This topic contains 18 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by 
Anonymous 8 years ago.
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Hi the group,
I’ve not posted here before but I’ve owned a copy of TMI for a year now and been working from it seriously for the last month after taking a break for a few months due to health problems. Apologies for the long post but I have spent about a week thinking about this and there’s a few angles to it.
I have read that practising the samatha-vipassana path is generally less likely to result in protracted “cycling” through the insights into suffering (“The Dark Night of the Soul”, http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB+5.+Dissolution,+Entrance+to+the+Dark+Night). But what if someone is already in a pattern of cycling through this stuff?
I’m nine years into a dry vipassana path and even before I took up that practice I had experiences that equate to bhanga / dissolution (“Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away”), which as I understand it lead pretty much inevitably to the DN if one is not aided by samatha. Because I am not naturally high in samadhi or tranquility (I have ADHD) this meant that I had pretty much entered the Dark Night before starting formal meditation practices.
On retreat for me, dissolution and the Dark Night manifests with real clarity around day four, preceded by clear kundalini phenomena (internal lights and sounds etc) and kriya shaking. There follows a period of three to four days of sitting with classical dukkha. On a few 10-day retreats I have “let go” into equanimity regarding the formations of perception (TMI Stage Eight? I have resolved not to jump ahead with TMI and haven’t read that far into the book). But these have been fleeting instances of tranquility amidst what is generally a very agitated mind. I have been unable to reproduce this “High Equanimity” reliably even on retreat, and after it does arise, the rest of the retreat I usually spend grasping at the memories in a most unhelpful way, trying to reproduce them.
During home practice, with bare vipassana I can access subtle body sensations at will, even on first sitting down to practise, but cannot reproduce Equanimity towards formations, I think due to dullness. My sits usually end up in boredom or lethargy. I have found Shinzen Young’s Focus In technique really helpful to keep me going, but usually I still fall prey to dullness. With samatha-vipassana, I experience the same — a lot of restlessness and boredom. I work with dullness most of the time (stand up, walk, sit with eyes open etc). On the odd occasion when I have mental unity towards meditation during home practice, I can do Stage Five samatha-vipassana practise (Culadasa). I haven’t tried going beyond that. These occasions occur about once every fortnight and have so far only lasted for the final ten minutes of a sit. Most sessions I spend a lot of time revisiting my motivations, making space for unknowing, cultivating patience while holding (or attempting to hold) strong intentions and working through Stage Two, Three and sometimes Four although not often in that order. The skills in there don’t come easily to the hyperfocussed, highly agitated yet high-dullness mind that I usually sit with.
U Ba Khin / Mahasi practitioners have suggested that because of the way the dukkha ñanas manifest I could “get further” towards Awakening by using dry insight and long retreats as opposed to samatha-vipassana and home practice, because the dark night is considered (by them) to be a time when attention broadens out and exclusive attention is borderline impossible, although attractive as it seems to offer a way out of the discomfort. They suggest building up to the traditional three-month attempts at stream entry, and just keep bashing away until successful.
But firstly, there’s the nature of an ADHD mind which isn’t highly consistent, reliable or steady and which in my experience does not present with incidental samatha very frequently, which the dry insight technique pretty much relies on for stream entry. Secondly I am a dedicated father. And thirdly since 18 months ago I also suffer from a chronic pain condition (which I don’t blame on the kriya / DN but I don’t think is entirely separate either). These seem to be significant obstacles to the traditional dry insight solution of “do a long retreat and repeat”.
I also am quite honestly scared of the Dark Night and feel like I’m out of inspiration to do it that way. Having undergone seven silent retreats up to three weeks in duration I’m no stranger to how tough things can be. Intuitively I am deeply unsure that the path to Awakening must be full of so much suffering as all that (although pain, surely).
Hence, TMI with its focus on tranquility, consistency and reproducibility, joy and home practice over long-retreats and intense heroic efforts has been a relief to encounter, even if it means starting at the beginning again.
I still rate the dry insight teachings highly for certain people. One warning I’ve had from Mahasi practitioners, outlined above, is that the dukkha ñanas are a particularly bad time to try and develop single-pointedness, due to the way perception works in those stages.
Which comes back to my questions: it seems as though the samatha-vipassana method is less likely to lead to a dark night, but does anyone have experience of a practitioner switching from dry insight to samatha-vipassana while in a classic dry insight dark night? If so, can you suggest where any of the tools and techniques in TMI require modifying?
If I just continue following the instructions in the book, can I expect to make progress despite being in a classical dark night?
I like the way the TMI practise challenges the whole dullness / agitation / hyperfocus loop of ADHD. I’m letting it undermine my tendency to rush, which has got to be beneficial. I’m hoping to get reassurance that it’s worth continuing, but the worry about developing these skills while being a decade into the dark night is niggling away and starting to enter my sessions as doubt so I’m reaching out.
With gratitude and appreciation for the gift of these practices,
Julian
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This topic was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by
Julian S.
Anonymous
AnonymousHi @wileyfox, sorry for my delayed response to your insightful comments. Let me go through them and respond inline…
“It takes a few weeks to realize that sotapanna has occured, as one notices the mind in a constant process of synthesizing its concepts and ideas, bringing order to itself to avoid insanity, frankly. Curing ‘cognitive dissonances’.”
This sounds intensely familiar to me — I assumed it was because I was cycling from bhanga through “the shit side of insight” (heh) and into equanimity, whereupon the cognitive dissonances are cured (temporarily). I don’t think I’ve had sotapanna — perhaps quite close a couple of times. There was a rich stream of profound insight and I stepped outside of myself both times, but I took “me” with me if you know what I mean. I never asked the question what was observing me step outside of myself.
“You are in exactly the right place practicing at Stage Five. Do page 47 before you practice body scanning, but take the four-step a bit further than descibed in TMI. In the fourth step, the breath is still conceptual, you are aware of BREATHE IN/ BREATHE OUT…you are THINKING! Let the breath experience slide from the conceptual to the exclusively SENSUAL. Get so involved in the experience of feeling EVERYTHING at the nose that there is no room left for ‘thinking’! Turn over all your mental bandwidth (attention and awareness) to THE SENSUAL. Thoughts there arise only occasionally, and you are distinctly aware of each arising. This YOUR SPACE… what you are looking for every time you sit, where thoughts are few and thin.”
This is pretty much *exactly* how I already practice. Which is reassuring synchronicity 🙂 I totally get what you mean by “getting so involved that there is no room left” for thinking. I can maintain this for ten minutes on a good day. But the problem I have is, perhaps due to just lack of mental stamina or disunity of sub minds, I run out of peripheral awareness — it “collapses”. Attention remains strong but without PA, my attention becomes ensnared in subtle distractions (this is aka hyperfocus, a classic ADHD trait). And once that happens, suddenly they’re not so tiny any more, and I’m floating in Stage 3 or 4 with not enough peripheral awareness to pull myself out (I describe this in way more detail here: http://dharmatreasurecommunity.org/forums/topic/slipping-backwards-from-stage-5).
“You will have to learn to restrain your sensual experience to your nostrils, because your sensual attention will want to spread randomly to other parts of your body. FOCUS! Then practice the body scan exercise in Stage Five of TMI, which will be greatly enhanced, without so much thoughts.”
I find this quite easy and as described in the link above I can sense subtle breath sensations with ease (even in daily life, while walking, driving etc). But it’s only easy until PA collapses, and then I sink into gross distraction and progressive dullness.
“In the second step of the four-step, you can work at squeezing “thinking” and conceptualization out of your attention zone by trying to hear EVERYTHING in your sitting environment (and in your body as well) at the same time, trying to feel EVERYTHING in your body AT THE SAME TIME, even the clothes hanging on your body. Smelling and tasting are valuable also, because these are sensations for which you have little concepts or descriptions. No “labeling”, as that would be “thinking”! Aggressively emerse your attention in the sensations. How long you can do this will be limited, as whole body practices are quite tiring to the mind. You will feel your limit.”
Are you suggesting just to work with whole body / step 2 and not progress to step 3 or 4? That’s an interesting idea that I haven’t tried. I could do that until I “feel my limit” and then end the sit, slowly increasing the duration, which initially would be quite short but perhaps the effort to lengthen them will stretch and strengthen my PA.
Or to do it until I feel my limit (which I’m already noticing with the way PA collapses) and then move to steps 3 and 4?
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This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Julian S.
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