I don't know, and of course won't know until I try, how helpful an online log regarding my efforts will be or whether or not I will continue the log...if it ceases you might interpret it to mean that I'm practicing more so than I am tracking the practice, which of course would be a very good thing indeed.

I've been doing Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka since November 2010. Regularity of home practice has waxed and waned but I feel the time has come to step it up. I served at a 10-day retreat, learning the dhamma of working in a commercial kitchen, last week. That right there meant a minimum of 3 hours daily on the cushion - usually more, since happily we were a remarkably cohesive and efficient group and were able to attend more sits and discourses than most server groups. I was off to a good start.

Since then I have been continuing my travels, outward and inward. I decided on an intermediate stop between the dhamma center and home to celebrate my best friend's birthday. During the celebrations, his father died in the next room. Talk about an opportunity to practice...attending to bodily sensations was about the only way to stay grounded enough to express compassion effectively and also care for myself, so I did.

It's just my friend and his mom now, and it became pretty clear that they would have found it difficult to manage everything without someone additional to serve as a witness to the process of making end-of-life choices. Even dying is made so hard in this culture...harder on one's loved ones...I found they had some trouble remembering everything said between themselves and firefighters, police, a chaplain, a funeral director, etc., but I could be of help. The emotional process is a whole other level of experience, of course, and I was there for them with regard to that too. I'd planned to leave today but realized this was simply not the time. Happily with my unusual work schedule I had the flexibility to stay on and be helpful a bit longer, so I'm doing that.

Work on the cushion today:

an hour this morning. The night is no longer young but I believe another hour will be possible.

Work off the cushion today:

a great deal. Attending to sensations to remain grounded and present...deciding what is wise to speak and how it is best spoken...and some reflections on the charnel ground practice from Sattipatthana Sutta. On Sunday I found it necessary to walk only a few inches away from a newly fallen human body just to navigate to another room, and I did find that emotionally difficult until I started remembering "this is body. This is old age. This is sickness. This is death. This is form. This is impermanence." As I sit at my friend's computer I am not far from that very spot and the memory still necessitates some grounding work but I feel I'm doing it successfully.

Keeping up a steady dhamma practice has been a challenge this week...not that it ever isn't unless I am on retreat...but in a way that's been a meta-meditation exercise - keeping in mind what I feel really matters, and having the determination not to waver from my plan to practice regularly.

I found that after the 10-day I served last week, I was in a much more even place emotionally than I've been in a while, and a quieter place mentally. To say that I was happier would not be quite accurate but I found myself at greater, more lasting peace than I've had in a long time...possibly ever.

Vipassana does that, in my experience. The last time I served, not on a course but between courses, I found that my relationship to anger changed. I've never been in a habit of behaving angrily or speaking angrily but while I was serving that time, my anger became conspicuous by its absence. It was as if a huge pyre in the back of my mind just snuffed itself out and wasn't seen again for months. At this point I feel more like I have a pilot light where that fire was. It's not noticeable most of the time and only grows into a significant burn when triggered by something specific; even at that, I can generally feel anger, observe anger, choose a response, and choose to let go. There have been exceptions but on the whole that's what anger is like for me as of the last year and a half or so. That's been a welcome change. I can't yet describe what it is that has become conspicuous by its absence since this past retreat but there is something and I feel like life is much more sustainable without it. I think for now I could use the term chaos. I feel more or less free of chaos inside. I would like to see that become a long-term change.

Being with my friend and his mother as they began the healing process following the death of the family patriarch right afterward did a fair job extending my opportunity to step away from the way life usually is, and practice on and off the cushion, and find a way to become more a meditator in a situation a little closer to everyday life. Everyday life, the way it usually is for me, feels like I'm under pressure from practically every direction, almost every hour of the day; the only times I really feel at ease are when I am doing massage therapy sessions or performing music on stage, and those two activities combined count for a maximum of about 20 hours out of the week. If I had been plunged right back into my usual constant rush of activity and stress, I'm not sure how well my reintegration would have gone. But there was a stair step here; I went from serving at the retreat (long, busy hours but regular demands and little perceived pressure), to being present with a grieving family as they made funeral arrangements (less activity but with unpredictable demands on my energy and attention and a situation that was more personal and pressing), to my daily life (long, busy hours with completely unpredictable demands, and a nearly unending list of things I feel a need to do well if not perfectly). Externally the chaos really never even stops; I run my own business and whether I choose to deal with it at any given moment or not, there is a constant stream of phone calls, emails, text messages, mail, bills, and errands coming my way 24/7. Internally, however...aside from a few bumps now and then I don't feel that chaotic.

I also notice my perception and ability to think clearly is really heightened. I'm noticing things - connections, similarities, needs, differences - that have eluded me before, and I'm getting good at asking penetrating questions even of myself. What's the fundamental need here?...Why am I reacting this way?...If I handle this situation in this way, yes my client will be satisfied, but what will the cost be in terms of my quality of life? Will I have the mental stamina to work well for a day that long and that late?...

On the cushion:

I've been getting to the cushion...or in my case either the futon or the seiza bench...and that in and of itself is a huge victory. I've found my samadhi to be greatly improved since the retreat. I find myself settling down and putting aside other cares and concerns rather quickly and with relative ease now.

Stray images and sounds enter my mind with varying degrees of frequency and intensity from one sit to another; it's like dreaming but I am reasonably sure I remain awake, partially because of the vivid samadhi with which I'm able to observe sensations, and partially because there's no way I could fall asleep in these positions without either at least one limb or my entire body falling out of position. They're not difficult postures to maintain but, well, I do have to have some muscles engaged to remain upright and balanced; I know the difference because of the rare occasions when I have begun to fall asleep in the same positions. My first sit today seemed to be a parade of images and sounds related to toys most of the way through. I saw a miniature gumball machine which I am sure was lost by the time I was 12, heard glass marbles rubbing together, watched a remarkably well-mechanized teddy bear wander across a table until it tripped over its own slightly too-floppy feet...and every time I simply treated body sensations as more important until the the latest float in the mental parade passed by. After a while the toy images stopped and I heard someone asking me a handful of questions about various topics. I most clearly remember a question coming up, "well this is the weaker being and it has been abused by beings like the stronger one all its life; is it better for the strong to abuse the weak, or the weak, when it has a rare chance, to take revenge on the strong?" I responded, "abuse is always wrong, and I am not here to ponder ethics anyway, thank you..." and returned full attention to body sensations.

I know what to do about all that stray imagery because music plays in my mind almost constantly as well, no matter what I am doing, on or off the cushion; it seldom turns itself off unless there is music in the external environment. (Right now I am hearing "Revolution No. 9" faintly in the back of my mind.) I have been like this for as long as I can remember, which means there has been a background soundtrack in my mind almost constantly for over 20 years, possibly 30. I am perfectly happy for the musical companionship in daily life but it seems out of place when I am trying to meditate; I once asked a teacher what to do about this with regard to meditation; she said to simply let it be there for as long as it wants to be there, not to try to control it, and to continue to observe bodily sensations and give that practice priority. Even if the music never stops, no matter - I just need to place my focus on sensations and be equanimous, just as if I were hearing a neighbor's radio faintly through the wall. So I've come to treat these spontaneous images and bits of dialogue in the same way. It works.

Off the cushion:

I often wonder if I encounter more dukkha in general than the average person. I won't try to qualify that; no one here needs to hear about my personal or professional challenges in any detail, but I will say that whether or not my level of dukkha is atypical, it's a lot. Opportunities to practice abound. I learned last night that if I am tired enough I cannot take advantage of it and begin to suffer over the dukkha rather than just dealing with it. One more reason to crawl into bed when my eyelids feel like felt.

Wow. I am incredibly happy!

It's not often, at least not in recent times, that I've found myself inclined to just plain say that I'm happy. It's not as if I had been miserable before, at least not usually, but just feeling plain old, wonderful happy was not a dominant color on my emotional palette for quite a while. People are actually laughing when they talk to me because they're not used to me doing things like signing off of a phone call saying "okay, well until later, be well and have fun!" I don't think I've done that since I was a college student, teaching kids' guitar lessons. I think in the entire time some of these people have known me the only answer they've ever gotten to "how are you?" was a politely perky, "I'm doin' okay, thanks. " They're not used to "I'm doing really well, thank you!" I always do my best to be pleasant but I'm not going to lie. If you ask me how I'm doing and I don't feel fabulous I'm not going to make something up...this is just what's real for me now. And it couldn't be attributable to anything other than my practice, specifically the boost I got serving a 10-day retreat.

Again, initially I just felt at ease...and that alone felt wonderful...but now that ease is making room for real JOY. Consciously I never really thought about it one way or another, but I realize looking back that I never really understood inner peace as an attainable thing. I saw it as an ideal...shoot for the moon, and even if you fail you'll end up among the stars, as I once heard it said. Really I probably am still "just" among the stars...I don't pretend to think this is an unshakable state, much less a permanent one...I haven't hit nibbana or become enlightened yet, I know...but whatever else this is or isn't...my gosh it is wonderful!

On the cushion:

I'm making it to the cushion at least once a day now, sometimes twice. I haven't been an exceptionally organized person for a while so learning to become organized enough for a sustained practice is taking time, but it is working. I had a lovely session last night - unusually quiet, a lot of easy free flows of vibration. The music in my mind still never stops but it was quiet and tuned to something or other pleasant in the background, and I don't remember what it was exactly so my attention must have been really nicely tied to my practice itself.

Off the cushion:

Little unwanted things happen, and I cope. Hopefully it will be an extremely long time before I have to find out how well I cope when big unwanted things happen, but since most of daily life's dukkha is composed of little unwanted things rather than big ones, well...again, I know I am not impenetrable, but I feel reasonably well-equipped.

Aside from nocturnal panic attacks (two thus far) and nightmares (too many to count over the last five days), life is still feeling very peaceful and very much "in hand." I was starting to get worried about the sleep disturbances and that preoccupied me just enough yesterday that it didn't seem like quite such a super-happy day...but it was still pretty darn happy. I'm getting harder to capsize emotionally. I don't recall any nightmares last night either, which gives me hope that I'm not going to repeat my early- to mid-twenties sleep pattern, which pretty much went go to bed, lie there for half an hour, go to sleep, have horrible nightmares, wake up more tired than you were when you went to bed, and repeat nightly for at least the next three years.

On the cushion:

Getting to the cushion was hard this weekend, due both to disorganization and time crunches I couldn't really control. Today it's not so tough schedule-wise, I just have that typical hyperactive, resistant monkey-mind hopping around in my skull.

Off the cushion:

The dhamma is pretty much how I stay upbeat and don't get swept up in anything, positive or negative. That's annoying...but it's not going to last. Might as well relax; it's not worth sacrificing my peace for...and THAT is just lovely...but it's not going to last. All the more important to enjoy it while it's here, and be ready for the time when it's not.

The sense of ease and happiness that I gained over recent weeks has stayed with me for the most part. I've had moments of feeling quite triggered, but they were only moments. I may have had three or four really bad hours in total over the last four weeks; the rest of the time I feel content and without chaos, and often downright blissful. Meanwhile I feel clearer mentally than I have in a very long time, and progressively more aware and at choice in the moment.

Up until my difficulties with nightmares and panic attacks waking me up (a problem which has since been resolved, thankfully), I never cared to learn about the various stages of which the path to enlightenment might consist. I felt better as a meditator than as a non-meditator; it seemed to be filling an immediate need in my life, and that was enough for me. Whether I ever became "enlightened" or not seemed irrelevant, probably because I didn't understand the term and it frankly sounded a bit pretentious until it was thoroughly clarified. Also I was just plain enjoying doing something without having a long-term goal in mind. However, having come as far as I have, I started to get curious as to what someone might call the place where I am at present.

Reading one definition of what might constitute stream entry, I think I'm getting quite close. I think the lack of a fully regular practice is what holds me back, since I seem to be doing relatively well with the rest of the eightfold path.

On the cushion:

Practice is still not fully regular but it's getting there. The commitment and follow-through is definitely on the rise. I actually signed off of a Skype call tonight - a call I'd been very much enjoying and wasn't eager to leave - just to take an hour out to meditate. Quality of meditation has been uneven and often distracted. The music that I constantly hear in my mind was exceptionally loud and novel tonight; I was hearing totally unfamiliar arrangements of familiar music, which is very unusual for me; I usually hear things just as I remember them, with no variations that I know of. But no matter what happens...I go back to the breath and body sensations. That's where the good stuff is.

Off the cushion:

I had quite a few metta challenges today, ranging from irresponsible and arguably predatory behavior on the part of a utility company, to an egregiously inappropriate demand someone attempted to place upon me. I am no longer afraid to speak out in most situations, but if I begin to slip out of an equanimous, balanced place, I'm finding it easy to spot, which of course is the first step in addressing it.

Facebook led me to this: http://what-buddha-said.net/Canon/Sutta/KN/Dhammapada.Verse_152.story.htm

For those who aren't in a click-y mood, here's the text:



What jumped out at me immediately was the part saying [O]n sorrowful occasions he would talk about joy and gladness. Besides, he never realized that he had been saying things which were inappropriate to the occasion. One of the more unfortunate interpersonal experiences in my life was with someone I regarded as a close friend. He described himself as a Buddhist, to the degree that most any Buddhist does so, and it was on that basis that he expected I would be totally without emotional reaction when severe storms erupted in my personal life. He expected me to sit there cheerfully as if nothing at all had happened when I was facing great personal loss, and he blamed his total lack of empathy on the dhamma. It is true, of course, that not being swept away in the emotional storms of life is a chief objective of the dhamma, arguably even THE objective...but emotions do continue to arise, and this is not necessarily incompatible with continuing on a path toward enlightened nibbanic freedom. Even if it were, however, look at what Buddha says: someone who insists on speaking of joy and gladness in sorrowful circumstances does so because he is lacking in wisdom, and not being able to see the inappropriate nature of that response was ALSO reflecting a lack of wisdom. So this is much like what I tried to explain to my friend quite a few times: to become enlightened does not mean to be without emotion; to be a good Buddhist does not mean to harden one's heart against others' suffering and treat it as irrelevant. A good Buddhist is not a rock; an enlightened person is not a sociopath. I would argue in fact that, at least in this one's admittedly fallible view, the ideal state of freedom for an individual would be the ability to have compassion - to feel with another - to be able to know their pains just enough to begin to understand - but without being capsized by their emotional troubles or one's own. Certainly it is impossible to rescue the passengers on a sinking boat if your rescue boat also capsizes, but it is equally impossible to help them if you refuse to put your own boat in the water - to get into the same rough seas and witness the damage done to the other craft. How can you be of service to a world, or even one friend, whose problems you refuse to relate to at all?

Of course like any good sutta, this story shows me my own weaknesses just as readily as it confirms that I have been harmed by others' weaknesses. Sometimes meditation goes by the wayside. I become so consumed in activities with objective, observable, tangible outcomes, that I don't find as much time for it as I intend. But what am I doing if I am amassing things - money, even if only enough to survive; clients served; songs written; spreadsheets filled out; taxes filed; litter boxes cleaned...even a healthy body - while that intangible, inner wealth is languishing? This is one of my own weaknesses. My priorities don't seem to be upside-down exactly, but at the very least they are lying uncomfortably on their collective side.

On the cushion:

It's been another one-hour meditation day. I'm glad for that hour; I just need another one. I have to keep that ox metaphor in mind!

Off the cushion:

There's never any shortage of metta challenges, but I've become resensitized to the blips in my own state of calm inside. I really feel it when I get a little fired up or a little weighed down; I have the opportunity to be at choice in my response, and at times I seem to respond very effectively.

It's been a rough couple of days. The week in general has been a little crazy, pretty triggering emotionally, but things really came to a head yesterday. I woke up this morning...um, this afternoon actually...feeling despairing and angry, which I haven't experienced in a very long time. If my practice were stronger I'd probably heed the typical vipassana-a-la-Goenka advice to just sit there and meditate until things straighten themselves out...but I haven't been very good at sitting there lately, because my practice isn't that strong just yet. I realize it's mostly an illusion but there are times when I feel like I just need something outside myself to give me a hand up out of these things.

It seems to me that anything worthwhile I have found in life has come to me, whether directly or indirectly, through music. That's been the thread that's linked everything I value in one way or another. A while back a friend introduced me to the music of Singh Kaur and I fell in love. Being as curious as I tend to be, I started exploring Sikh music in general and soon found Mata Mandir Singh. This afternoon I turned on a favorite YouTube video with his music, and the dukkha in which I appear to be utterly awash this weekend reminded me that nothing lasts forever, so if I value this music I should find a way of hearing it that doesn't rely on a website. I do indeed plan on purchasing a CD, and in the meantime I also ran across a page on his website that describes naad yoga; yoga that is all about sound interacting with the body and the universe - it's all about vibrations. Apparently when Mata Mandir was in a place in his life that felt like an extended-length version of what I'm going through today, Yogi Bhajan advised him to play a musical instrument to become more in tune himself. According to the principles behind naad yoga, that works on a deep fundamental level and is good at straightening out a lot of potentially serious bumps in the road.

Though the codified philosophy and science of it is new to me as of about an hour and a half ago, if this is so, it is probably the ultimate reason why I am a musician. My guitar teacher when I was sixteen asked me why I wanted to play the guitar and I told him I wanted to be a part of the music I was hearing all the time. Singing helped but it wasn't enough for me; I wanted more than that. Almost 18 years later, I've learned to play close to a dozen different musical instruments to at least some rudimentary degree, and if I'm still around in another 18 years, I'll probably have learned to play more of them. Thinking about it I realized playing some music would probably be a good way to lift myself into a together enough state to actually throw myself into the meditation that I'm pretty sure I need to be doing. And it worked...I actually managed to meditate before late evening, which meant I could do it again in the late evening.

On the cushion:

Started out distracted and sleepy. Never did get past distracted entirely but, well, you never do for long. That's the nature of the practice.

Off the cushion:

Just trying not to react too strongly to the strange stuff that's been happening, and believe me, there has been plenty of it. I could do better and I could do worse.

If anxiety had a fan club, I think my brain would have hosted the first several hours of its annual convention tonight. It came on kind of suddenly, this amped-up mood of mine...I was fine seven hours ago...but I think I know why it popped up tonight.

First off I'm somewhere around the two-month anniversary of the day I woke up feeling really good, and while I've had my occasional rough day, I have just never since been back to my previous state of overwhelm and inner chaos to anywhere near the degree I felt it before. I've felt good many times in my life, but never this consistently for this long. And in much the same way that I had nightmares and anxiety attacks when I first discovered a new level of happiness, I believe that once again some poor confused part of my brain is waiting for the other shoe to drop. I've been feeling really good for right around two months and all of a sudden I'm worried about something bad happening. All of a sudden I'm worried about everything from my cat dying to going bankrupt to losing my teeth...even though when last consulted, my vet, my accountant, and my dentist all agreed that my cat and I are both doing well or even marvelously. If it were any one thing, or anything I had any reason to worry about, I might think it was something to be taken seriously, but it really seems like my brain doesn't understand...yes, it really can be this good for this long.

Another thing is that I just recently passed the two-year anniversary of something really traumatic that happened to me. I've been getting more and more accustomed to the aftereffects of what happened to me, what I learned regarding my support network, and the choices I found it necessary to make as a result...but I still have times where I blame myself and get angry at myself for not having prevented what happened. Ultimately I think part of the problem was that I wasn't established enough in the dhamma to make a good independent choice at that time. Back then when I was scared, I ran to trusted advisors and friends to help me figure out what to do, and I would do it, telling myself that's what they said I should do and they'd never steer me wrong. Now I know that I don't have to do that. I don't have to take refuge in another human being's opinions to make a choice when I'm uneasy. I can even ask their opinions, but ultimately they aren't in my head and don't have to live with the consequences of my choices, so the decision is not properly theirs to make. I'm much better equipped to do that for myself.

So yes, I've gotten a lot better at working amid feelings of fear or anxiety, which was why despite my anxiety party tonight, I still sat down to meditate.

On the cushion:

I found this evening that meditating lifted the anxiety almost instantly. Unfortunately another emotional thug was waiting around the corner for me. I can meditate through anxiety, I can meditate through intense anger toward someone else (not that I have to do that much since I've barely felt angry at all in the last year and a half), but I have a very hard time meditating through anger toward myself. Still *sigh* I'm a "vipassana girl." No matter what happens, you sit there and meditate and let things straighten themselves out. So I scanned the small area at the top of the skull, and seethed at myself a little, and scanned the entire scalp area, and wondered how I could've been so stupid, and scanned the area around the eyes, and wondered what other people do when they feel angry at themselves...kept coming back to bodily sensations, though by the end of the hour I was both still angry and getting really tired. (Now, by the way, I'm typing and I'm not angry anymore. Someone once said that it seemed to them that I healed by writing, and I think they were right on that count.)

Off the cushion:

Life can be seen as nothing more than an extended parade of what a cancer survivor I met referred to as AFOs (Another F'ing Opportunity to practice). I feel like on the whole I'm still doing really well at using those opportunities - it's become a normal, often humorous thread in my life. Earlier I was cleaning and a heavy book fell off a shelf onto my foot, and I screamed...then I thought, "well, I can seethe and stew or I can go make a cup of tea. Seething isn't going to make my foot stop hurting or give other books a warning regarding the consequences of attacking my foot, so I might as well go get that tea."

I do notice my sense of humor has changed. Some things are funny that weren't before because I've stopped taking inconsequential junk so seriously, but other things aren't so funny anymore. I saw a picture on Facebook earlier with a spider under a glass and a note next to it that went something like "John - look at this huge disgusting spider I found. I can't believe it - it ran over my FOOT! Please kill it. Then kill it again." I think two years ago I would've laughed at that but now I just find it sad. Ma'am, I don't know which is sadder, the spider's situation or yours - you are afraid of something completely needlessly. If a spider runs over your foot it's presumably headed someplace else, so let it go there. It has no interest in you - you were just in its path at the time. If you really want it out of your house, slip an index card under the glass and carry it outside. I'm not wild about spiders either but they're living things with a purpose. They don't always have to die for you to feel safe, and you don't have to lose the balance of your mind or heart just because you see one.

Things have been ramping up nicely in terms of practice. I would hesitate to say that my practice is "regular" because that would suggest it occurs at uniform times of day, which it doesn't. However my practice is now frequent. Twice a day is pretty much normal now.

For the most part life is just lived on a nice, fairly reassuring even keel these days, and I'm still feeling like I have more brain power available for important tasks than I used to, presumably because I'm not using up energy being upset about things. Things happen that bug me here and there, and they often are indicative of problems in life which do need to be resolved, but they generally don't take me down very far or for very long. I've received unwelcome news and come to unwanted realizations a few times lately, but for the most part I'm not even inclined to be bothered; I just take action if I can, and take action on something else if I can't.

On the cushion:

Twice a day, generally; sometimes more. The quality of focus the last few days has been a little shaky...sometimes I'm just plain not focused...but that's all part of it. Even in really "bad" sessions, I tend to think there's a pretty tremendous amount of value. If my mind is skittering around like crazy for 50 minutes out of an hour, those other 10 minutes are the ones that count...and maybe they mean even more than the sessions where there is little to no resistance involved.

I have sessions where I just melt into bhanga nana almost instantaneously and have no desire whatsoever to attend to the material world beyond my experience of my own vibrating form, and those are wonderful feelings, but even as I have them I know they cannot possibly last, and there is no guarantee they will ever return once they retreat. Life is crazy; after a session like that, my next week's worth of sits could be difficult beyond measure, and on the seventh day I might get run over by a semi and never feel bhanga nana again. And in truth it's not about bhanga. It's about being able to cope with life as it is, with all its dukkha, all its uncertainty - to enter the lion's den and come back out alive, almost as if the lion had not been there...except for the memory of having faced a lion, unprotected by any conventional armor, and lived.

That's what the more challenging sits are about, I think. The times when the mind is a mess and I can't move my attention from my forehead to my chin without going off into some utopic (or dystopic) Never Never Land...whatever it is that pulls my attention back to my lips and gets me started back down another inch to my chin, that's what I really need in life. If my mind were naturally drawn to maintain focus where and how it is needed for the well-being and happiness of everyone (including myself), there'd be no need to meditate. I need the kind of training ground that will prepare me for life as it is, inclusive of all dukkha, great and small. When and if it comes to it, I need to be able to have utility companies fail me, government agencies confuse me, beloved cats bite me, acquaintances mistreat me, friends abandon me, old injuries flare up on me, the worst of my memories awaken in me, and far worse...and still be okay. I have to be tenacious about maintaining the balance of my mind, and I wouldn't learn that if all I ever experienced on the cushion were hours of almost effortless bhanga nana. Even when my meditation "sucks" by some standards...in a major way, that might be some of my best practice.

Off the cushion:

There's more perspective; more openness. I can see more, which means I can do more. I'm more at choice and happier. It's simple and true.

I can see why the pull back into the field of suffering is personified as Mara; at times it is hard for me to imagine having to be so diligent to resist something which isn't a personally involved consciousness.

It's been one of those days where I sometimes half-jokingly tell people I can almost see Mara drooling at the sight of my situation. I'm far from the poorest or least fortunate person out there - far, far from it - but neither am I a person of means or extraordinary good fortune, and as such I'm left vulnerable in a number of ways. There are limitations on what I can do with my resources, and even trying diligently to live well within my means, I still find that there are situations where it's difficult to provide for my own needs. Sometimes it just seems downright impossible to get things going in the direction of reasonable, life-sustaining gains rather than losses.

Why is it, then, that at these exact moments it becomes so incredibly difficult to allow myself the life-sustaining gain of meditation? That's what I'm struggling with this evening, and so far I have lost. But there is nothing I can do right now to effect positive change on any other level. No money to be made, no time to be saved...everyone appears to be turning in early this evening so there are no relationships to nurture, not even with my cat! So why not meditate? Why not?

On the cushion:

I've continued meditating twice daily whenever I can at all do so, and have attended a few group sits locally as well. Some meditations are much more focused than others but that's just the nature of the practice. Getting there, for me, is probably 90% of the battle in the first place.

Off the cushion:

All this talk of the dhamma, all this experience of the dhamma...I don't think like a "normal" person anymore. When asked for my perspective I tend to talk about the transitory nature of everything - not to say that what you experience is not important, but just to say that there is even more to the story, and the more we see that, the more we can bless ourselves, seeing things as they are. At the same time there is sometimes less to the story...seeing things as they are, not as words and images and institutions condition us to believe they are. Anything to get out of the grip of illusion. And yes, even when I myself trip and fall into the field of suffering I'm starting to see that. A year and a half ago my mechanic told me he couldn't possibly fix my car for less than $1,000, and the overwhelm hit me so hard I could barely think. Today my mechanic told me I have a new $1,000 problem, and I can't say I didn't feel a little faint, or that I didn't call a dear friend to kvetch for a moment, but I can say that afterward I thought, "well there's only one constructive response to the way I feel that I can think of...a major dose of hobby therapy. This is a bad, bad situation, yes...but I still have books to read, songs to write, wood to shape, and things to create. This dukkha is not the totality of experience."

...Then I got more bad news, and that's how I ended up just sort of sitting here for a bit. But...this will also change. Moods come and go, and a month from now I'll probably be on a whole new topic. To whatever degree I am able, I might as well let go now.

A few hours ago I discovered an email in my inbox indicating that my landlord has sold the property, so now I have 30 days to get my zafu out of here, so to speak.

This isn't welcome to say the least. I know safety and stability are illusory but let's face it; they're nice illusions to have, and in fact it's kind of hard to live from day to day without some semblance of them in your life. For most householders, I would guess that having a home somewhere is one of the most basic ways of achieving that...that's why we're called householders; it's sort of a defining characteristic in our lives...and it just got ripped away from me.

This is not only a problem in and of itself, it's also indescribably bad timing since I have some rather extraordinary plans in place for the next month and a half of my life. Things I've been waiting and planning to do for decades - since I was in college or even since I was a child - are supposed to be happening over the next 30 days. Now one of them isn't going to, at least not now, and it's the sort of situation where a delay of a few weeks makes a big difference in the quality of the experience. The other one I am just plain not giving up because if I don't do it now I may not have another shot at it for years, and I have just worked too hard and invested too much both financially and energetically to let this take it away from me...but if I don't find a decent place to live before I do it, I'm going to go through the experience knowing that while I have places to stay temporarily, there's nowhere for me to call home afterward. I don't want to give the impression that I can't afford to put my stuff in storage, because I can...I'm not saying that I'm not grateful for standing offers of a place to crash if needed because I definitely am...but fulfilling a dream of 16 years isn't going to be quite the same if it occurs against a backdrop of what is, in a very real sense, homelessness.

I think the English language is rather pitifully ill-equipped to express how I'm feeling right now. I feel defeated, bereft, angry, incredibly overwhelmed, hopeless, threatened, helpless...and there is still a tiny voice somewhere in the back of my mind telling me that it doesn't buy into the panic. Something in there is raising a protest sign in favor of equanimity. I don't think it has a snowball's chance at Taos in August of getting its way right this minute, but the fact that I haven't screamed aloud in a couple of hours seems like a potential good sign.

On the cushion:

Glad I got to the cushion this afternoon before I checked email. This is the kind of stress that could easily make a person sick, and I don't have time for that right now. I am obviously nowhere near being able to sleep so I might still get in that second session before bed.

Off the cushion:

Like I said, something's pushing for equanimity even though this is about as big a disaster as I could likely experience without ending up in the ER as a result. Something is still pushing for equanimity. That's impressive.

Also though I didn't find the email until evening it was apparently sent this afternoon...I have heard that people sometimes pass through psychic phases of sorts as they progress in the dhamma, and I can't help wondering if I'm experiencing some of that. This afternoon while I was working I was hit with a sense of foreboding regarding the house, as well as a spontaneous idea as to how one might go about optimizing a new living space if one were to move into a new living space...which of course I wasn't going to so why was this coming up?...

Well it's been over 2.5 months since I last wrote here, and if anybody was paying attention, you might have wondered if I was ever coming back. Sorry to disappoint, but the answer is yes - I have returned to darken your dhamma doorway once more.

My practice has continued as I have left one home, put all my earthly belongings in storage, traveled, spent a few weeks staying with wonderful friends, located another home, and moved into the latter. So has my practice been present? Oh, yes. Beneficial? Most certainly. Has it been regular? Absolutely not. And with that I am not pleased.

So it's time to get back on the stick the rest of the way.

On the cushion:

Sloth and torpor were giving me problems in my evening session. I was a little gummy-eyed before I even started, but this simply cannot wait. My practice has been irregular long enough. About 2 months' disturbance was pretty well unavoidable and the most recent two weeks or so were also quite difficult but it's time to stop worrying about the last few boxes of stuff to unpack and get on with real life. I was getting distracted pretty easily but that's all part of the path, especially when you are tired to begin.

Off the cushion:

Things are brewing toward the back of my consciousness for which I don't have very effective terms, but which I can see owe much to this practice. I know I am being guided to "be different" somehow. I get glimpses as to what that might look like sometimes but it may take a while for the whole picture to come into focus.

Micro-mini-update: missed morning sitting but got back to it tonight. I think the changing season is in great part to blame for my increasing problems with sloth and torpor; by the time it's been dark for about four hours, it's roughly meditation time but my brain still thinks it is summer, so four hours into the darkness it thinks it is supposed to go to sleep altogether. One would hope that after 30-odd years the body would get used to the fact that some days are longer than others, and that it happens in a predictable cycle, but well...in that hope, one would be disappointed.

Still, I am doing the work!

Another micro-update: today was pretty much like yesterday. Missed morning meditation in a flurry of activity, did evening meditation through a thick jungle of sloth and torpor. Tomorrow should be a good meditative day, though. I have plans!

Yesterday was a multi-session day. I guess I am used to having those two (or more) sits a day where all I am doing is working on the meditative path, because on days when I miss even one session I feel the difference, and I don't care for it.

I'm off to a late start today but thought I'd check in about yesterday before living out today - one thing at a time. And now, back to meditative normalcy with me!

It would appear I'm back to the habit of twice-daily sits.

Things have been more or less the same lately - early session happens with an agitated mind that is absolutely certain I have about a thousand other things I should be focusing on and doesn't seem to be able to admit the converse possibility; late session, I have to work pretty hard to stay awake. But all you can do is accept it. It is what it is. It's hard enough without piling drama and judgment on top of it, so why not keep it simple and just cope?

Another two-sit day. Each sit was shorter than I normally like by quite a bit but I'm trying to develop a schedule and habits in support of this practice so it's not so easy to disrupt when life gets crazy. I've noticed that finding time in my schedule for something is kind of like piercing a really tough surface; I have to start with a small, sharp point. From there I can go about as big as I need to but I'm not getting anywhere without that initial tiny piercing. So, another dually meditation-pierced day - I can work on gauging the piercings more tomorrow.

There was a bit of a hiccup as I spent most of two days sick. By this I don't mean gosh this runny nose is distracting sick; I mean lie in the fetal position and hope the hallucinations are mostly pleasant kind of sick. I still tried to meditate since that's among my life's top objectives these days but I'm not quite skilled enough to do it through a cloud of physical distress that thick, at least not as yet.

Today I felt better which was good because I wouldn't have wished to miss out on my plans for today, which really consisted of a contemplative journey including plenty of time for meditation. Right back on track.

Glad you're feeling better! I just found this log and have been enjoying reading about your practice.

I hope the two amazing opportunities you had earlier this year went well - they sounded very exciting!

This log has a lot about your life, a lot of content, but not a lot about how the actual meditation goes. Do you do samatha as well as vipassana? What do you experience when you meditate, any stages you notice, vibrations, and do on? Do you enter jhana at all? Are you observing the three characteristics? Noting? If it's something you'd like to write about, I think it would be helpful and I'd be very interested.

My apologies, J C, that I have taken so ridiculously long to get back here and answer your great questions and chat with you. I have had much greater success keeping up my practice than writing about it and for some reason participation on DhO fell through the cracks altogether.

I've talked a lot about practice beyond the cushion and how my life is affected by it just because even if you practice on the cushion two hours a day and sleep for eight hours every night, there are still 14 other hours in the day that you have to spend in some sort of consciousness; the more that consciousness includes the dhammas, the more I find I enjoy the way life goes, or at least my own response to it. The real power in this practice for me has been the ability to be moved through life more by my own chosen intentions and openness of interpretations, and less by circumstance and narrow habits of the interpretive mind...or put less formally, I find it both pleasant and instructive to spend as much time as possible observing myself not freaking out. The emphasis on applied practice is mostly intentional...mostly.

I would like to talk more about practice on the cushion as well but have had some trouble doing so. I haven't really known how to describe much of what happens for me in meditation but your questions give me some in-roads. I had to ask a dhamma brother to help me understand some of your questions; I tend to be a fairly intellectually-minded person but for some reason I've not absorbed as much of the vocabulary around Buddhist-based practice as I would have thought I would, given my approach to other subjects. Let me see if I get the meaning of your (much appreciated) questions and can answer them meaningfully...



If I understand correctly, anapana is samatha. I do anapana in the way and for the purpose instructed by Goenka - if I'm finding focus lacking I do anapana but otherwise focus on vipassana.



It is very different from one session to another; there are few generalizations to make. I usually find areas of pain or discomfort I hadn't realized I had prior to my sit, and those usually dissolve before long. I have noticed that my general sort of "ambient mood" in life as a whole affects things a great deal; it takes more time and more anapana to get focused if I've been amped up about a topic or topics. There are a lot of things I experience for which I just don't have adequate words. I have, however, been privileged to experience bhanga nana many times during my less distracted sits.



When I asked my dhamma brother about this he made a distinction between hard jhanas and soft jhanas. The hard jhanas he described are foreign to me and I'm happy about that; they sound disorienting and potentially dangerous depending on others' reactions. (I heard a story of someone emerging from a hard jhana to find his wife thought he was dead or dying and the paramedics were just about to attempt to jump-start him, so to speak. I could gladly live my whole life without such an experience.) If I understand the general construct of soft jhanas correctly, then those are more within my field of experience.



These being anicca, dukkha, and anatta (naming them mostly to reinforce my own learning and re-learning)...yes, though I don't often think consciously of anatta as much for whatever reason. They do all become apparent in this practice, very much so. A couple of times I have literally broken out laughing mid-sit observing a mixture of anicca and dukkha - a sort of gallows humor, I guess, but in this life I think that's actually a useful capacity. There's always some kind of dukkha going on somewhere...it's all subject to anicca so I only have to take it so seriously...but at the same time, as surely as one manifestation of dukkha phases out, another phases in if it hasn't already...that's pretty funny in a way. The word never comes to mind, or at least it hasn't so far, but awareness of anatta does arise sometimes from that exact observation. Things are obviously not anywhere near as concrete and stable as they feel they are...there are levels of change and plasticity in life that I have barely begun to familiarize myself with...so what the heck do I get so worked up about and attached to? What exactly is this I that seems to get so worked up? What the heck, with as little as I really know about even my own being, it seems premature to get too worked up about much of anything.



This seems like one of those terms that could have either very broad or very specific meanings depending on who is asking and their frame of reference. It's not a specific term I'm familiar with given my meditative background. If you'd like to tell me what "noting" is about for you specifically that would be great.

And I will try very hard to make it back in less than five months this time.

I have enough trouble using this site technically that I generally just don't come here anymore, but I got an email indicating I'd received a personal message so I slogged through resetting my password, etc., for a return.  I saw no new message in my inbox, but as long as I am here I thought I'd post for the first time in three years.

To be perfectly forthright about it, I really don't feel that I have time to seriously pursue understanding both through searching the suttas for wisdom and by maintaining my twice-daily vipassana practice.  I'm working multiple jobs and handling some rather unusual and demanding situations in my social life as well, and the time comes when there just isn't room for any additional pursuits.  If I have to choose between a lot of reading and a lot of experience, I will most surely take the latter.

I just got back from my tenth 10-day vipassana course a couple of days ago.  I've enjoyed sitting a lot of courses and I've also enjoyed steadily improving conditions in terms of internal climate in my own life, even though external circumstances are very difficult much of the time.  I was just telling someone close to me earlier today that although there's a lot about my life that's extremely hard, painful, and frustrating, I have better access to more resources as my practice continues.

When I started practicing vipassana a little over six years ago, I didn't fully take on the aditthana of two hours' daily sitting for a year right away.  I had the desire but lacked either the organizational skills or the scheduling flexibility (or both) to move on it, but over the last few years I have been able to make it a stable part of daily life.

Samadhi comes and goes.  Some days it's quite weak, other days quite strong.  For me one of the most powerful tools is to sit with that itself in a non-judging way.  If I didn't get distracted I wouldn't have the opportunity to gently choose to consciously readjust my focus, so in a way the distraction is potentially another tool and another experience from which to learn life skills.

The message bug brought me back to this site as well. To follow up on my previous message - noting is to describe your experience moment by moment, and it really helps in getting the paths to note as quickly as possible.

For instance - I found it helpful to note "rising" for breathing in, "falling" for breathing out, and "touching" for any time my attention turned to my body. So I'd say to myself "rising rising touching rising rising falling touching", etc.

Have you read Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha?

I've also found the Goenka retreats very helpful. It's very possible to go through the paths at those retreats - I got stream entry at my first one and 3rd and 4th path at my second. I didn't follow their instructions, though, just did noting and concentration practice (jhanas).

Good to hear from you, J C.

I haven't been noting in that sense, no.  I was exposed to quite a few forms of meditation practice prior to starting in this tradition of vipassana, but working with the instruction provided at my first Goenka-led course got me far enough down a path of healing I hadn't seen before that it made sense to me to continue doing as I was being taught there, and that's what I've done ever since.

I really don't think much about going through paths as such - I'm thoroughly grateful (and quite busy) just doing what I experience and refer to as "getting better."  Reviewing the paths, however, I'm quite sure I got first path/stream entry quite some time ago and I'm beginning to wonder if I may have hit second path recently.

I've not read Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha.  Is it something you've found of particular help?

If your approach is working for you that's great - noting can stir things up for a lot of people, so it's definitely not for everyone.

I'd be interested in hearing about your first and second path experiences, if you'd like to discuss them. I can tell you what I think.

Yes, I can't say enough good things about MCTB - I'm not sure if you're aware, but this website is run by MCTB's author and has a lot of discussion of that book and the methods and maps it discusses. MCTB is my all-time favorite book ever - it's exactly what I'd been looking for for years, and when I found it I was just blown away. It explains meditation and enlightenment so clearly and so well and it just amazed me with its insight. It's what started my meditation journey and taught me about the paths. I don't know if it will click with you as well but I think it's definitely worth checking out if you're interested.