Owen's Practice Journal, Part II

Ahh... something popped on my way home tonight. It will always hurt to look inside at the self since you have to make it up for it to be there at all! When you can surrender to looking "out" riding right at the edges of your ears and eyes and skin and not needing a past or a future you become whole. One taste, direct mode, pce. Doesn't matter. The self is another hot coal to drop!

There seems to have been a glitch in the system where I couldn't load this thread.. anyway, glitch is gone

" It will always hurt to look inside at the self..." -- Owen

Maybe I'm stupid, so I operate under that assumption when I ask these questions. The use of the word "pain" here is causing me some confusion. Owen, can you provide a more detailed explanation of what you are describing in your comment? How is this "pain" different from the pain of being stuck by a needle?

Also, you say:

"One taste, direct mode, pce. Doesn't matter. The self is another hot coal to drop!"

This, too, is confusing me in relation to direct mode, assuming you are, in fact, connecting the two. What do you mean by the term "one taste?" Are you dropping the self sense in direct mode or are you doing what has been previously described - not allowing emotions like anger to fully arise? I think what's confusing me is that if there is no self sense in the picture why would anger be a problem? Why would anger arise at all if there's not self sense? Or... are you both dropping the self sense and thereby preventing anger from arising?

Again, trying to understand....

"Owen, can you provide a more detailed explanation of what you are describing in your comment? How is this "pain" different from the pain of being stuck by a needle?"

Hi Chris,
The self-contraction, the little self that gets seen at 4th path as "not you" appears to only show up when you try look at it. Noticing the self creates it. There is a subtle sensation now of physical pain when I try and investigate it. In fact, it seems as though emotional pain is just the physical pain that's caused by the effort involved in breaking off the whole into a little self. It's just a habit of endless tail chasing.

So outside of the PCE, when I look at something, I simultaneously create a self image inside the body that "sees" it. This breaks off to some degree and it must then be protected. It gains a life of its own and this is the beginning of desire and aversion. "It" needs to survive but can't. It is in an impossible situation, so grabs on to identity after identity not wanting to admit that it was a fiction the entire time.

The fix to this pain is direct mode. One of the things I'm doing lately is to observe the world at the surface of the eyes and hear the world only where I feel the sounds at the ears. This has the effect of not producing an internal image of a self, which always winds up leading to a sh*t storm.

Anyway I hope that helps. BTW, I'm using the phrase one taste to describe the feeling of the world without a fictional self acting as a filter. No suffering or emotional pain at all when I'm in that state.

I think this is a vastly simplified experiential version of this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_origination

The objects in awareness are awareness itself. I can't look anywhere and fail to see awareness. They are the only me to which I can truthfully point.

When I keep my attention on the present sensations, I can't ever seem find a self. Emotions start to arise but there is nothing to keep them moving, so they quickly settle back. The self-contraction is a mirage, a perceptual artifact created by the need to project into an imaginary past or future. If I stop projecting it disappears. Right now, in this moment, there is no self, no one to get hit even by the first arrow. I'm just trying to make awareness of this moment into my habit, my default, so I don't keep jumping under the bus.

It hurts to think of myself.

Found this:
www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.089x.wlsh.html

It seems about dead on for what I'm going through right now. The gross emotions are now getting seen as the self-contraction or the "I Am" conceit. There is a part of me that's really not thrilled about going through this process and I've flip-flopped a bit over the last week, but I've about given up on the idea that I can do anything about it. Time to quit fighting and let it go.
Simply noticing when gross emotions come up and reminding myself that the self is not in any of the five aggregates has the effect of making it drop almost instantly.
I'm really rather peaceful this morning. It's nice.

Would anybody want to watch an 80's themed Buddhist hip hop group called the Sukha MCs? Because I know I would.

So I'm back to cycle mode and noting mind states for a while. Hitting large chunks of emotional material that are not getting appropriately addressed in direct mode, so time to down shift. The long term goal is still the full eradication of conceit, and I am spending longer and longer periods without self reference, but I have to go "weed the garden" so to speak. Old stuff is still old stuff, and it has to get addressed on its own terms.

While I'm not fond of cycle mode, I'm again impressed with the simple power of noting. It really is a bulldozer. Especially after 4th it's fun to watch what happens when I make a resolution. I even caught myself noting emotions and mind states when I got up to hit the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Tonight I'm going to go back to riding the arc and hitting NS and the PL Jhanas and all that. It should be fun, or at least make for more entertaining practice notes.

Regarding your Friday post: for about 3 seconds once, I thought I'd start a Buddhism blog called "I'm Gonna Git You Sukha".

Hi Owen,

About the emotional material that are not getting addressed in direct mode, in my experience they seem to only arise when I'm not in direct mode, and I do not find them to interfere with my every day life until I'm out of DM. At this time I find myself split between two possible ideas as the total eradication of suffering: one is that DM (or PCE, or whatever it is people call it when one has shifted into the non-localized, pure awareness) is the final eradication of suffering since there is no self contraction and henceforth no suffering arises, and the other is that even out of DM/PCE one experiences all the manifest world (including the sense of self) while noticing the 3 characteristics in real time, and being in deep equanimity with the whole manifest world (aka, experiencing the whole manifest world post 4h path).
Another interesting thing is what you mentioned on post No. 181. The noticing of the whole "Self". I have periods of time in which I seem to get "stuck" of the "I am" as my mind continues to find a suitable "self" for Jorge Freddy Post 4th path. Like you experienced, noticing the gross emotions coming up and noticing the 3 characteristics (at least in my case) does make it pass almost instantly. I only experience this whole flip-flop, get caught up in the "I am" while out of DM/PCE. I have very recently started to get a handle on successfully noticing the real nature of the "I am" (which was really really strong right after attaining to 4th path, but then it came and went, without my being able to control it).

Hope you have fun tonight riding the good ol' jhanic arc. Let us know how it goes!
with metta,

Jorge Freddy

So back up and down the arc again tonight. I find it so odd that it almost always takes about 20 minutes for the first trip. It's nearly clockwork.

I'm also noting the hell out of mind states in walking around mode. It's interesting, a bit like a dark night again, but not the same. It's as if all the features of a hard dark night are manifesting but I just can't bring myself to care. The mind is so non-stick even in the midst of severe emotional pain - perhaps the trick is that I don't expect anything other than pain when there is pain. But it's more than that, when it hurts, it isn't pain vs me. I'm pain. Or joy, or boredom or frustration or even romance. It doesn't matter. The world as it is is perfect. It needs absolutely nothing. I used to find a lot of things wrong with the world, but it was only because I was looking at my imagination. To tell the truth, I still sometimes get tripped up by that.

One of the things I've been trying to do today (chatted with Ian about this over dinner) is to keep up the awareness that everything I'm seeing is already broken apart. Totally impermanent. I don't even get the next second - it's already gone. This body is a already a corpse and I'm typing this on a broken computer. Finding it easier to stay grateful and more detached this way.

"One of the things I've been trying to do today (chatted with Ian about this over dinner) is to keep up the awareness that everything I'm seeing is already broken apart. Totally impermanent. I don't even get the next second - it's already gone. This body is a already a corpse and I'm typing this on a broken computer."

Could you clarify this sentence? It sounds a bit strange to me (given you are neither a corpse, nor is your computer broken, obviously). What is this perspective you are trying to describe?

"One of the things I've been trying to do today (chatted with Ian about this over dinner) is to keep up the awareness that everything I'm seeing is already broken apart. Totally impermanent. I don't even get the next second - it's already gone. This body is a already a corpse and I'm typing this on a broken computer. Finding it easier to stay grateful and more detached this way.

"

Could you please rephrase this in broken english?
(sorry)

Hahaha! Yeh, what the hell are you talking about Owen?

Okay, yeah. Teach me to post in fragments when I'm super tired.

I was thinking about Buddha's last words:

"all things are of a nature to decay; vigilently strive on."

So what I'm driving at is that because impermanence is fact, everything I'm seeing contains within it both the nature to come together into what it is now and the nature to break apart into the elements that are giving it it's current form. If the nature of this body is impermanent, then in one sense it is already a corpse. It's also a baby, and old man, my parents, their parents, all the food they ate, all the circumstances that made it possible for them to live... everything. The whole sherbang can be found by looking at anything in this room. And none of it can retain it's present shape for very long, so why not be grateful for it while it looks the way it does?

Er...?

posneg.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/415px..._001.jpg?w=351&h=496

"Er...?

posneg.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/415px..._001.jpg?w=351&h=496 "

Wow, super creepy image but yeah... Damn dude where do you find these things?

An internet friend of mine dug it up from out of the ether. Here's the whole post:
posneg.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/samsara-...uroburous-mandalaos/

It's a weird wacky place... Speaking of which, didn't you say something about starting up your blog again?

Yeah, I need to write something first. The hamilton project also needs a new podcast.

"So what I'm driving at is that because impermanence is fact, everything I'm seeing contains within it both the nature to come together into what it is now and the nature to break apart into the elements that are giving it it's current form. If the nature of this body is impermanent, then in one sense it is already a corpse. It's also a baby, and old man, my parents, their parents, all the food they ate, all the circumstances that made it possible for them to live... everything. The whole sherbang can be found by looking at anything in this room. And none of it can retain it's present shape for very long, so why not be grateful for it while it looks the way it does?"


Congratulations, Owen, on discovering emptiness

Hey, I'm the last one who should talk about a lack of blog writing. Just curious if it was still in the works.

Also brings to mind this quote from Stephan Hawking I read today: "I still believe the universe has a beginning in real time at the big bang. But there's another kind of time, "imaginary time", at right angles to real time, in which the universe has no beginning or end."

It's "what is your original face before your parents were born" applied to the universe!

(yeah yeah, no mixing the physics and the metaphysics, I know, I know...)

"
"So what I'm driving at is that because impermanence is fact, everything I'm seeing contains within it both the nature to come together into what it is now and the nature to break apart into the elements that are giving it it's current form. If the nature of this body is impermanent, then in one sense it is already a corpse. It's also a baby, and old man, my parents, their parents, all the food they ate, all the circumstances that made it possible for them to live... everything. The whole sherbang can be found by looking at anything in this room. And none of it can retain it's present shape for very long, so why not be grateful for it while it looks the way it does?"


Congratulations, Owen, on discovering emptiness


"

No kidding, I'm so not feeling that original lately. I'm on a back to basics kick. Every time I cycle back though what I think I understand it gets deeper and deeper.

But seriously, viewing this body as a corpse in waiting has a lovely side effect of not allowing me to get wrapped up in my current dark night bulls*it. This is a grindingly hard one, I need all the help I can get.

I think I can relate to the Dark Night experiences you are talking about post Satori Owen. I have had my share, although I am not in one right now... going back to the basics is good. I wish you a smooth passage to the next level of deepening which I am sure is on the way. It always is, even in the darkest night the dawn is closer than we think...

"But seriously, viewing this body as a corpse in waiting has a lovely side effect of not allowing me to get wrapped up in my current dark night bulls*it. This is a grindingly hard one, I need all the help I can get.

"

What is the point of Arahatship if one still suffers from so called Dark Nights?