Do you notice anything other than pleasure and tingles? Do you notice a sense of tension? If so, how does it manifest in relation to pleasure and tingles? Anything else?

When tingles arise and pass in an instant, is it literally an instant (in a "point" of time) or does it happen in MCTB's "analog" way?



I took the word "dwell" to imply that craving hangs out in that sense-modality. I suppose it could be read in different ways, especially depending on what the original Pali word is.

(The part relating craving to the sense-bases seems especially true and useful when taken in the way I took it. Villum (on KFD) had a practice tip about "relaxing the eyelids". I find, right now, that there is a special kind of tension on my eyes (including where my eyelids are when they're open), nostrils, ear-holes, and tongue, on top of the general subtle bodily tension wherever my body extends to. I think this is what Villum was onto...what this sutta seems to me to be pointing out.)



I think the experience you're referring to as "vibrations" are a collection of different connected experiences, one of which is craving. Think of vibrations as having "parts" or segments; the first part is craving, which gives rise to the later part.

Maybe you could find the



Good question. Sometimes I think it isn't so elusive. Other times I think I'm kidding myself for thinking that.

One thing that's clear to me is that there is what I call "becoming" and what MCTB calls "consciousness" (the "mental replica" or distortion of sense-experience) in all modalities. Perhaps I'll see if I can look more closely at it and find something analogous to what I think of as craving in those modalities, over the next few days.

Now I understand better what you're asking. I thought you were asking about vibrations, rather than meditation methods (that result in experiencing vibrations).

The translator's note on this sutta links it to the question you're asking: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn23/sn23.002.than.html

The more minute the analysis, the more the mind is liable to let go of its attachments in any moment due to those attachments seeming ridiculous from this perspective. (My experience.) For example, if you want to get up, but see that "get up" is now a string of rapidly-shifting thoughts and intentions that are called "the idea of getting up" only by convention, it is much harder to continue to want the thing, as the thing you could want no longer seems to have existed in the first place. The wanting finds nothing to be about, and disbands (at least temporarily, until you lose that perspective).

Are you describing an experience with vibrations, or not? The impression I had was "yes" but perhaps we're talking past each other on this issue.

If there are vibrations, then, for example, if you perceive them as analog, you can examine the time frame in which they arise and the time frame in which they pass.

As for the senses themselves, in principle you could examine visual experience so as to see the way that visual forms change more precisely. (In Abhidhamma it's claimed that one can discern all kinds of mental processes that we normally blur together into the label "seeing", though I have no idea about that.)

Another way to approach this would be to develop greater concentration while in the state you're describing, and then analyze what changes as concentration increases.