Forum: Catching the Vibes – Tips on Noticing Vibrations

A big thanks to Chuck for creating this page!

Awesome! Thank you Chuck, for making it easy to access these related threads.

Cool. I mean, not cool.

Vibrations are fundamentally heat energy. So you can do fire element practice to tune into vibrations. When sweeping the body or otherwise engaged in insight, note the presence and absence of heat energy in the various parts of the body. Note circulations of heat and cold energy as well.

When I undertook Qi Gong my sifu suggested learning to examine chi or Qi by first noting the changes in hot and cold parts of the body. Often there are pockets of habitually cold and hot areas in people for a variety of reasons. In the Qi Gong kinds of exercises one thing that one is aiming to do is to circulate that hot and cold energy into a kind of warm comfortable relaxing flow. So sweeping is a good idea for this kind of work as well.

Essentially sweeping begins as a kind of imagination which becomes sensing the whole body and pushing or pulling the energy into it's loops and whatnot extends from there.

Life is heat is vibration.

Cold is moreso to be associated with earth energy on its own as in a solid earth kasina and so also inanimate. In doing earth element work in the body the heat element is right through to the marrow of the bones as the blood circulates it even there. One needs to focus on the rigidity and extensive qualities of earth as it is in the body to sense the bones and so on. Water is of course the liquid stuff and air is naturally the breath, gasses in the body, air on the skin and so on.

In the living body heat circulates everywhere. If feeling cold and stiff, feel out some heat in the body get moving around and even maybe find some nutrition, the source of bodily vibrations. You can do vibration/heat element and body vipassana before, during and after eating which can be very informative as well.

The same thing happens with exercise, the basic vibration of the abdomen being pushed and pulled increases in frequency with many kinds of beneficial exercise, the body heats up as greater combustion takes place and energy circulates dynamically through the body. All kinds of discovery processes of processes to be noted. Be it straight up noting or other multi-faceted satipatthana styles of mindfulness practice.

Noting like this presses me to beg the question, "how cool is nirvana?"

vibrations are heat? man, i thought vibrations were wind. maybe im just a lot of hot air after all.

Author: bboyYen

I was under the impression that vibrations were simply notes or noting.

Like 40 vibrations a second would be 40 notes a second.

Air is the next coolest vibration, followed by water and earth being the coldest or slowest or most bass vibration -very long slow wavelengths. You're compound man, elemental and conditional. Kamma made. Life is maintained by heat and movement. Death is cold and still. As in solid compounds compared to animate life forms.
When there's no flame there can be no wind.
thus - physical mortality
3:>)

Author: yadidb

hey triplethink nice post,
this reminded me that in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta there's a description of how to do vipassana by dissecting phenomena into the elements.

thanks for the clarification. is this relationship (between the elements and their oscillatory characteristics) agreed upon across various traditions and cosmologies? i've never related much to elemental work, and although one of my teachers knew a lot about it, he never offered to teach it to me. one sayadaw i sat with though, upon hearing my description of my primary meditation object, called it 'interaction between wind and water element', but i took that as a pretty name and never gave it much notice. what can you say about the uses of elemental studies, particularly how they may help someone along in their insight practice? if the answer isnt directly related to being vibratory though, perhaps we should start a different thread.

It's all vibratory even an absolute zero vacuum, also this is all simply rupa - gross material element.
There is more phenomena but with subtlety vibratory as a descriptor begins to be less serviceable. The mind phenomena can be faster than light speed.
Got no idea how many Hz that is.
:
Insight Knowledge

"With his mind thus concentrated,...
...purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability — the monk directs and inclines it to knowledge and vision. He discerns: 'This body of mine is endowed with form, composed of the four primary elements, born from mother and father, nourished with rice and porridge, subject to inconstancy, rubbing, pressing, dissolution, and dispersion. And this consciousness of mine is supported here and bound up here.'

"This, too, is called the miracle of instruction.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.11.0.than.html


PDF(1,040 K Mindfulness of Breathing & Four Elements Meditation — Ven. Pa-Auk Sayadaw.
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http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/fourelements.pdf
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http://www.buddhanet.net/ebooks_m.htm
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how does materiality awareness counter conceit and cut through self deception in mind?

By removing the mind from any fabrication of narrative constructs and placing attention on the actualities of physicality. It's physics, a direct physics. Denoting the distinction between mind and body replaces conceptions about it with the arising and passing of it in real time. Sort of ties in with the silence thing discussed in the silence thread.

oops, i meant, 'how does materiality awareness in element form (earth water wind fire) counter conceit and cut through self deception in mind?'

as that is what i thought you were referring to

Dunno, it seems to depend on what individuals are like. What kinds of misconceptions are there about the body or the mind. Attention to actual qualities of mind and body are the way to counter those things. The mind is engaged in examining/insight instead of fantasizing or whatever else it might get up to when it isn't grounded in the senses.

Everybody is at whatever place they are at. I don't know what your asking me to speak to man. Maybe read the elements pdf if you haven't, it's a kind of introduction to all of that. As I see it we all have to discover everything for ourselves anyways. No point in me telling anyone else what to discover along one line of investigation or another. If we find we are gaining consensus on things, then this is probably more helpful and a more useful way to use the DhO.
This is just stuff I've done and learned from, I don't know that it is essential for others. People have so many resources now that probably this approach, although it has never seemed to garner much interest, isn't necessary. It isn't, imho however, an area that is fruitless for investigation.

@Triplethink: brilliantly put! This is where I was coming from in the other thread but just couldn't figure a way of saying it. Thank you!

Let me try this one out on you:
I think of the noting practice as taking a temporal/mind or time slice approach to insight while what we are speaking of here takes a spacial/physical approach. It is quite possible to jump back and forth by shifting ones attention between temporal/spatial aspects of experience.

Hi tarin, I would like to take a stab at this (and relate it back to the other thread 'Value of Silence'):
As mind and body are not two, thoughts are not without a component in physicality. When we look at them as mental events we miss the underlying physical/energetic component. What we are looking at is different points in the cycle of dependant origination. The process of continually dropping thoughts and going back to the body is not a suppression of thoughts but rather staying focused at a particular point in the cycle. When we can see the energetic fields underlying or giving rise to mental states – it is not a matter of cutting through something so much as seeing that there isn't anything to cut through – but rather a conditioned process. The result being a sense of dispassion and relinquishment. It also carries you right into the sutta jhanas – which is cool.

triplethink - im familiar with the common literature on the discernment of elements (had another look at the pa auk pdf to be sure), but the actual application of it in a systematic way as a starting point for vipassana i find complicated, and though i can understand the basics, i was curious to know what you have found of specific worth and value in this approach, which is stuff i might not find (or at least, easily notice) in the writings out there. specifically, i was wondering about advantages and special benefits that you've found to doing things this way that are missing, or at least not revealed as clearly or emphasised as strongly, in other styles of investigation.

chelek - my own practice was predominantly physical and energetic, and practising as such, i found, as you did, that they lead to dispassion and relinquishment, as well as the sutta jhanas (i call them vipassana jhanas). however, my question was about how breaking it down into the four elements and isolating all the different kinds of rupas specifically helps one understand the way things are. i understand that the essence of the elements is found in sense-experience itself (as part of 'ultimate reality' rather than 'conceptual reality'), and can appreciate that and understand where thats going (same place as any other insight approach), but do not know what the point of saying 'this one's air' and 'that one's water' and 'that one's fire' is. wanna take a stab at that one?

Tarin,
Thanks for the clarification, I now get what you are asking about – so sure, why not? Here's a stab:

My sense is that these terms had an everyday meaning for people of that time/culture. A way of understanding us and our world. Maybe a rough equivalent is investigating different 'flavors' of vibrations – vibrations that manifest as pain, or sadness, or pressure, temperature, etc. So, from this view point, it is just another way of slicing the pie – of deconstructing the apparent solidity of these phenomena. If that's not it then all I can say is “I don't know either”.

Yes, that seems to summarize it pretty good.

It appears that "triplethink" expanded on perhaps something I said in a diff thread (Confusing concentration and insight training (or what vibrations?) - I had mentioned qigong and qi (energy, vibrations). Hence, the breakdown of those vibration flavors, textures (or whatever one wants to call them) he further discussed here. Which, by the way is making wonderful sense to me. Thanks for all this additional clarification.
I guess it's just another way of "assessing" these vibrations, seeing the interconnection, and as "CheleK" points out "As mind and body are not two, thoughts are not without a component in physicality. When we look at them as mental events we miss the underlying physical/energetic component."

chuck,

yes i agree, it is flavours, as the experience of practising it shows, but breaking it up into elements first before breaking it up into the flavours next... i dont understand that part. why break it up twice? what is the significance of the 4-elemental distinction? there might be something interesting to that that we cant see, and if so, it might be apparent to someone who has a lot of experience and practice with that way of doing things. ..well, nathan?

Author: msj123

Every time you break something down, you realize it is empty. The person breaks down into the 5 skandhas. Thus, the person being dependent on the skandhas does not stand. The 5 skandhas break down into the elements. The skandhas depending on the elements do not stand. In such a time and culture, the elements may have been atomic.

Breaking it down that far may be more complicated, but this would require an increased level of concentration and sensitivity.

Hi again, needed a little bit of sleep. It looks like we're all on the same page now.

What is it about the four elements? For my purposes, it integrates very well into physics in general, something I have a lot of interest in. The term 'vibrations' encompasses a huge range of phenomena, which means that if you are simply noting, 'vibrations' then there may be many distinctions that may be passing you by. The 4 elements are a natural way to use tactile sense in your own body and this is one way of making more specific observations. We can see how the Abhidhamma guys really liked to get down into the minutia of phenomena. I like to do that too, take apart phenomena into the smallest bits, see how it all fits together and so on. As something immediate and tactile, something that can be a starting point for going deeper, dividing vibrations into the four elemental types has been useful to me in a variety of ways. There is also the ways these 4 basic kinds of elementary physicality express in the world around us, in other beings and so on. So I've found that overall, this kind of investigation has opened up a lot of new ground for understanding the nature of things both internally and externally.

Perhaps an example would help. An emotional moment, a tragedy occurs. Suppose you are moved by the circumstances and begin to cry. One can then examine the sequence of events elementally. The water element is in motion, where does the water move from and to and in what way? Etc.. This is developing insight into emotions in a different way.

We can employ many systems of analysis and classification, this is one more that a Buddha found useful.

Essentially I'm saying, be it vibrations or elementary states of physicality, or mind or whatever, there is less benefit in my saying, 'look for this and that specifically' than there is in everyone making their own investigations into what they are. Who knows how different we are from each other? It may as little as not much at all or it may be quite a lot. I didn't have a teacher when I began all of this and I haven't really had much teaching from other meditation practitioners over all. I like to look into myself for myself. When I can confirm something that I've learned elsewhere in my own nature, again and again, when I can observe it at work in others, when I have proven it out through the years, then I start to relax about the investigation of it all. Even so, I have what I call, my bulging file of anomalous phenomena, stuff that just does not fit, that screws up the whole conception of things, whatever that conception may be. So, simple, precise observations of phenomena are the key to sorting things out in the long run, be it all the routine stuff which together forms consistent cyclic patterns or that stuff which is just f-ing crazy making out there stuff from the twilight zone. Having many well practiced frames of reference at the ready to apply in a dynamic way affords better potential of having available appropriate investigative and analytical skills that can serve in a variety of ways regardless of what may be encountered.

As I continue to stress, to ultimately develop useful analytical skills one has to make one's own investigations. In terms of elements, this means looking into it personally, looking into what this framework might mean were it applied to one's own materiality.

Author: bboyYen

Is it possible that the four elements are simply different ways or kinds of sensations. Like in feeling we have pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feeling.

But in mindfulness of body we also have different bodily sensations or physical-like feelings? So for example when I feel temperature hot or cold I would say or note heat element? And when I swallow saliva I might note feeling or water element?

Or when I feel the fluidity or flexibleness of my stomach the quality of that sensation would be water?

In the Satipatthana sutta it seems that mindfulness is not just noting whether an object rises or falls, but seems to deal also with actually being aware of what the object is, correctly, so when there is hate you note hate.

So I guess in mindfulness of body and bodily qualities or sensations, the 4 kinds of bodily qualities or sensations would be earth, water, fire and wind which is something like solidity, fluidity, temperature and movement, or something like that. Just like feeling has pleasant, unpleasant and neutral, and mind or consciousness has hateful, greedy, deluded and un-hateful, un-greedy and un-deluded.

So if correct mindfulness would be accurately being aware of consciousness with hate, or consciousness without hate et.c Then accurate mindfulness of certain bodily sensations would be accurate awareness of the four elements. For example when you feel the flexibility of your stomach then that would be a water like sensation, and you already know that, hence you would note water.

Questionable information follows.

Same goes for feelings I guess, when you feel an unpleasant feeling and you already know it then you would note, unpleasant.

Questionable information ended.

That seems to me how it would make sense, but so far I haven't really bothered with noting those things. egh.

Author: bboyYen

Questionable summary.

So basically, kind of what I'm saying is. Is that if in feeling or correct mindfulness of feeling is mindfulness of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, consciousness as with hate, with greed, with delusion or without hate, without greed or without delusion then correct mindfulness of body or bodily sensations would be mindfulness of the four elements.



Questionable summary ended.

I mainly feel the four elements can be taken quite literally to mean these same properties in the body and in the world; energy, gases, liquids and solids.

An earth element might be toast. Water element the formation of saliva around the grinding of the earth element in the mouth. Wind the breath, air on skin and gases in the internal organs. Earth in bones, teeth, nails and hair, crystals and any other tissues with rigid contiguity.

Within this elementary physics of 'states' in compounded causal conditionality there is support for the biological complexity that builds on it.

The biological complexity supports the physical senses (feelings) and mind (consciousness) within the body - within the body entirely and without it as well.

In conjunction with the biological complexity adding the mind and consciousness complicates the complexity further. In comparison to all that arises and passes within mentality, the body, unto itself, as "mere elements" is a very simple study to undertake but immensely rewarding when skillfully done.

I think I've done this work just because it seemed so easy and obvious to me to do it. Like a primary education in meditation for someone without a teacher who nonetheless has a functional body at hand. I'm actually kind of surprised that folks are mystified about what the 4 elemental states might be about or mean.

To bring this full circle the reason I mentioned these states is that I'd also noted the four states as vibratory; fire/heat/energy is the fastest, gases second, liquids third and solids the slowest. So there is this useful relation to examine as well.

fascinating and helpful, as often. thank you for the replies.