I've been noticing for a good time now that in the discussion of the maps, there is very much appreciation for nanas 5 until fruition, but very little mention, at least when it comes to walking people through their practice, of the territory encompassed by just mind & body.

I'm wondering if I'm wrong about this and just managed to not see it all this time. It seems to me that there is ample territory to the first nana, and that more people are 'naturals' with this stage, and therefore it sort of 'goes without saying'. 

What's everyone elses ideas?

Interesting observation. I know a few people who got into the first ñana in childhood.

This is also the case with me: I have memories of playing mind games at bedtime when I wasn't tired but was sent to bed nonetheless. The most vivid memory is of visualizing the letters of a short word and simultaneously trying to "hear" how it sounded, and the shift into first ñana was when the word and letters were suddenly "out there", and had lost their meaning somehow. I got so "good" at this that with time, any word I'd repeat mentally for a short time would "get broken" (as I called it). I also have memories of getting into mind&body via smells, when we were on home leave to Germany (we were living in South Africa at the time) and there were a lot of unfamiliar smells around. With smells, the "out there" quality was very weird, involving sensations in my sinuses that I called "splintering" (like watching a glass object burst, but not visual or auditory, and the perception was localized in the frontal sinuses somehow).

Since I did mind games and relaxation exercises and guided metitations and religious devotional practices all throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was, as you say, very familiar with the territory when I came across the maps.

Maybe the DhO being self-selecting to a large degree, people here really tend to treat this one as almost not worth mentioning, like you say.

More descriptions?

Cheers,
Florian

To be fair, I haven't participated in the DHO throughout my practice, but I was at other sites.

I practiced a lot, really quite a bit, and I didn't have appreciation for the territory I was in. I was very demanding of myself, for good reason.

In the last year, I've made significant progress, from which you can understand why I needed a change so badly:

I had a strange insight with the digits on my left hand where I felt a strangely strong vibration that stayed off cushion for about a week accompanied by thoughts of unpleasant horror movie like gore, slowly lessening throughout the week.

Really unpleasant sort of libidinous tensions in the lower abdomen

Really heavy wrenching weight in my solar plexus

Strange unpleasant cold hollow vomitting sensation in my chest

Tension throughout the left side of my head from the left side of the tongue, through the teeth, into the eye and temple, in the jaw, and around the ear and back of head. It was constantly tensed for who knows, more than a decade, I'm 27 now, and I think it qualifies as body dismorphia. Reason being I had a bone condition and couldn't walk straight until I was 17, and had other things bone condition-wise with the left side of my body that made it difficult to orient, I just dissociated.

Serious tension in my right hip begetting lots and lots of anxiety. The problem was related to my bone condition that I had a spike of bone on the femoral neck on the front that my hip muscles had to stretch over.

Weird super heavy pain that came up during meditation for about two months after I had a surgery to fix the hip. It seemed to come out of a general sort of exoskeleton of like 'rough perception' of my leg and stretched from my hip down to my ankle. 

Strange airy sensation of anxiety in my left foot, it felt sort of like the nerves never really grew fully or something like that.

Body-wide anxiety and aching and heaviness, slowly getting lesser and lesser, eventually feeling okay just being in my body.


So those are all the important ones. Before those, during very serious and looking back basically strenuous practice, I did encounter some really tough aches in my upper back, but other than that just a couple brief and non permanent a&p experiences.

I wonder what it would have been like if I had appreciation for the territory, if I knew that basically some things like those were going to happened. Instead it feels like I may have just wasted thousands of hours of time. 

My first experience of Mind and Body, that I remember, was when I first got into meditation. I was trying a mantra and basically just being really frustrated about not being able to stay concentrated, but I kept at it because everyone always talked about how amazing meditation was. One day, The mantra suddenly became very clear, and my mind was suddenly quieter than before. The mantra was now "out there," but I didn't have the conceptual framework to fully understand or describe what had happened.

I also used to experience it quite a bit when I switched to anapanasati a few months later, but again, I didn't have any conceptual frameworks to understand what it was. All I knew was that the breath became much crisper and more solid, and my mind was quieter. Even when I read about the progress of insight in MCTB, I read about Mind and Body and thought, "Huh?" because I didn't fully comprehend what it entailed. 

Most of the heavy lifting is done in the early nanas and I think navigating them is incredibly important. A&P tends to take care of itself, the dark night goes all the way to Re-Observation whether you want it to or not, and Equanimity has its own traps but it tends to be very pleasant. In many ways, moving through the nanas 1-3 is the most important part of a meditators career.

[quote=Florian Wep
]
This is also the case with me: I have memories of playing mind games at bedtime when I wasn't tired but was sent to bed nonetheless. The most vivid memory is of visualizing the letters of a short word and simultaneously trying to "hear" how it sounded, and the shift into first ñana was when the word and letters were suddenly "out there", and had lost their meaning somehow. I got so "good" at this that with time, any word I'd repeat mentally for a short time would "get broken" (as I called it). I also have memories of getting into mind&body via smells, when we were on home leave to Germany (we were living in South Africa at the time) and there were a lot of unfamiliar smells around. With smells, the "out there" quality was very weird, involving sensations in my sinuses that I called "splintering" (like watching a glass object burst, but not visual or auditory, and the perception was localized in the frontal sinuses somehow).

Here's Daniel's description from MCTB Mind and Body: There is this sudden shift, and mental phenomena shift out away from the illusory sense of “the watcher” and are just out there in the world with the sensations of the other five sense doors. This is an important insight, as it shows us clearly and directly that we are not “our” mind or “our” body.

So that's how I understand this ñana / knowledge / insight to present itself in the case of mind objects like words. The watcher is made of words to the extent that it is a commentator, and when they shift out and away from the assumed watcher, they can't be used for purposes of watcher-maintenance any more. Since that quality is tied into the semantic field of every word, when it drops out of the picture, words seem "broken" or "not words any more".

With visualized mind objects, this ñana presents itself more straightforwardly, by interpreted as a sense of distance, an "out there" quality.

With the smell, I'm less sure, but other aspects of the experience fit in nicely with understanding it as mind & body.

Cheers,
Florian

Well, back to the original topic about the maps evidently not containing or the discussion not representing the numerous shades of insight gotten in the first nana.

This was not just absent in the Pragmatic Dharma scene but also in traditional Buddhist scenes like Goenka and the folks at IMS. And it wasn't addressed by numerous people in the Shambhala lineage as well, in addition to a bona fide Tibetan ex-llama, now technically a layman. And a couple catholic Priests, and a handful of professional yoga teachers.

So I am sitting here like "really?" Is that really what happened?

I thought there would be some interest in this here at a DIY pragmatic dharma forum sort of founded off a book that attests to the value of knowledge about the maps, but no one has really responded like so. It's great to point out that Mind & Body is an important insight to obtain, but what about portraying it as it is?

I don't like to say this but talk about Not Making The Dharma Accesible? 

That being said, all those harshly won insights all came with the same type of phenomena as you three mention: taking on an "out there" just being quality.

I agree with Florian that mind&body can arise very naturaly for people without meditation practice. 
It is important stage because without this there is no chance for the rest to arise as this is the first one.

Maybe people talk less about the first 3 stages because most of the meditators on a retreat hit the A&P and 
ones you hit A&P then you will cycle between A&P and EQ until you get frution.
So we spent definitaly more time in DN then in the first 3 stages so more to talk about. 

Okay.

What about teaching people what they need to be taught, whatever that is? Shouldn't this be at least somewhat of a staple in the DIY meditation world?

Or, those people who need to hear it can just go wallow around for years until they figure it out?

If a meditator follows the instructions dililgently, paying bare attention to the present moment, they will progress through the stages of insight whether they know what they are or not, and whether they want to or not. 

I do not understand your question. Are you asking the other participants here whether they think what you describe is all first ñana stuff? Or are you asking whether first ñana stuff is really underrepresented in discussions here? I, and from what I gather the other participants, understood your original topic in the second sense.



Please re-state your question. You are obviously frustrated about something, but I really don't see what it is that you are saying here.

Cheers,
Florian

Oh really? 

Or is that not true, as my experience demonstrates. 

Maybe there are some cases where the stage actually needs to be set for the meditator so that they can practice appropriately. So they know what to do.

Saying they just need to pay bare attention to the present moment is an oversimplification that helps no one. 

I wasn't really frustrated when I wrote this, of course I think it blows how I may have wasted thousands of hours, but I am a little wowed now that you respond with that simple one liner like you didn't read or think about anything I wrote.

Its cases like where people are "Extremely Fucking Miserable" where the situation approaches "change or just kill themself".

I'm saying that the maps are under utilized in teaching of this stuff, bringing this up to see what people think, not just about "the discussion here". 

I'm bringing it up because I think its something important in teaching meditation that unbelievably to me was missed by almost every teacher I had except one (LUCKY?).

Evidently though it seems like the discussion here is not interested in teaching meditation but just doing meditation for their selves regardless of other people. 

It is a little confounding because some people get into meditation to address suffering, and then some people get into meditation to address even deeper suffering and then can't do it because there's no appreciation for talking about something that's pretty elementary, and they fail at it and then just go kill themselves or something, while the people who got into meditation who it worked for are just blissing out on jhanas and getting nirodha samapati and not thinking at all about how simple and easy it would have been to actually consider the situation of these evidently ungifted practitioners and tell them what they need instead of throwing everyone into an unexamined cookie cutter approach to no avail for these ungifted practitioners despite how the answer they need is just hanging around in plain sight the whole time.

All right, so welcome to the DhO, where the maps, their application to practice and so on is a major topic.



Good teachers are hard to find, is that what you're saying?



The DhO is not an online course. There are no teachers here (taking students, in a teacher role). If you are after such things, you'll have to find them somewhere else. But if you practice meditation (alone or guided by a teacher) and like to discuss with like-minded people ("good spiritual friends" in Buddhist language), you will probably get a lot out of participating.



Sure, that's what a good teacher (whom you've found, going by your own words) can do for people. Are you just venting, or are you obliquely criticizing the DhO regulars for not being teachers in an online retreat center? I'm having difficulties understanding your posts in any other sense.

Cheers,
Florian

I read everything you wrote. As for my experience, I made it all the way to nana #11, Equanimity, without knowing what the Progress of Insight was, and only having a crude understanding of Buddhism. In addition, stream entry occurs in many traditions outside of Buddhism, e.g. contemplative Christianity.

Meditators waste thousands of hours, or even their entire lives, all the time. They spin around lost in thought or try to work on their psychological baggage instead of examining the sensations that compose the present moment. It takes a lot of mental discipline to stay on the level of bare sensations for any length of time. Just because something is simple, doesn't mean it is easy.

If you are having trouble attaining to early nanas, try really fast noting, as it tends to move things along.

Would the sudden realization of mind and body be sufficient cause for sudden happiness and bliss? Or is it more of a "holy shit" experience? 

Both have happened in my experience, though "holy shit" moments haven't been as common as "sudden happiness" moments.

Well, I suppose the underlying criticism is there, but its for meditators in general. They evidently aren't interested in making a reliable tool for a better life accessible. It's just something along the lines of "that's your karma". Whatever the hell that means! Why settle for that when you can Actually Address the problem just by being interested??

I don't know why you're introducing some "wanting a teacher" dynamic. Obviously people want teachers. Obviously people want to have an effective experience in meditation. Do you need some official lineage of teachers to do that? Or could you just have people who are interested in meditation and interested in what it takes to make it accessible. Like people who might be on this forum, reading this, being interested in meditation so that people don't have to starve on Mount McKinley to find out. Just little pointers here and there. It's just about being interested, and it even seems like many meditation teachers aren't even interested. Enough's enough for them, who really cares how many people flounder for no really good reason.

What I wanted to hear out of people is that they're actually paying attention to what composes the meditation experience, so that people who actually need it can access it, but what I'm getting from you guys is that you only think about your own stuff.

Maybe this is just this bizarre because other morons come on here and criticize the DHO blah blah. What I am writing about is something that happened to me and an evidently simple solution to it.

I have no idea why you're saying the DHO isn't an online course, it's like you're justifying your lack of interest in helping others along, no matter how basic, easy, and in-line-with-your interests that would be....

Well, if you read what I wrote you seem to have missed the point of it. The point was that those garden variety kickers like what you said aren't sufficiently appropriate for people in these situations. 

You're like, meditators waste thousands of hours routinely. Really? You are satisfied with that explanation. That's incredible.

Bizarrely, I actually had really fast noting as the anvil in my practice for like over a year and it is actually what was wrong with my practice. It was what was holding me up. I did it because I needed change, but it was just facile advice from the get go and didn't bring me much insight. 

It is like no one paid attention to my experience to the point of not even wanting to know about it. Just do the "notes". This applies to teachers, too. 

And now I am here writing about a solution to the problem. But it's not being interpreted like that, and evidently no one has any thoughts to add about it.

James, the first nana tends to be very brief, and in the Burmese Theravada tradition, some teachers say that "true insight" doesn't actually begin until the 4th nana, The Arising and Passing Away. This is at least part of the reason why the early nanas are often not discussed in detail. Once a meditator attains stream entry, they cycle starting from 4th nana, so the early nanas do not arise until the next path begins. So we can talk all day about the higher insight stages, since enlightened beings cycle through them, but the early nanas simply do not manifest very often.

If you have meditated with any degree of diligence, it is almost inconceivable that you have not attained at least the first nana, Mind and Body. As I said earlier, I did not know what it was until much later. I did not even really realize that anything special was happening. It is quite common to sail through nanas and not realize what happened, and it is likely that you have gone past them without realizing it. 

From your first post,

Again, Mind and Body, and the three early nanas in general, tend to be very quick, and cannot be repeated after path. It's easy to miss them. If you have practiced with any kind of mindfulness at all, you have almost certainly been through these early nanas. I wish I could be of more assistance.

Do you feel lost on the maps? 

You're not paying attention to what I wrote.

I know all of what you just said. The only problem is that parts of it are just wrong.

There is a lot of territory to the first nana, I've spent years going through it eradicating impurities that have prevented me from jumping up through the A&P.

So I have experienced it. And it has addressed numerous problems I had in my body in this time, but no one oriented me towards that. As soon as that started happening, it was fine.

But it could have happened a lot sooner had I been oriented towards it.

It's like you're not paying attention to this thread:

They may be quick for some people, but:

They are not quick for others, for others it entails a long process of purification, and this should be included in the maps.

Interesting. The reason I asked was because recently I began to think that my glorious and blissful "a&p" experience was just the realization of mind and body, of thoughts not being "me", just another sense. What followed was profound happiness for a few months, and then a deep depression. Sounds like the a&p but to this day I have trouble noticing the arising and passing of phenomena and due to that have been second guessing my place on the maps. In the scheme of things it doesn't matter too much as long as I practice.

Hi James,
Perhaps if you could lead the discussion with what you believe the maps should detail for the first nanna there would be more discussion in the area you want. 
Name and form, nama and ruppa,
standing, sitting is form
I sit, I stand is nama
What is the difference
Notice with the physical there is also the mental
This doesn't have to be hard
Observe again and again and then you start to see cause and affect
The 5 elements meditation is great for the early stages and observing a quality leads to Jhanna 

Does this help
Jeff

Hi Jake WM,
A&P can be also subtle...it is not always wow huge ass-kicking firework etc. especially if you already cycle so you don't need to worry about
to much. Maybe you've already crossed many times not even knowing about. If you already meditating for a while and you find yourself in kind of depression then welcome in the DN... 
and yeah as you say as long as you keep noting the stuff it doesn't matter anyway. 

Hi James

(sorry for my spelling I am not english speaking)

there are teachers/traditions where they are really intrested whether the student get the first stage or not.
how they know? they ask questions like "if you feel pain, who feels the pain"; "who sees the flower etc"? If the student has no idea what the question is about they sand him/her back to keep going with the noting practice.
Next day again. In some days will be clear that the experience coming truth the senses is mind. How?
If you practice to stay in present and note the phenomena arising in present moment you will realise that as long as you thinking you not able to see, hear etc. Will be more clear that the eye can not see, ear can not hear.

In Mahasi tradition you get plenty of dharma talks about the 6 sens organs and their objects (12 ayatanas - 18 Dhatus) 

http://www.mi-lam.org/pdf/AyatanasAndDhatus.pdf

then you keep going the practice and the stuff will be clear by itself. 
so teachers really care about the first stages but the student actually have no idea what is going on.
If you follow the instructions the insight will arise naturally. 

cause&effect is the same: intention to lift the leg is the cause, lifting the left ist the effect, lifting the leg is the cause noting it is the effect etc.
slowly they will get it.

you don't need to think about, you don't need to analyse
I guess if it is not arise then the student is not able to keep focus, so get lost in "own stuff" and not able to investigate the present. 
so they will leave early. or i don't know what are they doing after.

I agree with you it is important but same time my experience is that teachers really care about...
and yes here in DhO the DN is more talked about so is good that you brought the topic up. 

Hi James,

I'm a little confused as to why you are getting testy with people here. Are you saying that all the experiences in red above are all part and parcel of what you are calling the nana of mind and body?

If so, then perhaps there is a a talking past each other happening as some of those experiences point to other nanas arising in my own experience. I see 3rd and 6th nana expressed a bit in the very little phenomenological descriptions you have given thus far. 

Nick

I added some emphasis to what you wrote. James, are you saying that we are not sufficiently interested in your own stuff?

If that is the case, please read the DhO FAQ page again, especially the sections on what is appropriate here and what is not.

The topic you started is interesting and appropriate. I feel the discussion is not going well. I love discussing the maps and sharing the experiences of other meditators. Please share in the spirit of this place, and if you need to vent, feel free, and be open about it, for everyone's sake.

Cheers,
Florian

Right, right. Yeah, those are what I was referring to as being from Mind & Body. But now that you bring this up, I realize the only thing I am really saying is that they're pre-A&P experiences. For some reason I assumed they were encompassed in Mind & Body. 

As for getting testy I don't really mean to do it. I was a little confounded that the main idea of trying to address in greater detail the early stages wasn't being spoken about or noticed. I thought it was stated pretty obviously from me. Maybe not, though. 

So, more about that. 

I don't think what I've gone through has had any dark night nanas. If this is the dark night, then I'm surprised because this is relatively pretty easy -- although it has been really miserable when I've sat, it's always felt like I am making progress during the sits. I've thought that the dark night would be stubborn in that regard, and much more chaotic. All the insights that have come have come in a pretty organized fashion, like for that amount of time it was obviously just those insights that I was working with. I thought the DN would be more chaotic. There also is no cycling through the A&P. There is just the tone of the general sensations that I experience which come and go in a fairly predictable way throughout the day. No wild kriyas, just a general state pretty consistent from one moment to the next.

So I am thinking that all of this stuff, pre A&P stuff, is floating leftover garbage from the past on the level of normal habit patterns rather than the upheaval in the paradigm of perception like what would come out of an A&P event. 

I am open to thinking more about this, though. If it turns out that what I'm saying is true, then great, it's great to have that clarity. If it's wrong for one reason of another, then I should know that too. More later

Please start a new thread, and describe the problem and your solution.

Cheers,
Florian

Yes I you could say that's what I'm saying. I'm disappointed that people are not interested more in making meditation accessible, especially when it's an easy thing to do. Instead letting people like me languor rather than having a discussion about the territory of the early nanas so that people might be able to be guided well in that regard if it applied to them. But then it appeared like no one noticed. 

So it goes? Why are we even talking about this and not just talking about the topic as it was raised, if you think it is interesting and important?

How do you know? From people's descriptions not matching your own experience? Isn't that what you are frustrated at cocerning what you are calling pre-Ap experiences? One thing to keep in mind is that the experience of this and that nana can vary in how they present from yogi to yogi. One may not get kriyas at the 4th nana. One may not experience a "stubborn' experience in the dukkha nanas. It is best not to judge your experience too much up against others' desctiptions, though it helps when there are things we relate to to orient our practices. But when we deny our own progress because experiences are not 100% matches to this and that description, we simply set up a conceptual overlay which will influence what we do and don't do in practice , which may or may not result in further progress.Perhaps it is just 3rd nana, which with the very little info I have of your practice, is simply a guess based on a lot of reading others' experiences here as well as my own. Patterns need to be seen to make a more educated guess. Perhaps, only if you are truly interested, you could share your practice for a week or two in a designated thread, and described exatly what is occuring as you practice for 30 minutes to an hour each time? Up to you. Without patterns to be seen, it is hard to tell where you may be at, and all we can rely on is your own guess which may be tinged with your own objectification/proliferation/conceptualisation of what you are experiencing. It can be, and sometimes it might not be "chaotic" nor "stubborn". Depends on your past conditioning and how concentrated, stable, discerning your are.It is for a yogi lacking in a malleable, pliant mind. Perhaps you have different conditioning to yogis who experience it more chaotically. Perhaps you are talking about the 3rd nana. Need to see more patterns. Perhaps that nana hasn't matured yet and you are hovering around in the first three nanas. The point is, we don't know. And from the little phenomenological descriptions you have given, I doubt you are talking only about the first nana, which is more pleasant than not pleasant, which is why you can samatha-ise it into the 1st samatha jhana. Without seeing further patterns, I think you are misadiagnosing yourself, assigning meaning to experiences which dont match up to what is talked about around here , and then getting into a tissy about people not relating and talking about it as you wish. Sounds like classic post-AP yogi stuff to me actually. But truthfully, I need to see more descrtiptions of your experience to see patterns. Have you ever experienced the mind and body buzzing like you were lying on a vibrating bed, perhaps buzzing like you had electiricity surging through all parts? Even without kriyas, and lights, and fireworks, I'd classify this access as post-ap. It doesn't have to be a huge perceptual change. That comes later on post-11th nana. Good. And people here are open to taking you seriously. You just have to be a bit clearer and perhaps share a bit more so we can see PATTERNS!And you came to a place where we discuss this stuff openly and quite a bit. Trying to be clearer and less testy helps communication both ways.

My 2 cents are that you aren't talking about the just the 1st nana. But I'd like to make a more educated guess with patterns you share with us here at the DhO. If not, frustration may simply be the result. 

Nick

You are talking about the Mushroom Factor. Keep em in the dark and feed em shit. The Mushroom factor is something talked of here, or perhaps talked of in the past a lot more here now that there are less people not talking about maps, stages, and experiences. But this place and Daniel's book MCTB were a direct reaction to that perceived factor.  Let's see of we actually agree with your self-diagnosis of a broad 1st nana by showing us some patterns in your current practice. If not, then it's hard to continue with this discussion.

Nick

Thanks for bigning clarity to this discussion. The stuff you brought up were exactly what I was aiming for, with more refinement, ie the mushroom cutlure. I didn't intend on getting testy, but I suppose I did nonetheless. I guess you can count on someone's mind getting bent when they're talking about something important to them and it gets pretty misconstrued.

I'm going to take you up on your proposition to be more rigorous with this thread.

I got the impression that you though it would be very helpful to many that that there be more and better descriptions of Mind and Body to help confused beginners.  Ironically, interpretations of your question ranged to almost everywhere other than much in the way of explanations/descriptions of Mind and Body.   Sounds like you were frustrated since way back when people did not explain things to you back when you were a beginner and you feel like you wasted a lot of time and maybe things would have gone faster with better explanation.  That's hard to say if you would have gone faster if things were different, maybe it wouldn't have or maybe not,  but yes, it is irritating when people assume things about you and give you other answers other than the one you asked for, like assuming you were not able to get Mind and Body or that you only ask for  your own progress and not others,etc .  You probably easily remember all the frustration back from when you were a beginner and that is easily triggered when others take on a 'doesn't matter anyway' attitude.  Would a better description not be useful to many and so not worth bothering with here?   

Actually, I don't understand the MCTB explanation of it myself.  I am pretty sure I have gone through A&P through EQ so theoretically, I should have done Mind and Body, but I don't understand the explanations of it and I'm curious and would like to know if for no other reason than just the sake of knowing.  Maybe you just need to be heavily steeped in the traditions for a long time and learn a ton and another ton of terminology and subtly to understand a lot of these explanations.  From an outsider's perspective, that's how it seems to me.  Most explanations of terms are explained using multiple other industry terms, such that understanding anything via normal English is not common.  It's not like I'm a bad student normally and my language comprehension has historically been considered to be quite good, but when I read some of this stuff, I frankly don't know what the )^*#)&^ people are talking about!  Whereas some of the other stuff seems fairly obvious. 

I do sometimes wonder if many people don't answer some of these questions simply because they actually just don't know it well either or feel they don't know it well enough to for sure speak without incorrectness and so would rather just keep quiet.  Another option is that people feel the question is so stupid that it's not worth their time, but I suspect that's not the reason, even if it might be easy to feel slighted if answers swayed anywhere in that general direction.  After all, mind and body is supposed to be elementary, apparently, from what I gather but since I am a total outsider, I have the convenience of not being suppposed to know anything so I can just admit to total confusion on the subject.   Am I the only one that doesn't get it?  This board seems to describe itself in part as a place to discuss the map, so I can certainly see why a person would come here and expect to get more actual explanation than in other places and feel frustrated if it was not forthcoming.  Maybe it is because although this board seems anchored in part on the concepts of the map, this board is also said to be only for the hardcore and this simpler stuff maybe is considered uninteresting or not worth bothering with as being too elementary.      

So is the 'broken word' thing really an example of Mind and Body?  When I was a kid, many kids did that or talked about it on occasion, ie when you repeat a word enough, it can seem to lose its meaning.  I assumed it happened to everyone.  If there was any kid that didn't understand it, then that kid was not admitting it publically, but then again, even as kids, people often hate to admit when they don't understand something fully.

Anyway, something to consider for the long haul might be threads dedicated to one concept or stage at time, and various people's explanations and descriptions of that concept all in the same thread.  People could put their 2 cents in and do their best,  Those threads might turn out to be good ones to organize or make sticky and you could just refer people back to the thread.  When teaching, it's a good idea to explain things in different ways because each student also understand things in different ways.
-Eva

Hi
People have taken the time to give explanations and descriptions, there really isn't that much more to add.The insight is the important step. 
With a bit of direction people usually pass through this stage quickly. Thank you to everyone who has had a go
Cheers
Jeff

This one is worth reading in Full, In This Very Life by U Pandita. There is more on the 1st Vipassana Jhana which encompasses the first nana of mind and body.