So...
Now I do noting. And I finally got the book after having had to reorder it a couple of times...
So now I am vibration hunting.
And things are sooooooo solid.
The most I notice at times is a waxing and waning in strength, but this perception of noticing the sampling frequency, or the frames that make up the movie is just not there.

Am I trying to hard?
I perceive it as the noting becoming "how many times can I verbally note during a second" instead of "wow, now I notice and NOW I notice again". Sounds and touch and such are basically solid (which I intellectually know they aren't).

I am yet to slow to play table tennis with my index fingers (as in MCT, so any advice would be cool.

Or maybe I should just accept that things feel solid now and wait for it?

Thanks,

Mike

I would not advise that, and I also don't think you're "trying too hard," as that can't really happen. You likely need stronger concentration, so bare that in mind (meaning it may take some time to strengthen said concentration to an effective level for vipassana to deliver the goods).

If you view your hand at a glance, you may note "hand" and that be the end of it. If you pull the hand closer to your eyes, you may notice other characteristics such as light blood vessels, light hairs and so forth. Look even closer / more intently and you may take notice of your pours, very subtle creases, slight color variations, itty bitty scars, and so on; this being the most detailed you can see with what is mechanically available via the unaided eye (this 'level' of detail could be paralleled to a single vibration-- the most a sensation can be broken down).

Viewing a sensation / vibration is similar to the allusion above, except that concentration strength and will power is what you need to tune into to "look closer." Don't let that knowledge prevent you from investigating, though, since concentration strength is very subjective (hard to tell when you have enough, or how much is enough, until it just seems like the meditation is working) and waiting only begets more waiting.

So with all that said, I recommend this: "look closer," even if it seems like you can't "zoom in" any more.

Regards,
Trent

Robert Bruce has a clever technique. I find it can be greatly simplified and still be effective. That is, you can try lightly brushing the palm of your hand with your fingertips and then pay attention to sort of an after image sensation - it will just last a second or so. Try 'breathing in' that sensation - drawing it in through your palm and fingertips as you breath in, and holding it there as you breath out - such that with each breath you fill up your hands with energy. Then you can start moving it around and expanding it throughout the rest of the body using directed attention.

Hi, Trent!
Thanks!
What I've been trying to do is for instance focus on the touch of my arm on my thigh, or palms touching each other.
When I do this and am able to sit fairly still, it feels as if I can concentrate fairly well on the sensation and focus in (zoom in?)
on it.
But there is NO fluctuation (not even a wave in terms of amplitude).
The feeling is constant and there is no habituation (which should occur if the touch was constant).

During this time I try to catch any frustration and note that, but mainly I get frustrated afterwards evaluating what just happened.

So I THINK I am fairly concentrated, but this touch just feels constant.
(and as I say, I KNOW intellectually it isn't)

Of course I'll continue investigating (I try to note anger about lack of progress instead of quitting :-) )

Thanks, Chuck!
I'll look into it!
You think it can help with my "constant touch"-issue I mentioned above?

Anyways, I'll investigate!

Regards,
Mike

Hi Mike!

I've been lurking here for a while, and your question has convinced me to take the plunge and actually post...

Figuring out the whole 'vibrations' thing is a major focus in my practice, since I'm basically a beginner.
I've recently made what seems to be important progress in my understanding of vibrations, so I'd like to share these thoughts, and also I'll be interested if more experienced people can validate or criticize my understanding on this:

It seems that vibrations can be experienced, in one sense, as 'successive moments of awareness'.
Recently I was doing Insight meditation, using as the object the physical awareness of my entire body. (I had started off using noting, but then switched to just 'noticing' each different physical sensation coming from anywhere in my body.)

I noticed that I wasn't -really- experiencing a physical sensation from my whole body at once, but rather my attention would just naturally jump around, sort of like
"there's my foot, there's my shoulder, there's my rear touching the chair, there's my abdomen"... and this was happening really quite fast, if I tried hard to notice all the perceptions. (Multiple times per second, at least.)

Once I got used to observing my jumping attention in this way, I could narrow the focus a lot more (say to just my hand, or finger) and still notice my attention jumping around even within that small region. At that point, the 'frame rate of attention' starts to feel more like 'flickering' or 'tingling' (which is what I originally thought I was looking for).


So in summary, it might help if you don't try and think:
"My finger is vibrating, I must detect that"
but rather try thinking
"My attention is subtly jumping around to different parts of my finger, I must detect the jumping"

And, it might help to consider 'zooming out' to a larger part of your body, and notice the jumping awareness, before you zoom back in to just a finger or something.

Hope that is helpful! (Take all this advice with a grain of salt, and Comments from everyone are welcome!)

cheers
Graeme

Hi, Graeme and thanks!
I really appreciate your obeservations!

I am thinking (and this may be a misconception making me having trouble with this) that part of it is exactly as you describe it.
That is the way I've seen it as I tried speeding up the noting initially. I try to note when I notice that my attention has moved somewhere, "rising" "itching eyebrow" "pressure on toe", what have you. I likened this to playing pinball where my attention was the actual ball :-)

The second part is that knowing that atoms consist of a lot of emptiness with electrons moving fast, and that movies consist of still frames, I don't think I can speed up my perception to the level where I can go to a movie theatre and actually perceive the film as a series of still images.
But what I understand (correctly or not?) of Daniel's writings is the fact that there is a tennis game going on between a physical sensation and its mental representation. And the fact that one does not experience the actual sensation at the same time as one processes the mental impression/representation, and that there is a possibility to catch this "tennis game" in the form of vibrations.

Reality actually consists of a lot of samples with a certain frequency. The eyes need to do very small motions when looking so that the optical nerve doesn't habituate and we stop seeing what we look at, and probably the reason we don't lose sense of touch is that there are minuscule motions when for instance touching fingers.

But I wouldn't presume to get that fast that I could actually experience this (as in the seeing a movie as a series of stills).

So basically, I am trying to catch my attention wandering and what I believe to be the pauses between actually experiencing the physical sensation.

Don't know if this makes sense? And am I trying to do to much?

Hope others keep on chiming in, you are all so helpful!

Hi Mike,

The senses do not have "sample rates."[1] The concept, which I guess is an engineering/computer-y term that gets used as an analogy for describing various things going on in the mind / body, can be helpful for some things, but detrimental in other ways. When investigating reality via vipassana, I recommend that you don't assume that there's a sample rate, but rather, assume that there isn't one. "Look" as closely as you can, as clearly as you can, as quickly as you can.

[1]. The body senses do not turn off, nor do they have a set frequency for input (at least not one that we would ever practically be aware of in moment to moment experience). The amount of data entering the unfiltered senses is incredible in that it is as though every single thing being experienced is alive, vivid, scintillating as the "refresh rate" of the senses (with identity extirpated) is so fast as to seem solid. (This is a different "solid" than talked about in this thread, because it is a different type of attention altogether when the "attention wave" / identity is not present). For examples of how many inputs one can be aware of right now, consider just how many things are affecting just the cutaneous sense at any given time: the pressure exerted from gravity, clothes / lack of clothes on the skin, temperature fluctuations internally and externally, humidity, barometric pressure, one's posture, one's seating, and on and on.

Regards,
Trent

Hi again, Trent!
The question seems to me to be, should I jump around with the attention? (I guess this is nice because it shows how the mind "moves", right?)

Or should I be able to focus on one sensation to find the vibrations? If I do, I realize it becomes more of a pure concentration practice, since I am just trying to immerse myself in ONE sensation... So maybe I just want to find the vibrations so bad I turned to another exercise altogether?? From more of vipassana to more of a purer samatha?

Hmmm... I guess my looking for vibrations right now take me further from them... Because now I am utterly confused as to HOW I should look for the vibrations.

Thanks!

Hi Again,

I'm really liking this discussion.


@Mike- Now you've got me wondering about something. Here are Daniel's 'finger tennis' instructions:



So, my assumptions/observations about this exercise so far are:
-the experience of 'alternating perception' between fingers is a similar feeling to the 'jumping around of attention' we already discussed, just faster
-the essential 'moments of perception' in this exercise probably each appear to be spatially localized in either one finger, or the other (rather then 'in the head' or anywhere else)
-after doing the exercise for a while it seems like the rather 'light' feeling of 'attention jumping' turns into a slightly more vivid, more physical-seeming 'vibrating sensation'. (But so far for me, the two feelings are kind of similar and the transition is pretty subtle.)

Mike, it seems to me that maybe you are talking about trying to experience the 'moment of raw perception' as being separate from 'the moment of the mind overlaying further interpretation onto the sensation'. I agree that lots of the Buddhist literature supports that, but doesn't it seem like for this exercise Daniel is really just suggesting to focus on one finger vs. the other, and just making that 'back and forth' as distinct as possible? And, that the 'next level of fidelity' Daniel seems to describe is to actually make some type of distinction between the 'arising' of each sensation-moment and the 'passing' of each sensation-moment? (Am I making any sense here?)


I am excited to hear everyone's further comments on the 'right way' to do this.


cheers
Graeme

I'm not sure what you should do, but it might be worth trying to see the arising and passing away of each sensation. That is to say, if you look at sensations closely enough -- say, focusing on one specific area of your hand -- you may eventually come to an / enable an / stumble into an awareness that is aware of the arising and passing of sensations, and perhaps also realize that you don't have a choice in the way those sensations come and go as they do.

The reason samatha works the way it does is that the object of concentration is always a part of the affective self (such as the width of attention; eg "boundless") or a feeling such as "rapture." So if you are focusing on feelings or specific parts of attention itself, that is samatha-esque and you may not see things arise and pass as easily, as those are parts of the mind that can reinforce itself (thus, it may not arise and pass). That may not make a whole lot of sense depending on your current understanding, but the practical point is: try focusing on something sensual, such as the feeling of your finger or the sound of a clock.

Regards,
Trent

There are two qualities here that come up. One is that awareness focuses on only one sense door or location at a time. So you cannot place your attention on say hearing and seeing at the same time nor on both fingers simultaneously. With careful attention the switching back and forth can be noticed. The other quality (that I was speaking of in my first post) is that of energy/vibrations (chi/prana) that with careful attention may be seen as a more elemental experience that is compounded into various seemingly solid sensations. So the first quality has to do with how awareness jumps around to pick up various phenomena while the second has to do with how that phenomena is experienced on a more elemental level.

In order to see the latter, it is necessary to side-track the mind a bit as it is the one doing the compounding. Trying to see the compounded nature of experience with the mind that is doing the compounding won't work. Noting very quickly will do this - which totally occupies your attention - another technique is to focus/rest/immerse your awareness totally on body sensations - the technique I mentioned falls into this category.

@Mike: the "constant touch" is just how we habitually see things and takes some time to get behind/underneath. Try relaxing more while remaining attentive. Use your imagination - try seeing the constant touch as a cloud of mist or gas. How do you know it is solid? Focus on the actual sensations that are 'solid' - can you isolate them? You can try focusing out more on the whole sense of body while keeping part of your attention on the touch. Another trick is to hold your palms together so that they are almost touching and then just relax the mind and let your awareness rest on the sensation between your palms as you breath in and out. Try diffusing or defocusing your attention some. Investigate sensations of heat, cold, tingly, etc. that become present - as these have no solidity.

Chuck, Trent and Graeme!
You have contributed so much to my understanding.

Earlier today I just thought I'd justresign and give up the "trying to catch the vibrations" the way I understood them.
Maybe I just haven't got what is needed to get them just now, and in the meanwhile I'd just focus on trying to note the times of all changes and when my mind moved...
And hoping that things will resolve themselves if I ease off a little...

But I reread the texts and feel quite inspired to give it a try later on.
Chuck, your suggestions for relaxing and side-tracking the mind are very inspiring. Will try to work more that way instead of pressing on (and maybe just solidifying more).

By the way guys... If I may ask one more question...
When noting fast, is it ok, when for instance observing the breath to just aspire to "note anew" several times and note for instance "rising"?
What I mean is that I sometimes try to note fast, but I really don't feel like I am noting anything new, I am just pressing in more verbal notes (i.e. saying "rising" "rising" "rising" as many times as possible but not really sure that it is really a "NEW" note)

(Hmmm... it's kind of hard to verbalize sometimes, please bear with me :-) )

Thanks a lot,
Mike

Basically, you want to stay right up close with the sensations. If the sensations were a person that you were following around - you would want to stay so close to them that nothing could slip in between you - yet not be touching them - if that makes any sense. So many different tricks - noting, chanting, repeating 'Bhud-dho', etc. can keep your mind from drifting off too far. You don't want to allow the mind to get into processing its experience - you want it to just stay with the raw experience so that you can explore it (experientially). As you develop better concentration then you can shift away from these gross techniques and use subtler types of noting - until there is just an attentive awareness that stays on the object. In practice you need to adjust frequently as the mind moves from one level of activity to another. Experiment - you can't break anything :-)

A stupid mind trick you can try: Ask yourself 'what does it feel like to stay with bare sensations for a short time?' For example, 'What does it feel like to stay with sensations during each in breath?'

Hi again!
I guess this was what I was actually thinking before I got too preoccupied with finding something that had a "vibrating" quality to it!
That's what I meant when I was thinking I'd give up chasing the vibrations (maybe it's just the word "vibration" that gets me?) and just go with what I notice at the moment, and hopefully learn something...

1E06 thanks for your invaluable input!!!

;-)

Regards,
Mike

I'm not a teacher or anything, but my experience may be helpful...

I went on a Goenka retreat and had all sorts of solid sensations, most notably, I had iron rods in the back of my neck. At the end of the retreat, the iron rods just melted and wiggled up into my brain like little snakes, and a whole lot of rapture stuff ensued.

For at least a year, I went on thinking to myself: "Fuck! Now there's nothing solid, AND no vibrations!" I was so confused, because still nothing was vibrating or flickering or anything - but there was nothing solid anymore either. Instead, things were just tingling and numbness and buzzing and pulsing, and lots of blank spots etc. (But, I didn't get that all these were "vibrations" in some sense) So, yeah, I can understand that the word "vibration" may or may not be helpful.

What helped dissolve the solidity for me was just being very patient and still with the solid sensations, just observing without looking for anything. Just to see what's there, find out more about it, take an actual interest in it like a scientist. The dissolving happened on it's own naturally. It seems that awareness can't help but "dissolve" things - or rather become aware of the impermanent nature which was already there anyway.

Thanks a lot, Daniel!
I started guessing that it may be that I've been so darn hung up about my interpretation of the word Vibration.

So, yes, I'll ease off that now :-)