Meditating on the Mind – sadness

[5adja5bMember]

(I have posted this on /r/streamentry on reddit.com too but I wanted to post here for wider feedback, as it’s quite a specific, latter-stage question – I hope that’s OK)

Hi all,

I was after some opinions from others particularly regarding The Mind Illuminated’s ‘meditating on the mind’ practice. For me, this often brings with it a soft but palpable sense of sadness. I also notice I get more fidgity in this practice than in others – I think to do with being uncomfortable with things and so looking for distractions.

If I do any other practice that I am familiar with, I will often get familiar feelings of enjoyment, joy, pleasantness, equanimity, pliancy, etc. Some practices bring with them a sense of flow which can bring jhana-like feelings too (choiceless attention; arising and passing away).

However, I am drawn to meditating on the mind, partly because I am curious about this sense of sadness (and I guess there’s large a part of me that thinks the ‘painful’ area is the one I need to look at). If pleasant feelings do arise, they kind of fade out half the time, I think because they are then included in the meditation object (as they are part of ‘everything’ on which I am meditating) and lose some of their potency – they are all looked at with ‘attention’ and the penetrative vipassana, and kind of get a little dissected (albeit I try to be gentle!), rather than something arising in the background on their own.

I also think attention brings with it more baggage than awareness – it has an inbuilt sense of self and other, observer and object – and all that other stuff to do with self and separation. So when attention is ‘everywhere’ there’s no escape.

I also noticed that my sense of ‘self’, for a period of time, had relocated into ‘awareness’ (initially when I started meditating I would say the ‘self’ was tied up to attention: ‘I am looking at this thing’)- with this practice, the sense of self has nowhere to hide and is again under the microscope with nowhere in conscious awareness to relocate to.

My instinct often says that the sadness is to do with the sense of self having nowhere to hide and coming to terms with it being as empty as everything else. But I’m not sure.

There is a feeling of needing to ‘let go’ in this practice. Letting go of fabricating images on top of sensations, letting go of fabricating self on top of sensations etc… (at my current stage of practice I do get to see the self being overlaid on top of sensations in a similar way to seeing images overlaid on sensations – eg. aeroplane on top of the noise of an aeroplane – and I am able to sometimes go deeper, pre-self)

I have had lots of cessations recently but these have brought bliss waves, not sadness.

The second most common feeling from this practice (with the sadness being the main one), is equanimity. There are times when it just all melts and there’s a peaceful smile. I think this may be to do with letting go too. However this is the secondary feeling, happening about 30% of the time to the sadness of 70%.

Has anyone experienced anything similar, or have any opinions? I sometimes wonder if I should focus on other practices that are more pleasurable (which is pretty much any of the other TMI practices); but the stronger intention at the moment is to explore this feeling rather than back away from it – but as I say there is a part of me that thinks that the fruitful practice is the bit of it that’s causing discomfort! Which may be misguided or a little unkind to myself. However it does mean my meditation sessions (outside of jhana) are currently not joyful in the way latter-stage practice in TMI is described to be.

Thanks.

[nekoMember]

My experience with Mahamudra (which meditating on the mind is a form of) is very limited, but sadness does not seem to me like an expected outcome of it…

…This being said, I did experience it while practicing Mahamudra. In my case, it was a kind of reactivity to the idea of the self “going away”. Like missing an old friend. Longing. That area of loneliness. Does this ring a bell? Are you sure you are doing it after getting to Stage 9 in Culadasa’s map and stabilising it? I imagine yours might be a case of vipasyana / shamatha imbalance. Perhaps you haven’t realise the “natural state” well enough before starting to do the practice. Does this make sense?

Either way, if you are into this kind of stuff, Reggie Ray’s series of CDs “Mahamudra for the Modern World” is a fantastic source. There is much more to it than Culadasa could condense in one page inside TMI, so you might want to have a look there. Also try Tashi Namgyal’s “Clarifying the Natural State”.

Anyway, I repeat: I am NOT an expert in Mahamudra at all. I just felt like chiming in because what you wrote has rung a bell.

[5adja5bMember]

Thanks… I would say my practice is around stage 9. I have clear illumination and inner sound and have done for some weeks now, if not months. Joy is harder to identify because I am drawn to this practice that has this sadness effect, but when I dip into the other practices it brings either pleasure or equanimity. The only odd thing for me has been that the bliss of mental pliancy has been hard to find. (bliss of physical pliancy has been present for about 2 months!); as I say, equanimity is arising (although I kind of feel the equanimity may be more insight than shamatha-based, not sure though).

Having said all that – I would say in ‘normal’ practice outside of meditating on the mind, I get a feeling kind of like 3rd Jhana. I just haven’t done that much ‘normal’ practice as I am drawn to meditating on the mind; so I do jhanas, then meditating on the mind!

If I am not stage 9 I would say I am latter stage 8, which means it’s still not inappropriate to do this stage 9 practice, I hope? I think there’s an argument to place me stage 10 too, as the equanimity is lingering. So somewhere in stages 8-10 I would place myself.

I would say that if I had to say which part of my practice had advanced furthest though, I would say it is insight. I’m not sure if they’re imbalanced or not but if I had to pick one that was furthest ahead it would be that.

Your idea of ‘longing’ or loneliness does kind of ring a bell. It’s like the bittersweetness of a sad song, rather than being sucked into the dark depths. A quiet kind of sadness, fragrant in the air…
As I said above, if I had to take an instinctive guess it would be to do with the sense of self, which had relocated into awareness, having nowhere to go to.

What do you mean by ‘natural state’ – do you mean what Culadasa calls the mind’s resting state? If so, I have yet to see that (beyond possible glimpses)… any tips? So far, I am noticing how things slide in and out of awareness, kind of like an ever-shifting puddle of consciousness.

Thanks again 🙂

[5adja5bMember]

… the other thing I’ve noticed is that when doing this practice, it seems to currently make it ‘harder’ to experience the cessation events. I wonder if the two practices are working against each other in any way? (in TMI Culadasa writes the the mind in its resting state is not the same as a cessation event but the insights to be gained are the same)

Currently when I get the cessation/frutions, it is often accompanied by some form of dullness and dreaminess that I’ve been trying to work on. The meditating on the mind practice requires a lot of conscious power, so I wonder if for me, the being ‘very awake’ aspect of the meditating on the mind makes cessation currently less likely. In which case, should I prioritise experiencing as many cessation/fruitions as possible (which would be in another practice at the moment) or keep going with this one…? hmm.. !

[nekoMember]

What do you mean by ‘natural state’

The natural state is a technical term from Mahamudra. I am not a Mahamudra expert in any sense of the word, so I will try to explain this from the point of view of my very limited understanding.

Some background: Mahamudra practice is roughly divided into sections:
0) preliminaries.
1) First yoga, Mahamudra shamatha.
2) Second yoga, Mahamudra vipasyana.
3) Third yoga, Mahamudra shamatha-vipasyana.
4) Fourth yoga, Nonmeditation.
5) Post-enlightenment practices.

The preliminaries include a bunch of stuff, including tantric practices, but the most important part is basically the material covered in TMI: the Asanga map, the nine stages of samadhi, and the jhanas. In the first yoga of mahamudra, the same path is described in terms of taking progressive objects of concentration, starting with material objects (like looking at a coloured disk) and proceeding to more “rarefied” objects.

One way to describe the natural state is: It is the endpoint of Mahamudra-shamatha. Very roughly speaking, you could see it as the launching point from which one can start practicing Mahamudra vipasyana. Now since there is more than a bit of overlap between the Asanga map (TMI, technically part of the preliminaries) and the first yoga of Mahamudra (Mahamudra-shamatha), the late stages from TMI are also an adequate launching point to start doing Mahamudra-vipasyana, hence Culadasa’s description of the practice.

I am noticing how things slide in and out of awareness, kind of like an ever-shifting puddle of consciousness.

This is very good practice and I believe you are on the right track. It is the kind of thing you are told to look at in Mahamudra vipasyana. Looking at stuff like, how do perceptions and thoughts come into awareness? How do they slide out of it? Where do they come from? Where do they go to? What colour do thoughts have? What is the stuff they are made of? Is it the same stuff as the natural state, or different stuff? And so on.

when doing this practice, it seems to currently make it ‘harder’ to experience the cessation events

This does not surprise me. I get cessations easily when doing Theravada-style vipassana, but only occasionally when doing Mahamudra-style vipasyana.

I wonder if the two practices are working against each other in any way?

That’s a good question, and one I am not at all qualified to answer. 😀

Currently when I get the cessation/frutions, it is often accompanied by some form of dullness and dreaminess that I’ve been trying to work on.

Are you 100% sure they are cessations then? There’s a bunch of stuff you could be mistaking for cessations. Strong state shifts, formless realms (particularly so-called 7th and 8th jhanas), occasionally even just the Dissolution nana. Either way, Mahamudra strongly cautions meditators against practicing with dullness, lest they mix up the natural state with dreamy dullness.

should I prioritise experiencing as many cessation/fruitions as possible (which would be in another practice at the moment) or keep going with this one…?

This is up to you. It might be a good idea to work on one practice at a time… let’s say decide one, and keep at it for a few weeks or month at the least, before switching from one to another one. If you are familiar with MCTB, there is a lot of overlap between Daniel Ingram’s description of the higher paths (3rd and 4th) and stuff from Mahamudra. I am not sure what Culadasa thinks of Ingram’s description of the higher paths, or in general what the community here thinks about it, but it is a point of view you might want to take into account.

In addition to the book I suggested above (“Clarifying the Natural State”), and Reggie Ray’s CDs, you might want to have a look at this:

http://www.mahamudracenter.org/mmcmembermeditationguide.pdf

Hope this helps 🙂

neko

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by  neko.

[5adja5bMember]

Thanks for this extremely comprehensive reply!

As for the cessations, yes I am as sure as I can be. I mean, I may be wrong, but they are clearly blinks on-off-on, followed by obvious rushes of bliss more often than not. Sometimes there are audible clicks and the experience of the ‘off’ varies (sometimes it’s like black static space, or grey slate, or nothing at all but the before-after; the imagery I put down to the mind’s interpretation after the event); but it matches up with most of what I’ve read on the topic. The flickery-shimmery quality before (often but not always with dreamy-quality which as I’ve said I’m trying to work on); then the blink, and the rush of pleasure plus much sharper consciousness afterwards. Even when dreaminess is present it’s clearly a blink, like someone turns the TV off and on again. Something winks out then comes back on again. And I’ve experienced them without the possible-dullness too, and the pattern remains the same.

I was introduced to observing ‘doors’ through which these are experienced too and I can sometimes notice the impermanence shimmery-flickery door just before.

I have had a few of these experiences even when meditating on the mind recently (and as that practice seems to directly counter dullness, these experiences were less dreamy and they felt like they took more ‘effort’ too as a result!).

The dullness, if that’s what it is (I’m not 100% convinced it’s not some other natural process tied to the mind inclining towards cessation), is far less present when meditating on the mind. And I am curious with that particular practice, so I will keep with it. I have had conflicting information about whether exploring fruitions is holding one back from path progress, or whether the next path happens alongside intentionally called-up fruitions. I sort of felt that given how profound cessation could be it made sense to try and experience that as much as possible. Maybe I’m less attached to that view now.

I’ve had some interesting experiences on Meditating on the Mind, such as this sadness – and then some sense of deep relaxation as something that feels self-related (temporarily) dissolves into light (illumination, which is linked to concentration for me, is strong in this practice) – and then experiences of luminous consciousness, just like a mirror, or a lake’s surface, beautiful – stuff to explore. And currently it’s a dullness-buster too…

Ultimately l just try to do what feels right…

Thanks again.

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