The last log was getting a bit long. For reference, here are the previous logs. 

Log 1:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/22024623

Log 2: 
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/22715276

Log 3:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/23922732


On the cushion:
I have had covid for the past week and a half, which includes coughing, nausea, and tiredness, which all make meditation challenging. I'm satisfied with a half an hour a day. I do get some samadhi going, because I think it is generally speaking good for me and the wider world, but it's pretty basic. I can vipassana-ize  the sensations of sickness but it kind of misses the point. It is in the gestalt that sickness is most remarkable. Nausea is particularly interesting because, unlike pain, it is very hard to localize. If you look at the component parts of nausea, none has a very clear signature, and yet you cannot miss the fact that nausea is present. If you then try to look at it as an overall constructed thing, it slips and slides and morphs to an incredible extent. 

Off the cushion:
I'm still not suffering at a personal level but there is quite a bit of awareness of suffering on a more diffuse level. I was just starting to feel pretty healthy after last month's heart attack when my son came back from vacation and we all came down with covid. Although we all had boosters in December, it has hit us pretty hard. It must be an unfortunate strain. As all three of us are sick together, the inexorable and distributed nature of biological suffering is on display. I am also reminded that we are very lucky, doing this in a warm house with plenty of food, and nobody trying to kill us. 

Speaking of death, it is on my mind. Not in a bad way. I don't have any strong anti-death feelings (or even ant-dying feelings, which used to be a thing for me) but I do think that I usually have a bit of a death blindspot. The future tends to stretch indefinitely far before the mind's eye. Until recently, being a 61-year-old athlete with no health issues, I had somewhere between 20 and 40 years ahead of me. More or less infinity. Now it could still be decades, but it could also be later today. The funny thing is, that doesn't represent a change. We are always on the edge. 

This perspective has interesting tie-ins with desire. To want something or to be reluctant to lose something is to want a particular future but the future that is desired is itself situated longer future. Imagining being very rich, or very right, or very comfortable for just a day is different from imagining these states as potentially infinite, which, I think, is the default perspective. After all, we have all been, relatively speaking, rich, right, and comfortable and moments in our lives. There is nothing super special about those states. But when those states are in the future they look different. 

When I shift my background view of the future from infinite to finite, it has a different feel. Oddly, it becomes less tangible, less demanding of investment and protection. For one thing, the future is not finite in the sense of having a known end. It's not like the distance from here to the end of the street. The more specifically you try to make predictions about it, the more clearly lacking in reliability the predictions become. And the end is not just unknown, it actually does not, and will not, exist. It's not like the world stops when local consciousness stops. Looking at the whole wide world, and all the consciousness in it, it's clear that local consciousness stops millions of times a day. Probably millions of times a second. That doesn't seem to be much of a problem for the world at large. Only in the narrative version of life is the end so very important.

These are the views and perspectives that are flitting through my mind. I have no answers, which is a blessing. 

Oh, I love you man! Im 49 yo but I feel you big time! 

Yeah, that realization that death is inevitable. And it will happen to me. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe whatever But it will happen.

We are not all the same it seems. To me after the 1st path cessation, the "death thing" is more like "oh, this non-existence is not really scary at all". To me life-ing is more of a suffering thing than Not-consciousness But even that is more like ... oh, is this yet again a trance of sorts? ... oh, of course it is ... wonder ... dont know ... stuffing ... is ... this ... oops, again some sort of a trance dwelling state ... wonder ... dont know ... is ... ummm ... peace bra ... trance/dwelling state ... oh! I see! ... what know I ... dunno ... 

 

Wishing you good health, a speedy recovery and blistering insight. 

Death has been on my mind. 

I'm curious as to whether the sorts of things that you think of when you think of death have changed over time. For me, not being worried about it, and so not trying to push it away, particularly now that it has come so close, has made it possible to think about it more, and that is where all this thought about the finite nature of future experience comes from. Has your way of looking at it changed? 

Yeah so I understand or relate to the infinite wave horizon of time collapsing into a finite hour glass deal.

But lately it's something different. It's like when I really relax, when I really get down to it then death is just here. Through the room, through the body, through the heart. It has nothing to do with time really. 

I was a very sickly kid. I spent a lot of my early life in and out of hospital and the first few weeks of my existence in an incubator. 

I see now that my struggling against life has its roots in my early struggle to live. Once I start letting go of that struggle death arrives, or is seen to have always been right here, right through me.

It is frankly a rather unsettling experience  

​​​​​​​The last few years I've had some health struggles and I am now enjoying a patch of relative healthfulness. I wish the same for you. 

Thanks, Bahiya. It was good of you to share that. That does sound unsettling and also very penetrating. 

I'm glad your health is better at the moment. Health problems can shape life at such a basic level. I always found it interesting that, in the suttas, the monks were allowed their robes, their bowls, and their medicine, because, two and a half thousand years ago, managing health problems was part of life for many monks. 

On the cushion:
Back to meditating in the garage as of yesterday, for the first time since my heart attack two months ago. It feels good to go into what I think of as a dedicated space to do a dedicated activity. My concentration is, however, very poor, even in the garage. This morning I lost my count in my warmup. I usually count out 100 breaths at the start of my sit, but my mind wandered and I forgot to count. That is the first time that has happened to me in years. Samadhi is weak at the moment. Instead of a clear jhanic arc, there is more of a jhanic wave with rising (first/second) and falling (third/fourth) components. Mindfulness is not too bad. There are a lot of disparate objects arising without continuity. Body discomfort, sound, breath, body discomfort, visual image, breath, body pleasure, breath, sound... The implied space between the disparate things feels restful, reassuring.

Off the cushion: 
It turns out I have heart failure which has meant going from 16-hour days of working, running, swimming, seeing friends, and getting things done, to being happy if I have a day where I can go to the shops and take a 20 minute walk without ending up laying on the couch with nausea so bad I can't even watch TV at the end of the day. That is probably going to get better over the coming weeks, but I also have a different collection of probable futures now and different things that I need to pay attention to. Oddly though, it's all the same. There are things that seem desirable and things that seem undesirable, positive and negative vedena, planning, frustration, accomplishment. It's all there, even if the objects are different. Sometimes there is some dukkha with it but if I remember to turn toward it as an arising phenomenon and allow sadness, it is self-liberating. 

It's funny, I avoided sadness for almost all my life. I treated it as something that just absolutely must not be allowed. But now I know that sadness is the emotion of release and allowing. It is the feeling of emerging freedom. 

Sorry to hear about the health complications ☹️  

Thanks, Shargrol. It's one of the downsides of our experience being based on a self-assembling/self-destructing aggregate of cells. But downsides are part of the adventure :-) I will start a rehab program soon, where I get to go to the gym and improve my heart function, so there are lots of upsides too. 

May your recovery be smooth and speedy Martin!

Wishing you health, Martin.

On the cushion: 
Some improvement in concentration. The mind is still prone to wandering, but it is stabilizing and better remembering how things go. There is a state which I call nimitta space, which is basically a concentration state in which small, irregular, but often very beautiful nimittas arise. After the weak jhana cycle (jhana waves), at about the 30 minute mark onward, I have been spending some time in nimitta space. There is very intense joy in the beautiful nimittas, but no stability. It's like a little playground to run around in for a while. But I see no harm in having fun. 

With the strengthening of concentration, there is more mindfulness on the way in, and more mindfulness after the sit. I think I may add some walking after the sit, and see how mindfulness does in that environment. 

Off the cushion:
I'm kinda having fun. Maybe it is because I am feeling a bit better physically. But even when I don't feel well, or when I have a nervous reaction to symptoms, or calls from the doctor's office, there is no getting lost in that, just very bright awareness of how it feels. It's something like the "look how it ..." practice, but it's not a structured practice. It just is engaging to see the experiences around both ill-health and good fortune unfold, and there is no need to take it personally, and no clinging to specific outcomes. When things come up, I turn into them. And I don't mean that I face the challenge head-on with the intention of finding a solution (a way to an outcome). I mean that I watch the emotion shine and appreciate the intensity of it, for what it is, in that moment. Of course, there is some pragmatic good luck behind my attitude. My family would be financially OK without me. They are also, emotionally/spiritually/pragmatically in a pretty good place. I also have a fairly low chance of getting critically ill or dying in the very immediate future. If that were not all OK, the whole business of not clinging to outcomes might not unfold in the same way. It's hard to tell, of course. If there really is no clinging, then there is no clinging no matter what the situation. I have no way of knowing what things would be like if I were in a different situation. 

I am noticing and enjoying automaticity. Stuff unfolds and this Martin thing unfolds with it, but also my wife unfolds with it, my son unfolds with it, birds and clouds unfold with it. The world spins, traffic hums, trees grow. All automatically. 

I noticed this strongly when I was zipping around in ambulances and hanging out in hospitals. At that time, there was also a great sense of connection, or unity, or whatever we might call it. After, when I was at home and unwell, that sense of unity seemed lacking. Perhaps I just missed the in-your-face immediacy of hospital drama. Now the sense of lack has retreated and the brightness of the unity is showing up again, including short passages of nondual perception, which had been pushed aside for the past few months. 

On the cushion: Not much to report. I keep having things get in the way of my morning sits. Evening sits are not really a substitute. 

Off the cushion: I am back to looking at sensual desire. I am trying to notice the initial desire, which is to say, the orientation of the mind toward an object before clinging sets in. One way of seeing, which I have been playing with, is seeing the interaction as mutual, with the ice cream and the human experiencing desire for ice cream as peers, in the same way a sodium ion and a chlorine ion are peers. You cannot have sensual desire without an object. Sensual desire is the greatest driver of animal behavior. All of the sentient creatures, slithering, burrowing, running, swimming, and flying over the earth are doing so, for the most part, out of sensual desire. But the desires are in no way uniform. Birds are drawn to seeds, bears are not. Bears are drawn to salmon, snakes are not. And, of course, when it comes to mates, there is essentially no overlap. Sensual desires, then, are an evolved interaction between an object and a sentient being. Sometimes, the object, such as a seed-bearing fruit, benefits from the interaction, and other times it's harder to see the benefit to the object, such as in the case of a hawk and a mouse interacting. But, thinking back to sodium ions, which is what is driving all of this behavior anyway (via action potentials in nerve cells) there does not have to be a benefit for things to be drawn into each other.

It's such a big thing: beautiful, mysterious. It is the wind filling the sails of the animal world. And we can see it happen. We can tease it apart from vedena on one side and upadana on the other. So cool.

On the cushion: A lot of sits with weak concentration and, in those cases, I switch to noticing, but even noticing is less clear with weak concentration. I am also continuing to miss some morning sits because of being ill or being behind on other things due to being ill. I probably need to develop a practice that is more suited to low-energy situations. Having always been a high-energy guy, my standard sit is based on kneeling with a straight spine and setting an intention of high-energy focus. When I am weak and lightheaded or nauseous, that doesn't work so well. If anyone has any experience in meditating while ill, I'd be interested to hear any tips they may have. I do have Shinzen Young's book on the subject, but it really seems to focus on pain, and I don't have a problem dealing with pain. 

Off the cushion: I'm still not very good at allowing/integrating nausea. I still experience ill will towards it. It's not a deliberate thing but that orientation arises toward the sensation of nausea and I have to consciously notice it and release it. Fortunately, nausea is really only there for a fairly small percentage of the time. Other than that, I am still having a good time. A nice thing about being ill is that anatta is really clear. There is nobody calling for unpleasant sensations to arise and pass. It's just biology, and biology is a shared experience. There is no separation. What is happening here is not produced or controlled by me. It is a feature of the world. I notice this when I eat. It's cliche, but I am aware of the massive web of life in which food is entwined, and I am aware of how that awareness is also an emergent phenomenon in that web. This is a very pleasant experience, with a sense of loving/belonging, which is fundamentally natural. There is also quite a bit of nondual perception interspersed throughout the day, so the conceptual and the perceptual support each other. 

Speaking of concepts, I often find myself noticing the role of the future in aversion and desire. Aversion and desire can seem very immediate but, when I look at them, they are actually future-oriented. Desire is obviously so, because I want to get something (a sensation in the case of sensual desire) that I do not currently have, or I want to continue getting something that I have. If there were no future, there would be no desire. Desire assumes a future which, of course, is imaginary. Aversion is a little less obvious because the sensation is often currently present. But, here again, the point of aversion is getting rid of the sensation in the (usually immediate) future. In both cases, seeing the empty nature of the future immediately removes the fuel for aversion and desire. 

Meditate in bed or on the couch if you can do so without falling asleep. 

Your insight about the future is so on the money. 

Continue to heal up, the nausea and illness will pass. 

​​​​​​​

Yes, I do meditate on the couch. I don't fall asleep, but my concentration is usually poor, with a lot of mind-wandering. That may be because I associate laying on the couch with ordinary default-mode thinking. I keep meaning to make a formal go of it with a yoga mat and hands pointing upwards at my sides. Yesterday I tried flipping the vedena of the nausea and noticing the energetic features of it. I will keep playing around with that because, although it is possible the nausea and illness will pass, heart failure generally progresses, rather than healing up, so there are probably advantages to making friends with the symptoms. On the up-side, I saw a cardiologist this week who will be managing my exercise rehab and he has cleared me to start doing aerobic exercise which is likely to make me feel better. I did a couple of walking hill repeats yesterday and I am hoping to go for a super-easy swim today. (Man, I love swimming!) Being really into exercise is a lucky disposition to have for this disease. 

On the cushion:
I have a few different styles at the moment. When the energy is low, I just sit, following the instructions Adi was kind enough to give me. Just sitting, remembering that I am just sitting, putting down any long thoughts that may come up and returning to just sitting. Generally, this leads to quiet, which leads to a quiet type of samadhi. 

When I am feeling unwell, and in particular nauseous or lightheaded, I look at those sensations. My teacher used to ask me, "How do you know you are agitated?" or "How do you know you are dull?" "How do you know an experience is nondual?" Those were great questions, now I am applying them to illness. How do I know I am nauseous? What are the sensations that give rise to that label? Often they are tactile sensations mapped to the throat or the stomach, and there is usually an overlay of tactile sensations mapped to places that don't make sense, like the middle of the head, or some point outside the body. They are just sensations. Just points. 

I'm really interested in these sensations just as they are. I want to know them and get more comfortable with them because, of course, I am them. They are me. It does not make sense to the posture of me over here and the sensations over there, giving me a hard time. That posture is dukkha. Who wants it? It's possible to get interested in that separation and the dukkha that arises from it but I'm kinda done with that, at least for now. I'd rather step aside from the oncoming train :-) 

While it was not my original intention, I have also found that these sensations have a pattern, and so they can be used as an anchor for concentration, just like the breath or a mantra. This is something that I learned when I was first getting the hang of the jhanas. At that point, I was successful at entering first in probably a bit less than 50% of my sits. And on one occasion, when I thought my concentration was pretty strong, a stupid crow started cawing outside my window. I was really angry at this bird for fucking up my concentration, but it just would not stop. It kept going and going, so I started to just follow it, letting the sound become my meditation object. A few minutes later I went into first with a rush of light and just moments after that, the crow stopped cawing. Anyway, I can sort of do this with nausea. I watch the pattern and overlay a light-based visual representation of the spatial locations, and let the mind absorb into that until piti and sukha start arising. But, really, it's mostly a party trick because neither the samadhi nor the insight is that great. Still kinda fun though. 

Fortunately, my health has been improving as I do more exercise and so there are fewer sits that are suited to the nausea jhanas :-) and more where normal jhana is possible. Because jhana has been less accessible recently, whenever it arises strongly, particularly in second jhana, there is this sense of homecoming. The Puritans used to talk about feeling "God's caress." That phrasing resonates with me. Often, during jhana, I feel an affinity with people who experience a god. The modeling fits so well with the sensations of joy and contentment that arise in jhana, which are vast and unbounded. It's exactly what you would expect union with God to be like. 

But I don't believe in an actual god for various reasons, the most compelling of which is that I don't see any evidence for any permanence or agency anywhere. I don't see it in myself and I don't see it in the world around me. It makes no sense, based on my observations, that there would be some immutable entity that acts with unconditioned agency hiding in the ether. But it sure feels like it at times :-) 


Off the cushion:
The perspective of illness makes it obvious how the mismatch between the presumption of agency and the way the world really works causes suffering. People do not want their bodies to undergo old age, sickness, and death. Looking after the body's needs is fundamental. When we are hungry, we really have to eat, when something is stuck to our skin, we must scratch it off, when we are tired we sleep. Doing these things, we get the idea that we are agents, acting on behalf of the body. We are conditioned by this see ourselves as doing what is necessary for the good of our body and thus controlling outcomes. But, while there are some things that we can do to help with illness, nothing is sufficient in the long term. The best outcome is old age, sickness, and death. So things go on in our bodies that do not fit with the idea that we are running things. What is interesting to me at the moment is that the same thing happens in terms of what goes on in our minds and what goes on in our actions. People are upset by their thoughts and by their behaviors. They say, "Why can't I just let that go?" "Why did I eat that second piece of cake?" But all these frustrations and judgments and worries really hang on that same idea of agency, which in turn hangs on the idea of an unchanging agent. With illness, the silliness of that view is on display. The world unfolds in accordance with myriad conditions, and our bodies and minds are part of that, but no separate entity is in charge of the show.  ​​​​​​​

I had been thinking about the Akkosa Sutta (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn07/sn07.002.budd.html) which is the one where someone insults the Buddha and the Buddha says the insults are like food offered to guests but left untouched.

This is a nice way to look at ill will and various types of problems that one does not need to take up. But it also got me noticing a whole range of reactions of the heart, like being drawn to something beautiful, or a view forming around a contentious issue, or a story of a self in a social framework. All the passing things, lasting seconds or less, which make up the minutes of the day can be taken and made one's own, or they cannot be allowed to appear and disappear, without laying claim to them. They don't need to be rejected or even released when they have never been taken in the first place. 

The other thing I notice is that all of this, the arising of these things, and their passing away, is very beautiful, like a kaleidoscope being turned for no other reason than the beauty of the colors and the shapes.