HAPPY!!!... and harmless? - Discussion
I listened to the Hurricane Ranch talks yesterday. Super interesting!
One of the things Tarin said that I have been thinking about a lot today is how the first time he tried AF he dropped it because he reached some dead ends, like wanting to be happy but not really caring about harmless (or something along those lines).
This worries me a bit as I can definitely see that as a potential barrier for my future practice. I am pretty new to AF but have enjoyed getting into sensuousness and cultivating felicity. I realize that what attracted me to AF in the first place is the idea of this fairy-tale adventure and complete enjoyment of life that I have been reading about. However, to be honest, my main motivation is my own happiness.
Yes having simpler relationships where I don't get angry and frustrated would also be a major bonus but again that would mainly be a relief for my own sake (not having to experience that negativity), so I was wondering how I could give my practice a less selfish edge? I mean after all I understand the whole point of this practice is getting rid of the ego or the sense of self, but until I listened to the talks I was aiming for experiencing a PCE and then just hoping that realisations would come naturally afterwards, like 'wow this experience is so much better without ME in the way', but it sounded like the harmless aspect of AF was still an obstacle for Tarin.
Also, I am pre-path and I'm still not 100% sure where my practice is going at the moment. I am tempted to go all AF with some continued samatha sits (have been getting into some jhana-ish states recently), and drop noting for the time being because trying to fumble my way through dark night in my sits seems to make off the cushion AF practice harder afterwards.
BUT I have been advised to get stream entry before fully pursuing AF and although Tarin said in the talk to start practicing AF as soon as possible, he seemed to have problems when he approached it pre-path, and Daniel was saying how much easier it was with path. Thing is I DON'T FIND GETTING PATH EASY!
Any advice?
One of the things Tarin said that I have been thinking about a lot today is how the first time he tried AF he dropped it because he reached some dead ends, like wanting to be happy but not really caring about harmless (or something along those lines).
This worries me a bit as I can definitely see that as a potential barrier for my future practice. I am pretty new to AF but have enjoyed getting into sensuousness and cultivating felicity. I realize that what attracted me to AF in the first place is the idea of this fairy-tale adventure and complete enjoyment of life that I have been reading about. However, to be honest, my main motivation is my own happiness.
Yes having simpler relationships where I don't get angry and frustrated would also be a major bonus but again that would mainly be a relief for my own sake (not having to experience that negativity), so I was wondering how I could give my practice a less selfish edge? I mean after all I understand the whole point of this practice is getting rid of the ego or the sense of self, but until I listened to the talks I was aiming for experiencing a PCE and then just hoping that realisations would come naturally afterwards, like 'wow this experience is so much better without ME in the way', but it sounded like the harmless aspect of AF was still an obstacle for Tarin.
Also, I am pre-path and I'm still not 100% sure where my practice is going at the moment. I am tempted to go all AF with some continued samatha sits (have been getting into some jhana-ish states recently), and drop noting for the time being because trying to fumble my way through dark night in my sits seems to make off the cushion AF practice harder afterwards.
BUT I have been advised to get stream entry before fully pursuing AF and although Tarin said in the talk to start practicing AF as soon as possible, he seemed to have problems when he approached it pre-path, and Daniel was saying how much easier it was with path. Thing is I DON'T FIND GETTING PATH EASY!
Any advice?
These are good questions. Keep in mind, when reading my thoughts, that I never listened to the Hurricane Ranch discussions. (On reflection, pretty strange for someone interested in the subject.)
Speaking only for myself, I found that the only reason I ever intended to harm anyone was because of my own unhappiness...and so harmlessness follows automatically from happiness.
However, the opposite relationship holds, too...to the extent that I allowed myself to feel ill-will (of any kind), I was not able to be happy. So, steering away from those kinds of feelings (and, to whatever extent possible, situations that generated those feelings) was helpful in terms of my own welfare.
However, a more general point is, there's no need to worry about whether 'you' have a messiah / bodhisattva complex and feel the need to save the world or not. If 'you' have one, you should harness it. If not, then that's simply the way things are. What 'you' think is besides the point...it is enough to resolve to be happy and harmless, for whatever reasons work for 'you', be they egoic or altruistic or some combination. (To expect sainthood from yourself is an unrealistic sort of thing.) Perhaps you will think differently about things when there is less of 'you' around.
To the extent that 'you' are motivated by altruism, think about how much better off everyone else would be if you were a happy person, freed from whatever neurotic stuff you have. And think about how good it would be to share this practice with them (should they be interested), once you understand it and can speak from personal experience about it. Those are just two (very general) ways to appreciate how the benefits to yourself will carry over to others. Depending on the specifics of your life, you can surely think of more.
Unless you have tried this strategy already and found it unhelpful, or have some unique reason for thinking that getting path would be especially hard for you...if you have time to set aside for a vipassana retreat of reasonable length, that is a good way to increase the chance of getting path (and getting the whole thing over with quickly).
Another possibility is to conceive of the goal of your practice as paying attention rather than cultivating felicity. Paying attention is a kind of attentiveness to sensuousness that doesn't have feeling any particular way as a goal (though it can often result in felicity / EEs / PCEs despite that). If you can lessen the need to feel any particular way, you may be able to find a way to merge this practice with a kind of vipassana, so you could pursue [what you conceive of as] two separate goals simultaneously.
How is your attentiveness to sensuousness during the day? Could you accurately estimate how close you are to applying that 24/7?
carolin varley:
I listened to the Hurricane Ranch talks yesterday. Super interesting!
One of the things Tarin said that I have been thinking about a lot today is how the first time he tried AF he dropped it because he reached some dead ends, like wanting to be happy but not really caring about harmless (or something along those lines).
This worries me a bit as I can definitely see that as a potential barrier for my future practice. I am pretty new to AF but have enjoyed getting into sensuousness and cultivating felicity. I realize that what attracted me to AF in the first place is the idea of this fairy-tale adventure and complete enjoyment of life that I have been reading about. However, to be honest, my main motivation is my own happiness.
One of the things Tarin said that I have been thinking about a lot today is how the first time he tried AF he dropped it because he reached some dead ends, like wanting to be happy but not really caring about harmless (or something along those lines).
This worries me a bit as I can definitely see that as a potential barrier for my future practice. I am pretty new to AF but have enjoyed getting into sensuousness and cultivating felicity. I realize that what attracted me to AF in the first place is the idea of this fairy-tale adventure and complete enjoyment of life that I have been reading about. However, to be honest, my main motivation is my own happiness.
Speaking only for myself, I found that the only reason I ever intended to harm anyone was because of my own unhappiness...and so harmlessness follows automatically from happiness.
However, the opposite relationship holds, too...to the extent that I allowed myself to feel ill-will (of any kind), I was not able to be happy. So, steering away from those kinds of feelings (and, to whatever extent possible, situations that generated those feelings) was helpful in terms of my own welfare.
However, a more general point is, there's no need to worry about whether 'you' have a messiah / bodhisattva complex and feel the need to save the world or not. If 'you' have one, you should harness it. If not, then that's simply the way things are. What 'you' think is besides the point...it is enough to resolve to be happy and harmless, for whatever reasons work for 'you', be they egoic or altruistic or some combination. (To expect sainthood from yourself is an unrealistic sort of thing.) Perhaps you will think differently about things when there is less of 'you' around.
To the extent that 'you' are motivated by altruism, think about how much better off everyone else would be if you were a happy person, freed from whatever neurotic stuff you have. And think about how good it would be to share this practice with them (should they be interested), once you understand it and can speak from personal experience about it. Those are just two (very general) ways to appreciate how the benefits to yourself will carry over to others. Depending on the specifics of your life, you can surely think of more.
carolin varley:
Also, I am pre-path and I'm still not 100% sure where my practice is going at the moment. I am tempted to go all AF with some continued samatha sits (have been getting into some jhana-ish states recently), and drop noting for the time being because trying to fumble my way through dark night in my sits seems to make off the cushion AF practice harder afterwards. BUT I have been advised to get stream entry before fully pursuing AF and although Tarin said in the talk to start practicing AF as soon as possible, he seemed to have problems when he approached it pre-path, and Daniel was saying how much easier it was with path. Thing is I DON'T FIND GETTING PATH EASY!
Any advice?
Any advice?
Unless you have tried this strategy already and found it unhelpful, or have some unique reason for thinking that getting path would be especially hard for you...if you have time to set aside for a vipassana retreat of reasonable length, that is a good way to increase the chance of getting path (and getting the whole thing over with quickly).
Another possibility is to conceive of the goal of your practice as paying attention rather than cultivating felicity. Paying attention is a kind of attentiveness to sensuousness that doesn't have feeling any particular way as a goal (though it can often result in felicity / EEs / PCEs despite that). If you can lessen the need to feel any particular way, you may be able to find a way to merge this practice with a kind of vipassana, so you could pursue [what you conceive of as] two separate goals simultaneously.
How is your attentiveness to sensuousness during the day? Could you accurately estimate how close you are to applying that 24/7?
Very helpful and thought provoking post.
"Unless you have tried this strategy already and found it unhelpful, or have some unique reason for thinking that getting path would be especially hard for you...if you have time to set aside for a vipassana retreat of reasonable length, that is a good way to increase the chance of getting path (and getting the whole thing over with quickly)."
-I have been trying to get stream entry doing 1-2 and occasionally 3 hour sits for over a year now, and found dark night really difficult to deal with. Right now I am feeling better than I have in A LONG time, and although I've only had this mood change for about a week or so, I am acrediting this change to sensuousness practice. I actually find that inclining my mind to feel felicious makes me more willing to pay attention and accept things as they are, because I am no longer inclined to see suffering in everything (my favourite characteristic). In other words things are alot easier to accept when they are perceived as pleasant. The funny thing is it is the exact same stuff I was seeing/feeling/experiancing before and labeling as "suffering." This is why I am quite reluctant to go back to a vipassana-based practice in my daily life.
But yes I am planning on doing a vipassana retreat and cracking stream entry, as I feel I am struggling to get enough momentum through my daily vipassana sits to get through the nanas. Can you recommend a good place? I would prefer it to be mahasi style noting rather than goenka.
"However, a more general point is, there's no need to worry about whether 'you' have a messiah / bodhisattva complex and feel the need to save the world or not. If 'you' have one, you should harness it. If not, then that's simply the way things are. What 'you' think is besides the point...it is enough to resolve to be happy and harmless, for whatever reasons work for 'you', be they egoic or altruistic or some combination. (To expect sainthood from yourself is an unrealistic sort of thing.) Perhaps you will think differently about things when there is less of 'you' around.
To the extent that 'you' are motivated by altruism, think about how much better off everyone else would be if you were a happy person, freed from whatever neurotic stuff you have. And think about how good it would be to share this practice with them (should they be interested), once you understand it and can speak from personal experience about it. Those are just two (very general) ways to appreciate how the benefits to yourself will carry over to others. Depending on the specifics of your life, you can surely think of more."
-I just felt a lot of relief reading this!
"How is your attentiveness to sensuousness during the day? Could you accurately estimate how close you are to applying that 24/7?"
-I would say about 60% with sensousness practice which is a huge improvement from a previous "mindfullness/ noting" approach.
"Unless you have tried this strategy already and found it unhelpful, or have some unique reason for thinking that getting path would be especially hard for you...if you have time to set aside for a vipassana retreat of reasonable length, that is a good way to increase the chance of getting path (and getting the whole thing over with quickly)."
-I have been trying to get stream entry doing 1-2 and occasionally 3 hour sits for over a year now, and found dark night really difficult to deal with. Right now I am feeling better than I have in A LONG time, and although I've only had this mood change for about a week or so, I am acrediting this change to sensuousness practice. I actually find that inclining my mind to feel felicious makes me more willing to pay attention and accept things as they are, because I am no longer inclined to see suffering in everything (my favourite characteristic
). In other words things are alot easier to accept when they are perceived as pleasant. The funny thing is it is the exact same stuff I was seeing/feeling/experiancing before and labeling as "suffering." This is why I am quite reluctant to go back to a vipassana-based practice in my daily life.But yes I am planning on doing a vipassana retreat and cracking stream entry, as I feel I am struggling to get enough momentum through my daily vipassana sits to get through the nanas. Can you recommend a good place? I would prefer it to be mahasi style noting rather than goenka.
"However, a more general point is, there's no need to worry about whether 'you' have a messiah / bodhisattva complex and feel the need to save the world or not. If 'you' have one, you should harness it. If not, then that's simply the way things are. What 'you' think is besides the point...it is enough to resolve to be happy and harmless, for whatever reasons work for 'you', be they egoic or altruistic or some combination. (To expect sainthood from yourself is an unrealistic sort of thing.) Perhaps you will think differently about things when there is less of 'you' around.
To the extent that 'you' are motivated by altruism, think about how much better off everyone else would be if you were a happy person, freed from whatever neurotic stuff you have. And think about how good it would be to share this practice with them (should they be interested), once you understand it and can speak from personal experience about it. Those are just two (very general) ways to appreciate how the benefits to yourself will carry over to others. Depending on the specifics of your life, you can surely think of more."
-I just felt a lot of relief reading this!
"How is your attentiveness to sensuousness during the day? Could you accurately estimate how close you are to applying that 24/7?"
-I would say about 60% with sensousness practice which is a huge improvement from a previous "mindfullness/ noting" approach.
End in Sight:
carolin varley:
I have been trying to get stream entry doing 1-2 and occasionally 3 hour sits for over a year now, and found dark night really difficult to deal with.
What different techniques have you tried?
After reading Daniel's book I was doing a kind of"ordinary vipasna" with a mixture of noting (with and without words) until quite recently, and I found what I was doing quite a strained method of applying mindfulness. Went on a retreat recently though that was about taking the wider perspective of awareness and realising that you are always aware, and so you don't need to DO anything in a sense, because you can't help being aware. Just realizing this, and reminding myself of this has really helped. I think another reason my practice felt very forced before is that I didn't take proper time to understand the nanas, so i found it difficult to realize during sits that I was just in "fear" or "misery" and saw myself instead as "scared" and "miserable."
End in Sight:
There are many people who seem to be stuck before stream entry in some way, and I have spent a great deal of time wondering whether they would benefit from adjusting their technique to suit their temperament.
I've made this a core feature of my approach to meditation (constantly adjusting the details of the practice and the quality of my attention [etc.] to match the type of experience being had and the mind state I find myself in, based on past experience), and it's done wonders for me...but, until I started playing with the details in this way, I went nowhere fast. If you have been practicing so long and with reasonable dedication, I would recommend considering all kinds of variations (anything that you can think of, if you have no intuition for it yet) instead of continuing on with what you've been doing, if you continue to focus on vipassana.
If you are interested in applying this sort of approach, a practice thread dedicated to it, or at least a set of detailed private notes, may be helpful. However...
I've made this a core feature of my approach to meditation (constantly adjusting the details of the practice and the quality of my attention [etc.] to match the type of experience being had and the mind state I find myself in, based on past experience), and it's done wonders for me...but, until I started playing with the details in this way, I went nowhere fast. If you have been practicing so long and with reasonable dedication, I would recommend considering all kinds of variations (anything that you can think of, if you have no intuition for it yet) instead of continuing on with what you've been doing, if you continue to focus on vipassana.
If you are interested in applying this sort of approach, a practice thread dedicated to it, or at least a set of detailed private notes, may be helpful. However...
I think I definitely need to reflect more on my practice and by more honest with myself, which I have actually found one of the hardest things about my practice and probably one of the greatest hindrances to progress. After I wrote a few days ago that I felt I was mindful about 60% of the time, I have spent the last few days trying to actually be mindful of how much of the time I was mindful. I'm still not really sure how to measure this but I found that its more like 30% of the time where I am actually aware of my senses rather than lost in them. What I did notice though was that I spent about the same amount of time THINKING about meditation, whether I was doing it right, what form of mindfulness practice I should do, thoughts about how mindful I was being etc.
So decided to take your advice ans start a practice thread, hoping to pick up on more patterns I feel I am overlooking in my practice that may help me, and that it will encourage me to be more reflected. Also I feel like I can use all the advice I can get. For example I don't really know how to start going about to adjust my meditation to suit me like you suggested. I have noticed that I find some forms easier at the moment (choiceless awareness/formless awareness rather than noting) but now I'm rambling a bit, and should prob. just write about this in a practice thread. Thanks for all the advice.
End in Sight:
I wonder if you managed to pass through the dark night due to a high level of attention paid to your experience, as well as an accepting attitude towards it. (Speculation.)
I wish!
Hi Andrew,
Yes, there were definitely negative feelings involved. I suppose part of the challenge for me is developing a better relationship to my thoughts. Normally I will feel frustrated or guilty if I catch myself lost in thought.
Have been getting quite into AF practice recently though and so I have actually started intentionally analysing/reflecting on the causes of my negative feelings/ moods, rather than just labeling thoughts as "bad". To an extent I feel my thoughts are more useful (or I have finally put them to better use), where as before they were something that I saw as a really annoying obstruction to mindfulness.
I still have this really strong desire to "get rid" of my thoughts though, which I know isn't really the point, but since I still identify quite strongly with them, I still find it easy and frustrating to get carried away in them.
So ironically a lot of my thoughts these days are about how nice it will be to get rid of 80-90% or all that unnecessary thinking
So I suppose that thoughts, like you said, would be useful if I was reflecting on the Dhamma in a mindful way, in a kind of way where I was aware of thinking, but at the moment thoughts about meditation quickly spin off into day dreams about making "progress" and becoming enlightened. Narrowing in my thoughts to "Why am I not happy and harmless right now?" is still new to me but so far so good.
Yes, there were definitely negative feelings involved. I suppose part of the challenge for me is developing a better relationship to my thoughts. Normally I will feel frustrated or guilty if I catch myself lost in thought.
Have been getting quite into AF practice recently though and so I have actually started intentionally analysing/reflecting on the causes of my negative feelings/ moods, rather than just labeling thoughts as "bad". To an extent I feel my thoughts are more useful (or I have finally put them to better use), where as before they were something that I saw as a really annoying obstruction to mindfulness.
I still have this really strong desire to "get rid" of my thoughts though, which I know isn't really the point, but since I still identify quite strongly with them, I still find it easy and frustrating to get carried away in them.
So ironically a lot of my thoughts these days are about how nice it will be to get rid of 80-90% or all that unnecessary thinking
So I suppose that thoughts, like you said, would be useful if I was reflecting on the Dhamma in a mindful way, in a kind of way where I was aware of thinking, but at the moment thoughts about meditation quickly spin off into day dreams about making "progress" and becoming enlightened. Narrowing in my thoughts to "Why am I not happy and harmless right now?" is still new to me but so far so good.