[charlesanattaMember]

Thanks for the explanation, Ivan.

I’m at a point in Stage 6 where I’m getting very restless when I do the body scan. No wandering thoughts, just stable attention and also this urge of trying to get somewhere quickly. My mind seems to despise doing the body scan over and over again but I still don’t let it wander, and I just keep doing the technique… with every single sit, and as thoroughly as I can. It feels very constrictive to be honest.

So I think a good idea to balance things out would be to include a form of practice where I strengthen a more expansive form of awareness, where I can just watch things arise and pass away with equanimity in order to cultivate more dispassion. I believe by incorporating daily Shikantaza for example, there is much to lose! Yes, lose… all the anxiety and craving for progress that I’m experiencing lately.

With Metta,

Charles

[charlesanattaMember]

Hi Ted,

When you said this:

“My experience is that the practices that are taught in Vajrayana, particularly surrender, will help you to make rapid progress in the ten stages. The more you can let go of the idea that you need to improvise, and instead look at the ten stages as a training framework that will bring you to the point of being able to improvise, the more you will be able to actually hear the instructions correctly and put them into practice correctly, and the more you do that, the more quickly you will progress.”

For some reason it made me think of practices like Mahamudra.

Would you recommend doing stuff like that (Dzogchen, Shikantaza, etc.) before reaching Stage 7?

With Metta,

Charles

[charlesanattaMember]

Hi Wiley,

Thanks for all the info!

I actually agree with you, astral travel is all strictly mental phenomena. But I’ve heard about the dangers that can come from engaging in said practice, like basically going into a coma… so I believe Thanissaro Bhikkhu is right when he warns people.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu criticizes the deep jhanas, in the same way Ajahn Brahm criticizes lighter jhanas. However, I understand why they interpret things differently. They belong to different orders of the forest tradition and had different teachers. Personally I’ve never found Ajahn Brahm to be misleading, he’s been one of the greatest inspirations in getting me to practice consistently. I can say the same thing about Thanissaro Bhikkhu, just by listening to him expound the Dhamma I often get insights.

At the same time, I’m very glad people like Culadasa and Leigh Brasington are around teaching that all types of jhanic absorption are valid and useful, this happens to be my personal view about the jhanas. Also you’re definitely right, the way Culadasa has formulated the path is monumentally important. He’s truly an exceptional teacher as well, I can sense the compassion he has for his students when I listen to his talks. He’s always so kind and patient with everybody. I bet if all of us follow his example more closely we will start making more progress.

With Metta,

Charles

[charlesanattaMember]

Hey Bobby,

“The jhana is accessed by widening the field of attention (and sustaining it) on breath sensations in the whole body. I have spent some time with this practice, but probably not enough (I am with you on the needing to not rush things!)”

I see, and yeah, we need to remember a wise saying from Ajahn Brahm: “Careful patience is the fastest way!”

“I tried it this morning, and what did surprise me about it was how effective the widened attentional field was at tuning out sounds, even from perpheral awareness. When I noticed this, my attention started to wobble around, as if to sort of scan the field of awareness for activity. Suddenly all kinds of background noise came rushing in – like the volume knob suddenly being cranked up.

I am unsure though how much to gauge the quality of the absorption on auditory noise in peripheral awareness. There was also virtually no discursive thought, but this has become a consistent trait of my daily practice. There was also waves of physical pleasure and a subtle sense of joy regarding the whole process. Is that “the flow” Culadasa is pointing to? I’m not entirely sure.”

That sounds (no pun intended) like a cool experience. The whole joy & pleasure aspect, which I also perceive but only in a subtle way like you describe, has to do with the mind becoming more unified. It does constitute a state of flow as described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue…) and I do believe Culadasa is talking about the same thing when he mentions that term, because I remember him quoting Csikszentmihalyi’s book when discussing the flow state on some talk he gave.

As for what you say about intention. I’ve heard from Tina Rasmussen, that it can help to internally verbalize your intention firmly, and it is a powerful practice. Here’s an example of this, it happened to me 5 years ago. I wanted to try astral traveling one early morning during the weekend, so I repeated the following intention in my head: “the mind will stay awake while the body falls asleep”. As I was losing consciousness and drifting off I suddenly regained a tiny amount of subtle awareness which seemed totally different from normal waking consciousness, it had a distinctive quality of deep equanimity. I sensed the whole body being paralyzed, then strong vibrations happening and growing in intensity, finally I heard a weirdly distorted (almost muffled) popping sound in my ears, and had the sense of being absorbed inside my own skull. Then absolute blackness and no perception of the body or any of the 5 senses. After a bit I felt my “astral body” separating and had a typical astral travel experience. However what amazed me the most was how powerful intentions can be. I repeated this a number of times but later abandoned the whole astral travel thing because, like Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains, you can actually get stuck there.

I will also start using the technique of verbalizing intention mentally from now on in my meditation. But something tells me it will really play a much more important role when we start to practice the deep jhanas (probably not anytime soon…) Still let me know if you make any progress!

With Metta,

Charles

[charlesanattaMember]

Hi again Bobby,

You’re right, and thanks for taking the time to explain it all in such a clear and concise way.

“Whole body breath awareness practice does help pacify the discriminating mind, and as a result, thoughts are attenuated and/or relegated to peripheral awareness – the felt sense in my experience is that they are kind of wispy and distant, and often not complete thoughts – as if you are vaguely overhearing a distant but passing conversation.”

This has been my experience as well whenever I’m actually employing the method properly, that is without trying to rush through the technique (which is a tendency I’m working on correcting).

One very last thing I was wondering: In order to access and keep the whole body jhanas going does one have to maintain the focus on breathing with the whole body instead of placing attention back on the breath at the nose? If you have any advice from personal experience for entering and stabilizing these jhanas that would also help a lot!

With Metta,

Charles

• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by  charlesanatta.

[charlesanattaMember]

Hey Bobby,

Thanks for the info! It did help me understand things better.

“There is just this perception of raw breath sensations in awareness, almost like one impossibly long inhale, or one impossibly long exhale – it could be either. I experienced this much later though – but I’m sure experience varies.”

Ah yes, I had that same experience recently. To be honest I’ve been trying to get back there, but we all know how helpful craving is… (the very thing we’re trying to eradicate after all). I need to cultivate more dispassion. The funny thing is that the time I got that far in my meditation I sat with no expectations, watching the breath in a more relaxed way than I usually do.

I also perceive the breathing spot becoming cold rather often, and other chilly sensations that manifest throughout the body. Also electricity, heat, etc. I believe these are all signs of piti which has not yet fully matured. They feel pleasant (especially the chilly and electric ones) but are short-lasting. Culadasa rightly says to basically ignore them until one has mastered Stage 6. Only then can they be used to access the pleasure jhanas.

“More important at this stage, it seems to me, is the quality of exclusive focus.”

Yeah, that’s the impression I get as well. By the way, I have one question regarding the method for obtaining that: After experiencing the whole body with the breath and returning the attention to the object of meditation at the nose do you still keep the body and external sounds in peripheral awareness or do you try to become fully absorbed in the breath?

With Metta,

Charles

[charlesanattaMember]

Hi B Arnold,

Some monks like Ajahn Sumedho recommend using that ringing as a meditation object, even throughout the day. This is an ancient technique from Nada Yoga and maybe you could find it helpful in your practice. Since you mentioned the ringing stopped when you didn’t meditate for a while, then I don’t think it’s a medical condition, but I’m no doctor. I’ve also heard from Leigh Brasington that the ringing can be a sign of concentration improving.

With Metta,

Charles

[charlesanattaMember]

Hi Blake,

Thanks for the info! I guess the same thing could be said for the whole body aka “ultralite” jhanas helping one to master Stage 6, right?

With Metta,

Charles

[charlesanattaMember]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks a lot! The draft does indeed help until I can hopefully buy the book.

Hi Blake,

I see, thanks for clearing things up. I definitely have not mastered stage 6 yet, so I will avoid the practices outlined above for now. But like I said, it really does help me to know what I should be preparing for in the near future, so I’m thankful Matthew posted the draft.

I’m very glad to learn that the pleasure jhanas can be used to master Stage 7. So would you say that once a person has cultivated often the first four pleasure jhanas, they can choose to ignore the pleasant sensations and move to Stage 8 effortlessly by just staying with object of meditation?

With Metta,

Charles

[charlesanattaMember]

Hi and thanks again, Michael.

Now I see there are 2 different practices, one for each stage (5 & 6), involving body awareness in Culadasa’s meditation scheme. In the “Body Scan” technique which I use, I only focus on the breath energy sensations 1 part (or 1 section) of the body at a time, this only has the effect of removing dullness for me, subtle distractions still persist. What you’re talking about is definitely something more involved, like a step further, and it only makes sense in order to master this next stage.

I have faith this is the sort of technique I’ve been lacking in my practice. Something tells me this will be a long process… but without a doubt worth it, that’s for sure.

With Metta,

Charles

[charlesanattaMember]

Hi Michael,

Thanks! Your answers did help indeed. Let me see if I understand this correctly:

Basically by sustaining the focus on the breath (and keeping awareness of the body), the mind gets used to ignoring the subtle distractions and there is no need for any positive reinforcement like in previous stages. I guess the reason is having to smile in stage 6 actually disturbs one’s concentration. Instead one should just plainly ignore the subtle distractions at this point, in order to achieve exclusive attention on the meditation object.

“The practice of experiencing the whole body with the breath is to engage the mind to find sensations caused by the breath throughout the body, doing so in a very methodical manner by changing the scope of your attention while maintaining exclusive attention.”

Ah yes, I believe you’re referring to the Body Scan technique? I found that one essential to master the previous stage. I thought it meant something different.

“The mind creates concepts or labels based on raw sense-percepts and the habit of the mind is to react to these, not the original sense-percepts. For example, I react to the concept of pain in my knee while sitting (discomfort, fear of damaging it etc.), not the raw sense-percept of pain (a unique sensation). The term non-conceptual here refers to the ability, through pacifying the mind at this stage, to have an insight into your mind actually doing this with the meditation object. As a result, your meditation object of the sensation of the breath will not have a label such as “cold/warm” nor on the “arm/ nose”; it will be a raw sensation devoid of such labels, and hence non-conceptual.”

When I get very focused on the breath, it becomes very faint and like it’s almost about to disappear (I used to think this was actually Access Concentration) but so far I don’t think I ever had the experience you mention. Maybe the breath becomes non-conceptual once all subtle distractions are 100% effectively ignored? If that is the case, would this be the signal then for shifting the focus from the breath to a pleasant sensation in order to enter the Jhanas?

Thanks again for your time, by the way I don’t have the book since certain imported goods are rather complicated to obtain in my country.

With Metta,

Charles

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