I am pretty sure that I'm somewhere in the equanimity stage right now. My meditation sessions have a calm matter of factness to them, as opposed to the highs and lows I'm used to. I am also getting a lot of the sort of altered perception of self and world that Daniel mentions in the MCTB chapter on equanimity. So it seems to behoove me to be on the lookout for formations.

Yet, from descriptions I have read, I am still not quite clear on what formations are supposed to refer to. I have had some experiences that seem to bear family resemblances to Daniel's discussion in MCTB but also some differences or lingering points of uncertainty.

For instance, here is an account of a recent experience during a walking meditation.

I was focusing primarily on visual sensations as my objects of vipassana, though allowing and noting all other sensations as well, particularly any bodily and mental sensations that arose in response to visual sensations. I entered into a highly attentive and equanimous state. I felt very calm and absorbed. I moved slowly. I experienced the world not as the ordinary world with a certain externality and reality and inhabited by people and objects, but as "just a bunch of sensations". People were sensations. I saw them not unlike one might see a person in a lucid dream; obviously recognized as a person on some level, but at the same time there was a spontaneous, effortless experience of being noncommital/agnostic/skeptical about their "true nature" above and beyond their status as configurations of perception. I noticed subtle, automatic mental and emotional reactions upon perceiving people that normally would go unnoticed. The two were co-existing smoothly in time and space; there was this sense of this and then that, like an unbroken flow or pattern of sensations, between the external and internal. The following aspects of experience were heavily attenuated: substantiality, solidity, reality, meaning, importance, heaviness. The world really was something like "just sensations". Why get so worked up over a bunch of sensations? I was neither blissful nor afraid, just there in the moment experiencing. Body, and to a lesser extent, mental, sensations were experienced as arising alongside external perceptions in a kind of cause-and-effect, not-self way. I did not have a feeling of no-self in particular, although many subtle thoughts and reactions to perceptions were observed rather than experienced as a means of observation, i.e. seen as sensations rather than identified as self. I experienced some impermanence/flow phenomena. At one point my hands began to tingle like pins and needles, though in a bearable way. I felt my hands as energetic, bundles of energy, a fluid happening, rather than as a normal inert solid object. Several times, absorbing myself into the visual scene, things took on a vivid, now, frozen-in-the-moment quality not unlike the experience of a vivid photographic memory, except the experience was still happening. However, my memory for these visual moments is in fact more vivid than normal visual memory.

I suspect that the bolded parts, referring to an unbroken, natural, seemless flow of experience for both external, bodily, and mental sensations is something like a formation. Is that right? But, I still cannot reconcile other aspects of the description of formations in MCTB, such as:

If you could take a 3D moving photograph that also
captured smell, taste, touch, sound, and thought, all woven into each
other seamlessly and containing a sense of flux, this would
approximate the experience of one formation.

They contain not only a complete set of aspects of all six sense
doors within them, but include the perception of space (volume)
and even of time/movement within them.

What I experienced was kind of like an unbroken flow or stream of experience that in some sense disregarded the internal/external distinction. But it did not include anything to do with taste or smell, and did not really include a visceral feeling of space. It was also more stream-like than object-like; the description of formations provided in MCTB seems to denote something object-like, like "this chunk of stuff all together is a formation".

Also, the plural part of the word puzzles me. Is a formation supposed to refer to the entire field of experience? Or some attended subcomponents of the entire field of experience that cohere in a special way? Can multiple formations be experienced in one moment, or does "formation" refer to one unbroken stream of experience over some duration of time?

Dear Brian M,

When I read your descriptions and you mention frozen moments, I think A&P territory, and when you mention vibrations and energy I really think A&P territory.

Formation territory tends to be very integrated, ordinary and yet remarkable in its broad, simple direct clarity.

Keep going, as if this is Equanimity it will naturally mellow, gel and integrate on its own, and if it is the A&P, well, you know what comes next.

Have things progressed, changed, or revealed themselves since your last post?

I haven't been able to practice much in the past few days. I feel very much down to earth, mundane and normal again and getting caught up in my thoughts again, and even somewhat agitated, though I think that has a lot to do with the circumstances and attendant lack of practice.

In retrospect, the episode from my last post was kind of like an afterglow from a sublime experience a day or two before. I had an experience of letting go in a way I hadn't quite been able to do previously (or since), and the major feature of the experience was a change in the way I perceived agency in myself and others. It felt like we were all being pulled along on the same string so to speak, like a kind of experience of determinism where it wasn't a bunch of people deciding their own actions, but rather just the laws of nature finding expression in everyone's behavior. There weren't many perceived agents, just perceived one agent, the laws of nature, like just one big causal tapestry unfolding rather than multiple loci of causal agency. I was included in that tapestry, and yet in some way it still felt natural to act normally, i.e. it wasn't as if I felt that acting was futile because it was beyond 'my' control or already determined, etc. For a brief while it made sense experientially how the two could be reconciled.

I guess the major reason I thought it might be equanimity is because I never really got too caught up in the experience. I am somewhat prone to feeling giddy and losing my cool when a big interesting change in experience comes on but in these instances there was more of an observational, hands off, lightly interested kind of flavor.

On re-reading my response, I realize I didn't talk much about formations, which was your first question.

Here's some more on them that may help:

In the A&P, vibrations are things happening in space.
In Formations, vibrations include aspects of space, awareness and the stuff that is typically though of as not being those things.

In the A&P, big warps and crazy stuff might happen.
In Formations, the stuff seems more ordinary, more integrated, less of a big deal, very low-key most of the time. As high and interesting as they sound, many will not notice they are perceiving them at all even when they clearly are. This is contrasted with the A&P, which is usually pretty dramatic.

Which is which is not always straightforward, but context and time and seeing what comes next helps.

Helpful?

Since my last post I have been doing a more simple and disciplined practice, just looking at a kasina object with some light vipassana in the background and letting all sensations just do their thing. This has really helped push me forward and clarified where I am. I was able to push through some initially intimidating dark night episodes (fear, panic, misery) in a few days by practicing with consistency and equanimity, and in the past couple of days I've broken through to what must be equanimity. For the first time I have had multiple experiences of a split-second blinking out of visual awareness both during and outside of my practice. I don't think these are fruitions because they don't have a really radically discontinuous, all encompassing flavor, they just feel like someone flipped the light switch off and on really quickly. In any case I'll just keep going and see what happens.

Your description of formations leaves me a little befuddled. I used to be similarly befuddled by descriptions of no-self but feel pretty comfortable with what that concept is getting at now after multiple kinds of experiences both profound and subtle. It must be the sort of thing you just know when you see it. So once again, I'll just keep practicing and see what happens.