Time to reach the A&P

Matthew Jon Rousseau, modified 4 Years ago at 12/7/19 6:03 PM
Created 4 Years ago at 12/7/19 6:01 PM

Time to reach the A&P

Posts: 70 Join Date: 10/6/19 Recent Posts
If one where to practice Insight meditation  for about 2 hours a day.(mahasi style )... is it reasonable that someone  would reach the A&P In under a year  time. . I'm  already getting glimpses of cause and effect and mind body but they are unstable  .   
The meditation experienced thought  have been mostly pleasurable.
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Bardo, modified 4 Years ago at 12/9/19 7:11 AM
Created 4 Years ago at 12/8/19 4:36 AM

RE: Time to reach the A&P

Posts: 263 Join Date: 9/14/19 Recent Posts
Yes, it's reasonable to experience an awakening (A&P) in a year. It took me 1 year. I employed a vipassana technique for one hour daily, watching the waxing and waning of bodily phenomena time and time again while holding to the notions of the three characteristics.

Additionally, meditation is very orchestrated in that we create a suitable environment so we can carry out this task. This doesn't marry to well with real life and so after 3 or 4 months of realizing this I looked for a practice that I could do outside of meditation within the real world environment. This mostly involved everyday awareness with sense perceptions, satipatthana and, as often as I could remember, mindfulness of breathing. When these things became established things really took off in a big way. You could shave years - perhaps even decades - off your practice by allowing the practice to permeate your daily life. Your life does not need to stop in order for this to happen, in fact, life itself becomes a sort of object for contemplation; the movements of reality are thrown into scrutiny, curiosity arises and questions about the true nature of what or who we are will float on the surface of that curiosity.

I suppose I am saying there is potential, not just in meditative practice, but all around you in many forms and that tuning in to this can massively facilitate the whole process. 
Jigme Sengye, modified 4 Years ago at 12/11/19 9:22 AM
Created 4 Years ago at 12/11/19 9:22 AM

RE: Time to reach the A&P

Posts: 188 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Matthew Jon Rousseau:
If one where to practice Insight meditation  for about 2 hours a day.(mahasi style )... is it reasonable that someone  would reach the A&P In under a year  time. . I'm  already getting glimpses of cause and effect and mind body but they are unstable  .   
The meditation experienced thought  have been mostly pleasurable.
It depends on the intensity of your practice. It can take as little as a 10 day Goenka retreat, in other words 100 hours of practice in 10 days.

In qigong, you can do a 2 hour a day practice that resembles samatha at a particular spot on the belly for 100 days that'll take you past the A&P (though the terminology is different, since Daoism talks about qi). That practice involves complete celibacy (no sexual activity whatsoever), which is also something you'd do on a Buddhist retreat. This isn't a suggestion to switch systems, since Mahasi-style vipassana will be just as effective at getting you to experience the knowledge of the arising and passing away of phenomena.

How are you practicing Mahasi-style vipassana? What are you noting? Are you noting rising and falling of the abdomen? What comes up? Are you noting physical sensations, vedana (pleasant, unpleasant neutral reactions to physical sensations), mind states (emotions and other mind states like drowsiness, alertnes, etc.) and thoughts? If so, how? How often are you noting and how much mind-wandering is coming up? Are you noting that when you notice it? Are you able to keep noting a sensation until it disappears?

Are you experiencing any vibratory sensations? If so, can you describe them?