Dharma Treasure Community

Hi all,

I hope this is an appropriate thread to make – I looked for an ‘introduce yourself’ thread and couldn’t see one. I wanted to make a post to introdcue myself and my practice, and connect with others too, as I feel sharing experiences with others will help my practice and hopefully everyone else’s too.

I have increasingly felt recently that the guidance of a good teacher would be very useful to me. However, I live in England and a retreat is not that easy to arrange (particulrly soon). So I hope that good advise from places like Dharmatreasure can be a start in that regard.

I have been meditating ‘formally’ for about a year – I say formally, because a lot of what I am exploring through meditation, I have felt ever since I can remember and have tried to find various ways to express it. I have written poetry in the past and talk about feeling there is something being beyond thoughts; and how we label reality as we might draw arbitrary shapes in sand and call them different things. So coming to meditation and the insights that might be gained have, so far, all felt natural and almost familiar to me.

I have read a few different approaches to meditation, but keep returining to The Mind Illuminated as the most comorehnesive and ‘safe’ – I really like the idea of developing strong concentration before insights, in order to make the process of insight good as opposed to (potentially) traumatising – at least, this is what I understand to be some of the thinking behind the methods presented.

In terms of my practice, I do about 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes a day, in one sitting. This has grown naturally from initial 5 minute sits. I would roughly place myself at stage 7 from TMI, although I may be in the later stages (without discounting the possibility I may be overestimating the status of my practice!). Having relatively recently explored Leigh Brasington’s work on jhanas, I am reliably and consistently, as far as I can tell, able to enter the jhanas and tend to settle I think on 2 or 3 (I am not sure if I have reached 4 yet; and if I am identifying things correctly, I tend to skip past 1 pretty quickly as it is quite intense to maintain). Without verification from a teacher I accept I may be misidentifying my entering the jhanas, or may be entering them lightly, but from the descriptions I have read it does seem to match up. This degree of concentration might mean I am post-stage 7. As I say, I could be inaccurate with my assesment of my practice!

I would say typically within a minute, and often less so – sometimes within seconds of sitting – I find quite powerful joy arising within me, and it tends to ebb and flow (but I’d say it is always there in some form) throughout my sit. After a couple of minutes, I will ‘ride’ a powerful wave of joy into the jhanas at the start of my sit.

My practice at the moment consists of ‘warming up’ for 15 minutes or so through jhanas and then close following the breath, as deacribed in stage 7, for about 45-55 minutes. In the past few sessions I have been experiencing and exploring vibrations. While over the last week I have been aware of the breath being inconsistent and chunky, rather than smooth, yesterday all sensation – hearing, breath, perhaps vision (hard to tell with eyes closed) – appeared to be coming in rapid-fire bits, of about ten per second. Any thoughts in awareness seemed to be disjonted and not completely synched up, like a deck of cards in the wrong order. Ambient sound sounded like the ‘thwack thwack thwack’ of a helicopter in flight. There were points where it felt a bit like I was a malfunctioning robot rebooting – everything went ‘jerk jerk jerk’ – including physical twitching and movements- and stopped making sense; then I came back online. This has actually happened in th last two sits. I have considered the possibility that this was a cessation event, but I am not sure.

I would be interestd in people’s opinion on these experiences!

My first specific question, for those who have read this far, is: would this breakdown of sensation to vibrations apply to thoughts too? For instance, thinking through the words of a sentence. I have not been able to verify, and intellectually I am undecided as to whether thoughts would be broken down in same way to virbations, as they are not sensations of something external to the mind.

Secondly: if I look anywhere, at any point, closely enough, even as I write this, I can see my vision shimmering. It is a bit like a sheet of transparent static laid over everything. Are these ‘vibrations’ of moments of consciusness, or something more normal? This static in my vision is something I have always been aware of if I had ever stopped to think about it in the past.

Thirdly: I see TMI discusses cessation through the jhanas in the footnotes to the seventh interlude – i.e. The 9th jhana. The book states that it is very rare but possible that people achieve complete awakening through this jhana. Is the jhana itself complete awakening – or is it another stage beynd reaching that jhana? I ask because I could spend more time on the jhanas (at the expense of my other practice, as in some ways they kind of feel natural to me, so far at least. I think I have accidentally dipped into the 5th (the expanding space one?) and maybe one of the other later jhanas a few times accidentally throughout my life and in my earlier practice. As I said above, I don’t spend so much time on them as currently I am keen to close follow the breath and see reality ‘as it is’ and I am wondering if It is worthwhile upping my jhana practice (at the expense of the breath practice).

More generally, I have been thinking recently about people who are ‘awakened’ and their relationships. I see people who have a lot of experience who are also in relationships and have families. But, for instance, activities like sex – are they conducive to someone who has seen suffering as a result of clinging to things through desire, aversion, etc? Isn’t sex (as a form of pleasure) an activity that really is indulging sense pleasures? Similarly, comitting to and ‘lovng’ one person such as a spouse – well, I am not quite sure of the words but I am wondering how these sorts of relationships fit into the picture.

Thank you for your time!

• This topic was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by  5adja5b.
• This topic was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by  5adja5b.
• This topic was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by  5adja5b.