Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?)

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Crinia Signifera, modified 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 10:30 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 10:30 AM

Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?)

Posts: 0 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Forum: Dharma Overground Discussion Forum

I have on reflection being practicing concentration training (meditation) for a few years. Since joining this forum in May I have been looking for vibrations or sensations but they elude me which is a shame because I would like to try insight meditation.
My meditation time is before sunrise (quiet, dark and no stimulation). I follow my breath, note if my mind wanders and gently return to the breath. Very occasionally I get a realisation and "bliss out" No sensations/vibrations unless physical (ie. headache or muscular cramps).
Last week I tried meditating after a busy day. I noticed vibrations for the first time starting within my breath and only 1 about every 4 seconds. I widened my field of awareness and found many more sensations pulsing through my head. When I moved my awareness outside of my body the vibrations were overwhelming to the point I had to calm a feeling of nausea, stay with the vibrations and continue the meditation session even though unpleasant.
Returning to my predawn meditation since then I have again tried to find vibrations in my breath, my body, and outside by body. Nothing.
My questions are:
Are the vibrations I felt that once really vibrations or the result of an agitated mind not being settled/concentrated?
Where are the vibrations in my early morning meditation?
Am I tying to combine concentration training and insight training? If yes how do I separate them?
Crinia
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Jackson Wilshire, modified 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 10:48 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 10:48 AM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 443 Join Date: 5/6/09 Recent Posts
Hello Crinia,

First, yes, you were noticing vibrations. It's good that you stayed with them even though they were unpleasant. I'd recommend that you do that when the vibrations return in the future.

Insight training always takes a certain measure of concentration, so don't worry about concentration interfering with vipassana.

As far as getting the vibrations to return, I would start by noticing the rise and fall of gross physical sensations, "noting" the arising and passing. For example, you could note the rise and fall of your abdomen. Rising, falling. Rising, falling. Once you get the hang of that, you can add the stops that show up in between. Rising, stop. Falling, stop. Note them as they occur. This gets the mind used to seeing the arising and passing of phenomena. Eventually, you will begin to notice vibrations and a finer, more subtle level. Try it out, and let us know the result.

Helpful?
~Jackson
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Crinia Signifera, modified 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 11:32 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 11:32 AM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 0 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Thanks Jackson,

I note my out breath right through to completion immediately note the in breath then in the turning point before exhaling I stop ( I quiet enjoy this stop) where I note anything that occurs before exhaling again. Is this what you refer to as " noting arising and passing away".
I have been doing this for a number of years and I do not recognize anything these days that I could call a vibration. I use to see ( a few year ago) flickering lights of various colours (with eyes closed) but these disappeared long ago. Now everything is calm.
I am concerned that I have learned to associate "neutral sensations" with mediation. I understand the need to accept the bliss and the unpleasant and am working to work this into my life in general but do not know how to find those sensations with my meditation short of only meditating when my mind is racing.

Crinia
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Jackson Wilshire, modified 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 11:47 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 11:47 AM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 443 Join Date: 5/6/09 Recent Posts
Hi Crinia,

Thanks for providing more info.

Vibrations come in lots of flavors. Anything you notice to be arising and passing is a vibration. You know that tingly feeling you get when your feet start to fall asleep? How about the tickle-like sensation on your upper lip and nostrils when breathing in and out? These experiences are composed of very fine flickering sensations. Try not to over-think it. A sensation arises, you note it. It vanishes. You note it.

Eventually, things will speed up. If you notice yourself settling in to calm and objects appear to be solid, note it and go back to investigating. Practice makes proficient.

Jackson
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Wet Paint, modified 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 1:27 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 1:27 PM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 22924 Join Date: 8/6/09 Recent Posts
Author: msj123

Crinia,

I think an important thing to keep in mind is that vibrations are nothing special. We experience them all the time, but we do not recognize their vibratory quality. An easy vibration is sound. Sound arises and passes in a clean way. Thoughts are vibrations. Pain is a vibration, so is pleasure.

High frequency physical vibrations like you describe are simply that: high speed, physical vibrations.

In a sense, it sounds like you ARE combining concentration and vipassana practices. There is nothing wrong with this (Shinzen Young teaches them together), but people often find it easier to work with concentration then switch to vipassana. There are many ways to do this: focus on just the breath, focus on just a circular object, focus on just the body. Vipassana tends to have a wider field than concentration practices. So you may start with the breath, and then when you've reached a certain point, expand the focus to include the body, etc.

You might want to look at Kenneth's posts on concentration. Search for "chicken."

Matt
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Tina Hamilton, modified 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 3:16 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 3:16 PM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 0 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Thank you Crinia, for asking this question... and all the feedback given here is helpful in clarifying about "vibrations."
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triple think, modified 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 11:11 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/19/09 11:11 PM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 362 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
If you hold your hands up at about eye level, fingers open, palms facing the floor. Just hold them there, as long as it takes, a minute, five minutes, 30 min.. In due course you will see gross vibrations in your hands. These vibes accompany the growth of stress from holding up your hands just as your late night notes followed a day's stress but there are many subtler versions of the phenomena. It can help to start with grosser forms of vibrations and then fine tune the senses and the mind. You can listen for various ringing 'type sounds', you can stare at things until they go all wiggley. You can stand on a busy freeway. Vibrations are vibrations. In concentration practice you can tune all of that out until it is absent, in insight practice you can tune it all in until it is unbearable. To be able to direct attention to one form of emphasis or the other as you will is to have a mind that is effective for all kinds of meditation. That's why I like to dynamically combine insight and concentration practice, switching back and forth (sometimes even quite rapidly and frequently) between practicing insight or concentration. When the mind is tending to settle I encourage it to settle, when the mind is very focused on momentary and rapidly arising and passing phenomena I work at sharpening that faculty. In this way I can maximize whatever sort of energy it is that is arising at a given time.
nic s, modified 14 Years ago at 6/20/09 6:47 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/20/09 6:47 AM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 7 Join Date: 5/27/09 Recent Posts
I learned first to 'see' vibrations by practising the body scanning technique as taught by S.N. Goenka.
Essentially you focus on bodily sensations, and this could be anything really. Regardless if they are pleasant or unpleasant. Systematically you can learn to become aware of and to de-construct any sensation felt in the body, such as itching, heat, perspiration, tingling, pulsating...(the list is long) into very fine vibrations, but it takes a lot of concentration initially. For example you could use knee pain and focus on it for a while until you can perceive that the pain isn't solid but actually comprised of a mass of fine vibrations arising and vanishing in a high frequency. Or tingling sensations on your hands or feet. Or any other bodily sensation you fancy. The advantage by staying with bodily sensations initially, is that it can be too easy to get caught in sounds or mind objects. Although it doesn't matter really which object of investigation you choose, as long as you focus on seeing the 3 characteristics of it. After crossing the A&P event (which happened on a 10-day Goenka course),during the Dark Night, I switched to a style that was wider and more inclusive, and I also started investigating the nature of sound, space and mind objects (my personal favourite currently). My fall-back technique though, when I am less concentrated is to just really follow the breath extremely closely. Watching the sensations making up the beginning, middle, and end point, the rising and falling of the abdomen, and the touch of the breath just below the nostrils.
Chuck Kasmire, modified 14 Years ago at 6/20/09 11:31 AM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/20/09 11:31 AM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 560 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
A Goenka retreat was also very helpful for me. Can't say it was the most pleasant experience I have had but it was where I really was able to start seeing pain, emotional tension, etc. break up into vibrations. Prior to this I was aware of the vibrations – as energy - but the fundamental nature of them had not hit me.
There was something that Goenka said that did it for me – something like 'try to see the pain before the mind has labeled it as pain' – I just kept investigating it in that way until eventually things shifted and they (vibrations) became very apparent.
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Crinia Signifera, modified 14 Years ago at 6/20/09 3:17 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/20/09 3:17 PM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 0 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Thanks to everyone who has replied to my questions.

What I have established now is:
1. Yes I have been trying to combine concentration and insight meditation into one meditation.
2. Because I have been practicing only concentration meditation over the years I have been cultivating stability (calmness) to the exclusion of everything else. The thought of welcoming vibrations was just so foreign to me that I did not realise I was blocking them out. Yes they are everywhere (as you have pointed out).
3.I now realise what happened in the meditation session I described in my initial posting was my first insight experience.
4. That insight experience came on so hard and fast i became overwhelmed. To use "chicken" teminology - I saw the chicken, had the sense not to chase it, I went looking for more chickens, found more than I could cope with so sat down in the middle of them I tried not to panic.

Crinia
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Tina Hamilton, modified 14 Years ago at 6/20/09 3:23 PM
Created 14 Years ago at 6/20/09 3:23 PM

RE: Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?&

Posts: 0 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
CheleK, you stated that prior to the Goenka retreat that you were "aware of the vibrations – as energy - but the fundamental nature of them had not hit me."
That's how I was until yesterday... something in the way that people were describing these "vibrations" - it finally makes sense to me! This is really significant to me in my Qigong practice, too. I've always been able to feel/see the vibrations such as what "triplethink" described as that energy (aka: qi) between the hands, etc., but I wasn't making any progress in detecting the subtleties of the energy. Furthermore, sensations such as pain - I move into it, and have an understanding of it being just sensory perception (I've had surgery without anesthesia, just meditated through it), but I never looked at pain as being a "vibration." Now I'm amazed that I never saw it that way before. Feeling kinda silly about that.
Last night in my dreams I noticed the vibrations... today everything that I do, I'm now aware - not just conceptually, but really aware... vibrations... various textures, speed, etc.
Sorry people that I'm rambling here, but I'm really feeling good about finally getting it!

I feel that this awareness is due to the combination of me intensifying practice in concentration with methods I've learned here, as well as the dialogue in this thread. emoticon
Thank you!

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