Hi, I'm new here.   I've been using MCTB for the last few years, especially focusing on insight meditation, and I can definitely feel considerable change occurring, but I have never been able to get anywhere with noting because of some basic problems I seem to have with it.   So here I am, finally asking for some help!   I've browsed around to see other threads and noting resources to see if the issues I'm having are addressed elsewhere, but they don't seem to be (perhaps they are simply too basic), so I'll just come out with it:

The fundamental problem I seem to have is that when I try to note, it takes a significant cognitive effort to form a word or concept to attach as the note.   But that seems to me to be counterproductive, since that cognitive effort takes time, and that process can't itself be noted, because that leads to infinite regress, so it feels like every note pulls me out of paying attention to what is going on and sends me into thinking about what to note about a sensation that is now rapidly receding into the past, while not paying attention to the non-negligible act of noting itself.

So when I just follow the instructions, what it feels like is this:  I experience a sensation, then I try to note it, which becomes a process of thought that tries to categorize the sensation somehow, during which I am thinking about a past sensation and ignoring the present, and then after that effort, I return to the present and grab another sensation and repeat; there are far more sensations involved in the noting itself than what it is reflecting on, so I feel like I am only in the present for brief flashes interspersed with much longer intervals of "noting process".

There must be something basic I don't get about this.  How can noting not pull me out of the present into contemplating something that just happened, if only for a brief second?  What do I do about the feeling that I am ignoring (NOT noting) the sensations involved in noting itself?  

Thanks in advance for any help!

Why do you think you are pulled out of the present if you know you are comtemplating something that just happened and are aware of the sensations involved in noting itself?

(Out of curiousity, what is your short-term and practical goal for your meditation practice?)

Thanks for the reply.    My understanding is that the process of insight meditation and noting teach (among other things) a finer and finer discrimination of the fact that many (if not all) of the things we think of as "in the present" are actually short-term memories of just-past sensations, which we learn to let go of faster and faster and faster, with less and less analysis and clinging, approaching the present through the just-past asymptotically, but never quite reaching it, ideally leading to a moment when so little interpretation is done that we can't even form a memory of that moment or of time passing, which are the properties of fruition, according to the MCTB.  Intrinsic to that is that thinking about something that just happened *isn't* being in the present, it is clinging to something just-past, and learning how to let that go as quickly as possible is the goal, as a tool to see the ever-present now as unencumbered by analysis and interpretation as possible, so that the moment of attachment to desires and urges can be seen clearly.

When I'm thinking about something that just happened, I'm *not* at that moment thinking about my thinking about it.   If I then turn to noting the thinking about it (the process of noting), I am not in that moment thinking about my thinking about the noting, etc. ad infinitum.   I have to choose some point to stop the regress, which requires letting some level of noting go *un-noted*.  This, and what feels like the incredible slowness of my mental process of noting, are what I am struggling with.

This appears to me during meditation as a constant dipping in and out of perception of the present, with most of the time being spent in the noting process itself, which feels less and less in the present as the mental process of constructing the note proceeds, culminating in a conclusive "note".

As for my goals, I believe strongly in what I perceive to be the central message of MCTB, which I think is to learn to integrate into my basic mode of perception a deep understanding of the Three Characteristics, the transientness of all perception, the intrinsic unsatisfactoriness of self-identity, and loss of clinging to self-identity, as the path to freedom from suffering.   For me this is confirmed by the fact that I have already felt a massive reduction in suffering, and an increasing lightness of being, with the urge to attach to each incoming sensation flowing away quicker and quicker, like the wind through the leaves of a tree.

You may be putting too much emphasis on the word or label. If you put too much of your focus on the word, making it 'solid' so that it looms large, the word can become like a mantra, taking you away from the bare sensate experience. 

Another approach is to put, let's just say for the sake of argument, 90 percent of your focus on the sensations themselves with 10 percent allocated to the label. So it's 'rising, rising, rising, pause, pause, pause, falling, falling, falling,' but the vast majority of your focus is on truly tuning into the sensations directly. The label is transparent, wispy, whisper-like, barely there. It's there just enough to help you actually know what's going on. Again, the focus is on tuning into and knowing the sensations themselves. 

All of that said, it is possible to drop the labels altogether--the focus is on wordlessly 'noticing' rather than noting. 

Last point: The brain wants to conserve energy and tends toward laziness. The Burmese exhort people to make an effort for a reason. I spent more than a year doing out-loud, once-per-second noting per Kenneth Folk and had tremendous resistance to making this kind of an effort. I really hated it. Eventually, though, I started noting the body sensations, mind states and thoughts involved in that aversion--big breakthrough. You don't get to equanimity by always doing what feels easiest and best. 

Thanks!  I've heard controversy about whether to note with very specific words or with more general or ambiguous words.   It sounds like what you are saying is that the point is simply to reinforce the "noticing" of the moment, not so much to put a label on it.   That agrees with what I've been actually been doing, which is to focus on the maximally generic thought "I am experiencing this" over and over again simply to make the sensation more clear, which I can do extremely quickly without any effort to categorize or form a memory.  I've assumed that this was the point of noting, but the effort involved in constructing a label seemed counterproductive to me, and I felt like I was missing something.

edit: However, your point that more explicit, slow noting eventually pays off is interesting, and give me an incentive to put some more effort into that.   I do understand that part of the point is to keep the focus and energy level high, which I already do, but if pushing through the aversion is useful, I'll give it a try.

Great advice Tashi.

David, There is a lot of work involved in going "back upstream" from the lost in thought mode to being aware of sensations, urges, emotions, and thoughts... but cessasion doesn't occur when you reach that furtherest upstream point and thought stops. I can understand that model, but it is more like cessasion happens when you fall into the space between the experience between two sensations, two emotions, two thoughts, between a sensation and an emotion, between an emotion and a thought, etc. So cessassion is always a possiblitity, even in the midst of sensations or emotions or even thoughts -- what matters is a very clear perception of this current experience, noticing that they are always changing... and for things to change, one experience must turn into another experience --- meditation is all about being curious of how the mind changes in this way. How does the mind seem to be filled with vivid and concrete and knowable experiences and yet everything changes so effortlessly and without a trace?

It's also important to realize that the goal is awareness of the present moment, not necessarily labeling everything in the present moment. In other words, it counts if you are aware that it is occuring in your experience. It's not that it has to be labeled to count. So it's enough that you are aware of the sensations, urges, emotions, and thoughts that happen. This gets punctuated by noting as a safety-check that we are actually continuting to be aware of these things.

You don't need to get rid of anything that occurs. If there are a lot of thought about judging your practice, mapping your practice, evaluating whether noting is a worthwile practice or not... simply notice that you are experiencing judging thoughts, mapping thoughts, evaluating thoughts, etc. In other words, don't identify with any particular category of thinking, but rather be aware that the mind is doing that. (After you are done sitting, there is plenty of time for really thinking about those things.) This aspect is important, otherwise you will always identify as the thinker or watcher that is meditating. It's important to gently question that assumption. Sensations and thoughts associated with being the thinker or watcher don't have to go away, they just need to be notices as sensations as thoughts, just like any other sensation or thought.

It also sounds like you need a solid, short-term, practical goal for your practice. (It's great to have long term goals, too.) But how about "I will note one thing in my experience on every out breath and to be aware of everything in between those notes for an entire 30 minutes. I will do this every day for one week"? So that's 10-12 notes per minute in a short but very high-quality awareness practice done consistently every day.

Lots to think about, and meditate on!   I'm not sure I understand about cessation being "between" experiences, but I'll give it a chance.   It sounds like I'm not totally off track; I'm focused primarily on focused awareness of experiencing each sensation, and I'm trying hard to include  all categories of experience, including my thoughts and beliefs and sense of self.   I like the idea of trying to do some hard, explicit noting to keep me focused but falling back to a more simple awareness of experience in between notes; I'll give that a try!

This is great. Over-thinking, trying to pin everything down and get everything conceptually straight--including the long-term arc of progress and how it all plays out--is such a curse. I've had my own struggles with this of late in trying to work with the very dense instructions in The Mind Illuminated.
Picking a few things to work on and sticking to it--that seems to be the way to go.  

Let's say a bird is squawking repeatedly. Between each of these sounds--silence. I think Shargol is talking about the silence/space/nothingness "between" experiences. Maybe I have that right.