(continued from part 3)

WHOA

Clinging and craving are two very different things. Clinging doesn't have much at all to do with the object.

When the object arises, the clinging starts up. As the object begins to fade, the CLINGING REMAINS AND BEGINS CLINGING TO SOMETHING ELSE, AND THIS FRAMES THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE OF THE NEW OBJECT.

I just want to sit for hours and hours and follow this process wherever it leads.

(maybe I'm misusing the vocabulary of dependent origination here, not sure...but I'm describing something real)

Since you're onto me now, and i'm outed as a spider working under an alias, all blessings on THIS thread.

Haha, love it.

I'd appreciate it if you could keep this to yourself, by the way. People really change the way they interact with you, once they even suspect you might be an arachnid. 

Isn't the same true for craving? Once a craving has been fulfilled, the craving moves onto a new object? We have a whole economy based on that, after all.

(laughed out loud at the arachnid outing implications joke)

I think that what you're calling "craving" is more like what I'm calling "clinging", so yes. But what I'm trying to get at here is even more moment-to-moment than that.

Imagine you point a camera at someone and take their picture. Then, they leave the frame and someone else shows up, and you decide to take their picture next. But, you forget to refocus the camera, and you just leave everything set up as it was for the first person. And you get upset because it doesn't look right!

You are probably right. I read about the different realms before going to sleep this night and found that the way I distinguished between craving and clinging didn't seem to fit. It seemed that the very human experience I had in mind fitted more with the clinging described for human realm, whereas the craving described for hungry ghosts was something else. 

Yes! I can see this. It seems to be in action all the time and clearly the echo (that's' how I think of it, as an echo) of the last object is the mind's easiest interpretation of the previous object. Kind of like my economist friends who tell me the best projection of any given stock's closing price for tomorrow is today's closing price.

The way I'm thinking of it is something like this: if you hear someone calling your name, you might turn your head in their direction. That's clinging. Now, at that point, even if they stop calling your name, and even if they disappear, and even if you totally forget about them, your head is still going to be turned that way, and this will inform every experience you have going forward. 

If, after they disappear, you chase after them trying to get them to come back, that would be craving.

That's how I'm using the words, anyway.

Let me add something important:

Let's say you are in the presence of some food that you find appealing. Your body will start doing all kinds of subtle things to orient yourself in the direction of that food. This is clinging.

Then, suppose you can't get the food. But you're still in that mode of pleasure-seeking. So, when a new object appears (Netflix, for example), and promises a similar level of pleasure, you will be MORE LIKELY to notice it, and thus orient in that direction.

If some other pleasurable object were to disappear, because you are in that mode, you will be MORE LIKELY to notice its disappearance, and will thus be more irritated by it.

So in this way, the craving is informed by the clinging. But the clinging doesn't care about which object it's clinging to.

Something like that, anyway.

Yeah, "echo" feels right to me too

Why is this important? Because it means that you've been operating under the delusion that your interpretation of this moment has something to do with THIS MOMENT, but in reality it has more to do with the PREVIOUS MOMENT.

That's why you have such strong emotional reactions to this moment.

All you noticed was that:
- the picture came out blurry
- you're hungry and there's no food
- you're bored and Netflix is down
- people keep distracting you while you're trying to work

You forgot what came before.

Interesting. So how would you define this?

When I was watching StarTrek Deep Space Nine the characters were often enjoying their raktajino, a beverage. In our world there is no such thing (oh well, I have seen recipes for it, inspired by the series, which is funny because it means I wasn't alone in developing the weird pattern I'm about to describe). Yet I found myself wanting a raktajino too. They seemed so yummy. My mind made up all sorts of imagery about the roundness of the taste combined with a little sting and some sweetness, like a much improved Irish coffee or those hot shots that were popular for a while or something. In the beginning I would have this yearning only when the characters were actually drinking their raktajino. Pretty soon I couldn't even think about the series without having that yearning popping up. It was a bit of a struggle to watch the series (there are many seasons after all) and never get to taste that raktajino. So I made up my mind that raktajino was ginger honey and tea, and I treated myself to some ginger honey and tea together with the show. Problem solved. It satisfied the perceived need. It was yummy and cosy and the yearning didn't bother me anymore. 

Was any of this craving according to your definition?

Well, I watched all of DS9 years ago, and I don't even remember raktajino. So I guess my mind didn't have quite the same cravings yours did

But you know, maybe my words are wrong. It could be that what I'm calling "clinging" should be called "craving." And what I'm calling "craving" should be called "becoming."

I have no clue. Getting to the bottom of that would require reading and deciphering things written by other people, and sometimes that just seems like a waste of time that would be better spent sitting.

It's important, too, because it is a source of discomfort. This is also known as dukkha. Producing objects is uncomfortable. The mind works hard at it, and so it's... painful, to a lesser or greater extent depending on the circumstances. 

Word.

But to directly address that scenario:

You conditioned yourself to the point where watching DS9 made you want a beverage. So, when a beverage found itself in your vicinity, you noticed it. This is why your ginger honey and tea was so appealing. Because you were so primed to want that kind of thing.

Meanwhile, suppose a friend said something offensive to you while you were watching the show. You might have gotten super-angry about it, simply because it wasn't satisfying your need for that beverage, which your mind was desperately scanning for at the moment.

Yeah, classic Pavlovian. It didn't have to be a beverage, though. I was really yearning for a taste that didn't even exist, which illustrates how fabricated our consumer needs are.

Would I have been prone to anger with regard to something entirely different? That's interesting. Possibly. 

I agree that teasing out concepts is much less important than your practice. Respect for that. 

Word. And I beg forgiveness for that new asshole i tore in some out-of-focus previous version of some person in the frame of a camera shot where i was so slow on the shutter that the image is a bottomless blur. 

I have kept my eyes open to investigate your findings for myself. You are right. It works like that. Thanks!

Fine, I'll forgive you. Just this one time.

So you'll have to see this in action while practicing to believe it, and I don't want to give away all the answers.

Buuuut. Craving comes before clinging. Clinging is conditioned upon craving, which is conditioned based on a bunch of other shit. See: the 12 links of dependent origination for all 12 pieces of shit in this cycle.

Craving is that bit of tension you feel after a feeling of pleasantness, that contracted tense feeling. Aversion is the same thing as craving, but for unpleasant sensations. Ignoring/tuning out is the same thing as craving, but for sensations that are not pleasant or unpleasant.

Clinging is what happens after that tension of craving, conditioned both on that feeling as well as the object being perceived. It's the stories you start to make up about that feeling and what you associate with all the other links in DO before it. i.e. Bird chirps. It's heard. Sudden wave of pleasantness. Tense feeling of wanting to grasp it. It's decided that birds chirping is pleasant and there's a story associated with that. "That bird sounds lovely. I love birds. I wish I had a bird." That story is the clinging aspect.

Thanks, Steph. Is there something you think I'm not seeing, or would you say I've just mixed up the words "craving" and "clinging"?

Yea, sounds like you've reversed the definitions for craving and clinging. They relate very closely, so it's easy to mix them up. When trying to suss them out in practice, craving and clinging happen within fractions of a second of each other so it's also easy to miss seeing one or the other in real time as they occur. 

The example you gave above about someone calling your name and your head turning - there's other steps in there between someone calling your name and you turning your head. See if you can find them. There's lots of very academic writings about dependent origination, many of which are dense and hard to understand. The one at this link is pretty decent and straightforward, easy to understand. https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/dependent-origination/

I prefer the word Urge instead of Craving but that's just preference. 
Here is my experience from yestrdays sit. 

I can partially see the road passing by our house through the window. I usually sit so not to look directly onto it. It's in the peripheral vision.

There is seeing a dark smudge moving in the periferal vision, there is pressure in the solar plexus (excitement), there is comprehending its a car (almost dum gladness for knowing it), there is urge to look up to be sure, there is urge to resist, there is pressure in the solar plexus, there is question who is knowing/feeling all this, waiting/looking/anticipating, there is itch on the nose, unpleasant, image of the nose in mind, there is pressure around the bum and image of it with chair under it, etc ... 

I don't find it helpful to explain all in words though. Nor am I good with words. I'm a visual artist and musician. Insight is Insight even if you can't put all of it into words. So much stuff is known on the intuitive level anyway (in my experience that is). 

Well, thank you, and bless you. One time is really all it takes; the rest is the reiteration of the technique in practice.

It's going to click. I don't know when. But, it will happen. The pain is becoming more obvious. I can feel when the mind starts to turn in the direction of "practice", even before coherent thoughts start to form.

This log really is quite self-indulgent.

Btw, I think this might be the only thing you need to know about jhana practice: when something bad shows up, smile.

Oops, another long break!

For the past 4 days, I have been able to clearly notice the sense of the doer when it arises, and I have been able to stand back and let it pass if I choose to.

I am also able to summon it up at will.

I wonder what it all means.

Also, I have been finding it useful to do "yoga" frequently. By "yoga", I mean spending time just moving my body randomly, freely exploring tensions wherever they show up.

A couple weeks ago, I thought: screw vipassana. Insight practice isn't what I need right now. I need concentration.

Concentration is insight practice. Focus the attention always on the breath at the nostrils, 24/7. This makes me notice how the attention moves.

Self comes from suffocating. The slightest sense that my airway is closing, the self comes online.

Slow down this process. Notice how other muscles can kick in to force the airway open. This allows selfing to subside.

A few days ago, something flipped. I no longer feel that ALL of reality needs to be untangled. The only thing that needs to be untangled is the TINY part of reality that feels something needs to be untangled. I was walking, and I suddenly got frustrated that I had gone 10 minutes or so without being mindful. Then, I thought "wait, clearly I was mindful, because I have a memory of 10 minutes of not being mindful...Oh, I see...it's just THIS GUY RIGHT HERE that's the problem."

Thought I was finished for about 5 minutes this morning, while still waking up in bed. No longer think that.

Several projects seem to be happening simultaneously: kundalini/chakra balancing, being aware of selfing, concentration (strength training for the mindbody), just being, social integration.

There have been lots of little realizations over the past several months. I've written about very few, because I usually feel like using them as practice objects, rather than giving into the urge to write about them.

Hope everyone's having fun.

I have been missing your reports, but I'm glad you are doing what you need to do (and still: wohoo, a report!  ).

I feel like I've been spending the last several months staring at the inside of my head.

Frequently, I've asked "how do I know I'm not done?" I usually don't have much of an answer.

Today, however, an answer appeared: "because there are vibrations that are synchronized, and vibrations that are unsynchronized."

Right now, this seems obvious. I don't know why it didn't seem obvious yesterday.

I'm not sure exactly what it means to know that a vibration is synchronized vs. unsynchronized, but I seem to be able to tell the difference (and I've always been able to tell the difference).

The question was then: do I focus on the synchronized ones, or the unsynchronized ones? I tried both, and found that it seemed more natural to rest in the unsynchronized ones.

At first, I thought it was a matter of frequency, but I don't think that's quite it. There are fast synchronized vibrations and fast unsynchronized vibrations. I suspect they're both fundamentally the same, and that the difference is only that "the awareness of the vibration" is causally unlinked from "the cause of the vibration" in my mind.

That gap seems to be the problem.

This feels like how in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, the final boss is Link's own shadow.

Spatial, great to get a fresh glimpse into the universe via the inside of your head!

From my understanding, you're done when somebody sticks a fork in you and says you're done. Or when the fat lady sings.


This is fascinating. My mind invariably leaps into musical metaphor here: like, what if the scene here is a jazz combo with n players with different instruments, and the synchronized vibrations are like the bass line and beat laid down by the rhythm instruments. The "unsynchronized" vibrations would then be like a fresh instrument coming in on a riff, with the initial appearance of a break from the sync, but bringing it home eventually, to leave room for a new riff. Since the music is happening across every frequency in the universe, there is plenty of room for multiple riffs coming and going off on their own tangents, at any given moment, and the only real limiting factor is how much of the musical dissonance-heading-toward-consonance you can stand at any given moment and still keep playing. In practice, can you still play notes when you're THIS stoned? THIS STONED? and of course, there is the ever-present possibility, always gracious, of saying, "I'm just between the notes, man, play on."


This is where the mapping from the available language from inside your head falters when I try to map it to the inside of my own head. I can mis-appropriate and misinterpret what you might mean by "resting in the synchronized ones" fine. But for the unsynchronized ones, the mapping into my own head doesn't work with "resting." The unsynchronized ones are unpredictable, are a surprise, yes? "Out of nowhere", and temporally anomalous. I could see saying "waiting" or "being alert to the arising of" or something. So I probably have no idea what you mean by "resting." (duh, lol, but indulge me for the purposes of conversation, if you wish.)


Another metaphorical leap: in Big Bang theory, the universe emerges from a pointless point of infinite heat and energy, so hot that particles can't form. It is only at certain points in the cooling as it expands that the various classes and kinds of particles can form. Many theories posit these points as spontaneous symmetry breaks. So it seems possible to me that from the infinite Buddha temperature in your spaceless timeless head, the unsynchronized vibrations may be the symmetry breaks that allow matter, and ultimately life, sentient beings, and the Dharma, to arise. Please do not do anything hasty to fix this.


i am culturally impoverished. Will keep my eye out For the Zelda series. I live in Groundhog Day most of the time, myself, and I'm still trying to get in bed with Andie McDowell.

love, tim

"Resting in the unsynchronized vibrations" means something like "construct an observer so that I'm simultaneously aware of both the unpredictable nature of the vibrations but also the stillness of the observer."

So, I can feel the disconnect. Reality is split in two: the changing and the unchanging.

I figure this disconnect is what needs to be eliminated, or at least fully understood, so I figure it's a good idea to spend time in the place where I can perceive it.



Haha, you're about 33 years too late for this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NgnjM1UDRE

"So, I can feel the disconnect.
Reality is split in two:
the changing and the unchanging
We don't know who is who!
and it's all right baby! 
This will always be the Dhamma Blues!"

Oh shoot I think I'm in the wrong thread! 
Or maybe I'm in the Right thread!  

Yes. Work with this, spatial  

okay, so I'm going to use my same formula as above, to try to continue this conversation as far as we can go until the sense that it is meaningful breaks down completely, if you will indulge me: This is where the mapping from the available language from inside your head falters when I try to map it to the inside of my own head. I can mis-appropriate and misinterpret what you might mean by . . . "the changing and the unchanging." The unsynchronized vibrations appear as "unsynchronized" against the synchronized vibrations, which amount to a "stillness", in context: regular, a standing wave, maybe. So the "unsynchronized" are changing relative to the synchronized. But why "construct an observer" at this point? I'm still not clear on the language of "resting in," I think. To me, it still seems like the "resting in" is in the synchronized vibrations, the baseline, the working--- relative---stillness (as a steady gravitational field in relativity theory is indistinguishable from a field in a constant state of acceleration), an "unchanging" stillness which is itself only realized in practice by the manifestation of the relatively changing unsynchronized vibrations.

Again forgive me, for pursuing this if it is bothersome. I'm honestly trying to work on translating the language you're using into language I can at least have a sense of possibly understanding, and then asking questions as a way of exploring the hypothesis that the terms are common enough for the questions and answers to have meaning, and an opportunity for this kind of exercise in itself is rare enough that I'm very interested in the experiment. So thank you for your patience.

By "resting in", I'm referring to the attention. Let the attention rest in the unsynchronized vibrations.

Are you able to perceive that which is constantly changing? Does it stress you out to try to hold your attention on it?

If so, try calling up that experience and sitting there until you become comfortable with the fact that what's in the foreground is chaotic and unpredictable.

It's like being in a crowded room and hearing hundreds of people speaking all at once, and you're content to just sit there and listen to the waves of sound, without needing to follow any particular conversation.

Once you get that, you might notice that your attention sometimes goes to "hey look, I'm sitting here meditating and experiencing chaos and unpredictability, and I'm fine/not fine with it." At that point, the unchanging (the constructed observer) has become the foreground, and the changing has become the background. Re-assert your intention to keep the changing in the foreground.

I go away for a few weeks and everything changed. I don't even know if I'm replying correctly...

Anyway, latest update:

This whole time I've been training my eyes to be independent of the rest of my body and getting frustrated that even though they're basically independent now, it's still not ENOUGH.

I'm starting to think the idea is that now I need to train the rest of my body to get back in sync with my eyes.

Weird.

Translation, please?

I go away for a few weeks and everything changed. I don't even know if I'm replying correctly...

lol, yeah, anicca in the format. Dukkha, ditto. It's enough to piss anatta off.

The best way to reply, as far as I've been able to fingure out, is to always reply to the last post on the thread, or else your post ends up "disappearing" somewhere higher up, and is hard to track down.

This whole time I've been training my eyes to be independent of the rest of my body . . . 

Once again, I have the bizarre notion that I can kind of maybe sorta relate to your language, and suspect that it is simply my mind using your words as a rorschach blot. But we've gone several steps deep on rorschach blotches in the past. Anyway, forgive me if this has nothing to do with anything you are actually talking about.

So I'm thinking you've been letting your body settle and disappear, and attending to the visual field. Maybe you have a taste for (I should say, a vision of) the formless realms? "Spatial"? And a gift for them.

and getting frustrated that even though they're basically independent now, it's still not ENOUGH.

This is where it gets interesting, and I would love to hear more about the not ENOUGH-ness. You may just be satiated, vision-wise; how much luminous space can a guy really stand, lol? One possibility is that you're jonesing for a good taste (not vision) of nothingness. Though your gut take on this--- that you may need to re-integrate with the body--- would seem to suggest otherwise.

I'm starting to think the idea is that now I need to train the rest of my body to get back in sync with my eyes.

As I read it (chanting humility mantras, with all due etc.), you've sort of been letting the body be deep background, maybe, with vision foregrounded. My own experience is that the body will have some ideas of its own, when you let it back into the conversation. My body has made it very clear, at times, that the eyes are not the boss of it, lol. 

Weird.

Very weird. Let me know if it turns out you really are a spider after all.

This is an experience that comes and goes, and it's hard to explain. It's like I'm able to "hide out" up behind my eyes. In the past, that was something I was able to do once in a while, but only rarely. In late 2019, something clicked and now I'm able to do it all the time. Now, what I obsess over is that I don't fully comprehend everything that happens on the way to and from that place.

I think maybe I am a spider. It's a bit hard to tell. I still only have 4 legs+arms, but I do find myself lying in wait for my prey much more often than in the past.