Owen's Practice Journal, Part II

With all the life drama lately, I haven't gotten a chance to sit in about five or six days. Rectified that tonight. Feel so much better. I'm now playing with Kasina practice using a candle. It is incredible how fast that works to ramp up the concentration. Within minutes, the flame was everything. It felt very 1st and 2nd jhana like. Can't really tell where I am in the arc, the flame takes up too much space. Sit ended with an intense fruition. I think I'll be doing this for the next couple of weeks. Will be taking copious notes here.

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
-Ryokan

Oh my god, that poem just summed me up right now. Too....laaaaazyyyy.....meh!

A quotation regarding meditation from another great yogi:

"You can see a lot just by looking"
-Yogi Berra

Okay, back to kasina practice.

Okay, quick (20 minute) sit. But... Wow. Using a candle for a kasina object can get your concentration up really quick. I spent about 15 minutes staring at the flame until I lost contact will everything else. Closed eyes and raised internal visual field to the sweet spot and had a fruition that nearly knocked me over. Noticing big vibration with green energy pulses around throat area pre and post fruition. Rocketed up to 13th Jhana and was assailed with the most intense full body pleasure and bliss. Almost more than I could stand. 13th Jhana was cracked apart by another blasting fruition. Had to stop at that point and lean back against the wall for a while. Damn.

More kasina practice. Noticing concentration in a way that I've never experienced before. It gets so deep so fast. Also noticing that since I've done so much vipassana over the last few months, it's hard to let anything be solid. I have a habit of wanting to tear it down into mind moments and sensations.
So again, about 15 minutes of kasina, then the last 5 rocking up through the jhanas to 13. They are so much more clear now. NS, as always, is hard to do while sitting upright.

Anybody else find that periods of intense samatha practice reducing the need for sleep? Keep finding that I don't want to go to bed if I'm doing lots of kasina work.

I don't know for sure about kasina practice, but there's a body-based relaxation/concentration practice I do that does leave me feeling like I don't need to sleep, particularly if I do it right before I go to bed. I wouldn't be surprised if kasina practice does the same thing.

Few quick things:

1. Attempting the jhanic arc with a 9 hour sleep debt while reclining will not produce the desired results.

2. My experience is still "cloud of mysterious and agentless sensations" rather than "little man in Owen's head who needs to be protected from reality". So far, this seems to be pretty much constant.

3. I'm still neurotic as hell. In fact, I'm a lot more aware of being neurotic as hell. It just doesn't seem like the pain resulting from said neuroses is happening to anybody in particular. It might just be one arrow, but it still stings.

Soon, I'll be verging on the annoying about this, but: I was so struck by Norman Fisher's podcast in which he said that "intimacy," in zen, is another word for "enlightenment" and that he prefers inimacy because enlightenment has the connotation of being changed somehow, of being above everything in your life while intimacy sounds like one is becoming CLOSER to themselves rather than above it all. (something like that)
intimacy is a word I've been using a lot lately I think for the same reason. the progress of insight seems to be a process of getting closer and closer and closer to all parts of our experience. all parts. and having a good relationship with whatever is going on.
sounds like that is what is happening to you

Yeah, it feels very much like that. It is as if, in not having a fixed identity, it is now safe to experience deeply whatever is happening in the moment, even extreme pain or sadness. It is simultaneously dreamlike and very real. I don't want to hurt, but hurting isn't a problem. I don't want pleasure to stop, but when it goes I don't mind. In the end, I've become both the pleasure and the pain, and because of that I'm not suffering.

So after about a week of being low level sick with the flu I'm finally rested and beginning to feel better. It's kind of interesting being sick these days, it's as if the sensations of discomfort and fatigue are just more of me. When I'm sick, I'm just sick and nothing else is really going on. Previously, I would have resisted it and because of that resistance, it would have set a tone for the entire experience that hid all of the "not sick" moments within the sick. It's startling how much the idea of a self apart from experience colors everything. No more fanatically filtering factotum fretting and frothing in the space between me and the world. I am simply just what's happening, and that is perfectly fine.

The sit today was a ride up and down the arc. Three rounds of breath counting followed by 1st to 13th jhana then back. I love how I don't have to do anything, it all just shows up when I notice it. The simple act of noting what's in front of me will reveal all the layers of my mind. It's not hard to do, it just takes practice.

"It might just be one arrow, but it still stings"

Bingo! That one arrow can still be a real killer.

"
"It might just be one arrow, but it still stings"

Bingo! That one arrow can still be a real killer.

"

Yep. One arrow is all you need. I keep thinking how much work I have to do on myself that is not at all about dharma. Just basic human stuff. Relationships, doctor visits, money... you know, the rest of life.

For tonight's sit, I figured instead of candle kasina, I'd just get up to 7th jhana and soak in nothingness for a while. It's very nice, like a vacation. The longer I stay in a jhana the more intense it becomes. Tonight it was just bathing in nothingness. Endless black. Not to be morbid, but I think this is what suicidal people fantasize about. It is total break time from daily reality.

For the record, I need to stop playing with NS when I'm on the cushion. Really. Seriously this time. I promise. It is getting frustrating to keep coming back to conditioned reality while falling forward with your head about to hit the wall. I am a slow learner. I must do this while reclining. Or in an airplane. Well, maybe not in an airplane. They have those defibrillator thingies. Somebody might misinterpret. Then instead of a just feeling of falling, I've got electric burns on my nipples and I'm soaked in my own urine. Right. Keeping it to reclining.

Anyhow, Nick. My nothingness shamatha beats your ninja siddhis. Ninjas are just dressed in black. When in the 7th jhana, I am the night.

One arrow can still sting pretty good, it's alright if it weren't for that arrow how could one be a real human? I too am coming to realize that there are plenty of things the dharma has helped me gain perspective on while not really fixing them directly, that's ok it wasn't designed to fix everything

"For tonight's sit, I figured instead of candle kasina, I'd just get up to 7th jhana and soak in nothingness for a while. It's very nice, like a vacation. The longer I stay in a jhana the more intense it becomes. Tonight it was just bathing in nothingness. Endless black. Not to be morbid, but I think this is what suicidal people fantasize about. It is total break time from daily reality.

For the record, I need to stop playing with NS when I'm on the cushion. Really. Seriously this time. I promise. It is getting frustrating to keep coming back to conditioned reality while falling forward with your head about to hit the wall. I am a slow learner. I must do this while reclining. Or in an airplane. Well, maybe not in an airplane. They have those defibrillator thingies. Somebody might misinterpret. Then instead of a just feeling of falling, I've got electric burns on my nipples and I'm soaked in my own urine. Right. Keeping it to reclining.

Anyhow, Nick. My nothingness shamatha beats your ninja siddhis. Ninjas are just dressed in black. When in the 7th jhana, I am the night.


"

Jesus this is hilarious. I can't stop laughing....

Wetpaint needs a "I like this" button.

"
Anyhow, Nick. My nothingness shamatha beats your ninja siddhis. Ninjas are just dressed in black. When in the 7th jhana, I am the night.


"

I've moved on from the manifested ninjas and am now bathing in a lake of nymphs who ignore me. I've gotta start learning how to wake up in my dreams. Damn, so many things to do and not enough drive. .....meh!

"I've moved on from the manifested ninjas and am now bathing in a lake of nymphs who ignore me. I've gotta start learning how to wake up in my dreams. Damn, so man things to do and not enough drive. .....meh!"

Actually, I can help with that one, was thinking about it from our last conversation. You can try falling asleep while retaining a capsule of your daytime awareness. Basically just make the resolution to preserve some ego perspective and have it "activate" when the dream begins.
I stumbled on this while playing with OOBEs ages ago.

It might work better than the priming the pump approach of training yourself to ask "is this a dream" when you hit a common sensation since the resolution neural architecture is already in place for you.

Also, thank god there are man-nymphs.

Owen:
When you talk about going up the arc to 13, what do you mean?
Is it all samatha jhanas, or do you go through the nanas to 11 and move over to 4th jhana and up?
Or is it different everytime?
How long have you been working on concentration techniques?

Hmmm, nice. I will give it a try tonight. Thanks! Man-nymphs, hahah!

"Owen:
When you talk about going up the arc to 13, what do you mean?
Is it all samatha jhanas, or do you go through the nanas to 11 and move over to 4th jhana and up?
Or is it different everytime?
How long have you been working on concentration techniques? "

Going up the arc involves breaking up my sensations when I sit with the vipassana technique. I go through all the nanas (not really aware of 1-3 though) as I penetrate each layer of mind and as I go through them, there are stable stops along the way which are referred to as jhanas. When in the jhana, I can stop there for a while (samatha) by soaking in the sensations of jhana and lowering my internal field of vision to about 30 degrees below my internal perceptual "horizon". If I want to go up to the next nana or jhana, I raise my internal vision 30 degrees above the horizon. The 13 jhana (5th pureland) is the highest jhana to which one may attain via this technique. Well, there might be a few exceptions... but don't worry about that until 4th path.

Once at the top of the arc, I'll eventualy start to slide back down in reverse, visiting each nana or jhana again. I can go up and down the arc multiple times, and each time my concentration builds and the landscape of the jhana becomes more full and clearly perceived.
Make sense?

There are differences going up and down the arc, but they are mainly external conditions like how tired I am or if I've been super stressed. In general though, the more I've been doing concentration practices, the better I can navigate and the more details I'll find in each layer.

I've been working on concentration techniques since I was about 11 or 12 when I had my first A&P playing with OOBE stuff. But to be honest, the strength of my concentration is more in line with how much I've been practicing recently. If you want deep concentration abilities, kasina practice is the way to go.

Thanks.
though I've gotten path and fruition and can pretty much call up frutions when I want, and I have a good sense of when I am in equaniminty at this point I can't
- recognize nanas 1-10
- enter any samatha jhanas (at least not for certain, I know that something seems to happen but it is never very stable)

What path are you?