Trekcho

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Dustin, modified 2 Years ago at 3/3/22 5:41 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/3/22 5:41 PM

Trekcho

Posts: 113 Join Date: 12/28/17 Recent Posts
Has anyone used Trekcho (embracing emotions) along side noting practice or during noting practice when difficult emotions arise? I used it today after doing kasina and getting into noting and when I saw fear, frustration, anxiety come up I would let it expand and pervade me and then it would all the sudden be gone. No fighting, just allowing. I have had an issue for a while being with difficult emotions and trying to bypass them in trance or confusion and move on and it hasn't seemed to help at all. Like going into a tornado and never coming out but thinking I will. Anyway today was a interesting experience with the practice and just wondering if people ar using it and their experience. 

Here is the article:
The practice of meditation in the context of embracing emotions as the path gives us another option. This option is one in which we neither repress, express nor dissipate our emotional energy. But one in which we let go of the conceptual scaffolding and wordlessly gaze into the physical sensation of the emotion. This is what we describe as 'staring into the face of arising emotions in order to realise their empty nature’. This is where meditation becomes an essential aspect of our method of discovery. The form of meditation we will discuss here comes from the system known as Trèk-chöd, which means ‘exploding the horizon of conventional reality’. Trèk-chöd involves finding the presence of awareness in the dimension of the sensation of the emotion we are experiencing. Simply speaking, we find the location of the emotion within the body (it may be localised or pervasive). This is where we feel the emotion as a physical sensation. We then allow that sensation to expand and pervade us. We become the emotion. We cease to be observers of our emotions. We stare into the face of the arising emotion with such completeness that all sense of division between ‘experience’ and ‘experiencer’ dissolve. In this way we open ourselves to glimpses of what we actually are. We start to become transparent to ourselves. Through this staring, the distorted energy of our emotions liberates itself. In the language of trèk-chöd it is said: ‘of itself – it liberates itself’, and ‘it enters into its own condition’. In order to use meditation in this way, we need to have developed the experience of letting go of obsessive attachment to the intellectual/conceptual process as the crucial reference point on which our sense of being relies. In short, we need to be able to dwell in our own experiential space without manipulating whatever arises to referential ends. We need to experience mind, free conceptual activity – yet qualified by the effulgence of pure and total presence.

https://arobuddhism.org/articles/embracing-emotions-as-the-path.html
shargrol, modified 2 Years ago at 3/3/22 7:07 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/3/22 7:07 PM

RE: Trekcho

Posts: 2345 Join Date: 2/8/16 Recent Posts
good stuff!
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Pepe ·, modified 2 Years ago at 3/3/22 8:56 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/3/22 8:54 PM

RE: Trekcho

Posts: 713 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent Posts
Hi Dustin,

Yes it's very good practice, in my small experience. In my noting/noticing practice I do "label + allowing", either for mind-states, emotions or physical sensations. Perhaps it's good to try it first with not very troublesome mind-states, so as to build some experience on how to deal with these situations. You could even recall some memory to trigger that. That said, though I'm pre-path, I have some experience in EQ ñana, so it's easier to handle a lasting mind-state. Don't know how your situation is. 

If you browse some of the practice logs in DhO you'll find Chris' and Shargrol's comments on how to apply "allowing" in particular cases (look for words like "intimacy", "include", etc).
George S, modified 2 Years ago at 3/3/22 9:04 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/3/22 9:04 PM

RE: Trekcho

Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
I've found it to be a powerful practice. It's changed my relationship with difficult emotions.
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Dustin, modified 2 Years ago at 3/4/22 1:49 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/4/22 1:49 PM

RE: Trekcho

Posts: 113 Join Date: 12/28/17 Recent Posts
Thanks Pepe. I'm pretty good at handling diificulties in practice. I can get some meditative hangovers after deep insight but tend to handle those ok. I was asking about this practice due to caution though. Embracing emotions is not high on my list of things to do to become happy. hahaha. I have tumbled around some rough territory for a while and have been having the realization that trying to avert these feelings, thoughts, and emotions is not helping me wake up. 
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Dustin, modified 2 Years ago at 3/4/22 1:50 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/4/22 1:50 PM

RE: Trekcho

Posts: 113 Join Date: 12/28/17 Recent Posts
Thanks George.