When sitting in reobservation today i tried to explore my head tension without increasing it. I noticed that the actual sensation was quite small, but that the unpleasant vedana (feeling) was much larger. It seemed that the vedana occupied a similar but much larger physical space to the actual sensation.

I had previously thought that vedana was a mental phenomena and thus had no real location as it were. That appeared not to be the case and on further investigation I slipped into equanimity. This may have been coincidental of course.

Have I got this right?

I think when you slip into equanimity during unpleasant sensation as a result of investigating the vedana arising with the sensation then this is "right" practice.

Did the resulting equanimity give you a sense of releasing the contact between sensation and vedanā?

The definition seemed clearer yes. I could more clearly pick out one from the other, and neither had "teeth" anymore heh!

PS: Katy we need to change your nickname to "Katy Two Times". I was waiting for the 2nd reply I knew you'd post before responding!

So, your effort is accomplishing a result of satipatthana.

I guess so. I am currently rereading Analayo's commentary. I need to hurry up and reread the section on vedana.

It's amazing how much more Im getting out of that book second time around. In the time it's taken me to read it my understanding seems to have grown quite a bit..

The Head Center meditation might also help with your head tension:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88JUoa3B27o&feature=g-user-u

Introduction to head center:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sYcq4_G7z0

Yes, I agree: it's an amazingly useful work. And, the actual direct experience of no-craving with arising vedana is not only very useful to the person who experiences it, but is a basis for confident, honest, informative, and useful guidance to others in their stress/suffering.

Here is another work of his in PDF on the craving that arises from vedana.

He is a scholar of buddhism in several languages and is instrumental in making the chinese, tibetan and pali canon comparable.

Thanks Aman. I'll check this out when the kids are in bed!



Crikey Katy, that'll keep me busy! Cheers.

The development of the jhanas through metta practice has really helped all of this. For those reading that like myself, are chronic dark nighters, I highly recommend developing jhana, this stuff is still unpleasant but the often it can be kind of "in the background" . With dry insight work it's really up close and personal...

That's been my experience, too.

After a couple more sits I have some further observations:

• To just notice the affective tone of unpleasant dark-night-esque sensations seems to be enough to disarm them. This is not some super-penetrative deep understanding of anything much, just noticing that the sensation is the sensation and the feeling is the feeling.
• Adding this step to the regular body-scan instructions to focus on the impermanence of sensation (i.e. to notice the affective tone also, as well as it's own impermanence) seems to work very well indeed. I need to do it a bit more though. I tried it in the last 20mins of my morning sit today and it seemed to really propel me forward (out of the dn into eq..)