Fire Kasina has been my most fun practice since Kenneth Folk suggested I try it about 15 years ago. I think he said the instructions were stare at a candle with eyes open then closed and see what happens.  (Maybe because I have chronic migrain with aura?) I've tended to have rich visuals and find it pretty absorbing.

A year or 2 later when Daniel started firekasina.org I was amazed to find my experience corresponded closely to the basic phenomenology described there, and realized it must be another built in feature, like nanas and jhanas.

A few years ago I tried a 5 day solo FK retreat inspired by Shannon's book which was fun but the last 2 days were deflated by migraine symptoms. (Fortunately the last couple of years my migraines have become much less of an issue, but haven't lost the tendency for visual effects.)

Recently I got an unexpected chance to do a 10 day online jhana retreat, in January, and the teacher said it is ok with him if I prefer to use FK as my object. He said whatever generates access concentration is good. And he knows FK works but he won't be able to advise me on it during the retreat.

I had been planning a solo retreat but it seemed like the support of a jhana retreat where several sangha-mates are attending seemed seemed better since there are a lot of cautions about doing several days solo with FK. If I'm lucky I might get 5 days off next week to attend a different online retreat where I could also use FK, but won't know until the evening before. 

I've reached out to a couple of people quite experienced with FK about maybe getting a little supplemental advising during the retreat(s) but haven't heard yet.  

Currently FK has my daily practice revved up higher than for some years, sitting 1.5 to 2 hours each morning, and whenever else I can fit it in and tending toward secluding the senses as in ignoring and feeling disenchanted from optional online content.  I just have a small smattering of previous jhana experience but I get pretty absorbed during daily morning sittings and enhances insight and inquiry also.  Daniel has said FK "has it all", my intutition is that's true. 

Starting a 5 day online retreat with Angelo Dillulo today, with the support of my family. I'll be meditating amongst the other family members in our small house in the city.  I've done a lot of solo retreats at home over the years. Our daughters grew up with my wife and I meditating at home, and one of them has meditated daily for years. The other is entirely comfortable with having meditating family members different places in the house.  So is our dog. 
 
I'll be rotating rooms, sometimes in the basement, to stay out of the way. We're all used to the routine. My wife and daughter will likely join me in sits sometimes. 
 
May this retreat benefit the family as they always nurture me. _/\_ 
 
This is the 3rd annual online New Year retreat with Angelo for me. I feel very trusting, open and responsive with Angelo's direct pointing style of retreat and plan to just open to that. During sittings I plan to continue with fire kasina (FK). My practice is orienting lately to including awareness of the visual field in response to the FK. But it's increasingly oriented toward including everything. That unifying approach has always been my inclination (and I've always tended to generate some impedence with narrowly focused practice, though sometimes I'm drawn to it for a short time).
 
Recently a way of experiencing has been happening where instead of an emphasis on objectifying and observing experience, there is almost a shifting of identity from the observer in the head to the visual field. So the kasina and the visual field are not separate from awareness. This follows some insights, from doing the practices in Burbea's Seeing That Frees, about the citta and the perception mutually co-arising. Mind, kasina, body, sound and thoughts not separate. So a movement of mind from one part to another stopped in its tracks this morning's sit, it's already there. Somehow the FK practice feels like a galvanizing force in this development. 

I'm planning to only post online during the retreat if questions come up where I'm hoping for feedback. I might try voice recording if I want to capture some retreat experience to share afterwards. I'm afraid much of the experience will only be remembered by the body. 

Best wishes Mark!  

Good luck on your retreat .

Right now fire Kassina is my main practice as well. At the moment I am kind of lazy and just try to keep the visual field in the center of awareness until it turns purple, I chill out and it feels more spacious then until I chill out even more. Or I might stop and start again because I do it at night when I can't sleep.

What I found fun is to try it with eyes open and seeing the colors in "reality" though I never managed to turn my whole visual field purple that way only swaths of color. The earlier stages I find cool with eyes open as well.

For insight I found it interesting in 3rd VPS Jhana territory to try to perceive the bottom or top edges (or the sites) off the visual field where I can't "look with my eyes". Just soften into it without trying to look. This helped create first "in the seeing just the seen" experiences. And gave me pointers how to do it with other senses. Then at some point I realized everything is just there, nothing to do .

If you have 15 years of FK do you have any advice? I have only been doing it for some months (with interruptions) and never got my concentration high enough for the more trippy stuff.

How do you feel about starting with the afterimage vs just the visual field?

Thanks Dusko and SLSL! Loving the retreat.

SLSL, what you describe sounds similar to what I'm trying to do.  (Actually, it might be more like 13 or 14 years.)

My experience has been intermittent because most of the teachers I've worked with have not had experience with FK or didn't recommend that I prioritize it, so it's sometimes been a guilty pleasure. I get something of a free ride with FK because for some reason I tend to get psychedelic visuals right off the bat, including eyes and brief faces.  Eventually I lost interest in the show and used candle, or kasina, as just a stabilizing presence for choiceless awareness of the entire visual field (eyes open or closed). 

I particularly like gazing out a window at a natural view and just go wide, allowing any anspects of experience willing to present to be included.

But I'm going to a 10 day online jhana retreat next month and from previous experience don't get very far with breath as object. So it occurred to me to try FK concentration by the book (firekasina.org) and I was amazed how my daily practice, which was already pretty lively, took off.  So, I feel pretty new to the FK practice right now, as far as experimenting with the approach you're familiar with.

During the afternoon I had a long wakeful sit in a reclining chair. Concentration was pretty good and it felt like special effects would have been available but I was drawn to non-intervention. Just "letting" the visual field quietly present without mobilizing attention toward it. It started to feel closer to non-dual than my previous experience and pretty equanimous. An area at the top of the spine at the base of the skull is energized and attracts attention. It seems to like non-conceptual non-doing practice.

I noticed that if I went with a little intention to do something with the visuals they immediately fired up, like throwing kindling on the coals. Letting go of intention things went more black - like a field of black, not static. Like Rob Burbea's "fading of fabrication" when clinging is lessened. I'm mostly interested in the possibility of cessation &/or fundamental shift in identity than other things you can do with fire kasina right now.

"How do you feel about starting with the afterimage vs just the visual field?"  I seem to mostly be spending time with the visual field and not refreshing much currently. I don't need to look at a light source to get plenty to work with but starting with the afterimage and kasina is how it's usually recommended, so I've just been going with that.  I'll try without a light when I go to bed tonight. 

I'll be interested to hear more about your practice, to me it sounds more developed than mine.

I'm grateful for the 5 day retreat, it was a precious opportunity. 

After hearing a lot of cautions about hard to handle stuff that might spring up, I tried to set some intentional guide lines that I ended up relaxing as I felt more confidence in the wholesomeness of the practice, my intentions, efforts and surrender to the Dharma. (Maybe benefiting from previous "shadow work" practices.)

At first I thought, I don't want to entertain any random entities unless they're somehow Dharma related, but that seemed too vague. One of my teachers who was able to recall dozens of past lives during her practice, said that seeing the patterns was helpful to her during the awakening process (though she's not interested in it now). So, I thought, OK helpful past life memories could be OK. By day 3 I think I was just saying, whatever is useful for awakening is fine, and if anything else comes up, I'll just try to practice with it well. And a couple of times when I was briefly bored or adventurous, I just said, ok, whatever, bring it on! Before I got absorbed in the practice again.

The practice was so engaging, mostly I didn't think or worry about it. The fact that I was practicing at home with my family nearby probably keeps the mind more grounded. (The past 2 winter retreats I did with Angelo, I had access to an off-grid house in the country, which might have felt different. Hopefully I can try that some time.)

The only thing I can remember that didn't seem like a "normal" meditative kind of experience was early in the morning on the last day, my mind was suddenly seeing a young woman sitting in partial darkness on her bed. She was recently pregnant and her boy friend had told her he didn't want to support her and wanted her to have an abortion. She was just sitting there with that quietly. Thinking back on it, she may have had some equanimity with the situation, just quietly feeling it. I'm not sure if the equanimity was hers or mine.

Not sure how to describe, but I found myself feeling into her situation to the point where I was embodying it, or "it" was embodying me. It was beyond my baseline powers of empathy! It was a quiet, intuitive experience. It was kind of like just beneath the surface of my energy body, was her body, filling  me, so that I could feel what it was like to have a woman's body, physically (to the point of having moments of concern about my masculinity), but mostly the emotional tone of it. I just stayed with that for a while, touchingly.

After the retreat ended, my wife and meditation partner, asked me how I was doing. Since it was easier to describe and more interesting than meditation states, I told her about that and was surprised to find that sense of the woman's physical presence still beneath my skin. Having an extra felt sense on top of my own felt busier and more occupied with stuff. I wondered if my own bodily sense is lighter and clearer than that, or if I'm allowing something that's been dissociated? (It didn't feel spooky like being possessed or anything.) 

I thought, if this has anything to do with past lives (who knows?), maybe it's best not to remember them and have to process someone elses stuff.

But then I just relaxed into the usual practices of letting go of the story line and going with the changing felt experience. At this moment at least, it feels like there is something extra energetically like I've taken on some more life force that feels good. Or maybe just more empathy. The after effects of the retreat feel nothing but wholesome.

I'll write some more later. 

I've been wanting to write some more impressions of the 5 day semi-solo FK-based retreat I did last week before I forget more details but it strengthened the strong attraction I had to sitting with FK & practicing with visual field before the retreat to an even stronger level after. So I just haven't been willing to write rather than practice most of the time.

With a full-time job and busy householding commitments, it takes dillegence to carve out the 2+ hours for sitting I get on weekdays, and more on weekends.  One thing that really helps here is that FK-inflamed practice is so consuming for me right now, I almost totally don't want to waste time on optional non-practice activities.  So I now have time usually to do 2 hour sits in the morning, and 2 hours feels like my new morning minimum requirement (not long ago it was an hour).

The retreat confirmed that for me at this time, FK-initiated visual field practice rocks for level of concentration (compared to my previous baselines) for concentration, fascination, heart-felt commitment and what feels to me like some insight.  

This retreat answered some of my questions about using FK during a quite rare opportunity for a 10 day onine jhana retreat coming up in 2 weeks.

I'm no longer concerned about contending with challengingly weird states, and I have zero doubt that FK easily got me to access concentration during the 1st 3 days of the retreat, as well as some other worthwhile states. It seems likely there were repeated episodes of 3rd-jhana-ish states, while being kind of choicelessly aware of the "murk" ( murk is not how I think of it), and possibly some 4th, maybe even 5th?

It also seemed to me like there was at least one kind of classicly clear arrival in 1st J that lasted for 5 to 10 mins before progressing to 2nd.  Who knows what will happen during the jhana retreat with Leigh Brasington, but if any of that is willing to happen again, he'd be the man to help me with it.  In which case, I guess if FK gets me to access and 1st J, and I can hang there for at least 10 mins reliably, and progress to 2nd, which I think are Leigh's requirements. Then since it's a jhanas retreat, I'd just go with following Leigh's advised methods for jhana practice.

If jhanas don't feel like showing up during the retreat, then I'll still be able to play with FK. And if I get migraines and the retreat serves up a bunch of difficulty, I'll try to embrace that as well. :-)

In the meantime I'm looking forward to my sitting tonight, extra sits tomorrow, and visual field practice while walking the dog in a park in dark shortly. 

I appreciate you taking the time to log about this. Good stuff! You are leaving a breadcrumb trail of really useful resources for other people. Thanks!

Practicing with Leigh! That sounds fantastic. His book changed my life. I hope the retreat is migraine-free.

I think whatever you can "buy into" is of benefit. It has to feel like a good ride even if unpleasant at times but a good ride non-the-less.  

The worst is to dread the practice. Whatever that method might be. Its good to have that joy of riding the thing. 

​​​​​​​As always BEST wishes Mark! 

Hi Martin, thanks for the encouragement!  Some of my experience may be idiosyncratic but the differences and similiarities described by practitioners on firekasina.org and here seem to be a unique resource.

Have you written here about your experience with jhanas?

I did have a couple of brushes with migraines on last week's retreat that were intriguing. Around day 2, an amazing 3-D vibrating and shimmering structure of luminous colors and sharply angular forms appeared and out-shined the murk activity so brightly that it also blocked my view of objects in the room with eyes open. It was a particularly outrageous migraine aura, that I can still remember. Too bad I'm not an artist. I think it's not the first time I've seen that particular hulkingly solid shape, usually it's more of an energetic crescent moon.

I had a long standing habit not to focus on it, sort of like the habit of not touching a hot electric stove top. But it was just so mesmerizing, what a friggin' kasina. I wondered what would happen and couldn't resist. Within 15 seconds I found that giving full attention to the aura is like pushing the start button on the symptoms that I take to feel like the cortical spreading depression phase of a migraine.  

I took a break from the visual field for a while and shifted to concentrating on breathing in the hara. Took some migraine remedies and within a couple of hours I was able to return gently to the visual field. The concentration remained strong and I didn't notice migraine symptoms very much until I got up to walk. (The "with aura" type of migraine I have comes with a variety of unpleasant and sometimes impairing neurological symptoms rather than severe headache.) 

That night I took migraine meds, tried to get extra sleep and felt fine the next day.  The encounter didn't derail the retreat but my attention was piqued by the implications: the body/mind was not only representing the migraine as an aura, but attention could manipulate the migraine by interacting with the aura. This theme of the inseperability of awareness and visual field took increasing significance for the rest of the retreat.

On day 4 a milder aura returned, this time the sort of crescent moon shape, and I made sure to immediately and continuously keep attention in the area of the visual field not filled with the aura. This caused the vacant area to gradually expand eventually seeming to push the aura off to the periphery of the upper right field of view, until it passed. About 99% of the time, migraine symptoms express on the left side of my head. But this time I felt them more around the edges of both sides including, unusually, the right. The symptoms were lighter and the same remedies worked well. Not much impact on the practice. 

The near union, or seeming oneness, of visual field and citta, became the main exploration of the retreat for me, and is maybe my main takeaway lesson.  But describing this in detail in case it's helpful to anyone else who gets migraine aura during FK practice. 

I've heard that visual processing takes the lion's share of sense gate handling in the brain and that a larger portion of that processing is predictive/representational rather than fielding sense data. So it's striking me that the visual field may be somewhat uniquely full-featured when it comes to sense gates.
 
For a long time I've been more concerned about catching mental images in the act of "filling in the gaps" than I have been about the parts of visual experience that don't seem imaginal. But now that I've had the meditation experience that the visual is inseperable from awareness & attention, I'm much more interested in it as a practice domain. For one thing, it makes me wonder how much the visual field is *quietly* announcing about the state of the body/mind in real time if I was able to become aware enough to catch more of it. 

Also something about the power of that background announcing having the chance to come into awareness of itself.  At one point I remember the vivid feeling as I watched (in a samadhi state) the expansion of a network that looked like retinal fibers surrounding a black-hole iris, expanding the event horizon, that I was literally watching and participating in the rewiring of my brain.

Nearly a week later, I had to sit for 3 hours this morning before I felt back in touch with the retreat space enough to feel like I could write about it with some authenticity.  Guess I better let go of the coffee-fueled fun thoughts for now and focus more on finding the practice in my Saturday activities. 

Yes. Actually more than anyone could want to read :-) There is quite a bit from the 3/16/21 8:47 PM entry onward in https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/22024623

This covers a time when I started working with a teacher to up my jhana game. He (Nick Grabovac) was trained in TMI but actually taught me based on Leigh's book because that is what I had started with. 

It was neat looking that up because it gave me a chance to see some old posts and notice how much things have changed in what now seems like a short time.
 

I used to have migraine aura without headache, with the jewel-toned zigzags and ramparts that covered up about 20 or 30% of my field of vision. I was driving the first time it happened and thought I was having a stroke. It's funny now! I never had it happen when I was meditating. You seem to be working with it well. My symptoms other than the aura were always quite mild but friends have told me how unpleasant the other symptoms can be. I guess it is a reminder of how perception is not under our control. 

Wow, Martin that's an inspiring and humbling account of what's possible with jhanas. Thanks, looking forward to reading some more. Maybe I'll try nostrils as meditation object tomorrow (since that's what LB teaches) just in case I might happen to be ready to begin concentration practice in more earnest and I'm somewhat just blaming it on fire kasina. 

Had a 3 hour sit yesterday morning, and another hour before bed, motivated in part by trying to recover the waning focus of the retreat. It felt very worthwhile but nothing wanted to be pinned down.  
  
This morning it felt like it was time to move on from last week's retreat. Sat for 3 hours again, starting with FK-initiated visual field awareness, mostly not trying to do anything in particular, with a sense of inquiry and remembering from the retreat that what's happening is already here and sometimes noticing no particular sensation serves as the platform from which to observe the others. 

I'm guessing the sense gates & aggragates that present and are noticed when doing something of a choiceless awareness are most often ones I've worked with individually more intentionally in the past. 

The 10-day online Jhanas retreat with Leigh Brasington and Kim Allen was great, finished it a week ago.

I confirmed that for me fire-kasina works fine to get access concentration and access J1. Also confirmed that metta can work for that too.

Then I pretty much just followed Leigh's instructions for accessing jhanas after the first one. 

Leigh's approach, which he learned from Ayya Kema, is sutta based, and he presented the jhanas as pretty much just a spring-board to insight. The 2nd half of the retreat was focused on insight practices from the suttas. 

I have no complaints about my experiences with the jhanas on this first jhana retreat but about half way I found the insight practice was quite compelling and I stuck with that thereafter.

Whenever I wasn't working with post-J1 jhanas or insight practices, I just used candle kasina for default practice - but that wasn't my focus.

So, this didn't really turn out to be a fire kasina retreat.

In the future I'd love to get more into Rob Burbea's approach to the jhanas.  My impression from RB's jhana retreat talks is he presented the jhanas more as worthy practices in their right, worth more extensive saturating and infusing.  Currently I'm working with a Dharmachanics book practice/study group on Seeing That Frees. After several months of working with almost every practice in the book, chapter by chapter, we're just a few weeks from the end.

At that point, I plan to start over toward the beginning and proceed at a much slower pace than a chapter per week. I might try to get some mentoring, maybe someone connected with Hermes Amara Foundation.

And I still hope to do a straight up Fire Kasina solo retreat in the next few months, ideally with a little bit of mentoring if I can find anyone qualified to offer some FK guidance.

Lots of ambitions for someone who's supposed to be learning to drop everything.

Hey Mark - I think you can drop everything in the present moment and still retain your plans for acquiring new dharma. The latter may support the former!

Hi Chris, that's what I've been hoping, kind of playing with. During these last 2 retreats and in my daily practice there have been and continue to be a bunch of cool states and insights and engagement and ambitions and sometimes bald desperation and disappointment.

It was striking to read the discussion in Bahiya Baby's log. I've been kind of intuiting what Shargrol advised but it's good to see it described: 

"The practice for dealing with that event is to directly the experience the sensations of loss or absence (or sometimes it feels like sinking down in a way, a slow motion feeling of wonder, shock, sadness, fear, etc.) and to relax >into< that feeling while opeing to more/all of experience. This gives the opportunity for integrating the energy, as opposed to identifying with/embedding in the sensation.

"Include" is a great reminder. Include this "loss feeling" in the bigger context of this room, these objects, the space of mind..."

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