No moments of attention vs. attention fused with awareness

[nekoMember]

Hello all,

I have a question that is both theoretical and related to my own practice.

From the theoretical point of view, what is the difference between:

1) What happens inside 2nd jhana (when sufficiently deep), in which with the fading away of vitakka and vicara, “no moments of attention at all” happen anymore, and only awareness is left.

2) What happens in stage 9, in which, in the practice Meditating on the Mind, “You’ll eventually have the sense that attention and awareness have merged and become indistinguishable. The holistic quality of awareness and the analytic precision of attention are both fully present.”

From the practical point of view, this is what I do. When I am focusing on the breath at the nostrils and the session is going well (which is not always the case, as I often still struggle with dullness): my attention is “dragged away” from the sensations at the nostrils and into the space directly in front of my face. If I let this happen, it feels like attention “fuses” with that point, “melts” into it, and passes into the background. Awareness comes to the forefront, and it feels like attention drops away. At this point, most of my sensory field is suffused by mild pleasure, a feeling of stability, a subtle ringing in my ear. External and bodily sensory events are still in the background and available to consciousness. When something is particularly interesting or relevant, like an unexpected sound, or a relatively unpleasant physical sensation towards the end of the sit, it gets projected with more intensity into consciousness, and then I can let attention briefly come up again, “coagulate” for a moment around that sensation, and them melt away again in the background, without getting “stuck” to the sensation that called attention up for a second.

However, since I still haven’t learnt to counteract dullness completely, I feel that, while this goes on, I still have to supply “energy” to my mind-system, or subtle dullness will come back (or, if it is a bad day, I could even get strong dullness and never get into this stage at all). However, while I keep supplying energy, there is definitely a feeling of clarity, so I believe that there is no dullness in the state above.

I am not sure how to diagnose the Stage I am in, and what to do with it.

– The need to keep “supplying energy” to avoid getting into subtle dullness makes it look like Stage 7.

– The “no attention” side of it, and the piti symptoms, make it look like 2nd jhana. But I do not think it is 2nd jhana, because the piti symptoms are not strong enough.

– The fact that external sensory events are projected into consciousness, and the fusing of attention and awareness makes it look more like stage 9 than 2nd jhana, from what I understand, but it is not compatible with the effort needed to sustain the state.

Where am I? What do you suggest I do?

Thanks!

[T SparbyMember]

Here are a few thoughts:

1. Are there any more phenomena that show up? Do you get piti? Which grade? Energy currents running through the body? Is it wavelike? Does it last for seconds or minutes? This would help with diagnosis.

2. Based on what you say: Parts of you seem to have progressed further than other parts. You need to work on the parts that are underdeveloped. Dullness really seems to be the central issue. Do a lot of body scanning and work on introspective meta-awareness. Make meta-awareness continuous had habituate your mind to supplying energy when you need it and relaxing when you don’t.

3. Do some practices that you are not used to doing. Things that won’t let you relax, things that don’t come easy. In other words, challenge yourself to get out of your habitual patterns. Anything uncomfortable is good. Tried eyes open meditation?

4. Talk to teachers who have a completely different perspective on things to see whether they can pinpoint exactly what might be the issue. I had an issue with subtle dullness for about a year. What helped was switching to a less comfortable meditation position.

[nekoMember]

Hey Mr. T, thanks for your reply!

Dullness is, I agree, the central issue for me right now, and I have made it the central focus of my practice. I have almost vowed not to enter jhana anymore until I have defeated it (though I am not very rigid with vows). So eyes open, energise continuously, increase peripheral awareness to the max, increase continuous introspective awareness to the max. I will try *anything* at this point. Attention on the nostrils is horrible from this point of view, and it gives me dullness very, very fast.

Sessions with eyes open while powering up awareness feel very satisfactory and productive. My practice is kind of do-nothing-ish, within the boundaries of fighting dullness. Attention goes where it needs to, in particular to areas in mind-space that feel dull or fuzzy, to shine some light there. You could say that I am meditating on dullness, which you might even see as some form of meditating on the mind (an advanced technique) but taking as an object the fact that I suck at controlling dulness (a beginner’s problem). More on this below.

Piti is, I feel, not a great diagnostic tool with me, because I have located the “piti switch” and I can turn it on at will. I get what looks like pervading piti (pleasure / energy / vibrations buzzing in the body and the space around it) although it is not always so intense. Which brings me to another question: Culadasa seems to imply that the grades of piti are grades of increasing intensity and different type and pacification/unification at the same time. This is not necessarily my experience. I would actually grade piti on three axes: intensity, type (kriyas, wavelike, surging, showering, pervasive), and pacification (have the “ordinary” bodily sensations vanished?). On this scale, I would say that I can at will turn on:

* intensity -> 2 or 3 out of 5

* type: surging or pervasive. (kriyas, wavelike and showering happens spontaneously, or the do not)

* pacification/unification -> I cannot turn it on / off at will, it takes some work. If I am not dull, a few minutes I would say. If I am dull, yes, of course it is extremely easy to be pacified, but the loss in clarity does not qualify as unification.

Which brings me to “parts which have progressed more”. It seems to me lately these days that TMI tends to overgeneralise progress into stages. I don’t mean it is generally a bad thing, his model probably applies to over 90% of practitioners. But for me, I cannot place myself in one specific stage for the life of me.

I don’t know how often it happens, but it seems quite possible to have certain skills from advanced stages while having problems from lower stages. For example, in my daily life these days I have constant, powerful mindfulness throughout my daily activities. Very high clarity and concentration, pretty good equanimity too. It happens very rarely that I get lost in the “content” of my experience without being aware of it, even in daily life. This looks like stuff from stage 10 practice(!) (If I am not bullshitting myself).

But on-cushion I get strong dullness. Stage 4 stuff — of course with advanced skills in the mix. I do not get startled by sounds at all, I don’t slouch, from the outside I look perfectly alert. But basically I am in a very deep mindful dullness. Almost like lucid dreamless sleep, if I let myself go there.

Thanks again for your reply, see you IRL some time 🙂

[Michael DunnMember]

Hello, Neko

I hear what you are saying about the generalization on the stages though I think the hierarchical structure works well for communicating this technique through a book.

Most people don’t need to ask what stage their meditation is in as long as they know what they need to work on in their mind at any time. For example, we all know that a sit can start out at a lower stage (with certain obstacles like dullness/agitation), then you get into it when the mind settles and you are working at another stage (with certain techniques like body scanning or jhanas), and then when the mind tires the sitter will experience other stages and their obstacles… So it is never quite so linear, a meditation session seems to follow the jagged peaks of a mountain.

The important thing is not what stage you are at, but if you are working at your level for your mind at that point in time. Know the technique and then apply what you need whenever you need it. This is working diligently.

If dullness is so intense for you, and you seem to know the book well, it is because of a lack of perceiving mind moments as you seem to lose all attention when you sit and then dullness follows. This makes sense. Try to keep your attention during your sit as you do during the activities in the day that you say is full of clarity and mindfulness. The only distinction between the two is physical and perhaps this is a clue for you.
– Are you physically tired so that when you sit you tend towards sleep?
– Are you so physically active that sitting still is an absolute bore and your mind shuts down?

You can rejoice in knowing that “this too shall pass” if you don’t make it out to be more than it is, and simply apply the practice techniques to where you are. Place attention on the dullness, smile and make the intention to increase the number of perceiving mind moments. Repeat.

Regards,

Michael – Dharma Treasure teacher-in-training

[Ivan GanzaMember]

I really like the analogy of the mountain peaks.

The example I usually think of is that of trying to drive to a destination using an old-style map. (From the days when we actually still used maps rather than google maps…)

Anyhow, TMI is a very good map. But it is not the terrain. You can see roughly where you need to go, and have some pretty good instructions. You know what land marks to look for and so forth.

However — until you actually see the land-marks and learn your way by going that route over-and-over, many many times, becoming familiar with all the stops, you won’t know the details of the route.

And it seems each of us travel our own version of the route, and the land-marks and such look a bit different (and it doesn’t help that the land-marks are a bit shifty and not always perfectly clear! With time, doing the route over and over, they do become more and more clear all the time though)

Keep at it!

Cheers,
-Ivan/

(DT Teacher in Training)

[nekoMember]

Hello Michael, thanks for your reply!

I think two different topics got mixed up a bit: dullness on the one hand (gross and subtle, stages 4-6) and what happens to attention during higher stages of concentration (2nd jhana, stage 9). Of course it is extremely important not to mix up the two things, because it can be extremely easy to confuse dullness with high concentration states, for a bunch of reasons, including:

* The bliss of dullness feels very much like sukha.

* The loss of metacognitive and introspective awareness makes us prone to fool ourselves as to what is going on.

* “Blank mind moments”, which are the definitory characteristic of dullness, are easily mistaken for what happens to attention in 2nd jhana, with the dropping away of vitakka and vicara.

Now I am reasonably confident that, during a sit, I am skilled enough and honest enough with myself to be able to know whether what I have been going through is dullness or a high concentration state. (Or both in different portions of the sit.)

——-

When it comes to dullness, I am using the techniques from TMI: The antidotes, increasing introspective, extrospective and metacognitive awareness, and giving more stuff to do to my attention, both spatially (increasing the scope of my focus), temporally (increasing the “framerate” or time-resolution of my attention), and sensitivity-ly (is that even a word? :D). In addition, like T. suggested, I am trying new practices to keep myself interested and switch things around a bit. It’s interesting that the fundamental tips from TMI can be adapted to most practices, so I am also learning some additional chops. “Life quality” is in check. I get enough sleep at night, and healthy daily doses of non-strenuous exercise (walking, yoga, a 2km jog, stuff like that). Overall I am quite optimistic about the prospect and satisfied with the results so far.

——-

I was wondering if anyone has any comments on the topic that I put up on top as the “subject” of this thread: The difference between attention fusing with awareness in Stage 9 and attention dropping in 2nd jhana. Let me quote the two relevant passages from TMI:

Along with unification, two jhāna factors are present: meditative joy (pīti), and bodily pleasure and/or happiness (sukha). Since unification of mind has eliminated potential distractions, directed and sustained attention (vitakka and vicara) are no longer part of the absorption. In other words, there may be no moments of attention at all, particularly with the deeper forms of 2nd jhāna. Moments of introspective awareness continue and have as their objects the mental state of joy and feelings of bodily pleasure and/or happiness.

Whether you start with the attention focused on the Still Point or the breath, awareness should be almost entirely metacognitive. When you expand the scope of attention until it includes everything in awareness, the entire field of conscious awareness is the focus of attention. The object of meditation is the mind itself, and the distinction between attention and awareness disappears.

The question is: How are the two phenomena different from one another? I have a few theories and ideas based on my own practice, but since I have come to TMI after practicing the jhānas in a slightly different style*, I would like to hear the opinion of someone who practices in this tradition.

Any thoughts on this?

neko

________

(*) Specifically, if you are interested, Ingram – style jhāna practice. There are some minor, but relevant differences between how I experience the jhānas (very much in line with how Daniel describes them) and how they are decribed in TMI. 2nd jhāna and 3rd jhāna in particular have some subtle discrepancies, related to exactly how vitakka and vicara drop away, when, and what those words mean. I am training myself to develop more Culadasa-style jhānas. This distinction is related to footnote 32 to the second luminous jhāna:

It is possible, however, to experience a kind of intermediate jhāna, halfway between 1st and 2nd. In this case, just as with the whole-body jhānas, attention to the meditation object continues past 1st jhāna. In other words, the nimitta continues to be an object of exclusive attention, although less prominent, since conscious experience is dominated by peripheral awareness. The Theravadin commentaries call this vicara without vitakka.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by  neko.

[Ivan GanzaMember]

Are you wondering about these distinctions mostly from a theoretical basis?

Experience, over, over, over and over again is the best teacher. Then what others have wrote becomes more clear, and you can start to see why one person writes this way, and another that way.

Anything we try to describe and pin down with a nice tidy concept eventually falls apart. The descriptions of Jhana are pretty good, yet we have varying descriptions, translations, etc — the concepts and descriptions work to a point — past that you just need to eat the ice cream.

The Jhana meditations are much more fixed concentration where thoughts have been temporary suppressed. It is like diving deep into a lake. First you start on the surface, where there is much activity, and slowly dive down, deeper and deeper…..

Meditation on the mind/fusing of attention/awareness if more like you take off up out of the lake, the lake disappears, and your vantage point becomes a 360 sphere, where anything is permitted to move and dance in that space.

(*NOTE: We have not discussed stage 9 in the course yet. I may very well be doing the practice in a different way than Culadasa intended)

These are quite difficult to describe with words….

Best just keep eating from the menu 😉

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by  Ivan Ganza.

[nekoMember]

[edited out. not useful]

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by  neko.

[nekoMember]

Now, back to practice. Ivan adds:

The Jhana meditations are much more fixed concentration where thoughts have been temporary suppressed. It is like diving deep into a lake. First you start on the surface, where there is much activity, and slowly dive down, deeper and deeper…..

Meditation on the mind/fusing of attention/awareness if more like you take off up out of the lake, the lake disappears, and your vantage point becomes a 360 sphere, where anything is permitted to move and dance in that space.

I agree with these metaphorical descriptions, and they generally match my experience. One point of doubt on this topic is the following. The way you describe stage 9 is also compatible with:

– How I experience the 11th Nana (Equanimity) when I do dry insight practices, for example Mahasi noting, or Goenka body scanning.

– The way I used to experience soft 4th jhana when I practiced the jhanas MCTB-style.

So my next question is: When you are in 4th jhana (whole-body, pleasure, luminous, your pick), is the way your attention is working more comparable to your first paragraph, to your second paragraph, or to something completely different?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by  neko.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by  neko.

[Ivan GanzaMember]

In answer to your question:

In 4th Jhana: the way attention is functioning would be more comparable to the first paragraph. In a deep 4th Jhana, there would be no moments of attention being generated, and we perhaps could think of this as being way down deep, we are in a still place, far from all the activity at the surface.

In terms of the stage 9 practice: I need to point out, that we have not yet discussed those practices in the course yet. (I have edited my above post to reflect that). I may very well be doing something a bit different than what Culadasa means by that practice). I am not doing the meditation on the mind as a fixed-concentration based practice. I use open-eyed panoramic awareness, with an initial push of my attention into my awareness so to speak, then leaving it in place after that (with an occasional refresh of that if required).

Anyhow the only way I can think to describe what I think your wondering about, is as follows:

– Imagine that you have two cups, one is the cup of attention, the other is the cup of peripheral awareness (we will just call it awareness here)
– In the Jhanas, where the Jhana is deep enough, it is like you set aside the cup of attention out-of-sight; i.e. no moments of attention are generated
– With meditation-on-the-mind; where a fuse together of attention/awareness can occur; it is more like you (temporarily) pour the cup of attention into the cup of awareness
– Now where previously, you would have had a moment of attention-only for instance, you instead have a moment of (fused) attention-awarness (they are kind-of fused together) (*This is the best way I can think to describe it, I am not totally sure if it is valid to describe this way)
– This is how it is coming up for me to describe it, I hope my description is accurate, and not misleading anyone, it is difficult to write about cohereantly. I write based from my own experience…;

Cheers,
-Ivan/

(DT Teacher in Training)

(Edited)

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by  Ivan Ganza.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by  Ivan Ganza.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by  Ivan Ganza.

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