Does anyone experience: MANY, uncountable, very fine, rapid vibrations hitting the face, with softer vibrations seemingly 'trickling' down the entire body (whole body resonating)? This has been happening to me for more than a week. Meditation sessions, long or short, end with this phenomenon. It stays upon exit up to hours after, I have to sleep with it and it is awful. I can try eating, massaging my head, etc. and it goes away with facial activity but it comes back when I am even slightly still. 

Any advice on this will be greatly appreciated! 

Notice any aversion. Don't try to suppress or push the sensations away. Notice their "taste". Notice the unpleasantness and analyse it really closely at the level of vibrational flavourings. Notice its subcomponents and how it relates to aversion and craving. See if you can begin to notice as they arise during the day, and to notice when theyre gone. Notice how they might relate to emotions, posture, thoughts and other phenomena. If its really awful try relating to it as a purification process. If youre struggling with it emotionally try developing compassion for yourself and all other beings who experience similar or worse conditions and contemplate the noble truths.

Otherwise calming practices of shamatha variety might help

Thanks Andrew!

I thought I have been equanimous to them but I could have paid a lot more attention to them as you mentioned. I guess I have to really sit through till they end no matter how long they last...

Great advice from Andrew.

Another aspect of these annoying vibrations is they can sometimes be seen as "they are over there and I am over here being bothered by them". Even saying "I'm going to be equanimous to them" sets up this distancing. My best advice is to actually to feel like you are sticking your face into the middle of them and ideally immerse and swim in them. To do that, you'll need to get interested in all of the subtlelty and waves and interferrence patterns and your mind will become very concentrated. Seems like your mind is trying to help you go deeper!

Man, that is exactly what happened! I HAVE been too compacent and dismissive of them, "they are just doing their own thing". I soaked in them and passed through EQ and had a near miss. I feel so much better now. There were great insights regarding control or rather the lack thereof... 

Lesson: Continued focused practice is STILL necessary even if they are swimming in the background!

Thank you very much guys!

That's one of those general rules to file away. It comes up lots of different ways during practice, but in general when something seems to be a hindrance, go into it. 

I've had a couple more near misses today and if I persist sitting by going deep, past EQ it comes back to these intense buzzing which stays even off cushion - it is not exactly annoying other than trying to sleep with it. Noting 3Cs does not seem to get me through this gate.

Am I supposed to analyze and see through the illusions? e.g
1. the raptures hitting from the front are in concert with raptures at the back of the head, but they do not go through the head from front to back. The same goes with the slow pleasant phenomena in EQ that are tricky.
2. Or would it be related to how I react to my real boundaries, those weird out of body flux, should I react that they are not 'real' or just go with however 'out' they flow?
3. Or is it related to a certain way of looking/reacting to sense of control/analysis or lack thereof? I have been letting my eyes and breathing be 'controlled'.

Thanks again!

Is there an actual problem?

No problem, just that it keeps repeating. I should simply keep at it? 

Without intending to change the buzzing, try to look directly at any greed, aversion, or ignoring that occurs in relationship to the buzzing. 

Guidance above is really good. 

I think another angle that doesn't contradict the posters above is that it's possible to overload the nervous system. To push the pace of physio-psychological rewiring a bit faster than the body/mind can handle. There definitely seems to be a lot of rewiring happening as a result of intensive practise. Sometimes (maybe not in your case) these phenomena can be suggestions to "back off" a little bit. 

I experienced really strong buzzing in the head/neck lately. Vibrations apparently intensified during sleep, then woke me up to intense buzzing. It was like energy was pooling or building up there and there was a bottleneck to letting it flow freely. I felt pretty worn out by it so after some time took it as a clue to reduce insight practise intensity for a bit. I had quite a lot of fixation on this phenomena (and therefore aversion), which is natural when you just want to sleep. So the advice above has been helpful for me too. 

One thing that did seem to bring it into more balance is grounding or somatic descent type practises: feeling awareness of physicality open and descend down into the earth, rooted like a tree. Widening downwards and outwards, much lower and wider than fixation on the vibratey bit. It seemed to have the effect of both "lowering" the energy through contact with simple physicality (like the weight of the feet on the earth) and "opening" towards/through the vibratey bit with the equanimity a more panoramic awareness produces. 

Yes I have that, my sinuses build up pressure like it is clogging during practice, making even samatha more of a pain than bliss. Seems like I should take a break to 'unlock that hidden treasure', eh Pawel?

Thanks guys, I'll report back on what works!

Since then, I tried unsuccessfully to stay off meditation, till yesterday as I was reading and cohabiting with the bees buzzing for ~3 hours and it kept getting stronger till it was impossible to ignore them. I went to sit and resolved to get it done with, had a couple of fruitions to confirm and relief from the hornets' nest finally. 

The advice above is golden. (Beats me why the self refused to see this clear fact all along)
Equanimity required is deeper with progress, so put your face in it and hang out so much with it that it seems like you are destined to be inseparable. I tried taking a break but the buzz never left, learning to let my mind meditate me to sleep every night with the works.

It seems like going heroic should work if anyone has any other similar form of ill-dispositions – it very well seems to be as Shargrol had said, “Your mind is helping you to go deeper” although one needs to know that clearly seeing the 3Cs and having true equanimity is THE requirement. Bulldozing with fierce determination is not going to be pretty.
Good luck if you aren't on holidays/retreat, no imagination is required for what hell this could be with work/school. I would think that it is a good idea to take leave and get it over and done with if encountering such phenomena.

I investigated the pressure on the T-zone, was still very much there post-meditation yesterday, but the pressure clears quickly after fruitions today. Also to add that dropping control/investigation/effort is key to crossing fruitions it seems…

I hope this could help those passing through such suffering! Remember all suffering (sensations) are NOT YOU!

Nice! Yes, progress comes from being heroic (bravely facing what arises) and yet loving (equanimity with what is arising, not manipulating what is occuring, being interested in the details of the experience, not pushing it away). But Dr. Avocado is also right, sometimes you can overload the system and heroism is stupidity. The key thing seems to be whether you can muster enough compassion for what is actually occuring, so that your heroism isn't just stupid bulldozing with fierce determination.  

Early in practice, it's all about "overcoming" hindrances: developing a regular sitting schedule, staying on the cushion for the entire time, learning to return to the meditation object when our mind drifts...

But quite soon afterwards -- we get a strong hint of this in the dark night nanas, but we have to keep re-learning it -- it's all about learning the nature of the so-called hindrances. Basically taking the hindrances/suffering AS the meditation object. So the hindrances actually become fuel for practice, not obstacles to practice. It's a great thing when we see this clearly. Practice takes on a whole new momentum and vitality.

Ideally, this bravery and compassion/love that is so essential for sitting practice becomes who we are, our orientation to all of our life, hence why meditation seems to correlate to refinements in morality (although we can mess this up, too.)

Well just to update that the buzz is back and probably here to stay, along with new 'company' - NADA sound: they are seemingly synched (along with visual TV noise) and some manipulation to speed up/down seems possible and I will play with them and see if it is possible to turn the buzz into pleasure (Pawel?). The key thing though is that it seems that the mind or whatever it is, is intent on me learning to accept/know intimately, the pain/uncertainty of that which we call Life.

In the past weeks, due to the buzz, I have been very successful at dream yoga. For those interested, this is what happens:

Basically you get to watch everything go on by themselves, movements, adjustments, self-imagined intrusion into the force-field generated by the body along with self-generated shock (hilarious I tell you). Cycles obviously go on by themselves and now fruitions too (automatic triggering as much as 3x in ~5 minutes).

How to: I keep dropping effort, much like trying to sleep but resolve to be mindful, go wide and ignore sensations. I go through a few 'sinking' stages and for me, it starts when I sense my palate relax and hear my breathing, the body forms a 1" force field around and merges into 1. Thoughts start to fire on their own - absolute illogical stuff (visual/sound/abstract/clear/stories/questions/etc.) and whatever that would trigger your emotions will make you more alert or jolt you to its reality if you have drifted off. It seems that this drifting off happens often and levels of lucidity swings up and down.

The great (pain) and bad (pleasure) thing about lucid dreaming, is that there is a layer of something (like you are sheathed in rubber) to sensations, you will feel everything but it is dulled by this weird force field.

Waking up in the middle is almost bound to be accompanied by buzzing. It seems that this buzzing phenomena is a result of over practice as Dr. Avocado said. Any suggestions on what to do with buzz/Nada/Lucid dreaming other than to accept uncertainty and stand under/understand Dukkha?

hi yilun, if you are curious, watch this interview vid about non-duality and lucid dreaming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf0g1YZa8co

Hi Yilun,

The state of the energetic system, or you can say the state of the mind will determine how much you can push the meditation-comfortably.

There is so much advice these days- investigate the aspect of this or that- every report is met with multiple ideas of what to look for.
As far as an effective meditation instruction goes, this modern way is so overcooked, to the point of hinderance.
One pattern indicates that the meditator takes on a ricochet rabbit type exploration looking everywhere for everything, relentlessly until the mind collaspes in a state of exhaustion(this is not the goal, its just often the result). I'm not trying to make a joke of it. Alot of the accounts i read involving this modern tecnique, hint of a breakthrough that comes when the mind reaches the point where it lets go of the investigation altogether. Maybe letting go is the key.

When Pawel says he can experience the pleasure of the buzz, or any nana or basically any experience that arises through sense contact. Its true. One can bath in the immense pleasure of say, Reobservation. However although he can do it, he will be unable to show you how he does it. This is because he's not really doing anything more than experiencing the maturity of insight which are also some of the qualities of enlightment. At this level one can flip it as they wish, but their not doing anything, or looking for anything, or exercising any highly developed abilities. Its effortless and like Nibbana (the background, not the blip) being able to experience any sense contact in a three fold manner involves no intervention on the yogis part. Another way of saying it is that it all comes to the yogi-the yogi does not go to it. So Pawel can view unpleasant as pleasant or indifferent-or indifferent as pleasant or unpleasant-or pleasant as unpleasant or indifferent. He has 18 channels on his TV. He may even claim to have more . One channel he is losing is the suffering channel. Most people who can do this- I will change that to-Most people who experience this tend to just hang out in the background and let everthing present itself. There's no need to get involved, its quite satisfactory as it is.
The reason why ive focused on this is that from my point of view (at least) these qualities that arise from practice are not skills, in the sense that ones wisdom and abilities don't need to be applied for the pleasure. Its a shift, and yogi has no choice, its now the default state. This shift is not the result of a me kind of learning or understanding it comes in the back door and and is the result of observing the 3CS and some letting go. This is the technical attainment. A monastery allows for way better as you can really work on the fetters. This is where a more me kind of learning can be effective, and has a big effect on the quality of paths.
So i suggest that you don't be concerned with the sound, looking for the pleasure(it will become available when you are able to leave it alone), and begin to drop these type of practices, especially continuous second guessing of whats going on and what to do next.
Rather than chase paths or results develop the foundations of mindfullness and the 8 fold path. You may actually be doing this already, but you may also be following the pragmatic teachings. As you are a Monk in a monastery(and one that you are clearly happy with) you have the opportunity and conditions to go much deeper in your practice than lay people. Im suggesting make the fetters your priority not technical paths. In a monastery you are safe from many unhealthy obstacles, you can seek refuge from wordly distractions, including the internet. This provides the conditions for a still and quiet mind needed to work with the defilements at very subtle levels. You still get the paths, but you get them in conjunction with the other requirements prescribed by the Buddha. Anyway, just a thought.
On another topic. I come to Thailand fairly often. Most places i find very hot, and although i'm ok with mosquitoes-i'm not ok with the diseases they carry. Also the air quality during burning seasons is not good. Your description of your spot says its cooler and has clean air year round. Can you give me some more detail including mosquito diseases(are people getting sick). Thanks.

Wow! Thank you so much for writing such a detailed reply...

Firstly, I've not seen a single case of dengue here (temple). According to the local hospital, no cases of malaria has been reported recently. I really do not think diseases should be a concern here. You and anyone are most welcome...

I was writing about pleasure as a half-joke, and I'm not even interested in Samatha jhanas or any other kind of meditative pleasures for quite a while. 

I have been working like you said on a deeper level with fetters and you are most right that this is a good place for it.

The most interesting thing is that I have found it compelling to think that I should be going through with the buzz till exhaustion as intuitively this is what it feels like. I will keep at it till it bursts.

"The mind does not know how to liberate itself.
By going beyond its own limits it experiences unwinding.
From deep confusion it drops knowing.
From intense suffering comes releasing.
From complete exhaustion comes resting.
All these go in cycle perpetually repeating,
Till one realizes everything is indeed already liberated,
As spontaneous happening from before beginning."

Thanks again!

Edit: OK, after 8 hours. Grinding through does NOT work. hahaha. The buzz and the nana/jhana's are on a separate layer - they can go on at the same time. Here's guessing the system is overloaded. Better take a break, I suppose!