Unlearning Meditation - Jason Siff

Cool! Yeah, I wouldn't claim to have fully grokked Siff's approach, but it definitely seems like territory worth exploring. BTW, fantastic pic!

Chris Marti wrote: In my experience the fastest, most efficient way to a quiet the mind is to let the mind do what it does without judgment or resistance.

I've read Jason Siff's book, and, in theory, it sounds reasonable. But, I've been sitting for what will be 2 years in February and I'm not one bit closer to stream entry since I've been watching my mind do what it does.

It would seem that I'm just like people who have no knowledge of the dharma and who aren't trying to wake up, yet they sit quietly and watch their thoughts to no effect.

I remember Ajahn Chah saying how animals can sit quietly for hours on end, yet they gain no wisdom.

Tina wrote: I remember Ajahn Chah saying how animals can sit quietly for hours on end, yet they gain no wisdom.

+1

Although my dog doesn't seem to need much more wisdom anyway...

Watching the mind can be a really tricky practice. I remember spending a few years doing very long motorcycle rides out in the plains and high desert. If you asked me then I would have said that I was watching my thoughts. And I was, I swear. But I wasn't quite seeing them with right view, I was still pretty invested in them but really had no idea. It's normal, I think.

Watching the mind can put us in a state of presence, but that can be a dead end. It was for me. It was basically a very positive end for psychology, but it's a false summit for going further. It took someone telling me: that state of presence is just another state. Wow! That really shook me up and unsettled me. I was pretty identified with fairly quiet sitting and a fairly clear mind, a mild equanimity. I was making progress, mostly on the moral side of things (because internal quiet makes us sensitive to morality), but mediation practice was somewhat stale. I nearly gave up many, many times.

Even though equanimity is pretty lacking in self and suffering, it isn't who we are, it's another state.

My take on Siff's work right now is that it is about understanding how your mind works and trying to see what's really going on. I've been discovering a lot of self-harshness that I hadn't seen before. For example, one frequently recurring phenomenon for me is a situation where I'll be meditating and I'll keep having these imagined scenarios pop up where I'm in our Wednesday night dharma group and am saying stuff about practice, kind of addressing individual people or the whole group. One way to approach this--and I'm not saying it's a 'wrong' way to approach it, just a different way--is to immediately label it as an 'imagining thought' and go right back to the breath. There's an advantage to this: you've short-circuited proliferation and kept the concentration going, and you've dis-identified from the thought.

But the instructor I've been working with has been encouraging me to let these kinds of scenarios play out and to see things like the tone of voice I'm using in the imagined scene, how I'm feeling as I interact with other people, the kinds of things they're saying to me in response and so forth.

I used to have quite a lot of self-loathing come up in relation to these dharma thoughts. The feeling I had was that this was me being a pretentious 'teacher guy' who imagines himself holding forth in front of other people. Actually, that's just the harsh interpretation, but I didn't realize that I was embedded in that harsh interpretation because I'd never really looked at it before. In fact, these little scenarios are also at least in part about a sincere effort to try to understand the dharma better, to share stuff with other people, to feel that you're helping someone else and are part of a community and so forth.

So I guess the question is whether paying more precise attention to the thinking process in this way can help you better understand how that process works. What's the difference between Siff's approach and just being a "chronic yogi" who "sits in the ghost cave," always spinning out? If there is a difference, it has to be related to discernment. I think this is why Siff emphasizes journals so much. He wants you to reflect on what's been happening and how it happens--like, what happens before and after a given phenomenon.

That sounds similar to something I have done a lot of, which is to pay more attention to the *relationship* to the thoughts (or experiences, or whatever sensations/phenomena) than to the things themselves. Like you say in your example, noticing the reaction to it, the feelings around it, what it reveals about who I think I am, or who I think I should be, etc. I think that's very fruitful territory, and very much a deep kind of investigation.

Some (not all) people get into a kind of "watching" state where they just distance themselves from what's going on, but they aren't investigating anything. That may be useful at times, perhaps, but it can also be a kind of dead end.

shargrol wrote: ... I was making progress, mostly on the moral side of things (because internal quiet makes us sensitive to morality)....

Can you say more about this shargrol? I never heard anyone say that before (quiet makes us sensitive to morality).

Nothing new, and it's similar to what you are describing in your post above.

When you sit quietly, not meditatively but just sitting without other demands, thoughts will automatically arise. Some thoughts are delightful and some are distressful. Over time, it becomes more and more clear that greedy thoughts are a source of distress. Generous thoughts are delightful. Not because of some moral code, but because greediness becomes something that requires more and more planing and plotting to defend, whereas generosity is just a wonderful opening up.

To have this kind of automatic morality happen, you need to be sensitive to the feelings associated with thinking. Usually the speed of life covers up the feelings.

Of course, quiet can make people totally freak out, too. It can trigger a lot of reactivity. So it isn't a cure-all, it's not like solitary confinement automatically creates moral humans (althought I bet that was once the rationale for it).

EDIT: All I'm describing is a basically "time out" for adults!

"Some (not all) people get into a kind of "watching" state where they just distance themselves from what's going on, but they aren't investigating anything. That may be useful at times, perhaps, but it can also be a kind of dead end."

For sure. And maybe what's operating there sometimes is the idea that peaceful states will lead to a transformation without you having to do the work of active investigation.

shargrol wrote: Of course, quiet can make people totally freak out, too. It can trigger a lot of reactivity. So it isn't a cure-all, it's not like solitary confinement automatically creates moral humans (althought I bet that was once the rationale for it).

It totally was . And, I agree about the way in which in quietness one comes to see that 'immoral' states actually cause suffering for the self (and of course, very often others).

Chris Marti wrote:

But, I've been sitting for what will be 2 years in February and I'm not one bit closer to stream entry since I've been watching my mind do what it does.

Tina, how do you know this? You might be very close to stream entry and not know it. Some of us actually attain stream entry and don't know it.

Chris, you are right, I wouldn't know for sure, but I've recently started working with Abre Chen, and there is nothing in my reports that seem to indicate attainment of stream entry.

Also, on a personal note, with the possible break up of my 13 year relationship hanging over me, I'm feeling desperate, hopeless, and entangled in thoughts of sadness, loss, confusion, and disbelief. Entangled is probably an understatement.

Doesn't sound like someone who has reached any sort of realization, except that suffering is in full swing here.

-Tina

Best wishes Tina! I hope whatever happens ultimately works out for you and everyone involved. Sending you good mojo!

Tina wrote: Also, on a personal note, with the possible break up of my 13 year relationship hanging over me, I'm feeling desperate, hopeless, and entangled in thoughts of sadness, loss, confusion, and disbelief. Entangled is probably an understatement.

Tina, I'm sorry to hear about this situation - sending best wishes. What I'd say in regards to practice is that early paths don't necessarily fix this kind of thing - in my experience, I was just as depressed after Second Path (agreed by Beth, not just my opinion) as I had been before starting out (the way I described the difference in my experience was like, before practice it was like being a character in a horror movie - afterwards, it was like being locked in a box watching a horror movie). I don't want to discourage you - I think all of this was necessary for my path and has taken me to a place where I do feel like my practice is really impacting on that experience of suffering. But not being deeply entangled and embedded in negative stuff is not a sign that one hasn't achieved the early paths, at least from my perspective - and on the flip side, those early paths won't necessarily remove lots of that suffering, as of course I had fantasised that they would.

Best wishes and a hug to you, Tina.

Hang in there, Tina. As Kenneth would say, Mucho metta and mudita to you!