Forum: Dharma Overground Discussion Forum

Hi,

Daniel seems to encourage a very active approach to meditation in terms of diligently applying the 3 characteristics and speeding up how fast you can see sensations.
What are your opinions of this compared to more passive approaches such as just staying in an open, receptive awareness and letting sensations pass through. For example Matthew Flickstein recommends letting awareness be like a motion detector and letting it go to objects on its own without any cognitive intervention. Then there's Krishnamurti's (passive) choiceless awareness, Zen's 'Just sitting', 'giving up even the idea you're meditating', etc. etc.

Which do you think is better and why?

Thx
- Martin

Hi Martin,
My view is that either one of those is preferable to no practice at all.
Cheers,
Florian

Hi Martin,

Re-reading my previous reply, I realize it's way on the gruff side of the margin. I'm sorry for that.

What does your meditation practice look like? Are you looking for things to change in your practice? I.e. what are you really asking, rather than "what's the best approach to meditation"?

Me, I've made good progress with consistent, daily noting practice, sitting and walking, the way Daniel advocates it. I've tried the "choiceless" approach before, but looking back, my concentration and mindfulness simply weren't up to it back then, and I was floundering. Nowadays, when noting really speeds up, there's actually that "motion detector" quality to it.

I hope that was more helpful than my first reply. Good luck with your practice!

Cheers,
Florian

Hello Martin,

I, like Florian, have found that the active noting style is the most beneficial to my practice. That's not to say that the more passive, open, and spacious techniques don't have their place. There have been some phases of my practice where some strong momentum builds up, and progress tends to unfold on its own if I just let go and pay attention. In this scenario, trying to note too much gets me incredibly frustrated, and holds me back a bit.

That said, what I just described rarely happens, and I am almost always better off doing active practices. I realize that this is my experience, and that the experiences of others may vary to some degree.

I'm also interested to know a bit about your current practice, and where you'd like it to go. This information might help the more experienced DhO members answer your question in a more practical way.

Jackson

Hi, great replies guys

As for my previous practice I haven't had time to do much formal practice / retreats so for the last 8 months I've just been reading and keeping up mindfulness all day (in the form of spacious techniques, open receptive awareness)

In terms of progress, I belive I've been through a dark night :
Saw everything passing away so fast all I could see was everything passing away - dissolution?
This was followed by fear, then applying 3 characteristics to the fear, followed by a deep peace, followed by a flash of light for one moment.
The next day I had a deep realization of selflessness followed by deep peace.
After this I had a couple of unitive experiences where I listened to music and suddenly there was just the music and no me (I think this is stage 1, before the dark night on Daniel's progress of insight so maybe I'm overestimating my practice).

After this my practice completely died for the last 2 months (not sure why, sort of boredom and lack of energy) so I'm looking for a change (going to read Goenka, Ajahan Chah and Mahasis Sayadaw).

I tried noting a little bit early on but I found it caused my attention to be a bit too tight and sort of grab the objects instead of letting them pass through (but maybe I was just doing it wrong)

Hope this answer your questions
- Martin

By the way, my reasoning for questioning the active approach is that almost all the experiences mentioned above happened when I woke up in the middle of the night and started meditating automatically without any control or effort. However, those night-sessions haven't been happening for 2 months so I think I might need something more intensive to get some momentum going.

Hey Martin, thanks for writing about your practice.

You wrote, "The next day I had a deep realization of selflessness followed by deep peace. After this I had a couple of unitive experiences where I listened to music and suddenly there was just the music and no me (I think this is stage 1, before the dark night on Daniel's progress of insight so maybe I'm overestimating my practice)."

Your descriptions are similar to experiences I have had as well. The unitive experiences your describe sound like the side effects of strong concentration, and not necessarily a particular sign of insight. The reason I say this is because of the context. Being "in the moment" with your breath, or a piece of music, and expand your sense of self to include your surroundings in a way that feels very harmonious and fluid. I can see why you might call this "selflessness", but my near-experiences with no-self point to something totally different, and I don't quite know how to explain why they're different.

Also, you said, "After this my practice completely died for the last 2 months (not sure why, sort of boredom and lack of energy) so I'm looking for a change..." I experienced something like this during a dark night phase, so it's possible that you crossed the A&P somewhere down the line.

The only advice I feel qualified to give at this point is to get familiar with the maps (particularly of the Dark Night territory), and keep up with the noting practice. I know it seems scattered and difficult at time, but I think it will push you through a lot faster than the spacious practices at this point.

Good luck!

Jackson

Yes, I would agree with both Jackson's suggestions and his analysis. It's quite common to stop practicing while in the dark night (I've seen it happen many times, with many people). The noting practice is actually very good at helping push through dark night territory, and remember that the gold star for insight practice isn't a feeling of effortlessness or lack of control, but rather the engaged comprehension of the 3 characteristics. Suffering itself, often comes in the form of contraction, irritation, and all sorts of difficult mental states and experience. Feeling that doesn't mean you aren't doing insight, in fact it's the opposite. Also, the more formless practices you describe, though nice, are really stage specific. You described being able to do them while in the A&P, which is quite normal. But in the dark night, it usually takes a little more concerted effort to push through (as you mentioned). Sounds like you're heading in the right direction.

Every single one of my A&P peak experience candidates, including those I identified retrospectively, occurred during the night, usually about two hours after falling asleep. Some were vivid dreams, for some I actually woke up or was awake at the end. The past few instances have been roughly two months apart each. I have no idea why that might be so, but apparently, having these experiences at night is not uncommon. That said, I experimented with tranquility practice early last year, in an attempt to provoke the experience by creating what I thought of as favorable conditions, but that didn't work at all, of course and my progress resumed only when I did insight practice again.

As Jackson suggested, get familiar with the maps. I'll add that the emotional side-effects and width of focus are not very clear indicators in my case, but the vibratory quality and physical side-effects during meditation are excellent criteria, and they tend to become really obvious with noting practice.

Cheers,
Florian

Something I would add: Do your best to recognize the limits of the mind while in these stages. For example, in dark night territory, you'll most likely feel very broad/panoramic, as opposed to A&P sharp/one-pointedness. It's important to realize this subtly so that you can approach the practice realistically for the context.

If you fail to realize that your mind is simply not in a state to allow the one-pointedness it had in the A&P territory, you may end up beating yourself up and may become discouraged. Couple that with the generally crappy feelings of a dark night, and you may wind up quitting practice altogether. Instead, try your best to embrace whatever state of mind you are in and work with the mold you've currently available.

At the end of the day, I think the "passive" part should be embracing what you are given and tweaking your technique given the circumstance. Ergo, if your concentration is currently panoramic, then perhaps you can drop the "noting" part of the noting technique and simply stay with the broad range of vibratory sensations as they enter awareness, doing your best to note as many as possible; as this is the natural strength of the panoramic state of mindfulness. For A&P territory, specifically emphasizing the start and stop of each phenomena is likely to be more productive because the one-pointed concentration is complementary to that sort of practice. In other words: "quantity over quality" was always much more conducive to my panoramic states than a "quality over quantity" approach, which seemed best for states of sharp concentration.

I think the type of advice, Mr. 456, is really going to depend on your own proclivities.

E.g., for me personally it's necessary at the current stage of my own practice to use my attention and focus like it''s a pair of butterfly wings, and to work on the factors and faculties of awakening, at least until I gain a foothold in equanimity. My own tendency would be to struggle to "get" concentration when really the struggling for it was preventing it and likewise insight, on account of the background phenomena. And likewise this can become a hindrance in its own right, a thin but expansive layer over the experience. So I have to back off, and back off, while remaining engaged and balancing the faculties and factors. While I don't use "formless" practice there's a certain extent to which I do have to just let things process.

the dark night territory - particularly late dark night - has a habit of making me unsure which methods are best to employ in practice. should i note? should i use open awareness? should i pay attention to the wide vibrations? should i go with the discomfort? should i observe the questioning? etc etc. i would feel very dissatisfied with anything i tried.

eventually i realised that the nature of re-observation to was to have a cow with anything and everything and when i realised this it mattered a whole lot less what i did since i knew i would have no way of knowing if it was effective practice or not!

regardless, my recommendation would be to note or observe frustration, pain, doubt, boredom, distraction, gaming, predicting, expecting, etc etc when and where they arise and make sure - i mean really make fucking sure - that if you're killing yourself trying to meditate that you note that too

i vote for active practice in general, open practice as an occasional alternative.

Lots of great advice has been posted above, but to get back to the original post about fast vibrations, this is actually stage specific advice.

In the beginning, most people seem to benefit from strong effort. There is lots to learn, to identify objects, see the Three Characteristics of them, etc.

There are stages, however, where other factors come into play, and speed is not always the best option. For instance, the A&P has the fastest vibrations of the bunch, but they are simple, pretty clean, and in the center of attention. Speed and power is good here.

In the Dark Night, vibrations tend to be chaotic, irritating, complex, wide, around the periphery, with a relatively blind center, and much that is distressing. Most begin to reject their own insights here, as Vince so aptly mentioned, and this is too bad. Tons of effort to see things as fast as possible doesn't work quite as well here, and a this is where one begins to try to make that difficult transition from being the separate, active practitioner to being a part of the process, but still most benefit from continued and diligent practice that stays with what is going on and its Three Characteristics, even if the vibrations are not quite so fast, though more complex.

In Equanimity what is vibrating is attention, formations, the experience field, or however you wish to put it, and these are slower than the previous stages and also more simple, in that they are more inclusive. Thus, powerful effort to go fast doesn't work well, though staying on exactly what is happening in a very continuous, inclusive, diligent way still works well here, and helps people avoid spacing out and falling back too many times. As those who have hit Equanimity with strong momentary concentration know well, it is amazing with lots of profound things to teach about reality, so again, effort here is good, though balance and finesse are also needed, too.