Andy's practice journal

May 14

30 minutes of samatha, just counting my breaths.

May 15

1 hr 35 min of samatha, spread across 5 sessions throughout the day. I did a combination of breath-counting, breath-watching, and reciting Buddho. I think I'm starting to get a better feel for staying out of insight practices when doing breath-counting.

Had a number of different states including tinglings, bliss, joy, sleepiness, buzzing, calmness, narrow and wide focus.

May 16

15 minutes noting waiting for an appointment. Able to note continuously. Got concentrated and noting picked up steam. Had a brief wave of bliss, and that passed. The rest of the time, I noted my body buzzing and tingling and a tighter body-centered focus.

85 minutes
Set the timer for 40 minutes, and breath-counted until 30, then started noting. Seemed easy to stay on track. Occasionally, I'd get lost in thought, and it was easier to notice this and to get back on track. Moved through the eyelid lights stage quickly, then my sense of my body outline changed. A vague, subtle sense of dissatisfaction came next and stayed a while. Eventually, this got to a more normal feeling point, but I had thoughts about, 'is this all there is?'

Had some dream thinking and loss of clarity. Clarity then came back with a small rush of pleasant tingles and eyelid lights. This happened several times, and I resolved to focus and pass through this.

A bit later, I felt a jerk, then a blooming, rising wonderful pleasant calm, and my body outline got vague. I had a very clear sense of 'I could sit like this forever' and then the chime rang. I continued sitting and enjoying the pleasant calmness. At one point, I had some lights strobing in the periphery of my vision, and at another point, very slow pleasant pulses washed over me. I tried to just let sensations happen and observe them, and hung out with this for a long time. Noting was pretty intermittent, and lots of thoughts crept in.

Eventually, the pleasant calm faded away, and I got the previous stage back -- calm, normal, but something felt missing. I wanted this to change back to what I had just experienced and noted the grasping for the pleasant calm state. I was not able to reestablish it, so I just hung out for a while longer and then stopped. I was surprised to notice I had sat for an additional 45 minutes after the chime had gone off.

May 16 (cont)

30 minutes candle-flame kasina practice. Stared at the flame for 5 minutes, then closed my eyes and watched the after-image for 5. Stared at the flame for 10 more minutes until I started getting sleepy. Never felt like I 'locked in' on it, but did feel fairly concentrated after.

40 minutes
Felt pretty concentrated from the candle-flame practice. Laid down on the bed and started by breath-counting. Noticed a lot of body tingling, vibrations, and waves, but was having a hard time staying focused, and lost count several time. Started noting, but this didn't help that much. Eventually woke with a really fierce itch on my nose. This really woke me up very nicely. Then, another one, and another one. My body was really buzzing and tingling in an an unpleasant way. Noted stomach noises, vertigo, fear-related thoughts, itches, and various unpleasant body sensations. It felt like this peaked and was starting to calm down. Had some slightly more pleasant waves pass over me, and the timer rang and I needed to be done.

This ended up being a very physical session, and I can still feel some of the jhana sensations if I concentrate on them a bit.

May 17

Several practices throughout the day.

30 minutes at lunch. Counted breaths for 10 minutes, trying hard to stay with samatha, but still felt a few shifts. Started noting and was able to note almost continuously except for when some dreaminess occurred. Got to where outside sounds were noticeable and my state was calm, but not the very pleasant calm from the long sit yesterday. Felt pretty good about being able to note almost continuously and felt very focused on noting with very little thinking occurring.

30 minutes of noting at an appointment. Had an eye appointment, so I closed my eyes and noted while waiting to see the doctor, and then noted while waiting for my eyes to dilate fully. Able to focus on noting and able to note pretty consistently.

20 minute samatha session in the car after the appointment. Felt very focused after the noting, and decided to try samatha. Able to count breaths without losing track, but eventually had a few shifts and ended up in a very pleasant, very calm state. Hung out for a while and noted in this state, then opened my eyes, put on dark glasses, and drove home.

35 minutes noting while driving. Able to sustain the calmness for quite a while. Felt very focused and able to note consistently, but the pleasant calmness and the consistency of noting dropped off near the end.

May 18, 40 minutes

Was pretty tired today after a long bike ride yesterday. Started with breath-counting, but lost count a few times, so shifted to noting at around the 15 minute mark. Noting started off okay, but I got sleepy, and the noting got less consistent, and finally, I ended up drifting in and out of sleep.

May 18 (cont)

40 minutes
Started noting immediately, and felt a lot of energy swirling around in my body(don't know a better way of describing this feeling). Kept up noting fairly well. Stopped for a few minutes to roll up windows since it started raining. Noted rain sounds, body sensations, thoughts. Had a strong shift but no other discernible changes. Later, noted some coolness on my skin, cold hands. Later still, my mind manufactured a fearful scenario. Had an itch here and there. Energy started to feel like it was going to calm down. Started losing track of noting, and noting got sporadic. Had an episode where I very suddenly got eyelid lights and more clarity. Felt like I was close to breaking through to complete calmness when the phone rang. Noted frustration and answered the phone.


30 minutes
Set timer for 30 minutes, and set my intention to stay with pure samatha practice doing breath counting, without entering progress of insight cycle. Started of well enough, and was able to closely follow my breath. However, eventually realized that I was getting distracted with all the energy flows in my body(don't know how to better describe it) and losing count. Felt a deepening of concentration, and noticed I was getting sleepy. Tried harder to focus, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up with an incredible amount of buzzing, tingling, and energy. Found that I had slept through the chime an additional half hour past the original 30 minutes.

Andy,

I've spent a lot of time refining the technique I use for breath meditation. One of the things I've been doing lately is based on a couple of ideas. First the breath is the conditioner of the body. Creating long breaths will make the body feel good. I basically take the whole body into awareness and am also aware that I am breathing in and out as I do that. Fairly quickly pleasant sensations arise in the body and I include those along with the fact I am breathing in and out. In other words I am being sensitive to pleasure. This pleasure becomes more and more intense and as it builds I notice happiness (Jhana 1). I now shift my attention to the happiness as I did before with the pleasantness. The happiness will build now to a certain point (Jhana 2) and will eventually calm down to a deep contentedness (Jhana 3) and eventually to equanimity (Jhana 4).

So in this case the breath is conditioning the body which is then creating pleasant feelings which is then creating a pleasant mind-state (notice this is the first three foundations of mindfulness). It's almost like swinging from one vine to another (breath first, then pleasant sensations, then happiness, etc.).

"1st jhana has subtle exhilaration, deep joy, chilled out bliss, and equanimity.
2nd jhana has deep joy, chilled out bliss, and equanimity.
3rd jhana has chilled out bliss and equanimity.
4th jhana has equanimity."

Thanks for the tips. I'll give them a shot.

It seems like this used to be easier for me before, but then again, I haven't practiced pure samatha in quite a while, probably not in five months or so.

For me, the jhanas seem to manifest more physically, but still seem to have that quality of subtraction, where the higher jhanas are more about what's gone rather than what's added.

The exception is the transition from first to second. First jhana seems to be lighter and more on the surface of my body, where second seems to be a much deeper and fuller feeling. I've never really had a conversation with anyone about it, so I could be confused about things.

I seem to have a hard time staying out of the nanas when I try to do pure samatha. I start with watching my breath. Pleasant sensations arise on the surface of my body, and I feel excitement and joy. These sensations then quickly move into my core and deepen and bloom considerably. Pretty soon I see eyelid lights, and I'm off and running.

I've tried setting my intention to stay with jhana, and that seems to help somewhat, as does a fairly quiet environment. Disc kasina and candle-flame kasina seems to keep me out of insight stages too, and I wonder if it has something to do with having my eyes open.

May 19, 75 minutes

Set the timer for 45 minutes, and started with breath-counting to get focused. Counted breaths for a while, got some pleasant body sensations, but lost track a number of times. Started noting, and had lots of energy-type feelings in my body. I was able to note continuously for a while, but started getting sudden bursts of loss of clarity. Eventually, my noting dropped off, and my mind started wandering, but not before I had developed a pretty strong neutral-feeling buzzing and tingling, and some awareness of the traffic and bird sounds outside. Felt like I drifted around for a while, most likely from sleepiness. For a while, I tried to ask 'who am I?' and to locate a sense of the 'I' but was never able to get an answer to that question. All I ever saw were more sensations presenting themselves. Stayed meditating after the timer rang, and continued to drift around..

Tried meditating with my eyes open to stave off the sleepiness, and had some success. The body tingling and buzzing smoothed out, but I still kept getting these bursts of disorientation. Had a strange 'what was that?' episode. My eyes were open, and I was looking at a particular spot about 100' in front of my car, and was noting cars, trees, birds, and other stuff moving in my field of awareness. Suddenly out of the blue, I had this intense all-consuming full-body sensation of pressure or tightness which lasted maybe half a second. My attention jumped from what was in my full field of vision to only be in my body and slowly expanded back out back to what it was.

There was no discontinuity that I could detect, nor a sense of relief, nor lightness, nor clarity. I didn't feel like laughing or crying, and didn't feel energized or excited after. Just a weird body sensation.

Stopped meditating soon after, and in total, I ended up sitting a half-hour past the timer.

May 20

I attended a conference at a local university today, and had lots of chances to practice. Had some very interesting sessions...

It takes 40 minutes to get there by car, so I tried to note while driving, but seemed to have a difficult time of it. I started off okay, but felt pretty distracted most of the way. Interestingly, though, as soon as I established even a bit of a rhythm with it, I started to get these floaty jhana-like tinglings on my skin and a bit of excitement and bliss.

I found pretty easy to be mindful during the presentations, and rather enjoyed the level of focus I was able to bring forth.

We had two hours for lunch, so after eating, I spent some time doing walking meditation through campus (very large, very green). At first, I had a hard time focusing, but got into the groove of it when I slowed down my walking and lowered my gaze enough so that there weren't too many objects in my field of vision. I focused on the feel of my body breathing and on the feel of my feet on the ground. I definitely got concentrated, and I could feel bliss, excitement, giddiness, and tingling in my body too.

For a while, I sat on a bench by the river, closed my eyes, and noted. It felt like I went through the usual stages very quickly, and got to calm spaciousness. I hung out here, listening to this incredible variety of birdcalls, construction noises across the river, echoes off the buildings around me, people walking, running, and cycling. Thoughts were few and far apart, and I could see them arising quite easily. Overall, there was this vivid sense of immediacy and presence to my entire experience. I got up and walked back along the river, and for a while, I noticed not only the objects that my attention landed on, but occasionally I'd see thoughts and feelings spinning off as a result of that contact. Pretty interesting stuff, actually.

May 20 (Part 2...)

I was quite concentrated, and objects seemed discrete or separate or individually detailed. I'm not sure how to describe this, exactly. Sometimes, it's almost as if I can see a thing as separate, but also see how that thing relates to other things. A tree is part of a grove of trees, that stands next to a field, which is part of a larger patchwork of fields, trees, farmhouses. I see it as an individual tree with all its amazing detail, but at the exact same time, I see it connected to this vaster network both physically and conceptually.

The path got crowded with students and bikes, and I needed to cross several busy streets, and so by the time I got back, I had slipped out of this state. However, when I got back to the conference, I found I could generate the floatyness, excitement, bliss, and tinglings pretty much at will by just thinking about it. I couldn't really sustain it, but could certainly bring it up to be fairly noticeable almost immediately.

After the presentation, it took me longer than expected to get to the parking garage, and when I got there, there was this huge long line of cars waiting to exit. No worries. I closed my eyes and noted continuously out loud while I waited for the line of cars to clear, and then noted on my way out and off campus.

I then parked in a shady spot and worked on jhana. MuMuWu had provided a great tip about concentrating on the entire body breathing, and I wanted to play around with this. To my great surprise, I was able to generate and sustain the floaty, blissful, excited state for a short while. It started off with a rush, which immediately faded as I got excited about it, but within about ten minutes, I was able to get it to stabilize. Previously, I've had a hard time staying out of insight practice when I've done this, but today, it was very easy.

May 20 (Part 3...)

So, encouraged by this success, I stopped, stretched, sipped some water, and tried again. Sure enough, first jhana was there almost immediately, and I could get it to stabilize. I got second jhana to bloom and stabilize after another 10 minutes. Usually, by this time, I've started the insight cycle, and it takes off without me having to do anything else about it.

Took another quick break -- stretched, opened my eyes, drank some water, and restarted following my body breathing. First came up, then second. Third jhana came up and dropped off the excitement and joy, and left this underlying neutral buzzy vibration/tingling which I immediately recognized from Dissolution, and fourth basically dropped off the buzzy tingling and left the calmness which I also recognized. The layering of the different factors seemed pretty clear -- excitement, joy/bliss, buzzy tingling, and calmness. This is the first time ever that jhanas have been this clear for me. I've experienced the layering a few time in the morning, when I've woken, but not completely. Never, however, when fully awake on a sunny warm day, on purpose, intentionally three times in a row!

I'm incredibly excited by this, and now I can't wait to try this with candle-flame and with kasina, and using eye-positions, and on the bike, and watching TV, and, and, and, '¦.

This is so much fun!

Yeehaw!

"This is so much fun!"
My feeling exactly!! This stuff is so cool, and makes everything a little(or a lot) better. Your practice and notes are inspiring. Thanks!

"This stuff is so cool, and makes everything a little(or a lot) better. Your practice and notes are inspiring. Thanks!"

Thanks, Rev! I'm quite humbled. I feel the same way about your journal.

hey guys - some more useful info:
buddhasociety.com/online-books/anapanasa...ddhadasa-bhikkhu-1-5

Thanks for that link. Looks like there is a lot of good stuff there!

May 21
A pretty busy day today -- long drive, hard training ride, not enough sleep.

60 minutes of noting/driving very early in the morning. Started out with some difficulty focusing, and had a hard time staying with it, so stopped after an hour.

20 minutes of samatha. Was not able to reproduce the easy and quick access to jhana that I had yesterday, and noticed a lot of disappointment, doubt. After 15 minutes, I finally started to settle into watching myself breathe, but the giddiness and excitement never did stabilize for me.

90 minutes of noting/driving. Seems like I was able to focus reasonably well. Alternated periods of noting with breath-watching, and finally ended up just noting. My focus was still fairly good at the end of the drive.

Did a 135 minute training ride, and tried to note, and tried to watch breathing and the feel of my pedal stroke. I'm getting a tiny bit better than when I first started but in a lot of ways, it feels like I'm a brand-new meditator. I can't seem to maintain focus for more that a minute or two at a time, and don't realize I've drifted until long, long after I've lost it. The good news is that I'll have plenty of time to practice.

Got in 10 minutes of noting here, 15 there after I got home, but I noticed that my mindfulness and ability to note were very low. I was pretty tired after the ride, and my body was buzzing and tingling on it's own from the exercise earlier, so it was hard to use body sensations for feedback.

35 minutes of jhana practice. Was pretty tired after the ride, and had a hard time focusing, and then when I started getting concentrated, I'd get sleepy. Interestingly, I noticed I was in jhana when I'd come out of sleepiness, but would lose most of it when I got more awake and focused. Ended up sleeping more than practicing.

May 22

I was still pretty tired in the morning after the training ride yesterday. I've noticed that my best focus happens when I've gotten plenty of good sleep. This was not the case this morning.

I tried to meditate right after I got up, and just could not stay focused on my breath. I never got to the single-pointedness, so I tried to note, and the same problem came up there. 20 minutes later, I gave up.

Later in the day, I tried to lie down and do samatha practice. Earlier, I had worked in the yard, and around the house, and ended up fighting sleepiness for 40 minutes. However, when I tried to nap, I found myself doing what PEJN called "an unpleasant mixture of unwilling meditation and sleep." Once I came awake a bit, I found myself in fairly hard second jhana, apparently without consciously trying. I was able to move up to fourth and back down to first, then back up to second. By this time, I had woken up pretty much all the way, and my ability to jump from one jhana to another evaporated.

I wonder what it is about that twilight state between sleep and wakefulness that makes it easy to get into and move around in jhana?

I'm hoping to have more time to sit during the week, and to finally get a chance to play with candle-flame and kasinas. I'm hoping to duplicate the experience I had on Friday where I clearly saw the layering of the jhana factors for the first time.

I guess if there's one thing I've learned it's that experiences tend to repeat with practice. Sometimes it may take a long time, but if I work at it, I can get it to come up again.


(edited to add the date at the top)

May 23

Started with some walking meditation, alternating focus on my feet and breathing with noting. I was surprised that the sensations in my feet were pretty noticeable, and it was pretty easy to stay with them.

I then drove to my meditation spot, parked, rolled down the windows, and set the chime for 40 minutes. Followed my breath and counted, and was able to focus on breath sensations and on the building pleasure in my body. I noticed a sudden rapid upwelling of bliss and then its fading. Soon after, eyelid lights came up, so I abandoned the one-pointed practice and started noting. Things moved to a calm, open soundspace state fairly quickly, so I paid attention to the doppler sounds of the cars passing on the freeway, birdcalls, and the sensations of the breeze on my skin. I noted a couple of episodes of dreaminess and nonsense noting (eg. breeze sound, '¦ itch, '¦ car passing, '¦ king and queen, etc...) I'd return to clarity pretty much as soon as I realized I was noting nonsense.

(cont...)

Around the 35 minute mark, I was in one of the dreaminess episodes and suddenly had a strong head jerk, along with a very hard, quick, and disorienting transition in focus from wide-open awareness down to a tight focus on my body. This was accompanied by a rush of tingling on the surface of my arms and hands, along with colored, shifting, collapsing eyelid light patterns, and a slight but noticeable increase in body bliss. I also felt a strong sense of pressure(almost painful) behind my eyes that rapidly faded. In a short while, I had a slow-motion, full-body, mild bliss pulse, and over the next few minutes, the pulse repeated several times. I also felt a lot of energetic muscle twitching initially, but this subsided fairly soon as well.

At the chime, I opened my eyes and the blissful body sensations remained, and were still there 10 minutes after when I wrote up my notes. In fact, I'm still feeling some of that bliss right now, over two hours later.

(edited to add some remembered details, and split into two posts)

Sounds quite promising. Noticing anything else since?

Yeah. I did notice some other things. So, after the sit, I picked up some lunch, and noticed that I felt quite blissed out, and that this bliss really wasn't passing. In fact, I noticed that in addition to the bliss, I was getting more energetic and giddy as the afternoon went on. I read the jhana article that you gave me in #116, and going by that, I'd say I was suffering from a large excess of piti. In fact, this piti sensation (if that's what it was) was present for me all afternoon and showed no signs of fading.

Honestly, I felt fantastic, and had a hard time getting work done.

So, I did a short 25 minutes sit when I got out of work, trying to take advantage of what felt like constant first jhana. I started with breath counting, and focusing on the body pleasure. I was able to stay focused on the counting, but after about 10 minutes, it became pretty clear to me that I was cycling -- I had a rush of pleasure and eyelid lights, and rather quickly after that, the pleasure dropped off and I had the neutral tingly buzzy feeling of third jhana, and numbness on my skin. Pretty soon after that, the buzzy tingly sensation dropped off, leaving me fairly calm for the first time in hours -- what a relief. I hung out, experienced nothing else, and stopped the sit, since I needed to get home.

On the way home, I started to feel excitement and giddyness again and had a hard time staying focused on noting. At one point, the excitement faded, leaving the buzzy tingling, but now the excitement (along with a fairly active mind) is back. I'm hoping I can get it to settle down. I've had an increase in thoughts and excitement since last Friday, post #110, making it hard to get to sleep.

May 24

40 minutes
Fantastic drive into work this morning -- very, very visual and vibrant. Big sky, lots of clouds with mixtures of colors, tons of different greens in the trees, sharp edges, lots of dark/light contrasts, long distance views, color and shape juxtapositions.

Something else too... I noticed that thoughts would would arise, develop for a short time, then pass away, leaving just the various sense impressions to be noticed. Previously, I've usually had this subtle distaste at the interruption that thoughts made. Today, I noticed that I didn't have that same reaction when I noticed the return to the senses. It just wasn't a problem, but felt like more of a natural transition.

There was an ongoing and subtle (and not so subtle, sometimes) sense of joy in the pleasure of sensory impressions coming, staying, and then being replaced by others.

Finally, I noticed that at times, there was little to no distinction between noting and not noting. Attention was drawn to one thing after another continuously, and I could either note or not note, and it didn't seem to matter.