So, I have a guy who is doing a meditation sit with me for a month, and I thought I would start a thread that talks about some of the things we have discussed, such that, when I have some useful thoughts on topics that may be of general relevance, I can post them here. He is doing quite well, actually. Do not extrapolate that anything written here necessarily applies to him in the way I wrote it, as he is just some of the inspiration for some of these little tidbits.
He is doing an insight retreat, very Mahasi-based, with some vipassana jhana aspects also helping guide what to do with attention, doing the traditional 4:30am-10:30pm schedule, gunning hard for stream entry.
Things that might be of general relevance:
If you see faces or shapes or other odd things in walls, floor, etc when walking early on, just note seeing, seeing. These are just what the mind does when it starts to get concentrated sometimes.
Note every second, even if you are board or not much seems to be happening: it is like building up muscles by curling one pound weights: takes many, many reps to get them strong, but they do get strong by doing that and then you really start to see why you did it.
When you start to get a good handle on your objects and their Three Characteristics, start adding in things in the background while keeping the foreground awareness just as good, particularly things like rapture, confidence, doubt, equanimity, speculation about where you are and map theory, effort, and how attention moves.
Doubt, fear, expectation, thoughts of success and failure, anticipation, worry, restlessness, and anything with a time component in it: these are like the magnesium flares that fighter jets send out to throw heat-seeking missiles off of the trail of their hot jet engines. Your goal is to find suffering, the fundamental suffering, and these are sort of like a cover for it, a distraction, but yet they are still actually hot, they still have suffering in them, still are an opportunity to get closer to the jet you are trying to hit. They are opportunities to notice what is common to them all, what is the subtle thing wrong in all of them: that fundamental background suffering that you need to directly comprehend to get stream entry.
When things are very clear, and you really can see many objects arise and vanish: add in any process or pattern of sensations that seems to be you and synchronize with that such that even the looking for those processes is just seen as happening now. This takes gentle, skillful, persistent but sophisticated attention and should be done sensation after sensation, again and again, all through your skull, neck, throat, eyes, chest, abdomen, etc. to anywhere that anything that seems to be you or yours is. In this way, the lessons you learned for your objects, that they come and go on their own and are made of sensations, can be applied to the fundamental processes that seem to really be you or yours, but of course are not. When you can do this, try to apply the same thing to anything that seems to make up space itself, attention itself, awareness itself, consciousness itself, looking itself, wonder itself, questioning itself.
Avoid drama when possible: do not be sent into wild emotions just by simple transient thoughts, images or little bodily feelings: this is undignified. We are strong adults here capable of handling ourselves in the face of ordinary sensations and even unusual ones, for after all, that is all they are.
Keep noticing sensations arise no matter what happens or what you are doing: this is really important. Not sitting when you are supposed to? Note what you are doing at least once per second. Having lots of thoughts? Note those. Feeling confused? Note confusion. Feeling anxious, restless, doubtful, or anything else: note it.
The fundamental thing is not what arises, but that you knew whatever sensations arose to be impermanent, to arise on their own, to be observed, and to have some fundamental tension somewhere in them.
You must keep reminding yourself that stream entry or any other attainment is to be found here, now, in these sensations, not in some future time or place, at least from this point of view. Thus, realize that now arises, and you can comprehend it clearly or not, but then another now arises, and again you are invited to clearly comprehend it.
Practice as if you teachers and everyone else were dead and you were stranded on a planet alone with no one else in the world: in this way, you take responsibility for figuring it out, for comprehending things directly and clearly. Just as with riding a bike: no one can really tell you exactly how to do it: you just have to get on and feel it for yourself. Despite all the great theory, maps and guidance you could get, in the end meditation is like this. You must stand on your own, figure out how to perceive what is happening clearly whatever it is, and get it for yourself.
I will probably have further thoughts as things go on and will jot them down here if I do.
