Good tidings to everyone who would like to read this. My name is Jim Jam, and I have decided to halt my long-term lurking—posting once a year, or what have you—and begin a proper practice log for two primary reasons:
1. To give myself an opportunity to look back on my own past dharmic ramblings. My memory is poor, and writing these things down properly is the only way I will ever cement my past accomplishments and failures.
2. To allow other people to pick apart my bullshit when it arises and maybe help me avoid wandering through loops that you have already walked through.
I will begin this log by speaking about my past practice to give everyone an idea of the sort of territory I’ve walked and the techniques I’ve used. I will then transition to my current practice in terms of intensity, style, and methods. Finally, I will spend a bit of time discussing the current state of affairs and the cutting edge of my practice. I do this not to blab about myself but to give anyone who reads this a better idea of where I’m at—and to put my notes on this stuff in one place.I began meditating sometime in the middle of 2020, looking for a place of solace in that wild time. I was drinking incredibly heavily throughout the first half of that year, and one night, while drunk, I found a copy of Mindfulness in Plain English that my world religion professor had given me in my first year of college. I already had running as a good habit and drinking as a bad habit, so maybe another good habit would balance it out?I followed the instructions in the text and began a floundering meditation practice. Most of my sessions were done hungover, but Bhante G’s promise at the end of the book—
"You vividly experience the impermanence of life, the suffering nature of human existence, and the truth of no self. You experience these things so graphically that you suddenly awake to the utter futility of craving, grasping, and resistance. In the clarity and purity of this profound moment, our consciousness is transformed."
was inspiring to me. Before I knew it, something weird was happening. I was able to note things! A thought! A feeling! Oh, how joyous! I was still just as much of a drunk as before, but I was becoming an ‘awake’ drunk—or so I thought.]I started reading a lot about religion, feeling like I was really onto something. The intensity of it felt like it was picking up, and soon, I thought I was going to have the whole thing licked! I figure I passed the A&P around this time, and if I thought I had undeveloped problems before, this made it way, way worse. Bhante G didn’t tell me about this. Luckily, at this point, I had ordered Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (MCBT2), and I dark-nighted hard as hell for about a year.
First Path:
My practice really picked up in the summer of 2021. I was in the Army at the time and found myself with loads of free time. (If there are any other vets here, you’ll know how strange this is—sometimes I had a ton of time, and sometimes I worked 12-hour days for a year straight with no days off.) My responsibilities made it harder for me to self-destructively drink, so I increased my meditation dose dramatically. I went from roughly 20 minutes a day to 2–3 hours every day.For the first time on this journey, I really rocketed up the stages of insight. In 2021, I posted twice on this forum about my experiences: the first being some dark-night stuff, and the second being stream entry, which I still see as the moment I achieved it. I would like to thank Dream Walker for diagnosing me—somehow correctly—(R.I.P.), and Adi Vader for providing incredible advice. After I hit SE, I really stopped meditating for a while. Life was so much better—the big ‘thing’ I had been pushing for over a year and a half, and had spent 2–3 hours a day on for the last six months, happened! I really felt done, like I had done enough. I knew the charts, and I knew the writings on the later paths, but there was a sense of relief that I wouldn’t have to do any of that. I was certainly wrong. Some cool perks of SE for me: I could access some basic jhana stuff if I put the effort in, and I developed a vast textual understanding of the suttas that I didn’t have before. Cool stuff.
Second Path:
Sometime in mid-2022, a sense of uneasiness washed over me—a general feeling that I had to figure this out. There was still something wrong. I would be walking around, not even trying, and fruitions would occasionally happen with just a little tuning into reality—but something about that felt wrong, too. I set off on retreat a few times in 2022 to figure it out, but I couldn’t at the time. To make matters worse, I spent all of 2023 in a combat zone (a story for another time). I learned a lot of dharmic and moral lessons the hard way there. But one positive thing: despite the chaos, during some of the downtime in the summer months, I hit what I believe to be second path by sitting for roughly 7 hours a day. This was another deep cessation, and I got a lot of shit from some of my guys for sitting so long during our downtime—but it worked out.So far, so good, as far as meditation is concerned. My technique for second path was the same as first, with a touch more jhana. But I definitely didn’t dive into the deep end—after all, I could be hit with drones, mortars, or what have you (not a good environment for meditation). Note, note, then notice when you can notice, then note some more. My second path fruition was particularly intense and happened toward the end of my tour. I resolved that when I came back home, I was getting out of the Army ASAP—I couldn’t bear to call myself dharmic and carry weapons anymore. I know there’s some old-school Buddhism about this, and I know that emotionally I am still a strange fellow, but out of nowhere, there was a bone-cutting feeling that if I was part of this, my karma would be ruined forever. I can’t really explain it past that—I simply didn’t have the same conviction before that fruition.
Returning Home:
Upon returning home, I began to meditate some more in the same style for months. The problems began to really arise here. This practice had become incredibly infuriating for me—not in the first-path I can’t see what the hell they’re talking about perspective, but something much deeper . In 2024, I leaned much further into what I would consider mystical teachings, as I find them much more beautiful than I used to. Things like the One-ness of God from the Sufis, the works of Meister Eckhart, the Vimalakirti Sutta, and Moon in a Dewdrop. Despite this sudden mystic bent, my practice remained the same until roughly October of 2024.
Current Practice: The Man Rigging the Table
When I sit now, I notice ‘the man rigging the table’ (a crude metaphor, and I feel there is something better but I haven’t read the sutta, or the Shargrol post that probably explains it). The best way I can describe it is: I sit for an hour, simply ‘noticing’ reality. Yet, when I do so, I see ‘the man rigging the table’ show up. ]This isn’t ‘noting’ in the traditional sense. It’s more like: I am noticing reality, and then I notice something derailingthe simplicity. It’s as if I’m trying to be a dealer at a blackjack table where everyone has played perfectly—they could already win—but the dealer wants nothing more than to fuck it up. This dealer, when noticed, fades quickly into a very broad stream of sensational data, until it finds a new thing to warp reality around.
Now, for the second part of the practice. I feel as if I am going mad, because when I try to be rid of the dealer, the dealer is dealing. The dealer doesn’t stop dealing whenever input is applied (or not input, for that matter). He is playing his cards, and playing the entirety of the table (sensate reality) against me. Yet whenever I relax, the ‘man rigging the table’ goes away for a bit—it’s very gentle, very nice, and very peaceful (I suspect the bastard is still rigging the game). There’s an achy-ness to it. A feeling like I am going to lose a little bit of my childhood.It almost feels like the ‘man rigging the table’ is a childlike response to woundedness. This woundedness feels incredibly important, and I’m not sure why. It feels very simple and very sorrowful. Usually, whenever it arises in the sense field, there’s a feeling of an ‘un-rigging of the table’ that happens, but whenever I try to interact and understand that sensation the ‘man rigging the table’ returns. It’s maddening.
Closing Thoughts
This concept of ‘the man rigging the table’ has mostly shown up within the last month, and I know it is important. I apologize for the crudeness of the metaphor, and I will report back with anything else as I meditate this week, and the weeks after. [Thank you to all the excellent dharma-siblings on this forum! I apologize for the long initial message.
P.S. I had all this nice formatting on a google doc, and then posting it here messed it up. I apologize, the font is way smaller than I wanted.
- Jim Jam
