I've heard Daniel mention this about meditation during the Dark Night in general, that your ability to stay with an object in particular utterly blows; I've found this to be incredibly true throughout basically every day, whether I'm doing formal cross-legged quiet-in-my-room meditation for a longer period or if I'm just sitting for shorter periods in the library at the university here and trying to do samatha meditation on the breath. It also doesn't matter if I'm trying to do samatha or vipassana meditation - either way I just can't stay with it long enough, whatever it may be at the time, in order to really get something from it. By getting something from it, I mean the ability to progress beyond access concentration if I've decided to do samatha, or the ability to feel like I'm actually getting somewhere or noticing something if I'm doing vipassana. I notice the impermanence and the suffering aspects of what I'm describing for example, but it doesn't seem to yet get me anywhere. It just sucks and provides a nice boring philosophical argument.

It IS at least equally true that suffering exists in my meditation too, and that I can't hold on to even that, no matter what form I try. So there's truth to it, but other than proving a philosophical point there's little comfort in that.

It sounds hopeful when people speak about the attainment of equanimity (I'm still not sure if this relates to the sort of emotional feeling of equanimity or if this means something else unrelated), but it seems like sort of a Catch 22: how can I clearly observe the "lack of control" and get something from it when I really don't even have the control to unwaveringly be aware of it? Try as I might it also changes. Every moment of my observation during concentrated meditation almost imperceptibly winks in and out of existence, and that makes it incredibly hard for 1) to manufacture a convincing sense of fluidity if my goal is concentration practices and 2) to stay with it in either case. It's not a matter of technique, because I've sampled from more than several, from straight meditation on the breath to noting practices (the switching awareness between your two index fingers as quickly as possible and watching the shift) to trying to pay attention to vibrations of all kinds both in the body and in the mind...the technique's not the problem, I could benefit from any one of the many I already know and practice if it were just a matter of using it. Any one I use I still slip and waver badly.

If it is simply a matter of willpower in your concentration, maybe my will isn't as strong as some, but I can't believe it's that much weaker than the average person. Any words of encouragement or wisdom?

On another point, could someone try to explain to me how it is exactly that after the cessation of suffering, aka Enlightenment, individuals still undergo mental and physical suffering?? My reasoning up to this point has always been that the arahat experiences suffering of various sorts but somehow always has a sort of separate aspect of his awareness that is intrinsically free from suffering once he's attained awakening, sort of along the lines of "well I'm shitting myself and dying but by this wry spark in my eye the outside observer can see I know a secret that makes it all ok.", but somehow the unsettling thought remains, "if no one is exempt from suffering (thus proving the truth), then how the hell does anybody get away with making the claim that there's a cessation to suffering?" If perception is eternal no matter what and that eternal perception includes the full range and more of everything we naturally experience in life anyway...see where I'm going here? There's also no such thing as a separate or permanent self, so that eternal spark in his eye aspect that connotes that some part of him is living on the shores of Nirvana watching and awaiting Parinirvana and the freedom from all suffering of any kind seems like dogmatic crap. Yes I know there's no such thing in actuality as the subject-object duality and so therefore you can't help but experience the full range of your humanity and perhaps find the ultimate beauty in it in your Nights in White Satin moments of semi-equanimous reflection, but that doesn't answer my question, does it?

What are you trying to stay with when doing noting practice? What if you just note whatever comes up? If you find your mind has wandered, note that, too.

Easier said than done, I know... I had some really, really annoying sits where I would beat myself up for not being able to see "it" or see the sensation in just the way I wanted to. But that very (and very intense) annoyance is what had to be investigated.

What exactly happens when you sit? Like where does your attention go when you can't stay with something?


Arahat as defined in MCTB is apparently not the end goal. From what I understand from their reports, there is still suffering (like unwanted emotions), but it's just seen for what it is in some way and it doesn't affect you in quite the same way as a result of that... Actually Free people say they experience no suffering, though.



I don't think it's a matter of gaining emotional equanimity and then that causes the insight stage. It's more, you see things in an all-inclusive way that softens their impact, and that causes emotional equanimity. Like when I first got to it, the very things that pissed me off a second before stayed exactly the way they were, except they didn't piss me off anymore because I understood something or other about them.

I was a little vague when I said noting, hahaha. That actually means more in the sense of general vipassana/insight meditation, but when I'm doing that it usually falls under the heading of Shikantaza meditation, which usually works pretty well actually in terms of how much I can stay with the feeling...I can never stay with the feeling of sitting though, with the awareness of that, for more than 5 or 10 minutes before my focus begins to wander and I have to bring it back, but by the time I notice that the focus is already slipping and or on a daydream I've lost the "power" of the meditation. I guess now that I think about it a half an hour long stream of one-pointed attention isn't terribly realistic or necessary, since my lack of control and the slipping and the suffering from that and then finally the inability to find a permanent self or continuity in all of that IS my lesson. I suppose I want to not lose the focus at all because in that case I won't have to lose my focus, then a few moments later come back and have to superimpose the thought process and go, "oh I lost it there and this means this and this..." and get tempted to go off on a philosophical thought-tangent. Instead it should be something you see and realize, not consider and ponder over consciously. When I sit, however long I sit, wherever I sit, it's basically the same experience in that I "stay" with my focus (which I try to keep with the sensation of sitting if I do Shikantaza in order to ground myself but which also includes whatever else I can actually notice), but I have to keep bringing myself back every once in a while and that's not even factoring in my confusion about the question of thought...I'm not supposed to try to repress the arising of thought and I can't anyway and that's sort of the point then...but when I shift into thought I naturally lose my awareness that I've shifted until a moment later, so what gives?? I've heard some hocus pocus about being able to think thoughts without being drawn into them, but so far I haven't found that possible.

As far as emotional equanimity, well I've gotten THAT many a time, but it wasn't an attainment so far as I know; it's a temporary mental/emotional state that makes you feel semi-godlike in your wisdom and sooort of seems to impart the wisdom of experience and a kind of piercing perspective throughout general life, but it doesn't make my meditation any better at other times when it vanishes and it doesn't provide any kind of the-gates-are-crashing-down-wow-look-what-I've-just-found experience.

A suggestion: Do walking meditation while trying to understand the phenomena of slipping away into thoughts.

The "how" of my suggestion is this: (1) you find a reasonably unobstructed straight line you can walk back and forth on, either inside your house, or in the garden if you have one. (2) You walk back and forth, knowing that eventually you will be distracted, but determined to get a better understanding of how that happens. (3) Aim for catching a distraction at the right moment, which is when it has matured enough to have a life of its own, but not so much that you have wondered off for very long, so that you still have some short-term memory of the event. (4) you can then use this: ask yourself "what happened between the last time I was present and this moment of having slipped away?"

The walking back and forth is great because when you turn around, that acts as a trigger to remember to return to the exercise.

Try to correlate getting distracted with sensations in the middle of your brain. Once you find the spot where it happens, notice what else happens in that region, by applying a persistent, but soft and relaxed focus. Notice the fluttering, notice how intention interacts with it, notice the pushing and pulling (which is craving and aversion). Get into equanimity, and take notice of that spot in that state.

(PS: This is what I was doing when I got stream entry)