Hi all,

As I said on another thread, I have been using the method in TMI to try to get my concentration act together. It's slow going but seems worthwhile. 

​​​​​​​I wonder what anyone thinks of adding insight practices at this stage when I'm not doing sitting meditation. 

There is an old saying: if you ask the question, you know the answer.

But more seriously, what do you think? What are your concerns/reservations? Is there any reason you haven't experimented with noting/momentary concentration methods?

Dunno -- I tried a bit of noting some weeks ago and found it helpful, but then turned to keeping my breath in awareness when I'm walking around. 

I just thought: maybe I should be doing more noting, but maybe I should stick to the instructions in TMI until I've given it at least three months, as was recommended on here, and I really have no idea how to choose. 

​​​​​​​I guess my concern is that I'll get too scattered -- trying basic concentration here with slow progress, then throwing in noting at other times during the day. Maybe my practice will get unfocused and pointless.

It's okay to do vipassana at any stage. If you try vipassana and your mind wanders so much that you are not getting anything out of it, then do more samatha practices until your mind is calm enough so that you can pay attention during the vipassana technique.

Also I am not familiar with TMI so I don't know if this is a problem but ... my opinion/experience is that "hard" concentration can be counterproductive if it makes you tense, or if it causes you to suppress thoughts and emotions. It can make you irritable or numb, which is the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish - ie. develop a clear mind that that helps you to see things as they really are. I think more in terms of tranquility and relaxation. Stress is one of the main causes of mental turbulence, you can quiet the mind with relaxing meditation and you can develop good concentration without getting tense or suppressing anything.

Tom, how did you choose TMI and concentration-type practices in the first place? What was your goal/intention/reasoning?

​​​​​​​

I read the first edition of Daniel Ingram's book years ago, along with Leigh Brasington's Right Concentration. I was making progress, it seemed, when I let my practice be totally derailed for years by life circumstances. Recent circumstances have again made it hard for me to function, and I decided it was time either to give up or get my act together. I read the 2nd edition of Ingram's book, read there and somewhere else about TMI, and figured "developing concentration sounds like it can be useful for insight, and even if I just learn to control my attention, that'll be useful." 

Figured I'd give it a try, and someone on here recommended I give it a solid three months, which I'm still in the middle of. 

I guess my goal is the first stage of awakening, although my immediate goals are more like "keep working, don't abandon the practice, learn to work with my mind throughout the day, learn to recognize and not identify with painful habits of thinking." 

And to the post above, I'd say that I don't think my attempt at establishing concentration has brought in a lot of tension or judgment. But that's good to know to look out for, thank you.

Let's dive in a little more to get you some custom-tailored advice...

Sounds like your main focus is mindfulness while walking? Are you doing a sitting practice too?

What so far have you found most helpful to "learn to recognize and not identify with painful habits of thinking"?

Sorry for being unclear.

My main practice is a couple hours a day of sitting, TMI-style. Usually working on Stage Four, I think. 

I also have tried some noting while walking and doing things around the house, sometimes for extended periods, but certainly not all day. 

Lately (last two weeks?) I've tried attending to my breath in most situations.

What have I found most helpful about that? Well, I have tormented myself for years with certain thoughts. The TMI-style practice has certainly helped me to attend to my attention and to move it away from those things when they start. That alone has brought me significant benefit already.

 Well, it sounds like TMI is working for you, so no need to change.

If you want to experiment with noting, it basically involves not changing attention when difficult things arise, but rather allow them to exist as they are and mentally labelling them.

So for example, if a "tormenting thought" arises, you wouldn't switch away from it, but rather allow it to be as it is and give it a mental label like "worried-about-being-eaten-by-a-tiger thought" --- or whatever the tormenting thought is  

The idea is that avoiding/repressing thoughts might be helpful initially when we're really triggered or traumatized... but eventually we need to become capable of (eventually) allowing even tormenting thoughts to come and go. The reason is the basic psychological truth that repressed thoughts just find other ways to bubble back into consciousness ("what you resist persists" as the saying goes).

Only you can judge if you are ready for that kind of approach. If that doesn't seem/feel right for you, then no need to force it.

Sometimes a very gentle approach to noting is better for starting this kind of work, like the "RAIN" technique -- this involves slowly learning to have compassion even for the troubling experiences that sometimes happen during meditation. See: Blog: The RAIN of Self-Compassion - Tara Brach

​​​​​​​Hope this is helpful in some way.
 

Just lost my reply here, will try to reproduce it...

Thanks for the link, I will check it out. And thanks for the reply.

To clarify -- I didn't mean "tormenting thoughts" that arise during meditation, but the ones that arise during the day when I'm trying to do something else. Thoughts and little plays that feel like being hit by a train when I'm trying to read, drive, or do whatever. What's been helpful is not the ability to escape from them or pretend they don't exist, but to table them even for a short while. 

I'm not sure how well TMI is working for me -- I really am not sure about the progress I'm making within Stage Four -- but I guess all I can do is keep working on it. We'll see...

For what it's worth, those "hit by a train" experiences sound a lot like emotional flashbacks -- which is very characteristic of past trauma. Even if it is just the non-clinical "light version" of those, it can be useful to know the basic ideas around PTSD and C-PTSD treatments.

Lots of stuff online to google... but I have the book "Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving" in my personal library and I refer to it from time to time. Other good books are "Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: practices for safe and transformative healing" and "In an Unspoken Voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness."

I'm not diagnosing this (!) but rather just pointing out that "emotional flashbacks" are a thing and there are has been some work done on how to reduce/absorb/heal those hit-by-a-train type patterns.

Thank you. I didn't know there was trauma / mindfulness stuff. 

I plan to stick with the TMI method for now, but I just may check out those books.

I'm thinking of this whole thing as an experiment, trying to be dedicated (sitting every day as much as I can) but staying flexible to see what works well. Good to have some more information. 

Tom, I went back and re-read all your previous posts...  One thing I'll also mention is to be somewhat skeptical of feelings like "I'm not making enough progress" "this isn't working, maybe I should switch?" "could this be a dead-end?" etc. 

It's very common for the mind to do that little trick when things ARE working. In other words, when practice starts degrading old habits/patterns, the body-mind can have a little freakout and start second guessing things. Your old habits will never say "oh, I'm so glad that Tom is getting clear minded and not being so tormented by thoughts, I can't wait be an old habit that disappears forever" --- no, your old habits will say "things are changing, something is WRONG!!!!  Don't change!!!"   

One of the tricks in making progress in meditation (and psychology in general) (hmm, and weightlifting too!)  is to not give up too soon. Sometimes things hit a plateau, don't seem to be working, feel "off" in some way ---- but that's the change occuring. Then usually there is a big change -- a big jump in how you look at things or a big jump in what you can weightlift.

It can be good to talk about this stuff because no one else really understands. Meditators are kind of crazy (weightlifters too). But who cares? if it seems to be helping, it's a good thing to explore.

I appreciate that bit of insight. I hadn't thought about that (the body-mind resisting change). 

As it seemed to my conscious mind, my thought was "well, I don't want to sit for another year, and think I'm trying to make my practice my life and my life my practice, and then ask why no progress, and hear that I wasn't really practicing after all."

Yes, I know what you mean -- no one really understands. No one really understand my takes on most things, and I'm getting the sense even as a beginning meditator that there's literally no one in my regular life who has the slightest interest in this...

I do allow myself to worry that, you know, there's something deficient about my brain, my mind isn't filled with light, etc., and it's never going to be. But I guess I should just keep practicing, observe the three characteristics in my little worries, and move on.

Thanks for all the replies.

One option is to do samatha while doing sitting meditation, and practice vipassana in daily life.

It also might help to recognize that even if you are doing a samatha practice, there are also aspects of vipassana in it. Every time you get distracted you are reminded that you don't control your mind. Whatever distracted you, a thought, emotion, impulse, sensory experience, feeling of self or noself - is anatta, not you, not yours. Also, those things come and go while you try to concentrate, they are impermanent. Those that are be uncomfortable or unpleasant are dukkha. Whatever the focus of your attention is for the samatha meditation, you are observing it you might notice the three characteristics in what you observe. For example if you are meditating on the breath, you will see impermanence in the changing nature of the breath from inhale to exhale and exhale to inhale.

I'm not familiar with TMI but with many types of samatha practice, you can keep doing the same technique but put more emphasis (a little or a lot - as much as you want) on vipassana. One thing you can do is when a distraction arises you can take more or less time to acknowledge it and observe it and relax/let go, or relax/dig deeper as appropriate.

Thanks, Jim. Yeah, I've read about the viapssana elements that crop up in concentration practice, and have experienced same. I guess I thought I would be told that "didn't count" because it wasn't formal vipassana practice. 

I'm not very concerned about the "legitimacy" or "purity" of my practice, but I would like to have some idea of what I'm doing. And it doesn't help that many discussions of meditation online sound kind of panicked about this or that aspect of the thing. This board is an exception. 

I committed to 3 months of TMI as my central practice, but I guess there's no reason I can't throw in insight practices elsewhere in the day. I was doing that several weeks ago with my most extended attempt at noting.

Lately I've been feeling very different in everyday life. Better, but in a way I can't quite describe. My painful thoughts are quieter and last much less long. That's among other things. I got interested in the insight book Seeing that Frees and the presentation of "Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation" by Bhante Vimalaramsi, but I haven't taken more than a glance at either, yet. I'm going to stick it out with TMI to my 3 months, trying in more regularly do insight practices when I'm not sitting. Then I'll take stock and see. 

I guess there's no reason I can't see if I can't go all the way through TMI for concentration, and then try another method or turn those skills to insight practices.

Thanks for your reply. 

A couple of things to consider ...

In the anapanasati sutta where the Buddha taught meditation, he instructs people to do samatha first then vipassana within the same meditation session.

The Buddha also taught that samatha and vipassana were two qualities of mind that should be cultivated together. 
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/onetool.html

Hi!

Where?
The whole book? part of it? WTF are you doing?
Act? what is your "concentration act"?
What is slow?
Worth whatever while I guess. Depending how you don't bother to say anything.

I wonder if anyone thinks.
go to town and tell us the results?
what stage of what?
as you have compared to what?

I'm glad everyone can respond so well to the info you provided.
Unfortunately, with only half ass guesses of what you are saying, I have no opinion.
Please ignore me.
I shall move on.
Good luck on your wondering,
~D

I'm not sure how to interpret this quote from MCTB2, except as saying vipassana practice is a form of concentration practice:

https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-vi-my-spiritual-quest/70-around-the-world-and-finding-home/the-second-mbmc-retreat/


Just like there are aspects of vipassana in samatha practices, there is samatha in vipassana. You have to have concentration to do vipassana, but there is no reason you can't use vipassana "techniques" as a way to cultivate tranquility and concentration.

This bit: 

trying to go for one hundred percent capture, not letting a single sensation anywhere in the entirety of experience go by without perceiving the three characteristics clearly. I did this from the moment I woke up in the morning to the moment I fell asleep at night.

makes me wonder if I'll ever be able to do that kind of insight practice. My mind just isn't speedy enough to catch every bit of sensory experience, let alone conscious perception of the three characteristics. I guess just keep working on it. The material by Ingram has been helpful for me in that it's given a lot of human-sounding advice and helped me to get a picture of some general matters (retreats, misbehavior, various models), but some of what he describes sounds way, way beyond what I can even imagine.  Nirodha sampatti sounds more imaginable than the insight practices described above. 

Why?

It's just being aware of stuff. Like you presumably have access to some senses right? Can you notice that your sensing things? I mean it happens whether or not you think you can do it. 

Maybe I misunderstood what it means. What I imagined is meant is this: conscious attention to every blip of nerve impulse from any sense, attention to that it's impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not self, even though there are who knows how many of these per second. Like just the sensations of typing these words I could never keep up with. 

Tom, don't psyche yourself out!

I feel like people get hung up on this stuff from time to time. The magic of it is that you're already doing it. The liberation comes by noticing that. You are already, I presume, having a sense experience. Learning to relax and deepen your implicit awareness of that sense experience is good insight practice. Literally the best kind. This is what leads to reduction of suffering. 

I do sometimes suspect this branch of meditative practice has some beginner level language issues. I also suspect that some of the people who really get a lot out of the "MCTB approach" probably spent some years skilling up with other traditions or styles of practice. 

I often find myself wanting to say to beginner meditators that the trick to it all is to just relax and be aware of your experience. Anything technical we might discuss is just a different way of looking at relaxation and awareness.

You see things, or hear things, or feel things... for a moment relax and be aware that you are feeling, or hearing, or seeing. 

When we practice like this often we notice, all these distractions, all this dukkha, we become aware of dukkha (2nd characteristic), we relax with it, perhaps we pay a little attention to how it occurs in the body, what is it made out of, we see that the sensations that it is made out of can be seen to flicker in and out (1st characteristic) and they do so whether we notice or not, they do so without any direction from us (3rd characteristic) and so on.... With time, with relaxation and awareness, one starts to see more and more implicitly that this is true about more and more of our experience. 

Well, now, that seems like good advice, Bahiya Baby. Thank you for that. I'll try it today.

I ran this morning and tried something like this before even seeing your message: attending to the sensations in my footfalls, actually feeling them, not just expecting a regular rhythm, the wind on my skin, and so on, returning my attention when my mind wandered.

And I'll try not to psyche myself out, shargrol!

I don't know if this applies to you or if anyone else would agree, but in my opinion concentration is not like a skill that you get better at it because you practice over a long period of time. It is something you develop over the short term by practicing a lot. People go on retreats and develop good concentration and then they come home and can't maintain it. There might be some long term improvement but if you want to have really great concentration you have to meditate a lot every day, live a quiet low stress life, and practice mindfulness in-between sessions of sitting meditation. That's why monks live that way. 

​​​​​​​So people should not wait until they have great concentration before starting vipassana. They either have to do vipassana with mediocre concentration, which is perfectly okay, or they have to change their life style so they can have good concentration now not at some point in the future.

I am not saying people don't need any concentration to do vipassana, I think they will get more out of vipassana if they start a meditation session with some type of samatha practice first before doing vipassana (this is what the Buddha taught in the anapanasati sutta), but I don't think waiting until they have the highest attainments in concentration is practical for most people.

Supplement your formal practice with one more technique to be used in order to learn the operating principles of kayagata sati. Mindfulness fully immersed in the body/ Using the body as an anchor for awareness

1. Begin by taking slow deep gentle abdominal breaths
2. Once some momentum develops on an out breath, just simply relax and sink into the relaxation of the diaghphragm
3. Dont intentionally take the  next in breath - let it happen on its own
4. After some trial and error the perception of the breath 'happening on its own' (as juxtaposed with deliberate intentionally slow breathing) will become obvious. Try and maintain this perception for the rest of the exercise. Returning to the steps above in order to stengthen the 'on its own' perception
5. After a while direct awareness to a few touch points. Become intentionally mindfully aware of the touch of your lips, palms on top of each other, left butt cheek, right butt cheek and so on. Deeply appreciate that awareness 'moves', can be directed, it 'takes' objects in line with your intention
6. Next maintain the awareness of the touch of your body on the chair or the floor for a while
7. Include the weight of your body and its over all sense of temperature along with the touch of the body on the chair or floor
8. Include and exclude stuff multiple times to simply get a sense of awareness expanding and contracting to include and exclude
9. finally let awareness settle within the body (the kaya) - we will call this the grounding object

10. This is the tricky part - Every time awareness leavves the grounding object and it moves to something, anything - notice the autonomous movement of awareness. Can you develop a perception of awareness 'going out', reaching for something .... on its own! Try and maintain this perception. You can use simple words that you subvocalize - moved; on its own ... etc intially to develop the perception. But over mutliple sessions try to drop the subvocalizing completely and engage directly with the perception itself

Once you are familiar with this style of practice, this can easily port to situations that arent cognitively demanding in daily life. Waiting for your turn at the dentist's office? waiting for a meeting? waiting at a bus stop or train station? Sitting in a work meeting where you dont expect to be called upon?

Fantastic - settle awareness in the body let it immerse fully and simply observe and appreciate that it doesnt stay there. It moves ... on its own! Everytime awareness leaves the grounding object and you have observed the on its own nature, you can let it wander between the senses for a while. Then taking slow deep gentle breaths reform the construct of awareness on its grounding object.

​​​​​​​Hope this helps.

Thanks very much for your input, Jim and Adi. Jim, I'm certainly not waiting til I have the "highest" attainments in concentration. I've been trying to do some formal insight again already.

Adi, I'll try the practice you described tomorrow.

​​​​​​​The whole thing does feel tiring. I am drained at the end of every day.

The crazy thing is you dont have to do anything to be aware of everything. The awareness of things arise immediately with the apparence of a thing. But its important for you to realize this on your own