Noting as Substitute for Concentration?

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Jason Snyder, modified 9 Years ago at 8/2/14 10:36 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/2/14 10:36 AM

Noting as Substitute for Concentration?

Posts: 186 Join Date: 10/25/13 Recent Posts
I am consistently starting at low-Equanimity in my practice, and find that I am well served at this point by building up concentration, which doesn't take very long, and then shifting to raw noticing with self inquiry...bypassing noting altogether. It dawned on me that the degree that I find noting usefull is inversly proportional to my level of concentration. So if I go into insight practice with a high degree of concentration, I find noting unskillfull and an unnessesary filter overlaying raw experience and inquiry. If I am not concentrated than noting helps to build up concentration to the point that I can drop it. 

Is this the case for others? If so, than shouldn't people be advised to note only if their concentration is weak, i.e. if they are a "dry insight worker"? 
John M, modified 9 Years ago at 8/2/14 12:32 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/2/14 12:31 PM

RE: Noting as Substitute for Concentration?

Posts: 135 Join Date: 2/11/12 Recent Posts
More than a substitute, it is concentration. From the right concentration chapter of Bhikkhu Bodhi's The Noble Eightfold Path:

The kinds of concentration discussed so far arise by fixing the mind upon a single object to the exclusion of other objects. But apart from these there is another kind of concentration which does not depend upon restricting the range of awareness. This is called "momentary concentration" (khanika-samadhi). To develop momentary concentration the meditator does not deliberately attempt to exclude the multiplicity of phenomena from his field of attention. Instead, he simply directs mindfulness to the changing states of mind and body, noting any phenomenon that presents itself; the task is to maintain a continuous awareness of whatever enters the range of perception, clinging to nothing. As he goes on with his noting, concentration becomes stronger moment after moment until it becomes established one-pointedly on the constantly changing stream of events. Despite the change in the object, the mental unification remains steady, and in time acquires a force capable of suppressing the hindrances to a degree equal to that of access concentration. This fluid, mobile concentration is developed by the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness, taken up along the path of insight; when sufficiently strong it issues in the breakthrough to the last stage of the path, the arising of wisdom.
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Jason Snyder, modified 9 Years ago at 8/2/14 12:52 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/2/14 12:52 PM

RE: Noting as Substitute for Concentration?

Posts: 186 Join Date: 10/25/13 Recent Posts
Thanks, this is really usefull!

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