Nick's Practice Notes Number 3

Time for a new thread. Work is coming to a trickle soon so I am gonna have a few months of free time to return to some steady practice. Booya!

I thought I'd start off with this little video on critical thinking which I used for an English lesson today. It hit home with me and I am going to try and follow it's advice from now on.



May all beings be happy!

For Nick's Practice notes 1 and 2 here:
kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/36...lai's+Practice+Notes
kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/40...tice+notes,+Phase+.2 .

Great stuff Nick! Are you currently practicing 3rd Gear? Looking forward to your notes, always a lot to learn from them.

It really felt like I had just flicked a switch and reality just synched up in this way. I have experienced some majorly impressive PCE experiences, but this took the cake. And I have found that with this switch in seeing the moment as forever drawn out, I can repeat it at will. When I feel that I am out of synch, all it takes is remembering "the long drawn out moment' and boom!, experience flips to a groove worthy of writing about here. It feels like the mind seems to hook onto the idea that there is only this long drawn out moment and it 'rides' it, rather than fighting it. That means anything that arises, is part of that long drawn out moment and is accepted without second thought and evaluation; without sectioning it off and cutting the moment up and making some phenomenon an enemy or ally of an obvious illusory "I". All experiences of any phenomena just seem to groove as they are; nothing but synchronicity. This is difficult to describe.

It seems like it is my new pointer to be in the very here and now. Man, what a trip. And I can only fathom that this is possible due to having the tools that 4th path has given me. It seems my mind is starting to shift to a default mode which is losing a lot of an obvious self-contraction. I walk down the street and there is no "me", no sense of "me-ness"; of "being", but just what is seen, heard and felt within. I am feeling like a huge weight is starting to crumble from my shoulders. The weight of self-contraction. I am feeling lighter than I have ever felt in my life. The ever-continuing looooong drawn out moment that is life feels like it is how I am supposed to live. In this moment, affective happiness bubbles to the surface just remembering this mode of living. Oof! Could get better, could get worse, Hopefully it stays the same.

Thanks mudstick. Glad I could be helpful.


Disclaimer: In this thread, I do not wish to make any absolute claims but just to report my experiences as I interpret them. I could well be talking out my arse.

Today I had to attend an all day English student conference for the company I work for. It was easy-peasy money and I had not much to do except chat in the mother tongue.

I had a kind of Aha! moment during the day. The idea that there is only "now" and nothing else plopped into my mind. There is only now, no future, no past. Only "now"! This is obvious, of course, but it just become ever so more obvious in that very moment as it dawned on me. This seems to occur more often these days

I kept thinking about "now" being just this moment in time. Nothing more. But on thinking about it, time does not really exist. Seeing a moment just being a part of "time" just seems unintelligible to me if time does not really exist. There is only 'now'. No past nor future as they are concepts only. So how the hell could a concept of 'time' exist? Since there is no past and no future , a moment arises to pass away to be replaced by another moment? This conceptually just felt weird and confusing to me in that moment. What the frick is a 'moment'?

Then another thought struck me hard and for me, conceptually, it all made sense: "Now" is nothing more than a looooooooooong never-ending (until death) drawn out 'moment'. With this shift in seeing the concept of a moment, my experience synched up somehow. Any feelings of "not being in synch" dropped away and perception was left in what I can only describe as the most amazingly grooving experience of in-synch-ness I have ever felt. There was no suffering, no agitation, no out-of-synch feeling at all. Just a "long non-stop drawn out moment" of the experience of seeing, feeling sensations, hearing etc.

In my experience, it seems tanha is self contraction and self contraction is tanha itself. What more could it be? Desire is always rooted in the concepts of future or past. Not the "now". There is no desire in this very "now" when all is bathed in and synched up with it. 'I' only comes into being when it wishes to 'be'. Desire is only there because a self wishes to be. But it seems 'I' ceases to be when experience shifts to the very here and now where desire ceases to arise.

Jesus, I am sounding quite taken by all this. Thank god for the disclaimer! Hehe. Please don't take what I write to be me making absolute claims. It is just me getting carried away with my interpretations. Take me with a grain of salt.

I am feelings quite stress-free at the moment as I type this message, watching my hands type by themselves with no sense of a somebody typing. Just the hands doing their thing. A trip indeed!


May all beings be stress-free!!!!

DM mode has changed Nick. It is becoming clearer to me that every time there is self-contraction there is an interruption of the experience of "the long ever-continuing drawn out moment". It is only long and drawn out and completely stress-free when there is no interruption. There is only stress when there is self-contraction. Every time the self contracts, there is suffering. Every time the mind turns in on sensations, evaluates them as either good or bad, then precedes to hold onto them as such and react mentally to them, that is the self contracting. That very act of evaluation and reaction is the "me", the sense of "being", manifesting. An uneasy feeling of not being present but clinging to either a future or a past that does not exist.

For example, I feel a flow of harsh sensations at the chest. Immediately, the "long drawn out moment" is interrupted by a tensing in the mind connected to that flow of harsh bitter sensations. I see how the mind is repelled by the sensations. An aversion to its evaluation of "bitterness". A pushing away feeling arises in the mind. A sense of "I don't like it...runaway!". The mind is cutting up the flow of "now", by desiring for something to not be there; those sensations. Those sensations trigger a flow of thoughts of a negative nature..."This sucks, I want relief!"...Now, it is no longer present with what just is, but desiring some outcome in some non-existent future. 'I' has arisen to protect itself from what it has evaluated as 'bad', and project what it perceives to be "good" to be the preferred experience. There is a twisting and turning in on itself that is the habit of self-contraction, which causes a really obvious "desynchronized" feeling to dominate.

Cool description of the looooong drawn out moment. I think I'm noticing something similar lately as practice simplifies to recognizing and relaxing dualistic tension / self-contraction. It's as if all the energy of experience, all the swirls and eddies and the whole flow of experiencing, has no beginning or end.

The image that keeps popping into my mind is like those circular waves in water that spread out when you drop a stone in. Everything, the sensate/energetic immediacy of flowing experience, is like that but no stones, and no apparent end either. No beginning (that I have experienced) and no end (that I have experienced).

The annoying thing is that this is so simple in the seeing, so absurdly ineffable when I try to put it into words. I hesitate to equate our experiences for this very reason; but the one loooooong moment just seems to close not to say anything! Just a flow of energy without apparent end or beginning, and all the thoughts, sensations, feelings, perceptions are just like eddies or patterns in that flow. I can't really find a beginning or end to anything in that mode.

Seems like the very function of dualistic tension is to generate beginnings and ends, separateness in time as well as space. Interesting descriptions, Nick!

"" It's as if all the energy of experience, all the swirls and eddies and the whole flow of experiencing, has no beginning or end."

"Just a flow of energy without apparent end or beginning, and all the thoughts, sensations, feelings, perceptions are just like eddies or patterns in that flow. I can't really find a beginning or end to anything in that mode."
"

Hi Jake,

Yeh, these descriptions match my current experience. There is no beginning (that I can perceive) and no end(that i can percieve). It is just one never ending drawn out ever flowing moment. The ever flow of "now". That is all that it is. No past nor future exist in the here and now. Time seems to be a concept which aids the self-contraction in justifying it's actions and desires. Self-contract and tension and stress result. Self-release and stress evaporates.



Disclaimed!

I feel compelled to post a short sutta pointed out to me by Owen. I think is very much connected with the theme of this thread, and the theme of my life at the moment:

Khemo Sutta: Khemaka

[The other monks hear that the Ven. Khemaka has said:] "In these five groups of clinging I perceive no self, nor any thing pertaining to a self." [They therefore wrongly conclude that he is an Arahant. Finally, though sick, he comes in person to explain. They ask:] "As for this 'I am' you mention, friend Khemaka, what is it? Do you say this 'I am' is the body or not the body,... feelings,... perceptions,... mental formations,... consciousness or not consciousness?"

"No, friends, I do not say this 'I am' is the body,... consciousness, nor that it is other than the body,... consciousness. Yet with regard to the five groups of clinging, 'I am' comes to me, but I do not consider it (by way of wrong views) as 'This I am.' It is just like the scent of a blue, red or white lotus. If someone were to say, 'The scent belongs to the petals, or the color, or the fibers,' would he be describing it correctly?"

"Friends, it is like a cloth, soiled and stained, whose owners give it to the washerman. He rubs it smooth with salt-earth, lye or cow-dung then rinses it in clean water. Now though the cloth has been cleaned and thoroughly purified, there still hangs about it, unremoved, the subtle smell of salt-earth, lye or cow-dung. The washerman returns it to the owners, who put it away carefully in a sweet-smelling box. Then the smell of salt-earth, lye or cow-dung that still clung to it disappears completely." Khemaka

www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.089x.wlsh.html

"Surely not, friend."

"Then how would he describe it correctly?"

"As the scent of the flower, would be the correct explanation."

"In the same way, friends, I do not say this 'I am' is the body,... consciousness, nor that it is other than the body,... consciousness. Yet with regard to the five groups of clinging, 'I am' comes to me, but I do not consider it as 'This I am.' Though, friends, an Ariyan disciple has abandoned the five lower fetters, there still remains in him a subtle remnant from among the five groups of clinging, a subtle remnant of the 'I'-conceit, of the 'I'-desire, an unextirpated lurking tendency to think: 'I am.' Later on he dwells contemplating the rise and fall of the five groups of clinging, and he sees: 'This is the body, this is its arising, this is its passing away. These are feelings,... perceptions,... mental formations,... this is consciousness, this is its arising, this is its passing away.'

"So, as he dwells thus in contemplation of the rise and fall of the five groups of clinging, this subtle remnant from among the five groups of clinging, this subtle remnant of the 'I'-conceit, of the 'I'-desire, this unextirpated lurking tendency to think: 'I am' is brought to an end.

This quote is from a better translated version of the Khemaka sutta above:
www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.089.than.html

"In the same way, friends, even though a noble disciple has abandoned the five lower fetters, he still has with regard to the five clinging-aggregates a lingering residual 'I am' conceit, an 'I am' desire, an 'I am' obsession. But at a later time he keeps focusing on the phenomena of arising & passing away with regard to the five clinging-aggregates: 'Such is form, such its origin, such its disappearance. Such is feeling... Such is perception... Such are fabrications... Such is consciousness, such its origin, such its disappearance.' As he keeps focusing on the arising & passing away of these five clinging-aggregates, the lingering residual 'I am' conceit, 'I am' desire, 'I am' obsession is fully obliterated."

I post it as a reminder to myself. This is what I am doing.

Nick

Wow dude, my five clinging aggregates envy you so much right now Great reading, thanks for the practice notes. Curious about one thing: if you stare at a candle in PCE, is there a residual after-image when you close your eyes? (I guess I could ask Trent or Tarin, but what the heck )

Great description of a wonderful journey

Nick do you notice the stillness of this actual world?

cheers
Jeff

Nick,

I truly enjoyed reading about your experiences withe PCE and your realizations post 4th path. I have been noticing a lot of the same elements throughout my day while shifting into PCE. The idea of the "now" being a loooong never ending moment certainly seems to be a common trait of PCE (in my experience as well). I have noticed that I can call out fruitions at will while in "regular" 4th path mode, but I cannot experience them while on PCE, so it seems like not only one becomes the flow of whatever arises, as it starts to pass one instantaneously follows it and then flows into the next one and so forth. It really seems to be the nature of being pure non-localized awareness, no object seen, no observer. Without the self-contraction, no desires or related thoughts arising. In my experience, I feel like all the feelings (emotions) arise from some sort of friction between that flow experienced during PCE and the so called self-contraction. Indeed, the tools available post 4th path make the shift to PCE and noticing all these new exciting realizations so much easier (I would even think they are the only ones that make it possible).
I'm also very glad you have finally time to start writing again. Your and Owen's posts on both post 4th path and DM/PCE are giving great insight and clarification to this whole new (at least to me) practice. Those posts and Kenneth's many experiments are allowing for a very interesting developing of the practice!
Look forward to reading more about your practice!
Nos Vemos en el futuro!
JF

Hi all,

I am currently reading the following long article on Dependent Orgination and I am loving it. It makes so much sense to me and for some reason as I read about it, its put into practce. The end of stress!!!!.
I advise anyone especially 4th pathers to take a look.



The Shape of Suffering A STUDY OF DEPENDENT CO-ARISING
By Bikkhu Thanissaro

www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/DependentCo-arising.pdf

Hi all,

Been awhile since I've posted anything about my own practice. I have been doing noting once again. I have narrowed my noting down to just two words. "Nama" and "rupa".

My "nama/ rupa" noting practice consist of me noting nama for any mental phenomena of the mind, like mind states, thoughts, images, any type of mind movement, reaction, evaluation, conceptualization, the tones of feelings of sensations etc. I just note it all as "nama" or "mentality". As I do this, the mind will then eventually and automatically fall on the physical component of compounded phenomena (a combination of mind and body). Any emotion will have a sensation that seems to interplay with the mental components. This interplay of mind and body seems to create sankharas or mental volitions that condition my actions. But if I break it up with this style of noting, it ceases to be compounded very quickly and is seen as it truly is. Just impersonal impermanent compounded phenomena.

Generally the sensations are felt as some flow of vibrations at the chakra spots up and down the body. The solar plexus, the heart and the throat seem to get the most action for me but at times it moves up to the third eye and crown. The sensations without their evaluated tone will then be noted as 'rupa', 'rupa'. I just keep noting it like this...'nama, nama', then as the mind movements calm down and then cease, the mind falls on the sensations thus I note 'rupa rupa. This practice has been very effective in purifying the view of what "Nick" really is, so to speak. Kenneth gave me instructions to note mind states. This is a little tweak of mine which is working amazingly for me. I got the idea from reading the Visuddhimagga, on page 612: I've been recently returning to my Theravada roots.

www.scribd.com/doc/30119169/Buddhaghosa-...cation-Visuddhimagga

Continued from above...

START OF QUOTE: '[NO BEING APART FROM MENTALITY-MATERIALITY]
He defines the four immaterial aggregates that have thus become evident through contact, etc., as 'mentality'. And he defines their objects, namely, the four primaries and the materiality derived from the four primaries, as 'materiality'. So, as one who opens a box with a knife, as one who splits a twin palmyra bulb in two, he defines all states of the three planes, the eighteen elements, twelve bases, five aggregates, in the double way as 'mentality-materiality', and he concludes that over and above mere mentality-materiality there is nothing else that is a being or a person or a deity or a Brahma.

After defining mentality-materiality thus according to its true nature, then in order to abandon this worldly designation of 'a being' and 'a person' more thoroughly, to surmount confusion about beings and to establish his mind on the plane of non-confusion, he makes sure that the meaning defined, namely, 'This is mere mentality-materiality, there is no being, no person' is confirmed by a number of suttas. For this has been said:

'As with the assembly of parts The word "chariot" is countenanced, So, when the aggregates are present, "A being" is said in common usage' (S.i,135).' END OF QUOTE

I am also coupling the "nama/rupa '“mentality /materiality" practice with making sure to "love" my "self" more. Owen gave me that little piece of advice. Anytime there is the desire for the self-contraction or emotion or whatever to not be there, it is nothing more than the "self" wanting the "self" to not be there. So it creates a never ending feedback loop of "self" creating "self" creating "self" etc etc.

continued from above...

So I do not chase any self-contraction or emotion away. I let it be there. It is an act of embracing and acceptance. It works really well for when one is passing through the dukkha nanas too. I just mentally say, 'I accept you and embrace you' with whatever crappy sensations and tension created by the mind wanting to turn away. What happens is the mind then turns towards the sensations and images and thoughts that create the illusion of "I AM" and the tension that accompanies it. And then the tension is released. Then the "nama/rupa" noting practice breaks it all up into what it really is. Quite a powerful combination.

It became so clear that the turning away from the sensations was what was causing the suffering. The habitual tendency to feel repulsed by them. Thus, that habit is being turned on its head. These two practices of noting "nama/rupa" and loving and embracing myself have caused suffering levels to drop to all new very low levels. I have been experiencing a lot of vibratory activity and seemingly energetic movements in the body. But the tendency now for the mind is to see any self-created tension and self-contraction as just an interplay and combination of nama and rupa. There ain't no "being" there to protect so it seems and this means a lot of peace has taken the place of that tension and stress.

I've still got a lot of noting to do. But it feels like I am back on the ride a little bit. Deeper down the rabbit hole we go.

A practice I've been doing that I think is related is to go through each sense door, bringing awareness to each of the things I name below

"there are objects (the attention moves out to individual objects), there are the eyes (the attention moves to the eye balls) and there is seeing (seeing is taken in as a whole experience)"
"there are sounds, there are the ears, and there is hearing"
"there are points of contact (including pleasant sensations, pains, pressure, tingling, etc.), there is the body, and there is feeling"
"there are smells, there is the nose, and there is smelling"
"there are tastes, there is the tongue, and there is tasting"
"there are thoughts, there is the mind, and there is thinking (I'm including images, self talk, etc. in this)"

As I bring awareness to each of these the experience becomes more and more inclusive. At the end, I generally ask one more question "Is there anything else." This tends to put the mind in a sort of watching state from where I can see it go out to grasp on particular things (like a sound, an object, etc.)

I then note anything using one of the categories above if the attention is drawn out to it

"seeing, thinking, hearing, thinking, etc."

From that point it'd be pretty easy for me to switch to this nama and rupa thing you've mentioned above. I really like it.

Hi Nick,

Your post reminded me of a thread long ago on a site long abandoned:
tinyurl.com/29982mj (the old wetpaint dharma overground site).

-Chuck

Hi Chelek,

I clicked on the link, but I dont have any access to the old DhO. Can you give me the gist?



Nick

Hi Nick,
Sorry, didn't realize the site was no longer public. Here are a couple chunks of it:

me: I can only speak from a rather recent fourth-path view: ... Emotions become just phenomena that comes and goes '“ one aspect of our total experience of being '“ and that sense of being is much more expansive and open then before (which carries with it a sense of calmness or tranquility which is always present) '“ emotions no longer have the power to grab on to me and suck me in. Not to say there is no 'sucking' '“ but I am much more aware of it and can choose to be sucked in or not '“ I am never trapped by emotions - that is, when I am 'sucked in' I know I am and have a choice to continue or not. Another aspect is that emotions tend to fall apart more into their elemental qualities '“ so they lose allot of power. They become more patterns of energy or sensations '“ just sort of a subtle tension that rises up '“ kind of like riding the swell of a wave.

..."By 'riding the wave' I mean that I stay right in the present with sensations as they come up and one key aspect of those is something I can only call 'heart energy'. Let's say that this 'heart energy' has a 'flavor' of sadness '“ in the past I would have denied or repressed it and what would happen is that it would 'spring forth' and represent itself as a whole world 'out there' complete with all kinds of judgment, anger etc. (not that I was ever aware of this '“ this is hindsight speaking). Now, in order to 'ride the wave' I have to take in or be fully present with that heart energy '“ to really allow it to be felt and in a sense own it. There is a sense of wholeness or completeness with this practice. I have also found that if it gets away from me and is projected then I can in a sense recover that heart quality by 'unwrapping the world', throwing away the mental wrapper, and taking in the 'heart energy' that is still buried inside '“ sort of 'plan B' if you will. "

Hokai: "Namely, emotions are somehow that which inherently arises, tortures you, and then goes away. In this sense, the best we can do is see through the whole thing and realize the impersonal nature of this display. However, there are at least two additional dimensions to be considered. First, horizontally, we can develop positive emotions and uproot negative ones. And second, vertically, we can evolve beyond relative identification with basic emotions, and develop a dynamic meta-emotional personal stream, with emotional states being an expression and augmentation of our stage of realization. Such meta-emotions, along with meta-motives, are concerned with the whole gestalt of our situation, refer strongly do what we might call "deep time" in spiritual sense, and tend to be quite resistant to changing local circumstances. They are often pointed to when speaking of passion and compassion, zeal and enthusiasm, authenticity and inspiration etc.

Furthermore, engaging in emotional work (whether therapy or transformation, but not to be confused) from an already awakened mind, is completely different and yet even more urgent and meaningful, than, say, doing emotional work when needed because of the obstacle the unresolved emotional baggage presents on the path."

Hokai (clarifying above): "Dynamic in this case refers to avoiding the trap of negative models of enlightenment, and instead engaging and optimizing the wider range of human experience. Meta-emotion refers in this case to emotional experience rooted in higher principles like e.g. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness (i.e. meta-motives), or in a Buddhist example, devotion and the four apramana ("unbounded") i.e. love, compassion, joy, equanimity. Finally, personal stream refers both to an enduring stability in maintaining and enhancing such and unimpeded awareness of emotional state being like a dream state."