Hello to you all, this is my first post after lurking here for years (since 2014, when a fellow meditator asked me if I knew about the progress of insight at the end of a retreat, leading to MCTB and the Dho). A huge thanks to Daniel and to quite a few members of this forum for challenging my opinions and opening my understanding...

I have been practicing in the Goenka tradition for the last ten years (with at least a retreat a year and a couple of longer ones) and... I've been hesitating for a long while to share my views here, as it is obvious that this tradition has its shortcomings which have been thoroughly documented in various threads, and that some moderators are quite blunt about dismissing it. Well, here we are. I chose to keep on with the technique even though I was aware of the tremendous efficiency of the noting practice, through MCTB and testimonies on this forum.
It was a tough choice, based partly on the desire to attend longer retreats (for which you need to dedicate yourself exclusively to Goenka's tradition), but also on the need to check for myself. True, Nikolaï (http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2010/11/going-for-stream-entry-on-goenka-10-day.html) gives a great account and advice for reaching cessation in the course of a 10 day retreat. My purpose here is more like... "what are the benefits when you don't"?
So I decided to pursue with this practice until no further progress would be made, as I had a sense that something precious was unfolding from retreat to retreat and that some understanding was developing. I was also curious to see if I would reach stream-entry on Goenka's instructions. It prompted me into analyzing more what I was doing while body scanning and looking into the connections between this kind of noticing of the body sensations and (my limited understanding of) the noting practice. I am still at it five years later...

As it is the only (or most convenient) retreat option for a number of meditators, I believe it would still be valuable to some here (those who are acquainted to this tradition or are curious about it) to try to make the most sense of what happens during these retreats and afterwards, and maybe question their understanding. And to me as well of course, to organize my thought in a coherent whole here... We'll see about that one!

This thread is mostly meant for people who are already acquainted to the technique, as I won't go into certain details. If you don't know anything about these retreats, better read an introduction elsewhere first (sorry, no link yet)...
You are also welcome to chime in and discuss the techniques. I won't venture here into a critique of the organization (which would deserve its own thread). I would love to have some experienced old students share their own understanding, and maybe question the dogma, fully understanding it is something thoroughly discouraged in this tradition (I fear for wrong reasons. I chose to use an alias because it is heard of people getting blacklisted from further retreats for diverse mysterious motives).
So bear with me... I will try to argue why it may be interesting to spend years and numerous retreats on this technique as I did (and still do, even though I can see many here asserting that it is plain stupid!). I see it is often presented as a powerful (and dangerous) introduction to meditation, which does not deserve further deepening after the infamous A&P has been reached... I will try to explain why I think otherwise.

So let's start... with anapana. Goenka places great emphasis on sila, bringing his own cultural background (some say with a trace of Jainism) on his interpretation of it. I won't discuss it right now as it is a big subject.
I noticed that Goenka practitioners tend to parrot him when they describe their meditation practice. I take it as one of the downsides of never verbalizing your experience. Please correct me if you see this trait in myself (I will use brackets when I do it on purpose)!

(... to be continued)

Anapana

My first point is that "anapana" in this tradition is not a pure concentration technique. To reach optimum concentration, it is known from the experience of seasoned practitioners and teachers, that you should not be too hard on yourself, even though intensity is needed. Here, you arrive and on Day 1, you sit for ten plus hours intending to focus "on the small area below the nostrils above the upper lip" (I call it "the zone". Ok, that's for old students, the area is a little bit larger for beginners -oups, new students, not necessarily beginners-, including the whole of the nostrils). Still, focusing on a relatively small part of the body generates some tension (until one rests effortlessly on the said area, which in my experience takes years of practice), and sitting for that long creates A LOT of physical tension. This is clearly not ideal to enter jhana territory, but it is quite a good way to start understanding how your mind-body reacts under stress. After a couple of days of doing this, you have thoroughly reduced the mental chatter and often encountered your first altered states of consciousness, but in the process you have created a good deal of physical stress that often went unnoticed (should I say subconscious) as you strove to only take into account what was happening on this small area (usually devising complex strategies to achieve this, from subtle breath control to active dissociation). For me, as I had my issues with breath control (different practitioners face different issues!), my pattern was: observe the "zone", notice any tension there, notice the subtle control, let go of it; see a deeper layer of control where you thought there was none, let go of it etc...

Also, for beginners, there is usually a lot of pain until the mind has gotten quiet enough. I would not force myself into stillness, it will come later (physical stillness involves stability of the mind, so there is some fine tuning here). You should move when you really need to, aware of how your mind loses its balance in the process, and back to it. Goenka says so, but I suspect many people can't hear it.

I believe that we spend part of the retreat from day 4 onward dealing with these tensions (the ones we "created") until we have encountered them consciously, and they have "dissolved" through concentrated and equanimous scrutiny, allowing us to feel deeper layers of sensations (there is a lot in that little sentence to comment on, I will come back to it later. What is this "dissolving"? How does it work? What are these layers of sensations?).

I would try not to aim for anything (forget about jhana for that matter, though it is our nature to want to achieve lofty goals in little time), and perform the exercise to the best of my ability noticing any tension that is the fruit of my practice (there is much more to be said about the various kinds of tension). Goenka states that "anapana is a preparation for vipassana". This is because, by day 4, you are well aware that suffering is a defining characteristic of sitting still for extended periods, and most will have started to find some connection between the calming of the mind and that of the breath (maybe also seeing, at times, how thoughts unexpectedly pop up in their concentrated mind). Now it is time to start to explore the mysterious relationship between mind and sensations in the body...

(... to be continued)

"Vipassana"

Ok, so first I apologize for the fact that this tradition has claimed ownership on the term "vipassana" and has equated it with a meditation technique where you understand the three characteristics of experience in each bodily sensation you encounter while performing the infamous "body scan" in various ways. This is why I read “Living Dharma” by Jack Kornfield back then (going through the table of contents in a secondhand bookshop), as I did not like the easy dismissal of other traditions by Goenka... I will try to stick to the term "body scanning" when discussing this technique.

After spending three and a half days focusing on the "zone", you are taught (or reminded, from your second retreat on) how to move your attention around your body in a, at first slow and ordered way, during a gruesome two hours session where Goenka's art in slow burn instructions reaches its apex. Noting the characteristic of impermanence is focused on as the main tool to cultivate dispassion. Practicing this way, you will deepen your understanding of equanimity, and you will cultivate your will (to place your awareness on the desired object, whatever it is). You may also experience intense pain or bliss...

I believe that whole body awareness is the natural follow-up to a more circumscribed concentration when time is ripe. Here, ripe or not, you have to switch to the body scan wherever you were on the concentration spectrum after 3 and a half days of concentration (1/3 of the retreat time, on longer retreats as well). Actually, as a beginner (as long as you use extra tension to help with concentration), the more concentrated you are on the "zone", the more difficult it will be, at first, to move your attention through the different body parts (and movement will tend to break your hard-acquired concentration). First, you "force" it on the "zone", then you "force" it around the body... A lot of forcing, thus tension involved where there should hardly be any in a perfect world (concentration being a kind of tension)... A tension overload might bring full dissociation that will launch you unprepared into an A&P, with all the unfortunate consequences that have been well documented here and elsewhere. That's my take on it as I did not experience an intense "dark night" myself, I guess because I let concentration build up (more) naturally after learning the hard way on my first retreat. I believe I was then mostly prepared for what has come so far (never say never!).
The "rationale" in this tradition is that there is no “you” to create any tension (or anything for that matter), that through introspection you are just revealing what is. What is constituting "you", actually. It makes sense, and working with tensions is used in many other traditions as a tool to contrast with the state of open awareness and learn from this contrast (that's an important aspect of initiations, and I tend to think that these retreats have an initiatic feel to them, although a very non-shamanic one, as the exploration of different realms is not contextualized and dismissed as "just experience").

Also, when I say "around the body", what I really mean is "around how you picture your body in your mind": never forget that all this happens in your mind. If it is not a visualization (Goenka repeats "no visualization" day in, day out), it is a thorough "feelization"!
I would posit that, if we consider the framework of the five aggregates (another traditional and interesting way to frame or make sense of our experience), there is nothing such as "bare contact". None of the aggregates exists by itself, they are all interdependent. "Rupa" is the object side of the experience, which is only knowable through "nama" and all the different parts of "nama" are a condition for it. If one truly disappears, the others cannot be. Consciousness is experience, "vedana" involves recognition, categorization, "sañña" needs some kind of volition and "sankhara" (the Beast in this tradition) exists inside viñana... They only exist together. So there is no "bare contact" in the absence of "sankhara" or any other aggregate. The extinction of one of the aggregates brings the extinction of the whole of "nama rupa". Cessation... That's paticcasamuppada one o one. I spent quite a while trying to make sense of the order of presentation of the aggregates until I realized this. This idea reflects the fact that perception is projective (see also enaction in phenomenology).

The body scan performed year after year will generate an ever changing felt map of the body (with a general tendency toward spaciousness as a baseline), where your consciousness will have its landmarks... well, a map delineating the moving boundaries of your consciousness really, with its luminosity fields and its blind spots, an emptiness (first a changing substance) within which you will find emotions and higher symbolic content. The quality of the scan will tell you a lot about the quality of your mind. Not so much about the actuality of your anatomy (that's my take on it)...
It will also deepen your understanding of the process of perception. I said in the last paragraph that perception is a projection based on our previous representation of the world that transforms it through new input. The awareness also brings all the conscious and subconscious qualities of the mind in the perception of this moment, thus giving it a color which taints the object. Actually, a big development in my practice was when I started noticing the qualities of the awareness that performs the scanning. From then on, I decided to stick with the technique, and never got bored again.

(... to be continued)

It is essential to always keep in mind that the vipassana aspect of the body scan is only present if your are aware of at least one of the three characteristics, impermanence being the tradition's choice (well, we could argue on the differences with "noting it"). If not, it remains a good concentration technique, once you got used to moving your attention (more movement at first entails more restlessness, thus tension, in an interesting feedback loop), easing on the tension that you might have created when focusing on the "zone".

One of the most common critique is that the practice only deals with the body sensations, leaving aside the mind and emotions. While it is true that you can sometimes get absorbed in full body awareness (or any other object) to the point of not recognizing emotion and not producing discursive thought (full body absorption), you are still only observing the content of your mind in this moment and my experience is that felt sensations sometimes reflect some content of the mind that eludes conscious awareness, providing a valuable window on the subconscious.
One of the most obvious manifestations of this is how our being deals with exaltation. Let's say you reach a stage for the first time where your whole body is bright bliss and quick easy vibrations. Even if you were told a thousand times not to feel elated, you will (this is our nature), and it will unbalance your mind, creating restlessness that will generate tensions (after a little while depending on the density of this layer of your mind. This is a fascinating area to explore, the latency between cause and effect, the time necessary for karma to ripen... my experience is that strong concentration greatly speeds up the process, allowing you to discover unsuspected chains of causality). These tensions will manifest as "uneasy" sensations somewhere in your body, bringing you down from this elated state. So, next time you reach this same kind of experience, you will have learnt your lesson and remember "seriously, I don't get elated this time". Well, the recurring appearance of difficult sensations will help you understand that some subconscious part of your mind did not get it yet.

This state (of perceiving subtle vibrations) will get more and more refined, more and more balanced with time and practice, but the outcome (each time it reaches its apex, a state that we never experienced before) will generally be restlessness which will trigger different reactions which will lead to solidified ("gross") sensations. So you will run repeatedly in a state you might interpret as "bangha ñana" (knowledge of dissolution). But if you try to locate your experience on the insight maps (dissolution, then a good existential angst, serious derailing, equanimity and path), you might be in for a disappointment (if it is not the time for your big ride, as I believe there are many shades of dissolution before the real deal). Here, scripting comes in the picture. Let's go back a bit: the main instructions are "just observe the reality as it is" and "the practice is to be aware and equanimous". But, after a few days of body scan at increasing speed, Goenka informs you "cautiously" about the stages you might meet in your practice: "now or in the future, you might encounter a free flow of subtle vibrations running through your entire body", followed by "do not crave for it" then "a stage where there is no solidity anywhere, inside, outside, this is bangha!", along with "beware of not clinging to these stages, they are dangerous for you might crave them etc." Well, it is natural that a student will wonder if he has reached this or that stage (free flow, bhanga), but he might develop unhealthy curiosity about it and equate to quickly his experience with that insight stage (I believe that agitating the mind -moving quickly from an object to another- will lead to A&P'ish experiences... and to restlessness, and that can lead to self delusion in the long term. It is true of any set of beliefs that has to do with spiritual development).
To be fair, Goenka always asks us (even mature practitioners) to often come back during a single session to a practice where we move "part by part, slowly and attentively", looking for blind spots or solid sensations. I believe it is to keep us balanced and learn plasticity and resilience (and because coming down in speed will help us maintain balance in practice... But maybe "losing it" is a necessary stage on the path to cessation... The scan maintains a subtle duality between subject and object when more letting go might be needed. For this particular outcome, at least. Even when we stop the scan after bangha, it is not final, and we should come back to the surface of the body regularly for further "purification".

Well, I guess it is time to say something about the stages of insight. I suspect that noting practice speeds up the mind (Daniel is a good example!), rushing the practitioner through the stages of insight with a certain lack of stability that makes insight "shallow" until full stability is achieved (4th path?). Concentration, as practiced here (with a narrow one-pointedness) slows the mind down, and the body scan, alternating a quick flow of attention with a slower "part by part" practice, prevents you from going too easily on overdrive and "lose" it, making it a long road for insight experiences.
But, by deepening your understanding of equanimity, you make this... frame of mind ("a balanced and equanimous mind") the basis on which the different insights will proceed, which seems to make sense. That's my experience anyway, no quick A&P for me. For those who hit the A&P early on, well, the tradition will be of no help to you, so... better read about the stages of insight! (Goenka says that you might run into “gross, solidified sensations” after dissolution (itself a "very high stage indeed"), but seems to keep the meaning of “adinava” or fear etc. as the fear of getting lured into the pleasures of the very subtle sensations of dissolution, which you conquer by being disgusted by it and then desire liberation).

Anyway, in order to alter your experience on purpose, your concentration needs to be strong enough. High states of concentration bend perceptions, allowing you to act on something which is usually the field of deep subconscious influence.

One of the problems with this method is that you are totally helpless when you get lost in content (when you have thoughts powerful enough to interrupt or derail your scan). Here we need a technique to help us return to our concentration. Noting seems to be really valuable when this occurs.

(... to be continued)

A note on cessation

I need to say that, even though I've had a serious practice and stuck to the instructions, I did not have a taste of nibbana yet. Well, the teachers do not consider it a likely outcome even in the long run. Goenka's description does not seem to fit perfectly with a cessation (which is why you'll likely be dismissed if you go to the assistant teacher with a cessation report). He says something like "After you've explored the whole field of vedana (and let go of it), you will reach a stage beyond mind and matter, where there is still consciousness with nibbana as its object". And also that "Nibbana is fourth jhana with awareness of impermanence". So it seems that it is not exactly "no consciousness"... More like a non-dual absorption? This has been bugging me since I heard of the Mahasi type of cessation... is it possible to have serious progress in insight without coming through this non-experience?
As I see it, noting speeds up the natural development of the mind and its outcome is the bleep. Scanning is intended to accelerate the mind in a "reasonable" way, alternating between fast and slow processing, and does not get the mind to a sufficient momentum to produce the bleep, the goal being the result of a process of endless purification, which will lead to "the end of suffering".
Does it mean this technique produces no insight? Experience is linked to insight in a complex way... in that some insights produce certain experiences, but any experience has numerous causes (apart from insight), and no experience is bound to produce insight, there has to be a movement of the mind towards it...

So, apart from that, what kind of benefits do I experience in the long term?

I believe that proficiency in attending to the felt body image in daily life is a valuable tool to monitor your emotional state and not get lost in content. It is a good anchor for concentration.
In my experience, the perception of the body as open, as a fluid field of experience, conveys the feeling of being an open void through which the winds of karma blow freely, in the best times without solidifying into suffering (so the "end of suffering" is possible in the here and now, if not forever...). It is a fruit of concentration, but goes quite a long way in transforming our worldview and reducing suffering. It is also a good point from which to practice metta (I like Analayo's take on metta: to radiate the different qualities of the brahmaviharas, the fruits of your practice, in all directions, though I can see why Goenka makes use of verbalization for this particular "technique", as he wants to provide a balm for the participants at the end of an intense retreat).

We need to make use of a set of beliefs (or a "frame of reference") to make sense of any experience. I like to use, sometimes, the idea of our awareness navigating (or being thrown around) various layers of consciousness (or realms of existence, 31 of them in the buddhist framework). With the scanning, we learn to move our awareness horizontally on one plane, but we may notice that our perception of the sensation varies, that the "distance" between our awareness and the sensation changes, increasing as we maintain equanimity, decreasing as we react with aversion. With the distance comes fluidity, then dissolution, and with mastery we achieve vertical plasticity of the awareness, meaning we can change layers effortlessly, thus accessing further layers, well the whole range of human experience, really, from the lowest hell realm to the highest brahma realm where the experience is so subtle, so subtle and the body is long gone. Each layer has its backlog of knots which will prevent us from accessing the next one. So, it is a very long, but rewarding process of "purifying" all these layers until a hypothetical final liberation. It is a path of concentration with insight as a tool to jump to the next realm. "Getting the joke" in Kenneth Folk terms, will have you make a sidestep from the wheel of existence into cessation, and get a more or less serious understanding into the nature of reality, but you will still need to get back to experience for change to take place (karmic change, purification of the mind?). I think I remember from his three talks with Michael Taft (best podcast so far, by the way) that he was advocating coming back to the physical sensations, to which I thought: "Ok, all 4th paths to Goenka retreats!". Hum... I would venture that the nature of dissociation from experience is not the same whether you work with body sensations or with mental concepts. I think that's what Goenkaji is pointing to when he demands that we stay with body sensations. Not so good for quick understanding, but useful for karmic purification. He believed in purification, and most meditators in this tradition do... For me, there is cleansing going on, but there is no end to it (in the sense that you will not get rid of your subconscious, and you will not function in life without some set of beliefs deeper than "you", that's why the concept of "paranibbana" was introduced, death will tear us apart...), so the end has to be a sidestep... which is no end, really.

I believe that Goenka had a very strong baseline concentration (he taught over 300 ten days retreats before 1990, to give you a faint idea of his sitting history), which explains why his vision of the path was highly tainted with concentration, and why his students value retreats so much, to the extent of maybe missing insight. It also makes the Goenka centers these very special places where one can achieve such concentration that will lead to progress. Quite a lot to let go of, really...

Well, I only scratched the surface of the practice and it is already a long post. I will sit on this until more development emerge from the deep...

Metta to you all, friends in dhamma

Dear SS, you’ve done an outstanding job of describing the technique and I’ve learnt some things from the telling of your more advanced practice in that tradition than I ever managed to achieve. My response will be short as I don’t have much time, plus on a tablet, this text window doesn’t scroll so I’m limited to only a dozen lines or so before I lose control of editing. 

Very briefly, I know, and everyone I’ve asked knows, of not a single case of someone who attained Stream Entry or higher paths in that tradition, and as I’ve stated before, frankly I’d say if anyone does actually fit the bill, that they probably augmented their practice with other stuff. Fact is, the G method doesn’t allow observation of all 6 sense spheres, which is (AFAIK) essential to develop total Equanimity to all formations, and thereby set up the conditions for path knowledge to occur. The Mahasi method happens to do this, hence why that method has produced countless SEs just among the people I know, let alone more widely. Second, I can think of not a single justification for holding back on attaining path & fruition as this is where the real ‘fun’ (or work) begins (nor A&P for that matter). So the belief that one should develop one’s practice over a longer time for greater benefits than ‘rushing’ to SE via Mahasi, makes zero sense to me. The Pali Canon has numerous tales of people who approached the Buddha for teachings when it was not convenient and he turned them away. They insisted with the claim they know not how long they will live, and struck by this pointed plea, he relented. As if to prove the point, said people always end up dying right after attaining liberation upon hearing his words. Anyway, point being, even the Buddha would agree that one should attain liberation as quickly as possible, as one knows not how long one has. And any work yet to be done for someone who rushed through can be done better after that stage. 

I appreciate you starting this topic, and I want to say this with absolute metta and compassion and not at all in a sectarian way, I hope you branch out and bring your apparently very strong foundational skills to a broader noting method, and thereby attain liberation as soon as possible. The world needs more considerate and compassionate meditators such as you, up there teaching and disseminating the good stuff. Thanks again, and metta to you!

Paul, if you click on ”source” you can scroll on your tablet. At least I can, on my ipad.

...

I appreciate this thread very much. Great posts! Thankyou, Smiling Stone, for starting this topic and presenting it so thoroughly!

I have been on a lot of goenka retreats, sitting and serving. I obtained stream entry after the 3rd retreat. Goenka's advice of "continuity of practice is the secret of success" being the key for me. I had no idea what happened at the time and it didn't really matter much. I know of several others who obtained stream entry. I suspect there is a considerable percentage more but it is not talked about. Stream entry isn't even mentioned in the 10 day course. Not until the satipatthana retreat which would have to be at least the 4th retreat.
Unless you are parting hairs, the technique is the same as mahasi. At least the initial mahasi instructions. Put your attention on your meditation object i.e. the abdomen. When something grabs your attention, come back to the abdomen. There are a lot of similarities. The differences are irrelevant in the big picture. Mahasi might have a larger % but I suspect it is related to the quality of retreatant. If you hop on a plane and go to Nepal for 60 days, you are more serious and, likely, more experienced than your average goenka retreatant. That said, goenka is doing volume. Even with all of the goenka shortcomings, the cumulative effect on the world will be very positive.
One sense door works. It works with fire kasina. It works with body scanning. I can vouch for both. I have heard reports of people using the ringing of the ears or smell via incense to do vipassana as well. I feel like I can easily experience subtle impermanence in the visual or tactile sense doors better than most just because of the hours put in with kasina and body scan. However, it is not possible to just focus on one sense. Mental and auditory echos show up in the body and visa versa. Trying to focus on one sense door will definitely bring a lesson in not self.

That said, I like 6 sense doors as well. I seemed to stall after SE body scanning. Body scanning plus noting thoughts then eventually just noting led to further progress for me. I am grateful for having all of the tools. Not that I am saying multiple are better than one.

The important part is getting SE. After that, progress will be inevitable and intuitive. Do that in whatever way works! I agree with Paul on branching out if scanning has not worked after all of this time.

[quote=Very briefly, I know, and everyone I’ve asked knows, of not a single case of someone who attained Stream Entry or higher paths in that tradition, and as I’ve stated before, frankly I’d say if anyone does actually fit the bill, that they probably augmented their practice....
]

If you check the link in the OP to the blog I contributed to, that blogpost has a lot of posts added towards its end from a now anonymous yogi who has been only within the Goenka tradition and by their admission, attained to stream entry via the sweeping method applied without gaps on a ten day. 

Nikolai

https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/analayo/development-insight.pdf

i posted this comparison by Analyo in a new thread but thought it may also fit here.  Please excuse if thats not the case.

cheers
tom

Hey Paul,

Thank you for your very kind and articulate post.

Thanks for your concern about my progress. While I do not have the nagging sense of a desire for path (I was little bit obsessed for a while after reading MCTB, and thus feel quite comfortable where I am... I am fully aware that, by posting here, I will get this kind of answer ("switch to noting ASAP"), and I acknowledge it might be my subconscious (?) query... It is perfectly fine, but I am primarily looking for ways develop the understanding of the practice in this tradition, not to switch for another one, if we admit the two methods are really different in the end. These retreats will continue to flourish and attract more people, unless Daniel, Willoughby Britton and the likes make enough noise... which would be a really good thing, to my point of view, as it would force more people in the organization to recognize the downsides of the dogma... well, I am not sure anything would actually change but one can still hope... I don't think they foresaw the impact of the internet on the (lack of) ignorance of the retreatants (which is still not so obvious on retreat).

As for reaching Stream Entry asap, I have read quite a few threads here in the past five years, as well as the practice journals of Nikolai, Chris, Noah and others (Shargrol?... it was a while back) on awakenetwork.org (plus the Hamilton Project... I wanted to thank them all for sharing their practice and insights which such generosity). I have, I believe, a fair idea (not worth much, I admit!) of the path as they are laying it before me.
I really value their insights, and I try to emulate them by making my practice as open and inclusive as possible.

As for cessations, there is something about dissociation and the path that is questioning me (it is in the air, it seems), and that I am currently trying to articulate better. Let's try: To paraphrase Freud (a dangerous game, but this line seemed to make sense to me): "Repression does not always take place through repression, but also by the disjunction of the links of causality, which is a consequence of the drawback of the affect". It seems to me it is pretty much what we are doing when we train our equanimity: "do not react to this", aka "you are not this, this is not you". Is this dissociation skillful? In psychology, they draw the line between healthy and pathological dissociation. Healthy dissociation is the result of resolving your emotions through acknowledgment and acceptance, it is a natural movement of the mind when an experience becomes habitual. The affect linked to the experience then diminishes until it disappears. It will then be written in memory with neutral affect, or forgotten. Pathological dissociation takes place through trauma: you just obliterate what you cannot stand. Bringing back to the conscious mind the body sensations through awareness, the body scan makes conscious (and first full of affect) what was till then unconscious. The practice then tends to make one familiar with all kind of sensations, thus slowly freeing them from their emotional content. When the affective load is modified, perception changes, lightens, lessens until disappearance...the sensation has been resolved (natural dissociation could take place and undo the repression that was there before)... if and only if there was no trace in practice of pathological dissociation.
Cessation, being the culmination (or perfection) of equanimity towards all formations, is total dissociation from the six senses. I think that progress on the path may hide unresolved issues. Whatever method we use, we should be careful about how we are reaching balance, so we don't bury (too much) stuff, and we don't create more than what we let go of. Also, while cessations demonstrate a capacity to touch perfect equanimity from time to time, working on baseline equanimity (meaning when some sort of concentration is involved) makes most sense to me. (Sorry for the rambling... am I trying to rationalize my fidelity to the scanning?)

PS: As the initials of Smiling Stone are loaded with historical horror, I would rather you all call me Stone, Smile, S. or whatnot... Your go !

All the best
Metta
Smiling Stone

Hi Linda,
Thanks for your encouragements, I enjoy your practice log, your healthy curiosity and your general presence on this forum.

With Metta
Stone

Hello Jason,
Thank you for your testimonial and your advice (I would not say that scanning has "not worked" after all this time, though).
I find the discrepancies between your post and that of Paul quite interesting. I hope more people will chime in.
I see you give valuable advice to people going on these retreats. Keep up the good work!

Metta
Smile

Hello Nikolai,

I said it in the reply to Paul, but thank you again for being an inspiration and one of the reasons why I got hooked on this forum in the beginning.
Any more anecdotes about your contact with Goenkaji (I would love to hear more... though I understand these were your dark night years, maybe that's why you don't talk much about it) ?
Anonymous Yogi does not seem like the average practicioner to me (very inspirational as well!). Does the pce the year before SE mean she was already in contact with Actualism or that it was posted on an actualist forum? I would love to have her take now on all this, but I gather she might not talk/write ?

Metta
S.

Hey Tom,

Thank you, no hijacking, Analayo is my hero !
Actually, I thought you were sending this:
"The Ancient Roots of the UBa Khin Vipassanā Meditation" :
https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/analayo/ancientroots.pdf

and realize it is a different article that I have not read yet. Bravo !
I will read that shortly and with great interest as always
and put some links to other ressources of Hamburg Uni on one of your Analayo threads (three now, if I count well?)

With Metta
Smiling Stone

Your kind words made me smile. Thankyou!

As for cessations being dissociation, that’s not my experience at all. Sure, for a very brief moment no information is being projected into consciousness, but I don’t see any problem with that. In fact, the reboot of the consciousness resulting from it enables a far more vivid experience of life and helps a lot with building a baseline equanimity.

Best wishes for your wellbeing and practice.

Interesting. My first retreat was a Goenka retreat. After that I branched off towards noting, where I actually understood what the 3Cs were. But now, after almost a decade, I'm considering going back and giving Goenka another try, because I suspect that the whole-body scanning might do something good where noting fails, because in noting it seems to be rather random where your attention ends up.

I recall that something like this is actually Goenka's argument for why his technique leads to enlightenment ("get all them sankharas, not only some of them), whereas others don't: sankharas are everywhere in your body, so you need to observe the whole body.

So my own experience is that there are many things in the mind which maybe need to be clearly seen, but when I do noting, they're simply not visible and just fade into the background.
Anyone who has a lot of experience in both approaches and can comment on this argument of Goenka?

Sorry for commenting despite lacking experience, but I find it fascinating that sankharas in the body go unnoticed for people. It is probably due to having Tourette syndrome that I often find them all too obvious. That’s a mixed blessing, I guess. My brain doesn’t have that kind of spam filter. It’s a pain in the ass to be aware of all these tensions all the time, but I have come to find it helpful with regard to purification. The body does indeed harbor a seemingly endless amount of sankharas, and every layer that is peeled off is a relief.

I just want to point out how the statement on body scans making the affect conscious is both true and untrue. In theory, it definitely should work this way, but I've also encountered enough people that seem to be perfectly able to experience sensations and yet be blind to emotions, or urges, or thoughts. So I think it's possible that, for some people, they can connect with body sensations and never quite access suppressed/repressed emotions and thoughts.

It surprised me the first time I encountered it, someone being able to tell me phenominologically what they were experiencing in terms of sensations, but when I asked them if they noticed they were adverse/angry (which was obvious) they didn't connect to it. I also remember someone who could connect to was obviously doubting, uncertain, and always mapping/comparing their practice, but couldn't report their thoughts about it. In both of these cases, they were doing a combination of body awareness and noting ---- but were not noting whole  categories of mind objects (emotions and thoughts). 

This is why I think working with a teacher helps. We all have blind spots. In both of those cases, it was clear that they need to do dedicated noting of sensations for a period of their sits. Similarly the other person needed to do dedicated noting of "practice thoughts" during their sits. My sense is that body scanning was not going to be the answer for them. But who knows?

I think the biggest factor for Equanimity and SE is actually getting good at noticing urges (pre-emotions) and thoughts-as-thoughts, especially thoughts about practice. 

But that's worth what you paid for it!

Thanks for your input Shargrol !
Actually, I totally agree with what you say. I have met enough people high as kites on retreat, convinced that the technique would solve all their issues (not unlike the actualists who "do not experience emotions"), which was so obviously off the mark.

Also, I do not think it is a reasonable goal to hope we are going to unearth and solve all our blind spots (with any technique or therapy, for that matter - maybe more with the latter than with the former, though). It has a name in Daniel's models...

I guess my last post was not that skillful, I have to learn to interact on the forum (like, answering people without thinking too much about it and without saying stupid things or getting carried away)... I wanted to talk about the ways to develop equanimity, stressing that some are leading us in a dead end (using the term pathological dissociation, I would say that is what you are talking about). It is a risk if you focus on sensations discarding emotions and thoughts (a common feature of Goenka practicioners, I admit, as it is exactly what Goenka asks us to do: "do not give it any importance"...). I guess it would be helpful to translate vedana as "experience" instead of "sensation" (maybe Analayo talks about this somewhere, have to check)

To Linda, thanks for your feedback, I did not want to imply that cessations were bad or unskillful, but that maybe there was some issue with the equanimity leading to them
I should not have used the word "dissociation"... But I am at a loss for a better one!

I take your advice Shargrol, thanks (and it comes cheap enough!)
With Metta
Smiling Stone

Hi  Raving Rhubarb,

Thanks for your feedback, it is exactly the kind of topic I hope this thread will adress.
As to "get all them sankharas", goodluck, with any method (see also Shargrol's post to ponder why I say "sometimes")!

Metta
Smiling Stone

Hey again Linda,
The fact that you find your sankharas obvious does not imply that you have access to all of them. That would mean you have no subconscious whatsoever, no blind spots etc...
Sankharas are all types of volitional formations, not only reactions. In the dogma of this tradition, they "cristalize" as body sensations and this where you can deal with them, with awareness and equanimity. When you have dealt with them all, after a short honeymoon period where you might feel you have gotten somewhere, you are granted access to a new, "deeper" layer of sensations... an opportunity to deal with a few more sankharas. I do not think it is very healthy to believe we are going to get rid of all of them. That's parinibbana -did I say that somewhere already ?-... And I would not be too quick to equate bodily sensations with sankharas...

All the best with your practice
Wish you a fruitful retreat
Metta
Smiling Stone

Hi Smiling Stone,

Thank you for your post. It's interesting to hear the perspective of someone who has been in the tradition longer than I have. I discovered Goenka 6 years ago and have only been on three retreats so far. I also would say that my daily practice has been somewhat lackluster at a steady 1hr a day for maybe 300/365 days a year. That being said, on my last retreat in late 2016 I got what was definitely A&P and believe I progressed to EQ. I've been going through a difficult transition in my day to day life (got fired and am currently looking for a job for the past few months) and today just realized how important the practice is to the day to day quality of my life.

I've never been the best with sila or continuity of practice. I tend to give into my cravings for sensual pleasures, smoke marijuana/drink socially, lie in the job search to make my resume look better, and will miss a day of practice when I have a really good streak. But the frequency of it is becoming less and less and so is the actual to desire to part take in these behaviors. I use to do all of this pleasure seeking at a much higher volume than I do now, even when it wasn't a "stressful" period in my life. According to his yardstick of if the practice is benefitting my life, I am seing slow but consistent improvement.

I've realized that I tend to devolve into craving and aversion in difficult periods and have yet to see what a "diffuclt period" in my life looks like while maintaining practice. I've spent a number of hours today reading materials for old students and it has made me realize that there is no escaping dependent originiation. Every moment I succumb to craving or aversion, I create more suffering for myself. I tend to make excuses for my practice, ie I'm looking for a job so I can't afford to take 10 days to do a retreat or I can't do two hours of meditation because it will eat into my productivity (meanwhile I just sit around watching TV  :grin What today has made me realize is that this is just doubt and aversion talking.

Continuity of practice is the key to success, and the short periods of time where I have been able to maintain it post retreat have been the most peaceful and "in tune" periods of my life. Of course, I understand the whole point of this is to not be pleasure seeking, but maintaining continuity of practice allows me to not get "absorbed" in that pleasantness. I ate some leftovers today that yesterday I was thinking man this is good stuff. Today when I ate it, I didn't not cling to the pleasant sensations. It was just food with pleasant sensations. The difference between the two days? More concentration and commitment to dhamma. I've also been practicing metta more consistently and that has been huge as far as my day to day interactions with others goes.

All this to say that I haven't given the Goenka my 100% effort yet, and it has still been very beneficial for me and moved me along the path. I'd like to give this tradition a real go with 100% commitment and see where it lands me. I suspect it will do me well given the number of people on this forum who have gotten SE and also the benefits it has had in my life up to this point. It may not be the "most efficient" way to get SE, but I think it will get me there eventually. At worst, I will be generating a wealth of good karma for my future attempts at liberation.  It has still been the most valuable thing I have discovered in my life as far as reducing my day to day suffering and "finding the truth" is concerned. As long as it continues to do that, I will follow the tradition.

Metta,
Maher

P.S. - I tend to run into newcomers in this tradition more than others. Very few people tend to stick with it from waht I've seen. Perhaps this tradition was only meant to introduce them to dhamma. Regarding the discussion about feeling different cravings, emotions, thoughts, and sensations etc I can definetely tell when they arise separate of each other and am able to distinguish them. For example, an ithcing sensation arises on my nose and a craving to itch it arises which causes a thought of moving my arm to scratch the itch to arise. If I just observe this process and do not react, I believe I am eliminating some sankharas

Hello Maher,

There are a few things that come to me reading your post:

You feel guilty about breaking your sila. This is extremely common among Goenka practitioners as there is so much emphasis on it during retreat. While it is important (the sila), I am not sure it is very constructive to add guilt to it, especially as you do not seem to harm other people in an obvious way. What you are doing is good, identifying your weaknesses and doing your best to correct them. But your post is actually full of self depreciation, like you are exposing us how you are not good enough... good enough for what? I feel it might be good to question that tendency in you...

You also feel guilty about not practicing two hours a day... Well, meditation is a difficult business, and scanning is especially hard to maintain in daily life, hence the advice to do one retreat a year, which always seemed sound to me. I see on your other post that your last retreat is 2 and 1/2 years back, that's a long time, and it is quite an achievement that you could maintain a daily practice until now. One hour is already very good (I would do my best to sit everyday, it makes a difference). Goenka asks for two hours because it enables you to maintain the momemtum of practice between retreats. With one hour, it goes down, which means it gets harder, that's all. No guilt necessary here either. Certainly frequenting this forum is a good help, as are the shorter courses (1 day and 3 day courses are very useful to give a little boost to your meditation). It might be good for you to sit a course whenever convenient. The two hours will be much easier after one. And your understanding of the practice will deepen after each course

I wish you the best with your practice and with your life.
I hope you find something useful in what I said. I would recommend that you read the interviews of Analayo I posted in Tom's thread on Satipatthana. They were quite an inspiration for me.

with metta
smiling stone

Great thread, folks! Sorry to call you that acronym, Stone ;-) 

I don’t want to get into arguments, as this part is only my opinion based on what I’ve seen/heard. I will just say in response to the 2 or so posts about people getting SE in Goenka, that as I already said, I’d doubt it was done using Goenka only, regardless of how the individual’s story pans out. Fact is, some rare people get SE never having meditated, so it’s also possible some people get SE with a modicum of practice in any tradition. That doesn’t disprove my point that as a method it is not geared to getting the average punter over the SE line. Jason’s point re one sense door is enough is very interesting and I hadn’t looked at it like that so will carry that with me for a while and see how it fits. 

And Stone, I still see absolutely no justification for delaying SE. Post SE is hands-down better than pre SE. And so in true pragmatic Dhamma style, I’d say whatever gets a yogi over the line in the shortest possible timeframe is the path to be going with all one’s energy. Be careful of letting complicated psych theories get in the way of simply advancing one’s practice. Linda is spot on about cessations being positive experiences (or at least the immediate aftermath is). I’d even advance the simplistic notion that dissociation is more likely to be a feature of the thinking of an individual struggling with the 3 poisons of Desire, Hatred, and Delusion, thus coming back around to the importance of getting SE asap. 

Thanks Linda for the source tip on scrolling - it works! Now I can ramble on as much as I like. Haha. 

Hey Paul,

I appreciate your input, and value the fact that you have had a long term involvement in this tradition, which gives you a strong basis for your analysis... And I see that you were on a serious retreat frenzy in Burma, going really deep into review and innumerable fruitions last December (and also that you were a monk for a while!). I was very impressed by your exchange with Shargrol at the time, and I understand how you could loose interest for what comes before that. My post must look like hopeless kindergarten... And I would tend to bend on your side in this argument with Jason. I would love to learn more about your practice history, and at which point you felt stuck in the Goenka tradition...
Am I intellectualizing that much, really? That bit about dissociating and meditation has been on my mind for a while, I admit. I can also see how there has been an attempt to rationalize the fact that I did not attain cessation by questioning it! By the way, if an advanced Goenka practitioner has a better rationale than me sustaining this view, may he share it, we are interested (yes, the total eradication of "sankharas" is final liberation)...

I will try to be a bit more specific about why I started this thread. Of course I wanted to test my understandings against this community, because I feel I belong here somehow, aware though that many here would be critical towards this particular practice. I also had the desire to reach other meditators in this tradition and give them the drive to write themselves (because I do not pretend to hold any truth. My comprehension of the path is ever changing, hopefully on the up slope most times but who knows when one is deluded? I just want all this to be a basis for reflection and development).

But deeper than this, what have I been doing these last five years (since I came in contact with pragmatic dharma)? reading eagerly outside of my tradition to open my mind, to get different ways of looking at the path, different angles of practice, and trying to integrate all this to my sitting practice, while keeping with the scanning. I did quite a few retreats, including long ones (by Goenka's standards) since I read Nikolai and anonymous yogi's advice on how to gather the right conditions to reach stream entry on (or off) retreat... As I said, I am happy with my progress, but I must admit: no cessation so far. So I might be a little bit thick and it will come when time is ripe, I don't have a sufficient urge for hardcore practice... Or maybe I had an unknown unknowing event years ago which I did not acknowledge at the time (there seems to be a strong bend toward this kind of "delayed insight" around here)...

So now is the time to ask myself (and maybe get feedback here): what am I doing wrong (if anything) to miss that important aspect of the path?

- The main thing I have done is let go on effort, so as to let the scan do itself when it is fluid enough. Of course, I suspect that the nature of the scan itself, even in its most passive form, makes it difficult for one to meet the level of letting go necessary for stream entry. I still slightly direct the attention one way or another. That's the thing, I did not let go of perception of body itself, because I could still feel so much tangible progress attending to it.

- And yes, I have been trying to cultivate awareness of the six sense doors on and off cushion, focusing on impermanence. I can sense the inertia brought by long term attendance to one sense door (and only a few aspects of it: before "see hear think", I was pointed towards proprioception and gravity as other fields of sensate experience I did not focus on at the time). So I am still trying to find the right balance, mainly doing it when my felt sense of the body has been pacified, meaning I do not have to ignore "body" to attend to the other doors. Well, working on it. (I guess the advice not to mix different vipassana techniques comes from the confusion it tends to produce at first. For other meditation techniques, it is more an energetic issue...)

- A good friend is deep into Douglas Harding and the Headless Way, and it seems a genuine tool to work with subject object duality in the visual field. It cuts a lot of the intellectual game of the neo advaitin I am not so comfortable with... Been playing a little with that with high concentration on retreat during the breaks from sitting, as well as in daily life.

- I have been investigating the sensations that constitute the self, which has gained quite a bit of plasticity if not disappeared (the first few layers of tension in the back of the head and chest are long gone).

- I have been trying to catch the first signs of volition. (Shargrol is always spot on, it seems, and I guess it maps me around the equanimity ñana). And I have been noting my thoughts during the scan (especially the thoughts related to practice) since I read Nikolai say something about the Goenka yogis spacing out in equanimity... After thinking "but me... I never space out! I have full on awareness 24/7". Well...

- I have met my girlfriend, who gives me thorough (and much needed) feedback on my personality and flaws (and qualities as well sometimes!), and helped me reappraise love and the deep link between two beings. I learn so much from sharing my life with her! I also see in some Goenka practitioners this strong desire for celibacy, sometimes at the expense of their current relationship, and I tend to think it is often delusion and repression, rather than a real extinction of desire. There is this tendency to put the cart before the horse when it comes to sila, which is promoted by Goenkaji and which I find detrimental to balance.

- She is also deep into bodywork and developed a very precise mapping of the body, which relies heavily on anatomy, which made me ponder my own sense of "mastery" in this field. She sometimes identifies tensions in me before I do... but is still fascinated by the kind of peculiar knowledge I am developing.

- I have been reconnecting with my emotions (yes, I got a bit disconnected at some point), recognizing I was not free of unwholesome ones (that's heavy in MCTB, and that's what Shargrol was talking about, I would say it is linked to all the beliefs we are exposed to repeatedly on retreat (see celibacy), because to believe anything solidifies the mind around it, and there is quite a bit of faith involved in this tradition about how the practice will transform us quickly and how we'll be able to resolve every emotion through monitoring our reactions to body sensations. Been there, done that. There is some truth there somehow, but many emotions act on a layer we are not yet aware of.

- I agree that there is a huge difference between ignoring something ("do not give it any importance, just ignore it and keep on attending to the sensations"), and recognizing, then letting go of it (noting it). I now try to do the latter (noticing rather than noting, so I do not feel like I introduce a new technique), as I realize the former may lead to some kind of dissociation (my belief nowadays).

- Finally, I have been letting go of the scan when I got balanced for a while in the vibratory field of consciousness (considering I was somehow in dissolution) and focused for a few minutes at a time on the small area near the heart as Goenka recommends doing so in long courses. I will come back to this soon as it is a big topic.

Hmmm, so in the end I guess I am quite attached to body awareness, and I want to see what happens while attending it, when maybe the only way be sucked into cessation is to turn away from it. And I can see there is a strong inertia in my mind from the practice all these years, which makes changes difficult... and also some pride, as I would have liked to sort all this out myself. Thoughts?

Sorry for this long post again, but I feel if we can identify together more accurately what is lacking in the scanning technique to attain path, and make some slight adjustment to make it more efficient in this regard without denaturing it (well, we will, in the Goenka sense, I am afraid), it would be of benefit... for myself first, but also for numerous practitioners who feel they have been dwelling in equanimity for long enough.


metta
smiling stone

"
So now is the time to ask myself (and maybe get feedback here): what am I doing wrong (if anything) to miss that important aspect of the path? 
"
Do you have a typical retreat pattern both in terms of MCTB progress of insight or Goenka sign posts?

What does your daily practice look like?

These are good questions, Jason, I will answer them asap.
metta

Yup, this is the key point... But it sorta begs the next question which is related to correlation between equanimity and cessation: if someone isn't able to develop equanimity to the point of cessation, are they really able to dwell in equanimity? 

Even this has to stop. Do you see how the "I" is trying to catch the "I"? 


EDIT: adding on... the real trick in EQ is first getting good at noticing sensations as sensations, urges as urges, emotions as emotions, and thoughts -- especially thoughts about practice -- as thoughts. And then radically let them be exactly as they are without avoidance or manipulation. Neither clinging to nor avoiding.

But the tendency is to always have thoughts "about it". 

Once you can watch your self have thoughts... then you are very close. 

When you can notice thoughts about the self or thoughts about thinking... then you are right on the doorstep.

When you can listen to thoughts and they becomes sounds that seem to hit the mind like little pulses... then you are stepping through the door.

And when you are sitting in meditation, meditating on the mindstream, and you step through the door, you will fall into a hole, and then you land in the place you are already sitting.

Hey shargrol,

Thanks for the post. In your opinion, what does it mean to "watch yourself have thoughts?" I experience many times where there is thinking going on. Sometimes the content is very clear, sometimes the thoughts are less clear and hard to decipher, sometimes the thoughts contain I statements, sometimes they don't, but generally "I" am aware when there is thinking going on. Sometimes the thinking is intentional, sometimes it is not. I guess, my question is, what is the difference between identifying with thoughts and just being aware of them?

My attention seems to quite naturally bounce between the six sense doors without much effort or volition. Sounds, thoughts, tastes, smells, touch, and sights are just kind of randomly chosen as a point of focus. I am also generally aware when an urge to do something arises or an urge to not do something arises. I def hit A&P on my most recent 10 day Geonka retreat 2.5 years ago and believe I was able to make it to EQ before I left. I've been practicing relatively consistently since then, but haven't been able to go on another retreat since. (looking to fix that ASAP)

Based off your experience with Goenka, do you guys think I'm in EQ?

Hi Shargrol,

I love when you chime in, that's a beautiful post! a little bit of poetry in an otherwise stern thread...
I will ponder this, not assuming that I have it integrated already. I try to catch the "I" that eludes my eye, oh my...

metta
smiling stone

Hi Maher,

re: "what is the difference between identifying with thoughts and just being aware of them?"

The thoughts you identify with, you do not label them as "thoughts", they are "you" in this moment. They escape your mindfulness practice.
The emotions you identify with, they submerge you (my way of putting it, if that makes sense for you). You dwell in anger until you realize you are angry. You lost your mindfulness.
The sensations you identify with, you do not see them as sensations, they are "you". They are off your radar.
The sensations you objectify but still react to (when scanning for example), they amplify across consciousness and feed the ego in a process of mental proliferation. To change this reacting pattern is the primary goal of the scanning practice.

re: "Based off your experience with Goenka, do you guys think I'm in EQ? "

My experience with Goenka does not make me proficient in mapping! I don't think that's how it works, though. I doubt one can maintain a retreat insight for 2,5 years without very strong daily practice, and I am not sure it is a question that will help you progress on the path... but let's see what others, well versed in this art, think...

metta
smiling stone

Hello everybody,

I wanted to try to expose a little bit more of my own practice, in order to bring different aspects of this path to the discussion.

But before I proceed, I wanted to share why I find it difficult. It has to do with the purely phenomenological approach which I dodged in my first posts (I hoped you got a feel about my practice in between lines, though): when I define a sensate experience as this or that way, gross or subtle, solidified or flowing, peaceful or vibratory, what kind of representation do you get in your mind? Does it have anything to do with what I try to express? The main idea I want to convey is that my experience of a “sensation” is everchanging through practice, that it is dependent on the content of the mind that experiences it, so that living without reifying any sensation (as existing in and of itself, as ultimate) would qualify as my most important insight so far.
Said another way, what I considered a subtle sensation a few years back, I might now label as “gross”, and I hardly remember what meant solidity on my first retreat, as I have not had access to that quality of experience for a long time. How do I convey some sense of the growing subtlety of my practice, which is a big part of what makes it different from before?

As far as insight is concerned, my take on it is that, when you are not mindful, you are nowhere on the spectrum of insight. When you become aware of the object your attention “chooses”(whether you direct it or you just witness it going somewhere, attending something, or whether non dual awareness manifests itself), only then do you enter the “maps”. Apart from that, an attainment would be the baseline quality of your consciousness which is maintained even when you are not aware. For example, my daily practice these days is suffused with peace and ease, sensations are subtle ripples in consciousness. Actually, the mapping of the body which is the fruit of my practice, which contains all the perceptions related to “body”, is just one bubble in the space of consciousness. The perceiving of the self is another bubble, which merges with the first one if I direct the attention towards the sensations related to the self in the body. If I look for the subject, I cannot find no bubble, I am still immersed in it. And if I test the felt limits of “my” consciousness, I am back within the cartography of the body, there is a limit beyond which I have no access except with the help of imagination. Hence the fractal nature of the different aspects of awareness.

So, what is left of this outside of meditation, when I forget to be aware, when the cartography of the body disappears as I identify with thoughts? I would say a quality of spaciousness in the mind and of presence to the moment, a joy in the background, a plasticity of the ego who does not take itself too seriously. This is my attainment. It is not rock solid, it gets sometimes obscured by anger, endangered by restlessness or worry, or it sinks for a moment under worldly feelings, but it is a baseline I can rely on these days. I am quite confident it would change after a while if I stopped practicing... but I don't, it is a balancing part of my life, even when I get edgy after a particularly peaceful or empty sit... it happens because you don't get highs without lows, this gets clearer and clearer in my experience. Baseline is neutral, but when you explore the confines of your inner world, nature has to restore balance. It has never failed so far...

Ok, back to retreat then... what is the apex of the practice on retreat? I will attend to the sensations on a deep layer of consciousness if anapana got me into unknown territory (sometimes it is not the case and I will enter vipassana in an already very open state). The scan will go slow at first in the substance of that layer. Then the awareness will get more and more free and flowing until I get the whole “body” (that whole layer) instantly (meaning very quickly). This quick movement of the awareness changes the nature of perception, giving it fluidity, but also creates restlessness, thus imbalance in the mind and more difficult sensations in the scan. After dealing with that and reaching the stage where there are vibrations everywhere in the body, and at times strong activity in the upper centers in and above the head (which has also become less intense, tending toward void) I have in the last couple of years directed the attention for a couple of minutes to the small spot Goenka talks about in the long courses (Nikolai and Tarin discussing it in this thread: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/93663). There is no mention of it in the ten day course.
I have to be clear here. Bangha is considered a very high and rare stage to attain in this tradition, and I would say there is more of an A&P feeling to where I am when I concentrate on that area. And I have in the past (after the years of plainly reacting so I would loose balance) felt kind of stuck there, getting a little bit tired by the intensity of the sensations (they have much more of an empty feeling nowadays), or bored by the perceived lack of change (aha)... or craving for progress...

So a few minutes around the heart area, nothing special really, a little bit of residual tension the first times I tried this, but often nothing but openness. After, back to free flow around the body (a luminous sphere at this point) alternating with attending to it part by part, “slowly and attentively”. In the half hour following the exercize, I would start to notice some kind of solidification of the substance scanned, and after the next break (maybe two, three hours later), I would notice a huge upsurge of restlessness where I would be overwhelmed for a while, fully identifying with the agitation, followed by a serious solidification of the sensations in some parts of the body. Back to the bottom of the map... and it would take me from few hours to few days to a few weeks to cycle back to free flow and spaciousness of the perception. That's really how I got a sense in this tradition of the cycles Daniel is talking at lentgh about. And each cycle brings in the end more subtlety to the perception, less room for the ego... I am cycling from solidity to fluidity, from restlessness to peace, from heat to the cool, from cohesion to dissolution... I have experienced the fading of perceptions, rarely on retreat but more often during daily practice, and I can see how you need dispassion towards all formations for it to reach its conclusion. Hmmm, that would put me below the dukkha ñanas, hence the solid good mood of the past few years !

Also, my first go at this was after twenty or so days of retreat, when concentration was at its peak. With less concentration, the latency between cause and effect will increase a great deal, so you cannot make the link between your change of mood and the focus on that spot, or you did not contact a deep enough layer to face strange consequences. What I am talking about is different from feeling pain, or unease or fear in the chest area. That's where it starts, though. I think that's one of the reasons why we use the zone “under the nostrils above the upper lip” as the point of focus during anapana: because we first release tensionsrelated to the breath in the head or in the abdomen in other traditions before attending to the deeper knots of the “heart”. That's also how I understand why Goenka retains that information and generally asks us to always move our attention. Strong energetic effects, sometimes overwhelming, thus dangerous, can be triggered from staying anywhere for a long time... maybe not anywhere, but who can tell for sure which points trigger deep reactions? Where do the knots related to repressed emotions and anger locate themselves?

“From heat to the cool” : actually that one was more of a long term process. When I started meditating, it was always “burning” after a while, I thought it was a feature of meditation practice. A few years back I was serving on a retreat and I went to meet with this young AT with a really good vibe. I felt a coolness in his presence which I associated with nibbana (the extinguishing of a fire). I had a two hour sit every morning where I would objectify the heat (that came up mainly in the second hour), which I would consider as kalapas of the fire element. The whole body was burning vibrations. After days of doing this (loosing balance at some point and working my way time and again through solidified sensations up to that unified field of... intense heat), something started to move, getting slightly subtler, but it was another couple of years before heat would recede into the absence of heat. Nowadays, extreme heat appears quite seldom in the practice, under special circumstances... same for solidity or restlessness... It is rare now that attention does not move freely around the body. It happens after the mind gets overwhelmed by a particulary deep emotion, one I could do nothing but reify for a while...

Finally, we have to understand why serious goenka students do not have interest in cycles or in this kind of disclosure of personal experience. It is because it means dwelling in the past or projecting in the future, hence proliferation of discursive thought and leaving the present moment. Also, trying to locate yourself on the maps might serve the solidification of the ego. Actually, I respect the letting go of any idea of progress which I take as a sign of maturity on the path, and in the last year I have stopped to go through that process of provoking cycles for a while, as I identified a slight dissatisfaction towards the state I was in when I chose to concentrate on that area, and a not so subtle desire for progress...

Well, I hope some of this will be of use for someone!
My opinion about all this is bound to change, so take everything with a grain of salt, and practice skillfully.

with metta
smiling stone

I didn’t mean to imply that I’m conscious of everything. Of course not. But I’m aware of enough tensions to deal with at a time. And when I have dealt with one layer, a new one opens up. I don’t have to dig for them to appear. There are enough of them at the surface to keep me busy, and enough layers to keep me busy continuosly. So no, I have no illusions of getting rid of them all.

I do not equate bodily sensations with sankharas, although I tend to somatize (I have a diagnosis of that) so pretty much of my traumas seem so have ended up in the body. Still I do not take for granted that all sankharas are available as bodily sensations. I just replied to a comment about some people being unable to notice that kind of sankharas.

I don’t think there exists any human being without blind spots, or perceptual barriers. I guess I was just trying to express my fascination about how different people’s perceptual barriers are. For me it is painfully easy to acess the top layer of bodily tensions, so my perceptual barriers are probably primarily somewhere else. I do not doubt that I have them. Maybe I just have more bodily tensions to deal with than most, wherefore more of them are accessible. I don’t know. It is a fact, though, that the basal ganglia of people with Tourette syndrome, like me, do not do their job of keeping lots of impulses from reaching the conscious mind. Other stuff still remains subconscious, of course, due to other processes.

"It is a fact, though, that the basal ganglia of people with Tourette syndrome, like me, do not do their job of keeping lots of impulses from reaching the conscious mind."  

Hi Linda,

I am really sorry if you felt like I was patronizing or something in my answer to you. It was really not my intention.
What you say is interesting. The first goal of the scanning is really to get you to the point where you can feel sensations anywhere in the body. So Tourette takes you way ahead in this regard...
I just wanted to vouch for the existence of a multiplicity of layers, which is a fact  in my experienceso far. But which I am ready to reconsider under new evidence! For me, once you cleared a layer of tension, you go through a phase where you feel like you're done -no tension anywhere-, only to find after a while that this state of “emptiness” unearthed deeper stuff you have to let go of. Or that what you felt to be “empty” was just full of sensations you were not sensitive enough to recognize. There seems to be no end to this but, as I stated in my last post, things do get clearer and clearer with time and practice, and the stuff you work on subtler and subtler. Except when it isn't!
So you say that some biological wiring do make people have really different access to sensate experience, and to different layers of perceptions. Like, on the opposite side of the spectrum, hyperactivity of the basal ganglia could really prevent people from accessing their sensate experience, and thus from following that particular insight route. Also, does a meditator reprogram his/her biological wiring (I guess they do, somehow, as the way we use our attention actually shapes our perception)?
I am really happy to get more feedback from you. The concept of layers of perceptions is still fragile as far as phenomenology is concerned, just a way for me to make sense of experience...

with metta
smiling stone

Hi again! No worries. I just wanted to express myself more clearly, because my initial formulation was obviously foggier than I realized when I wrote it. I share your experiences about the different layers. That’s a very good description.

I do think that Tourette syndrome can take someone way ahead in that specific regard, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing. It can make the experience too overwhelming for someone to be willing to work with it, so I guess it depends on a variety of circumstances whether it’s an advantage or a disadvantage. I avoided all forms of both relaxation exercises and vipassana body scanning techniques for many years, until I was able to deal with all the sensations. I know that I’m not the only one. It was Shinzen Young’s many dharma talks about equanimity that made me realize that the tics are actually an excellent opportunity for practice, especially since it worked, and that my sensitivity with regard to sensations in the body is actually sensory clarity and can be a good thing. I noticed that the tics seemed to be my mind resisting insights into the three characteristics, because if I met the impulses to tic with equanimity and let the sensations run wild, so to speak, those insights were hard to miss. Maybe this is something that Daniel could look into in his research, matching insight stages with medical diagnoses. I think there might be interesting connections between neurodivergence and insights. #research #insight stages Anyway, approaching my wiring like this is helpful for me, as it enables me to see opportunities instead of mere difficulties. I think there are some advantages to all kinds of wirings with regard to insights. One just needs to find them.

It sounds very reasonable to assume that hyperactivity in the basal gangliae (a really strong mental spam filter) would prevent someone from accessing at least some sensate experiences. That would actually explain a lot. I know some very non-impulsive people who have great difficulties in accessing sensory input, emotions and even thoughts. Of course, that’s only anecdotal. I have no idea whether that would hold up for a statistic analysis. It sure is an interesting hypothesis.

I do believe that meditation can rewire the brain. Apparently there is some scientific evidence to that, including tests on Daniel’s brain.

Metta right back at ya.

I don't know the answers to any of this. But, I will tell you that things changed for me when I realized the extent to which "emotional reactions" accompany perceptions. This became clearer after I spent a lot of time just noting "pleasant" or "unpleasant" anytime I noticed anything. 

They changed again when I stopped trying to keep my eyes in one place, and keep my body rigidly still (although, I probably wouldn't have been able to stop doing that if I had not first practiced many hours of trying to keep my body rigidly still).

I'm still trying to figure this all out. But right now, I'm feeling like there's no sankhara without bodily sensation.

It's funny that you are bringing this up... Years ago, I had a girlfriend with Tourette syndrome, and I remember some of the physical tics she had. I have been finding recently that one of the keys to getting through very difficult meditation experiences is allowing my body to contort itself in ways that really resemble what I remember seeing her do. And then those contortions get smaller and smaller, until it just feels like something that happens on the inside. I wonder to what extent they are related.

That’s interesting. I have the same experience, but that kind of surrender doesn’t feel like tics at all. I guess the compulsiveness and suffering associated with the tics are dependent on the delusion, at some levels, of a self who is in control. In those meditative experiences there is no sense of a self controlling the process. The process just occurs on its own. Maybe that’s why I actually like those purifications. Physically they are no worse than what I have gone through most of my life, and the suffering component is no longer there. It’s a great relief.

EDIT: on second thought, I don’t think the experiences I’m thinking of contain similar movements, but rather sensations of movement, as if someone were tearing parts of the body. There are probably actual tensions involved there, though, as I have come to notice. I do think that it’s important for me to let go of those eventually. The tense movements are residual resistance, related to clinging/craving and aversion. On the other hand, there are also kriyas that are more about letting go of control to get rid of blockages. Those can resemble tics quite a lot on the surface, but they are the opposite of compulsion (tics are compulsive, which is why they are so draining).

(edited again to correct poor English)