we are all born, a fact we never bother to linger on... Perception was really fast, it was textbook A&P, so much so that I made a resolve not to let the impending crash be too much of an obstacle... Interestingly, I feel like I identified sub-nanas during this A&P.
In the late afternoon, I experienced a mild dissolution. Right after the last session, I broke my vow of silence to offer some advice to a woman who had expressed that she really had no idea what shamatha was about and that doing 6 hours of that during the day had been totally meaningless.... I tried to explain to her that the key was to domesticate her interest, to have fun with it... Talking with her and another guy, I realized just how out of phase we were in this moment. That basically moved me into the DN. My visual field of extremely fine grained and I was experiencing things like objects leaving a trail of color behind them as they were moving. I started getting scared and paranoid. Going to watch the sunset was strangely gloomy and ominous. When I found myself alone to look over the field, the stars and the moving cars in the distance, I realized just how detailed and clear perception was. A bit later, it all started to become overwhelming : the vibrations started to take on a really edgy and maddening quality, it got to the point where I didn't know if I was ok or not. In my bed, I was trying to stay calm, felt some fear about the fact that some stranger was sleeping on the bed next to me. This peaked at around 10 pm, when I felt full blown panick and a sense that I wasn't gonna be able to escape this experience and was doomed to madness, or something like that. Then all of a sudden, this whole delirium lifted, leaving me feeling tired, raw, uneasy, but fine... I reckoned that this was the POI of second path, in fact it seemed perfectly aligned with daniel's detailed map.
I decided that it was a problem that I was really gonna be on a trip of my own if I kept practicing like that. So, I decided to chill out and be with the others, to really do that retreat and listen to that teacher (at least some of the techings), deciding that fast progress was not worth feeling completely alienated from everyone else there... and that it was just not cool to go too much against the flow.
So, I'll skip the next few days. Whether they all occurred in EQ or not, I don't know. I would guess that yes, but since I started really following Doug Veenhof's teachings and techniques, I'm not sure how to map any of it. In fact, is it mappable at all ? Later experiences, and teachings, have left me doubtful about the POI maps. This way that phenomena seem to develop, is it not very much the result of conditioning and ways of working with attention that create this verydevelopment ? I have some ideas about that but won't spell them out now.
I started to experiment with this "union of movement and stilness" technique in my visual field, while walking, eating, etc., finding it very interesting and much more aligned with ways of looking I had been practicing spontaneously since my early teenage years than anything I had ever been taught about meditation. The dzogchen approach is very much to work with real-axation and global awareness rather than precise attention and intense focus.
On the 5th day I had a really interesting visual experience : I could take the whole visual field as an object, and while being extremely relaxed, not focusing on anything, start to se the totality of the field come alive, as a flux of indistinct shapes and colors, all shimmering. I was getting all kinds of insights, about the equivalence of perceiving everything as "not-me" and perceiving everything as "me" ; about the fact that perceiving that everything is in constant movement (impermanence) actually cancels movement, and so that total change is rigorously changeless. Later that day, I had what I think was a fruition through the no-self door for the first time - a "woosh" thing, instead of a "blip", which matched what I imagined it would be, except it was quicker. It occured during the outbreath. Right after that i was left with a much less spatial experience, and physical sensations were much grosser in an obvious manner. I also came out of that meditation session felling extremely fresh and light, and didn't care much about meditation anymore. I now am guessing that this might have been 2nd path.
On the 6th day, during the last sits in the morning, we started to use new techniques of investigation : my examination of dependent origination had unprecedented clarity, in particular as regards thoughts : I could really see them for the first time as the dim, vague and insubstantial ghosts that they are very directly. I started to play with the way objects of perception are constructed, messing with my mind by replacing parts of the process with others, by imagining that this thing which was perceived as if it was "in front" of that other thing was actually behing the first, or replacing certain images with absurd ones, just to see if the mind would realize how crazy the whole process was ; trying to get the machine to break up, basically. It was a lot of fun. At noon, after getting up and waiting for the bell to call us up for lunch, I kept an extremely relax and extremely sharp investigation of objects of perception going while sitting on a bench. Opening my eyes, I looked at one of my fellow retreatants walking back to her room.
This was astounding. I don't really know how to explain it, but I believe I was experiencing emptiness in real time. It was absolutely clear that there was no past and future in that immediate experience : though she was obviously changing position, her movement was not of time. It was utter immanence, eternity : she was moving, and everything around her was moving ; yet nothing was moving. In fact, she didn't exist, and yet existed more than ever. Something angelic.
I got up, went to get my food. As I looked upon the face of some of my fellow meditators, I was struck by two profound things : first, I was perceiving them in such detail and in such a light, that they appeared like universes, like infinite things which had nothing to do with anything else ; each one of them was a miracle, right here in front of me, indistinct from me, of the same fabric. This brought about deep compassion and love, which moves me to tears now as I write about it.
As I was eating, in silence, my visual perception was deepening. It was already quite astounding, in detail and brightness. But now, looking at my fork, it was starting to really bloom in a crazy way. My forkful of dahl was the most beautiful and rich thing I had ever seen. In fact, as I was letting that develop itself, myself just trying to relax into it, it felt as if visual perception started to open, that I started to dissolve into it ; it felt like something untangled in the back, and that everything got bigger. It felt like a free fall into a world of unexpected richness, of a transfigured nature, timeless, the same as ever, yet totally different, raw, vivid, inescapably rich. In fact, this started to get freaky. I stopped the process. I felt some fear, but it was confined to a tiny perception of my heart beating in the chest. I decided to chill out. But something had flipped. It was this : reality, become REAL. I now understand what realization must mean. Just that : reality become completely real.
For about two hours I explored the premices, walking around the pond, into the forest, etc. It was completely surreal, psychedelic. Visual perception was totally illuminated : every object that had some kind of brightness or movement was emitting intense light in the whole of my visual field. It was like the experience I described earlier, x10, with an added depth to spatial perception that was astounding. Furthermore, I could "freeze" perception on command by stilling it on a particular object, which would start to acquire the same "transfigured" quality I described. The same, yet totally different, totally new, totally immanent : direct perception, pure unfolding of shapes and colors bound by nothing, flux.
Emotionnally, I felt a mix of elation, incredulity, great amusement and mild background panic. What the hell was that ?? I skipped meditation to go lie down. Was this a side effect of my ear infection ? Was it the first phases of a visual migraine ? Have I gone nuts ?
None of these...
I talked with another meditator in the hallway of one of the buldings. The best way I can describe it is : it was like a conversation on mdma. The kind where one is both profoundly calm, at ease in a supernatural way (nothing can touch me), yet extremely sharp, loving and energetic. Visual perception was so sharp, in particular, any reflecion in the field of vision, particularly the periphery, was perceived as a glowing neonish light. The face of that man was beautiful to look at : shimmering with light, detailed, with a background sense of eternity infusing the whole of perception... Man. Powerful.
We had been working with trying to sense the union of mind and appearances, the emptiness of all of that ; about trying to perceive everything as not different from dream appearance. Very global, synthetic ways of working, totally different than what I've been accustomed to, contrasting sharply with the highly analytic techniques and presentations I'd been immersing myself with lately. These ways of working seemed very meaningful to me, like extensions of my natural inclinations.... And it very quickly paid off in unexpected ways.
I didn't feel at all like meditating anymore. In fact, I went into the teaching very giddy. My outlook on this teacher had really changed. He started this session by saying this : "well, what's interesting about this path is that it can quckly get one from shamatha (ie access concentration) to getting a glimpse of rigpa and then learning to stabilize in that perception." He looked at me when he said that, I laughed, he smiled, and then he kept looking back at me during that whole session while explaining things about that. He said smthg which seemed to describe my life up until this point, smthg about pride and such... Then we read a text which, he said, could be mindblowing for someone who had some experience of these things : it was a dzogchen texht by the Dalai Lama on the difference of point of view between the "new translation" and "old translation" schools of tibetan buddhism. I can find it and post it if anyone is interested. One of these schools says there must be cessation for pristine awareness (the way dzogchen describes the goal, the experience of an enlightened mind) to be accessed. The other says this is not necessary. The dalai-lama argues both perspectives can be reconciled (surprising coming from him, isn't it ?). But reading that text did blow my mind at this moment. Could it be that there is indeed a completely altenate route to enlightenment ? This is what this tradition claims : they say it "cuts through", that it's a different path than the others. Of course, all traditional vehicles claim this, I assume. But here i was reminded of some things I've stumbled upon around here. Isn't this what kenneth folk calls the "simplest thing" ? I seem to recall that he says that this is something beyond the cycles and paths and jhanas and all that, and that in some ways it is independent of it...
I'm sure someone must have asked this before, but I would love to hear your opinions about this regardless. I'd be glad to elaborate if needed, and to include some texts if you are curious.
In anycase, since that event, 5 or 6 days ago, my visual perception hasn't gone back to normal. It's not subtle : sometimes, I'm unsure what color something is, simply because the glow of it is so different from what I'm accustomed to. In the periphery of vision, anything with a reflected light on it is sharp and shiny. Lights and bright colors are really different from before, now possessing an eery and often intense glow which, when I reflect upon it trying to qualify that perception, seems "unreal". Colors seem to have a "fake" quality to them, in fact it is like they are seen in a totally non-conceptual but direct and unmediated way as MENTAL. This, may I stress it again, is not subtle, but a kind of in-your-face spontaneous, effortless new thing in perception which is pretty entrancing. Passing through Paris on the way back from the retreat, was quite an experience ^^ It seems that all these luminous things are patches of vivid "emptiness" ...... what a terribly word to describe this, emptiness....
Everyday objects are now luminous and glittering, and none of this is a hallucination, just very enhanced awareness of what is there... I get the sense that great progress would come from contemplating that luminous quality that vision now possesses. Please let me know what you think, and what that might represent.
The whole mapping, jhanas, nanas things has lost appeal to a large degree. I think enlightenment has nothing to do with that. And I'm a bit scared of the real thing, actually ! It seems like it's gonna be... almost... too real. Can you talk me out of that ?
Another slight concern is this : I'm wondering if I should move back to a more theravadin way of practicing vipassana. I'm going to nepal for a few weeks in september, to meditate in panditarama lumbini and perhaps other places. I've been doubting this projet a bit since the retreat. Doug Veenhof advised that it was moving backwards to resume with more "attentional" and conceptual prctices when serious experiences of rigpa (if that's what i had....) had been reached. What do you guys reckon ?
With friendly thoughts,
Olivier
So, I'm coming back from a 9 day long retreat, and have really fresh new stuff to report.
In fact, though the retreat was labeled as "shamatha", it was actually dzogchen with a strong emphasis on shamatha. The teacher was Doug Veenhof, a student of Alan Wallace, and what we were taught is the first in a system of eight phases leading towards full enlightenment according to the presentation of Dudjom Lingpa, a 19th century dzogchen master...
We started with plain shamatha, moved on to a very interesting presentation of mental stillness as the "union of movement and immobility", then progressively added some very mild vipashyana, ending up with "cutting-through" practices. A lot for one week. I must say I was rather disappoited with the teachings in the first days, but when we started moving on to more advanced topics, it got more and more fascinating, until I started experiencing totally new things, leaving me to question everything I've learned about meditation so far... I've had LOTS of understandings during that retreat, on many levels.
For now, let me stick with the most self-centered considerations ;)
On the second day, I decided that I was too good for that teacher who seemed like a mushroom grower to me. Being extremely motivated and really bored with the really long talks that taught me nothing and the small amount of actual practice (4-5h of actual meditation per day), I resolved to skip all teachings and prayers and such, to do my own meditation, and join the rest of the retreatants for the times of practice. On that day, my meditation was amazing : responsive, rich, creative, balanced, fast, profound... I went through a very clear POI : in the end of the morning I reached a profound A&P, incredibly beautiful and quite intense, with lots of understandings, creative bursts of poetry about eternity popping up spontaneously in my mind, seeing how the shimmering dance of the shadow of a prayer banner was telling me something so deep about the sun, from which we are all born, a fact we never bother to linger on... Perception was really fast, it was textbook A&P, so much so that I made a resolve not to let the impending crash be too much of an obstacle... Interestingly, I feel like I identified sub-nanas during this A&P.
In the late afternoon, I experienced a mild dissolution. Right after the last session, I broke my vow of silence to offer some advice to a woman who had expressed that she really had no idea what shamatha was about and that doing 6 hours of that during the day had been totally meaningless.... I tried to explain to her that the key was to domesticate her interest, to have fun with it... Talking with her and another guy, I realized just how out of phase we were in this moment. That basically moved me into the DN. My visual field of extremely fine grained and I was experiencing things like objects leaving a trail of color behind them as they were moving. I started getting scared and paranoid. Going to watch the sunset was strangely gloomy and ominous. When I found myself alone to look over the field, the stars and the moving cars in the distance, I realized just how detailed and clear perception was. A bit later, it all started to become overwhelming : the vibrations started to take on a really edgy and maddening quality, it got to the point where I didn't know if I was ok or not. In my bed, I was trying to stay calm, felt some fear about the fact that some stranger was sleeping on the bed next to me. This peaked at around 10 pm, when I felt full blown panick and a sense that I wasn't gonna be able to escape this experience and was doomed to madness, or something like that. Then all of a sudden, this whole delirium lifted, leaving me feeling tired, raw, uneasy, but fine... I reckoned that this was the POI of second path, in fact it seemed perfectly aligned with daniel's detailed map.
I decided that it was a problem that I was really gonna be on a trip of my own if I kept practicing like that. So, I decided to chill out and be with the others, to really do that retreat and listen to that teacher (at least some of the techings), deciding that fast progress was not worth feeling completely alienated from everyone else there... and that it was just not cool to go too much against the flow.
So, I'll skip the next few days. Whether they all occurred in EQ or not, I don't know. I would guess that yes, but since I started really following Doug Veenhof's teachings and techniques, I'm not sure how to map any of it. In fact, is it mappable at all ? Later experiences, and teachings, have left me doubtful about the POI maps. This way that phenomena seem to develop, is it not very much the result of conditioning and ways of working with attention that create this verydevelopment ? I have some ideas about that but won't spell them out now.
I started to experiment with this "union of movement and stilness" technique in my visual field, while walking, eating, etc., finding it very interesting and much more aligned with ways of looking I had been practicing spontaneously since my early teenage years than anything I had ever been taught about meditation. The dzogchen approach is very much to work with real-axation and global awareness rather than precise attention and intense focus.
On the 5th day I had a really interesting visual experience : I could take the whole visual field as an object, and while being extremely relaxed, not focusing on anything, start to se the totality of the field come alive, as a flux of indistinct shapes and colors, all shimmering. I was getting all kinds of insights, about the equivalence of perceiving everything as "not-me" and perceiving everything as "me" ; about the fact that perceiving that everything is in constant movement (impermanence) actually cancels movement, and so that total change is rigorously changeless. Later that day, I had what I think was a fruition through the no-self door for the first time - a "woosh" thing, instead of a "blip", which matched what I imagined it would be, except it was quicker. It occured during the outbreath. Right after that i was left with a much less spatial experience, and physical sensations were much grosser in an obvious manner. I also came out of that meditation session felling extremely fresh and light, and didn't care much about meditation anymore. I now am guessing that this might have been 2nd path.
On the 6th day, during the last sits in the morning, we started to use new techniques of investigation : my examination of dependent origination had unprecedented clarity, in particular as regards thoughts : I could really see them for the first time as the dim, vague and insubstantial ghosts that they are very directly. I started to play with the way objects of perception are constructed, messing with my mind by replacing parts of the process with others, by imagining that this thing which was perceived as if it was "in front" of that other thing was actually behing the first, or replacing certain images with absurd ones, just to see if the mind would realize how crazy the whole process was ; trying to get the machine to break up, basically. It was a lot of fun. At noon, after getting up and waiting for the bell to call us up for lunch, I kept an extremely relax and extremely sharp investigation of objects of perception going while sitting on a bench. Opening my eyes, I looked at one of my fellow retreatants walking back to her room.
This was astounding. I don't really know how to explain it, but I believe I was experiencing emptiness in real time. It was absolutely clear that there was no past and future in that immediate experience : though she was obviously changing position, her movement was not of time. It was utter immanence, eternity : she was moving, and everything around her was moving ; yet nothing was moving. In fact, she didn't exist, and yet existed more than ever. Something angelic.
I got up, went to get my food. As I looked upon the face of some of my fellow meditators, I was struck by two profound things : first, I was perceiving them in such detail and in such a light, that they appeared like universes, like infinite things which had nothing to do with anything else ; each one of them was a miracle, right here in front of me, indistinct from me, of the same fabric. This brought about deep compassion and love, which moves me to tears now as I write about it.
As I was eating, in silence, my visual perception was deepening. It was already quite astounding, in detail and brightness. But now, looking at my fork, it was starting to really bloom in a crazy way. My forkful of dahl was the most beautiful and rich thing I had ever seen. In fact, as I was letting that develop itself, myself just trying to relax into it, it felt as if visual perception started to open, that I started to dissolve into it ; it felt like something untangled in the back, and that everything got bigger. It felt like a free fall into a world of unexpected richness, of a transfigured nature, timeless, the same as ever, yet totally different, raw, vivid, inescapably rich. In fact, this started to get freaky. I stopped the process. I felt some fear, but it was confined to a tiny perception of my heart beating in the chest. I decided to chill out. But something had flipped. It was this : reality, become REAL. I now understand what realization must mean. Just that : reality become completely real.
For about two hours I explored the premices, walking around the pond, into the forest, etc. It was completely surreal, psychedelic. Visual perception was totally illuminated : every object that had some kind of brightness or movement was emitting intense light in the whole of my visual field. It was like the experience I described earlier, x10, with an added depth to spatial perception that was astounding. Furthermore, I could "freeze" perception on command by stilling it on a particular object, which would start to acquire the same "transfigured" quality I described. The same, yet totally different, totally new, totally immanent : direct perception, pure unfolding of shapes and colors bound by nothing, flux.
Emotionnally, I felt a mix of elation, incredulity, great amusement and mild background panic. What the hell was that ?? I skipped meditation to go lie down. Was this a side effect of my ear infection ? Was it the first phases of a visual migraine ? Have I gone nuts ?
None of these...
I talked with another meditator in the hallway of one of the buldings. The best way I can describe it is : it was like a conversation on mdma. The kind where one is both profoundly calm, at ease in a supernatural way (nothing can touch me), yet extremely sharp, loving and energetic. Visual perception was so sharp, in particular, any reflecion in the field of vision, particularly the periphery, was perceived as a glowing neonish light. The face of that man was beautiful to look at : shimmering with light, detailed, with a background sense of eternity infusing the whole of perception... Man. Powerful.
We had been working with trying to sense the union of mind and appearances, the emptiness of all of that ; about trying to perceive everything as not different from dream appearance. Very global, synthetic ways of working, totally different than what I've been accustomed to, contrasting sharply with the highly analytic techniques and presentations I'd been immersing myself with lately. These ways of working seemed very meaningful to me, like extensions of my natural inclinations.... And it very quickly paid off in unexpected ways.
I didn't feel at all like meditating anymore. In fact, I went into the teaching very giddy. My outlook on this teacher had really changed. He started this session by saying this : "well, what's interesting about this path is that it can quckly get one from shamatha (ie access concentration) to getting a glimpse of rigpa and then learning to stabilize in that perception." He looked at me when he said that, I laughed, he smiled, and then he kept looking back at me during that whole session while explaining things about that. He said smthg which seemed to describe my life up until this point, smthg about pride and such... Then we read a text which, he said, could be mindblowing for someone who had some experience of these things : it was a dzogchen texht by the Dalai Lama on the difference of point of view between the "new translation" and "old translation" schools of tibetan buddhism. I can find it and post it if anyone is interested. One of these schools says there must be cessation for pristine awareness (the way dzogchen describes the goal, the experience of an enlightened mind) to be accessed. The other says this is not necessary. The dalai-lama argues both perspectives can be reconciled (surprising coming from him, isn't it ?). But reading that text did blow my mind at this moment. Could it be that there is indeed a completely altenate route to enlightenment ? This is what this tradition claims : they say it "cuts through", that it's a different path than the others. Of course, all traditional vehicles claim this, I assume. But here i was reminded of some things I've stumbled upon around here. Isn't this what kenneth folk calls the "simplest thing" ? I seem to recall that he says that this is something beyond the cycles and paths and jhanas and all that, and that in some ways it is independent of it...
I'm sure someone must have asked this before, but I would love to hear your opinions about this regardless. I'd be glad to elaborate if needed, and to include some texts if you are curious.
In anycase, since that event, 5 or 6 days ago, my visual perception hasn't gone back to normal. It's not subtle : sometimes, I'm unsure what color something is, simply because the glow of it is so different from what I'm accustomed to. In the periphery of vision, anything with a reflected light on it is sharp and shiny. Lights and bright colors are really different from before, now possessing an eery and often intense glow which, when I reflect upon it trying to qualify that perception, seems "unreal". Colors seem to have a "fake" quality to them, in fact it is like they are seen in a totally non-conceptual but direct and unmediated way as MENTAL. This, may I stress it again, is not subtle, but a kind of in-your-face spontaneous, effortless new thing in perception which is pretty entrancing. Passing through Paris on the way back from the retreat, was quite an experience ^^ It seems that all these luminous things are patches of vivid "emptiness" ...... what a terribly word to describe this, emptiness....
Everyday objects are now luminous and glittering, and none of this is a hallucination, just very enhanced awareness of what is there... I get the sense that great progress would come from contemplating that luminous quality that vision now possesses. Please let me know what you think, and what that might represent.
The whole mapping, jhanas, nanas things has lost appeal to a large degree. I think enlightenment has nothing to do with that. And I'm a bit scared of the real thing, actually ! It seems like it's gonna be... almost... too real. Can you talk me out of that ?
Another slight concern is this : I'm wondering if I should move back to a more theravadin way of practicing vipassana. I'm going to nepal for a few weeks in september, to meditate in panditarama lumbini and perhaps other places. I've been doubting this projet a bit since the retreat. Doug Veenhof advised that it was moving backwards to resume with more "attentional" and conceptual prctices when serious experiences of rigpa (if that's what i had....) had been reached. What do you guys reckon ?
With friendly thoughts,
Olivier
That's very nice to hear
To get back to my earlier post : I'm still very curious to hear what people have to say about this report, even though I said I didn't care much about maps and theory anymore ^^ Shargrol, Noah ... ?
To get back to my earlier post : I'm still very curious to hear what people have to say about this report, even though I said I didn't care much about maps and theory anymore ^^ Shargrol, Noah ... ?
Nothing so far. Not even first jhana in fact. Since that retreat was definitely not about jhanas (in fact, there was talk of jhanas explicitely being avoided in the mahayana, which I guess influenced me : I only had jhanas show up once during that retreat, in a very mischievious, surprising and quick way - like kids playing a trick on me and quickly running away), and maybe because of momentum, i haven't inclined to that at all since. Life has been busy and my meditation totally ... disengaged, kind of like in july. The experience that I had, whatever it was (I'm reading daniel's description of third path in mctb2 and, though this hasn't stuck, it seems to be quite similar in certain ways - A&P of third path ???) really made me utterly lose interest, until a few hours ago in fact, in jhanas, nanas, and all that, because it seemed so much like the real-deal, having nothing to do with these things - though, it did : it's because I practiced the way I did and read mctb that this revealed itself. But now, it's gone : no more visual vividness, even 
hehe
I really haven't started investigating anew, or even being curious about meditating. Life circumstances this past week (only ?) also played a big role in that. Today I completed my final bit of graduate school, and right now I'm in the airport waiting to board for nepal. So I guess I'll find out in Panditarama Lumbini ! I feel ready to meditate again !
Ok, in truth some things to report about daily life mostly : There does seem to be something new in the way emotions just glide by ; this also comes with a new level of honesty, like I can't avoid being aware of things I might not want to see or know about "myself", but that are in fact not clung to at all (here it is like my reactions defy my own expectations, in a vein that is becoming familiar) ; I definitely observed some cycling that manifested in very obvious ways when the lights were still there, because they transformed according to the cycle, which was pretty cool ; a couple of days ago in bed, in a half awake state, I was just thinking about the fruition I mentionned having thought of as second path (?? who knows), and it seemed to happen again several times in a row (which would be a first for me), in fact I think with each new outbreath - well, somthg happened with the outbreath several times in a row anyway... ; when I close my eyes for a sec and examine things, it seems there is more space, like the world is bigger, a perception i've had since that moment I talked about earlier when I was watching my fork and something opened profoundly ; also a recurrent feeling that reality is less solid and could vanish easily (odd) ; dependent origination (the reification process) is seen much more easily ; and a few other little things not worth mentioning, intuitions of some things which might be possible...
So, I'll post back a few weeks from now, I guess.
Cheers
hehe I really haven't started investigating anew, or even being curious about meditating. Life circumstances this past week (only ?) also played a big role in that. Today I completed my final bit of graduate school, and right now I'm in the airport waiting to board for nepal. So I guess I'll find out in Panditarama Lumbini ! I feel ready to meditate again !
Ok, in truth some things to report about daily life mostly : There does seem to be something new in the way emotions just glide by ; this also comes with a new level of honesty, like I can't avoid being aware of things I might not want to see or know about "myself", but that are in fact not clung to at all (here it is like my reactions defy my own expectations, in a vein that is becoming familiar) ; I definitely observed some cycling that manifested in very obvious ways when the lights were still there, because they transformed according to the cycle, which was pretty cool ; a couple of days ago in bed, in a half awake state, I was just thinking about the fruition I mentionned having thought of as second path (?? who knows), and it seemed to happen again several times in a row (which would be a first for me), in fact I think with each new outbreath - well, somthg happened with the outbreath several times in a row anyway... ; when I close my eyes for a sec and examine things, it seems there is more space, like the world is bigger, a perception i've had since that moment I talked about earlier when I was watching my fork and something opened profoundly ; also a recurrent feeling that reality is less solid and could vanish easily (odd) ; dependent origination (the reification process) is seen much more easily ; and a few other little things not worth mentioning, intuitions of some things which might be possible...
So, I'll post back a few weeks from now, I guess.
Cheers
I'm extremely tired writing this, so don't know how this will come out ^^ I'm letting ideas burst forth, hope it won't cause confusion...
Well, i experience it in the same way that most people seem to be reporting it : quick blips, soft wooshes, and perhaps intruding cracks sometimes. I definitely am not one with a lot of clarity into that, and I'm not interested enough to try to figure more out - at least right now. I don't get bliss waves of any kind (well, some mild rush feeling sometimes, but I would never call that bliss... terminology), though sometimes the desire to meditate evaporates for a while (that's what happened for a period of a few days after both my suspected path moments - I guess that's my way of feeling done, in the negative).
It's something that absolutely cannot be planned for me, and I must say the times that I have indeed kind of tried to make them happen have always failed. They occur when there's a true and kind of holy disinterest in what's going on, which usually is associated with low sensate clarity for me. It's honestly a lot like improvising music : sometimes you "don't care", yet you do, and that's usualy when grace comes. When you're not the one improvising, and yet it's coming from you, that's the kind of state I'm talking about, I guess. It's linked with true lack of clinging, in action. Doing something (meditation) without clinging. A subtle balance, about which the taoists have a lot to say I think. I recently started reading things about Tchouang Tseu, and I think that's gonna bring a fresh new perspective on the whole path. Interestingly, after supposed SE, my improvisation skills were a quantum leap better.
(Shargrol's first response to my initial post in this thread was a great way of expressing that and really I must credit him for putting me on this track in a way that was simple and probably more relatable to most than the heavy stuff I tend to write... Have I expressed how deep my appreciation is Shargrol ? I'm afraid not, shame on me !!)
It's also probably a "wiring"/inclination thing (this is linked with values and desires, and also views in a philosophical sense.). Some people are very naturally in tune with their bodily sensations, and I would imagine people like that tend to have more to say about fruitions in terms of sensations... Because when they let go of effort and directed attention/intention in EQ, then they maintain a high clarity of the sensate field. I tend to be more of a poet/thinker, at heart, and so, usually, I get a fruition when I'm a bit taken by a thought or image or such. I guess that's what happens when I just truly flow with things.
Well, just an idea...
Other times, it's just when I'm paying attention to the breath, or something else, in a really soft and non directed way.
In any case there's a key point here about interest, motivation/drive, and fundamentally in the end, eros/love. I think I'm talking about dependent origination somehow here...
What about this : people who hold a strong view that the world is fundamentally made up of sensate atoms of sort, will naturally be fascinated by the detailed sensate aspects of phenomena. Others who hold other views, won't. Similarly, at a different order of magnitude or what, if one truly cares about experiencing fruitions in a very detailed way, one will. But one can't lie about that. So I guess we find again that element of absolute honesty that goes along with all this, the deep connections interrelating values (what is desirable ?) beliefs and perceptions.
To sum up : fruitions are really not very significant - as an experience - for me. It does seem to be a co-event to some other transformations which do not ever manifest in connexion with it, though.
Nota bene : in fact, I must say that most of the time I'm not even sure that the things I experience are fruitions. Could be that I get them quite often, could be that other events get misidentified... I would say that Shargrol's descriptions are the ones that resonate most with what I experience ; you can find a bunch of topics on this. But I suspect that there is also my tendency to doubt my intuition which shows up there. In the moment, I'm usually spontaneously totally sure that something was a fruition, but will then doubt it ("that was so insignificant it could have been anything"). I am open to the possibility that I have never actually experienced a fruition, but that seems pretty unlikely to me if I reread my journal or think about past experiences. That "insignificance" of the event seems almost like a universal trait that people report...
Which in itself is incredibly interesting, if you reflect for a second. Nibbana is the most boring thing in the world. Doesn't that sound just right ? If it weren't seemingly insignificant, would the dhamma be hard to see ?
I guess the whole path, if I tried to express my current conceptin of it - what do you mean you didn't ask ? ^^ - is about learning to see what's right in front of you and always has been. Wittgenstein also said that that's what is hard about philosophy - becoming aware of what's familiar. That is why we repeatedly immerse ourselves in the simplicity of the manifest : so that some day there will only be that, a purified awareness of pure immanence. The goal is very precisely and litteraly in front of you, right now, as we speak, and the secret is to start exactly where you want to arrive, I was told.
At the other end : Saying that something is not significant, what does that mean ? sign-ificant. Something which is not a sign, something which is not part of any kind of relational structure, not even any intentionality. The consumation of épochè. I think that's what cessation is. Fruition is utter and total insignificance, which is the exact equivalent of absolute meaning, isn't it ?
Alpha et omega...
Well, I'll stop rambling now... Hope that wasn't too out of touch with your expectations. Good night
Well, i experience it in the same way that most people seem to be reporting it : quick blips, soft wooshes, and perhaps intruding cracks sometimes. I definitely am not one with a lot of clarity into that, and I'm not interested enough to try to figure more out - at least right now. I don't get bliss waves of any kind (well, some mild rush feeling sometimes, but I would never call that bliss... terminology), though sometimes the desire to meditate evaporates for a while (that's what happened for a period of a few days after both my suspected path moments - I guess that's my way of feeling done, in the negative).
It's something that absolutely cannot be planned for me, and I must say the times that I have indeed kind of tried to make them happen have always failed. They occur when there's a true and kind of holy disinterest in what's going on, which usually is associated with low sensate clarity for me. It's honestly a lot like improvising music : sometimes you "don't care", yet you do, and that's usualy when grace comes. When you're not the one improvising, and yet it's coming from you, that's the kind of state I'm talking about, I guess. It's linked with true lack of clinging, in action. Doing something (meditation) without clinging. A subtle balance, about which the taoists have a lot to say I think. I recently started reading things about Tchouang Tseu, and I think that's gonna bring a fresh new perspective on the whole path. Interestingly, after supposed SE, my improvisation skills were a quantum leap better.
(Shargrol's first response to my initial post in this thread was a great way of expressing that and really I must credit him for putting me on this track in a way that was simple and probably more relatable to most than the heavy stuff I tend to write... Have I expressed how deep my appreciation is Shargrol ? I'm afraid not, shame on me !!)
It's also probably a "wiring"/inclination thing (this is linked with values and desires, and also views in a philosophical sense.). Some people are very naturally in tune with their bodily sensations, and I would imagine people like that tend to have more to say about fruitions in terms of sensations... Because when they let go of effort and directed attention/intention in EQ, then they maintain a high clarity of the sensate field. I tend to be more of a poet/thinker, at heart, and so, usually, I get a fruition when I'm a bit taken by a thought or image or such. I guess that's what happens when I just truly flow with things.
Well, just an idea...
Other times, it's just when I'm paying attention to the breath, or something else, in a really soft and non directed way.
In any case there's a key point here about interest, motivation/drive, and fundamentally in the end, eros/love. I think I'm talking about dependent origination somehow here...
What about this : people who hold a strong view that the world is fundamentally made up of sensate atoms of sort, will naturally be fascinated by the detailed sensate aspects of phenomena. Others who hold other views, won't. Similarly, at a different order of magnitude or what, if one truly cares about experiencing fruitions in a very detailed way, one will. But one can't lie about that. So I guess we find again that element of absolute honesty that goes along with all this, the deep connections interrelating values (what is desirable ?) beliefs and perceptions.
To sum up : fruitions are really not very significant - as an experience - for me. It does seem to be a co-event to some other transformations which do not ever manifest in connexion with it, though.
Nota bene : in fact, I must say that most of the time I'm not even sure that the things I experience are fruitions. Could be that I get them quite often, could be that other events get misidentified... I would say that Shargrol's descriptions are the ones that resonate most with what I experience ; you can find a bunch of topics on this. But I suspect that there is also my tendency to doubt my intuition which shows up there. In the moment, I'm usually spontaneously totally sure that something was a fruition, but will then doubt it ("that was so insignificant it could have been anything"). I am open to the possibility that I have never actually experienced a fruition, but that seems pretty unlikely to me if I reread my journal or think about past experiences. That "insignificance" of the event seems almost like a universal trait that people report...
Which in itself is incredibly interesting, if you reflect for a second. Nibbana is the most boring thing in the world. Doesn't that sound just right ? If it weren't seemingly insignificant, would the dhamma be hard to see ?
I guess the whole path, if I tried to express my current conceptin of it - what do you mean you didn't ask ? ^^ - is about learning to see what's right in front of you and always has been. Wittgenstein also said that that's what is hard about philosophy - becoming aware of what's familiar. That is why we repeatedly immerse ourselves in the simplicity of the manifest : so that some day there will only be that, a purified awareness of pure immanence. The goal is very precisely and litteraly in front of you, right now, as we speak, and the secret is to start exactly where you want to arrive, I was told.
At the other end : Saying that something is not significant, what does that mean ? sign-ificant. Something which is not a sign, something which is not part of any kind of relational structure, not even any intentionality. The consumation of épochè. I think that's what cessation is. Fruition is utter and total insignificance, which is the exact equivalent of absolute meaning, isn't it ?
Alpha et omega...
Well, I'll stop rambling now... Hope that wasn't too out of touch with your expectations. Good night
Hello everyone,
So after this month long retreat in Lumbini, i've a lot of stuff to share, and I think I'll start a specific thread for this new report, as well as my questions regarding second path.
Just one remark : the events described in my previous posts (and the intense faith and grandiosity of said posts ! oops) where connected with the fourth ñana - it could have been obvious, but the realness of those things makes it hard to have "diagnostic" distance. So for anyone who might have been curious, neither second nor third path where achieved during that 7-day shamatha retreat !
The visual craziness (things appearing with a rainbow-like appearance, meaning glowing, sometimes contour-less, presenting simultaneousely observable and fused yet distinct colors) was linked with this A&P phase too. In fact, it provided a very clear personal confirmation to Daniel's notion that everything that occurs between the A&P event to re-observation, is a kind of unit, and that something else starts with EQ. That's better than U Pandita's division of the vipassana jhanas.
One rationale for what was happening is that peripheral vision (sensitive to brightness) was extremely predominant, in a way that changed in sync with the different dukkha ñanas. I know this for sure because after the first sit during which I hit EQ of second path, with the crystal clarity and certainty that retreat conditions offers (meaning, in the realm of abstract abdominal f*ing sensations), it so happened that this visual phenomenon disappeared entirely. A fact I did not notice, being so chilled-out, until the next day. I then experienced it reoccurring every morning for a few days, in it's jarring, elusive, strange and distressing version, as I was falling back into Re-ob, and it would disappear again when I reached EQ around lunchtime.
So, to present things backwards in terms of causality : the lights were a very direct and precise indicator of what territory was being traversed : cool ! They also confirmed that the third jhana is definitely about periphery of attention in a radically obvious way : cool ! And they were not "luminosity" at all, in the sense of everything seeming aware of itself - a pretty common mistake i reckon. The word numinosity could be a nice replacement, what do you think ? cool !
Let me just add this : let's not forget that the maps are conceptual tools. They are derived from our experiences, not the other way around - just like math and sciences are theories construed from... etc. etc. A grave blunder would it be (it was Galileo's and still is most scientific minds' mistake) to mix things up and believe that theories are not descriptive but generative ! It's a sure way to lose touch with, well, numinosity, and the immediacy of experience.
Cheers
So after this month long retreat in Lumbini, i've a lot of stuff to share, and I think I'll start a specific thread for this new report, as well as my questions regarding second path.
Just one remark : the events described in my previous posts (and the intense faith and grandiosity of said posts ! oops) where connected with the fourth ñana - it could have been obvious, but the realness of those things makes it hard to have "diagnostic" distance. So for anyone who might have been curious, neither second nor third path where achieved during that 7-day shamatha retreat !
The visual craziness (things appearing with a rainbow-like appearance, meaning glowing, sometimes contour-less, presenting simultaneousely observable and fused yet distinct colors) was linked with this A&P phase too. In fact, it provided a very clear personal confirmation to Daniel's notion that everything that occurs between the A&P event to re-observation, is a kind of unit, and that something else starts with EQ. That's better than U Pandita's division of the vipassana jhanas.
One rationale for what was happening is that peripheral vision (sensitive to brightness) was extremely predominant, in a way that changed in sync with the different dukkha ñanas. I know this for sure because after the first sit during which I hit EQ of second path, with the crystal clarity and certainty that retreat conditions offers (meaning, in the realm of abstract abdominal f*ing sensations), it so happened that this visual phenomenon disappeared entirely. A fact I did not notice, being so chilled-out, until the next day. I then experienced it reoccurring every morning for a few days, in it's jarring, elusive, strange and distressing version, as I was falling back into Re-ob, and it would disappear again when I reached EQ around lunchtime.
So, to present things backwards in terms of causality : the lights were a very direct and precise indicator of what territory was being traversed : cool ! They also confirmed that the third jhana is definitely about periphery of attention in a radically obvious way : cool ! And they were not "luminosity" at all, in the sense of everything seeming aware of itself - a pretty common mistake i reckon. The word numinosity could be a nice replacement, what do you think ? cool !
Let me just add this : let's not forget that the maps are conceptual tools. They are derived from our experiences, not the other way around - just like math and sciences are theories construed from... etc. etc. A grave blunder would it be (it was Galileo's and still is most scientific minds' mistake) to mix things up and believe that theories are not descriptive but generative ! It's a sure way to lose touch with, well, numinosity, and the immediacy of experience.
Cheers
Hi everyone,
So, after a few months of absence, here we go for an update. Long post (but, really), as usual
Hoping it may be of interest and use to some.
Long retreat. A few markers from that long retreat (4 weeks in panditarama lumbini in sept/oct) : I arrived there after a week long shamatha retreat in which I'm assuming I ended deep in a new A&P. It had left me with this crazy glow vision thing, which I detailed on here before. The glow had faded but started becoming brighter and more prevalent as soon as I set foot on the meditation compound in lumbini, basically. During the first few days I experienced none of the discomforts that usually accompany the first few days of a retreat, and many experiences of "suchness", particularly visually. Something interesting is that I was experiencing review fruitions (I believe) with a new degree of clarity for me, or perhaps they were just "new" fruitions from the second path which I hypothesized I might have attained during the shamatha retreat in august. ... or whatever...
New or clearer fruitions ? Let me pause here to describe that, so that maybe an external observer could chime in : I would start observing the abdomen, go through a fast sequence of light nanas, with a few shifts of perception (2 or 3, like entering different spaces - vipassana jhanas), get to a point where observation would becoming kind of impossible to maintain and replaced with dreamy states which were very very clear, and oddly connected to my supposed meditation object (the abdomen) in a deep way. There would then be some weird understanding about something, like the movement of the person moving in my mental dreamlike vision is not something else than the movement of the abdomen, and it is in fact no movement at all, and there would be a sharp snap from one sense door (mental) to the other (tactile) which would be followed by an unmistakeable and very pleasant deep shaking or surge, which felt so right. I think these were textbook fruitions but oddly enough, in my notebook I just reported them as cool and curious events, without realizing what they were... So I don't know what that says about all the other times I though I had fruitions where they were never like that, with that kind of merging of sense doors ending in an unmistakeable discontinuity that would send a bliss wave... Could it be the difference between first and second path fruitions ?
EQ2. Anyways. I broke through to the EQ nana during a sit on the 6th day of the vipassana retreat, I believe. Oh, and that was when I applied the narrow focus technique with intense determination and might, I must say for the sake of transparency... because the sayadaw was making me feel like i was fucking around... So, it manifested in a highly "abstract" and crystal clear cut way, meaning just in the way abdominal sensations of the breath were changing... You know, endings obvious, then nothing, force your way through that desert, then poooof all of a sudden huge sensations available right here, and life feels good again ! This was immediatly followed by the disappearance of the visual glow. Then, the glow vision would flare up and then recede regularly, cycling in a way that lined up with how I was going from DN to EQ every day for some time. I don't know whether getting more concentrated did it, or if that means the glow was a characteristic of the 3rd VJ which would be subsumed by the broader 4th...
I guess I really got established in EQ after three weeks, which is when the teachers finally acknowledged I was moving into the higher nanas, thereby ending the torture of me constantly doubting if they were assessing my progress correctly. Of course, they knew I had been going up there since a while back, but didn't let it on at all, and just gave me instructions that were designed to help them evaluate how mature each nana was.
Fetters model. I must say, most of the DN stuff I experienced there, was connected with this precise situation - feeling I was in the wrong hands, frustration about the dogmatism of the place, doubting this technique which was definitely not a good fit for me... a LOT of frustration about all that, but I kept going anyways trying to make the best of the experience. This DN was very much about ill-will, and I speculated for a while that this was connected to the fetters ; what i came up with - and i was very seduced by this notion for a bit - was that during first path, the main theme/problem lies with the perception of a fundamental issue pertaining to identity. Through spiritual development we come to solve this problem directly, but it constitutes the core issue of the first path, the thing that comes up again and again. Through gradually understanding, directly, and reflexively, that there is no permanent self, we develop wisdom, solve the issue, and lose all doubts as to how to solve that problem. Then SE seals all that stuff in and "eradicates" the notion that any other way of resolving that issue than the one that has been found could be the solution, since the right way has been experienced. There go the three fetters : self-view, rites and rituals, doubts. Then, I thought, echoing stuff I had read around here, it would make sense that THE problem of second path would have to do with ill-will and greed, right ? This lines up with what I experienced during that retreat anyways...
EQ2, II. The new equanimity nana that opened up had a new broadness to it, in the sense that, at the level of abdominal sensations for instance, I could tell, when I got there, that I could both observe very precisely the object of meditation (one sensation), and at the same time have exactly as much clarity about a bunch of other things around it - my body, sounds, etc. It was very itneresting because with that degree of clarity, and concentration, I could see how the object of meditation would become extremely small and remote while the surrounding sensations where becoming prominent (3rd vipassana jhana stuff), and then there would be a moment where it all opened and the center as well as surroundings became extremely clear and easy, and it seemed like I could observe many objects at once and see through objects, as if I could see all the trees in the forest. But at no point did I get into crystal clear absorption states like I did during first path, or in the month after what I take to be stream entry. Even when the EQ was very jhana like, when I experienced, for instance, the 4th jhana in a way that really reminded me of that classical description the buddha gave with the image of cool water infusing a lake etc., it was not at all as refined as I have sometimes experienced it in the past, although by all means my concentration levels must have been at an all time high...
Psychological bubbles. The last week of this retreat was extremely interesting, not really vipassana anymore, but there was an incredible amount of psychological insights and ideas, like a stream, bubbling up constantly, of forgotten memories, sensations from the past, atmospheres, little proustian moments of reminiscence all day long, basically. Very touching. Sometimes the sound of a crow's cry was just exquisitely satisfying in the sober, quick, yet profound emotionality it evoked... Lots of creativity, by all means. For instance, music would come up - I actually, immediatly after the retreat ended, composed music based on a poem by mary oliver, which praises Attention as a form of prayer, for 4 voices, based on some fragments that kept coming up during that last week. Also, conflicts would arise, becoming my meditation object, and get untangled and understood seemingly for good. Many of them. I had, in particular, one extremely profound emotional opening, like something huge about my life had been understood, was being accepted, through an incredible release of emotional energy, during about two or three hours... It was quite something, very beautiful. I do think my psychology has evolved by a step there...
Meditation ? Some time before that, i think, i had started to venture in mental spaces along the lines of "if there are no "things", then how could one possibly be distracted ?" ... And the notion of concentration started not making much sense anymore. After said opening, it seemed like all interest in vipassana practice vanished - I told the Sayadaw that it really felt like I was just observing stuff happening, that there was nothing special about it, and that I could as well be just looking at the flowers in the garden to the same effect... which pleased him, as you can imagine. Oh yes, there were also a few sits, on stands out in particular in my memory, where I was just resting in a kind of perfect midnfulness of things, not doing anything, except gently tryng to notice how things experience were always already "known", conscious, without there having to be any action on my part. That led to a very precise sequence of observations, whereby I jsut decided to check out what attention did, exactly. So, I focused on something : my index finger. This meant that the rest of experience receded, though it was still there ; that the perception of the index became somehow bigger, more detailed. At the same time, it created a tension in the neck.back of head, and a sense of unpleasantness, as well as a stronger sense of "duality". It as well triggered mental images and impressions, an image of an old woman for some reason. I released that and it was much better.
And I guess these kinds of experiences just deepened this conviction that it was quite artificial and not very useful to develop strong narrow focus on objects anymore. I was at the end happy and fresh and excited to be done with this retreat, somehow skeptical about meditation, but incredibly focused and disciplined, something which lasted for a few weeks and slowly faded, which went along with a rise in general unpleasantness/
Critique of panditarama lumbini. That retreat has left me with a bittersweet aftertaste, I would say. I'm now somehow disenchanted with vipassana practice, and have developed particular aversion to the mahasi sayadaw approach and the values and views it entails. I went there without having measured exactly what it would be like, who those teachers were, etc. There was no real hardship, in fact i did well and the retreat really went good, with the teachers in the end telling me I was practicing well, etc. But it kind of fucked my confidence in the practice, or in my own intuition, perhaps.
Before that, I was very much meditating based on strong intuition, faith, everything technical I had learned of course, but with a sense of wonder, amazement and beauty, before that reatreat. You might have sensed that in my previous posts. And that was perfect. But they insisted so much on needing to apply their technique so litterally, discouraged and dismissed any kind of natural curiosity as "experimenting", had no regard whatsoever for beauty and wonder.... It was so dry... And I actually think that this is not a good thing, it is life denying, because beauty is an internal necessity for life, as Michel Henry would say. Of course it is in line with the pali canon dogma, and this is what they believe, so it is what they teach... But that, I realized the hard way, is not for me, at all. They also did not try to assess my actual attainments, and so, it was only after 16 days, when I managed to tell the sayadaw that Ithought I had stream entry, that he changed his instructions to a more free flow kind of way, which finally started meeting my experience where it needed to be met... 16 freaking days into the retreat, can you imagine.. !
Gratitude for panditarama lumbini. Well otherwise, of course, the place itself is beautiful (garden of eden), the teachers so dedicated, as well as everybody else which practices there, and they are extremely good people, that must be said. Maybe I shouldn't focus on the negative. I also had very profound and beautiful moments of connecting to the deepest meaning of my own life there, so I should also express gratitude... Yes, it was such an adventure...
I guess I might also have overdone it a bit and fried myself somehow, though it didn't really feel like it at the time.
Meditation now. I guess is not very structured at all, sometimes i'll incline more towards cultivating calm abiding, sometimes examine things just a bit, but the very idea of taking the rise and fall of the abdomen as object and developing a narrow focus in a "heroic" way (which is what the sayalay there kept advising me....) just feels terribly wrong ^^
The thing is, the ability to perceive things simultaneously is now sort of default, or maybe it's better to say that attention is more broad "by default", so this kind of narrow focus makes little sense anymore. I've also notice countless things that hint to the fact that perception is at a new level of clarity, generally speaking. All kinds of details in things are available... in vision particularly.
I guess this new level of clarity had to be integrated - still is being integrated. I've also started to open my eyes much more fully to the predicament the world is in right now, and that has contributed to the somehow more difficult period I went through after the retreat, but that's something else, although a much more important topic than my little practice...
Emotions. It seems, though, that the emotional fluidity, the way emotions, though they may hit stronger, move away quite quickly, has very much stayed as a default thing since last summer, and somehow deepened. There is an increased resilience and a lot of stability in my daily life, clearly. It seems that negative mindstates don't really happen anymore.. even when I'm feeling not so well, there is usually a smile on my face at the same time... Don't know if that will last but there seems to be something permanent there ^^ I also seem to be drawn to just getting absorbed in activities for hours on end with little need for breaks, which seems like a nice perk that comes from such a long retreat time (350 + hours over a month and a half). But i've also noticed a somehow dicreased ability to get organized, strangely enough.
Rainbow cycles. The glow vision phenomenon comes back and forth in cycles of about a week, and this is unrelated to how much practice I put in. Sometimes it may be triggered by talking about it - when I explained the august breakthrough, it came back on, and I then perceived things with this rainbow vividness for a solid week.
There have been times where this felt like some form of visual non-duality, like the patches of glowing color were perceived as neither here nor there, neither far nor near, some beautiful and weird magical in-between of undetermined identity, very immediate in the sense that it seemed "aware", alive, on its one, known and seen as vivid vision before I could register an act of perceiving something... In fact, the teacher from that shamatha retreat told me via email (I wasn't able to tell him during the retreat about my experiences) that he thought I was starting to perceive things "non conceptually", and quoted that famous bahia sutta... well... But another person, a very nice guy, probable anagami, that I met through the DhO (hi fred !), suggested it sounded more like A&P stuff than non-dual perception.
There is also DN things happening sometimes, at a macro level of days, which express as nervosity, edginess, etc., all the good stuff (right now, I have this knot in my stomach which makes me think that perhaps...). But not debilitating at all. Things are rather smooth in general, but more rich and complex, I would say, than in the months (year, really...) that preceded stream-entry...
Weirder things, like - I noticed numerous times that if I look at something with a lot of calm and stilness, the whole visual field starts to move, kind of warp in a perceptible way, not dramaticly, but clearly. I mention this because it happened earlier this afternoon. There are many moments where it seems that things are perceived in a more... untangled way, as if different sense modalities were more "separate", in a way. Sometimes, perceptions that seem to only be what they are (ie : in the seeing just the seen, in the felt just the felt describes it well, and these are kind of strange but also exhilarating experiences, where it seems that this thing i'm seeing is really disconnected from all other sense modalities which seem mostly absent from that moment of perception... although they don't happen very often).
I've basically given up on the maps, and am now just sitting regularly without much complication beyond that. My plan had been to get second path in the more vipassana style and then move on to emptiness practices as described by Burbea in his Seeing that frees book. I don't know if I got second path yet, but I'm about ready to get to that new stuff.
Sensory atoms ? meh. I've developed a lot of doubts about the whole buddhist thing, though, at least theravadin stuff seems to me so reductionist, lacking subtlety and aliveness and emotionality now... Sorry for being so blunt, dear theravadin practicioners... But there is something confining to absurdity in a world view that reduces experience to a bunch of different sensory atoms to be perceived very quickly... Not that I ever gave credit to that kind of abidhammic perspective, but then, I'm now thinking - well why the hell was i not suscpicious about practice based on the conception that "reality" is actually.. kalapas ? Can you tell me ?
Hmm... anyways, that's it for now. Let me finish by stating that I do feel somehow confused and perplexed (although this does not create much suffering) about meditation practice as of today. I know that this i probably normal. But still, I'd appreciate some advice from seasoned practicioners.
Thank you to anyone who might answer this, very best wishes for your life and existential endeavours
Olivier
ps : edited a few times
So, after a few months of absence, here we go for an update. Long post (but, really), as usual
Hoping it may be of interest and use to some.Long retreat. A few markers from that long retreat (4 weeks in panditarama lumbini in sept/oct) : I arrived there after a week long shamatha retreat in which I'm assuming I ended deep in a new A&P. It had left me with this crazy glow vision thing, which I detailed on here before. The glow had faded but started becoming brighter and more prevalent as soon as I set foot on the meditation compound in lumbini, basically. During the first few days I experienced none of the discomforts that usually accompany the first few days of a retreat, and many experiences of "suchness", particularly visually. Something interesting is that I was experiencing review fruitions (I believe) with a new degree of clarity for me, or perhaps they were just "new" fruitions from the second path which I hypothesized I might have attained during the shamatha retreat in august. ... or whatever...
New or clearer fruitions ? Let me pause here to describe that, so that maybe an external observer could chime in : I would start observing the abdomen, go through a fast sequence of light nanas, with a few shifts of perception (2 or 3, like entering different spaces - vipassana jhanas), get to a point where observation would becoming kind of impossible to maintain and replaced with dreamy states which were very very clear, and oddly connected to my supposed meditation object (the abdomen) in a deep way. There would then be some weird understanding about something, like the movement of the person moving in my mental dreamlike vision is not something else than the movement of the abdomen, and it is in fact no movement at all, and there would be a sharp snap from one sense door (mental) to the other (tactile) which would be followed by an unmistakeable and very pleasant deep shaking or surge, which felt so right. I think these were textbook fruitions but oddly enough, in my notebook I just reported them as cool and curious events, without realizing what they were... So I don't know what that says about all the other times I though I had fruitions where they were never like that, with that kind of merging of sense doors ending in an unmistakeable discontinuity that would send a bliss wave... Could it be the difference between first and second path fruitions ?
EQ2. Anyways. I broke through to the EQ nana during a sit on the 6th day of the vipassana retreat, I believe. Oh, and that was when I applied the narrow focus technique with intense determination and might, I must say for the sake of transparency... because the sayadaw was making me feel like i was fucking around... So, it manifested in a highly "abstract" and crystal clear cut way, meaning just in the way abdominal sensations of the breath were changing... You know, endings obvious, then nothing, force your way through that desert, then poooof all of a sudden huge sensations available right here, and life feels good again ! This was immediatly followed by the disappearance of the visual glow. Then, the glow vision would flare up and then recede regularly, cycling in a way that lined up with how I was going from DN to EQ every day for some time. I don't know whether getting more concentrated did it, or if that means the glow was a characteristic of the 3rd VJ which would be subsumed by the broader 4th...
I guess I really got established in EQ after three weeks, which is when the teachers finally acknowledged I was moving into the higher nanas, thereby ending the torture of me constantly doubting if they were assessing my progress correctly. Of course, they knew I had been going up there since a while back, but didn't let it on at all, and just gave me instructions that were designed to help them evaluate how mature each nana was.
Fetters model. I must say, most of the DN stuff I experienced there, was connected with this precise situation - feeling I was in the wrong hands, frustration about the dogmatism of the place, doubting this technique which was definitely not a good fit for me... a LOT of frustration about all that, but I kept going anyways trying to make the best of the experience. This DN was very much about ill-will, and I speculated for a while that this was connected to the fetters ; what i came up with - and i was very seduced by this notion for a bit - was that during first path, the main theme/problem lies with the perception of a fundamental issue pertaining to identity. Through spiritual development we come to solve this problem directly, but it constitutes the core issue of the first path, the thing that comes up again and again. Through gradually understanding, directly, and reflexively, that there is no permanent self, we develop wisdom, solve the issue, and lose all doubts as to how to solve that problem. Then SE seals all that stuff in and "eradicates" the notion that any other way of resolving that issue than the one that has been found could be the solution, since the right way has been experienced. There go the three fetters : self-view, rites and rituals, doubts. Then, I thought, echoing stuff I had read around here, it would make sense that THE problem of second path would have to do with ill-will and greed, right ? This lines up with what I experienced during that retreat anyways...
EQ2, II. The new equanimity nana that opened up had a new broadness to it, in the sense that, at the level of abdominal sensations for instance, I could tell, when I got there, that I could both observe very precisely the object of meditation (one sensation), and at the same time have exactly as much clarity about a bunch of other things around it - my body, sounds, etc. It was very itneresting because with that degree of clarity, and concentration, I could see how the object of meditation would become extremely small and remote while the surrounding sensations where becoming prominent (3rd vipassana jhana stuff), and then there would be a moment where it all opened and the center as well as surroundings became extremely clear and easy, and it seemed like I could observe many objects at once and see through objects, as if I could see all the trees in the forest. But at no point did I get into crystal clear absorption states like I did during first path, or in the month after what I take to be stream entry. Even when the EQ was very jhana like, when I experienced, for instance, the 4th jhana in a way that really reminded me of that classical description the buddha gave with the image of cool water infusing a lake etc., it was not at all as refined as I have sometimes experienced it in the past, although by all means my concentration levels must have been at an all time high...
Psychological bubbles. The last week of this retreat was extremely interesting, not really vipassana anymore, but there was an incredible amount of psychological insights and ideas, like a stream, bubbling up constantly, of forgotten memories, sensations from the past, atmospheres, little proustian moments of reminiscence all day long, basically. Very touching. Sometimes the sound of a crow's cry was just exquisitely satisfying in the sober, quick, yet profound emotionality it evoked... Lots of creativity, by all means. For instance, music would come up - I actually, immediatly after the retreat ended, composed music based on a poem by mary oliver, which praises Attention as a form of prayer, for 4 voices, based on some fragments that kept coming up during that last week. Also, conflicts would arise, becoming my meditation object, and get untangled and understood seemingly for good. Many of them. I had, in particular, one extremely profound emotional opening, like something huge about my life had been understood, was being accepted, through an incredible release of emotional energy, during about two or three hours... It was quite something, very beautiful. I do think my psychology has evolved by a step there...
Meditation ? Some time before that, i think, i had started to venture in mental spaces along the lines of "if there are no "things", then how could one possibly be distracted ?" ... And the notion of concentration started not making much sense anymore. After said opening, it seemed like all interest in vipassana practice vanished - I told the Sayadaw that it really felt like I was just observing stuff happening, that there was nothing special about it, and that I could as well be just looking at the flowers in the garden to the same effect... which pleased him, as you can imagine. Oh yes, there were also a few sits, on stands out in particular in my memory, where I was just resting in a kind of perfect midnfulness of things, not doing anything, except gently tryng to notice how things experience were always already "known", conscious, without there having to be any action on my part. That led to a very precise sequence of observations, whereby I jsut decided to check out what attention did, exactly. So, I focused on something : my index finger. This meant that the rest of experience receded, though it was still there ; that the perception of the index became somehow bigger, more detailed. At the same time, it created a tension in the neck.back of head, and a sense of unpleasantness, as well as a stronger sense of "duality". It as well triggered mental images and impressions, an image of an old woman for some reason. I released that and it was much better.
And I guess these kinds of experiences just deepened this conviction that it was quite artificial and not very useful to develop strong narrow focus on objects anymore. I was at the end happy and fresh and excited to be done with this retreat, somehow skeptical about meditation, but incredibly focused and disciplined, something which lasted for a few weeks and slowly faded, which went along with a rise in general unpleasantness/
Critique of panditarama lumbini. That retreat has left me with a bittersweet aftertaste, I would say. I'm now somehow disenchanted with vipassana practice, and have developed particular aversion to the mahasi sayadaw approach and the values and views it entails. I went there without having measured exactly what it would be like, who those teachers were, etc. There was no real hardship, in fact i did well and the retreat really went good, with the teachers in the end telling me I was practicing well, etc. But it kind of fucked my confidence in the practice, or in my own intuition, perhaps.
Before that, I was very much meditating based on strong intuition, faith, everything technical I had learned of course, but with a sense of wonder, amazement and beauty, before that reatreat. You might have sensed that in my previous posts. And that was perfect. But they insisted so much on needing to apply their technique so litterally, discouraged and dismissed any kind of natural curiosity as "experimenting", had no regard whatsoever for beauty and wonder.... It was so dry... And I actually think that this is not a good thing, it is life denying, because beauty is an internal necessity for life, as Michel Henry would say. Of course it is in line with the pali canon dogma, and this is what they believe, so it is what they teach... But that, I realized the hard way, is not for me, at all. They also did not try to assess my actual attainments, and so, it was only after 16 days, when I managed to tell the sayadaw that Ithought I had stream entry, that he changed his instructions to a more free flow kind of way, which finally started meeting my experience where it needed to be met... 16 freaking days into the retreat, can you imagine.. !
Gratitude for panditarama lumbini. Well otherwise, of course, the place itself is beautiful (garden of eden), the teachers so dedicated, as well as everybody else which practices there, and they are extremely good people, that must be said. Maybe I shouldn't focus on the negative. I also had very profound and beautiful moments of connecting to the deepest meaning of my own life there, so I should also express gratitude... Yes, it was such an adventure...
I guess I might also have overdone it a bit and fried myself somehow, though it didn't really feel like it at the time.
Meditation now. I guess is not very structured at all, sometimes i'll incline more towards cultivating calm abiding, sometimes examine things just a bit, but the very idea of taking the rise and fall of the abdomen as object and developing a narrow focus in a "heroic" way (which is what the sayalay there kept advising me....) just feels terribly wrong ^^
The thing is, the ability to perceive things simultaneously is now sort of default, or maybe it's better to say that attention is more broad "by default", so this kind of narrow focus makes little sense anymore. I've also notice countless things that hint to the fact that perception is at a new level of clarity, generally speaking. All kinds of details in things are available... in vision particularly.
I guess this new level of clarity had to be integrated - still is being integrated. I've also started to open my eyes much more fully to the predicament the world is in right now, and that has contributed to the somehow more difficult period I went through after the retreat, but that's something else, although a much more important topic than my little practice...
Emotions. It seems, though, that the emotional fluidity, the way emotions, though they may hit stronger, move away quite quickly, has very much stayed as a default thing since last summer, and somehow deepened. There is an increased resilience and a lot of stability in my daily life, clearly. It seems that negative mindstates don't really happen anymore.. even when I'm feeling not so well, there is usually a smile on my face at the same time... Don't know if that will last but there seems to be something permanent there ^^ I also seem to be drawn to just getting absorbed in activities for hours on end with little need for breaks, which seems like a nice perk that comes from such a long retreat time (350 + hours over a month and a half). But i've also noticed a somehow dicreased ability to get organized, strangely enough.
Rainbow cycles. The glow vision phenomenon comes back and forth in cycles of about a week, and this is unrelated to how much practice I put in. Sometimes it may be triggered by talking about it - when I explained the august breakthrough, it came back on, and I then perceived things with this rainbow vividness for a solid week.
There have been times where this felt like some form of visual non-duality, like the patches of glowing color were perceived as neither here nor there, neither far nor near, some beautiful and weird magical in-between of undetermined identity, very immediate in the sense that it seemed "aware", alive, on its one, known and seen as vivid vision before I could register an act of perceiving something... In fact, the teacher from that shamatha retreat told me via email (I wasn't able to tell him during the retreat about my experiences) that he thought I was starting to perceive things "non conceptually", and quoted that famous bahia sutta... well... But another person, a very nice guy, probable anagami, that I met through the DhO (hi fred !), suggested it sounded more like A&P stuff than non-dual perception.
There is also DN things happening sometimes, at a macro level of days, which express as nervosity, edginess, etc., all the good stuff (right now, I have this knot in my stomach which makes me think that perhaps...). But not debilitating at all. Things are rather smooth in general, but more rich and complex, I would say, than in the months (year, really...) that preceded stream-entry...
Weirder things, like - I noticed numerous times that if I look at something with a lot of calm and stilness, the whole visual field starts to move, kind of warp in a perceptible way, not dramaticly, but clearly. I mention this because it happened earlier this afternoon. There are many moments where it seems that things are perceived in a more... untangled way, as if different sense modalities were more "separate", in a way. Sometimes, perceptions that seem to only be what they are (ie : in the seeing just the seen, in the felt just the felt describes it well, and these are kind of strange but also exhilarating experiences, where it seems that this thing i'm seeing is really disconnected from all other sense modalities which seem mostly absent from that moment of perception... although they don't happen very often).
I've basically given up on the maps, and am now just sitting regularly without much complication beyond that. My plan had been to get second path in the more vipassana style and then move on to emptiness practices as described by Burbea in his Seeing that frees book. I don't know if I got second path yet, but I'm about ready to get to that new stuff.
Sensory atoms ? meh. I've developed a lot of doubts about the whole buddhist thing, though, at least theravadin stuff seems to me so reductionist, lacking subtlety and aliveness and emotionality now... Sorry for being so blunt, dear theravadin practicioners... But there is something confining to absurdity in a world view that reduces experience to a bunch of different sensory atoms to be perceived very quickly... Not that I ever gave credit to that kind of abidhammic perspective, but then, I'm now thinking - well why the hell was i not suscpicious about practice based on the conception that "reality" is actually.. kalapas ? Can you tell me ?
Hmm... anyways, that's it for now. Let me finish by stating that I do feel somehow confused and perplexed (although this does not create much suffering) about meditation practice as of today. I know that this i probably normal. But still, I'd appreciate some advice from seasoned practicioners.
Thank you to anyone who might answer this, very best wishes for your life and existential endeavours
Olivier
ps : edited a few times
Smiling Stone:
Hey Olivier,
I really enjoyed your thread a few months back and was looking forward to reading this post after your "teaser" in another thread a few weeks ago. Detailed phenomenology, honest and sensitive reports, please keep on sharing about your practice!
Not much to comment on. I thought interesting that you had some critics about the end goal of the buddhist path (which you did not develop that much here yet), and about the way of teaching in the most trendy mahasi center in the world today (on dho at least, and the fault cannot be imputed on the politics of the center, far from it!). So feel free to develop...
I (still) practice in the Goenka tradition, so I have not much in the way of advice. One thing, about reluctance toward narrow focus: In the course of my practice, there was a point where I would consider myself quite mature while monitoring the body perceptions with easy open awareness, but the narrowing on a smaller area would still produce some kind of tension or the other.
It took me quite a few years to understand why the assistant teachers would ask us (hum... mature practitioners) to alternate between free flow (extending the area of attention) and "part by part" (narrow focus), even though we would dwell effortlessly in cool, wide open states.
We had to attend the tension, which was different from avoiding it.
After practicing that for a while, there is less and less difference between the two modes, the effort, boredom or discomfort have more or less disappeared from the narrow focus.
More on this here : https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/14719066#_19_message_14719066
Also, in everyday life, as we have to focus sometimes, isn't it for the better if we learn to do it without tension in a meditation setting?
I wish you the best on your ongoing journey (and I will re-read the whole thread which is not so present in my mind right now). It seems that this kind of long post tends to elicit less reaction from the community, but I hope you get more informed "opinions"...
With metta
Smiling Stone
I really enjoyed your thread a few months back and was looking forward to reading this post after your "teaser" in another thread a few weeks ago. Detailed phenomenology, honest and sensitive reports, please keep on sharing about your practice!
Not much to comment on. I thought interesting that you had some critics about the end goal of the buddhist path (which you did not develop that much here yet), and about the way of teaching in the most trendy mahasi center in the world today (on dho at least, and the fault cannot be imputed on the politics of the center, far from it!). So feel free to develop...
I (still) practice in the Goenka tradition, so I have not much in the way of advice. One thing, about reluctance toward narrow focus: In the course of my practice, there was a point where I would consider myself quite mature while monitoring the body perceptions with easy open awareness, but the narrowing on a smaller area would still produce some kind of tension or the other.
It took me quite a few years to understand why the assistant teachers would ask us (hum... mature practitioners) to alternate between free flow (extending the area of attention) and "part by part" (narrow focus), even though we would dwell effortlessly in cool, wide open states.
We had to attend the tension, which was different from avoiding it.
After practicing that for a while, there is less and less difference between the two modes, the effort, boredom or discomfort have more or less disappeared from the narrow focus.
More on this here : https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/14719066#_19_message_14719066
Also, in everyday life, as we have to focus sometimes, isn't it for the better if we learn to do it without tension in a meditation setting?
I wish you the best on your ongoing journey (and I will re-read the whole thread which is not so present in my mind right now). It seems that this kind of long post tends to elicit less reaction from the community, but I hope you get more informed "opinions"...
With metta
Smiling Stone
Hi there !
Thank you for the kind words, as well as your attentiveness.
I never intended to "tease" haha, I just felt that explaining my ideas here would be out of place somehow, would not be heard, or not be of interest for people. And seeing how my posts don't elicit much reaction ... I also didn't want to spend too much time criticizing things, you know. Finally, altough english is my "father tongue", my command of it is less subtle, and expressing my thoughts on these topics in english seems more daunting, especially since a lot of authors who nourish me are french and sometimes not available in other languages.
But if you're interested, I'd gladly elaborate. What would you like me to say more about ? You just have to be warned that it'll most probably turn into a long, hard to follow and radical discussion
(I actually started answering you generally, and it's already three pages long on my wps document...)Interesting suggestion about attending the tension in narrowness of focus, I'll explore that.
Best wishes to you, smiling stone
A smiling tree.
I'll answer you, promess.
But honestly it might be more illuminating for you to start listening to Rob Burbea's talks available here, if you don't know the man. I always find his stuff extremely inspiring and liberating, and it has definitely informed my thinking and conceptions a lot. For instance this one, Living in the truth https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/10831/ or this, Creative Samadhi https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/26008/
I listened to that one again today, almost a year after my first listen, and I'm realizing how important it is to go back on your tracks, conscientize and keep in touch with what has nourished you and what nourishes you now. I realize how much my conception of the path was influence by Burbea's approach. The ending of this last teaching is priceless and will allow me to add something about the critique of the mahasi (and goenka I assume) methods :
"If we take as our meaning of the word samadhi not this english word concentration [...] but this more open state involving the whole body, involving a degree of unification and well-being, to whatever degree, it doesn't have to be amazing, then something's important to realize : that direction or the deepening of this "avenue" of practice is much more dependant on openness of heart than we might realize. It's not just about focus, it's not just about withdrawing the senses, walking around with the eyes down - it might be skillfull at times - but it's much more about openness of heart. That, as a key ingredient in the opening of samadhi, is much more significant than the focus. Why ? Why is openness of heart so significant in samadhi ? Because when the heart is open, the energy body is already soft, unknotted to a degree, it's already open, the energy is already flowing, there's already some alignment, it's not far from samadhi already from the openness of heart. It implies that it's more important to nourish openness of heart than focus, perhaps. What is it that nourishes the heart ? Are you feeling (on retreat) connected with the community, is the heart open to gratitude and appreciation, are you connecting with nature, is there some sense of love and inspiration and beauty ? These things, feeding the sense of beauty, inspiration, gratitude, togetherness, connectedness, these nourish deeply, they open the heart and that's much more significant than we often realize. There's an artfulness to being on retreat, it's quite individual and it varies over time, so experiment with what it is that nourishes you heart in support of samadhi. Experiment, feel, where am I ? How do I feel ? What do I need ? Can I notice ? Can I respond ? And it includes everything, everything. Feeling, and responding, open the eyes, open the heart to the beatuy that's around, because that's significant. The heart is, sometimes, the most significant piece."
What a HUGE difference with the dogmatic ineptness I was fed during that mahasi sayadaw retreat, where it was hammered into my head that I should NOT experiment ; where I was asked, when giving the best reports I could, in the most precise formulations : "what did you study in university ?" with a look that implied I was some kind of incompetent idiot for using sophisticated language, and that I could not even understand basic meditation instructions when at the time I already had stream entry ; where they could give little in the way of instructions beyond "concentrate on the abdomen through effort"..."Don't look at the plants"... Sure...
I'm seriously starting to suspect that the fact that this meditation method of Mahasi Sayadaw is so inbalanced, is the reason why it takes so much time for the insights garnered through its use to be integrated. I don't know, but I suspect it. There is a lack of integrity there, in the sense of integralness, in the sense that part of what makes humans humans is repressed, ignored, disrespected, very deeply.
Now that I'm really starting to be done processing the anger and confusion I've felt ever since then, I have to make it "official" : I can't recommand that anyone go to panditarama lumbini and don't recommand dry vipassana practice, in particular Mahasi Sayadaw's version of vipassana practice either. When I see the destabilizing effect these retreats have on so many people, probably everyone (my brother has been kind of fucked in the head since he went on his first goenka retreat), and in the light of understanding how basically humanity denying theravadin buddhism is (yes it is ! come on) it makes me want to yell :
(please children leave the room)
F* HEROISM AND TOUGH GUY BULLS*, F* neutring, life-denying and loveless practices which seek to end desire and give an end to existence. F*CK. THAT. CRAP. I wan't beauty, love, and magic.
Ok. Moving on.
Bye for now
But honestly it might be more illuminating for you to start listening to Rob Burbea's talks available here, if you don't know the man. I always find his stuff extremely inspiring and liberating, and it has definitely informed my thinking and conceptions a lot. For instance this one, Living in the truth https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/10831/ or this, Creative Samadhi https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/26008/
I listened to that one again today, almost a year after my first listen, and I'm realizing how important it is to go back on your tracks, conscientize and keep in touch with what has nourished you and what nourishes you now. I realize how much my conception of the path was influence by Burbea's approach. The ending of this last teaching is priceless and will allow me to add something about the critique of the mahasi (and goenka I assume) methods :
"If we take as our meaning of the word samadhi not this english word concentration [...] but this more open state involving the whole body, involving a degree of unification and well-being, to whatever degree, it doesn't have to be amazing, then something's important to realize : that direction or the deepening of this "avenue" of practice is much more dependant on openness of heart than we might realize. It's not just about focus, it's not just about withdrawing the senses, walking around with the eyes down - it might be skillfull at times - but it's much more about openness of heart. That, as a key ingredient in the opening of samadhi, is much more significant than the focus. Why ? Why is openness of heart so significant in samadhi ? Because when the heart is open, the energy body is already soft, unknotted to a degree, it's already open, the energy is already flowing, there's already some alignment, it's not far from samadhi already from the openness of heart. It implies that it's more important to nourish openness of heart than focus, perhaps. What is it that nourishes the heart ? Are you feeling (on retreat) connected with the community, is the heart open to gratitude and appreciation, are you connecting with nature, is there some sense of love and inspiration and beauty ? These things, feeding the sense of beauty, inspiration, gratitude, togetherness, connectedness, these nourish deeply, they open the heart and that's much more significant than we often realize. There's an artfulness to being on retreat, it's quite individual and it varies over time, so experiment with what it is that nourishes you heart in support of samadhi. Experiment, feel, where am I ? How do I feel ? What do I need ? Can I notice ? Can I respond ? And it includes everything, everything. Feeling, and responding, open the eyes, open the heart to the beatuy that's around, because that's significant. The heart is, sometimes, the most significant piece."
What a HUGE difference with the dogmatic ineptness I was fed during that mahasi sayadaw retreat, where it was hammered into my head that I should NOT experiment ; where I was asked, when giving the best reports I could, in the most precise formulations : "what did you study in university ?" with a look that implied I was some kind of incompetent idiot for using sophisticated language, and that I could not even understand basic meditation instructions when at the time I already had stream entry ; where they could give little in the way of instructions beyond "concentrate on the abdomen through effort"..."Don't look at the plants"... Sure...
I'm seriously starting to suspect that the fact that this meditation method of Mahasi Sayadaw is so inbalanced, is the reason why it takes so much time for the insights garnered through its use to be integrated. I don't know, but I suspect it. There is a lack of integrity there, in the sense of integralness, in the sense that part of what makes humans humans is repressed, ignored, disrespected, very deeply.
Now that I'm really starting to be done processing the anger and confusion I've felt ever since then, I have to make it "official" : I can't recommand that anyone go to panditarama lumbini and don't recommand dry vipassana practice, in particular Mahasi Sayadaw's version of vipassana practice either. When I see the destabilizing effect these retreats have on so many people, probably everyone (my brother has been kind of fucked in the head since he went on his first goenka retreat), and in the light of understanding how basically humanity denying theravadin buddhism is (yes it is ! come on) it makes me want to yell :
(please children leave the room)
F* HEROISM AND TOUGH GUY BULLS*, F* neutring, life-denying and loveless practices which seek to end desire and give an end to existence. F*CK. THAT. CRAP. I wan't beauty, love, and magic.
Ok. Moving on.
Bye for now
So, I pondered whether I should edit that previous rude message and decided to leave it on here, since it's a new and different flavor expressing with honesty what I'm going through. Because this very anger and frustration was the heart of the difficult times I encountered during the long retreat. Also because it seems to have had a good effect on me to "make it official" that I was somehow disavowing the kind of practice I submitted myself to during that time. Something important there, as shargrol pointed out. So all in all I decided to leave it. It seems to be part of a process where some blockage is being allowed to dissolve more fully, and since then, like I said earlier, I've been contemplating going back on my tracks to understand better what was right in my practice before, that doesn't feel so right anymore. It also allowed me to really acknowledge that, in fact, I do feel like something is off, that I am somehow unquiet and off-center, in practice and life, at times.
I've been doing that, going back to listen to dhamma talks by Rob Burbea which had been my daily bread last year, listening to ajahn brahm talks, too. Those were my daily bread the year before that, which is when, I know now, I had my final very hard bout of DN and really had no more choice than to just discipline this mind-body, stop running away, cross my legs, sit down, and face myself, face life full-on in the secluded time and space of meditation. Basically needing to take time to really reconnect with the simplicity that meditation practice used to be... To rediscover the emotional, analytical, observational tools and know-hows, practical know-hows which had become so well integrated in my practice and life, partially without realizing it, culminating in the stellar mastery which was mine (MINE ! I said it ! lol) before and during that shamatha retreat last august, which were slowly bashed out of my system through these few weeks of intense and rigorous mahasi noting in the burmese style.
Or, another way to think of this is that I just lost this ease and mastery because this is what it means to be working on a new path. And it must be said that thinking in terms of nanas definitely has the virtue of taking some weight off of things at times - something like dis-identification : 'it's not me, it's not existence, it's just the nanas ! what a relief'. But the downside is to reify this so-called process of awakeing (it can't logically be a process...), to make it mechanical, which dries the heart out.
I guess this is what it means to play with views. See, I'm playing again Long live curiosity, my dearest companion !!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you'll allow me an aside - because thinking and reflecting is highly important for integrity, because "penser" in french comes from "peser", which means "to weigh things out", and evaluate : Know-how, or practical knowledge, is a way to translate prajna (Dan Lustraus). Meditation is praxis. It's not objective knowledge, knowledge of some thing, it is non-objective, knowledge which in essence is no different than its own enactment, if I may say it that way. It is the knowledge that onions have, if they don't grow skin one year when the winter is not gonna be cold. How do they know that ? And what is it they know ? They are that knowledge, which is life, life always already revealing itself to itself through its own phenomenalization. Isn't it also how plants know how to grow towards the sun ? Their knowledge that the sun is out there is the very movement that they become, there is no difference between their flesh and their movement towards the light, which is the knowledge that they have that the sun is out there, when they pursue that light... That is phusis, and it is incarnation. Meditation is the human version of blooming, isn't it ? And that process of blooming, of becoming, bhavana, the buddha's word for his practice of choice, which shares the same origin as the word phusis, well my friends, that is what Michel Henry simply calls culture, the culmination of which is precisely what we are looking for here, what I am looking for, through meditation, and which is so dear to me - simply the actualisation of the highest possibilities offered to us, the transfiguration of the universe through our small being, receiving the revelation of who we truly are. Just watering the seed and letting it follow the light without too much intervention.
This is the most rigorous way that I can conceive of awakening... right now...
That's another view, another perspective, which has the virtue of providing me with a sense of inspiration and depth of mystery (but also, there is in there a profoundly justifying point to the notion that meditation should, as all things, be mostly intuitive). That poetic sensibility, heart openness and sense of inspiration was integral in my practice before. That is being deeply in line, for me. THat's what I need to keep exploring and developing. Why else did I write my master's thesis on the connections between esthetic experiences and meditation ? After all, everybody with some culture knows from Parmenides to Wittgenstein that truth is not expressible, not accessible through any theoretical means (least of all scientific), not some ob-ject that consciousness could put in front of her to be aware of passively from afar. Burbea speaks very highly of unfathomability and depth of mystery. I couldn't agree more. My practice took off over a year ago, at a time when I simultaneously discovered mctb, but also realized that I was free to follow my gut and intuition in meditation. In particular, TNH's way of using poetic phrases as a mindfulness practice, was a great inspiration. I remember writing in my journal - "anything is game". If you understand the spirit of something you are king.
Follow the spirit, not the letter.
This, in my practice, evolved into using internal discourse in times where it was useful as a way of both bringing awareness to what was going on in my experience, emotionally, etc., to unknot the knots, to control attention, and also to deliberately induce an intense esthetic sensitivity, all of these combining to produce a sense of wonder, an openness of heart, and also a strong foundation to navigate whatever came at me when it became difficult - working with energies and emotions in order to achieve collectedness, to imbue my experience with a background bliss, and to develop enough space to be able to welcome all movements of the being, good or bad, to truly welcome and, by virtue of that, transform them.
We are, after all, creatures of speech, creatures of emotions, creatures of art, why should these things not guide meditation ?
All these things were key in finally establishing equanimity. I never used mahasi noting. Noting practice came in my life at a time where, I can now tell in retrospect, I was already deeply established in equanimity and had all the tools needed. I started using a light noting technique, almost non-verbal, in a very free-flow and non-directive way, although there was definitely room for effort and tight examination, definitely, because it felt right to do so at the time, around march 2019. I had no idea where I was on the maps at the time, but I quickly started experiencing nanas and it turned out I was farther along than I thought, since I had delt with 1st path DN entirely already, which is why I got SE less than three months later, having put in, probably, less than a hundred hours of deliberate vipassana practice.
But it probably did also happen because of these new conceptual frameworks (the spiritual faculties were a key teaching for me) and technique, and generally because of mctb too.
So, these are avenues which I should engage with again, and that should be my discipline, for me, who always wants to explore and have new things to satisfy this curiosity ;) ;) And I bet, though i've copiously shat on them, that dryer techniques will come back when the time has come, and i'll be sorry to have talked badly to them. And perhaps I will learn.
--
Here is what I wrote in my journal earlier :
1h of creative metta meditation. I let the correct/just (in the musical sense of justness) phrase emerge, which is vibrant for my little heart in this moment and allows a real connection to other beings and benevolence be felt - "may all beings fully realize the highest potentialities which are offered to them." This is spontaneously associated with a broad and spacious attention to what Burbea calls the energy or emotional body which centers somewhere around the head. I tentatively let myself comment what I am experiencing, at times feeling the confusion and blockage that "this is not how meditation should be", but not letting that burmese sounding voice brainwash me. It helps me unknot things, this internal discourse, subtil and momentous. Because what I've been feeling in meditation for a few months is fear and confusion, let's be honest. I'm afraid of meditation, afraid of becoming crazy, of losing reason, joy, self. Afraid of suffering. Afraid of life again. There is often times, though not acute, a mild diffused background panic (I almost wrote "picnic") which arises when I sit, or even nausea. I realize writing this, that I had been tuning out from this.
I'm afraid of myself again.
Wow. That's very important.
And staying with, noting these things as somehow sensate (in the sense of being made of up of simpler namarupic atoms, these things which we call emotions being neither emergent nor reducible but just what they are - sorry for the polemic touch here, it's one of my tendencies) would be one of the least skilfull and natural things to do in that moment. No, what makes sense, what vibrates, is to feel, actively, to probe, to question and engage, to listen deeply to what is playing itself out and the emotions.
At the end of this session, a lot of openness and self-compassion, well-being, a sense of reconnecting with a skilfull way to let life be life in meditation and to exist - talk to your fear, tame it, make her your friend... It is the time you spent taking care of your rose, which makes her precious.
Gratitude. And a strong desire to listen to this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKRcaaX6ULc.
--
I hope I can regain fuller faith and trust in myself and life on and off the cushion. I wish it for you too.
I'm going on a three-four day mahamudra retreat this friday, that will be interesting !
Finally, I want to reassure that even though it may sound like there is a lot of struggling going on for me, it's in fact not acute at all. It's more that meditation has become dull, and that there is sometimes and general sense of a lack of direction. But it's only if I compare with the amazingness of the times i've had before SE. For the record and the sake of perspective, I'll just add that there has remained, basically at all times, since last summer, a kind of ease which is not going away, although I sometimes wonder what would happen if I didn't meditate for, say, a month. I can always conjure up a smile. But it does feel like there is sometimes a very mundane bleakness and almost despair which poke their nose, and that means there are things that I must face, tame and embrace, not fear.
The whole range of emotions is still available to me. They move quick, and there's a general simplicity and joy to existence. But one must stay prudent, humble, honest, open.
May you be well, may you realize your highest potentialities.
Olivier
I've been doing that, going back to listen to dhamma talks by Rob Burbea which had been my daily bread last year, listening to ajahn brahm talks, too. Those were my daily bread the year before that, which is when, I know now, I had my final very hard bout of DN and really had no more choice than to just discipline this mind-body, stop running away, cross my legs, sit down, and face myself, face life full-on in the secluded time and space of meditation. Basically needing to take time to really reconnect with the simplicity that meditation practice used to be... To rediscover the emotional, analytical, observational tools and know-hows, practical know-hows which had become so well integrated in my practice and life, partially without realizing it, culminating in the stellar mastery which was mine (MINE ! I said it ! lol) before and during that shamatha retreat last august, which were slowly bashed out of my system through these few weeks of intense and rigorous mahasi noting in the burmese style.
Or, another way to think of this is that I just lost this ease and mastery because this is what it means to be working on a new path. And it must be said that thinking in terms of nanas definitely has the virtue of taking some weight off of things at times - something like dis-identification : 'it's not me, it's not existence, it's just the nanas ! what a relief'. But the downside is to reify this so-called process of awakeing (it can't logically be a process...), to make it mechanical, which dries the heart out.
I guess this is what it means to play with views. See, I'm playing again
Long live curiosity, my dearest companion !!!!!!!!!!!!!If you'll allow me an aside - because thinking and reflecting is highly important for integrity, because "penser" in french comes from "peser", which means "to weigh things out", and evaluate : Know-how, or practical knowledge, is a way to translate prajna (Dan Lustraus). Meditation is praxis. It's not objective knowledge, knowledge of some thing, it is non-objective, knowledge which in essence is no different than its own enactment, if I may say it that way. It is the knowledge that onions have, if they don't grow skin one year when the winter is not gonna be cold. How do they know that ? And what is it they know ? They are that knowledge, which is life, life always already revealing itself to itself through its own phenomenalization. Isn't it also how plants know how to grow towards the sun ? Their knowledge that the sun is out there is the very movement that they become, there is no difference between their flesh and their movement towards the light, which is the knowledge that they have that the sun is out there, when they pursue that light... That is phusis, and it is incarnation. Meditation is the human version of blooming, isn't it ? And that process of blooming, of becoming, bhavana, the buddha's word for his practice of choice, which shares the same origin as the word phusis, well my friends, that is what Michel Henry simply calls culture, the culmination of which is precisely what we are looking for here, what I am looking for, through meditation, and which is so dear to me - simply the actualisation of the highest possibilities offered to us, the transfiguration of the universe through our small being, receiving the revelation of who we truly are. Just watering the seed and letting it follow the light without too much intervention.
This is the most rigorous way that I can conceive of awakening... right now...
That's another view, another perspective, which has the virtue of providing me with a sense of inspiration and depth of mystery (but also, there is in there a profoundly justifying point to the notion that meditation should, as all things, be mostly intuitive). That poetic sensibility, heart openness and sense of inspiration was integral in my practice before. That is being deeply in line, for me. THat's what I need to keep exploring and developing. Why else did I write my master's thesis on the connections between esthetic experiences and meditation ? After all, everybody with some culture knows from Parmenides to Wittgenstein that truth is not expressible, not accessible through any theoretical means (least of all scientific), not some ob-ject that consciousness could put in front of her to be aware of passively from afar. Burbea speaks very highly of unfathomability and depth of mystery. I couldn't agree more. My practice took off over a year ago, at a time when I simultaneously discovered mctb, but also realized that I was free to follow my gut and intuition in meditation. In particular, TNH's way of using poetic phrases as a mindfulness practice, was a great inspiration. I remember writing in my journal - "anything is game". If you understand the spirit of something you are king.
Follow the spirit, not the letter.
This, in my practice, evolved into using internal discourse in times where it was useful as a way of both bringing awareness to what was going on in my experience, emotionally, etc., to unknot the knots, to control attention, and also to deliberately induce an intense esthetic sensitivity, all of these combining to produce a sense of wonder, an openness of heart, and also a strong foundation to navigate whatever came at me when it became difficult - working with energies and emotions in order to achieve collectedness, to imbue my experience with a background bliss, and to develop enough space to be able to welcome all movements of the being, good or bad, to truly welcome and, by virtue of that, transform them.
We are, after all, creatures of speech, creatures of emotions, creatures of art, why should these things not guide meditation ?
All these things were key in finally establishing equanimity. I never used mahasi noting. Noting practice came in my life at a time where, I can now tell in retrospect, I was already deeply established in equanimity and had all the tools needed. I started using a light noting technique, almost non-verbal, in a very free-flow and non-directive way, although there was definitely room for effort and tight examination, definitely, because it felt right to do so at the time, around march 2019. I had no idea where I was on the maps at the time, but I quickly started experiencing nanas and it turned out I was farther along than I thought, since I had delt with 1st path DN entirely already, which is why I got SE less than three months later, having put in, probably, less than a hundred hours of deliberate vipassana practice.
But it probably did also happen because of these new conceptual frameworks (the spiritual faculties were a key teaching for me) and technique, and generally because of mctb too.
So, these are avenues which I should engage with again, and that should be my discipline, for me, who always wants to explore and have new things to satisfy this curiosity ;) ;) And I bet, though i've copiously shat on them, that dryer techniques will come back when the time has come, and i'll be sorry to have talked badly to them. And perhaps I will learn.
--
Here is what I wrote in my journal earlier :
1h of creative metta meditation. I let the correct/just (in the musical sense of justness) phrase emerge, which is vibrant for my little heart in this moment and allows a real connection to other beings and benevolence be felt - "may all beings fully realize the highest potentialities which are offered to them." This is spontaneously associated with a broad and spacious attention to what Burbea calls the energy or emotional body which centers somewhere around the head. I tentatively let myself comment what I am experiencing, at times feeling the confusion and blockage that "this is not how meditation should be", but not letting that burmese sounding voice brainwash me. It helps me unknot things, this internal discourse, subtil and momentous. Because what I've been feeling in meditation for a few months is fear and confusion, let's be honest. I'm afraid of meditation, afraid of becoming crazy, of losing reason, joy, self. Afraid of suffering. Afraid of life again. There is often times, though not acute, a mild diffused background panic (I almost wrote "picnic") which arises when I sit, or even nausea. I realize writing this, that I had been tuning out from this.
I'm afraid of myself again.
Wow. That's very important.
And staying with, noting these things as somehow sensate (in the sense of being made of up of simpler namarupic atoms, these things which we call emotions being neither emergent nor reducible but just what they are - sorry for the polemic touch here, it's one of my tendencies) would be one of the least skilfull and natural things to do in that moment. No, what makes sense, what vibrates, is to feel, actively, to probe, to question and engage, to listen deeply to what is playing itself out and the emotions.
At the end of this session, a lot of openness and self-compassion, well-being, a sense of reconnecting with a skilfull way to let life be life in meditation and to exist - talk to your fear, tame it, make her your friend... It is the time you spent taking care of your rose, which makes her precious.
Gratitude. And a strong desire to listen to this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKRcaaX6ULc.
--
I hope I can regain fuller faith and trust in myself and life on and off the cushion. I wish it for you too.
I'm going on a three-four day mahamudra retreat this friday, that will be interesting !
Finally, I want to reassure that even though it may sound like there is a lot of struggling going on for me, it's in fact not acute at all. It's more that meditation has become dull, and that there is sometimes and general sense of a lack of direction. But it's only if I compare with the amazingness of the times i've had before SE. For the record and the sake of perspective, I'll just add that there has remained, basically at all times, since last summer, a kind of ease which is not going away, although I sometimes wonder what would happen if I didn't meditate for, say, a month. I can always conjure up a smile. But it does feel like there is sometimes a very mundane bleakness and almost despair which poke their nose, and that means there are things that I must face, tame and embrace, not fear.
The whole range of emotions is still available to me. They move quick, and there's a general simplicity and joy to existence. But one must stay prudent, humble, honest, open.
May you be well, may you realize your highest potentialities.
Olivier
Hi Olivier, thanks for posting this. I really enjoyed reading your experiences. Just a couple of comments.
1. If you go back and reread your thread, you will see the nanas playing out in your writing as well as in your reports. Some classic reobservation in there too! But we've all done that (or at least I have).
2. The territory between first and third can be really mucky for some, and a cookie cutter approach to meditation may not work. You do sound like you have been suffering from getting stuck with inappropriate instructions, compounded by the difficulty of trying to make sense of the two approaches you have been looking at. I guess that's why Ajahn Chah said "take the one chair". Still, you have two chairs now, so let me see if I can help you reconcile them.
3. So weird colours, spinning things, pulses - yeah A&P. But intensely vivid reality, with no awareness of a separate consciousness, and things glowing with their own inner existence and beauty, even mundane things. Sure sounds like a glimpse of the ground. Remember the Tibetans frame the ground as first appearing in glimpses, then growing in frequency, then occupying all waking hours, and then you go beyond it. On the Theravadan path the ground manifests later, and from different causes than the direct non-dual practices of the Tibetans, but it is still the same. So enjoy the glimpses of the ground - don't strive after them, but don't discount them either.
4. If you are still noting, you should be well beyond the rising and falling of the abdomen by now. I would recommend noting the arising and passing a way of phenomena in the six sense doors as fast as possible, and once you have mastered that, going on to note the three characteristics of these phenomena. But by now noting should not mean a verbal label, or even a mental 'bip'. You should now be able aim for the bare mental act of knowing - a fortieth of a second. Then you use your spacious awareness to have that bare mental act of knowing applied to dozens of things in a second. It's like an jhanic absorption in the flux of reality, as it arises and passes away through your sense doors.
5. That style of noting should not only clear out the vipassana dissonance you are experiencing, it should also support development of nondual perception later.
6. And I'm not sure path labels are useful at this point (they will be again later). For some people, and you may be one, the progress around jhanic control, nana control, emptiness of space, emptiness of concepts, glimpses and so on gets really mucky. Things happen in different orders for different people. So just accept what is, consolidate, improve, and don't cling to paths. Actually, the seven factors of awakening contain all the advice you need right now!
I hope this helps. With much metta and good wishes.
Malcolm
1. If you go back and reread your thread, you will see the nanas playing out in your writing as well as in your reports. Some classic reobservation in there too! But we've all done that (or at least I have
).2. The territory between first and third can be really mucky for some, and a cookie cutter approach to meditation may not work. You do sound like you have been suffering from getting stuck with inappropriate instructions, compounded by the difficulty of trying to make sense of the two approaches you have been looking at. I guess that's why Ajahn Chah said "take the one chair". Still, you have two chairs now, so let me see if I can help you reconcile them.
3. So weird colours, spinning things, pulses - yeah A&P. But intensely vivid reality, with no awareness of a separate consciousness, and things glowing with their own inner existence and beauty, even mundane things. Sure sounds like a glimpse of the ground. Remember the Tibetans frame the ground as first appearing in glimpses, then growing in frequency, then occupying all waking hours, and then you go beyond it. On the Theravadan path the ground manifests later, and from different causes than the direct non-dual practices of the Tibetans, but it is still the same. So enjoy the glimpses of the ground - don't strive after them, but don't discount them either.
4. If you are still noting, you should be well beyond the rising and falling of the abdomen by now. I would recommend noting the arising and passing a way of phenomena in the six sense doors as fast as possible, and once you have mastered that, going on to note the three characteristics of these phenomena. But by now noting should not mean a verbal label, or even a mental 'bip'. You should now be able aim for the bare mental act of knowing - a fortieth of a second. Then you use your spacious awareness to have that bare mental act of knowing applied to dozens of things in a second. It's like an jhanic absorption in the flux of reality, as it arises and passes away through your sense doors.
5. That style of noting should not only clear out the vipassana dissonance you are experiencing, it should also support development of nondual perception later.
6. And I'm not sure path labels are useful at this point (they will be again later). For some people, and you may be one, the progress around jhanic control, nana control, emptiness of space, emptiness of concepts, glimpses and so on gets really mucky. Things happen in different orders for different people. So just accept what is, consolidate, improve, and don't cling to paths. Actually, the seven factors of awakening contain all the advice you need right now!
I hope this helps. With much metta and good wishes.
Malcolm
That's a relief to hear.
Nah, I think I have done my share of the young cow enthusiasm. I know for a fact that my young cow enthusiasm has annoyed some. None of us are stereotypes. No need to be sorry. My life is fine as it is. I could tell thousands of different storylines about it. They would all be equally true, and equally untrue, and they would be very different from each other. For instance, I also have my dream job and am happily in love and have great friends and am currently writing a book. Two books, in fact. And there is a purring cat next to me and one by my feet as I'm writing this. And your enthusiasm makes me smile happily.
Nah, I think I have done my share of the young cow enthusiasm. I know for a fact that my young cow enthusiasm has annoyed some. None of us are stereotypes. No need to be sorry. My life is fine as it is. I could tell thousands of different storylines about it. They would all be equally true, and equally untrue, and they would be very different from each other. For instance, I also have my dream job and am happily in love and have great friends and am currently writing a book. Two books, in fact. And there is a purring cat next to me and one by my feet as I'm writing this. And your enthusiasm makes me smile happily.
Linda ”Polly Ester” Ö:
Malcolm, do you think this advice applies to me as well?
It sure is mucky, and I miss how the practice found its own momentum the period just before SE.
I'm not Malcolm, obviously, but I hope you don't mind me chiming in or intruding. He has a lot of good suggestions there.
Just to share my own experience, after SE the "practice" and what that meant conceptually started to die away. It became obvious that previous meditation techniques, and ideas weren't what was going to work now. I got some help from fabulous board member Dream Walker on working with the Sense Gates, a suggeston to read "Untethered Soul" by Michael Singer (recommended) - I asked for Amitabha's help in dissolving the witness (success!), turned toward strange "tightnesses" on busy streets and mentally embraced them, found strange jhana states I never bothered identifying, and many other small things, but the suggestion to "let go" in any moment your body or mind are tight or grasping/clinging/defining is KEY.
Most of the work that ended up mattering on the way to 4th path, for me happened OFF the cushion, and in the letting go framework. While my primary practice is and always has been open awareness/Dzogchen/Zazen, this surrendering/accepting is what moved things, and in many traditions constitutes a path in and of itself.
My experience is that, at this point, it is your "self" that is in your way, and no particular technique will get you past that. When I read your posts I notice that you tend to heavily define yourself in a variety of ways... I'd see what it would be like to let go of that. What is it like to let go when you are getting dressed and you telling yourself a story about how what you wear will impress someone, suprise them, or frighten, or make them like you? What is like to let go of getting prepared for a meeting, or worrying about the outcome of a date, or just meeting someone on the street? What is like to look at everyday objects and have them be "empty" of your past stories, attachements, or aversion? Can you watch a body sensation go from just that, to like/dislike all the way to being a concept and then fitting into your illusory worldview? How familiar are you with it? Can you see just this moment, empty of things, beliefs, etc? How much of your day can be spent that way? Can you drive a car, or talk with a friend that way? Can let the mind settle into that view in a few moments, or just notice that it is that way already and always has been?
You may be doing some or all of this, which is great - just some ideas about where to go next, said in the spirit of sister/brother/otherhood.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Believe me, you wouldn't want me to drive a car like that, or in any other way. I don't have a driver's license.
I have let go of lots of conventions and "musts" and "shoulds" and identity things over the last decades, for the purpose of survival, but sure, that can turn into an identity as well, and that must also be let go of.
I sure need to learn to let go more, but mainly in other ways than what you describe. I keep my clothes in large bags on the floor, based on category (what body parts they cover). Most of them are black so they are easy to match. I just grab some. I rarely have the energy to prepare for stuff, etc. I usually avoid dating, except when people practically fall into my lap (who am I to say no to free home delivery?), because I have enough people in my life as it is. So maybe I do define myself a lot, but apparently not in any way that gives people any idea of what my life really is like. The reason that I try to describe my conditioning and conditions in my posts is that I hope to get advice adapted to my conditioning and circumstances, but it seems to be pretty counterproductive. I get the picture, though, and can transform it into something that applies to my life. Many thanks! Hopefully this is helpful to Olivier as well. I'm really sorry for taking up the space here in this thread.
Believe me, you wouldn't want me to drive a car like that, or in any other way. I don't have a driver's license.
I have let go of lots of conventions and "musts" and "shoulds" and identity things over the last decades, for the purpose of survival, but sure, that can turn into an identity as well, and that must also be let go of.
I sure need to learn to let go more, but mainly in other ways than what you describe. I keep my clothes in large bags on the floor, based on category (what body parts they cover). Most of them are black so they are easy to match. I just grab some. I rarely have the energy to prepare for stuff, etc. I usually avoid dating, except when people practically fall into my lap (who am I to say no to free home delivery?), because I have enough people in my life as it is. So maybe I do define myself a lot, but apparently not in any way that gives people any idea of what my life really is like. The reason that I try to describe my conditioning and conditions in my posts is that I hope to get advice adapted to my conditioning and circumstances, but it seems to be pretty counterproductive. I get the picture, though, and can transform it into something that applies to my life. Many thanks! Hopefully this is helpful to Olivier as well. I'm really sorry for taking up the space here in this thread.
Linda ”Polly Ester” Ö:
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Believe me, you wouldn't want me to drive a car like that, or in any other way. I don't have a driver's license.
Believe me, you wouldn't want me to drive a car like that, or in any other way. I don't have a driver's license.
I sure need to learn to let go more, but mainly in other ways than what you describe.
The WAYS aren't important, these are merely examples or things to try. You already know what you are really holding on to, and don't need anyone's input, unless you have REALLY gotten stuck - and then the idea that you are stuck is often what you need to let go of. WHO is stuck, after all?
The reason that I try to describe my conditioning and conditions in my posts is that I hope to get advice adapted to my conditioning and circumstances, but it seems to be pretty counterproductive.
I agree that it is likely counterproductive. Ultimately there ARE no conditions. The sense doors aren't windows into reality, they are mirrors into mind.
Stirling Campbell:
Linda ”Polly Ester” Ö:
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Believe me, you wouldn't want me to drive a car like that, or in any other way. I don't have a driver's license.
Believe me, you wouldn't want me to drive a car like that, or in any other way. I don't have a driver's license.
I sure need to learn to let go more, but mainly in other ways than what you describe.
The WAYS aren't important, these are merely examples or things to try. You already know what you are really holding on to, and don't need anyone's input, unless you have REALLY gotten stuck - and then the idea that you are stuck is often what you need to let go of. WHO is stuck, after all?
The reason that I try to describe my conditioning and conditions in my posts is that I hope to get advice adapted to my conditioning and circumstances, but it seems to be pretty counterproductive.
I agree that it is likely counterproductive. Ultimately there ARE no conditions. The sense doors aren't windows into reality, they are mirrors into mind.
I know people who are very frustrated about meditation instructions that are poorly adapted to how their minds function, and I get that. I was, in the beginning. Getting started can be very frustrating when teachings cater to specific ways of functioning because the barriers can be too large - or the opposite, aiming at learning something that one has known for decades whereas one would need to learn something else that is taken for granted by others instead. At this point in my practice, I can usually figure out on my own how to adapt methods to what applies to my mind, if necessary, and the details that bothered me about specific methods have shown themselves as empty anyway. I don't think I had fully realized that development.
I did find out yesterday, though, that one teacher that I find unusually easy to understand is a fellow autistic. It's probably not so much about the methods themselves or the points conveyed about them, because now that I get them I recognize them in instructions from other teachers that I haven't understood quite as easily. It seems to be something about the way referential points are presented and how things are contextualized and emphasized, and how things are framed (knowing when the other party is joking or serious, and how things relate to each other, what is subordinate to what, and so forth). In order to facilitate interaction in my daily life, I have found that it often helps to metacommunicate more about how my mind works. I mean, my mind may not be "real" ultimately, depending on how one defines real, but as long as I'm alive it still sets limits to my part of the interaction with others. But if people read it as identity claims rather than as information about what kind of communication is needed, then it won't help, of course.
Linda ”Polly Ester” Ö:
Stirling Campbell:
Ultimately there ARE no conditions. The sense doors aren't windows into reality, they are mirrors into mind.
I know that. And sure, during cessations there are no conditions.
Speaking only from my experience, there are no conditions in this moment either... or any moment that is experienced, which is always now. All dharmas are always already empty, and can be seen to be empty in any moment. This moment is always quietly Rigpa until you breathe your conceptualization into it. This is where bringing practice to every moment, not just the cushion, begins to pay off.
In the relative reality, on the other hand, it would be naive and potentially dangerous to say that there are no conditions. We are all limited by our current physiology and neurology. It wouldn’t be wise to just stop taking our medicines, for instance, if our mammalian body needs them.
Complete "no-self" is seeing that this moment, as it is, just IS. There isn't anyone to take or decide not to take your medicines, at the same moment that there is what you think of as "you" holding the bottle and putting the pills in your hand. There is also no-one to blame if you suspect you forgot. Ultimately, the story you tell yourself about who you are, about what conditions from the past cover this moment, is just that, a drama that is just your thoughts about a "self" happening now.
If a meditation teacher and their student lack sufficient common ground, assessments and advice and/or the reception of them may be misguided and misguiding, and failing to recognize that would be unprofessional. On the other hand, if sufficient common ground is established, even a very brief pointer may lead to cessations, which was the case for Malcolm’s advice to me here as well as several times before (he is not my formal teacher but this just tends to happen). I have seen that kind of well-synched interaction happen between others here on this forum as well, with people who have sufficiently matching conditionings for establishing sufficient common ground.
In my opinion, learning happens or it doesn't happen, and it has nothing to do with conditions you create, or prefer. If you notice what irks you, or what you are attached to in an exchange with a teacher (or even more often a stranger since Dharma is coming at you 24/7) and investigate it, you have the opportunity to untie another knot of your karma. It can be more valuable than teaching in this respect. I don't believe that common ground is necessary, and a teaching, or teacher doesn't need to necessarily resonate with you to be effective... in fact, a good (and trusted) teacher will put pressure on your sore spots, and push you out of your comfort zone, when necessary. There is more teaching happening in this moment of world politics than you'll get out of your next dharma talk, probably.
Linda ”Polly Ester” Ö:
I hope you make sure that you have somebody's consent before you start teaching them.
Oh yes... there is always a permission form involved, unless someone is eavesdropping on the other side of my fence, or reading my shopping list over my shoulder.
Linda ”Polly Ester” Ö:
Stirling: I know what you are saying. I can even feel it energetically in my body, the difference it makes to ponder the fact that every given moment is totally new. And it is. Samsara is created anew at any given moment. Karma is, too. And the storytelling about conditions tends to set limits to how the new moment manifests (and that is at the core, or non-core, of conditioning). That is an important realization.
When you start to look at what dependent origination means - how all-encompassing and transformative it is - self and other dissolve as anything other than belieffs. Time, space, separateness, agency, anything the subject/object relationship makes you feel is real is understood in a new and deepened way. This moment is the only moment. Samsara is our beliefs, our attachments and aversions - the creation of the delusion and suffering.
“Strictly speaking there are no enlightened beings; there is only enlightened activity.” If you think you are enlightened, that is not it. The goal is to let go of being anyone special and meet each moment with beginner’s mind". - Suzuki
Still, it is good that you have those consent forms, and I hope that before a student signs them, they are thoroughly informed about the conditions of your contract, including how you see your role - in a way and in a language that they are conditioned to understand.
There are no forms, I was being sarcastic honestly. Anyone I speak to personally about dharma I have a personal relationship with first. Sore spots are where we are caught. If there is hoping to see beyond the self, working to get as much of it out of the way as possible is an worthy pursuit IMHO, and one that I try to assist with if there is interest. A significant life trauma that I finally let go of coincided with a massive shift for me, so I have some conviction. I am aware that this can be a difficult journey, and carry a short-list of local Buddhist-friendly psychiatrists for this reason. I don't see working with psychiatry as my role.
I don't think a jury or a judge would respond well to your explaining that there is no legal system, no judge, no jury, and no-one to be harmed.
Makes me think of Meister Eckhardt.
Worth reading about.Writing this makes me body contract in a painful way, because it solidifies inflammatory pains that are only spiritosomatic
That's how you know where the gold is. This is obviously worth deep investigation.
Because I happen to know that precisely this point is a huge trauma trigger for many people who have been told throughout their life that their feelings and boundaries and difficulties are just something that they are imagining.
It absolutely is a huge trigger. It was a trigger for ME. Letting go of what we are attached to - what we think defines us, and what we use to define ourselves, or create our "character" - is paramount. I may have recommended this recently (as it seems to have become valuable to recommend in a number of venues lately) but I will again - the book "Untethered Soul" by Michael Singer is, IMHO, a primary resource for working with this issue. Highly recommended.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts Linda/Polly.
Hello everybody,
I've been putting off writing here for a while, because I felt much less of a need to do so, but for the sake of perhaps being useful to someone, I'm gonna pick up where I left off. Four months already, hey...
Still praticing, 1h+ a day in general, I guess a lot has happened since the last time, which was right before my mahamudra retreat in february, so... Let's start there, and let's do this bit by bit, I guess i'll make a few posts. I'll try to keep it short but as you know I'm a prolix mofo.
Mahamudra retreat.
The above discussion with Stirling (and following unfortunate clash with Linda the tigress) was very good, it made some very obvious conceit and clinging come out. I had to recognize to myself that I had developed a sense of attachment to meditative experience, a conceit, a pride, a sense of being a strong meditator, and had to open to that and grieve a bit at the beginning of retreat, which was what needed to happen. Felt good, more connected. I see this as the official end of the somewhat dark/confused period I had been describing, and the return, in my sits during that retreat, of a level of spaciousness and fadedness and unification and subtelty which I hadn't experienced since the period when I first started this journal last year.
This sentence of Stirling particularly struck me, as I read it while already at the retreat :
It was a very good moment for me to hear that. Coupled with the grieving of self-image, it produced, the first night, a very interesting opening as I was walking back home (the retreat center was full and I had to stay about a km away, very cool to walk under the stars for a while after a day's meditation) - well basically the sense that "hey, this vision thing is my mind." I remember noticing later, in bed, a sort of warm collectedness and light in my head/forehead, a sense of something cleared up.
Hmm, ok, that is a start, now I'm gonna have to do the rest, so that's it for now !
I'm kind of " lost in time " these days, chilled out, unphased... And procrastinating ! !! Sh*t !
Good night.
I've been putting off writing here for a while, because I felt much less of a need to do so, but for the sake of perhaps being useful to someone, I'm gonna pick up where I left off. Four months already, hey...
Still praticing, 1h+ a day in general, I guess a lot has happened since the last time, which was right before my mahamudra retreat in february, so... Let's start there, and let's do this bit by bit, I guess i'll make a few posts. I'll try to keep it short but as you know I'm a prolix mofo.
Mahamudra retreat.
The above discussion with Stirling (and following unfortunate clash with Linda the tigress
) was very good, it made some very obvious conceit and clinging come out. I had to recognize to myself that I had developed a sense of attachment to meditative experience, a conceit, a pride, a sense of being a strong meditator, and had to open to that and grieve a bit at the beginning of retreat, which was what needed to happen. Felt good, more connected. I see this as the official end of the somewhat dark/confused period I had been describing, and the return, in my sits during that retreat, of a level of spaciousness and fadedness and unification and subtelty which I hadn't experienced since the period when I first started this journal last year. This sentence of Stirling particularly struck me, as I read it while already at the retreat :
Ultimately there ARE no conditions. The sense doors aren't windows into reality, they are mirrors into mind.
Hmm, ok, that is a start, now I'm gonna have to do the rest, so that's it for now !
I'm kind of " lost in time " these days, chilled out, unphased... And procrastinating ! !! Sh*t !
Good night.
Hi,
Here is part of an email exchange I've had with An Eternal Now these last few days. He has been kind enough to reply with lots of links and info. To sum up : he's telling me that the actual insight/realization of anatta has not arisen (that's obvious), and that this is what needs to happen. lol. I really liked his later comment that after realization of anatta, "one is headless" I find that very funny.
AEN "Also, out of curiosity, did you experience the dissolution of all sense of self/Self/perceiver in this experience? Or was there still a subtle sense of self, or you don’t know? " [Oli : he is talking about the big opening I expereinced last august, described on page four of this log. AEN has included this description in his guide under the headline "intensity of luminosity"]
Olivier : In this experience, there was a degree of dissolution of the sense of perceiver, yes, but not full, I think. It was last august, so I don't remember perfectly. The part where I describe like I'm "falling into vision" was in fact like dissolving into vision, like I was disappearing into vision, or rather, that I was disappearing and that only vision was left ; but this triggered a reaction from me, and I "stopped" it from dissolving entirely. I distinctly remember that. It was like vision was extremely predominant but I could still feel my body faintly and the heart was beating hard. So, there was still a sense of self, although it was very diminished.
After this experience, which occurred during a 10 day dzogchen retreat, I went on to do 4 weeks of intensive mahasi noting 12h a day at Panditarama Lumbini in Nepal. I had planned the retreat a long time before, so I still went, but in fact, after the experience I described to you, I felt like it was a bad idea to do mahasi noting... But I did. There, I went through another "cycle of insight". Awareness opened up : many objects could now be experienced at the same time at the center of attention. Like being aware of all the branches of the tree at the same time, or like being able to perceive all the trees in the forest at the same time.I'm not sure it was a good idea to do intensive noting after what seemed like a real opening, but hey, that's how you learn... And it did lead to progress. Afterwards, for a few months, things were very confusing, meditation was confusing. At the end of this retreat, I had trouble making sense of the very notion of concentration. It just stopped making sense : how can I be focused on something, if there are no-things ????
For months my practice was very conflicted, because I did all these hundreds of hours of strict mahasi noting, when I was far beyond the point where I needed to do that, yet the teachers there did not realize I wasn't a beginner... And there was this inner conflict as to what meditation even was. This resolved after this winter.
I also had interesting openings during a 3day mahamudra style retreat in february, where I realized I had developed some attachment to these experiences I describe to you, some sense of pride around them.
“Since then, I've had lots of moments of "non duality", I would say, moments of feeling "transparent" and somehow a very subtle and deep sense of freedom and space in experience." [Let me add the qualifier that this can be accessed upon contemplation in every day life, within a range of "depth", but that it is far from being my constant experience]
AEN :How is your nondual experience like?
O : So, they are glimpses. I don't know if it's fully non-dual, or if is to some degree of non-dual, or what. Sometimes after "looking for myself" (ie, doing self inquiry, or the practice I described to you of experiencing the gap between "here and there") something opens up, or "unties", and it feels like "I'm not there" the way I usually am ; as if indeed there was no sense of "someone" solid being behind sight, no "body" behind the eyes (this can be triggered by looking at the periphery of vision and looking at eyebrows and seeing them as "just sight"), a "transparency" of experience, I don't know how to describe it better, with a feeling of joy and very subtle but deep freedom, not spectacular but the feeling of "this is it". Or, sometimes, it is like everything is seen to happen "in the same place", like sense doors are neither separate nor the same, overlapping but not, and are not locatable in relation to each other. This goes with a kind of "magic" and insubstnantiality. This is what I mean by transparency : things are nowhere to be found and yet do appear ; sense modalities are different but co-exist in an incomprehensible and paradoxical co-existence... And in there, I can't find myself. I've had moments particularly these last few months where it does seem like in the seeing there is just the seen ; like appearances are just appearances, that I'm nowhere in it. And this goes with freedom/bliss, again.
I've done lots of very very precise investigation in mctb vipassana style, without labels necesarily, but examining the details of experience in great depth and intensity. One thing that was very interesting for me these past weeks/months was seeing the working of attention, and how "objects" are constructed. Like, playing with paying attention to one object, and just seeing very clearly how this is actually created and seeing how the sense of "space" "out there" is a mental fabrication, that the sense of the movement of attention, the sense that there is something which moves from here to there and "selects" some truly existent "object" within experience and brings it to the forefront, is actually not what it seems, but a mostly mental construction, that this very sense of movement is mental, that there are mental processes involved, and that all these are happening nowhere other than where thoughts are happening...
All this is not like an "on/off" thing, but come progressively and go progressively. It seems to vary in intensity/completeness, too. The default is still that I'm here behind my eyes and looking at objects out there.
ps : seeing, or perceiving that "my head" and "what I'm seeing" are not happening in different places sometimes occurs, but I have a feeling that this could be "realized" whereas now, as you say, it is just experiences which come and go.
AEN : Yes you are having some very good experiences. Keep going and contemplate to arise the insight and you will make it to MCTB 4th path after not very long.
Regarding sense of head and body, after anatta one is headless. And eventually bodiless (no sense of solid shape and boundary and construct of body) called mind body drop... deconstruct the Mind and body. But not a dissociative state, one can still and should be fully somatic
Here is part of an email exchange I've had with An Eternal Now these last few days. He has been kind enough to reply with lots of links and info. To sum up : he's telling me that the actual insight/realization of anatta has not arisen (that's obvious), and that this is what needs to happen. lol. I really liked his later comment that after realization of anatta, "one is headless"
I find that very funny.AEN "Also, out of curiosity, did you experience the dissolution of all sense of self/Self/perceiver in this experience? Or was there still a subtle sense of self, or you don’t know? " [Oli : he is talking about the big opening I expereinced last august, described on page four of this log. AEN has included this description in his guide under the headline "intensity of luminosity"]
Olivier : In this experience, there was a degree of dissolution of the sense of perceiver, yes, but not full, I think. It was last august, so I don't remember perfectly. The part where I describe like I'm "falling into vision" was in fact like dissolving into vision, like I was disappearing into vision, or rather, that I was disappearing and that only vision was left ; but this triggered a reaction from me, and I "stopped" it from dissolving entirely. I distinctly remember that. It was like vision was extremely predominant but I could still feel my body faintly and the heart was beating hard. So, there was still a sense of self, although it was very diminished.
After this experience, which occurred during a 10 day dzogchen retreat, I went on to do 4 weeks of intensive mahasi noting 12h a day at Panditarama Lumbini in Nepal. I had planned the retreat a long time before, so I still went, but in fact, after the experience I described to you, I felt like it was a bad idea to do mahasi noting... But I did. There, I went through another "cycle of insight". Awareness opened up : many objects could now be experienced at the same time at the center of attention. Like being aware of all the branches of the tree at the same time, or like being able to perceive all the trees in the forest at the same time.I'm not sure it was a good idea to do intensive noting after what seemed like a real opening, but hey, that's how you learn... And it did lead to progress. Afterwards, for a few months, things were very confusing, meditation was confusing. At the end of this retreat, I had trouble making sense of the very notion of concentration. It just stopped making sense : how can I be focused on something, if there are no-things ????
For months my practice was very conflicted, because I did all these hundreds of hours of strict mahasi noting, when I was far beyond the point where I needed to do that, yet the teachers there did not realize I wasn't a beginner... And there was this inner conflict as to what meditation even was. This resolved after this winter.
I also had interesting openings during a 3day mahamudra style retreat in february, where I realized I had developed some attachment to these experiences I describe to you, some sense of pride around them.
“Since then, I've had lots of moments of "non duality", I would say, moments of feeling "transparent" and somehow a very subtle and deep sense of freedom and space in experience." [Let me add the qualifier that this can be accessed upon contemplation in every day life, within a range of "depth", but that it is far from being my constant experience]
AEN :How is your nondual experience like?
O : So, they are glimpses. I don't know if it's fully non-dual, or if is to some degree of non-dual, or what. Sometimes after "looking for myself" (ie, doing self inquiry, or the practice I described to you of experiencing the gap between "here and there") something opens up, or "unties", and it feels like "I'm not there" the way I usually am ; as if indeed there was no sense of "someone" solid being behind sight, no "body" behind the eyes (this can be triggered by looking at the periphery of vision and looking at eyebrows and seeing them as "just sight"), a "transparency" of experience, I don't know how to describe it better, with a feeling of joy and very subtle but deep freedom, not spectacular but the feeling of "this is it". Or, sometimes, it is like everything is seen to happen "in the same place", like sense doors are neither separate nor the same, overlapping but not, and are not locatable in relation to each other. This goes with a kind of "magic" and insubstnantiality. This is what I mean by transparency : things are nowhere to be found and yet do appear ; sense modalities are different but co-exist in an incomprehensible and paradoxical co-existence... And in there, I can't find myself. I've had moments particularly these last few months where it does seem like in the seeing there is just the seen ; like appearances are just appearances, that I'm nowhere in it. And this goes with freedom/bliss, again.
I've done lots of very very precise investigation in mctb vipassana style, without labels necesarily, but examining the details of experience in great depth and intensity. One thing that was very interesting for me these past weeks/months was seeing the working of attention, and how "objects" are constructed. Like, playing with paying attention to one object, and just seeing very clearly how this is actually created and seeing how the sense of "space" "out there" is a mental fabrication, that the sense of the movement of attention, the sense that there is something which moves from here to there and "selects" some truly existent "object" within experience and brings it to the forefront, is actually not what it seems, but a mostly mental construction, that this very sense of movement is mental, that there are mental processes involved, and that all these are happening nowhere other than where thoughts are happening...
All this is not like an "on/off" thing, but come progressively and go progressively. It seems to vary in intensity/completeness, too. The default is still that I'm here behind my eyes and looking at objects out there.
ps : seeing, or perceiving that "my head" and "what I'm seeing" are not happening in different places sometimes occurs, but I have a feeling that this could be "realized" whereas now, as you say, it is just experiences which come and go.
AEN : Yes you are having some very good experiences. Keep going and contemplate to arise the insight and you will make it to MCTB 4th path after not very long.
Regarding sense of head and body, after anatta one is headless. And eventually bodiless (no sense of solid shape and boundary and construct of body) called mind body drop... deconstruct the Mind and body. But not a dissociative state, one can still and should be fully somatic
To add to this update :
I've also had some fruitful contact with Shargrol (of course). I've been issued the warning about this part of the path - "it can get existential"
Anyways, Shargrol has advised me some extremely simple practices : asking questions such as "where is resistance ?" "Am I experiencing the natural state ? If not, what could happen so that I would ? How can I bring this there, here ?"
It has been very interesting, although I don't have much to add from the descriptions in the previous post.
Also been suggested to pay attention, basically, to subtle pride, ie, sense of superiority/inferiority, and the dichotomy here/there. I do do () that, and it's proving interesting in daily life. In fact, I'm very itnerested to see how meditation can be brought to daily life these days. I'm finding that there are interesting fruits. For instance, it seems that conflictual stuff that may arise, becomes automatically a source of insight, nowadays. Kind of like what started to happen at the end of my retreat in lumbini : psychological knots appear, and they attract interest, and that untangles them and brings understanding and liberation. It's pretty cool. I feel like most of the suffering in my life comes from/happens in imagination. Things always go well. It's only when you project that suffering happens - litterally. Like, situations are fine, but beforehand I might get nervous out of fear that it won't be fine. It always is fine, though.
One thing I could mention, because it has been unusual, is that for a period of a few weeks, following the conversation with Shargrol (actually, I think it might have started before that), I've had a series of dreams around "awakening", and a lot of things happening during my sleep. This is unusual for me, I'd never had dreams about meditation before, and I'm usually and extremely sound sleeper, don't pay much attention to dreams in general nor do I recall them very well.
The first dream : I was meditating, and I managed to figure out how to dissolve the sense of self completely. It was crazy. I could "do" this thing, a certain way of watching and of "projecting" myself out there, which lead to an experience without a sense of self, where only "sight" was experienced. I could trigger it on command, and come back to normal afterwards. Surprisingly, this was not actually a nice thing. I new it was "it", but it wasn't pleasant. I think I woke up many times that night and had trains of thoughts where it seemed to me like I had understood the thing, then would fall back to sleep, repeat. In the morning, I had forgotten these understandings.
Strangely this happened several times over the next few weeks. I would have agitated sleep, wake up, feel like I was understanding everything, fall back to sleep, etc. It was rather unpleasant than pleasant.
One time, I had a dream in which I was dreaming that I was meditating, and the same thing happened, I think, but in a more "nested" meta way.
Anyways, this has stopped - the last time I had agitated sleep was two week ends ago, I would wake up very stressed and feeling like I had overslept, like 10 times, and then I woke up feeling extremely refreshed and lighthearted, and the "problem" has not reoccured. After that, it also seemed like some kind of youthful energy started going on in ym life again, a desire to just have fun and not be serious. Well, it's also summer that's starting, hehe.
No idea if this is of any significance, but it was certainly interesting.
Well, that's it for today folks.
Cheers and metta
I've also had some fruitful contact with Shargrol (of course). I've been issued the warning about this part of the path - "it can get existential"
Anyways, Shargrol has advised me some extremely simple practices : asking questions such as "where is resistance ?" "Am I experiencing the natural state ? If not, what could happen so that I would ? How can I bring this there, here ?"
It has been very interesting, although I don't have much to add from the descriptions in the previous post.
Also been suggested to pay attention, basically, to subtle pride, ie, sense of superiority/inferiority, and the dichotomy here/there. I do do (
) that, and it's proving interesting in daily life. In fact, I'm very itnerested to see how meditation can be brought to daily life these days. I'm finding that there are interesting fruits. For instance, it seems that conflictual stuff that may arise, becomes automatically a source of insight, nowadays. Kind of like what started to happen at the end of my retreat in lumbini : psychological knots appear, and they attract interest, and that untangles them and brings understanding and liberation. It's pretty cool. I feel like most of the suffering in my life comes from/happens in imagination. Things always go well. It's only when you project that suffering happens - litterally. Like, situations are fine, but beforehand I might get nervous out of fear that it won't be fine. It always is fine, though.One thing I could mention, because it has been unusual, is that for a period of a few weeks, following the conversation with Shargrol (actually, I think it might have started before that), I've had a series of dreams around "awakening", and a lot of things happening during my sleep. This is unusual for me, I'd never had dreams about meditation before, and I'm usually and extremely sound sleeper, don't pay much attention to dreams in general nor do I recall them very well.
The first dream : I was meditating, and I managed to figure out how to dissolve the sense of self completely. It was crazy. I could "do" this thing, a certain way of watching and of "projecting" myself out there, which lead to an experience without a sense of self, where only "sight" was experienced. I could trigger it on command, and come back to normal afterwards. Surprisingly, this was not actually a nice thing. I new it was "it", but it wasn't pleasant. I think I woke up many times that night and had trains of thoughts where it seemed to me like I had understood the thing, then would fall back to sleep, repeat. In the morning, I had forgotten these understandings.
Strangely this happened several times over the next few weeks. I would have agitated sleep, wake up, feel like I was understanding everything, fall back to sleep, etc. It was rather unpleasant than pleasant.
One time, I had a dream in which I was dreaming that I was meditating, and the same thing happened, I think, but in a more "nested" meta way.
Anyways, this has stopped - the last time I had agitated sleep was two week ends ago, I would wake up very stressed and feeling like I had overslept, like 10 times, and then I woke up feeling extremely refreshed and lighthearted, and the "problem" has not reoccured. After that, it also seemed like some kind of youthful energy started going on in ym life again, a desire to just have fun and not be serious. Well, it's also summer that's starting, hehe.
No idea if this is of any significance, but it was certainly interesting.
Well, that's it for today folks.
Cheers and metta
Steph S:
This is good stuff. Keep it coming. I took a few weeks break from meditating and started up again recently and find it hard to articulate what practice is like. I haven't posted about practice because it's hard to talk about. Yours is an interesting guide. My experience isn't as refined as this and there's still duality happening, but a couple things you mention stand out as interesting and stuff I can relate with right now.
(Hey Steph ! Nice to hear from you !
Again I want to stress that it's definitely not like I abide constantly in non-duality at all, you know.)
Maybe i should tell you that when I read your report of these three days of non dual which led you to take this break, I felt it sounded very similar in some ways to the experience I keep refering back to, in this new update for instance...
Things I also keep asking.... "what even is meditation anymore?" It's like sitting with my eyes closed, versus not. Slightly more attenuated, but also knowing that daily life doesn't seem all that different from meditation.
...hence perhaps, this is akin to what happened to me this winter... It does sound like it. I remember telling Sayadaw Vivekananda that it just seemed like I was just sitting there, things where happening, and I might just look at the flowers in the garden to the same effect, it would be the same thing. Pretty confusing. But I kept sitting though. I definitely had a pretty long period where i just didn't understand what the hell was what the hell. This question "if there are no things, what does it even mean to be concentrated ? to pay attention ?" Like, direct experience that, no, it's not me and/or my so-called cognition that are making things be experienced. But then, what the hell could meditation even be ?
Also the transparency of experience. I keep thinking about how all sensations seem like ghosts. It's obvious they're there and happening, but feel very insubstantial, without a core essence, without the same sense of weight they used to have. Like they're all just apparitions.
Yes, I can realte to that quite a bit. The more I "rest" in that, the more "insubstantial" and magical things appear, particularly people. It's really beautiful.
The funniest thing to contemplate for me, is to take an object of attention, and discern how it's made up of different sense modalities, and then to ask "where are these different aspects located in relation with one another ? Where are they in relation with my head ?" It's just so weird
I like the bit about the sense of weight : emptying out objects from the weight of substantive existence...
It's like ... this weight is at the back of the mind, so to say... not over there but right here...
(Hey Steph ! Nice to hear from you !
Again I want to stress that it's definitely not like I abide constantly in non-duality at all, you know.)
Maybe i should tell you that when I read your report of these three days of non dual which led you to take this break, I felt it sounded very similar in some ways to the experience I keep refering back to, in this new update for instance...
Things I also keep asking.... "what even is meditation anymore?" It's like sitting with my eyes closed, versus not. Slightly more attenuated, but also knowing that daily life doesn't seem all that different from meditation.
...hence perhaps, this is akin to what happened to me this winter... It does sound like it. I remember telling Sayadaw Vivekananda that it just seemed like I was just sitting there, things where happening, and I might just look at the flowers in the garden to the same effect, it would be the same thing. Pretty confusing. But I kept sitting though. I definitely had a pretty long period where i just didn't understand what the hell was what the hell. This question "if there are no things, what does it even mean to be concentrated ? to pay attention ?" Like, direct experience that, no, it's not me and/or my so-called cognition that are making things be experienced. But then, what the hell could meditation even be ?
Also the transparency of experience. I keep thinking about how all sensations seem like ghosts. It's obvious they're there and happening, but feel very insubstantial, without a core essence, without the same sense of weight they used to have. Like they're all just apparitions.
Yes, I can realte to that quite a bit. The more I "rest" in that, the more "insubstantial" and magical things appear, particularly people. It's really beautiful.
The funniest thing to contemplate for me, is to take an object of attention, and discern how it's made up of different sense modalities, and then to ask "where are these different aspects located in relation with one another ? Where are they in relation with my head ?" It's just so weird
I like the bit about the sense of weight : emptying out objects from the weight of substantive existence...
It's like ... this weight is at the back of the mind, so to say... not over there but right here...
I have a question.
Isn't it dualistic to talk of agencylessness ? It doesn't make sense to me. It seems to contradict the ontological middle way.
Arahats, anagamis, would you be so, kind as to describe how you would perceive, like, a car passing by ? Could you describe it precisely, please ?
Does the inside/outside perception exist but is seen to be just one aspect of experience/perception ?
Any further elaborations would be greatly appreciated.
Isn't it dualistic to talk of agencylessness ? It doesn't make sense to me. It seems to contradict the ontological middle way.
Arahats, anagamis, would you be so, kind as to describe how you would perceive, like, a car passing by ? Could you describe it precisely, please
?Does the inside/outside perception exist but is seen to be just one aspect of experience/perception ?
Any further elaborations would be greatly appreciated.
Chris ! Hi !
Now that I've dragged you here...
What about the sense of there being a truly exisant entity moving through in space over there in front of me here ? What about the perception of like... weight, I was refering to earlier, this ontic weight of substantial existance which seems to get projected into sight most of the time... but sometimes doesn't.
I definitely have that urge to think awakening makes a big difference ! After all, experience is different for me now than it was a year ago. Quite different.
You are saying that being awake is not different from not being awake, in short ?
Most people say that the difference is, to quote an infamous crazy singaporian sage, "quantum, bro".
How does this line up with what, for instance, AEN says above, that "one is headless after anatta insight (again, lol), then eventually bodiless". That the world that opens up only deepens the experience of luminosity and insubstantiality which was glimpsed at before and started suffusing experience ? (this is coherent with my experiences so far).
Or what Daniel says about flipping the switch to utter (or, to use the exact term, "true") agencylessness which is supposed to be both "vastly better" as well as "an acquired taste" ?
Or what Stirling was describing earlier in this thread ?
What does it mean for you to say "in seeing only the seen" ?
For me, in seeing, there does not seem to only be the seen.
Thanks for your time
Now that I've dragged you here...
What about the sense of there being a truly exisant entity moving through in space over there in front of me here ? What about the perception of like... weight, I was refering to earlier, this ontic weight of substantial existance which seems to get projected into sight most of the time... but sometimes doesn't.
I definitely have that urge to think awakening makes a big difference ! After all, experience is different for me now than it was a year ago. Quite different.
You are saying that being awake is not different from not being awake, in short ?
Most people say that the difference is, to quote an infamous crazy singaporian sage, "quantum, bro".
How does this line up with what, for instance, AEN says above, that "one is headless after anatta insight (again, lol), then eventually bodiless". That the world that opens up only deepens the experience of luminosity and insubstantiality which was glimpsed at before and started suffusing experience ? (this is coherent with my experiences so far).
Or what Daniel says about flipping the switch to utter (or, to use the exact term, "true") agencylessness which is supposed to be both "vastly better" as well as "an acquired taste" ?
Or what Stirling was describing earlier in this thread ?
What does it mean for you to say "in seeing only the seen" ?
For me, in seeing, there does not seem to only be the seen.
Thanks for your time
Chris was a pain in the ass first, then I was, now you are. It's a beautiful thing.
Don't sweat it steph, the last time someone hijacked my thread, the discussion that ensued helped me a lot - your interaction here with the other ex-pains in the ass was very welcome, but this time, there wasn't even any fighting involved ! Great stuff.
And in fact, I like to think I am also part of that select club, and look forward to becoming a future ex-pain in the ass
--
I'm just reading the mctb2 section on "the three kayas" and this part which had escaped my attention is now making a lot of sense :
This is cool because it seems to correspond to a seemingly minor insight which has slowly been dawning up on me. Kind of hard to pinpoint exactly but it has to do with symbols and meaning.
Hmm. I used to have this intuition that "pure" experience, like, a "pure" experience of sight consciousness, would be utterly meaningless. Because it would be pure phenomenality, pure fluxing phenomenological matter, totally pre-categorial, pure "hylè", as the phenomenologists would say. This seemed to me like i would represent the natural and ultimate deepening of some experiences i've had many times. That it would be "ultimate" in some way, truer than my normal perception of the world, something to cross over too, a process of seeing "beyond concepts" and "labels" and "names" on a perceptual/experiential level. I've been very naturally and pretty intensly inclined towards for years.
(((((((Sorry about the intellectuality here, skip it. This bit is just for me, just to articulate something - this in my mind is the difference outlined by Husserl in his Lessons for a phenomenology of intimate time consciousness, where he discerns between intentional consciousness, which is where time is fabricated, and impressional consciousness, which is "the pure flux of absolute consciousness", and actually not temporal. Or said another way : it is form VS matter, morphè VS hylè. Actually, Michel Henry drew on this distinction and put it at the base of his thinking : he discernes two "modes of phenomenalization" : (1) the world ; (2) life. (1) is intentionnality, time, objects, attention, (nirmanakaya?). (2) is non-duality, intimacy, absolute non-separation, and in a way, non-manifest, "pre-world", (dharmakaya ?).))))))))))))))))
I also had the notion that this absolute meaninglessness was "emptiness" and that it was strictly equivalent to absolute meaningfulness (right ?), and that somehow this was one extreme of experience - dharmakaya ; and that led me to think that there is this process of gradual conceptualizing, or fabrication, which I identified as dependent origination, which goes from this absolute immanence up to the world of everyday perception of objects, with everything in between ; and I took this to be what the three kayas were about.
But after reflecting many many times upon such experiences, I have to say that even though things manifested very differently, I can't actually say they were not meaningful, that they were "unfamiliar" and "uncategorized". I thought they were, or almost. Yes, they were intensly luminous, not separate one from the other, insubstantially fluxing shiny phenomenality without boundaries or depth - but things were discerned and things were recognized. Transfigured, but recognizable.
I just assumed that this could be deepened to a limit, and that, in other words, there was a way to go utterly non conceptual.
The presupposition there being that conceptuality was like a mental overlay on experience. That signs were a fabrication of the mind and could be seen as such, and that non semiotic perception was somehow truer.
But in fact, I realized that that is not the case. That what appears is always already inherently meaningful and that there is no reason that it shouldn't be so, or could be otherwise.
I have no idea if this makes any sense to anyone else. But for me, though it hasn't been a huge insight or anything, it's just added a sense of familiarity and closeness with the world. Nice It feels like it's begging to deepen. For some reason, it seems strangely significant, although it's just a thought that popped into my head while going to do so recycling the other day :p
I don't know... it makes me think of that famous heart sutra punchline.
Interesting to see it described as sambhogakaya, although I'm sure this is Daniel's personal take on that.
And so, to conclude à la Daniel : Thoughts ?
[Hell. While rereading this post, I am having a small epiphany. It's becoming apparent to me, that this might actually be what I have always been looking for, to connect this with Shargrol's earlier question ("think about what it would be like to be done"). A few moments of tearing up, for instance, reading the quote from the bible. Is there no "beyond" signs ? I read it again - “In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God,” and again, I get shivers.]
Great stuff.And in fact, I like to think I am also part of that select club, and look forward to becoming a future ex-pain in the ass
--
I'm just reading the mctb2 section on "the three kayas" and this part which had escaped my attention is now making a lot of sense :
... sambhogakaya - the full range of phenomenal reality and even the full range of the emotional life can be deeply appreciated for what it is. They see that the world of concepts, language, symbols, visions, magickal experiences, thoughts, and dreams is fundamentally the same as the world of materiality, that they both share the same essential nature from an experiential point of view. The first line of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God,” is a nice way to put it. For those who find this phrase too cryptic, I paraphrase it as: “From the beginning, concepts, words, dreams, visions, and the realm of thought have always been an aspect of ultimate reality.”
This is cool because it seems to correspond to a seemingly minor insight which has slowly been dawning up on me. Kind of hard to pinpoint exactly but it has to do with symbols and meaning.
Hmm. I used to have this intuition that "pure" experience, like, a "pure" experience of sight consciousness, would be utterly meaningless. Because it would be pure phenomenality, pure fluxing phenomenological matter, totally pre-categorial, pure "hylè", as the phenomenologists would say. This seemed to me like i would represent the natural and ultimate deepening of some experiences i've had many times. That it would be "ultimate" in some way, truer than my normal perception of the world, something to cross over too, a process of seeing "beyond concepts" and "labels" and "names" on a perceptual/experiential level. I've been very naturally and pretty intensly inclined towards for years.
(((((((Sorry about the intellectuality here, skip it. This bit is just for me, just to articulate something - this in my mind is the difference outlined by Husserl in his Lessons for a phenomenology of intimate time consciousness, where he discerns between intentional consciousness, which is where time is fabricated, and impressional consciousness, which is "the pure flux of absolute consciousness", and actually not temporal. Or said another way : it is form VS matter, morphè VS hylè. Actually, Michel Henry drew on this distinction and put it at the base of his thinking : he discernes two "modes of phenomenalization" : (1) the world ; (2) life. (1) is intentionnality, time, objects, attention, (nirmanakaya?). (2) is non-duality, intimacy, absolute non-separation, and in a way, non-manifest, "pre-world", (dharmakaya ?).))))))))))))))))
I also had the notion that this absolute meaninglessness was "emptiness" and that it was strictly equivalent to absolute meaningfulness (right ?), and that somehow this was one extreme of experience - dharmakaya ; and that led me to think that there is this process of gradual conceptualizing, or fabrication, which I identified as dependent origination, which goes from this absolute immanence up to the world of everyday perception of objects, with everything in between ; and I took this to be what the three kayas were about.
But after reflecting many many times upon such experiences, I have to say that even though things manifested very differently, I can't actually say they were not meaningful, that they were "unfamiliar" and "uncategorized". I thought they were, or almost. Yes, they were intensly luminous, not separate one from the other, insubstantially fluxing shiny phenomenality without boundaries or depth - but things were discerned and things were recognized. Transfigured, but recognizable.
I just assumed that this could be deepened to a limit, and that, in other words, there was a way to go utterly non conceptual.
The presupposition there being that conceptuality was like a mental overlay on experience. That signs were a fabrication of the mind and could be seen as such, and that non semiotic perception was somehow truer.
But in fact, I realized that that is not the case. That what appears is always already inherently meaningful and that there is no reason that it shouldn't be so, or could be otherwise.
I have no idea if this makes any sense to anyone else. But for me, though it hasn't been a huge insight or anything, it's just added a sense of familiarity and closeness with the world. Nice
It feels like it's begging to deepen. For some reason, it seems strangely significant, although it's just a thought that popped into my head while going to do so recycling the other day :pI don't know... it makes me think of that famous heart sutra punchline.
Interesting to see it described as sambhogakaya, although I'm sure this is Daniel's personal take on that.
And so, to conclude à la Daniel : Thoughts ?
[Hell. While rereading this post, I am having a small epiphany. It's becoming apparent to me, that this might actually be what I have always been looking for, to connect this with Shargrol's earlier question ("think about what it would be like to be done"). A few moments of tearing up, for instance, reading the quote from the bible. Is there no "beyond" signs ? I read it again - “In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God,” and again, I get shivers.]
I feel like doing a 2-3 week solo retreat going through Rob Burbea's book Seeing that frees. I'll do it when I can but I'm not sure when.
As I've never done a long formal solo retreat, I wonder if you guys have any advice/ideas.
What I imagine as a daily schedule is something like, doing one hour of intentions setting in the morning ; bf ; one session of meditation (shamatha ? could vary based on what seems to be needed) ; a session of reading the selected passage of the day from STF ; two hours of meditation related to that passage/theme ; lunch ; 3 sessions of meditation around the theme ; dinner ; one hour of dedication, etc.
Something along those lines. I'm not sure how to decide on the progression - select potential sections before the retreat, start there, and move along at the natural rythm that seems to unfold ? That sounds reasonable.
But how much flexibility/fixity of schedule is reasonable though, I wonder. Of course it's up to me, but I'm hoping people here have some experiences to share. "Thoughts ?"
As I've never done a long formal solo retreat, I wonder if you guys have any advice/ideas.
What I imagine as a daily schedule is something like, doing one hour of intentions setting in the morning ; bf ; one session of meditation (shamatha ? could vary based on what seems to be needed) ; a session of reading the selected passage of the day from STF ; two hours of meditation related to that passage/theme ; lunch ; 3 sessions of meditation around the theme ; dinner ; one hour of dedication, etc.
Something along those lines. I'm not sure how to decide on the progression - select potential sections before the retreat, start there, and move along at the natural rythm that seems to unfold ? That sounds reasonable.
But how much flexibility/fixity of schedule is reasonable though, I wonder. Of course it's up to me, but I'm hoping people here have some experiences to share. "Thoughts ?"
Thanks for the advice Smiling.
A for food, ideally, I'm looking to do this somewhere where my meals would be prepared for me that would be very nice, hehe.
As for the idea of following audio, that's an idea, but i've listened to so much of his audio, and would like to dive in the book, which is so intimidatingly huge that I've put it off until I could really devote a lot of time to it. I feel like it will be a "paradigm" change for my understanding of what meditation is.
So far, I've found that 6-8h a day is good amount of meditation for me. I feel like this amount of sitting is a good basis, to which I could add if it feels like it. I've sometimes made a lot of progress on retreats where the schedule was light (even if it felt too light !), and not so much when it was really heavy, so I'm not necessarily convinced by the notion that more is better (not that this is what you said).
Hope all is well with you
Metta,
Olive
A for food, ideally, I'm looking to do this somewhere where my meals would be prepared for me
that would be very nice, hehe.As for the idea of following audio, that's an idea, but i've listened to so much of his audio, and would like to dive in the book, which is so intimidatingly huge that I've put it off until I could really devote a lot of time to it. I feel like it will be a "paradigm" change for my understanding of what meditation is.
So far, I've found that 6-8h a day is good amount of meditation for me. I feel like this amount of sitting is a good basis, to which I could add if it feels like it. I've sometimes made a lot of progress on retreats where the schedule was light (even if it felt too light !), and not so much when it was really heavy, so I'm not necessarily convinced by the notion that more is better (not that this is what you said).
Hope all is well with you
Metta,
Olive
(1) Right. The idea is to dedicate as much time as feels necessary, as in : if it feels like I should spend five days on one paragraph, I'll do it. That's the general plan anyways
I like the "don't aim too high" advice. This won't be at home if possible, but a general 8h +-2 seems fair to me.
(2) I know that Seeing that frees is very much emptiness/DO oriented, and am not expecting any imaginal stuff.
I've actually skimmed through it a few times, read some passages, done some practices.
But everytime I've just thought - "man, I'm not ready. I don't really understand this ways of looking thing fully."
It feels to me that currently, I'm undergoing a new shift in my conception of what meditation is. I started in 2016 to meditate formally within a buddhist framework. The first major changes in my framing of the practice was with mctb. Then there was a very awkward period, which followed new openings/insights, and this gave rise to a new understanding of what meditation is.
Now, a similar thing seems to be happening - I'm not meditating much, I'm drinking, enjoying life, etc. Meditation seems uninteresting and unappealing. However, I've comitted myself to practicing in some way or other until I die, so this is just a temporary taking it easy phase.
Probably something is readjusting, and I feel ready for the "ways of looking" framework, which just seems to entail something really radical which I was unable to grasp before...
These days, I feel free, I feel like there is nothing I need to understand. (for the moment !) Ever since I had this insight that what I was looking for did not exist - "there is no absolute reality, no transfigured reality different from the forms and signs and significations which already exist as they are in my current experience" (... sounds obvious I know ! )-, there is a kind of ordinariness and simplification in my life... I'm not sure what that insight corresponds to, but it feels like it changed something.
I surely hope this is not "the end" though, because it would kind of seem like a bad joke :p
Anyways, I don't think so, and feel that I will soon feel ready to tackle a new, more fluid, more scary, more free conception of practice. hehe
(3) As for the schedule thing, it's like this thing with "optimal amount of practice" in any practice. Some people say that more than x hours a day is just counterproductive and I tend to agree.
Hope you're all right Smiler :p
Cheers
edited with some qualifiers
I like the "don't aim too high" advice. This won't be at home if possible, but a general 8h +-2 seems fair to me.
(2) I know that Seeing that frees is very much emptiness/DO oriented, and am not expecting any imaginal stuff.
I've actually skimmed through it a few times, read some passages, done some practices.
But everytime I've just thought - "man, I'm not ready. I don't really understand this ways of looking thing fully."
It feels to me that currently, I'm undergoing a new shift in my conception of what meditation is. I started in 2016 to meditate formally within a buddhist framework. The first major changes in my framing of the practice was with mctb. Then there was a very awkward period, which followed new openings/insights, and this gave rise to a new understanding of what meditation is.
Now, a similar thing seems to be happening - I'm not meditating much, I'm drinking, enjoying life, etc. Meditation seems uninteresting and unappealing. However, I've comitted myself to practicing in some way or other until I die, so this is just a temporary taking it easy phase.
Probably something is readjusting, and I feel ready for the "ways of looking" framework, which just seems to entail something really radical which I was unable to grasp before...
These days, I feel free, I feel like there is nothing I need to understand. (for the moment !) Ever since I had this insight that what I was looking for did not exist - "there is no absolute reality, no transfigured reality different from the forms and signs and significations which already exist as they are in my current experience" (... sounds obvious I know ! )-, there is a kind of ordinariness and simplification in my life... I'm not sure what that insight corresponds to, but it feels like it changed something.
I surely hope this is not "the end" though, because it would kind of seem like a bad joke :p
Anyways, I don't think so, and feel that I will soon feel ready to tackle a new, more fluid, more scary, more free conception of practice. hehe
(3) As for the schedule thing, it's like this thing with "optimal amount of practice" in any practice. Some people say that more than x hours a day is just counterproductive and I tend to agree.
Hope you're all right Smiler :p
Cheers
edited with some qualifiers
Hi guys,
One question, and one announcement.
The question : Chris, Shargrol, Linda, ..., would you mind writing up precise descriptions of what fifth jhana is like for you, what are the main phenomenological markers, how different sense modalities manifest, what the sense of body (sensations) and body image are like, what sounds are like, how the transition from fourth to fifth happens, what the general feel is like ? That would be lovely, thank you in advance.
The news : I've just submitted my official PhD project - it's gonna be an interdisciplinary study of meditation, and I'm sincerely hoping that some of the good people on this forum will be interested in helping me with this thing as I go along, perhaps taking active participation depending on how the project unfolds More to come in the following months/years, if all is well. May things go smoothly and may this work be beneficial to others somehow.
Here is the abstract, translated from french :
One question, and one announcement.
The question : Chris, Shargrol, Linda, ..., would you mind writing up precise descriptions of what fifth jhana is like for you, what are the main phenomenological markers, how different sense modalities manifest, what the sense of body (sensations) and body image are like, what sounds are like, how the transition from fourth to fifth happens, what the general feel is like ? That would be lovely, thank you in advance.
The news : I've just submitted my official PhD project - it's gonna be an interdisciplinary study of meditation, and I'm sincerely hoping that some of the good people on this forum will be interested in helping me with this thing as I go along, perhaps taking active participation depending on how the project unfolds
More to come in the following months/years, if all is well. May things go smoothly and may this work be beneficial to others somehow.Here is the abstract, translated from french :
The general aim of this project is to contribute to furthering our understanding of contemplative practices, to better our grasp of their nature, their aims, their effects and the value which they could have within the context of our modern societies, often atheistic and dissociated from their spiritual heritage. More precisely, we shall establish a general phenomenology of spiritual experiences, taking interest in the long-term effects on those who are engaged in a diversity of meditativo-contemplative practices. The term “spirituality” is understood here in the precise sense, gnoseological or even gnostic, of an inquiry into the nature of mind, of conscious experience, of manifestation. We will heavily rely on Michel Henry’s phenomenology of life. In order to root our theoretical discussion within experiential practice, we will proceed to a micro-phenomenological study of the transformations of subjective experience perceived by highly trained subjects from a variety of contemplative traditions, wondering if they can be understood from the distinction between intentional consciousness and impressional awareness upon which the material phenomenology of life is constructed. We hypothesize that experienced meditators cultivate the primacy of a non intentional consciousness to the point of shifting into the experience of an auto-affected mode of phenomenalisation (which we shall call “non-dual”), and that this precise aspect of human spiritual life represents the endpoint of a certain domain of investigation, which to us defines some of the most essential aspects of the notion of spirituality. From there, we will seek to determine how our results might shed light on other domains of research, attempting to apply them to the study of musical practices, in order to evaluate what meaning might be construed from the framework we will have developed.
So, for about two months, much less regular meditation. It seems I have no more concentration or investigation abilities, at least in the way I used to think about those two things. I sometimes think that this is actually : I have no more desire to manipulate oxperience or forc anything to happen in my experience. When I approach it that ways, it relates with a few insights which came up since the last discussions happened on here. I'm referring to the time where I realized that there is no "absolute" non-conceptual experience to be found, that appearances where, in their particularity and inherently meaningful qualities, the only way that manifestation manifests. This seemingly minor understanding seems to have made a big shift ; but perhaps I'm making this up. Although these kinds of logs are very cool in that they allow one to see things which were previously opaque. They are also biased, because they come from a perspective which is seeking changes connected to practice, and looking for those changes in ways that corresponds with expectations, things read in other journals, other texts, etc. Although, it's always a good sign to me, a sign of authenticity, when something unexpected comes up and sheds a new light on things. But it must be said that it does create a kind of narration which is a construction.
So, that narration for me, is that this minor insight mentioned above, led me to see pretty clearly in practice, a few times, that the only thing standing between actuality and this moment being perfect just as it is, is the notion, which manifests as a kind of tension in space, actually, that there is something to be found which is not already here-and-now, or conversely, something missing, or something imperfect in experience. Holding that notion is what makes experience imperfect...
And so now, it seems that ptractice happens in a way I can't control. My last few meditations where kind of weird in the sense that it seemed more like day dreaming than anything else, but a daydreaming which was insightful, making me directly perceive that the dream world, or the world of thoughts, intentions, etc., is litteralyl as real as anything else ; that it's not, as I used to believe/perceive, that those things are fantasies inside of me, but that they have the same status as other perceptions... Very interesting, kind of freaky too. Sending love to my dead grandmother did not seem like a fantasy...
If someone thinks this is just a result of slacking, please say it !!
Also, the last two longer sits I did, brought me, near the end, in contact with something I hadn't realized was still there : a feeling deep-down that I'm not worthy of being loved. It was both time a kind of bodily feeling associated with mental things and emotions; but very bodily in a way, like, it comes up when I'm pretty silent, very relaxed, when the space is like cotton and smooth and attention is extremely light and effortless. That contact brings tears, sadness, surprise, a bit of sideration, compassion, acceptance of the fact that this perhaps will stay with me forever, curiosity, a bit of release. Don't know if it will linger, sounds worhty of consideration.
So, since I'm tracking signs which correspond to the whole meditator waking up thing, in a way that conforms to what i've kind of come to expect from reading other people's practice journals and talking with them here and elsewhere, I would say that i've noticed some things : that it seems these days that when suffering is there it is always a source of insight, very valuable in itself. That manipulating experience is always artificial and a way to move away from what is happening. And that perhaps the most fruitful thing would just be to exist and not try to change anything, and that perhaps this will always be ok from now on - ergo exeunt active meditation practices ?. Also a lot of curiosity for this fucked up world.
Perhaps it's all in my head.
Btw, I can't seem to be able to find a place to do a retreat !
Cheers, my friends.
So, that narration for me, is that this minor insight mentioned above, led me to see pretty clearly in practice, a few times, that the only thing standing between actuality and this moment being perfect just as it is, is the notion, which manifests as a kind of tension in space, actually, that there is something to be found which is not already here-and-now, or conversely, something missing, or something imperfect in experience. Holding that notion is what makes experience imperfect...
And so now, it seems that ptractice happens in a way I can't control. My last few meditations where kind of weird in the sense that it seemed more like day dreaming than anything else, but a daydreaming which was insightful, making me directly perceive that the dream world, or the world of thoughts, intentions, etc., is litteralyl as real as anything else ; that it's not, as I used to believe/perceive, that those things are fantasies inside of me, but that they have the same status as other perceptions... Very interesting, kind of freaky too. Sending love to my dead grandmother did not seem like a fantasy...
If someone thinks this is just a result of slacking, please say it
!!Also, the last two longer sits I did, brought me, near the end, in contact with something I hadn't realized was still there : a feeling deep-down that I'm not worthy of being loved. It was both time a kind of bodily feeling associated with mental things and emotions; but very bodily in a way, like, it comes up when I'm pretty silent, very relaxed, when the space is like cotton and smooth and attention is extremely light and effortless. That contact brings tears, sadness, surprise, a bit of sideration, compassion, acceptance of the fact that this perhaps will stay with me forever, curiosity, a bit of release. Don't know if it will linger, sounds worhty of consideration.
So, since I'm tracking signs which correspond to the whole meditator waking up thing, in a way that conforms to what i've kind of come to expect from reading other people's practice journals and talking with them here and elsewhere, I would say that i've noticed some things : that it seems these days that when suffering is there it is always a source of insight, very valuable in itself. That manipulating experience is always artificial and a way to move away from what is happening. And that perhaps the most fruitful thing would just be to exist and not try to change anything, and that perhaps this will always be ok from now on - ergo exeunt active meditation practices ?. Also a lot of curiosity for this fucked up world.
Perhaps it's all in my head.
Btw, I can't seem to be able to find a place to do a retreat !
Cheers, my friends.
shargrol:
Olivier:
a feeling deep-down that I'm not worthy of being loved.
...
That manipulating experience is always artificial and a way to move away from what is happening.
...
That manipulating experience is always artificial and a way to move away from what is happening.
Nice. Yes, core wounds become visible very late in the four path model. These things get seen and it explains a lot of our worldviews and patterned thoughts and actions.
It's also worth looking for what the core habit/compulsion is --- what is your unconscious strategy to be worthy of being loved? Common things are niceness, competence, obeying, working hard, intelligence, entertaining, worshipping, etc.
Hi Shargrol. In what you mention, I would say that most of those things apply, except perhaps worshipping
A few things though. Why do you and others seem pretty sure I'm that far along the path ? I'm personnally not so sure I even got third path tbh, given the definitions given by Daniel in mctb for instance. Certainly, I feel like that event back in august 2019 was like a "filter" was permanently deleted between "me" and the world, and in some ways it resembles third path descriptions. But I don't have, to my knowledge, and have never had, access to formless realms for instance, or even much command of the formed jhanas. Granted, it seems that interest in altered states basically disappeared in august 2019. And I'm pretty sure I have a kind of homebase in a mild form of fourth jhana. Also, a few days ago, I practiced intense fast noting for an hour, followed by an hour of the opposite : relaxing all objectification and all attentional/intentional activity, which had the effect of triggering a kind of almost formless jhana, I guess, but I don't know. But still, we are far from this famous jhanic arc that many thrid pathers report.
In terms of fetters, which seems to be your working model, we are closer to the mark, and also in terms of AEN's 7-fold model. But I don't know, I'm a bit skeptical. Not that it's bothering me, just trying to be accurate and clear and honest.
Manipulating experience isn't always artificial. Life likes to play and explore --- there are many actions which are consistent with this, even the whole practice of meditation itself. It's okay to "test" reality through playful experiments, she doesn't mind. The "rule" of no manipulation is actually a little dogmatic. Creativity and experimentation is fine, it's only when we take an approach of superiority or inferiority and try to force or solidify reality that a foundation for suffering is created. (and like you said, the neat thing about suffering is it points to where we made a mistake).
Are you resisting your own creativity? Are you limiting your own experimentation?
Very funny, because the day after I posted that bit about "perhaps I will never want to do active practices again", and before you wrote this, I found myself extremely inspired to do very fast freestyle noting for a couple of hours
Haha !!! This triggered a jarring POI which did not, to my knowledge, lead to a fruition.This is another point of question for me.
I recall, in my history, two periods where it seems there were many fruitions happening during sits. I mean, blips, not three-doors stuff (the closest to seeing stuff like that was on the second week of my panditarama lumbini retreat - I think !). Before june 2019 it never happened to me to have blips in my sits. It lasted for a few weeks then stopped. Then, after the end of august retreat and during the beginning of panditarama lumbini, there were also very regular blips and more clearly dileneated strange discontinuities for 2-3 weeks. That disappeared entirely afterwards and has never returned yet.
There seems to have been some kind of event around june 2020, after the period where I was having nightmares/dreams of awakening. This strange period ended during the night between a saturday sunday, which was again very agitated, punctuated with strange in-between dreams and experiences. I woke up the next morning fresh as a daisy, and afterwards went into a kind of reset period similar to the year before, where I just "reconnected" with life and regular self, kind of lost interest in meditation,
So what do you think about my theory of : I'm actually more on the verge of third than fourth ?
(What about you Chris, as you're probably reading ?)
At a certain point, structured practices that emphasize very open experiences, like resting and looking practices, are an interesting way to keep experimenting.
For some reason, I rarely do the practice you recommended. Perhaps because it feels like the momentum isn't right for that atm, but it felt very fruitful, so I'm keeping it at the back of my mind. I've started experimenting again, in particular, as I said, I'm starting to wrap my head around Burbea's "ways of looking" framework, and have tentatively started recording the efffects of particular kinds of very sharply defined types of practices. For instance : doing very fast intentional practice/objectifying/noting (clarity, destabilization, almost irritation, disentanglement) and then immediately doing objectless shamatha (which I'm likening to the phenomenological practice of épochè : no intentional/reifying/conscious activity, as well as the way taoists sometimes describe meditation as falling into confusion, and just the plain old notion of "silence", which I'm seeing now as more of a non-fabrication of experience through non-cling non-objectifying non-desiring). I then practiced metta visualizations for a half hour. It was very interesting and informative to compare the effects on experience/perceptions of different axes of practice.
Also, I could mention something interesting which has come up spontaneously these past months : elements.
I've started thinking (a bit) and feeling (a lot) in terms of the four elements (earth wind fire water), as "energies" or very special "regions" or "qualities" or "aspects" of experience, both in terms of actually feeling how special a stream of running water is, for instance, and as psychological/personal energies of people. I've started feeling people in terms of combinations of these qualities and it seems to be a very insightful way of expressing people's energies. And also gives pretty good explanations of imbalances and what to do about them, as well as personality affinities. Ex : I'm air mostly, and fire. My gf is earth and water, clearly. This is just the spontaneous feeling I get. And it seems to explain the complementarity a lot. Etc. So yeah, feeling "energies" a lot more.
Are you limited by a core wound or a core compulsion?
I think this will come up on its own when it must, but interesting. Especially the connection you're making with creativity... Touché, good sir, touché.
Thank you for your continued interest
Last thing, finally found a retreat place, so I'm going for 2 weeks of retreat starting on friday.
I've changed my plan : for the first four days, I will do one type of shmatha in the morning, and in the afternoons one of the brahmaviharas in order. Then for the next ten days, I will work through Clarifying the natural state. Thoughts, advice ?
I have no strong urge to pin down where you are exactly on the path maps. The nice thing about practice is it can only hit you where you are, so as long as you are continuing to explore and be curious about your experience... it all works out.
My hunch is that your next challenge will be to find out how formal sitting practice is not in conflict with "reconnecting with life and regular self". The you that lives life isn't different from the you that sits, and the you that sits isn't different from the you that lives life. It might be good to look at anything that suggests a difference between sitting and life.
No worries!
My inital reaction is that this sounds kind of contrived. Obviously, I can't know for sure, but it seems unclear what you are trying to achieve. I also get the feeling that you really want to go on retreat but you are slightly worried about doing a traditional sitting walking sitting walking practice for some reason... could you say more about your goals? what really interests you?
I woke up the next morning fresh as a daisy, and afterwards went into a kind of reset period similar to the year before, where I just "reconnected" with life and regular self, kind of lost interest in meditation,
My hunch is that your next challenge will be to find out how formal sitting practice is not in conflict with "reconnecting with life and regular self". The you that lives life isn't different from the you that sits, and the you that sits isn't different from the you that lives life. It might be good to look at anything that suggests a difference between sitting and life.
For some reason, I rarely do the practice you recommended.
No worries!
Last thing, finally found a retreat place, so I'm going for 2 weeks of retreat starting on friday.
I've changed my plan : for the first four days, I will do one type of shmatha in the morning, and in the afternoons one of the brahmaviharas in order. Then for the next ten days, I will work through Clarifying the natural state. Thoughts, advice ?
I've changed my plan : for the first four days, I will do one type of shmatha in the morning, and in the afternoons one of the brahmaviharas in order. Then for the next ten days, I will work through Clarifying the natural state. Thoughts, advice ?
My inital reaction is that this sounds kind of contrived. Obviously, I can't know for sure, but it seems unclear what you are trying to achieve. I also get the feeling that you really want to go on retreat but you are slightly worried about doing a traditional sitting walking sitting walking practice for some reason... could you say more about your goals? what really interests you?
Sounds good, but it's funny... now my hunch is that a very traditional therevadian sit/walk/sit/walk retreat is probably a really good thing for you to try.
There is something about a very simple practice that tends to bring out the sublte (or not so sublte) aversion, greed, and indifference that obsures the true nature of mind. Any problem that shows up in this format points directly back to the three poisons and psychological blindspots. It's a very direct path.
There is something about a very simple practice that tends to bring out the sublte (or not so sublte) aversion, greed, and indifference that obsures the true nature of mind. Any problem that shows up in this format points directly back to the three poisons and psychological blindspots. It's a very direct path.
Are you saying that this is true for everyone, or something you understood about yourself ?
I don't think that (diverting oneself) is true of all desires by a long shot.
Cheers
I don't think that (diverting oneself) is true of all desires by a long shot.
Cheers
It was true for me and I'm just speculating about your experience, so I may be completely wrong Maybe it's just that I'm at a different stage of life. I finished my PhD almost 20 years ago and had to convince myself to leave academia, so I probably have a bias against academics. If so, apologies, but here's my take FWIW ...
In the suttas thought is called the vaci sankhara ("speech conditioner") because "having first directed one's thoughts and made an evaluation, one them breaks out into speech". We are social animals and the evolutionary purpose of speech was to enable us to develop complex social structures with division of labor, philosophy departments etc. In this sense thought is just another tool to gain social power (Foucault?). I'm not saying one shouldn't have an intellectual interest in mediation (I certainly do), but at some point one needs to address one's real motivations for practice.
I hope this doesn't come across as a personal attack. We all have an axe to grind. I'm sure being a celebrity lama is a big draw as well One of the reasons I started meditating again was to help me manage my emotions in day trading, make of that what you will!
Maybe it's just that I'm at a different stage of life. I finished my PhD almost 20 years ago and had to convince myself to leave academia, so I probably have a bias against academics. If so, apologies, but here's my take FWIW ...In the suttas thought is called the vaci sankhara ("speech conditioner") because "having first directed one's thoughts and made an evaluation, one them breaks out into speech". We are social animals and the evolutionary purpose of speech was to enable us to develop complex social structures with division of labor, philosophy departments etc. In this sense thought is just another tool to gain social power (Foucault?). I'm not saying one shouldn't have an intellectual interest in mediation (I certainly do), but at some point one needs to address one's real motivations for practice.
I hope this doesn't come across as a personal attack. We all have an axe to grind. I'm sure being a celebrity lama is a big draw as well
One of the reasons I started meditating again was to help me manage my emotions in day trading, make of that what you will!
agnostic:
It was true for me and I'm just speculating about your experience, so I may be completely wrong Maybe it's just that I'm at a different stage of life. I finished my PhD almost 20 years ago and had to convince myself to leave academia, so I probably have a bias against academics. If so, apologies, but here's my take FWIW ...
I also have a huge bias against academia and don't plan to become an academic, so I can relate
In the suttas thought is called the vaci sankhara ("speech conditioner") because "having first directed one's thoughts and made an evaluation, one them breaks out into speech". We are social animals and the evolutionary purpose of speech was to enable us to develop complex social structures with division of labor, philosophy departments etc. In this sense thought is just another tool to gain social power (Foucault?). I'm not saying one shouldn't have an intellectual interest in mediation (I certainly do), but at some point one needs to address one's real motivations for practice.
Yeah, I agree. What do you do once you find what you were seeking though ? How do you transmit that ?
There need to be people who try to place true culture as an important thing in the social arena.
We are a so-called post-traditional society. That means that things like that are not passed on from one generation to the next (tradere), anymore, thanks partly to the Galilean revolution.
This, by the way, is what liturgy means. Liturgia used to be a tax, which rich greek citizens had to pay, as a just retribution to society for having received so much. So it was in the church later on.
How can I, having spent years and years developing intelectual skills, within a culture which values intelectuality very very much, as well as art, truly have a liturgical action in due time ?
Emptiness is form too, isn't it ?
I hope this doesn't come across as a personal attack. We all have an axe to grind. I'm sure being a celebrity lama is a big draw as well One of the reasons I started meditating again was to help me manage my emotions in day trading, make of that what you will!
Not at all, this is something I reflect on very often.
When I think that people who sell SUV's don't hesitate to pour billions in advertisment to get what they want, but that people who are willing to spend decades understanding the nature of reality just disengage from social/political life somehow, I can't help thinking there is a misunderstanding somewhere.
Jesus overthrew the merchants in the temple.
Once one overcomes personal suffering, what is left to do ?
Maybe it's just that I'm at a different stage of life. I finished my PhD almost 20 years ago and had to convince myself to leave academia, so I probably have a bias against academics. If so, apologies, but here's my take FWIW ...I also have a huge bias against academia and don't plan to become an academic, so I can relate
In the suttas thought is called the vaci sankhara ("speech conditioner") because "having first directed one's thoughts and made an evaluation, one them breaks out into speech". We are social animals and the evolutionary purpose of speech was to enable us to develop complex social structures with division of labor, philosophy departments etc. In this sense thought is just another tool to gain social power (Foucault?). I'm not saying one shouldn't have an intellectual interest in mediation (I certainly do), but at some point one needs to address one's real motivations for practice.
Yeah, I agree. What do you do once you find what you were seeking though ? How do you transmit that ?
There need to be people who try to place true culture as an important thing in the social arena.
We are a so-called post-traditional society. That means that things like that are not passed on from one generation to the next (tradere), anymore, thanks partly to the Galilean revolution.
This, by the way, is what liturgy means. Liturgia used to be a tax, which rich greek citizens had to pay, as a just retribution to society for having received so much. So it was in the church later on.
How can I, having spent years and years developing intelectual skills, within a culture which values intelectuality very very much, as well as art, truly have a liturgical action in due time ?
Emptiness is form too, isn't it ?
I hope this doesn't come across as a personal attack. We all have an axe to grind. I'm sure being a celebrity lama is a big draw as well
One of the reasons I started meditating again was to help me manage my emotions in day trading, make of that what you will!Not at all, this is something I reflect on very often.
When I think that people who sell SUV's don't hesitate to pour billions in advertisment to get what they want, but that people who are willing to spend decades understanding the nature of reality just disengage from social/political life somehow, I can't help thinking there is a misunderstanding somewhere.
Jesus overthrew the merchants in the temple.
Once one overcomes personal suffering, what is left to do ?
For me, the feeling that one needs to do something
is personal suffering. Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water, sell SUVs, tax the rich. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water, sell SUVs, tax the rich
is personal suffering. Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water, sell SUVs, tax the rich. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water, sell SUVs, tax the rich
Then i'm not interested at all in that version of enlightenment. And that doesn't make much sense IMO. The feeling that something needs to be done is consubstantial with manifestation, as I see it. If there is no desire, there is no experience - quite literally. Can you stop breathing, please ?
There is a life desire in you, which is not transparent to yourself, but it is an existential necessity. Recognizing it, nurturing it, and obeying it, is essential. Call it daimon if you will. I see this as "being aligned".
So, which desires are skilfull ? I humbly suggest to you the book : We've had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world's getting worse by jungian psychotherapist James Hillman.
Ending personal suffering but not trying to help with other people's is the definition of selfishness. Morality : the first and last training.
There is a life desire in you, which is not transparent to yourself, but it is an existential necessity. Recognizing it, nurturing it, and obeying it, is essential. Call it daimon if you will. I see this as "being aligned".
So, which desires are skilfull ? I humbly suggest to you the book : We've had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world's getting worse by jungian psychotherapist James Hillman.
Ending personal suffering but not trying to help with other people's is the definition of selfishness. Morality : the first and last training.
"For me, the feeling that one needs to do something is personal suffering. "
I mostly agree with this statement, but it is important to notice/distiguish between want and need in this case.
EDIT: just for more context... vague feelings of needing to do a vague something, wow this quickly becomes suffering. Strong needs to do s specific something, wow this is destined to cause conflicts when reality doesn't match the need perfectly. But vague feelings of wanting to do something, if contemplated and shaped into an intention to do something specific, which is held lightly and able to be modified as one pursues the intention based on new information, which evolves over time into practical, incremental progress... well, that's basic sanity.
I mostly agree with this statement, but it is important to notice/distiguish between want and need in this case.
EDIT: just for more context... vague feelings of needing to do a vague something, wow this quickly becomes suffering. Strong needs to do s specific something, wow this is destined to cause conflicts when reality doesn't match the need perfectly. But vague feelings of wanting to do something, if contemplated and shaped into an intention to do something specific, which is held lightly and able to be modified as one pursues the intention based on new information, which evolves over time into practical, incremental progress... well, that's basic sanity.
shargrol:
p.s. just ordered We've had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world's getting worse by jungian psychotherapist James Hillman. Looking forward to reading it!
So, about your analysis of the situation : not sure I understood it. These situations do occur ... Why is it needless suffering to grieve someone close, or to feel a need to help them ? Isn't that as natural as the need to breathe ? Isn't a certain level of suffering the condition for appropriate action to occur ? If I manage not to care, perhaps I will not suffer, and perhaps my daughter will not die, but is that possible ?
What is the difference between clinging-suffering and loving-grieving ?
Certainly life will always suck, and so, I wonder - I'm sure there's an optimal way to approach these kinds of situations, but I really doubt there is a way to not suffer, and even doubt that eliminating these reactions is even healthy ?
Not that this is what you are suggesting, it seems to me you are arguing for radical openness and fluidity of judgment/intentions. I can only concur with that, and it sounds like a high and most worthy ideal to aspire to, one I am far from being able to embody.
But in real life situations such as the one described, it seems like things are a bit different. And in these situations, isn't suffering a blessing ? I need to relieve this young woman's suffering because I find it unbearable to see her be violented like that - don't you think that is good and compassionate ?
How do we act without forming judgments/intentions, in other words, engaging ?
I don't know, in the end, if the relative is the absolute, isn't there, actually, good and evil ? A right and a wrong course of action ? These are questions I ask myself now after years of holding the position that no, there is no real right and wrong.
Thanks to the discussion in Agnostic's log, I finally wrote kind of a summary of that retreat, which felt very fruitful. Here goes, not so documented actually, but I'll probably fill in with details later... I took lots of notes.
So, I wrote in that log that it seemed i'd hit some kind of end to vipassana, not in the sense of noting, but actually, in the basic activity of "deliberately investigating things wondering what their nature is". Ie, observation which seeks to understand something about mind/experience, to achieve some understanding/or further realization.
I started like I stated earlier, with 4 days of shamatha/brahmaviharas, one vihara per afternoon. These days were in themselves both difficult because of detox I would say, from kind of static lifestyle, coffe drinking and all, but also amazing, filled with insight and richness and beauty, and I really feel like these are practices I want to explore further now and devote full retreats to. Incredible amount of relative but profound insight there, about love, suffering and all that stuff.
Also, during the first part of the retreat, did various contemplations (bahiya sutta and such), which brought me into a state of "no mind", I would say, the 4th day. Actually now that I think about it, these contemplations came to happen naturally because emtiness meditation just felt like the logical extension of the fourth brahmavihara, equanimity. Very close to the experience I described from august 2019 and the radical opening of the Dzogchen retreat / but more laid back, deeper, more refined, less me. There was excitement at that time, because I could actually see, after doing a very careful contemplation of the "sick person sutta", and then deeply contemplating through the six sense doors following each of the lines of the bahiya sutta - i could actually see it. "I'm close", feeleth Olivier
After that, 4 days of "just looking", whith a special emphasis on contact/vedana if resistance seemed to be there, referring to the scaffolding of things to look for, going down the chain of DO, if practice proved difficult, concocted by Shargrol-sama (see above (ps : don't worry, at the time i wasn't conceptualizing it)). A kind of open yet very structured practice which basically blends dzogchen type "just looking/being" and vipassana, vipassana being a kind of backup plan to keep the momentum going. I was also regularly contemplating on a text by Dan Ingram on "the two modes of perceptions being one". Again, some relative insight then (hey, I'm noticing repulsion when I look in the mirror some times !!), more struggle than previous days, and the struggle was interesting in the sense that it was almost exclusively about the practice itself, a kind of back and forth between "i'm doing something wrong/this practice sucks"/ and just being there and being ok with that.
It seemed like I was going through the ñanas during this period, but they were like a really tiny part of experience, yet very clear, but not possible to contract on them. At all times experience was very panoramic and seemed 99% fine and normal, except sometimes these aspects, like angry thoughts happening at the notion that the practice should be corrected, would be quite sharp, yet just a really small part of the whole thing and benign. The 3rd day of this part of the retreat, I remember, in the afternoon, really looking pretty deeply and wholeheartedly with a burning desire to understand what mind is, to see something which I wasn't seeing. Also during activities and at other times I would engage in noticing noting attraction/repulsion/neutralness quite a bit, and would later realize I was doing this out of doubt about the practice, forcing it instead of just examining resistance as it showed up (which it didn't much except about practice itself), a forcefulness which played a role in ....
the freak out. Something kinda strange happened here,later that same afternoon. There was this conflict happening somewhere in the thought space whil doing walking practice. That walking session was like fully experiencing some of the worst emotions of the worst time of my life and associated thoughts/conceptions/images/self images. This was all within a panoramic awareness, and it actually seemed that all this stuff was just one small aspect of space. Kinda felt crazy. It was also very much connected to the unease mentioned above about practice, and excessive zeale at noticing/noting repulsion/attraction/netrualness, in a contrived way which drove the thing to a full blown panic moment, from strain, I believe. The freak out itself was interesting because it subsided rather quickly, but I reacted with some very primal defense/escape mechanisms which I used to use at the time which the internal conflict was referring to, a time in my life which was very difficult and full of negative emotions and such (early teenage years). Eating, going to a heat source in the bathroom, taking a shower, reading. I actually read a lot of shargrol's posts about 3rd/4th path at that point. Took it easy for that evening, not making much of things.
Anyways. I then reflected on what had happened. And that was extremely interesting, becaused it appeared specifically that any suffering I experienced during this past week was connected to a subtle insatisfaction with the meditation practice itself, with my ability to do it, or with the person who prescribed it, and the result of trying really enthusiastically to pinpoint EXACTLY what the hell that seemingly elusive thing called mind WAS, where and what shape, etc. ?, with a kind of excitement/frustration/curiosity at finally figuring IT out.
FYI I usually just stuck to shargrol's instructions, but sometimes did extremely fast investigation of three c's and such, experiencing for instance the mind stream's impermanence at new levels of granularity for me, like seeing clearly maybe 15/20 thoughts bubbles per second.... just to boost things a bit :p
But let's say that the whole thing was very much motivated by "I'm looking for something here, and it seems I'm really really close !!!!". And then I experienced fully the suffering which arose from that and the subtle dissatisfaction. I also reckon that the freak out was basically connected with some assumptions I had about practice showing you "core wounds" at some point, which came from over reading dharma posts...
During these two days I saw clearly that the whole thing was based on positing that the mind was something and that it could be found, that something hadn't been fully seen, or that there was some higher understanding to be had, and that the way to do that was to get better at, or to perfect meditation, basically. And it seemed excessively clear to me upon reflection that this whole thing was fundamentally restlessness, conceit, and ignorance... This seemed extremely certain. And it also appeared very clearly that any suffering I experienced during those two weeks was basically due to my looking, in the future, for something which doesn't exist. It was the fetters of subtle restlessness and conceit, connected to ignorance, because ignorance was contained as the act of looking for something other than what is... This was seen and felt in a deep, clear way.
Then during the last four days, I went through the instructions in Clarifying the natural state. Went through the bit of shamatha, then vipassana. Then I did the pointing out instructions, which point to the fact that shamatha, calm, is the empty, ungraspable, unfindable, luminous appearances themselves appearing and liberating on their own, and vipassana is just the knowing of your present moment experience, which is not different from the experience itself.. And that both these, and any meditation methods you are using to observe the moment, are part and contained within this moment.... (or close enough ! :p Dont quote me)
This came at the perfect time to bring the understanding mentioned above to a kind of completion. Something really drove the thing home.
After going through these instructions very carefully things seemed really really complete, with a kind of complete quiteness, perhaps more quite than ever, an almost complete absence of desire, like "nothing to do now than rest in this natural state of the mind and let that take over". It also seemed I really deeply understood, I want to say GROK the connection between restlessness (basically subtle agitation based on dissatisfaction with what is), conceit (essentially : judging things as + or -, ie, this experience is not it) and ignorance as not being lear that this is it and that nothing is excluded from it, not even the imaginary goals, whether I'm looking or not, whatever qualities manifest at any given moment which is always full and complete... etc. etc.
I repeated these instructions several times during the next few days. It would bring about and deepend the sense that my experience was "complete", in the sense that there was absolute certainty than nothing could be added or subtracted from the thing. The completeness/stilness was in itself very impressive, but it wasn't, because it was like everything, every thought, image, etc., was seen just as it arose when it arose and there by dissolved smoothly in itself, never causing contraction, ie attention pushing/pulling something and thereby ignoring something else.
It was also self evident, and that was truly satisfying, truly resting, that the act of looking through that push and pull (attention) was connected very subtly and fundamentally to dissatisfaction, that it was born from it. The thing that allowed for this to be understood was the full emotional certainty that this was so. Everything dawning as dharmakaya, let's say. Edit : here what i mean is that, it's not like i'd never experienced that tension in looking etc., But in this case there seemed to be a confidence about why that was, an understanding of that if you will
And life was dripping with seemingly ultimate insight, it seemed that the barest reflection would yield these really really profound understandings, which i sometimes wrote down, and it seemed that I really understood the dharma now, up until the very root of ignorance.
It seemed I was able to see DO happen in real time during daily activities, which was kind of freaky actually, seeing exactly how push/pull and ignorance created this chain reaction and identities to be born, but the freaky was part of the whole thing so...
And that was kind of like "oh, everything is unravelling now".
Anyways, guess that's it. That's what I meant when I said "vipassana feels done". I'm sure I'm not actually done, but that was a really deep, beautiful two weeks, extremely sanitizing I guess, brought about a lot of humility, awe, realness, down-to-earthness and a great sense of lack of control. THinking back on it now, which I hadn't really done, brings back a deep, heartfelt and almost teary sense of gratefulness.
Also, a lot of synchronicities happened during that retreat, just as an example, the first and last days (which i didn't count in the three times four sections) where actually Saint Francis (of Assises)'s day and the last was St Theresa of Avila's day (one of the greatest christian contemplatives). I learned that afterwards. What's funny is, I read the life of St Francis while I was there, the name of the pond on this retreat center is St Francis of Assises, and there was a young resident teacher there named François, who basically invited me to come do talks there later on, after several discussions.
Well, thank you for taking the time to read this post.
Ah, yes, finally. Since the instructions in CTNS say that after having identified the natural state, the practice becomes "undistracted ordinary mind" and that this should be maintained at all times without efforting at all. Then further progress will come from sleep practice, being aware in your sleep. So this is why I feel drawn to that now.
But it feels to me like life circumstances are preventing me from bringing this undistracteness to all aspects of my life including sleep, which seems like the next area of work. Particularly, living with someone who is not a deep practicioner, doesn't really have a commitment to meditation/presence, and is (as is living closely with anyone) somewhat distractive and influencing daily habits. Not a source of frustration, and in fact things are going extremely smoothly globally, but perhaps I should do something about that.
Haven't practiced much since then, but written quite a bit, and am now close to finishing my first book on "esthetics and meditation".
Ah, yes. I dropped the PhD project :p Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, renunciation, my old friend, what a pleasure to see you again...
Pax.
So, I wrote in that log that it seemed i'd hit some kind of end to vipassana, not in the sense of noting, but actually, in the basic activity of "deliberately investigating things wondering what their nature is". Ie, observation which seeks to understand something about mind/experience, to achieve some understanding/or further realization.
I started like I stated earlier, with 4 days of shamatha/brahmaviharas, one vihara per afternoon. These days were in themselves both difficult because of detox I would say, from kind of static lifestyle, coffe drinking and all, but also amazing, filled with insight and richness and beauty, and I really feel like these are practices I want to explore further now and devote full retreats to. Incredible amount of relative but profound insight there, about love, suffering and all that stuff.
Also, during the first part of the retreat, did various contemplations (bahiya sutta and such), which brought me into a state of "no mind", I would say, the 4th day. Actually now that I think about it, these contemplations came to happen naturally because emtiness meditation just felt like the logical extension of the fourth brahmavihara, equanimity. Very close to the experience I described from august 2019 and the radical opening of the Dzogchen retreat / but more laid back, deeper, more refined, less me. There was excitement at that time, because I could actually see, after doing a very careful contemplation of the "sick person sutta", and then deeply contemplating through the six sense doors following each of the lines of the bahiya sutta - i could actually see it. "I'm close", feeleth Olivier
After that, 4 days of "just looking", whith a special emphasis on contact/vedana if resistance seemed to be there, referring to the scaffolding of things to look for, going down the chain of DO, if practice proved difficult, concocted by Shargrol-sama (see above (ps : don't worry, at the time i wasn't conceptualizing it)). A kind of open yet very structured practice which basically blends dzogchen type "just looking/being" and vipassana, vipassana being a kind of backup plan to keep the momentum going. I was also regularly contemplating on a text by Dan Ingram on "the two modes of perceptions being one". Again, some relative insight then (hey, I'm noticing repulsion when I look in the mirror some times !!), more struggle than previous days, and the struggle was interesting in the sense that it was almost exclusively about the practice itself, a kind of back and forth between "i'm doing something wrong/this practice sucks"/ and just being there and being ok with that.
It seemed like I was going through the ñanas during this period, but they were like a really tiny part of experience, yet very clear, but not possible to contract on them. At all times experience was very panoramic and seemed 99% fine and normal, except sometimes these aspects, like angry thoughts happening at the notion that the practice should be corrected, would be quite sharp, yet just a really small part of the whole thing and benign. The 3rd day of this part of the retreat, I remember, in the afternoon, really looking pretty deeply and wholeheartedly with a burning desire to understand what mind is, to see something which I wasn't seeing. Also during activities and at other times I would engage in noticing noting attraction/repulsion/neutralness quite a bit, and would later realize I was doing this out of doubt about the practice, forcing it instead of just examining resistance as it showed up (which it didn't much except about practice itself), a forcefulness which played a role in ....
the freak out. Something kinda strange happened here,later that same afternoon. There was this conflict happening somewhere in the thought space whil doing walking practice. That walking session was like fully experiencing some of the worst emotions of the worst time of my life and associated thoughts/conceptions/images/self images. This was all within a panoramic awareness, and it actually seemed that all this stuff was just one small aspect of space. Kinda felt crazy. It was also very much connected to the unease mentioned above about practice, and excessive zeale at noticing/noting repulsion/attraction/netrualness, in a contrived way which drove the thing to a full blown panic moment, from strain, I believe. The freak out itself was interesting because it subsided rather quickly, but I reacted with some very primal defense/escape mechanisms which I used to use at the time which the internal conflict was referring to, a time in my life which was very difficult and full of negative emotions and such (early teenage years). Eating, going to a heat source in the bathroom, taking a shower, reading. I actually read a lot of shargrol's posts about 3rd/4th path at that point. Took it easy for that evening, not making much of things.
Anyways. I then reflected on what had happened. And that was extremely interesting, becaused it appeared specifically that any suffering I experienced during this past week was connected to a subtle insatisfaction with the meditation practice itself, with my ability to do it, or with the person who prescribed it, and the result of trying really enthusiastically to pinpoint EXACTLY what the hell that seemingly elusive thing called mind WAS, where and what shape, etc. ?, with a kind of excitement/frustration/curiosity at finally figuring IT out.
FYI I usually just stuck to shargrol's instructions, but sometimes did extremely fast investigation of three c's and such, experiencing for instance the mind stream's impermanence at new levels of granularity for me, like seeing clearly maybe 15/20 thoughts bubbles per second.... just to boost things a bit :p
But let's say that the whole thing was very much motivated by "I'm looking for something here, and it seems I'm really really close !!!!". And then I experienced fully the suffering which arose from that and the subtle dissatisfaction. I also reckon that the freak out was basically connected with some assumptions I had about practice showing you "core wounds" at some point, which came from over reading dharma posts...
During these two days I saw clearly that the whole thing was based on positing that the mind was something and that it could be found, that something hadn't been fully seen, or that there was some higher understanding to be had, and that the way to do that was to get better at, or to perfect meditation, basically. And it seemed excessively clear to me upon reflection that this whole thing was fundamentally restlessness, conceit, and ignorance... This seemed extremely certain. And it also appeared very clearly that any suffering I experienced during those two weeks was basically due to my looking, in the future, for something which doesn't exist. It was the fetters of subtle restlessness and conceit, connected to ignorance, because ignorance was contained as the act of looking for something other than what is... This was seen and felt in a deep, clear way.
Then during the last four days, I went through the instructions in Clarifying the natural state. Went through the bit of shamatha, then vipassana. Then I did the pointing out instructions, which point to the fact that shamatha, calm, is the empty, ungraspable, unfindable, luminous appearances themselves appearing and liberating on their own, and vipassana is just the knowing of your present moment experience, which is not different from the experience itself.. And that both these, and any meditation methods you are using to observe the moment, are part and contained within this moment.... (or close enough ! :p Dont quote me)
This came at the perfect time to bring the understanding mentioned above to a kind of completion. Something really drove the thing home.
After going through these instructions very carefully things seemed really really complete, with a kind of complete quiteness, perhaps more quite than ever, an almost complete absence of desire, like "nothing to do now than rest in this natural state of the mind and let that take over". It also seemed I really deeply understood, I want to say GROK the connection between restlessness (basically subtle agitation based on dissatisfaction with what is), conceit (essentially : judging things as + or -, ie, this experience is not it) and ignorance as not being lear that this is it and that nothing is excluded from it, not even the imaginary goals, whether I'm looking or not, whatever qualities manifest at any given moment which is always full and complete... etc. etc.
I repeated these instructions several times during the next few days. It would bring about and deepend the sense that my experience was "complete", in the sense that there was absolute certainty than nothing could be added or subtracted from the thing. The completeness/stilness was in itself very impressive, but it wasn't, because it was like everything, every thought, image, etc., was seen just as it arose when it arose and there by dissolved smoothly in itself, never causing contraction, ie attention pushing/pulling something and thereby ignoring something else.
It was also self evident, and that was truly satisfying, truly resting, that the act of looking through that push and pull (attention) was connected very subtly and fundamentally to dissatisfaction, that it was born from it. The thing that allowed for this to be understood was the full emotional certainty that this was so. Everything dawning as dharmakaya, let's say. Edit : here what i mean is that, it's not like i'd never experienced that tension in looking etc., But in this case there seemed to be a confidence about why that was, an understanding of that if you will
And life was dripping with seemingly ultimate insight, it seemed that the barest reflection would yield these really really profound understandings, which i sometimes wrote down, and it seemed that I really understood the dharma now, up until the very root of ignorance.
It seemed I was able to see DO happen in real time during daily activities, which was kind of freaky actually, seeing exactly how push/pull and ignorance created this chain reaction and identities to be born, but the freaky was part of the whole thing so...
And that was kind of like "oh, everything is unravelling now".
Anyways, guess that's it. That's what I meant when I said "vipassana feels done". I'm sure I'm not actually done, but that was a really deep, beautiful two weeks, extremely sanitizing I guess, brought about a lot of humility, awe, realness, down-to-earthness and a great sense of lack of control. THinking back on it now, which I hadn't really done, brings back a deep, heartfelt and almost teary sense of gratefulness.
Also, a lot of synchronicities happened during that retreat, just as an example, the first and last days (which i didn't count in the three times four sections) where actually Saint Francis (of Assises)'s day and the last was St Theresa of Avila's day (one of the greatest christian contemplatives). I learned that afterwards. What's funny is, I read the life of St Francis while I was there, the name of the pond on this retreat center is St Francis of Assises, and there was a young resident teacher there named François, who basically invited me to come do talks there later on, after several discussions.
Well, thank you for taking the time to read this post.
Ah, yes, finally. Since the instructions in CTNS say that after having identified the natural state, the practice becomes "undistracted ordinary mind" and that this should be maintained at all times without efforting at all. Then further progress will come from sleep practice, being aware in your sleep. So this is why I feel drawn to that now.
But it feels to me like life circumstances are preventing me from bringing this undistracteness to all aspects of my life including sleep, which seems like the next area of work. Particularly, living with someone who is not a deep practicioner, doesn't really have a commitment to meditation/presence, and is (as is living closely with anyone) somewhat distractive and influencing daily habits. Not a source of frustration, and in fact things are going extremely smoothly globally, but perhaps I should do something about that.
Haven't practiced much since then, but written quite a bit, and am now close to finishing my first book on "esthetics and meditation".
Ah, yes. I dropped the PhD project :p
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, renunciation, my old friend, what a pleasure to see you again...Pax.
There's a lot of assumptions in your comments, guys.
Some are jumping to conclusions a bit quick.
For instance, I'm not currently looking for life or career advice. That, I reserve for people who know me well and in person, and whom I know well and in person.
This log, as most logs, is mostly an exercice in self reflection and a kind of testimony which I hope might serve as inspiration for some, perhaps ; I have appreciated the pointers and suggestions, but this is not an open-call for people I only know from this board to influence the details of my life. Thank you for respecting that.
The suggestions to stay humble and honest are appreciated. The misspelling of my name though ...
I urge all people reading this to stay critical on the internet as in life, and to keep their common sense unto themselves at all times.
May you all be well.
Cheers.
Some are jumping to conclusions a bit quick.
For instance, I'm not currently looking for life or career advice.
That, I reserve for people who know me well and in person, and whom I know well and in person.This log, as most logs, is mostly an exercice in self reflection and a kind of testimony which I hope might serve as inspiration for some, perhaps ; I have appreciated the pointers and suggestions, but this is not an open-call for people I only know from this board to influence the details of my life. Thank you for respecting that.
The suggestions to stay humble and honest are appreciated. The misspelling of my name though ...
I urge all people reading this to stay critical on the internet as in life, and to keep their common sense unto themselves at all times.
May you all be well.
Cheers.
It's interesting, I didn't mention it but during that retreat I also felt very keenly that I needed to take my distances from internet and this forum - perhaps that is why I didn't want to post afterwards.
There are limits to such a medium of communication, in which anyone can appear and respond/freely say stuff about you or dispense commentaries in a space which is both quite intimate and utterly non-intimate. These limits must be clearly acknowledged...
I think that can really be damaging, because in real life, we know instinctively whom we need to let ourselves be influenced by, and whom we should stay away from. Or not Actually, this advice applies to other situations too...
This is not an attack or statement on anyone in particular, mark me - just a general reflection.
Anyways. Bye for now.
edit : Chris : I don't doubt that, but has they say, Hell is paved with good intentions !
There are limits to such a medium of communication, in which anyone can appear and respond/freely say stuff about you or dispense commentaries in a space which is both quite intimate and utterly non-intimate. These limits must be clearly acknowledged...
I think that can really be damaging, because in real life, we know instinctively whom we need to let ourselves be influenced by, and whom we should stay away from. Or not
Actually, this advice applies to other situations too... This is not an attack or statement on anyone in particular, mark me - just a general reflection.
Anyways. Bye for now.
edit : Chris : I don't doubt that, but has they say, Hell is paved with good intentions !
Which of course means that we can apply them to every situation
Chris Marti:
Definitely not, they're just demographic averages. It's just that I happen to be your average middle/old aged guy handing out potentially life changing advice over the internet with zero legal liability.
Fast forward another 10-12 years and by your late 30s/early 40s you are biologically old-aged.
I'm afraid to ask what stage I'm in at my age. Ancient? Decrepit? Dilapidated? Worn out? Useless? Rotting away on the inside? Beyond hope?
Chris Marti:
Fast forward another 10-12 years and by your late 30s/early 40s you are biologically old-aged.
I'm afraid to ask what stage I'm in at my age. Ancient? Decrepit? Dilapidated? Worn out? Useless? Rotting away on the inside? Beyond hope?
I feel like I'm in the wistleling past the graveyard stage...
Chris Marti:
Fast forward another 10-12 years and by your late 30s/early 40s you are biologically old-aged.
I'm afraid to ask what stage I'm in at my age. Ancient? Decrepit? Dilapidated? Worn out? Useless? Rotting away on the inside? Beyond hope?
Sorry, tact was never my strong point. I think the Buddha said we're rotting away on the inside from the moment we are born. I remember asking my grandmother for a word of advice on her 50th wedding anniversary and all she could say was 'I don't know, we weren't supposed to live this long'.
Chris Marti:
To be fair, isn't that what he is doing?
I was referring to being circumspect before we post personal things we don't want to be exposed. Sorry to be inexact in my language.
Chris Marti:
I'm just saying that in this case Olivier actually explicitly asks us to refrain from some specific forms of advice, firmly but politely. We could just, you know... respect that, and thank him for trusting us enough to communicate his boundaries. If he didn't think of us as both well-meaning and capable, I don't think he would bother.
That's absolutely the way it should be, yes, and what I would prefer. But I have to say again, we're posting to a forum that is open to anyone, so we can't expect specific behaviors, or requests to abide thereby, to be manifest. This is why some of us have at times created other forums that are not public, requiring a login, so that we could have more personal, deeper discussions without the public part.
I can see that you are looking out for Olivier's best interest from your own perspective, and I appreciate the clarifications. It's good to be reminded of the need for that kind of boundaries as well. I agree that with much richer knowledge about a person than might be wise to expose in this format, it would probably be possible to be explorative enough to give more tailored advice to a larger extent, maybe even find enough common ground to adress more subtle stuff.
In my reading of the conversation at hand, I didn't get the impression that the problem was about having personal details exposed as much as about getting advice based on assumptions filling in the blanks of what has not been exposed, including areas that are clearly outside the scope of this practice log. That's why I wanted to shift the emphasis a bit. But Olivier can speak for himself much better than I can, and I don't want to barge in with my assumptions here too, so I'll stop here.
The internet is indeed frustrating at times, especially when trying to adress subtle matters. It's a miracle that so much good comes out of it despite all the limitations, like caring for each other.
"The misspelling of my name though ..."
I'm totally with you on this one Olivier btw, my partner is pregnant and we decided to name him Oliver and to be honest I did think about you when we made that decision. I know it's not the same name but they look similar on the paper
Also it's fine if you leave this forum. However you can join us in The Bar(do) of Last Resort which is not really part of this forum. It's hosted in the 6 Realms and we are never sure which one as it cycles very fast! Fucking roller coaster I'm telling ya!
I'm totally with you on this one Olivier
btw, my partner is pregnant and we decided to name him Oliver and to be honest I did think about you when we made that decision. I know it's not the same name but they look similar on the paper Also it's fine if you leave this forum. However you can join us in The Bar(do) of Last Resort which is not really part of this forum. It's hosted in the 6 Realms and we are never sure which one as it cycles very fast! Fucking roller coaster I'm telling ya!
Ah, yes. I dropped the PhD project :p Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, renunciation, my old friend, what a pleasure to see you again...
Pax.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, renunciation, my old friend, what a pleasure to see you again...Pax.
ahh, and off the cliff he goes. Welcome to the fast track to poverty, also known as creative writing. There's no askesis like combining art and meditation: if the one doesn't obliterate you, the other will. Still, wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now, as the old gospel song goes. But seriously, mon ami . . . yikes.
love, tim
Tim Farrington:
Ah, yes. I dropped the PhD project :p Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, renunciation, my old friend, what a pleasure to see you again...
Pax.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, renunciation, my old friend, what a pleasure to see you again...Pax.
ahh, and off the cliff he goes. Welcome to the fast track to poverty, also known as creative writing. There's no askesis like combining art and meditation: if the one doesn't obliterate you, the other will. Still, wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now, as the old gospel song goes. But seriously, mon ami . . . yikes.
love, tim
At least that's the way it is here in the USA... students are treated kind of like footsoldiers.
Olivier, great stuff here man, and thanks for all of your contribution and inspiration here. Totally understandable if you feel you need to step away, I've felt that need myself before. And, if you don't come back, you will be missed, but best of luck to you wherever/whatever you end up going/doing.
Peace
J W (John)
Thank you, O, One, for explaining to me the mechanism of role-models. Now I will give up all dreaming - never again will I be intoxicated. I shall cross over to the furthest mountain, and there wake up to my own life, and sit on my chair all day, beyond contentment and discontent, not pursuing the illusions of the past nor those of the future ; I shall disregard the false contentments of Eros and abide in the simplifying detachment of Metta and Agape, abide in the clear light of knowing, in the bear and naked truth of the now ; and thus, free of desire, until the Deathless shows itself to be the non-arisingness of the arising of its absence. You have pacified this one through your beneficial word ; now I shall go forth into the homeless life, and meditate until I Wake Up To My Life As It Really Is, or Die Trying. Or maybe, get married, have kids, and THEN, wake up to my life As It Is... but in the future, so, to My Life As It Will Be, though perhaps not My Life, as I will have seen the no-self by then, so, Life As It Will Be.
Seriously though.
(i) You think that awake people do not have things they like to do and others they don't ? That sounds crazy to me. Just one example : the deepest, broadest, and most inspiring practicioner i've listened to is rob burbea, a man who saw the emptiness of all things and then proceeded to invent the dharma of desire, soulmaking and imaginal practices, who did not have kids nor a girlfriend that I know of and yet seemed to find great meaning, beauty, and depth in the process of his own dying. And I don't want to become him, actually, inspiration is not jealousy. That is very different. One energizes, uplifts, fills with joy ; the other, well... Further... I do love myself. And I'm not in denial I've pledged to love myself no matter what until the very last breath, and I will fulfill that promess regardless of what I may or may not become. Even if I fail to fulfil it. Get it ?
edit : Here is a recording from Rob's deathbed https://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/62457/
I think you are the one doing spiritual bypassing, honestly, and imagining what awake existence is like.
Believe me, I know what you are talking about : both my parents are musicians, who pursued idealized careers and did not achieve to the level they wanted ; my step mother on the other hand is a very successful singer, who's conception of music and competitiveness Ihate think is unhealthy ; and my brother's godfather is a god-like musician whose name I wont tell you, and who is now aging and losing his game.
But actually, he is a religious man, who's had a deep practice and faith, since an early age, and seems to have found profound calm and acceptance and clarity through that, and whose success I actually attribute to detachment, so that's ok. And he seems to still very very much benefit from the fruits of his engagments. He has also helped and benefited a lot of people on the way through the sharing of his findings, me including.
Very inspirational, actually.
I believe there is a specific life desire in all of us, and that this meditation business is also very much about stripping down the intoxications, and comitting to doing the things that are ours to do, which express our individuality ; that beyond emptiness, there is the process of free, and creative individualization, without necesary attachment to outcome. Second part of the heart sutra. And many awake people say that. People who are awake sometimes have a lot to offer, sometimes not.
(ii) What does it even mean, "wake up to your life as it is, not as it could be" ? There is something such as "my life as it is ?" and something else which is not that ?
There's some kind of wrong view to be teased out there.
(iii) I've always thought it would be more effective to hear someone in a Bear costume tell me about Bare Awareness :p
edited a couple times.
Now, please stop making assumptions and guesses. I didn't want to do that, but I'm calling you out on your narcissim, as you've repeatedly asked people to do, agnostic. How effing cocky does one have to be to think they are clever enough to figure out what people's expectations and psychology are through a few posts on a board ? Should I also remind that you keep saying that you're not actually capable of true sollicitude/love and can only act like you care, but are actually in it for other reasons, spite, or something along those lines ?
Seriously though.
(i) You think that awake people do not have things they like to do and others they don't ? That sounds crazy to me. Just one example : the deepest, broadest, and most inspiring practicioner i've listened to is rob burbea, a man who saw the emptiness of all things and then proceeded to invent the dharma of desire, soulmaking and imaginal practices, who did not have kids nor a girlfriend that I know of and yet seemed to find great meaning, beauty, and depth in the process of his own dying. And I don't want to become him, actually, inspiration is not jealousy. That is very different. One energizes, uplifts, fills with joy ; the other, well... Further... I do love myself. And I'm not in denial
I've pledged to love myself no matter what until the very last breath, and I will fulfill that promess regardless of what I may or may not become. Even if I fail to fulfil it. Get it ?edit : Here is a recording from Rob's deathbed https://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/62457/
I think you are the one doing spiritual bypassing, honestly, and imagining what awake existence is like.
Believe me, I know what you are talking about : both my parents are musicians, who pursued idealized careers and did not achieve to the level they wanted ; my step mother on the other hand is a very successful singer, who's conception of music and competitiveness I
But actually, he is a religious man, who's had a deep practice and faith, since an early age, and seems to have found profound calm and acceptance and clarity through that, and whose success I actually attribute to detachment, so that's ok. And he seems to still very very much benefit from the fruits of his engagments. He has also helped and benefited a lot of people on the way through the sharing of his findings, me including.
Very inspirational, actually.
I believe there is a specific life desire in all of us, and that this meditation business is also very much about stripping down the intoxications, and comitting to doing the things that are ours to do, which express our individuality ; that beyond emptiness, there is the process of free, and creative individualization, without necesary attachment to outcome. Second part of the heart sutra. And many awake people say that. People who are awake sometimes have a lot to offer, sometimes not.
(ii) What does it even mean, "wake up to your life as it is, not as it could be" ? There is something such as "my life as it is ?" and something else which is not that ?
There's some kind of wrong view to be teased out there.
(iii) I've always thought it would be more effective to hear someone in a Bear costume tell me about Bare Awareness :p
edited a couple times.
Now, please stop making assumptions and guesses. I didn't want to do that, but I'm calling you out on your narcissim, as you've repeatedly asked people to do, agnostic. How effing cocky does one have to be to think they are clever enough to figure out what people's expectations and psychology are through a few posts on a board ? Should I also remind that you keep saying that you're not actually capable of true sollicitude/love and can only act like you care, but are actually in it for other reasons, spite, or something along those lines ?
Also, and this is the final chapter on my part.
Honestly, it's never too late to change course. Well, until it's too late, of course, but THEN, that's actually your life As Is :p
My aunt was a stay at home mom who married the man, my uncle, whose secretary she used to be. At 55, kids all grown up, she decided to study. Proceeded to get her BA with 100 % in all subjects. MA, same. PhD, same. Started her business. Is now making a lot of money doing something she's so passionate about she doesn't sleep at night. She'd rather be up there working than chill with us But that's not dukkha. She's happier than she was before ; not more enlightenedç sure. But she might be more satisfied thinking back of her life, on her deathbed. Less regrets, more of a sense of accomplishment and of having done the task.
Other example ; this man : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbJiy6EJLsI&feature=youtu.be
Who got enlightened and finished his medical studies in late twenties, wrote a book which was enjoyed by many and rejected by many others, proceeded to work as en ER doctor for fifteen year (YIKES), then retired early, and is currently doing a bunch of research and networking and such (YIKES), all because he loves the dharma and has a desire to help others.
Said book contains a few things on relative happiness which are of some relevance here...
Etc.
Honestly, it's never too late to change course. Well, until it's too late, of course, but THEN, that's actually your life As Is :p
My aunt was a stay at home mom who married the man, my uncle, whose secretary she used to be. At 55, kids all grown up, she decided to study. Proceeded to get her BA with 100 % in all subjects. MA, same. PhD, same. Started her business. Is now making a lot of money doing something she's so passionate about she doesn't sleep at night. She'd rather be up there working than chill with us
But that's not dukkha. She's happier than she was before ; not more enlightenedç sure. But she might be more satisfied thinking back of her life, on her deathbed. Less regrets, more of a sense of accomplishment and of having done the task.Other example ; this man : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbJiy6EJLsI&feature=youtu.be
Who got enlightened and finished his medical studies in late twenties, wrote a book which was enjoyed by many and rejected by many others, proceeded to work as en ER doctor for fifteen year (YIKES), then retired early, and is currently doing a bunch of research and networking and such (YIKES), all because he loves the dharma and has a desire to help others.
Said book contains a few things on relative happiness which are of some relevance here...
Etc.
"I'm genuinely curious to see what else is possible because I know its A TON."
And maybe, ... just maybe, it is ONLY an itch, and the rest is fun-games Disneyland of the "advanced" (burp) La-la Land
Then again I might be off on this one , ... hm? ... lemme think ... Oh look! A Butterfly! (runs after it in excitement) ... ...
And maybe, ... just maybe,
it is ONLY an itch, and the rest is fun-games Disneyland of the "advanced" (burp) La-la Land Then again I might be off on this one , ... hm? ... lemme think ... Oh
look! A Butterfly! (runs after it in excitement) ... ...
Hey Guys,
Thank you Chris, Tim, Linda, Papa Che, Steph, for your messages of appreciation. Very heart warming.
I want to point ot that what I was talking about is, I think, really as much, or mostly, caused by the sheer medium : internet. Chris is right, here, I think there's just inherent limits to the thing, and I'm sure if all of us were to find ourselves at some retreat center, practicing and exchanging, hearing each others' voices, seeing each others' bodies, etc., it would be quite different. Less distractions, etc.
So don't think I'm just shitting on this place, which is really great as the internet goes, honestly, and has been very beneficial to my practice, I think. I mean, the sheer reaction here is more than enough proof that the people who hang around here are mostly good, patient, appreciative, open, etc. No question about that.
I think I'm just the kind of guy who can't just go so far into this, explore the nature of reality to its depths, etc., on the side of an otherwise conventional life at the same time. I don't know, not sure...
So I do feel like there's a problem in spending a lot of time on an internet forum, which might also be a personal thing, sure. A solution might be, as chris said, to be more protective of what I put out and engage, but again, that's what you guys like about me I imagine, I'm very engaged and pretty radical in fact. Would be kind of paradoxical to superficialize my presence here, you know what I mean ?
Like, I recently had some interesting experience (vertigo/near fainting) which made me start thinking about death again. Something both very disturbing/moving and powerful/fascinating about the sense of things there. Being face with this absolute powerlessness/radical transformation possible in a split second/everything being taken away from you, etc. I've been thinking about it a lot and wanting to bring it into practice and life.
When I started all this, it wasn't about "proving that fruitions exist", or "just this" or "enlightenment is like pooping", it was something about life and death, which set my life straight, made it profoundly joyful, and possible to imagine dying very serenely and more. That's what I'm actually interested in exploring along with others who are interested. This thing about mortality and beyond.
Oh yes, I see now, this will clarify it. I'm talking about sacredness. A lot of this stuff is sacred to me, or should lead to sacredness. It's impossible to have sacredness in a place which is not singled out, separated from regular life somehow - that's the meaning of it, sacrum is separated. Especially when you have people who are gonna show up and make fart jokes about this life changing moment, you know what I mean
Or, when someone suggests something which is in the domain of poetic perception, as a meditation instruction, or very real existential possibility with inherent value, it usually gets classified as "waxing poetry", or "woo woo", or downgraded as "froo froo stuff".
Which is pretty offputting and violent to someone who's been writing poetry on impermanence since 13, lol, who spends lots of time these days playing bach and medieval church music, gets an enormous emotional kick out of Rilke, and is in the process of finishing a book started 1.5 years ago on the relationship between esthetic experiences and meditation.
Not that I'm against a good fart joke now and then, far from me this idea ! I do fart a lot. My gf loves it, you can imagine.
It's just that the reason why I'm here is not for fart jokes, you know what I mean, it's about the nature of reality, existential transformation, meaning of life and death, learning to live and to die well, and there is an inherent solemnity to that...
For instance, the first four fays of my previous retreat felt like the most fruitful, actually. Doing the brahmaviharas, and particularly, seeing the world as a place of suffering and transforming that into joy through breathing - was very powerful. I'm gonna pursue that much more. But the feelings that arise from that have nothing to do with Wake Up to Your Life, it's about transformation and mysticism, the poetry and infinity of existence. One doesn't have to cling to this, to want to infuse existence with this sense. But here, there will automatically be suggestions of the kind ; it will sometimes be reduced to a reductionnist vision of spirituality, which I know for a fact, is not clearer or more lucid, just smaller. Or, when you experience deep understandings about the profound interconnectedness of various religions/spiritual systems, and express that understanding, which is not something even questionable, because it's an understanding, and then someones comes and says - NOPE, that's not buddhadharma... blablabla... I mean, it's not that it's wrong to discuss and all. But what i'm interested in is deepening this thing i understood... Which perhaps someone with a certain view will come and say "hey, maybe you're looking for special experiences to talk about, but that has nothing to do with awakening ; you'll know what I mean when you grow up"...
Well, ok then. Very different than the conversations I had about all this with the resident teacher at my retreat center, who was actually keenly interested what I had to say, and basically invited me to talk there. Although, sure, other downsides there, FPMT dogmatism too, but since it was IRL, it's just different, here it was someone who was pretty much a renunciate.
And I'm sorry that this is turning into some kind of theatrical scene here. I'm definitely not blaming this on anyone you know, it's just circumstancial, structural, I think. There is something deflating about the possibilities of anything entering your field of consciousness unexpectedly, particularly, advice and other magical forms of communication of people who actually are trying to shift your energies, in a way, you know what i mean ? Not necesarily wih bad intentions, of course, but it's got effects.
And you know what they say : "Beatus vir qui non abiit in concilio impiorum, ..."
So anyways, stuff to reflect upon for me. I think it has more to do with being clear about what I want or not, than with the DhO itself, which, I repeat, has brought me a lot.
I might just be looking for religion, actually, more than just a meditation practice ; something which comes regulate all domains of life, with collective rituals, etc.
Xox
Thank you Chris, Tim, Linda, Papa Che, Steph, for your messages of appreciation. Very heart warming.
I want to point ot that what I was talking about is, I think, really as much, or mostly, caused by the sheer medium : internet. Chris is right, here, I think there's just inherent limits to the thing, and I'm sure if all of us were to find ourselves at some retreat center, practicing and exchanging, hearing each others' voices, seeing each others' bodies, etc., it would be quite different. Less distractions, etc.
So don't think I'm just shitting on this place, which is really great as the internet goes, honestly, and has been very beneficial to my practice, I think. I mean, the sheer reaction here is more than enough proof that the people who hang around here are mostly good, patient, appreciative, open, etc. No question about that.
I think I'm just the kind of guy who can't just go so far into this, explore the nature of reality to its depths, etc., on the side of an otherwise conventional life at the same time. I don't know, not sure...
So I do feel like there's a problem in spending a lot of time on an internet forum, which might also be a personal thing, sure. A solution might be, as chris said, to be more protective of what I put out and engage, but again, that's what you guys like about me I imagine, I'm very engaged and pretty radical in fact. Would be kind of paradoxical to superficialize my presence here, you know what I mean ?
Like, I recently had some interesting experience (vertigo/near fainting) which made me start thinking about death again. Something both very disturbing/moving and powerful/fascinating about the sense of things there. Being face with this absolute powerlessness/radical transformation possible in a split second/everything being taken away from you, etc. I've been thinking about it a lot and wanting to bring it into practice and life.
When I started all this, it wasn't about "proving that fruitions exist", or "just this" or "enlightenment is like pooping", it was something about life and death, which set my life straight, made it profoundly joyful, and possible to imagine dying very serenely and more. That's what I'm actually interested in exploring along with others who are interested. This thing about mortality and beyond.
Oh yes, I see now, this will clarify it. I'm talking about sacredness. A lot of this stuff is sacred to me, or should lead to sacredness. It's impossible to have sacredness in a place which is not singled out, separated from regular life somehow - that's the meaning of it, sacrum is separated. Especially when you have people who are gonna show up and make fart jokes about this life changing moment, you know what I mean
Or, when someone suggests something which is in the domain of poetic perception, as a meditation instruction, or very real existential possibility with inherent value, it usually gets classified as "waxing poetry", or "woo woo", or downgraded as "froo froo stuff".
Which is pretty offputting and violent to someone who's been writing poetry on impermanence since 13, lol, who spends lots of time these days playing bach and medieval church music, gets an enormous emotional kick out of Rilke, and is in the process of finishing a book started 1.5 years ago on the relationship between esthetic experiences and meditation.
Not that I'm against a good fart joke now and then, far from me this idea ! I do fart a lot. My gf loves it, you can imagine.
It's just that the reason why I'm here is not for fart jokes, you know what I mean, it's about the nature of reality, existential transformation, meaning of life and death, learning to live and to die well, and there is an inherent solemnity to that...
For instance, the first four fays of my previous retreat felt like the most fruitful, actually. Doing the brahmaviharas, and particularly, seeing the world as a place of suffering and transforming that into joy through breathing - was very powerful. I'm gonna pursue that much more. But the feelings that arise from that have nothing to do with Wake Up to Your Life, it's about transformation and mysticism, the poetry and infinity of existence. One doesn't have to cling to this, to want to infuse existence with this sense. But here, there will automatically be suggestions of the kind ; it will sometimes be reduced to a reductionnist vision of spirituality, which I know for a fact, is not clearer or more lucid, just smaller. Or, when you experience deep understandings about the profound interconnectedness of various religions/spiritual systems, and express that understanding, which is not something even questionable, because it's an understanding, and then someones comes and says - NOPE, that's not buddhadharma... blablabla... I mean, it's not that it's wrong to discuss and all. But what i'm interested in is deepening this thing i understood... Which perhaps someone with a certain view will come and say "hey, maybe you're looking for special experiences to talk about, but that has nothing to do with awakening ; you'll know what I mean when you grow up"...
Well, ok then. Very different than the conversations I had about all this with the resident teacher at my retreat center, who was actually keenly interested what I had to say, and basically invited me to talk there. Although, sure, other downsides there, FPMT dogmatism too, but since it was IRL, it's just different, here it was someone who was pretty much a renunciate.
And I'm sorry that this is turning into some kind of theatrical scene here. I'm definitely not blaming this on anyone you know, it's just circumstancial, structural, I think. There is something deflating about the possibilities of anything entering your field of consciousness unexpectedly, particularly, advice and other magical forms of communication of people who actually are trying to shift your energies, in a way, you know what i mean ? Not necesarily wih bad intentions, of course, but it's got effects.
And you know what they say : "Beatus vir qui non abiit in concilio impiorum, ..."
So anyways, stuff to reflect upon for me. I think it has more to do with being clear about what I want or not, than with the DhO itself, which, I repeat, has brought me a lot.
I might just be looking for religion, actually, more than just a meditation practice ; something which comes regulate all domains of life, with collective rituals, etc.
Xox
We have only one rule in this place and that is ELE ! Cmon' people we can do this! https://youtu.be/2nXJe9i70DE
and that is ELE ! Cmon' people we can do this! https://youtu.be/2nXJe9i70DE
Papa Che Dusko:
We have only one rule in this place and that is ELE ! Cmon' people we can do this! https://youtu.be/2nXJe9i70DE
and that is ELE ! Cmon' people we can do this! https://youtu.be/2nXJe9i70DEJesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dream-
ing so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it?
A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled
back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beau-
tiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little
ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
"Goodtime Jesus" by James Tate
Agnostic - Yes, I personally agree with the notion that the best course of action is to avoir such relationships.
I admire those who insist out of genuine compassion, but I don't play those games.
Hence I am now formally asking you to stay away from this log and myself - and let that be the end of this spat.
Wishing you the best, agnostic.
--
I'll add, for the sake of readers, that agnostic is not as advanced as he will make you think he is, and that you should also exert caution when he gives you pointing out advice and tries to delude you into buying his grim version of the thing. Own your practice, don't let anyone influence your life. There is a delightful spaciousness, clarity and freshness of existence which can be achieved and accompany you through the highs and lows of this unfolding, utterly out of control existence.
Notice that the fact that finding the prospect of letting one'sdefense mechanisms down so terrifying, makes a lot of sense in the context of NPD. One definition of narcissism is the the False Self is overinvested and the True Self is damaged and rejected. In that case, seeing through the false self indeed seems like a very scary thing. I'm truly sorry that this might be the case for agnostic, truly... but generalizing that to others is a mistake.
This has NOT been the case for me, on the contrary. I have gone on a total of several months of retreat now, over time, which isn't much compared to some, certainly, but I can tell you that none of these retreats involved terrifying shedding of psychological defense mechanisms... For me, the terrifying things happened during first path. Seeing through those, seeing that the stick was a stick, not a snake, has brought about persistent happiness and joy... Which is now basically constant.
This is not a subtle thing, people have noticed. My relationships are so much better. My life is so much easier. I recover from difficult times much more naturally. I am more humble, more real, very mortal still, which is perhaps scary, but now equipped with the necessary tools which allow one to face this suffering condition and transform it into joy.
And I'm not exceptionnal, people can do this, agnostic can do it, I have faith in that.
Well, enough said...
Listen to the ones who you consider to begod good (lol ! typo) examples and speak to your heart. Be clear about your boundaries.
Here are a couple of quotes from Dogen.
”Life is short and no one knows what the next moment will bring. Open your mind while you have the opportunity, thereby gaining the treasures of wisdom, which in turn you can share abundantly with others, bringing them happiness.”
“Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”
And for my own sake, I will add this other Dogen quote, contradicting some advice by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal in CTNS to not teach/help out too soon :
”Foolish people think that if they help others first, their own benefit will be lost, but this is not so. Beneficial action is an act of oneness, benefiting self and others together.”
Pax.
I admire those who insist out of genuine compassion, but I don't play those games.
Hence I am now formally asking you to stay away from this log and myself - and let that be the end of this spat.
Wishing you the best, agnostic.
--
I'll add, for the sake of readers, that agnostic is not as advanced as he will make you think he is, and that you should also exert caution when he gives you pointing out advice and tries to delude you into buying his grim version of the thing. Own your practice, don't let anyone influence your life. There is a delightful spaciousness, clarity and freshness of existence which can be achieved and accompany you through the highs and lows of this unfolding, utterly out of control existence.
Notice that the fact that finding the prospect of letting one'sdefense mechanisms down so terrifying, makes a lot of sense in the context of NPD. One definition of narcissism is the the False Self is overinvested and the True Self is damaged and rejected. In that case, seeing through the false self indeed seems like a very scary thing. I'm truly sorry that this might be the case for agnostic, truly... but generalizing that to others is a mistake.
This has NOT been the case for me, on the contrary. I have gone on a total of several months of retreat now, over time, which isn't much compared to some, certainly, but I can tell you that none of these retreats involved terrifying shedding of psychological defense mechanisms... For me, the terrifying things happened during first path. Seeing through those, seeing that the stick was a stick, not a snake, has brought about persistent happiness and joy... Which is now basically constant.
This is not a subtle thing, people have noticed. My relationships are so much better. My life is so much easier. I recover from difficult times much more naturally. I am more humble, more real, very mortal still, which is perhaps scary, but now equipped with the necessary tools which allow one to face this suffering condition and transform it into joy.
And I'm not exceptionnal, people can do this, agnostic can do it, I have faith in that.
Well, enough said...
Listen to the ones who you consider to be
! typo) examples and speak to your heart. Be clear about your boundaries. Here are a couple of quotes from Dogen.
”Life is short and no one knows what the next moment will bring. Open your mind while you have the opportunity, thereby gaining the treasures of wisdom, which in turn you can share abundantly with others, bringing them happiness.”
“Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”
And for my own sake, I will add this other Dogen quote, contradicting some advice by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal in CTNS to not teach/help out too soon :
”Foolish people think that if they help others first, their own benefit will be lost, but this is not so. Beneficial action is an act of oneness, benefiting self and others together.”
Pax.