Pre A&P practice

P.S. see the "article" I just posted on therapeutic models for meditators

Femto, it seems possible to me that you are actually asking others here to validate and sympathize with your personal experience? Sometimes questions are like that - a kind of elliptical way of asking for comfort?

And that could be totaly fine-- but possibly more effective if done directly

I'm trying to prevent things like that happening. I thought this was obvious. I don't think any kind of right livelihood is the answer. You just try it with several unrelenting nests of negative sensations and see if it works. It might be nice to do, but not for anyone in that situation. This is my personal experience.

People are too superficial and fickle for anything like that to be reliable. Even the places where people are supposed to be compassionate they are actually not, so don't fool yourself. It is not a real world solution.

That's interesting that you wouldn't suggest they go meditate, that they go do some other type of soothing activity, but I think meditation is the only thing that can help them -- this thread is about what kind of meditation can be prescribed for these people that will work: maybe the correct answer is something in between the two, part meditation, part soothing.

It might suck to do, it probably will, but that is just necessary. The only problem is if it doesn't work. If it works, then it is fine, actually positive, if unpleasant

Here we're talking about the type of waterfall where someone has many comorbid physical things, and we're wondering if this can be encapsulated in a map, so these people have something to do, a goal based practice

I just saw your other thread (I think) on Dharma Overground (Nana #1).

It's still unclear to me what you are looking for and if you have any possible solutions.

Are you asking about dealing with emotional difficulties are you asking about physical pain management? If both, what is the principal, causal issue?

What are the signs and symptoms you are trying to address in others?

What is your criteria for an acceptable treatment modality?

What are the signs and symptoms of what you would consider a successful treatment?

Based on your experience, what method worked for you?

Based on your experience, in both your life and through your reading/investigations, what are you proposing as a possible approach for others?


It could be you are no longer interested in your original question. If so, no worries, no reply needed.

?

I thought the idea was straightforward, the idea of a broad first nana, with a progression of insights in the physical body.

Is that or is that not the case.

If so, then having a map for these areas would orient the meditator to do the best practice. It would give them a goal based practice that is actually realistic.

I am wondering if the state of the body insofar as disruptions/impurities is related to the first few nanas, and if they can be correlated fairly consistently. If so, then there is a direct goal based criteria for people who fall in this territory.

I'm not looking for a treatment modality. If it was true that the state of the body correlates to ability to go deeper into the insight stages, then the problem would just take care of itself. There would a descriptive map and people would be able to tell where they are on it, and this would influence the manner in which they practice.

I am asking about insight. What is a good way to orient people for insight. What I am getting, however, is that no one is interested.

As an aside, I just did a google seach on "mind and body nana" and the DhO post is #1 in google! Wow!!

Femtosecond wrote: ...the idea of a broad first nana, with a progression of insights in the physical body.

Let's go slow.

First nana is knowledge of mind and body. In means something very specific in meditation maps, which is more than just there is mind and there is body. It is very close to that, but it goes one more step and creates an small Oh! or Aha! moment. It is something simple on one hand, but something that is very easy to overlook.

It is the realization that experience consists of mentality and physicality and both of these are OBSERVED, and because they can be observed, they are not what "I" is. We are not the body. We are not the mind. The body can be observed. The mind can be observed. If they can be observed, they are different from what we "are", which seems to be the observer itself.

If you look at a sensation in your body, a warm sensation on the cheek, there is the sensation itself (warm) and there is the mentality of that sensation (the mental label "my cheek"). The sensation itself is the body. The label "cheek" is the mentality. The insight is that because I can witness the experience of warm, then the "I" is not warm, I has to be something different because if I is AWARE of warmth, if it aware of it, then it can't BE it. The insight is that because I can witness the mind labeling the sensation "cheek" then "cheek" isn't what "I" is, I has to be something different because if I is AWARE of "cheek", if it is aware of it, then it can't BE it.

So the insight of mind and body is that, although we identify with things all the time, and although at times we feel like we truly are the body or we are our thoughts and feelings, the truth is we are not our mind and our body, The "I" is capable of experiencing mind and body, so it must be something different. It must be something like the witness of those things or the watcher of those things or "that which is aware of mind and body" or the observer of mind and body.

It is possible to just sit in meditation and notice that sensations appear and thoughts appear. Sensations are sensations. Thoughts are thoughts. Very simple. Very observable. Kinda nice, too. No need to make a big deal about sensations, because they are just sensations. No need to make a big deal about thoughts, because they are just thoughts. There is a little bit more space around the having of sensations and the having of thoughts. There is just a little more peace. You can appreciate why meditation is helpful, it can help create a little more space, a little more peace.

Originally we thought that we were the mind and we observed objects like the body. Which is duality. The unenlightened mind thinks that the mind witnesses objects. Now we see that mind is an object, too. It's the first insight that the world of subject and object isn't as simple as we thought. And it happened because now we have a clear knowledge of mind and body.

Does that match your understanding of the first nana, the Knowledge of Mind and Body?

Yes I know all of this and my point from the beginning is that it is not enough for some people. My point is that it should be expanded to be specific enough so people can actually make progress.

I think I wasted thousands of hours because I didn't have this. I was trying to make something happen with my practice and I was getting some states that suggested I was making progress (on the maps) but I was not proceeding in a way that was most applicable to my state because 1) I couldn't feel all that crap and 2) no one suggested I try it, despite keeping detailed sit logs, seeing multiple teachers, ect.

My point is that the actual progression of mind & body (if this is what it is), with its factors, should be mapped, or put into words, so that people can be guided.

I seem to be running into a lot of dogma.

Is it really that different from what appears to be the standard interpretation of the maps to think that there are multiple notes of mind & body to differentiate and fully see so that they can really grasp what's meant by "Mind & Body"?, that someone needs to have a fairly clear base in order to see this?

Isn't that already in the literature with two of the seven factors of enlightenment, tranquility and concentration?

This just sounds like Pragmatic Dharma to me. But no one appears to think this but me! What is wrong with trying to fix the maps to help more people?

Femtosecond wrote: Is it really that different from what appears to be the standard interpretation of the maps to think that there are multiple notes of mind & body to differentiate and fully see so that they can really grasp what's meant by "Mind & Body"?, that someone needs to have a fairly clear base in order to see this?

Cool. Okay so we're on the same page with the Knowledge of Mind and Body. So the next piece of your question is how to increase the odds that someone has the insight of this stage.

It's important to recognize that you can't just talk about it or tell someone what is supposed to happen, because an insight is different than conventional knowledge. Just like you can't just read a bunch of books and become enlightened, you can't just read descriptions of the Knowledge of Mind and Body nana and experience that insight. That's why you can't really "map" a insight. What you can do is suggest practices that might support the occurrence of an insight.

The amount of time it takes for an insight is completely unpredictable. It's important to know that there are people who make fast progress with little difficulty, slow progress with little difficulty, fast progress with lots of difficulty, and slow progress with lots of difficulty. Some people come up with some metaphysical explanations about why this happens (their "karma", their "impurities") but from a practical dharma point of view, those are just retroactive attempts at explaining something. It's stupid to blame or shame someone for their rate of progress, even ourselves.

There are two aspects of practices that support the first nana: 1) we have to be less attached to our thinking, 2) we have to be curious about how thinking and sensations appear in consciousness. So usually the practices that are suggested are very simple. Simple doesn't mean easy, though.

Mindfulness of breathing can be very difficult. It's not a given that anyone can count breaths from one to ten without having a stream of thinking intrude and break up the counting or for the mind to go on autopilot and keep counting past ten. It's rare to be able to do three sets of 10 consistently. Ironically, some people think that it is the counting that is important and not the relaxed mind, so they will bear down and force themselves to count to ten by thinking really hard --- but that's contrary to the goal, which is to loosen the thinking and controlling mind while staying attentive. So they'll say "what the fuck, I can count to ten for thirty minutes, what's the next practice", but their mindstate is still a mess. One of the easy ways to diagnose people who are forcing a count is when they report a degree of "success" that is simply too high. It's very very rare to be able to go for more than a few minutes without losing count or realizing that we're in the twenties, even for more advance practioners, But the thing is advance practioners know that the point is to simply loosen the mind and start again, and focus on loosening the mind while being aware. So they don't get hung up on the "success" of the counting, they just keep practicing.

The other aspect of practice is being aware of sensations in consciousness. The counting of breaths gently requires the awareness of sensations of breathing because: you need to know when you are breathing in and out to count, and the only way to know is to feel the sensations.

So mindfulness of breathing is a very simple and fast way to create the context for having the insight. The insight however has to come on its own. It can't be forced.

(And the amazing thing is this practice, softening the mind and paying attention to sensations in consciousness, is actually enough for moving through all of the stages and all of the paths to full awakening.)

These days, it seems like the thinking mind is so busy in western society that we just don't calm down and groove on sensations of breathing. So the other major approach that is used in practical dharma is noting. Noting works by using the power of the thinking mind to put the meditator into contact with all of the aspects of mind and body sensations. Again the practice is simple, but it doesn't mean that it is easy. It's very easy for the meditator to easily note some sensations, but not others. Noting the sensations of emotions or thoughts are often difficult or avoided, but sometimes it's the other way around and people are "blind" to their body sensations.

As a result, the practical dharma teaching is to note all four foundations of mindfulness. (As an aside, this isn't anything new, it appears in the Buddha's original teaching. In fact, he said it was the "direct" way to awakening --- which is pretty cool. It seems to work better for people who are not on retreat and only have shorter sessions for practice or who are more analytical.)

All four aspects of being alive need to be noted, although in our practice we can focus on one or more. It's usually better to being a session by focusing on things we are good at to build some momentum, then switch or include the ones that we are difficult at doing. The four foundations are:

1) Body sensations (warmth, tingling, soreness, aching, etc).

2) Body feeling tones (typically only three labels are used: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral)

3) Emotional states (which have more "meaning" than sensations, so it's things like happiness, frustration, contentment, shame, dullness, etc.)

4) Categories of thoughts (judging thoughts, remembering thoughts, predicting thoughts, hoping thoughts, satisfaction thoughts, etc.)

If someone is able to note all four foundations consistently, lets say one note on every outbreath for 30 minutes... it's basically guaranteed they will have the insight of mind and body.

There are two ways people have trouble. The first is they misjudge themselves and think they are doing the practice but they actually aren't. This can be hard to show people because they can be defensive (like me!), but they can test it themselves by noting out loud. Do notes happen every outbreath? A foolproof way to judge is to recording it. Or by reflecting back on the session and seeing if there were notes from all four categories of thoughts. If you can't remember notes from the past sitting session from all four categories, chance are you are still imbedded/identified with some aspect of mind and body, which is preventing the insight.

What's more common is people will have a problem during the noting, but forget to note the problem itself. This can be a bit embarrassing when talking to the teacher because they will point out the obvious thing we're overlooking. (That happened to me all the time!) Oh well, that's just the way it goes. But it is why teachers/friends can be helpful.

The important thing to realize in meditation is it isn't about changing how objects appear in consciousness, but rather getting good at noticing them. ("Waking up to them, not being asleep") If we want to change the content, then we use bodywork for body objects and mental therapies for mental objects. Meditation is simply about being awake to what is actually happening, so it is a different type of practice than those two.


So, based on your experience, do these two methods make sense for someone working through the Mind and Body nana?

I was just thinking... one thing I will say about the domains of practice: meditation really can help with bodywork and psychology. But it takes time. If someone is willing to go slow and take the time, meditation really can help. After all, a lot of what we now know about body and mind is a fairly recent invention of western science. For thousands of years, meditation was just about all anyone had. So the broad effects of meditation shouldn't be minimized. Nor should the effectiveness of more modern stuff obviously. So like everything in life, it just takes a sense of balance to find the right combination of stuff that helps.

That even includes the type of meditation practice. I remember doing the "RAIN" technique for a while when things were really tough and it helped. I also remember spending a good year on the 5 elements.

So on one hand the point is to move up the nanas, get paths, get attainments... but really the bigger picture is doing what is needed in the situation, what fits with how things are going right now. That's going to be a personal thing and isn't going to be some formula or map. It depends on interest, needs, and what resonates with how you are feeling.

Okay, that is all understood.

But what I am a little taken aback by is that no one here is interested in being specific about what can help get traditional insights, and if that process can be mapped to some type of progression. It just appears that no one is interested in this. Evidently it's more or less up in the air if anyone is capable of succeeding in insight meditation, whatever.

To me this looks anomic. It does not appear to be very complicated to figure this stuff out, and people would benefit from someone doing so greatly. Someone might not have the resources/are too busy with other things to research it themselves, but the responses I have been getting is like they aren't even interested in this and don't think it's consequential.

Femtosecond wrote: ...being specific about what can help get traditional insights, and if that process can be mapped to some type of progression.

That's the whole point of pragmatic dharma. There are techniques, maps that provide a general depiction of what happens when the techniques are applied, and people documenting their experience in the open as they apply the techniques. This community is a living map of the process.

One day a man of the people said to the Zen master Ikkyu: “Master,will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?”
Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.”
“Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more?”
Ikkyu then wrote twice running: “Attention. Attention.”
“Well,” remarked the man rather irritably, “I really don’t see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written.”
Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running: “Attention. Attention. Attention.”
Half angered, the man declared: “What does that word attention mean anyway?”
And Ikkyu answered, gently: “Attention means attention.”

www.tathagata.org/DhammaTalks/Instructio...asi_Instruction.html
contemplativefitnessbook.com/book-three-...quick-start-guide-2/

I know about that stuff, and sure, I agree.

I'm saying something different, that there's not enough description of early milestones that make actually doing that stuff in a significant way possible for some people.

It seems most people had a modicum of this stuff when starting and aren't interested in actually listing it.

Now that we are sure that we are talking about the first nana and the techniques that are often used to gain insight in the territory, now we need you to participate in the specifics of the discussion. This is really the only way the conversation can move forward. We have to talk in specifics otherwise we're just guessing about the kinds of "early milestones that make actually doing the practices in a significant way possible for some people" that you are looking for. Milestones seem to mean disembedding from a particular problem in meditation practice. What are those specific problems that you think most often prevent people from doing the practices?

Please provide some specific examples of the problems people have when trying to understand the stage on the map.

Or please provide some specific examples that people have when trying learn breath counting or noting practices.

Or please provide some specific examples of reasons why the practices would not work.

This is important stuff and I think you are on to something. If you aren't interested in providing specific examples though, that's fine, no worries. But if you aren't interested in talking about specific examples, then it seems like the conversation is too abstract. (We've had three pages of conversation so far without really nailing this down.)

I'm definitely interested in participating in this discussion. Count me in.

Ah. There isn't much discussion because there isn't much to say about first nana. It's not a milestone. I hardly experienced it at all. Some of the stages of the progress of insight are much more significant and useful than others, which is why they get discussed all the time: three characteristics, A&P, the dukkha nanas (especially reobservation), equanimity.

Have you read the revised version of Kenneth's progress of insight essay? contemplativefitnessbook.com/book-two-th...ress-of-insight-map/

shargrol wrote: Now that we are sure that we are talking about the first nana and the techniques that are often used to gain insight in the territory, now we need you to participate in the specifics of the discussion. This is really the only way the conversation can move forward. We have to talk in specifics otherwise we're just guessing about the kinds of "early milestones that make actually doing the practices in a significant way possible for some people" that you are looking for. Milestones seem to mean disembedding from a particular problem in meditation practice. What are those specific problems that you think most often prevent people from doing the practices?

Please provide some specific examples of the problems people have when trying to understand the stage on the map.

Or please provide some specific examples that people have when trying learn breath counting or noting practices.

Or please provide some specific examples of reasons why the practices would not work.

This is important stuff and I think you are on to something. If you aren't interested in providing specific examples though, that's fine, no worries. But if you aren't interested in talking about specific examples, then it seems like the conversation is too abstract. (We've had three pages of conversation so far without really nailing this down.)

I'm definitely interested in participating in this discussion. Count me in.

Can I make a few suggestions, based on the conversation? From the conversation, I'm seeing implications that some of the hindrances to establishing a practice in the very early stages CAN include (though they won't be the same for everyone):

-intense physical discomfort in sitting (due to spine problems, fibromyalgia, or other physical conditions, for example)
-intense anxiety (not necessarily one Femto mentioned, but one that is common for many people)
-strong impatience
-very easily distracted
-very easily frustrated

Anyway, is this the kind of thing we are trying to do here? I may be talking about the wrong parts. I agree with Shargrol - Femto, get us started with a list of specifics examples - that would help a ton. Coming up with a complete list of possible problems would help organize drafting guidelines for solutions.

It wasn't a milestone for you. You can consider yourself lucky in this case. For others, like me, I have spent literally thousands of hours in it. It would have been helpful to be oriented. There have been a lot of insights in it for me, but I didn't appreciate it like that for the first couple years. Even trips to non pragmatic, but esteemed buddhist teachers did nothing to help me here. I think there's been like 8-10 comorbid things that were fucking me up, it would have been really nice to have a template to compare myself to. Maybe it would have saved me about a thousand or two hours, rather than just having some generalized instruction about stoicism in practice. It can make difference to someone who needs change: if they don't have a realistic idea of their progress, they can get in the way of themselves.

For me there was a bizarre kriya with disturbing thoughts in my left thumb, anxiety in my left foot, ugly sensations in my lower abdomen, a heavy wrenching knot in my solar plexus, a cold hollow dead feeling in my chest, tension/disorientation in the left part of my head, incredible tension in my right hip, and underneath that pounding pain and general tension in the right leg, and in between all of these a few stages of generalized body unpleasantness/anxiety. And there was anxiety that went along with each of them while they were happening.

I was reading Jake's post about how he had heart stuff in the a&P, throat stuff in the DN and face/head stuff in equanimity. So maybe these things aren't exclusive to the progress of insight. But do they inform the progress of insight? How could they not? These things should be put in their own template that can be called upon to teach people. Kenneth says he can't claim to have a one size fits all practice, but to me this appears to be a not-too-complicated addition that would help a lot of people.

It should be done for the state of the art.

Hmmm-- I think for me at least there seem to be two different things going on, physico-energetically, in my practice. There was that clear sequence of energy blocks being cleared from the bottom of the spine up through the top of the head which was prominant my first time or two through the P o'Insight cycle. That really felt like, for me at least, a sequence of physical experiences directly tied to my progress. In fact, the more I just kept attention on those tensions and their release at a sensate level, the quicker they seemed to give way and progress occurred.

Then on the other hand there are all the idiosyncratic things I have going on in my body. For instance, I have finer proprioception on my left side generally-- a finer grain of sensations. When I close my eyes and feel my body the right side feels distorted and is more associated with negative emotions, patches of strange tension, etc and I also have actual physical issues in certain areas of the right side, such as a recurrent iritis in my right eye. Yet the left side of my body feels very clear aqnd natural by default. When my concentration is good, the right side becomes finer-grained and more stable and clear and less distorted. Progress over time from baseline shifts, basically is shifting the sensations of the right side of my body gradually in the direction of finer-grained more accurate proprioception.

But I don't think mapping these things would do anyone else much good, because they are fairly idiosyncratic to me. Even the initial process of energy moving up the middle of the body, which is a fairly classical experience in terms of the process of unblocking chakras, is not going to be experienced by everyone or in the same way (sequence, qualities at each location, etc) for each person who DOES experience that. And I definitely know people who have had a lot of experience with chakra openings and energy moving up through the crown of the head who don't seem to have any of the insight-understandings that I associate with stream entry. So, where does this leave us? I'm not sure. It is clear that there is something of vital importance in this conversation to you, and I think contrary to how you may be feeling at points in this conversation, everyone who is participating with you in this thread is committed to supporting you in your endeavors here on this thread and in general. I am just not sure if what is at issue is the mapping of stuff in the 1st nana or what, because in my experience the kinds of physical things you are talking about can be spread out over the whole cycle of insight in some cases and in others can be apparently totally idiosyncratic and more a part of concentration practice/energy work/even depth psychological-energy work, but point being, totally different from the progress of insight.

That said, I think Shargrol offered good clarification and redirection for this conversation in his recent post, in terms of bringing the discourse down to a very very concrete level with you sharing examples of what you would like to see included in the mapping, and articulating why these phenomena should be included in the context of maping the early nanas, and methods that you used to make progress that you wish in retrospect that you had used earlier, and also, what you were doing in the initial thousands of hours that seemed in retrospect to be a waste of time. For starters---

Femtosecond wrote: For others, like me, I have spent literally thousands of hours in it.

I challenge that assumption.

Yeah, that's up in the air too, actually. I only say it because if what I've been experiencing for the past year is the DN, I'm surprised! It seems like all the stuff I've been working with is directly traceable to the kind of misery I had before meditation.

F, please say more about what you would propose!

You know, all this talk about mind and body nana never seemed quite right... I've thought about this a bit, and I'm pretty convinced that what you are describing is the Knowledge of Three Characteristics stage.

3.1 The Three Characteristics
Basic insight: Begin to see Three Characteristics: impermanence, suffering, no-self
Basic Flaw: Fight them, don't see them very clearly, mostly at physical level

The Three Characteristics stage will always feel like a purification of sorts. All sorts of sensations arising, all sorts of reactivity arising to the degree that we fight the reality of the Three Characteristics: the unpredictability, unsatisfactoriness, and self-arising nature of what arises, mostly in the body.

The basic direction is to let it happen, don't fight it, don't make it into a project, don't try to fix anything, don't try to manipulate anything, just let it happen.

From MCTB:

... This unpleasantness tends to be mostly physical, though this stage can also cause numerous dark feelings and a sense of wanting to renounce the world and practice. Occasionally, the early part of this stage can cause people to feel vulnerable, raw, and irritable to a small or large degree in the ways that a migraine headache or a bad case of PMS can. I have occasionally been laid out on a couch for hours by this aspect of this stage, holding my head and just wishing that these early stages didn’t sometimes involve so much pain and anguish.

There may be odd bodily twistings, obsession with posture, and painful tensions or strange other sensations, particularly in the back, neck, jaw and shoulders. These tensions may persist when not meditating and be quite irritating and even debilitating. The rhomboid and trapezius muscles are the most common offenders. It is common to try to sit with good posture and then find one’s body twisting into some odd and painful position. You straighten out, and soon enough it does it again. That’s a very Three Characteristics sort of pattern. People sometimes describe these feelings as some powerful energy that is blocked and seems wants to get out or move through.

Feelings of heat and sensations like those of a fever may sometimes accompany this stage. One’s neck and back may become very stiff, either on one side or both sides. The right and left sides of one’s body may feel quite different from each other sometimes. The easiest way to get these unpleasant physical manifestations to go away is to keep investigating the Three Characteristics, either of them or of whatever primary object you have chosen. These are common early retreat experiences, particularly in the first few days.

Fighting them or trying other methods (back rubs, etc.) seems to either help only a little, work only temporarily, or sometimes make them even worse, though sometimes hatha yoga and related practices done with a high degree of awareness can be helpful. This is a common time for people to go to health practitioners of various kinds, from orthopedists and dentists to chiropractors and body workers. For example, I had a wisdom tooth removed during one pass through this stage because I thought it was throwing my jaw out of alignment, and perhaps it was, but this was clearly exacerbated by this stage of practice.

Even if these unpleasant physical manifestations do slack off for a bit, they are likely to keep coming back until one’s insight is sufficient to progress beyond this part of this stage. Thus, should one find such things interfering with one’s life, I recommend continued precise and accepting practice. This is a phase of practice when strong effort and very quick investigation really pay off.

Certain traditions may look at such physical manifestations as “energy imbalances” or in some other negative light, and I can see where they are coming from, but I find those perspectives limiting. Rather, I see this stage in its broader context as just one more phase of practice. Others may invent very strange stories to explain these experiences. A friend of mine ran into this ñana on retreat, found it very unpleasant, stopped practicing and began to spin out all sorts of fantastic stories in her head about how the poor fellow sitting next to her was very angry and how it was making her tense. This didn’t help whatsoever, and she got stuck there. I have learned to welcome these odd manifestations as clearly recognizable markers of progress on the path. They are clear objects for practice and reassure me that I am on the right track. Unfortunately, this is a hard lesson to teach others. True, these manifestations can suck, but being able to appreciate what is happening in the face of the difficult stages is important, and becomes much more important later on.

As the mind gains speed at really seeing each of the sensations of the mind and body come and go, the jerkiness from cause and effect can get quite rapid and pronounced. These physical movements and spasms seem to help break up the physical tension that may sometimes accompany this stage, and are a sign of progress.