u/katspaugh

There’s no self, so there’s nothing to liberate other than the loop the process is stuck in. The process just needs to exit cleanly, without clinging to itself. Looping forever is unethical and pointless, it’s just torture. There’s craving for some achievement in life, some beauty to discover or create, but it’s a delusion. There’s no result to achieve and there’s no one waiting for any result. Life just goes on and on, it’s not some elaborate experiment to solve some problem. There’s just emptiness. Best you can do is free up the resources and enjoy the peace. Use the time left to extinguish craving, and don’t fuel it with unnecessary activity.

Edit: after re-reading, this does sound almost suicidal. Might be a disservice to the community to sound like this.

One: HH’s Watching the Peripheral

He talks about this in almost every video. We look at our entire context, our entire current experience and see ourselves as part of it. Anything that comes up is part of that context. No subject/object dualism, just experience happening. Observer is part of the experience. You can mix in anicca here too. Since experience is constantly changing, i.e. phenomena arising, enduring and passing, it cannot be something you can reliably call a permanent self. Just processes and phenomena. They are always given, impersonal, and you’re within the given.

Two: Elements

Elements are one of the “contexts” from method 1. For example the earth element. Everything in the “material” experience has solid properties to it. On the basis of solid properties, our bodies exist. In the body, neurons fire up and make up a sense of self. So self is just a phenomenon in the world made of elements. So contemplating the earth element is the context wide enough to include all of our experience, and nothing that comes up can disturb this contemplation if seen as contained within the currently experienced context. The important bit is that elements should be contemplated from the first point of view, or in a non-dual way.

Three: The Five Skandhas

We investigate each skandha one by one, until we see each of them as impersonal phenomena. One of them or a combination of them makes up the sense of self, but it’s an empty illusion as only the skandhas themselves are there. Thoughts come and go on their own — they are not self. Consciousness arises only in relation to objects of consciousness, so it’s not an independent self either, just a device, just a process. And so on for each skandha.

Rob Burbea’s “Seeing that Frees” is excellent for this.

Four: Specifically the Body

Contemplating the body specifically is very important to cement the no-self view. We contemplate every single part of the body starting from hair or nails (the most impersonal, alienatable parts). We want to be able to see the entire body, inside and outside as an object. HH would emphasize here that we should not investigate the body like a scientist would, because objectifying it would just reify the observer-subject again, and just place it outside of the body. So we must contemplate the body within the context of the entire currently enduring experience as per method 1.

It’s important that no part of the body is left uninspected because we must have the entire inventory of what constitutes the basis of our physical sense of self within the context of entire experience.

HH constantly reminds that these Satipatthana practices must be exercised only with the Right View as described in method 1. So this method already implies you have an understanding of dependent origination — as Matryoshka-like containers unfolding and manifesting the experience.

Turns out when suttas talk about citta, they can mean it broadly — the entire mind space, container of entire experience, and narrowly — the pre-conceptual affective layer of the mind, the one that pressures us to react to pleasant and unpleasant feelings.

HH refers to the former as Animal that must be trained. He says the wild animal doesn’t speak our human language and understands only when we show it through our equanimity that agitation of any kind brings only suffering; while dispassion and non-resisting, non-reactive endurance brings peace. Animal enjoys peace and learns to stop craving.

To find its outline he recommends looking at the “felt physicality” (body as its lived) and feeling tones. Citta will then reveal itself as pressure, attitude and “space” between these things.

I know it’s just a terse interpretation of HH’s talks but I’d be curious to discuss this topic and refine my understanding.

My current understanding of Dharma as a lay person. Mostly influenced by Hillside Hermitage lately:

We’re free, when we face pleasant and unpleasant experiences alike with equanimity. Not craving and not pushing away. To be able to do that all the time, we have to untrain the mind to do its default thing, which is craving and pushing away, appropriating, proliferating and identifying.

We train by restraining ourselves, i.e. at first forcefully limiting ourselves in various indulgences. When there’s restraint, craving intensifies and it’s easy to observe it, along with its terrible consequences: suffering. When the mind sees clearly and often enough that wanting equates to suffering, it stops wanting.

This discipline and training is different from blind repression and self-abuse because of the added awareness and intentionality. We know why we’re doing this and we know to observe what’s happening with clarity and focus. If there’s no clarity and focus, it’s just suffering with no benefit of learning.

Observing means un-identifying/objectifying. We learn to see the mind for what it is, and not as “I”. A Jungian psychologist would say that the training phase implies disintegration of the psyche.

Restraint also happens to be ethical and beneficial on its own because we restraint ourselves from things that are harmful. Once we unlearn the default reactions, we don’t replace them with new positive but still automatic reactions. We leave the choice open moment-to-moment, and the default reaction becomes non-reaction. Thus all thoughts, speech and actions become fully intentional-spontaneous, driven by ethical motivations. The spontaneous part is when the psyche gets re-integrated again.

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Is this correct understanding, roughly?

I’m on the train home from my second 10-day Vipassana retreat and wanted to share some thoughts on the experience.

## The place
My first time was in Sweden where they have dorms with shared bathrooms, and this time it was in Poland — with private rooms and private bathrooms. Big difference in comfort which you can see as both a benefit and disadvantage from the practice standpoint.

## The mind
I was counting days and was wanting to go home every day. Sense pleasure restraint really is one of the most powerful parts of this retreat. Observing your own discomfort and “experiencing the presently enduring situation”, as Hillside Hermitage likes to put it, really makes you see how life always has an underlying layer of dukkha as long as craving exists. Such as the craving to see your family, for mental stimulation, or for a goddamn cookie in the evening — the center did provide amazing brownies and carrot cakes on a couple occasions which turned out — surprise! — not to bring even medium term happiness.

Withstanding all that sense pressure with equanimity was a very tangible learning. I’m not good at seeing anicca at micro level yet (and on a macro level it’s nothing but a truism to me), but applying anatta was very helpful. Seeing the experience experiencing itself, with no need for an owner, with no subject or object, relieved a lot of suffering. Just body sensations happening with no need to be reflected on or controlled by a “self”. Just a process aware of itself.

## The body
Oh it was painful. Over the last two years, I’ve trained myself to sit in full lotus for up to an hour without much discomfort. Yes, the legs go numb, yes, they might hurt a little. But this pain goes away as soon as you get up, and it’s more of an intense stretching sensation. Sometimes it’s even pleasurable. Tiny champagne bubbles (as per Shinzen Young) fluxing and flowing. Fun and easy to focus on and observe objectively. But not so easy with a wide and dull back pain. It would persist in the breaks and accumulate over the day. An improvised back support from a tied sweater did help, as did sitting on a meditation bench. But boy oh boy was it a torture. Same learnings as with the craving to leave though: as soon as aversion to the pain, to distractions of others coughing, the craving to have a deep focus, agitation and restlessness — as soon as any or all of that would be let go, the pain would also reduce. The body would relax, settle “like a stack of gold coins”, breath would become slow and even, peace and tranquillity would warm you like Buddha’s smile.

On one day (day 5), when the pain was strong, I spontaneously started self-massaging the tension with my breath. Gentle alterations in the breath, rolling over and through the tense muscles and tendons. Just like Ajahn Lee described, or Buddha himself in the sutta about dough-like soap. I read those instructions many times but never understood them practically. I got elated. An image of Guan Yin appeared in my mind, along with a sense of bliss and gratitude.

Pain in the back has been my greatest insight driver. When you see in realtime and high intensity how your hatred and aversion directly increase tension and pain, and how equanimity relaxes it, it’s hard not to internalize the cause and effect relation between the two.

## The escape
On day 6, the mind staged an escape attempt. There was a panic attack-like experience, tension near the heart, hard to breathe and dizziness. I wasn’t psychologically panicking but I thought it would be safest to leave. The teacher was very chill about it, he said it’s not so easy to die from meditation. So I stayed and observed that state and it resolved itself.

# The teaching
People like to criticize the vipassana movement. Some of it is fair. But look at the facts: Goenka is very close to the Pali suttas. He literally (re)cites them. Teaches about dependent origination and offers a practical interpretation of satipatthana. Yes, it’s made very accessible and popular — but it’s great. The closest we got to an actual sensible mass meditation education, and it’s all grass roots and donation-sponsored. What else can one wish for the society?

## The aftermath
The second time was much more insightful than the first one. Knowing how to sit still for a long time, having glimpses of the Right View (or so I hope), all made a big difference.

Would I go again? The feeling is like after LSD — not in another ten years. I’m sure this might change. But I will offer money to anyone to go and try this at least once in their life.

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Edit: I didn’t mention it explicitly but this time around I did have good progress with subtle sensations and free flow. Blood pumping and pulsating in various parts of the body, tickling electric sensations, vibrations, almost no blind areas.