Dear DhO,

I am trying to resolve some very good advice, but which I find conflicting, i.e. is confusing me a little:

I generally note, "rising...falling..." of the breath in the abdomen and other phenomena that arise, usually mentally labelling with the sense door, and other types of things like questioning, planning, wanting to stop, wanting to keep going, etc. Sometimes vibrations appear, sometimes not.

My confusion lies in when to stop noting, for example when vibrations are not there. Some say that when Access Concentration is achieved, to leave things as they are. I can sometimes sense that awareness is fairly clear and that seems like a good time to just remain aware of whatever happens.

Some also say that it is good to just remain aware whatever, even when the mind wanders off, just noticing that it has wandered off, returning, and so on.

Somewhere in this the breath is used as a meditation, when is best I'm not sure, and also somewhere in all this, it is very important for the three characteristics to be observed. Now, whether to focus one, two, or all three...

I wonder if anyone has similar doubts and if anyone can help clear things up?
Thanks!

These are two distinctly different forms of meditation - noting and investigation of what arises and passes or just being present with what people call awareness. Mixing the two can indeed be confuing. I'd suggest that if you want to investigate the aring and passing of phenomena you do just that throughout your meditation session, no matter what happens in your attention. If you want to just be present in general awareness, stick with that.

Bottom line - if you're confused between the two I suspect neither will be satisfactory.

Make sense?

Dear Junglist,

I hope I am reading this correctly, so here goes:

It seems like you are uncertain of what is/isn't Access Concentration? You need to be sure of it and master entering it. The only way I can describe it (as it is experienced differently person-to-person) is that it is a state where out-of-the-ordinary things happen, e.g. trance-like, bubble-like, force-field around body, missing sensations, coarse sensations become more numbered/faster/different, attention seems to be auto/target-locked/absorbed, awareness of certain sense doors appear diminished/gone, etc. 

The way to get in is maintaining the power of concentration (imagine it as a torchlight) for long enough. 

Samatha will have you hold the torchlight unceasingly at the breath, concentrating it as a whole, sensitive to body and thus rapture, marrying breath/body/rapture/bliss and so on.

Vipassana IME has a different (said to be momentary but that does not mean you can wilfully strobe/flash your light intensity) torchlight power entry-requirement. You hold the light at your object/s (best to stick with physical sensations and treat all others as distractions if noticed and return promptly), e.g. breath and investigate (peer through a microscope patiently/gently to perceive the smaller details) the many vibrations in many locations that it can be found until another physical sensation compells you to investigate instead - where you move/maintain the light without turning it off. Maintaining the power of the light at one/varying locations and with the intent to perceive deeper kickstarts the Vipassana process (weird stuff in Funky Town).

Noting is used primarily for 2 purposes: 
i. A marker for beginners to hold/bring their attention to/back;
ii. To allow the mind to associate the noted phenomenon with Dharma, or in other words to deepen/sink-in the insight

I instruct beginners in the monastery in graduating steps to use 1. noting to successfully gain a stable concentration, bring attention back to object 2. Abandon noting to gain greater clarity/stability of concentration 3. then once AC is confidently established, noting can be brought back for purpose ii above. 

I'd like to say that pure noting is without actual silent-noting, if you notice that your mind has already noted that last sensation and know/notes it as impermanence, your additional noting effort is simply a hindrance to clarity. A meditator who already has this pure noting mind, can engage "Do Nothing" meditation and see that happen automatically. But before that happens, be sure to use silent noting to get there and be alert to how noting affects your practice, thus always ready to pull/stow it from your toobox.

When in doubt or stuck, clear-seeing must always take precedence over noting (an aid or accelerator).

http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/issues/2009/spring/magical.php
Perhaps first letting go of the training wheels (noting) can allow you to glide?

May you be blessed with great in(sight)! 

May the Buddha's last words guide you:

“All compounded things in the world are changeable.<-Impermanence
They are dissatisfactory. <- Suffering
Work hard to gain your own liberation. Do your best.”

Focus on impermanence - that is where you get up to speed, depth and breadth. If you need to note suffering, you are very enlightened already hahaha.

May All Beings be Free from Suffering!

Thanks for your help Chris! That makes good sense.
I didn't quite get this bit though, as in why neither will be satisfactory.

Thanks Yilun! I think you have understood this issue very correctly. 
Your advice is very helpful, to know variability of Access Concentration between people. It also helpful to know that I have something clear that I need to know that I have mastered, because often I feel that I don't have a good enough level of clarity on what skills I have developed and to what degree.

For the next bit I'd appreciate a weeny bit of help with the details? 
OK, this sounds like normal samatha so far......plus the extra investigative component. Is that right?So it doesn't matter if I decide to leave attention in one place or move it wherever, as long as I'm investigating the sensation?For point 3., I can see myself sooner or later thinking "so should I start noting again yet or not?". I get the impression that I would probably be going "1...2...1...2...3...2...3...2.................". Does that sound about right?By "silent noting" do you mean simply noticing sensations without using labels? As in just being aware of each individual sensation as it arises and passes?OK, so this seems to be a warning about avoiding something along the lines of "Ah, that was a sensation, er, what was it, maybe thinking."So this seems to imply that I should develop Access Concentration to the point that I really really know what it is, and can then respond and accordingly, which I think you implied in the first paragraph. I think I can recognise many of the weird phenomena you mentioned, but I think they could be put better into context.

The "Do Nothing" (I assume you mean Shinzen's, shikantaza, etc.) – If I've understood Chris correctly, he seemed to imply they were quite different practices, and maybe don't mix(?), or maybe at least in one sit. Perhaps to help with my confusion in using the two. You seem to imply that it can be used once 
Yes, I think how noting affects my practice should be clearer to me."When in doubt or stuck" advice is very useful. Are you, however, suggesting here that if I think I might have got Access Concentration but am not sure, that I should drop noting?Thank you very much!

Sorry for all the questions! Hopefully it will help other people with the same problems too!

Much Metta to you first! And a reminder to go to it whenever you can all-day-long and especially when the slightest negativity rears its head! It is also a brilliant idea if you find it savory, to simply do metta as a main practice, done correctly it can launch you into jhanas, much bliss and catapult your practice forward. Instructions here.

Let's build things from ground up - start to gain entry into AC, stay a few minutes to investigate what you sense, exit and repeat as many times as you can before you get sick of it. This is to build confidence and certainty, which will be very useful in difficult times (DN). You can post or PM Shargrol or I, I am sure he wouldn't mind!

I am seeing your mind being very active on/off-cushion trying hard to muscle out the Experiencer - which is supposed to be the boss in this quest. The Thinker is creating problems to solve and it will worm into the smallest holes to pick the smallest detail to be of question; when all the answers are to be found when you are under the authority of the Experiencer. Try using this Frank Heile model and see how that works to keeping the monkey mind under control?

I am suggesting some creative ways to spruce up your practice as it is very tiresome to keep going back to the same routine facing the same fears of finding the same outcomes...

I hope that helps!

And to reply you in detail. See inline. All the best Junglist, I feel deeply for you!

Really good advice.

Junglist, just remember the whole goal of different meditation methods is to create the conditions where you are 1) aware of your actual subjective experience (rather than lost in thought about it) and 2) sensitive enough to notice how resistance/ill will causes unnecessary suffering. 

So if you are doing a lot of thinking, pay attention to physical sensations. And if you are resting in the present moment, be curious about what causes dukka. If you aren't experiencing dukka, enjoy!  (Seriously, just dwell in the dukka-free experience as a way to recharge your batteries.)

Just wanted to say this post really helped me out.

Appreciative for the questions and answers.