Practical Hua-Tou

@tomo: If you work on the h-t during the day, do you find yourself asking the question spontaneously without even noticing it much? I find this with the self-inquiry. Sometimes I don't even know if I asked the question. It's unknown whether this is a fruitful or not, since I'm not really aware of the question at these times. Weber says the question works on you "unconsciously" so it may not be that important. It seems that the practice instructions for h-t vis-a-vis self-inquiry are somewhat different though.



"Keep asking the h-t not thinking you will answer it, but that the h-t will answer you." I love that! I think that's a great mindset for self-inquiry too.

Thanks for the update!

I think you can get that "inquiring mind" attitude by asking the question in the same way you might ask "now where did i put my keys?" You may be busy with daily activities, but for a moment your mind turns itself to the question.

What I was emphasizing before is that if you only ask the question when you have enough time to get into a deep meditative state, then you are missing the chance to let it work on you the other 23 hours of the day. While the asking throughout the day is not a substitute for a more focused session, it certainly doesn't hurt and I think it can be very beneficial.

I think even a rote repetition of it is better than nothing, because a) it will seep into the unconscious mind and b) it will support a more attentive asking by establishing a habit (ie even if at first one in ten times you remember to actually turn your full attention to the rote question, that is a start).

"Dat iz why you practice."

It's funny how the mind is primed to rest itself in answers rather than questioning, even if the answer is, "This is stupid. It isn't working, so there's no point in trying." (I'm not suggesting this is what you're thinking, Tom. It's just an example.)

It's a lot like the 2nd law of thermodynamics: entropy. For there to be a lot of complexity, a lot of energy needs to be expended. When the source of energy is lacking, complex systems revert into levels of lower complexity that require much less energy. It's not unlike how to keep your perishible food from rotting, which takes very little energy, we have to pump enormous amount of electricity into the refrigerator. Unplug the fridge, and the milk descends into chaotic nastiness.

What's my point? H-t practice takes a lot of energy, especially at first. The good news is that over time, the ability to raise doubt gets stronger. It's like lifting weights to grow bigger muscles. It takes some time, but it takes less effort to maintain the muscles than it did to grow them. Keeping the h-t as much as possible during the day is like exercising your doubt-generating muscles. It will get stronger through continued practice.

The h-t literature contains stories about lay practioners who kept their h-t going for many years, without any significant results. Yet suddenly, unexpectedly, they woke up. Like all practices, different human beings develop their capacities at different rates. The essential point is to just keep it going; maybe not endlessly, but long enough to know whether the ability to grow the doubt is improving. I'd give it at least six months.

Do you people think it can be useful to practice the daily h-t without dedicated h-t sitting, as an adjunct to regular vipassana? I began trying yesterday, but sill very difficult to remember it all during the day. Maybe with time...

I found it worth trying because something that happened at my last retreat. (I'll tell the details because it's a little charming tale) I was calmly sitting vipassana when all of sudden it was apparent there was no intrinsic self. As a result got into what seems a mild altered state and my mind agitated at the novelty of the experience. I couldn't keep the scanning, so I asked Hermes Thrice Great (to whom I keep a devotion and sometimes refer for advice) what should I do and he answered: "Who's asking?" I kept rising the question, momment to momment, through the entire sit. But I would also "search" for the watcher among sensations - and at the same time watching my mind running after it's own tail. It seems to me this is outside h-t - or it's not?

Iago wrote: Do you people think it can be useful to practice the daily h-t without dedicated h-t sitting, as an adjunct to regular vipassana?

I think it's best done as one's whole practice. That's how it was designed as a method, in my understanding. The point of the h-t practice is to build doubt, and the momentum stops when the doubting stops.

Iago wrote: I began trying yesterday, but sill very difficult to remember it all during the day. Maybe with time...

Maybe indeed.

Iago wrote: I found it worth trying because something that happened at my last retreat. (I'll tell the details because it's a little charming tale) I was calmly sitting vipassana when all of sudden it was apparent there was no intrinsic self.

Why, hello, Emptiness! Glad to make your acquaintance.

Iago wrote: As a result got into what seems a mild altered state and my mind agitated at the novelty of the experience. I couldn't keep the scanning, so I asked Hermes Thrice Great (to whom I keep a devotion and sometimes refer for advice) what should I do and he answered: "Who's asking?" I kept rising the question, momment to momment, through the entire sit. But I would also "search" for the watcher among sensations - and at the same time watching my mind running after it's own tail.

Adding active inquiry here seems odd to me. When a head-on collision with emptiness happens, of course there's going to be chaos in the mindstream. Moving into active inquiry seems like an attempt to regain control of the situation. Why not just sit with the chaos, come what will?

Iago wrote: It seems to me this is outside h-t - or it's not?

Can you clarify what you mean by "outside"? If you mean to say this is not h-t practice, I think you'd be right.

Jackson wrote:

I think it's best done as one's whole practice. That's how it was designed as a method, in my understanding. The point of the h-t practice is to build doubt, and the momentum stops when the doubting stops.

Thank you for the advice! I'm interested on ways of extending my pratice to off-cushion somehow, but it may be better so to stick with the 'alien' method Cmarti pointed, and regular mindfulness, more akin to my present sitting pratice (Goenka's body scanning).

Jackson wrote:

When a head-on collision with emptiness happens, of course there's going to be chaos in the mindstream. Moving into active inquiry seems like an attempt to regain control of the situation. Why not just sit with the chaos, come what will?

Now you say, I think that even searching for advice from deities on situations like that can be unskillfull, as an attempt to keep control. When you talk about sitting with the chaos, you mean choiceless awareness with open scope - being mindful and equanimous with anything sensation that comes to attention? I ask this because I'm not skilled at noting pratice, and if I was to follow strictly Goenka's method, I should turn to samatha until agitation subdued, and then keep the body scanning as usual. I didn't do this because I was afraid I would 'lose' an important perception, wich seems now to me an attachment to the altered state.

Jackson wrote:

Can you clarify what you mean by "outside"? If you mean to say this is not h-t practice, I think you'd be right.

Yup! This.

Thank you again! Metta.

Iago wrote: Thank you for the advice! I'm interested on ways of extending my pratice to off-cushion somehow, but it may be better so to stick with the 'alien' method Cmarti pointed, and regular mindfulness, more akin to my present sitting pratice (Goenka's body scanning).

Good move.

Iago wrote: Now you say, I think that even searching for advice from deities on situations like that can be unskillfull, as an attempt to keep control.

Yahtzee!

Iago wrote: When you talk about sitting with the chaos, you mean choiceless awareness with open scope - being mindful and equanimous with anything sensation that comes to attention? I ask this because I'm not skilled at noting pratice, and if I was to follow strictly Goenka's method, I should turn to samatha until agitation subdued, and then keep the body scanning as usual.

Be present with whatever arises without getting involved in the details. You can call this choiceless awareness if you want, but don't worry about trying to feel equanimity. Resting in attention tends to lead to equanimity, but only when you stop caring about whether equanimity is or isn't happening.

Iago wrote: I didn't do this because I was afraid I would 'lose' an important perception, wich seems now to me an attachment to the altered state.

I like this. No perception that can pass away is worth clinging to. The nature of perception is change, so... ?

I'm enjoying this conversation.

Jackson, you're on a genius roll today. Nice advice.

(Added to my file of useful things to remember...)

Haha - glad it's useful. I don't know if I would describe the roll as genius, because it feels sort of like the opposite. It would seem that I've recently dropped a lot of conceptual baggage that was both unhelpful and unnecessary. There's no guarantee that I won't pick it up again. Maybe next time I'll hoist and haul something even more yucky. Maybe not.