Morality and Daily Life

RE: "Stuff"

Cul Godfrey — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 06:53:47 GMT

1) I had PTSD resulting from random trauma, i.e., very serious car accident, extra cruel,weird-o neighbor kids, father who bellowed night and day, and other stuff. I have rebuilt my mind from top to bottom. Here's what worked...
2) I saw a highly respected Yale-trained psychiatrist. Medication eased 30% of my suffering, but only after the long trial of finding the right drug. There were some drugs that exacerbated my condition.
From there I branched-out and tried all manner of available treatments.
Buddhist philosophy helped me live moment-to-moment, even as I was paranoid and shaking with cold sweats and too messed-up to leave my bed.
EMDR therapy helped me to relax and gain insight into my past and reintegrate more positive memories. This is really just a sophisticated form of guided meditation, but a well-trained guide is the key.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped me cancel out anxious, habitual mind chatter
The book "Journey to the Center: A Meditation Workbook" by Matthew Flickstein was my first taste of meditation. Worked wonders.
A guided meditation CD by Jonathan Foust helped me access an inner world of metaphorical solutions that presented as wakeful dreaming. I listened to this CD in a reclining position when I found it difficult to get out of bed. I have and A&P experience every time I listen.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy workbooks from Barnes & Noble led me to Thich Nhat Hanh and more meditation.
James Baraz's online class "Awakening Joy" offered through Spirit Rock Meditation Center introduced me to the work of neuropsychologist Rich Hanson. Rick's recent book is "Buudha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom". You can also find his work at wisebrain.org.
Mindfulness and body scans helped me pinpoint the moment I began to dissociate. Once you note it, you can interrupt it.
Swimming, yoga and dance classes helped break the fog of dissociation.
The poetry of Rumi and Hafiz helped in countless ways.
The writings of Martha Beck, PhD encouraged me to experiment until I found my "core of peace". I learned that I'm uniquely calm when skipping across a lake on a Sea Do at full speed or when jumping off a giant glacial rock into a pool of cool black water. I can draw on that sensation of empowered peacefulness at will now.
Tonglen meditation practice cuts through a ton of delusion.
Metta meditation.
The mantra "When you're calm, you're calming" was another great training.

Many of these overlap, but I needed to hammer home positive experience to cancel out the undesirable stuff. I'm on solid ground now, but there's been some shifting lately, so I know I need to return to 60 minutes of meditation daily and then take my practice to the next level.

RE: Addictions

J Adam G — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 23:56:08 GMT

If I can make a bit of a nitpick here, meditation itself is unlikely to help you deal with addictive behaviors. Now, high-level insight certainly can make the process of dealing with them much better (for lack of a better adjective), but it takes a bit of time to get that kind of insight.

If I were in your position, I'd go for some form of psychotherapy (it isn't particularly important which type it is) with a very good psychotherapist. It's much more important for the therapist to be good than for their type of psychotherapy to be good, because they all pretty much work when done right.

That said, cognitive-behavioral therapy would be effective at dealing with addictive behaviors, though it certainly doesn't go deep into the recesses of your mind and discover why you have the behaviors in the first place the way a psychodynamic therapy would. It's up to you to decide how much time and money you want to put into it -- psychodynamic therapy works, but god does it take forever in some cases! CBT works way faster when you find a good CB therapist, but far too many CB therapists out there just follow instructions from a manual and know little to nothing about actually helping people improve their lives, rather than improve their scores on symptom checklists.

RE: Addictions

Dark Night Yogi — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:23:52 GMT

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/672679

theres another thread about 'women', maybe you'd wanna check it out..

One thing I think of about lust, it is really bad for karma, it is really tiring, it makes you lose touch with seeing the opposite sex with respect. Another thing though is its normal depending on your age and you usually outgrow it

Addictions

Mark Christian Lopez — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:25:37 GMT

I think I'm addicted to the net and porn. Can meditation help me with it?

I have been to many retreats, read Daniel Ingram's book, have meditated for quite some time, but still can't let go of my addictions. Should I try specific practices?

It's just so good to let go of, I think.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Daniel Johnson — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:09:53 GMT

Dark Night Yogi:

This is a description by Kenneth Folk http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/The+Progress+of+Insight+(Part+Three)
Today I'd like to continue the narrative of the ñanas with the 11th ñana, Knowledge of Equanimity. The equanimity ñana is generally a very happy time for a yogi. Having suffered through the solid physical pain of the third ñana and having endured the dark night of the tenth ñana, the yogi wakes up one day to find that everything is just fine. Dissolution of mind and body continue, but it is no longer a problem. In fact, nothing is a problem. In the early stages of the eleventh ñana (Knowledge of Equanimity), the yogi can sit happily for hours at a time. If pain comes, no problem. Wandering mind, no problem. Objects present themselves to the mind one after another, obediently posing for inspection. This is where the yogi really gets a feel for what vipassana is all about, as he effortlessly deconstructs each thought and each sensation that appears.

Equanimtity Nana by the descriptions and by my own experience has been very strong. If you are not certain if you are in the Equanimity Nana, it may also be that you are not in it

Stream entry's important becoz after attaining it, you don't have to work your ass off as hard. I worked my ass off with stream entry but after that, I was able to relax more and still progress. Progress becomes automatic even if you meditate less.

Thanks for the thoughts on this.

My experience in my last retreat sounds pretty much just like the Kenneth Folk quote except no (can sit happily for hours at a time.) I think all my Goenka courses took a toll on my back an knees. So, I wasn't sitting so much, but still happily, and pain wasn't a problem. Otherwise, my experience seems to match the descriptions. But, that doesn't mean a whole lot. I suppose I could be in Equanimity, or I could be somewhere else, or I could be an Arahat, or I could be a really retarded vegetable. The insight stages are mostly rather mysterious for me.

I really like the idea of reaching a place where I don't have to work my ass off as hard. That sounds kinda cool.

Still, I don't really understand what this whole "progress" thing is and how it seems to happen in a matter of days or months for some, and years or lifetimes for others. I imagine that anything is possible.

I wish I could just set aside a weekend and get to some magical place called "stream entry" where I didn't have to work my ass off anymore. That sounds cool. I just set aside three days for meditation and it was hell.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Dark Night Yogi — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 01:26:56 GMT

Thanks a lot Bruno and Crazy Wisdom, very cool and helpful stuff! I definitely should learn how to work with Chi. It seems to be more and more relevant the more you progress since it becomes more subtle and more easily felt.

Daniel J, hope i'm understanding correctly,

re equanimity: do you understand the difference between the equanimity nana & 'equanimity' as a verb?

re not stopping: during this time when you're in the equanimity nana, if one isn't aware of the existence and importance of 'stream entry', then s/he may just meditate with the same level of urgency as s/he did before when they reach equanimity Nana. What worked for me during this time was to grab equanimity nana by the horns and really step up my practice bigtime. Strong determination, clear out the next weekend and leave it free for continuous practice. And it worked, i practiced friday night, saturday and sunday. Monday morning at 9am i got stream entry.

This is the description of equanimity from Daniel I's blook
http://web.mac.com/danielmingram/iWeb/Daniel%20Ingram's%20Dharma%20Blog/The%20Blook/5976668A-E169-4F93-BDE7-DA8DB3108E76.html

This is a description by Kenneth Folk http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/The+Progress+of+Insight+(Part+Three)
Today I'd like to continue the narrative of the ñanas with the 11th ñana, Knowledge of Equanimity. The equanimity ñana is generally a very happy time for a yogi. Having suffered through the solid physical pain of the third ñana and having endured the dark night of the tenth ñana, the yogi wakes up one day to find that everything is just fine. Dissolution of mind and body continue, but it is no longer a problem. In fact, nothing is a problem. In the early stages of the eleventh ñana (Knowledge of Equanimity), the yogi can sit happily for hours at a time. If pain comes, no problem. Wandering mind, no problem. Objects present themselves to the mind one after another, obediently posing for inspection. This is where the yogi really gets a feel for what vipassana is all about, as he effortlessly deconstructs each thought and each sensation that appears.

Equanimtity Nana by the descriptions and by my own experience has been very strong. If you are not certain if you are in the Equanimity Nana, it may also be that you are not in it

Stream entry's important becoz after attaining it, you don't have to work your ass off as hard. I worked my ass off with stream entry but after that, I was able to relax more and still progress. Progress becomes automatic even if you meditate less.

This time for me really was something far-out, and it did take its toll on me emotionally and stuff..
What I learned from taking a Goenka retreat though is: Getting angry is the most destructive thing to meditation practice, atleast for me. There were times that I was angry about the Food, and i was frustrated coz i thought the servers consistently and purposely made the food difficult to piss us off. They served oily eggplants as the meat/protein source. eggplant contains barely any protein, and all the oil is crazy. so my muscles were deteriorating, no energy, and sluggish due to all the oil. here i am using up hard earned leaves from work to waste time suffering in crucial days of the retreat. I wasted many days feeling like an unconscious vegetable. Anger can be used to really fuel your meditation practice. Give it all you got, but when its above you, its the worst.

Hope this helps in clearing things and all the best.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Daniel Johnson — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:13:45 GMT

I really don't mean to be the Dharma Retard or something, but how do you tear down everything without Equanimity?

I seem to be really misconfused by my misrepresentisatisation of myself here... but does it seem like I'm wanting to "have" equanimity?

I don't really want equanimity, or stream entry or enlightenment or whatever... I don't know what the fuck I want, and I've never known that, I don't want to know what I want, and I don't expect to know it anytime soon. Wanting something seems to be something that comes and goes, comes and goes... and I don't understand why this whole "I'm a meditator" thing should be any different? Why should this whole "stream entry" thing be some thing to have?

Qutie frankly, Equanimity can fuck itself in it's own ass for all I care. I don't have any special love-mate attachment to the damn thing, I just find that it's supremely helpful in the process of coming to know reality.

Yes... tear it all down. That's what I've been doing. I don't plan to stop.... and I don't get what all this hype is about.

Of course... I do stop. I stop over and over and over again! I'm human! ... and I may be the Dharma Retard again.... but I thought that was why I meditated in the first place... to not stop... to catch the conditioned response to try to solidify things and instead to continue to penetrate to their true nature. I thought that the human condition is that we all resist the coming and going constant dissolution of our reality until we start to learn otherwise. Am I dumb here?

- Daniel

Daniel M. Ingram:

Tearing down Equanimity is as or more important than attaining it, meaning, to see the Three Characteristics of everything that makes up Equanimity is more important than some sort of dwelling or "mastery" or whatever of equanimity.

Many get hung there as it is so nice after the Dark Night.

Tear it down. It all comes and goes. See all that, space, you, ease, peace, equanimity, doubt, anticipation, mapping, intention, all of it, arise and vanish as sensations again and again through the bones.

You can have all the Equanimity you want after stream entry and it will be way better. Don't stop.

Daniel

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Crazy Wisdom — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:41:32 GMT

Dark Night Yogi:

I think that because of my chakra blockages, my breathing hasn't really been able to take as much air & my digestion hasn't been able to function properly for the last several years, causing me much solidified ignorant experience. I think the difference is worth noting for me.

Even having attained a couple of paths, it took some time to get close enough to work with & see thru this.
About a couple of weeks ago & 2 weeks after my 2nd Goenka retreat, i noticed this. I now am more able to notice
the food in my gut, and the energy that it gives or the process of my body metabolizing that food. I feel i have a more direct connection with this and that another deep rooted chakra or layer has been unblocked(or partly unblockedI think its the root chakra. The last big blockage i had a big change was the one above that.

I will see how i will handle this 'progress' onwards from now and see if it sticks, see if im efficiently able to keep seeing thru this. Since these sankharas/blockages are all due to my own habits and stuff, how I deal with it off the cushion will also tell if I fall back or not.

I changed my meditation object a couple of days ago. My object is now mostly 'body', dukkha in the body. (centered more solidified in my root/gut, and occasionally shifting the object to my limbs, w/c are less solid, to sharpen concentration) and Breath now becomes secondary in the background. Pure awareness is still often too difficult but probably my practice object is leading more in that direction. I'll see if this is consistent, especially in times of dissolution, chi drain-out, and succeeding dark nights.

For a summary of my practice history:
Started meditation & occassional/varied (wrong) techniques: July 2008
Started 'everyday' meditation atleast 10mins: Jan, 2009
Stream entry: Aug, 2009
2nd path: Sept, 2009
First Goenka retreat: Oct 2009
2nd Goenka retreat: April 2009

Opening the orbit as BRuno suggested seems like a good idea. THe small universe meditation CDs you can by at springforestqigong.com is considered by several posters at thetaobums.com as a very good and safe way to open the orbit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyVzsDaMXN4

Wuji standing meditation as is shown in the youtube video is considered very good for digestive issues and affects the spleen and pancreas in particular which are key organs for digestion. It is also, like other standing meditation, very good at grounding you. THe key is how the hands are held so maybe you should find a video that displays that more precisely. Such standing postures are considered ok to learn on ones own as once you are in them posture gets naturally self corrected as long as you relax and look for the best way to stand. Also once the energy starts moving you will be surprised at how it moves you into the right posture.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Crazy Wisdom — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:27:37 GMT

Bruno Loff:

For me either (1) working with the legs made a very big difference, or (2) it was sheer coincidence, and the work I've been doing in the legs, and the concrete sensations of tingling and moving energy I get in those parts, have nothing to do with the fact that I feel way more grounded than a couple of months ago.

Only time will tell :-)

From alchemicaltao.com, the "three amigos of rooting" (ankle rotations, squats & belly breathing through the legs):

http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/IS_ThreeAmigos.htm

The legs are very important, maybe key, in grounding. Especially the connection between the kidney 1 point that one breaths through in the breathing technique Bruno mentioned and the earth is supposed to be central. Also the heels have a special connection to the root. Another thing I have read several times and which seems to match my very modest experience is that when the feet are on the ground earth energy is pulled up through the feet and transformed through the legs to a softer more refined energy then if you sit with feet crossed as then most of the energy goes straight from the earth into your perinium and creates a much more crude and volatile energy. Sort of like the difference between breathing with your nose vs breathing with your mouth.

In certain traditions of qigong they sit in the throne posture with with on the ground precisely to have a stronger connection to the earth. If you look at asana those were you have your feet on the ground are much more grounding than those where you do not. Standing meditation as is done in qigong (Zhan Zhuang) is VERY grounding, balancing and builds a lot of energy. In addition it lets you work to correct your entire posture and alignment in a very nice way. It also eventually naturally opens your microcosmic orbit. I loved it when I was doing it.

RE: Dealing with other people

Crazy Wisdom — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:13:52 GMT

I started having the same problem and asked my teacher about it. He said that he solved it by simply bringing mindfulness to the fact that these were not his emotions or energies. My mindfulness abilities are not much to speak of but I tried it an it worked well as long as I could be mindful of it. THey energies then just become phenomena I observed and a way of reading other peoples states. Previously the energies blended with my own and could become almost inseparable and then bring me down but with mindfulness that stopped. My practice now is much less intense than it was at the time so now I am not sensitive enough to be bothered much by it anyway.

A bunch of traditions that center more around energy work have techniques to protect you from the negative energies of others be it those sent involuntary or willed "psychic attacks". They seem to involve building sort of auric fields of protection. Healers also often know such techniques. I know that Michael Lomax who teaches Stillness Movement Qigong does this and I know that guys that teach Kundalini Awakening Process (Glenn Morris`system) teaches it. At least they teach it in their psychic self defense course but I am guessing they also teach something in KAP 1 or 2 or both. If you feel that this is something you want to do I am pretty sure you could get private lessons on skype or phone on how to do it. If you already have a fairly advanced meditation practice making something like this work once you are taught the right technique should be quite easy.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Daniel M. Ingram — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:52:40 GMT

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Daniel Johnson — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 03:24:46 GMT

Thanks for the reply, Dark Night Yogi,

Right now, I have no clue whatsoever.

I think you could consider yourself quite fortunate to have a fast experience from A&P to stream entry.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Daniel Johnson — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 03:20:57 GMT

Hey Nikolai,
I might have given the wrong impression. I'm not really "worrying" about equanimity, and don't give too much importance to what Goenka says.

I'm not sure why, but I seem to be miscommunicating myself pretty well on this website.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Dark Night Yogi — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:39:51 GMT

In my case, equanimity has always been fast. The longest I've spent in one equanimity state was about 4-5 days. Thats low-medium-high. Or usually about 2-3 days.. something like that.. Sometimes just 1 1/2 days.

Or is it usually: the closer you are to stream entry, the stronger and shorter are the equanimity periods? So if you think you're experiencing equanimity, then you should see if the duration becomes shorter and shorter and the level of equanimity increases?
(I don't know.. Im just guessing..my experience of pre-stream entry was very fast. From A&P, just 2 months I think til stream)

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Nikolai S Halay — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:51:53 GMT

Daniel T Johnson:

And, if "Stream Entry" really is what they say it is, that it's some sort of cessation, or some sort of gap in the mind-body experiential world, or whatever... then I imagine it requires a whole lot of equanimity to allow into it. And, observing the nature of my mind as it is now, it doesn't seem that this level of equanimity has yet been cultivated.

So, I could be totally totally wrong about this in any direction. But, it's just a guess based on a little map in my mind of how much equanimity I experienced 2 years ago, 1 year ago, today, and what I imagine might be necessary to enter the stream.

Why do you ask?

For me... at least in my experience... Equanimity is something that seems to have developed over time, rather than me just saying "I resolve to have equanimity" and then *Boom* I have it.

Hi Daniel,

I used to think like that too for a very long time having been immersed int he Goenka tradition for most of my yogi career. Equanimity is something you develop and have to perfect. Well, this is correct to some degree....equanimity is a parami after all. And it is good to be equanimous. But you will find that if you truly are getting to "equanimity of formations" nana, that it is called that for a reason. It is damn easy to be equanimous with all formations/sankharas. Especially in high equanimity where it is easier to see the whole picture as Daniel described in another thread. The whole panoramic view where it all happens, all "you" arising and passing away phenomena. You don't have to worry about equanimity if you are objectifying and noting all the phenomena that take centre stage. It will develop by itself and truly be experienced at the 11th nana which takes its name for the reason that it allows this insight to arise. Just my two cents.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Daniel Johnson — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:10:07 GMT

Yadid Bee:

Daniel T Johnson:

And, It seems like I'm probably still about 6 months away from stream entry if I spend most of that time on retreat (just a guess).

I think this quote is really interesting Daniel.

What makes you think it will take you 6 months? I mean, what are you basing that guess on?

Thanks for the question. The guess is mostly arbitrary. It's based mostly on two things:
1) My best guess for where I am on the Progress of Insight Map. My assesment is that I seem to have made it to Equanimity perhaps last September or so and have been dipping in and out of the Dark Night for a few months.
2) The trajectory at which my equanimity seems to have been developing over the last few months. Like, its sorta like I feel my mind settling down to a state of equanimity with more and more of my sensory reality. More and more sensations that used to provoke reactions, now I can have equanimity with, they don't slip by unnoticed like they used to. And, if "Stream Entry" really is what they say it is, that it's some sort of cessation, or some sort of gap in the mind-body experiential world, or whatever... then I imagine it requires a whole lot of equanimity to allow into it. And, observing the nature of my mind as it is now, it doesn't seem that this level of equanimity has yet been cultivated.

So, I could be totally totally wrong about this in any direction. But, it's just a guess based on a little map in my mind of how much equanimity I experienced 2 years ago, 1 year ago, today, and what I imagine might be necessary to enter the stream.

Why do you ask?

For me... at least in my experience... Equanimity is something that seems to have developed over time, rather than me just saying "I resolve to have equanimity" and then *Boom* I have it.

RE: Dealing with other people

C C C — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 02:09:20 GMT

'Light Emerging' is the name of the book, actually one of two, by Barbara Brennan. She has others but that's pretty darn brilliant.

If you want rational, she is the perfect author. She used to be a NASA scientist. She also sees and feels and can manipulate these chakras in other people. But if you have strong aversions to people who do courses and sell CD's (because you have your own issues about money and trust), then best stay away. Not everything with a commercial flavour is rubbish, you have to be very discriminating.

In relation to the number of chakras, what they look like, anterior and posterior projections, etc. it's a bit like the various streams of Buddhism. There's lots of slight variations on a theme. The consensus figure is 7 but that's the main ones, with lots of other smaller ones in the hands and feet and face.

RE: Dealing with other people

J Groove — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:25:56 GMT

Best of luck with your practice, Noah, and in dealing with the challenge of this new receptivity to others' emotions.
Pavel, thanks for that article--I've just read it and it is indeed very interesting. That's the most rational take on chakras I've ever run across.

RE: Sex, ethics and the Dhamma

J Groove — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:05:12 GMT

Daniel M. Ingram:

Yeah, MCTB does directly contradict much standard Buddhist dogma, but then so does reality, so whatcha gonna believe? ... I know plenty of celibate monks and nuns without any significant insight, and a good number of relative horn-dogs who are meditative stars.

Wonderful. Exactly. And hysterically funny, as usual!

RE: Sex, ethics and the Dhamma

Daniel M. Ingram — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 09:42:17 GMT

Yeah, MCTB does directly contradict much standard Buddhist dogma, but then so does reality, so whatcha gonna believe?

Here's what I recommend, which sounds so preposterous from one point of view but is actually really doable: become an arahat, or at least an anagami, and then see what holds up to reality testing and what is just junk.

Follow standard methods, get your practice trip together, go on retreats, engage with the profundity of the teachings of insight practice and their fundamental assumptions and pointings, make progress, get stream entry by following the usual advice, progress from there as directed. Then you will see and we will have much to talk about, not that we don't now, but it will be at an entirely different level and much of it wouldn't even need to happen, given that you would see for yourself, which is really the whole point of Buddhism, however sliced.

Until then, withhold judgement, and certainly don't necessarily believe me. Do your own research, confirm for yourself. This is the way. All else is just blind faith, dogma, hearsay, etc. and of little to no value, and might even be harmful if you substituted that for your own direct comprehension.

Also, sex and practice: I don't see any particular correlation between sex and progress in insight or a lack thereof. I know plenty of celibate monks and nuns without any significant insight, and a good number of relative horn-dogs who are meditative stars.

RE: Dealing with other people

Noah 42 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 23:07:16 GMT

Well, as for working with the shakra's or other energy practices, I think I'm with J Groove at this, it might not be the best time for me to extensively dive into new practices like these. I've allready got enough stuff to attend to, and amidst of all confusion it's actually quite comforting to have a clear goal like stream entry accompanied by clear instructions.

But as pavel put it:

Pavel Oulik:

I have experienced a fair amount of chakra activity during my sits despite not looking, expecting, or wanting to work with this kind of phenomena.

I've also noticed this. I've become aware of my emotions in places like the low abdomen, the solar plexus, my chest, my throat and my forehead¸ places where I never consciously noticed any sensations before i started doing vipassana practice.
I also noticed the coincedance that these area's are exactly the same places where shakra's are depicted in yoga-flyers and the like. Before that i never took chakra-talk that serious to be honest.

Pavel Oulik:

..the first sign of me being in the Dark Night are very hard and heavy sensations on my torso chakras, with some accompanying unpleasant emotions floating around the belly, chest and the solar plexus.

I experience exactly this on very regular basis, almost every day. Damn, it seems there's no denying it: this must be what dark night feels like. Oohh, the misery ;-)

Pavel Oulik:

One thing that helps me is not to think of it in this way - instead I observe the emotions that other people experience and understand them to be their own, then I observe my own emotions and understand them to be my own, then I choose what to do according to the situation rather than the emotion. A lot of the time this may suck a lot and a lot of the time the emotions will affect my actions somewhat. But thats all good.

Thanks, that sounds like very workable advise, i'll see if this can get me somewhere.

Pavel Oulik:

Perhaps one more thing:

(...) there will be constriction, holding, stopping, forcing and other physical phenomena that make these emotions appear more unpleasant than they actually naturally are (in Buddhism they are sometimes made fit into 3 general attitudes/actions - aversion/attraction/confusion, even simply watching out for those 3 play out moment-to-moment can be awesome) - there is a whole myriad of reactions that take practice and strong insight skills in order to be noticed (and it is worth it to do so). (...)

Thanks alot also for this advise, also very workable. I'm not sure if my skills are strong enough yet to notice alot of this but I'll start to look out for it.

Thanks so much for thinking along guys, I really appreciate it.

And some fun is definately coming up in a few days, as next wednesday I'll be flying to malaysia to visit the MBMC for a week or four. First time for me to meditate longer then the 10 day goenka treat, so i'm quite excited. Let's see how much closer this can get met to stream entry.

Cheers,
Noah

RE: Dealing with other people

Pavel O. — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 13:44:16 GMT

Perhaps one more thing:

While it is not always appropriate to do insight in these day-to-day situations, it can be educational to pay attention to the habitual emotional/physical reactions that occur moment-to-moment in these situations and when being around people who project these strong emotions. As in, there are very specific things that will happen when around anger, fear, force, sadness,... All of these are observable and it may be very helpful insight-wise to get accustomed to watching out for them - there will be constriction, holding, stopping, forcing and other physical phenomena that make these emotions appear more unpleasant than they actually naturally are (in Buddhism they are sometimes made fit into 3 general attitudes/actions - aversion/attraction/confusion, even simply watching out for those 3 play out moment-to-moment can be awesome) - there is a whole myriad of reactions that take practice and strong insight skills in order to be noticed (and it is worth it to do so). Some reflection after these things have happened may make it easier to make a decision on how to relate/behave in these situations in the future - as in, having the equanimity to act wisely comes from not reacting to the occurrence of these strong emotions while they occur, but it helps to be decided on what it means to act wisely. Also, it helps to realize that rather than taking on the emotions of other people, it is more to do with reacting to the emotions of other people. This is observable moment-to-moment.

I hope that this helps and I hope that you will have fun in your practice. Its not all pleasant but it is all worth it and from a certain perspective even the hard stuff is great.

RE: Dealing with other people

Pavel O. — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 13:05:48 GMT

Isn't the whole chakra thing just a morass of conflicting opinions and systems, not to mention all of the unsubstantiated, magic/mythic BS floating around out there about chakras?

Yes and no. I have experienced a fair amount of chakra activity during my sits despite not looking, expecting, or wanting to work with this kind of phenomena. The predominant factor of the chakra activity I have been aware of is that it changes with the stages of insight - the first sign of me being in the Dark Night are very hard and heavy sensations on my torso chakras, with some accompanying unpleasant emotions floating around the belly, chest and the solar plexus. At other times there will be a sense of wide open space in some of them, or even (this happened very recently) an inability to access with my focus a small circular area going from the chakra location out into distance.

There is a wonderful and short article on chakras here: http://openenlightenment.org/?p=326

Is working with chakras really the best recommendation for someone struggling with difficult emotions and uncertainty about the boundaries between self and other?

It could be if one was to do insight on them (in sitting practice that is, daily life I am guessing requires more active options too) - the emotions and physical sensations that have made the most trouble for me generally stemmed from this area, I do not know whether other peoples experience is similar. (I actually found it impossible not to pay attention to the torso and later head chakra regions in my insight practice). This would be helpful on the insight front but probably not very helpful (for a while) in normal life.

I have been having a very similar problem myself (that of being intensely aware of other peoples emotions and those emotions affecting me), a solution to which I have not really found. One thing that helps me is not to think of it in this way - instead I observe the emotions that other people experience and understand them to be their own, then I observe my own emotions and understand them to be my own, then I choose what to do according to the situation rather than the emotion. A lot of the time this may suck a lot and a lot of the time the emotions will affect my actions somewhat. But thats all good.

I also found that it helps to learn how to manipulate ones attitude to do whats right in the face of emotional turmoil - as in, to have enough space to make decisions and enough will-power to carry them out even in the face of difficult emotions. This requires a lot of training. (and a lot of mindfulness in order not to permanently suppress or avoid what is going on emotionally)

Well, all the best Noah and let us know when you figure out a solution or a way to work with it, I would love to hear of it.

RE: Dealing with other people

J Groove — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 12:05:57 GMT

Isn't the whole chakra thing just a morass of conflicting opinions and systems, not to mention all of the unsubstantiated, magic/mythic BS floating around out there about chakras? Is working with chakras really the best recommendation for someone struggling with difficult emotions and uncertainty about the boundaries between self and other?

I'd like to know more about chakras, but how the heck could anyone sort through the mess of specious information out there and find something that has any validity? Wikipedia on chakras? Can't every New Age practitioner in the world edit that page? I dunno, maybe it's got some good information. I have heard of Montak Chia. Maybe a good place to start, then?

RE: Dealing with other people

J Adam G — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 11:40:55 GMT

Should you choose to work with energy practices, I second the recommendation to check out the microcosmic orbit. In fact, I would recommend that over direct work with the chakras to someone unfamiliar with energy-centered practices, because it's more of a "follow the instructions correctly and the process just works right" thing, sort of like vipassana.

In contrast, working with chakras requires familiarity with each chakra. Before you can even become familiar with the chakras, which requires a good deal of work, you have to start out with deciding how many of them you think there are, where you think they are, whether the fronts and backs are the same things or different things, etc. There seems to be more of a barrier to entering chakra work than to entering micro- and macro-cosmic orbit stuff, though it may just be my learning style. Perhaps you would find chakra work easier if you found a great primer on it.

RE: Dealing with other people

C C C — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 10:22:07 GMT

Noah, I don't know a lot about meditation, not experientially anyway. I do know a fair bit about psychology however, and how it relates to the energy centres of the body. So maybe we're just on different pages of the same book.

You can diagnose a chakra's state by reading about what sort of symptoms occur when balanced/imbalanced (sort of indirect and difficult) or you can just close your eyes and think about a particular chakra and see what picture comes into your mind. For example when I put my attention on my 4th chakra, there's not a lot of colour in it (should be green with maybe some pink in it), there's very little movement (should spin), the structure seems ok (like a mesh skeleton without flesh on it), the front projection is a good symmetrical shape, the back projection is broken and incomplete, etc. I can't "see" see them the way that some people can, but I can "know" somehow that's what it looks like.

Working on chakras can be done by a variety of methods including physical exercise, visualization, affirmation, actions, release, grounding, etc. An excellent book for this is 'Eastern Body Western Mind' by A. Judith. So many people write about chakras but this work stands out a mile. The other books I quite like are by Barbara Brennan, mainly because she says she can actually "see" see them and manipulate them with her hands and she has a lot of very interesting illustrations about how the chakras get out of balance. Her books are very complicated and I find them hard to work with in a practical sense but they are still good. They are directed more towards energy practitioners.

I also like Mantak Chia's microcosmic orbit stuff because he goes into detail about how to avoid too much energy ending up in the head, going crazy and all that stuff. Nicely balanced practice.

I just had a look at chakras on Wikipedia. Maybe have a look at that?

RE: Dealing with other people

Noah 42 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 09:45:09 GMT

HI J,

Thanks for your reply. I guess your right, there is something beautiful to it, but indeed at this moment it makes me suffer.
I'll try out the tonglen meditation! It seems a lot like metta for difficult times, it might just be very helpful. Thanks for the tip.

CCC, we're on a totally different level here. It might just be inexperience, but I'm not at all at the point where i can tell what chakra would be 'open' or wich one 'closed', and i don't even know how to imagine 'working with them'.
I might just read into chakra's a little, thanks a lot for the advice tho.

cheers,
Noah

RE: Dealing with other people

C C C — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 08:03:14 GMT

A wide open 6th chakra combined with a blocked 3rd/4th chakra is a recipe for disaster. See: "real concern about a friend" thread for an extreme example. Can I suggest going back a few steps? I know exactly what you're describing and it helped me. My 6th chakra is quite open (not sure why but it is) and my 3rd/4th were very dysfunctional. Work on the 4th in particular has helped my overall balance.

I suspect (though haven't proved yet) that the Dark Night thing is totally avoidable. I reckon the body's energy gets redirected after the A&P to lower energy centres that have been neglected (commonly the 4th chakra). It's like the body says "what are you doing trying to get freedom? You don't even love yourself!! Back you go! "Do not pass 'GO', do not collect $200!!" as the game of Monoploy dictates! So if the heart chakra is healthy, I just have this feeling you will totally bypass Dark Night, let alone recycling through it over and over.

RE: Dealing with other people

J Groove — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 01:41:07 GMT

Hi Noah.
I don't think this is unusual at all. I've heard other practitioners describe feeling this way. If you don't already do tonglen, the Tibetan giving-and-taking practice, this seems like a good thing to try. You could just do a Google search for the instructions on how to do the practice, if you're not already familiar with it. There's something kind of beautiful about what you describe, but it will cause you suffering if you're too embedded or identified with the different emotional storms as they come and go, IMHO.

Another thing that seems helpful would be to be careful, as always, not to build too much of a storyline around your own openness. It might be the case that one minute you are relatively impervious, and another you are extremely open and empathetic. But the thought, "I am so influenced by the emotional comings and goings of others" could become a fixed thing. Don't know if that makes any sense.
Best regards,
-J

Dealing with other people

Noah 42 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 01:01:22 GMT

Hi all,

I'm having a real hard time dealing with people in daily life. That's not at all surprising, because ever since I came out of my self-isolating pot addiction I'm suffering from social anxiety. So having anxiety around people is to be expected.

However, it seems as if i've become a lot more sensitive to other people's emotions, or their 'vibe', since I've started doing vipassana practice, about two years ago.

I'm wondering if this is indeed a result from vipassana practice and familiar to other practicioners, or if I'm just being totally unstable and more aware of it (or both, for that matter).

For example, I might have a fairly good day, and then driving to work with my collegue who, sadly enough, is extremely stressed out, her stress and worry will hit me really hard, making me feel bad and depressed in turn.
Or someone might snare at me out of dissatisfaction or envy or whatever negative emotion and it will hit me like an arrow in the chest, startling me, affecting me pretty badly.

The other way round is also true. I'm teacher and my cheerful, totally free of worry pupils can easily make my day and bring up positive emotions (although these eradicate soon enough due to all the depressive stuff of my own).

Is this grown sensitivity to other people's mind state something that comes with vipassana practice? Or might this be darknight negativity sipping through making me overly sensitive?

Any advice on how to deal with this stuff would be great.

Cheers,
Noah

RE: Sex, ethics and the Dhamma

Disembeding Yogi — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:39:34 GMT

The term kusala is better translated as ,,wholesome''- good for yourself and good for others. The whole Buddha's teachings can be condensed in 3 sentences: abstain from akusala( keep 5 precepts), perform kusala, purify your mind (surface with samatha and depths with vipassana).

All teachers staet that those intesrested in obtaining results in other two trainings, shoulkd also engage in training of morality, which is a foundation of formal meditation practice. Its obvious that generating passion in your mind by having sex, deluding and confusing your mind by telling lies, generating greed by stealing, etc. are not wholesome nor for yourself nor for others.

I find it confusing that Daniel as omeone who claims to have mastered the Three Trainings writes that an Arahat can kill, have sex, tell lies etc. Why he couid not explain without contradictrions? It means that he can do it, but doesn't, because he knows that its a source of suffering? Or he can do it because there is no ,,I'' doer involved and no sankhara(intention/volition), only a vehicle of unfinished karma?

RE: Sex, ethics and the Dhamma

Florian Weps — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 05:28:45 GMT

Hi Ray,

Give your sutta-thumping friend an assignment: let him sort out the difference between the terms "desire" (chanda) and "craving" (tanha).

Also, reflect on the way the factors of the noble eightfold path can be sorted into three categories: Morality, Concentration, and Wisdom (sila, samadhi, panna). Your friend will likely know which sutta that is most clearly presented in. I always put ethical considerations in there with the "morality" section, while observing the doings of craving goes into the wisdom section.

Finally, Bruno's advice to meditate and let some real insight arise is really good. I have actually read most of the suttas in the pali canon, and I have meditated quite a bit, and if I had to choose, I'd choose meditation over scripture-study every time.

The suttas are actually a great read if you've got a bit of insight under your belt, provided you like reading old texts like these. Without any meditative experience it's hard to tell what they are about, and you end up with absurd stuff like it's unethical to eat or have sex in general. There's even a sutta about that, called the "snake simile".

Cheers,
Florian

RE: Sex, ethics and the Dhamma

ray . taylor — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:07:05 GMT

Thanks bruno

Yes it is readily observable as you say...that desire (craving/aversion) is at the source of suffering. My friend has since come on and said .... "all phenomena are rooted in desire (from the mula sutta among others) and desire is akusala (unethical)" I have always been of the view that desire is neither ethical nor unethical but it is what i do with it that makes it so. But if I take my friends position to other extremes it would imply that even the desire for food etc is unethical, which to me doesn't make sense.

RE: Sex, ethics and the Dhamma

Bruno Loff — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:40:47 GMT

I think it's a stretch to say buddhism sees craving as unethical. This is usually the sort of dogmatic adornment that depends on who is talking. Buddhism does say that desire (craving/aversion) is at the source of suffering. This in itself isn't ethical or unethical, it is just a statement which you can yourself derive by observing the way your mind works.

The idea that sex is unethical 'in itself' is preposterous, it obviously depends on the circumstances. I'm sure you can come up with situations which are ethical and unethical.

Sex, ethics and the Dhamma

ray . taylor — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:30:11 GMT

I am involved in a debate with a friend and he has made the following comment "Re sex being 'unethical' in general, I think one can't get away from the fact the Buddhism does see craving as unethical and therefore to the extent that sex is motivated by craving it is ultimately unethical from a Buddhist perspective."

Something disturbs me when i read this but I just cant put my finger on it. I think it has to do with the use of the term 'unethical'. I would appreciate some help for my own clarity..........

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Yadid Bee — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:07:28 GMT

Daniel T Johnson:

And, It seems like I'm probably still about 6 months away from stream entry if I spend most of that time on retreat (just a guess).

I think this quote is really interesting Daniel.

What makes you think it will take you 6 months? I mean, what are you basing that guess on?

RE: It's a crazy, crazy world...

C C C — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:10:32 GMT

Paul, I think I know what you're experiencing. While I have no attainments to back up what I'm saying (I won't be blaming anything on Dark Night), I am very skilled at seeing through people and reading thoughts, even at a distance, and I can do some inter-personal powers-like things on occassion. I see all the way through people, what they say and what they do, right to the end. Almost always what I see is self-centered, small minded, unaware and geared towards protecting the precious ego. Even most of the people who post on here have those same motivations, and just in case you think I'm above it all, no, I'm probably one of the worst offenders. However I am very aware of my underlying motivations. It makes life interesting on one level, but moreso I find myself thinking: how goddamn pathetic we are!!

If that was the end of the story, it wouldn't be too good. But for me, the answer lies in self-love, which begins with self-acceptance and that's what I practice (different from metta practice because that seems too 'other' focussed for me). Acceptance of every aspect of my small 's' self or what my ego thinks is the real me (particularly my feelings about myself and my achievements, looks, status, lifestyle etc.). In other words, I believe it's better to drop back a level from 6th chakra (concentration) and 7th chakra (insight) practice, which I see as being too advanced for anyone who hasn't achieved a basic level of self-acceptance (4th chakra). Doing things in the proper order. Most of the people who post in here have low self esteem - it's obvious. Go to any spiritual gathering, and you will find a very odd bunch of social missfits; and what is a social missfit? It's a person who has abandoned self-acceptance in favour of "higher goals". Off the top of my head I can think of one in here who has good self esteem and that's florian.

RE: It's a crazy, crazy world...

J Adam G — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:44:20 GMT

Heheh, ain't that the truth. Reobservation can be physically sickening if you don't surrender EVERYTHING when it seizes you. Resisting the 3C of existence is like trying to resist or figure out a bad trip on psychedelics -- always makes it worse! If you've seen them, and can't un-see them, then the best that can be done is to accept and love and mindfully observe your way through the process of insight. At least, that's in my brief, still-not-a-stream-enterer experience of the stages up to Low Equanimity. Maybe a different response is needed once you actually get to the Equanimity, for all I know.

RE: It's a crazy, crazy world...

Paul Marshall — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:52:28 GMT

Dan K:

It's a helpful insight that things don't really make sense, and that there is a touch of insanity to everything. That's not necessarily because things are actually that way, or at least not in the way you think. What I'm trying to say is... don't burn any bridges.

"Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise."

I'm fortunate to have never been a dharma evangelist nor to have gone off the deep end trying to get away from experiencing the three marks. I've also found that seeming paradoxes about experience that crop up in meditation can be almost physically nauseating when they are occurring but eventually resolve themselves when you give up trying to find out what the correct viewpoint is.

RE: It's a crazy, crazy world...

Dan K — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:41:01 GMT

Bruno Loff:

J Adam G:

From my understanding, the dukkha can get really bad around third path, or while working on the fourth path but not having gotten arahatship yet.

Really?! It gets worst?!! I thought I had gone through the worst part after stream entry. I have a hard time keeping any sort of connection to the society as it is... F*ck

Imagine what it would feel like to have your soul dragged through the depths of hell. Don't worry though - if you're like me, you will start to take a little bit of masochistic pleasure in the whole thing. "TAKE THAT, FIXED PROCESS OF IDENTIFICATION. DIE ALREADY, WON'T YOU?"

Although there is considerable mental anguish, increasing equanimity more than makes up for it.

RE: It's a crazy, crazy world...

Dan K — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:29:14 GMT

RE: It's a crazy, crazy world...

Paul Marshall — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:56:47 GMT

J Adam G:

I think I may be in a position that means that I'm becoming very aware of my own conditioned psychology and therefore able to see similar things in others (and also hypersensitive to it).

It's an experience that has completely killed any interest in politics, but I can see how it might lead someone to do the opposite and become some kind of utopian socialist or something similar.

I'm not sure why your psychotherapist friend thought that "patching people up" wasn't a useful endeavor. If everyone has so many problems, why not try the best that one can to help them? Forgive me for making such a rash assumption, but it seems to me like that decision was based on something like burnout, being a dark-night yogi, or no longer knowing how to enjoy his job. From my understanding, the dukkha can get really bad around third path, or while working on the fourth path but not having gotten arahatship yet. It would be understandable for even a very advanced practitioner to take on such a pessimistic view.

I couldn't imagine any other reason for a psychotherapist to believe that people can't really be made significantly better in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. I, for one, was near-suicidal for about a year back in high school but I've come a long long long way since then, to the point where my experience is vastly dominated by pleasant and neutral sensation rather than unpleasant. So I would respectfully disagree with the conclusion/excuse that your friend had, assuming I wasn't in something like Reobservation with its unending dukkha. If I were in Reobservation, I'd probably be jumping the gun to agree with him... That's how views are, I guess.

This is just conjecture, but I think the time he decided this he had been starting to practice mahamudra (maybe a year or so into it). It might well have been a consequence of some realisation from that. As far as I know he moved from being a part time therapist to being a nurse - a deliberate decision about where he would be the most use. If I remember correctly, he was of the opinion that only practice could help others in any permanent manner.

This kind of reminds me of the tale about Avalokiteshvara becoming despondent about helping others, causing him to contemplate breaking his vow to help others and resulting in his head exploding. Maybe this experience is what the myth is pointing to.

RE: It's a crazy, crazy world...

Bruno Loff — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:29:57 GMT

J Adam G:

From my understanding, the dukkha can get really bad around third path, or while working on the fourth path but not having gotten arahatship yet.

Really?! It gets worst?!! I thought I had gone through the worst part after stream entry. I have a hard time keeping any sort of connection to the society as it is... F*ck

RE: It's a crazy, crazy world...

J Adam G — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:12:50 GMT

Believing that everything and everyone is fucked up is a very common thought/feeling during the Dark Night, though it can arise any time that someone takes a serious look at how people work. Especially if looking with an eye towards the problems of people and societies. You could find similar outlooks in some forms of absurdism or other postmodern or poststructuralist thought.

That said, there are probably just as many sensible ways of looking at the world that don't involve thinking everything is fucked up. Views as just views, rather than necessarily being the truth of how things are, you know?

I'm not sure why your psychotherapist friend thought that "patching people up" wasn't a useful endeavor. If everyone has so many problems, why not try the best that one can to help them? Forgive me for making such a rash assumption, but it seems to me like that decision was based on something like burnout, being a dark-night yogi, or no longer knowing how to enjoy his job. From my understanding, the dukkha can get really bad around third path, or while working on the fourth path but not having gotten arahatship yet. It would be understandable for even a very advanced practitioner to take on such a pessimistic view.

I couldn't imagine any other reason for a psychotherapist to believe that people can't really be made significantly better in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. I, for one, was near-suicidal for about a year back in high school but I've come a long long long way since then, to the point where my experience is vastly dominated by pleasant and neutral sensation rather than unpleasant. So I would respectfully disagree with the conclusion/excuse that your friend had, assuming I wasn't in something like Reobservation with its unending dukkha. If I were in Reobservation, I'd probably be jumping the gun to agree with him... That's how views are, I guess.

It's a crazy, crazy world...

Paul Marshall — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:46:26 GMT

Hi all.

I was wondering if something that I've been experiencing on-and off has been a more universal experience amongst other Buddhist practitioners and it seems that the DO is the place to ask.

The more I practice insight practices (mainly from the Tibetan tradition) the more I see what can be considered normal behaviour, ideologies and societies as being not that different from mental illnesses or neuroses. Is it possible to think of samsaric existence as not just suffering, but also being inherently nuts?

Something that my main teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche often teaches (and which I've not really come across elsewhere in much detail) is the notion that there is a subtle body in addition to the body and mind and that this is very easily scrambled. In his experience many, many people's emotional bodies are damaged in some way by a rlung/wind disorder that effectively drag them around emotionally to the point of illness.

Does this concord with anyone else's experience? Is there a connection between the dark night and the feeling that "the world's gone mad"?

Edit: I've just remembered something interesting and relevant - a fairly senior practitioner I know used to be a psychotherapist but gave it up since he stopped believing that people could be made emotionally well again; only a little patched up rather than fully repaired.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Nikolai S Halay — Sun, 23 May 2010 15:38:34 GMT

I agree with prem!!!!!

How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

prem kumar — Sun, 23 May 2010 15:26:11 GMT

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Dark Night Yogi — Sun, 23 May 2010 05:50:59 GMT

I think the way meditation is explained to us in Goenka retreat is different from what i was feeling when i was going thru it at the time.

It's like, Goenka says its ok. Disillusion is just disilluion, its all just normal.. comes and goes, comes and goes.
My thinking was more like, what the hell is going on here? This is 'not' normal, this is wild scary shit. I just want to get this over with and return to normal life. This is unacceptable. Furthermore, I was reading stories of people who say they were in the dark night for years! Coupled with my dark night being Very strong! I seriously thought i would be like that for 9 years, in confusion, fear and dissolution! Hahaha! This was ever since first reaching A&P. This was a big factor.

I think my own addictions and cravings was a good gauge for knowing if i was practicing well. It was like, "Ok, if buddha says that living like a monk is what it takes, let's see. I won't give in to my addictions." So everytime i fell back into dark night or worse, the 3 characteristics stage, its nearly impossible for me to resist my cravings in this stage. I could only resist my cravings in A&P and equanimity... so honesty was a good gauge. This was a big factor. renounciation

Now, back in the flow of real life, I would rate my moment to moment 'enlightenment levels' based on my ability to work with my stuff. I do have some issues that I'm still trying to heal, or at least cope with in a level where it doesnt cause stress..
That's why the advice ive been seeking lately is also on techniques that work with stuff - Because gung-ho practice got me results, but gung-ho practice didn't teach me how to deal with real life. Maybe its true, living a monastic life is in my blood hehe.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Dark Night Yogi — Sun, 23 May 2010 05:05:15 GMT

Bruno: Thanks for the tips! Also, on the paying attention to the legs, nice to hear that this works for you too. Gives me more confidence to continue doing it and feel i know what im doing. Shoulders, elbows, knees are the parts that usually work for me. Will try ankle.

Daniel:

Genetically coded: I think i read somewhere that people who are more prone to insanity are more prone to getting enlightened. I've had some weird spiritual experiences since I was a kid too. Nothing serious though. It may run in my genes. Some people may have a more overactive nervous system I think im one of them.

In a buddhist past life point of view,
a psychic friend tells me I was a catholic monk for 3 lifetimes.

Shadow side to quick progress: I don't think so.

Wrong practice: I do have quite a bit of this. A wrong practice that turned into sankhara is "counting breaths" (a newbie instruction for zen meditation) that I never really erased.

Reaching 2nd path w/o retreat: I did weekend retreats in my room, and 1 weekend zen retreat. I was also just working part-time. 4-5 hours a day only. This was a big factor. Aside from that, I was living like a monk. Eating meditation. Renounciation from TV, movies, even music. (atleast I cut it down a great deal. maybe just one listen a week) Fear was what drove me. I couldn't bear to be in the dark night. It was a life or death motivation that made me go for stream entry. I couldn't stand the feeling of reaching equanimity then just falling back to the dark night. My dark night was awful.
It was desperation that drove me. Stream entry was the best day of my life. I knew things could only get better from there. I also knew that I would have to start working full time soon, so since Daniel I. noted that 2nd path was reachable, I went for that and luckily got it. (I say luckily coz i think i didn't work as hard for this one.)

Now, life is busier and practice is more difficult.

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Nikolai S Halay — Sun, 23 May 2010 03:03:28 GMT

My practice

First meditation course September 2000
Lived at a Vipassana Centre for a year or so. Lots of serving. Spent 10 months in India, Pali Student at Dhamma Giri, became a monk for 12 days in Burma..hehe! , Lot's of service at vipassana centres...building mostly. Cleaned Goenka's house at Dhamma Giri...and dusted his Nike running shoes..hehe!

Over a period of 9 years
12 x 10 days (Goenka)
2 x Sati (Goenka)
2 x 20 days (Goenka)

2 years or so ago, came across Buddhist Geeks then Daniel Ingram's book, then this place. Got to know the map of insight, the nanas etc...Followed Daniel's advice, Tarin's advice, and Kenneth Folk's advice

Over the last 2 years:
Practiced samatha with a kasina....maybe 1st or 2nd and maybe 3rd jhana
Integrated the Mahasi noting practice into my yogi tool box......coupled it with bare awareness of the sublest of sensations /vibrations on and in the body.....started noting EVERYTHING......resolved to get stream entry......got myself up to equanimity of formations nana a lot over the last 2 years.....kept using kasina to strengthen concentration and then investigate and note the hell out of the sensations that make up the "I".

Resolved even more to attain stream entry! Do or die attitude! Full momentum!!!!!! Went and sat my 12th 10 day course in Goenka tradition over New Year's but with my own agenda and inclusion of mahasi noting and kasina. Didn't tell anyone!

January 1st this year: At approx. 11:05 am, waiting to be served lunch on the 5th day of a 10 day, a blip out/path moment/fruition occured and 1st path was attained. On the 9th day another "special" blip out occured and the perception basline shifted! The "I" less solid and the mind much more spacious. At least one more "special" blip out since then which has left me with access to some cool stuff....but I am holding out on saying that I am past 2nd. I think I am 2nd path now. It is different to 1st. Lightening fast access to 8 jhanas and later on possible extra 9th one...possible pure abode but not certain. But according to Kenneth, what I've described may be nirodha samapatti but I am seriously doubting it still. Anyway...that's how I did it!

If I was to sum up how I did it from doing years of just "going through the motions" in the Goenka tradition?....I gave myself permission to get enlightened, I believed I could do it, I resolved to do it, I included Mahasi's noting into my practice, I upped my concentration by looking at a kasina, I noted and investigated the hell out of the sensations of "I" and saw how they blipped in and out of any experience, I noted all the subtle states and sensations that I never paid attention to, like anticipation, boredom, investigation, space, spacing out, etc......I noted and objectified EVERYTHING experienced, including the images and sensations of "I".....and I made sure to investigate all 3 of the characteristics, not just one.

Hope this helps...

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Daniel Johnson — Sat, 22 May 2010 23:58:02 GMT

Dark Night Yogi:

For a summary of my practice history:
Started meditation & occassional/varied (wrong) techniques: July 2008
Started 'everyday' meditation atleast 10mins: Jan, 2009
Stream entry: Aug, 2009
2nd path: Sept, 2009
First Goenka retreat: Oct 2009
2nd Goenka retreat: April 2009

Hey, I hope you don't mind me jumping in on this with a question, but I saw your progress notes and wanted to ask what's been on my mind. How the hell does that happen so quickly?

Here's my progress notes so far (as far as I can tell):
Cross A&P - January 1999
Start occasional and varied meditation and lots of wrong techniques - April 1999
First and second Vipassana Retreat (Suan Mokh, Thailand) - Summer 2003
First Goenka retreat - May 2008 (cross A&P again)
Started everyday meditation at least 2 hours per day - May 2008
Seven more Goenka retreats, and serving on 6 Goenka retreats, meditating at least 3 hours per day June 2009 - Dec 2009 (reached equanimity)
20 Day Bodh Gaya retreat - January 2010
50 day retreat, India - March 2010
Still in equanimity - May 2010

Nine grueling years of self-help, meditation, therapy, psychic training, weird yoga shit, eating raw foods, and pretty much all sorts of every practice known to man. Followed by 2 years of intense vipassana/meditation practice. And, It seems like I'm probably still about 6 months away from stream entry if I spend most of that time on retreat (just a guess).

On one hand, I'm totally happy to have found the Dharma, and happy to be alive, etc... and so who cares about time, anyway.
On the other hand... what's up with this? How is it possible that you reached 2nd path without even going on retreat?

Mostly out of curiosity: What's the explanation for this kind of thing? Are some people just genetically coded differently? Am I not practicing correctly? Do I have more "karma" to burn through or "sankharas"? Is there a shadow side to quick progress? Could it be that all the "wrong" practice I did actually set me back in the opposite direction? Is it possible I actually made it through first path and don't recognize it?

Maybe I should start my own thread, but since I saw your progress notes, I just decided to ask you here.

Thanks,

Daniel

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Bruno Loff — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:00:49 GMT

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

J Adam G — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:28:40 GMT

Does sitting cross legged with the perineum next to or touching the ground help with that, or does the "flow" specifically need to go through the legs?

RE: How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Bruno Loff — Wed, 19 May 2010 11:36:05 GMT

DKY I haven't experienced any energy dry-out anymore, I mean, I have unpleasant releases all the time, but it's been months without A&P or Dark Nights. I have some conjectures why it happens in the first place. I think dark night happens because a lot of energy accumulates in the head (this is, in essence, A&P) and the body then activates some sort of emergency mechanism to shut it down (avoiding death by head-explosion )

I suggest you try to open your front channel: this is the "conceptual vessel" in chi gung. the meditation would be: keep tongue in the palate ("roof" of the mount); Now there are a bunch of pathways for chi to flow: basically it's middle of the brain -> forehead particularly between the eyebrows; then to the throat; then through the chest, down the center of the belly, and it ends just bellow the navel, where it curves inwards towards (I guess) the intestines.

You will notice that there are two pathways from eyebrow center to the throat: either through your sinuses and then your tongue (at some point you will actually feel the tongue "sucking in" energy), or through your jaws and mandibles.

Once the blocks in this area are removed, energy can now flow "down," and this effectively allows the head to "cool off," sort of like closing a cycle in your body circuitry. Take it easy though, closing the circuit too fast might send more stuff upwards.

Then there is more stuff to open up that will get you even MORE stable and grounded. Basically it seems that the legs work as a sort of "buffer," and opening that up stabilizes things a lot.

There's loads of this stuff in Qigong theory. (they use esotherical names like "energy of the earth" and sh1t like that, but they are actually referring to concrete somatic processes).

Bruno

How the insight cycle helped my stuff & progress notes

Dark Night Yogi — Tue, 18 May 2010 00:40:05 GMT

RE: Craving Meat :-(

Ona Kiser — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:34:49 GMT

Surgery and medical treatments can really put demands on your body - so part of your craving may be an honest need by your body for more protein, iron and other things commonly found in meat. As some others suggested you can make an extra effort to eat lots of good protein and vegetables, and see if that helps the craving fade.

Another thought, perhaps there is also a symbolic element? Meat is dead flesh, pieces of tissue, the stuff your body is made of. You have just had your body cut up in surgery. Perhaps you are thinking of meat because in your recent medical procedures you were a little bit like a piece of meat. A sort of unpleasant thought, but maybe something like that is floating in your unconscious mind.

Feel better!

RE: Craving Meat :-(

Yuliya Yakhontova — Fri, 14 May 2010 00:39:59 GMT

Dear Nicola,

I've been a raw vegan since June 2002 and I now A LOT of people who are eating mostly fruit and some greens and are extremely health, running marathons, looking great e.t.c.

I highly recommend you to listen to World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle. Outstanding book. I would love to attach the mp3s here but they are too big. Will Tuttle allowed me to download them for free as a promotion.
It discusses physiological aspects of vegetarianism vs. meat eating and also modern practices of production meat at factory farms.
The web-site is www.theworldpeacediet.org

RE: Dharma Companion

ratanajothi - — Thu, 13 May 2010 00:07:28 GMT

Hi there Rusty, keep on posting. I read your posts a few times, but it's hard to comment on a meditation log.

Talking about deep breathing, please be subtle about it or it might make the other people uncomfortable.

Life is lonely, and it is pleasant to be able to hang out with good people, although they may not necessarily be the right people. Go ahead and enjoy their company, there is not much point of saying things to people who are not receptive to it. If the members say something unpleasant, or express some kind of bigotry, try to make a mental note of the kind of trap people fall into in order to save one's soul and skin, and hope that it doesn't befall ourselves.

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:58:55 GMT

5/12/10: Thirteen days since I posted here. And no responses to my post(s). Ah well, it may be slightly useful to me to do another post. Odds of it's being useful to someone else are much smaller. But then, working on myself is far more important than trying to change others and things away from myself. I try to stay aware the odds are much better that I can change myself so a situation is OK with me, than the odds I can change the situation and the other people in it.

Just sat a rather odd half hour meditation. In it, I practiced taking a full deep inhalation before uttering a complete sentence. The point of my doing it alone and by myself where no one can listen, is that it might increase the odds that I do the same in talking with strangers, or with people I'm already acquainted with.

A prime example is two bible study groups I joined at the place where I eat breakfast frequently. Both of them are quite fundamenalist groups. But I have found them attractive. Unfortunately I got myself booted out of the men's group with the statement from one of the men who is turned on to talking with me, "We've decided we want to sharpen our thinking by ourselves, so don't join us. I want to come over and talk with you after we're thru." I don't know how or why they reached that decision, but I am hoping to find out when and if the one member does talk with me.

What I found attractive in both the men's group and with the women's group where I am still welcome, is that while I disagree totally with many of their views, I was impressed by the fact they did seem to be honestly working on themselves, looking at themselves, and making efforts to be good christians in their particular terms. Another attractive thing is they offer(ed) a forum for me to work on myself in my own terms. Of course, they are working on trying to convert me since I let them know I wasn't at all a believer and hadn't been since I was a teenager.

So you see the point, perhaps a single deep inhalation before I say anything with these Bible groups, might keep me in as a member of the 3 lady group. Might also be quite helpful in any conversation I have with anyone if I can establish the habit. Many of the sentences I say alone, are statements of how I intend to function, such as, "Avoid right/wrong arguments, Rusty. They never were useful for anyone."

Is any of the above legitimate Buddhist practice? Or am I way off in my own peculiar corner of creating practices that seem like they'll be useful for me? Could some of the above fit under RIGHT SPEECH?

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:01:55 GMT

4/29/10: I'm struggling with this post. I think I know what I want to say, but I've deleted 4 starts already. Ever do that, Florian? OK, resort to starting every sentence with "I."

I lay in bed presumably meditating for 18" this morning. I was aware of my breathing consistently, and much of the time sentences, ideas, thoughts of what I might write here ran thru my mind. I was paying attention to two things, and much more. I was aware of the sounds, the occasional plane, Spike getting protective, the weight of my head against the pillow. I wasn't very focused, but I was quite aware. I didn't move except for the breathing motions. All my mental thinking and verbalizing turned out to be completely useless. I just deleted it.

Yesterday, I lay perfectly still 58" with, I believe, considerably less conceptual activity than I noticed during the 18" today.

I have been doing a lot of mindfulness of bodily motion practice. Aside from feeling and noting as much of my movements as I can, I have been paying special attention to the timing of awarenesses. Am I always aware of an intention to move before I do so? Of course not. How often do I move and only pay attetion to, become aware of it as it is going on? How often have I changed position somehow and only noted it after I was in a new and different state of body?

I am aware of little discussion of these kinds of questions in the literature on mindfulness, although there is some. I find them very important. If I'm aware of an intention to move before I do so, I have some control over what I'm doing. I am not entirely operating as an automaton, playing out old habits and sequences unknowingly. If I catch the intention to cross my legs before I do so, I can decide not to, and thus perhaps avoid increasing my varicose vein problems. Even if I only catch on to what I am doing with one foot in the air, I can stop and reverse the motion. Almost as beneficial as not crossing my legs, but there is a bit of waste of effort there. On the other hand, if I only notice after the legs are crossed, theoretically some additonal risks of needing varicose vein surgery have been taken.

The paragraph above talks about one small repetitive moment. Or we could say I was working on changing one minor habit. How difficult just that is for me! And how many other small unenlightened actions, speeches, thoughts pepper my days? Is it possible they pepper your days as well, Florian? Is it possible they pepper the days of everyone who reads this? For me, getting rid of as many small, minor, unenlightened, even anti-enlighgtened, things I do makes more sense than trying to become enlightened. Perhaps just working on those will keep me more aware, awake, etc. than trying for some exalted state or attainment...

RE: Dharma Companion

Florian Weps — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:11:06 GMT

Hi Rusty,

Do I enjoy my company? Great question. It goes to the heart of the matter very quickly - whose company? Who am I? What am I doing, what's happening that I could enjoy or not?

Counting breaths is not an option for me during the day, but I try to be aware of certain "stop" events - walking around the office building between my office and conference rooms, sitting down and getting up, taking a break from typing and so on.

How do I define "now"? Tricky... When thinking about the past or future, I'm doing it now. So, in terms of the breath: when inhaling, or thinking of an inhalation I remember, or planning to do something about the next inhalation - this is happening now. When sitting in formal meditation, noting practice is my tool of choice to remind myself of this.

How much do I practice? About two hours a day of formal practice. How goes it? I'm trying stuff Tarin recommended recently. What do I hope to get out of it, why bother to continue? Stream-Entry, enlightenment, the end of this tugging impulse to seek.

Cheers,
Florian

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:39:53 GMT

4/25/10: Damn, time to work on another post. Even tho I enjoy writing...I'll wait until I really want to. No responses to my posts. If there were that might stimulate my writing glands...

Damn again, 2 abstract paragraphs I just deleted. My practice, today: I've done some breath counting. Thirty one minutes of it lying flat on my bed. Occasionally I do a short form of what Evans-Wentz describes as an initial practice for many tyro Tibetan monks---counting all the breaths between waking and going to sleep. Seems like a stupid practice, but there are things to be learned from it besides whether you can concentrate and control your mind enough to be able to do it. Note I said "short form." Even a short form sometimes still gives me unexpected lessons.

I think it was Spinoza who said that if only all the leaders of the world spent a half hour every day sitting in a room by themselves doing nothing the world would soon be at peace. I find it impossible to do nothing. At a very minimum I keep breathing, and hearing, and even if I don't move my bodily senses keep reporting in, taste and smell attract less attention. For sure I have never gone a half hour without some words or images coming to mind.

What did Spinoza think would happen with these power brokers sitting alone in a room doing nothing? I wonder whether they would find themselves good company. I do find myself good company and enjoy being alone doing (relatively) nothing. Any opinions out there? Is there anyone out there who doesn't enjoy their own company?

There are times I want the company of other people. Just the other day, I spent 4+ hours talking/listening to other people. When I finished the last conversation, I really wanted alone time, quiet time, with just the noise that penetrated my quite quiet house or that I or Spike made.

I'm curious. What do other people with an interest in Buddhism do during a day? Are there any besides me who regard the whole day as an opportunity to practice? I do know some people are reading this. Will any readers, decide writing is a useful practice? Natalie Goldberg's roshi recommended it to her according to one of her books. Surely someone has the illusion, as I do, that they might write something interesting, perhaps even useful, to other people. How do y'all practice, when, how much, how goes it, what do you get out of it, why bother to continue? I think it's clear that my aim, goal is only momentary---as much interest, alertness, awareness, consciousness as I can manage right now. My definition of right now varies some, but mostly it stays within the confines of a single breath. How do you define right now, or the present, or this moment? Almost 500 words, time to stop.

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:12:13 GMT

4/22/10: No one posting with me or commenting on what I'm saying about my practice, my days, my version of Buddhism. My energy has been low. Aging heart weakening??

It does take effort, energy expeniture to stay alert, aware, tuned in to every moment and the opportunities and decisions it presents. Undoubtedly RIGHT EFFORT in Buddhist literature has some things to say on the subject. Mental effort is much easier for me at 84+ years than physical effort, even the effort of sitting here typing.

Back from eating breakfast at Village Inn Pancake House: Possibly my describing in summary fashion a few of the details of my practice of mindfulness while there might be useful to someone reading this. I made 6 times ?? conscious decisions as to what to put in my mouth next. Eggs, bacon, potatoes, pancakes with syrup and butter, water, and coffee were in front of me to select from. I did pay attention to chewing and tasting each bite, and which I thought would taste best next. At the same time, I was paying attention to the sounds and sights around me, as well as being aware of as many of my physical movements as I could. Of course the sensations of my breathing were in my mind much of the time as well. And there was thinking going on. Speculations as to the relationships among the people coming, going, and sitting where I could see them. What might be going on with them judging from their expressions and motions? The details of the relatively unmoving physical surroundings were in my awareness as well but these didn't draw much of my attention. Imagine how much I'd have to write if I went into detail instead of these broad, general abstractions.

Does all that sound excessively busy? I didn't feel busy. I felt like I was eating a leisurely breakfast and simply enjoying my surroundings. Oh yes, some of my thoughts during breakfast were of what I might do after leaving the restaraunt, and there were even a few of things that I had been involved in during the past week or so, and some thoughts as to what I might do with the rest of my day after getting in my car.

I called what I was doing "my practice of mindfulness." I'm thinking many might disagree and say that what I described above is even the opposite of what they consider the practice of mindfulness. Enough, some over 400 words. Any opinions out there? Was I practicing mindfulness at breakfast? How and what do you practice?

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:44:05 GMT

4/19/10: Just got up from 20" meditating and getting warm under the duvet. Around 20"+ seems to be my natural meditation time. I write the time when I start and check it when I decide to stop. Today the meditation both energized me and woke me up. Felt tired and sleepy when I started. Not now.

What is a moment? as I ended my last post. How many moments did I meditate in those 20 clock minutes? I just checked the dictionary and it's not much help. Like any abstraction or word, we each create our own definition. One extreme is the definition of some eastern meditators that there are 84,000 moments in each clock second. Not my experience, but who am I to say it's not theirs. At the other extreme is the historical moment of the trench warfare in WWI. That moment lasted for years.

How I define and experience my moments gives me my perception of time. I recall how I experienced time as a pre-school child. Days were infiinitely long as well as fascinating and interesting, filled with fun. For the past 10 years more or less, I have been experiencing my days in much the same way I did then. Looking at my life, it seems much the same. I have experienced so much and such a variety of things that it seems I have lived 500 years, perhaps a thousand, rather than my 84 calendar years.

This is in striking contrast to what I hear many people say when they talk of their experience of time. "Time flies...I don't know where the time has gone...It seems only yesterday I was in my teens (from people 40 and up)..."

These people may live a habitual, in a sense, unconscious, unaware life. Of course, their actual life and experience I cannot know. People my age I have known since childhood seem to live this way. Their moments have to be very long when they look back on them. That may not be clear: Another way of putting it is that they must remember very few moments, or possibly their moments as they experience them and as they recall them are just a blur of same old, same old. How else can I explain their "It seems only yesterday I was in my teens?"

They must be unaware of making continual decisions to do the same thing over and over. Their habits are the same as they have been for years perhaps. There may be a certain comfort and ease in living a habitual life. No need to make decisions, they're mostly already made. It's effortless to coast along in the same old way. I'm already living the good life, why should I change anything? And suddenly, here I am at the end and where has it all gone?

Personally, I'd rather make the effort to be aware of my decisions in each moment. I might decide to do what I did yesterday, but perhaps not. Even if the decision is between coffee, tea, milk, soda pop, beer, schotch, gin, etc. making it conscious rather than letting habit decide increases my enjoyment and awareness of both that moment and what I drink. Being aware of and deciding whether to take one more sip or gulp and of the sensatons of raising the glass to my lips turns the moment of having a beer into how many moments? Wow! Even at 84+ I sure have a lot of moments

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 14:48:03 GMT

4/16/10: Having just returned from a pleasant outdoor meal in which I engaged in RIGHT EATING as well as talking with strangers, I realized that consciously eating and tasting every bite should be listed as one of my practices as well. That makes #20 on the list 2 posts ago, and a big omission it is.

I am just starting some RIGHT WRITING, a high school graduation letter to a grand nephew. I think that's the right term for the daughter of one of my nephews. I have until 5/15 to polish and try to make it as influential a letter as I can. In addition to offering her a bit of advice---a traditional thing to do with graduates---I'll be sending her a little money, 2 books on Buddhism, and a suggestion that she read a third.

While I'm on a RIGHT kick I should mention RIGHT DRINKING as a subject I might get around to discussing here.

OK, I quickly went back over my rankings of all those activities. One thing impressed me, how far down on the list I put formal meditation. This even though I do it more often than some others on the list. But the ranking was for that particular day.

It should be clear from my two previous posts that an overall label for what I do is all day mindfulness. Did I mention previously that for perhaps 10 months 8 years ago or so I posted in what was then Cafe Utne but now is The New Cafe under a topic labeled "mindfulness?"

Time to drop my interest in those 2 lists. Is there anything else I want to say?

A continual question I pose for myself as I go through my days is one form or another of "What do I want to do next?" This is leaping a bit out ot right now and into the near future, but I find it does help in maintaining some semblance of awareness of the present moment.

Answering the question involves a decision or choice. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are making decisions and choices practically every second of our lives. The important question is how we make them. Do we make them unconsciously and without awareness? Do we let our habits, all the conditioning of our previous life rule the present moment? While I was waiting for the previous sentence to come to me, I consciously decided to take a sip of tea, I tasted the flavor of Constant Comment, and then went back to feeling my breathing. On the breathing I pretty much let my body decide for me how to take each particular breath. Time to re-read.

Living and practicing for me is a matter of tiny, tiny details, one moment after another. Which raises the question of what a moment is, but perhaps tomorrow...

RE: Mindfulness while thinking?

Aziz Solomon — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:04:19 GMT

Thank you all for such very helpful replies! I'm falling in love with Dharma Overground!

RE: Personality Types and Dharma

Aziz Solomon — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:48:32 GMT

Amen!

The very real possibility of all-out nuclear apocalypse aside, there are some very encouraging signs! Your book and the activity on this site are somewhere at the avant garde of what definitely seems to be a wider zeitgeist shift.

The last few years have seen an explosion of studies into the psychological effects of meditation and its therapeutic applications (http://www.self-compassion.org/links.html has links to several dedicated research centres). "Mindfulness" certainly seems to have been mainstreamed, albeit at a fairly superficial level. But once a large scale epidemic of "insight disease" has broken out, I'm sure it won't be easily contained!

Exciting times!

RE: Mindfulness while thinking?

Daniel M. Ingram — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:24:13 GMT

As I am sure you have noticed, as the implied background to your question, that high-level discursive thought and precise mindfulness of the sensate nature of phenomena are a hard mix to pull off.

I guess it depends on what you are doing or going for, but if you just want insight, there are plenty of easier objects to get that insight, and if you want really high-level discursive thought, then mindfulness practice will likely gunk that up, hence times when compartmentalization for the sake of pragmatism makes sense.

Just as I don't use a magnifying glass while driving, nor a telescope when typing on a computer screen, just so I tend to do whatever I am doing on its own terms and with a focus that works well for that particular task.

RE: Personality Types and Dharma

Daniel M. Ingram — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 06:53:33 GMT

I also dream of what I think of as the Age of Big Data on Meditation, when the map terminology has made it intact into the mainstream of scientific thought, when there are enough people who have practiced well to study, and when people finally study them at the level of thousands, with the phenomenologist's eye makes things clear and straightforward, and with the creativity to ask interesting questions and prove associations, correlations, and causes and effects. We are decades at best from that level of work, and possibly much further from it than that, but one day, assuming we don't really blow this civilization thing by some stupid act of destruction, I believe we will get there.

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:57:29 GMT

4/15/10: Below is the result of taking my own test and following its directions as well as I could. One thing I learned about myself taking and making the test is that I tend to overcomplicate things.

Rusty: 1. 12, 1 (13, 17), 2, 10, 18, 19, 7, 6, 15, 4, (3, 5. 16), 9, (8, 14) 11.

It took me exactly an hour to write a page in my personal journal and do the above rankings. I have reached the conclusion anyone who’s interested would get more benefit from constructing their own test rather than taking mine, and looking at what they consider most important, etc.

My criteria for ranking importance of practices or any of my behavior.

1. How much I enjoyed it.

2. If with other people, my best guess as to how much they enjoyed it.

3. Its potential for reducing my suffering.

4. Its potential for reducing the suffering of others.

5. How sure I am of my judgments, esp. regarding other people.

6. If I happen to remember a specific instance of it, how much I might enjoy that.

7. Minimal potential for doing harm to myself.

8. Minimal potential for doing harm to others

9. How much it contributes to my being awake, aware, alive, tuned in to my senses and as much of the other stuff that goes on in the present moment as I can comfortably and enjoyably be.

10. Its potential for moving others toward the state described in 9.

I’m not even going to try to rank order the criteria!! But I am going to continue to work on my test, looking at which criteria are more important in judging which activities. I expect to learn more from doing this.

I came up with the 9th criteria last, even tho I feel sure right now it is the most important. All the others depend on it; unless you’re aware, offhand I’d say the others are at least improbable, perhaps even impossible. Was I unconsciously saving the best for the last?

RE: Personality Types and Dharma

Aziz Solomon — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:51:47 GMT

I also fit the INFP profile, and I would guess that people who are really into meditation would tend towards the Introverted side. Not in the sense of being socially phobic but in terms of deriving primary stimulation and fulfillment from engaging with their "inner world".

An interesting question is also whether meditation can change one's personality (aside from revealing the entire construct to be something of an illusion!). The standard measure of personality currently used by psychologists is the OCEAN model, which tests for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Different kinds of meditation might affect these traits in different ways (metta for instance is geared particularly towards Agreeableness; perhaps highly disciplined vipassana or zen sitting goes further to develop Conscientiousness). And the effects might vary quite a bit depending on the long term progress one has made. For instance, people might become more agreeable and less neurotic with the Knowledge of Arising and Passing, but much less agreeable and more neurotic as they enter the Dark Night, and hopefully more agreeable and less neurotic than ever before if they make it through to equanimity and beyond!

I'm sure there are online versions of these tests, so if anyone cares to try measuring their personalities pre and post retreats, I would be very interested to hear the results!

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

tarin greco — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:39:00 GMT

Aziz Solomon:

i assume that your interest in making insight progress is due to what you already know is possible and that your trepidation about going through the knowledges of suffering is due to having had a taste of them before, as after seven years of sitting with goenka, you are, as florian said, likely in the dark night already. if this is so, then you are more than halfway there... perhaps you just need an incentive?

Prisoner Greco- I can't seem to figure out for sure where I am on the map! I have only been on one 10 day retreat and then I let my practice slip for a few years, and then it was reignited about a year ago by a 3 day retreat. Some of the descriptions I have read of the stages leading up to "dark night" and "dark night" itself sound familiar to me from my experience, but some don't.

Still, let's say I am a "dark nighter", what might it take to get first path? I definitely do want to go for it, but I just don't know whether there's much chance that I'll be able to make any real progress until these next few hectic years have passed. If I can only do say, an average of half an hour meditation per day for the next few years, do I realistically have any chance, assuming I don't have some exceptional innate aptitude for enlightenment?! If not, would I not be better of spending my limited time developing samatha, in the hope that it will lay the foundations for serious vipassana work (and hopefully enlightenment!) when I have a bit more time on my hands to meditate for long periods and go on retreats?

if you have already crossed the a&p, a some measure of your mental processes are already allocated to solving the insight problem, and either concentration or insight practice, done well, will contribute to the development of those processes. hence, more important than which style of practice you do is the intent with which you do them, as well as how much that intent remains running while you are going about your everyday life. given what you wrote about the efficacy of your current method of practice[1], consider continuing to do things this way.

tarin

[1]

Aziz Solomon:

I do find that when I do vipassana, I generally feel that greed, hatred and ignorance have much less of a grip on me. This does seem to affect my day-to-day decisions quite significantly for the better.

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:14:01 GMT

I’ve made what I’m doing with posts too damn complicated. Trying to simplify, the following is a post I am continuing to work on. In itself, it may be overcomplicated.

4/7/10---6:20AM: THIS IS A TEST. Creating the test has increased my self awareness and self knowledge. Please follow instructions carefully. Put my name, Rusty at the top of your post.

Below is a numbered list of my practices in the past 24 hours. Create your own answer sheet. Rank order the practices from best or most important to least important, or perhaps I should even eliminate some. Indicating such would be helpful to me. Do this following the letter A as follows:

A. 5, 7, 3, (2, 4) 6, (1. 9. 11) 12, 13, 8, 10 (The parentheses indicate equality.) Write Rusty or Self after your rankings to indicate for whom they apply. Feel free to just omit some practices as not even worth considering.

After typing B. give your rationale for your rankings. Single or multiple rationales are fine. If your rationale for different practices is different, clearly indicate which rationale(s) apply to which practice.

A suggestion to simplify what may seem a complicated task. On a sheet of paper pick one which may be middlin’. Write that in the center of the sheet. Write another number to the right or left if it is more or less important. Then another, and another, writing above or below the line as you have to.

1. Sitting, relaxed, in my lounge chair, looking at my mountains, drinking a 2 cup glass of Lipton’s tea, for 45 minutes, until the morning star was one finger width above the mtn. One of my thoughts was the Buddha enlightenment story.

2. Writing, editing, and posting this test.

3. Lying flat in bed enumerating people I know personally by name, one with each breath, as follows: “May Jan be happier, May Tom be happier, etc.” Took about 40 minutes. At times I used “May I help Scott to be happier, etc.”

4. Remembering, appreciating, and acting on one of my dead wife Toni’s influences on me. This went along with other practices, such as # 5, 6, 7, 8 and off and on since.

5. Turning and driving back to a McDonald’s, signaling the 21 year old girl standing begging of the corner wearing a cardboard sign reading “On the road, hungry, broke, etc.”, buying her a hamburger (she ordered only one),

6. getting her story,

7. giving her some money

8. and some fatherly advice.

9. Weighing myself and recording it. All of my health and weight maintenance practices.

10. Looking directly at, smiling, and talking with strangers. At breakfast I talked with a writer and emailed him the address of this website.

11. Taking a shower which I plan to do next. After all, cleanliness is next to godliness.

12. Remembering to go back to my all day paying attention to my breath.

13. Writing and sending checks to IRS and State Revenue Dept.

14. Sixteen minutes formal sitting facing a white wall on a straight chair.

15. Making sure my dog Spike has food, water, a walk, and enough petting.

16. Using my check off list of things I want to do every day, and completing it shortly before bed.

17. Doing RIGHT DRIVING every time I went out.

18. Making my fairly regular call to a neighbor who is seeing a psychiatrist for depression, has a severe orthopedic problem, and a lot of pain. She laughs a lot during our conversations.

19. Writing personal journal.

This is an ungraded test. If you want one, grade yourself using the usual A thru F grades

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:41:26 GMT

Catching up a little on recent posts in Amazon.com

First post in Amazon. Com:Reading the above, very little of the details of how individuals practice mindfulness, the specific results they get, the difficulties and failures they run into. This requires first person writing which also is the way to write to take full responsibility for what you're saying. See how easy it is for me, an educated type, to fall into that trap. A small failure in my practice. I really think all books on practice should be written in first person. I'm just testing to see if I can get this posted. More later.

Second post in Amazon.com: I hate these dinky spots to write in. Frequently what I want to say runs on much further. I know, I could write it on Word and and copy it to here, but that's wasting paper. Feeble attempt at humor. OK, two ridiculous parts of my practice. Both of them serve as reminders, motivation to stick with my practices: journaling, sometimes 3 times a day, and a checkoff list, again reminders. One of the basic definitions of meditation is remembering after all. Oops, third person sentence. I'll have to really watch that. Glorious colored cloud to the south of Sandia Crest. Yes, I made it glorious by seeing it that way. OK, anyone else want to write about their practices in first person, somewhat as I've done above. You'll probably find it difficult. Second person . there. I find it terribly easy to slip into the third person, presumably authoritative, objective mode of writing I learned in graduate school way back then, even though I think it sucks.

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

Aziz Solomon — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:46:06 GMT

RE: Craving Meat :-(

Clayton James Lightfoot — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:16:03 GMT

To the Original Post,

Sorry to hear you struggling to maintain your vegetarianism. I have just been vege since December and haven't had any cravings since the first month. I was taking a lot of whey protein. Now that I cut out dairy and eggs (just givin it a try) I take a lot of lentils... I hope you can work something out. Perhaps on the days you feel good cook up meals for a few days? I don't think its necessarily bad to eat meat... but some people like us do have the conviction to give it up... so I wish you the best on your journey... (ow and be sure to hit that mediation cushion it is the most important part of our practice)

Clayton

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

Aziz Solomon — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:21:36 GMT

Thanks, all, for very thought-provoking responses!

RE: Dharma Companion

Albert "Rusty" Rustebakke — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:35:01 GMT

Jamzar: Rec’d notice of your email but don’t recall how to access it. You can contact me with a post in this thread. Thank you for bringing me back to dharmaoverground.

My wife Toni died, perhaps exactly on the solstice in the early morning of Dec. 21, ‘09, just 12 days after my last post in this topic. I am almost entirely past the physical symptoms of mourning and grieving. Say one slight feeling behind the eyes that tears might come in the past 3 weeks more or less.

On 4/1 I started posting in a Amazon.com Buddhist discussion forum on mindfulness, and am thinking I may publish my 10 or 11 posts there here. I think that’s legitimate. Then, once I catch here up with there, I’ll continue doing my one publication per day both there and here.

I found re-reading my next to last post here useful. I may re-read all my posts here, just to recall where my head was and what it was doing back in Sept.-Dec. Glad to be back, Lucinda, and any others who might read this. Enjoy your day, y’all.

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

Ruth Laura Edlund — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:56:22 GMT

How about a metta practice, or a practice in cultivating all four of the brahma viharas? Love and compassion are particularly useful when one is caring for newborns.

RE: Craving Meat :-(

Dark Night Yogi — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:33:41 GMT

ive been vegetarian for about 6 weeks, but the first 3 weeks with eggs.
now without eggs, its been a struggle. i feel i have less energy.
i think vegetarian + eggwhites works best for me.

i also do sports

RE: Mindfulness while thinking?

Dark Night Yogi — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:14:47 GMT

for me,

the more routine the task, the easier to be mindful.
the steps where we usually get hooked, the more important to be mindful.

opening my Ym is a nice one, where i usually get impatient.
clicking a link is another where the mind often drifts off to craving.
while talking to my mother, its my prerequisite
bathroom breaks is an easy one.
while eating, i developed to minimize craving and overeating.

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

tarin greco — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:17:33 GMT

Aziz Solomon:

On the other hand, in the Goenka tradition I was taught that samatha doesn't really make a lasting impact on one's sankaras, and can be a form of escapism. If that it true, samatha practice would seem to offer only limited scope for making tangible improvements to life "off the cushion".

i was taught the same. i was further taught, in the mahasi tradition, that vipassana doesn't make a lasting impact on one's sankharas either, and that only the attainment of stream-entry would effect a permanent change to them. if that is true, vipassana practice (particularly of the desultory sort) would offer only limited scope for making tangible improvements to life 'off the cushion' unless you take it all the way and get path.

i assume that your interest in making insight progress is due to what you already know is possible and that your trepidation about going through the knowledges of suffering is due to having had a taste of them before, as after seven years of sitting with goenka, you are, as florian said, likely in the dark night already. if this is so, then you are more than halfway there... perhaps you just need an incentive?

picture is related.

RE: Craving Meat :-(

Sister Khema — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 23:44:04 GMT

Here are a few ideas to consider about Vegetarianism, Kammic Effects and the human body types.
I often think that It would be nice if people in general would do more research and maybe take note of the reply that was made to Ven. Jivaka by the Buddha. Ven. Jjivaka was the physician who traveled with the Buddha.
Have you ever considered, wouldn’t it be nice if vegetarians were vegetarians because that was best for their bodies and meat eaters were meat eaters because it was best for them? Then there could be kinder words and FAR less accusations thrown around in this world perhaps other than discussions concerning health issues.
There is really no question that some meat eaters would live better by eating vegetables BUT on the other side, there are vegetarians who don’t feed their bodies properly either. Really, both have good and bad issues to consider and also the fact that our food chain is not what it once was quality wise concerning the vitamins within our foods that are grown. AND when you begin to travel, I dare say, one could not tell some countries they could not eat meat, OR, others that they could not eat vegetables! The opposite may not even be possible.
It would also be good if maybe we stopped hanging bad Karma onto meat eaters, or feeling this kind of guilt or others by making assumptions and through transposing information based on assumption without understanding what really went on concerning this issue in the Buddha’s time. Much of the vegetarianism within present traditions was left over from previous religions or added in later on.
Seems like that would make things more peaceful in this world, don’t ya think? It is no secret how the Buddha’s teachings have been undercut over the centuries by various groups pushing in with their own agendas and we should not pretend this doesn’t’ exist…. essentially it is there.
Let’s consider this very interesting information:
-----
The Buddha dispensed the Jivaka Sutta (MN-55) when Jivaka questioned him on the controversial questions of the Kammic effects of eating meat . The Buddha explained that the eating of meat was not in itself an unwholesome act if the following conditions were met.

Pali words concerned here:
Adittha - One has not seen the slaughtering of the animal;
Asuta- One has not heard that it is killed for his or her consumption or heard the being crying as it is being killed;
Apavisamkita - there should be no doubt at all in one’s mind of the person consuming the meat that the animal was not killed with you in mind.

The Buddha said:
“ Taking life, beating, cutting, binding, stealing, lying, fraud, deceit, pretence of knowledge, adultery, this is un-cleanliness, not the eating of flesh.
“When men are rough and harsh, backbiting, treacherous, without compassion, haughty, ungenerous, and they do not give anything to anybody; this is un-cleanliness, not the eating of flesh.
“ Anger, pride, obstinancy, antagonism, hypocracy, envy, ostentation, pride of opinion, interacting with the unrighteous; this is un-cleanliness, not the eating of flesh.
“When men are of bad morals, refuse to pay their debts, are slanderers, deceitful in their dealings, pretenders, when the vilest of men commit foul deeds; this is un-cleanliness, not the eating of flesh
When men attack living beings either because of greed or hostility and are always bent upon evil, they go to darkness after death and fall headlong into hell; This is un-cleanliness, not the eating of flesh.
“Jivaka, I have declared that one should not make use of meat if it has been seen, heard, or suspected to have been killed on purpose for a monk. I allow the monks meat that is quite pure in these three respects; if it has not been seen, heard or suspected to have been killed on purpose for a monk.---
The Amagandha Sutta- Anguttara Nikaya

This was presented to a council and explained by most Ven. Vimalaramsi Mahathera
using the translation material of Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi when it was discussed.

So before feeling guilty about this, go and have your body examined for body type conerning food first. Then consider this material and add meat in if necessary in sparse quantities to see if there can be majjor improvements in your health. Your body telling you about these urges may be a very lucky sign that you should pay attention to now before major damage occurs.
Metta
Sister Khema

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

J Adam G — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:49:02 GMT

I don't know that I have much to offer you in the "experienced yogi" department, but I want to point out a seemingly minor nitpick about Goenka's statement that is more important than it may seem at first.

Shamatha can become a form of escapism -- but that doesn't mean that it always is a form of escapism, even if at a point in your life you're practicing just shamatha and sila and not practicing vipassana a lot. If you're practicing shamatha because your life sucks and you're getting into all these high mind states and your morality trip starts to fall apart, and you stall on the Insight path in a place that you really don't need to stall like Dissolution or Reobservation, then that's a problem.

It's a whole different picture if you're mindfully deciding that the wisest thing to do in your life at the moment is to practice shamatha for the purpose of building up your concentration skills (and if you get some fun and enjoyable mindstates, then that's a pleasant bonus on the side) so that you can be more efficient at vipassana when you do decide to take the plunge and get through the dark night.

My personal opinion is that the second use of shamatha is much more skillful than the first one, and I don't believe it counts as escapism at all. The results that you get from the first way of doing shamatha aren't anything you want. But the results of the second use are that you build up a "muscle" that you'll need later when you really increase your commitment to insight.

What's the catch? It's no good to start out with wonderful intentions matching the skillful second context for shamatha use and end up converting to the first use. That would be starting out with skillful resolve but losing it along the way. Keep the right resolve up so that you always remember what the real purpose of shamatha is -- it's supposed to help you with insight. Entire schools of practice use jhana as the base for insight, as discussed in another thread. It's a powerful practice! But never lose sight of what it's really for. Then it's not escapism. It's preparation.

</opinion>

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

Florian Weps — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:27:13 GMT

Hi Aziz,

the dark night, well... as Daniel keeps pointing out, if you're poking around sites like this, chances are very high that you have crossed A&P already, maybe years ago, and are already acquainted with the dark night.

Daniel's depiction of the dark night in MCTB is very detailed, and covers the more extreme ways it can manifest. There are so many Dharma books out there which gloss over this, MCTB goes to the other extreme of emphasizing it. Thus, cosmic balance is restored ;)

I'd relax a bit. Like you, I find insight practice a good thing. Now that you know about the dark night, you can keep an eye on tell-tales like being in a strangely reactive mood after some opening experience a few days earlier, being edgy and buzzy, and so on. Common sense really helps, and places like this and KFDh are great resources.

Cheers,
Florian

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

Aziz Solomon — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:04:43 GMT

Many thanks, Florian, for your replies. I'll definitely follow up your suggestions.

I do find that when I do vipassana, I generally feel that greed, hatred and ignorance have much less of a grip on me. This does seem to affect my day-to-day decisions quite significantly for the better.

However, I am not at a very advanced stage in the progress of insight (probably due to desultory practice), and am afraid of getting more deeply into it at a time when I may not be best able to handle the destabilizing side-effects. Specifically, having read up about the 'dark night' and its inevitability, I don't want to get stuck there until I am in a position to dedicate a good amount of time and energy to hauling myself through it.

So I am trying to work out whether I might be better off sticking primarily to samatha meditation for the moment...

On the other hand, in the Goenka tradition I was taught that samatha doesn't really make a lasting impact on one's sankaras, and can be a form of escapism. If that it true, samatha practice would seem to offer only limited scope for making tangible improvements to life "off the cushion".

So I can't work out which to focus on at this point in my life. In my limited experience so far, vipassana has offered very positive "bleedthrough" into my everyday life, but it also seems to offer lots of future scope for very negative bleedthrough if I continue to higher levels.

Any more advice from experienced yogis would be very greatly appreciated!

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

Florian Weps — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:22:35 GMT

Hi Aziz,

Hm. I tend to view these three as separate dimensions or axes, and "where I am" in terms of what shapes my current experience is determined by where I am on each of these. I.e. I could be a complete jerk who is highly skilled in concentration, or a very kind and generous person who has absolutely no truck with "ultimate wisdom" regarding impermanence, not-self etc.

In the past few years, since I started to observe myself in these terms, here's what I found out about myself. YMMV of course:

Whenever I'm overdoing the concentration training, I become fascinated by all kinds of strange stuff, put too much emphasis on elevated mind-states, high concepts, dreams, and unusual views of reality, often at the expense of everyday common sense and kindness, and also at the expense of increasing insight into the fundamentals of how this existence presents.

At those times where I push myself too hard insight-wise, I'm again often a bit too dis-interested in everyday concerns and emotionally incomprehensible to those close to me.

I don't think I ever really overdid the kindness and generosity, yet. While a theoretical possibility, this doesn't seem something I'm prone to.

For a more fine-grained decomposition of the threefold "morality - concentration - insight" training, maybe studying the individual factors of the noble eightfold path in detail will be as useful to you as it is to me.

Cheers,
Florian

RE: Mindfulness while thinking?

Florian Weps — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:01:27 GMT

Hi Aziz

Well, a simple definition of "mindfulness" which I like is "keeping something in mind" as in "remember what I'm doing".

While writing a thesis is much more than operating a word-processor, the word-processing part at least offers quite a few opportunities for training mindfulness in the form of "stop exercises", i.e. "stop and review what's going on here" whenever something specific happens. Choose a "trigger" and try to be mindful of as many of these as possible.

Examples: to keep TSV at bay I set up a "typing break" software to alert me every so often to relax my wrists etc. After the break, I try to keep in mind that I'm now working again. This gradually slips, of course, and during my next break, I try to remember the moment when the fact that I was working slipped from my mind, i.e., I backtrack to the last moment of "mindfulness of working". Or, I decide to be aware whenever I save my work (maybe initially just the instances when I make "big" copies to some external medium like an USB flash memory or a different computer system).

Come up with your own. Alan Chapman describes an exercise where he tried to be aware of his right arm as often and for as long as possible.

Cheers,
Florian

Mindfulness while thinking?

Aziz Solomon — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:53:07 GMT

Here's another question about integrating mindfulness into daily living: There seem to be plenty of activities that can clearly be enhanced by the application of mindful awareness, but what about activities that necessarily involve complex discursive thought? I know how to do the dishes mindfully, but how about writing an academic thesis? Wouldn't 'noting' (or opening to a wider range of sensations) just interfere with the thought process?

RE: Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

Aziz Solomon — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:11:21 GMT

To put it slightly differently, do you think that 'insight' or 'concentration' practices do more to support the training of 'morality' (and the engagement with everyday responsibilities and challenges)?

Best practice to support a demanding daily life?

Aziz Solomon — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:28:37 GMT

I am new to Dharma Overground- indeed it is the first online community I've ever joined- and it is really exciting to be a part of it. The spiritual journey can be intensely isolating, so it is great to find fellow-travelers who are striding ahead on the path (and with their feet clearly still on the ground!)

I have been doing vipassana (having learned at a Goenka course) on and off for about 7 years. My meditation practice recently received a significant boost, thanks to guidance from Daniel's book, but I am also very unsure of which direction to take it right now. Just as I am starting to get some real insight into the 'three characteristics', the demands of my work/ personal life have massively increased and have to become my top priority.

Without going into too many details, I am about to become a father of twins and am struggling to finish a PhD and get started in a challenging new career at the same time. I am therefore quite terrified of entering 'the dark night' at this juncture and getting totally overwhelmed and unable to fulfill my 'worldly' responsibilities. I don't think I will have the opportunity to go on a serious retreat in the next few years, so my goal is really to focus on living the best life possible 'off the cushion' until my babies are a little grown up.

I do want to keep meditating though, and would be extremely grateful for your advice with this: Is samatha practice generally more directly beneficial for keeping anxiety levels low and motivation high? I have generally found vipassana more profoundly transformative, but then I haven't yet attained to any of the jhanas. Any suggestions for where I should be aiming would be much appreciated!

RE: Caffeine addiction

Dark Night Yogi — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:30:01 GMT

i suffered from the energy loss when i quit smoking & cut down on caffeine. i tried quitting caffeine but now settled to 1/2 to 1 cup in the morning only.

i eat fruits in the afternoon. i feel the energy it gives is unlike any other food. oranges or pears usually (but just coz theyre the cheapest over here) fruits also help in the bio-energetic dept, as i feel it gives chi. i read fruits are best eaten alone and not too early in the morning as it interferes with digestion of other food. thats what i do.

RE: Caffeine addiction

Clayton James Lightfoot — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:23:45 GMT

Hey,

Great to see this topic. I know for one I have been addicted to caffeine. This December when I went on my first 10 day retreat I figured they wouldn't give me any because of the 5th precept. So the day I traveled up to the center I didn't have any caffeine. Of course when I got there they had coffee and tea for everyone. But I stuck to my guns... it was hell for a few days but I have not regretted that decision. It really helped me level out energy wise... also its great to feel free from all chemical dependency... Coffee was the last of my chemical addictions to go... but I am glad I didn't hang onto it... really helped me sink deeper into meditation... of course everyone's body is different

Good luck...

RE: I don't believe my own thoughts. So how do I give/take advice?

Trent H. — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:46:52 GMT

Hi, I don't know the context the difficulty is arising within, and so this reply is a generality as well.

J S S:

I'm having a slight problem, and I want your take on it and hear what experiences you may have.
I really don't believe my thoughts.

If I may ask, what makes you think that it's a problem in the first place? Believing is to "wish something to be true"...Perhaps the notion that you do not know the answer to a question/situation/whatever is simply the fact of the matter and you are intelligently aware of this. As such, you would rather be genuine? I would not want to put words in your mouth, of course.

J S S:

So when I'm going thru a rough time, I can think of my own little justification of why it happens and also see all the reasons I can never be sure if I'm right (or rather, it's more of a feeling of knowing it could be wrong, not logical reasons it's wrong). So when I tell people this little justification, am I lying? It's not really truth.

Belief and doubt are quite a pair, eh? That is, I am assuming that doubt is what you are referring to when you say "it's more of a feeling of knowing it could be wrong." What I have found personally to ameliorate this conundrum is to strike belief and doubt from one's psyche entirely. Instead of belief, one looks for where one may be confident; that is, one looks for a fact or facts to substantiate one's thoughts. If those facts do not appear readily available, or perhaps there is some suspicion on one's part that inhibits one's confidence on a matter, there is the oft overlooked option of naivete (which you seem to be familiar with). To be naive ("innocent, artlessness, unsophisticated", not "gullible") rather than doubtful, one is simply acknowledging one's own lack of information on a matter or matters. To sincerely say "I don't know" when one does not know is to be honest with oneself whilst perserving one's integrity. I am of the opinion that naivete/innocence is an esteemable quality.

J S S:

I also have nothing better to go off of and people get frustrated pretty fast when all you say is "I don't know". Sometimes I need to give concrete answers (as per the social exchange) , yet I... I'm so unsure of what I say. I feel like I'm lying or making crap up.

Something that seems to work for me is to guide one's peer into articulating their question further or in a different way. Often times people are not specific when communicating because they are speaking to their own projections, and as such, assume that you know what they are talking about when they are vague or mix-mash language. Probing the question can lead to a situation wherein you may be refered to as "pedantic," so I usually don't dig too deeply. If I can't answer with confidence after asking the individual a few extra questions, I usually just defer the question in the most unabrasive way possible. "I don't know" being my favorite.

Regards,
Trent

I don't believe my own thoughts. So how do I give/take advice?

J S S — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:57:15 GMT

Hello, all!

I'm having a slight problem, and I want your take on it and hear what experiences you may have.
I really don't believe my thoughts. So when I'm going thru a rough time, I can think of my own little justification of why it happens and also see all the reasons I can never be sure if I'm right (or rather, it's more of a feeling of knowing it could be wrong, not logical reasons it's wrong). So when I tell people this little justification, am I lying? It's not really truth. I also have nothing better to go off of and people get frustrated pretty fast when all you say is "I don't know". Sometimes I need to give concrete answers (as per the social exchange) , yet I... I'm so unsure of what I say. I feel like I'm lying or making crap up.

Has anyone run into this problem? Any pro-tips?

RE: Smoking pot and meditative concentration

Pavel O. — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:10:52 GMT

I never was the type to just smoke and bliss out. I was there to learn whether I wanted to or not, it was habitual seeking of insights. A strong dose one day blasted me into the A&P... strong. I had been there before and come to enjoy these 2D cartoons dancing about, sometimes with my eyes open, but certainly strongly when they were closed. My body seemed to pulse and that was cool too. Unfortunately, I dropped precipitously into the worst dark knight imaginable.

I had pretty much the same experience with MDMA, interesting to hear that pot can do the trick too. One thing that I am aware of retrospectively (not having dabbled with substances in a while and not wanting to do so again in the near future) is that the experience produced by most (if not all) psychoactive substances will be defined by the stage that you are in, I have taken a fairly large range of psychedelics in the Dark Night and was not able to cope with what came out very well. Pot is definitely among those - I have had great (ie. pleasant) experiences while in A&P and horrid, anxiety-ridden ones in the Dark Night. The only drug that gave me a temporary release from the Dark Night (for perhaps two months or so) was ayahuasca. Interestingly, even caffeine seems to be affected by the stages (would others agree?) - I have noticed quite strong negative reactions, anxiety, fear and general constriction after the effect of caffeine wore off (which, if I could do insight for a couple of hours was not necessarily a very bad thing).

Giving another quote (also from Ram Dass I believe), 'If you get the message, hang up the phone'. Most of the interesting effects of these drugs (at least the ones that are insight, concentration, or energy orientated) appear to be accessible through meditation (which also gives you the tools to work with the results), not forgetting the difference between having a one-off weird experience as opposed to having a reproducible skill, ability or understanding.

RE: Smoking pot and meditative concentration

Tom Carr — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:15:44 GMT

I know a few people who smoke pot and meditate. They are not the people I am most impressed with. I know people who did it for a while and quit. They seem healthier.

If it was really helpful I think it would be more widely used. Why don't we hear of any advanced practitioners recommending it?

I spent some time in India in the 70's. There were lots of Sadhus who smoked it, but they weren't the serious yogis that I looked up to. They were kind of hanging out and smoking pot, just like stoned people in the USA. The serious swami's and teachers didn't use it.

Ram Dass made a good point about it in a book a long time ago. He said that even if it did help a little, still you are breaking the law and that puts you in a paranoid us versus them position which is not helpful.

I recommend you think about this and decide for yourself, but if you were to ask my advice I would suggest you stop using it.

RE: Caffeine addiction

ratanajothi - — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:12:41 GMT

I can't say much about effects of caffeine on bio-energetic processes. In fact it doesn't affect me much. However, it does affect my wife. Should she go without coffee for more than a few hours, she gets tired. More than 24 hours, she gets headaches.

If your body's constitution is affected by coffee, i.e. lethargy or headaches, you should consider giving it up altogether. The symptoms go away after 10 days, and don't come back - until you start drinking coffee again.

Once you have established whether you can be free from coffee or not, it is then up to you to weigh up the pros and cons of that next cup of coffee.

Cheers.

RE: Caffeine addiction

J Groove — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:26:38 GMT

Thanks, Nikolai.
Part of my thinking here definitely is to try to identify and remove obstacles. (I'd hate to buy the farm, hit the bardos and be told by some multi-armed deity that I would''ve been a jhana master were it not for the damned Starbucks! LOL!)
One certainly could let the super-ego's ambitions run wild at a certain point. I don't want to start stamping out all enjoyable behaviors out of some kind of spiritual materialism. And yet I do sense that things have gotten a bit out of control with the coffee--I drink three huge cups a day, usually.
Yes, moderation in all things. We'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll get it down to one very small cup in the morning and just make do with decaf the rest of the time. Hmmm....

RE: Caffeine addiction

Nikolai S Halay — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:46:36 GMT

Everything in moderation, I say. I was addicted to coffee and probably still am. I love the stuff. But of course I drink too much and I suffer the highs and lows. I got 1st path at the beginning of the year and i still drink coffee. My fiance bought me an expresso machine and now i have real cappuccinos for breakfast. What i am trying to convey is that it doesn't have to be a hinderance to progress on the path. If you feel it is for you, do something about it. But coffee didn't stop the progress of insight for me. I think there was a good thread on coffee and meditation posted ages ago. I'll look for it and link it here.....from the wetpaint days.

The link

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/88956?_19_redirect=/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/search%3F_19_redirect%3D%252Fweb%252Fguest%252Fdiscussion%26_19_breadcrumbsCategoryId%3D0%26_19_searchCategoryIds%3D0%26_19_keywords%3Dcoffee

Edited to include link.