Time: 45 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting Burmese-style with my hands on my knees.

Experience: I closed my eyes and immediately perceived my visual field vibrating at about six times per second. After a few minutes the vibrations ramped-up to about twelve times per second or so, and I switched my focus to my sense of touch (skin) to better track the arising and passing of each vibration. My concentration was pretty high and I only dropped into stories and tape loops once or twice, and then only briefly. This session was characterized by the inclusion in each vibration of multiple sense-stimuli. I would perceive sound and taste in a single vibration, for example; sometimes three or four senses in each vibration. The delineation between experience and mental impression of experience became pretty stark. I had a shock when it occurred to me that each vibration was like a chunk of sense stimuli that arises out of zero, does its thing ever so quickly, and then is utterly gone. When the session was over, this high level of concentration lingered on for a little while after.

Observations: Impermanence was really, really obvious as each sensation came, "did it", and disappeared, all in a flash. I was struck by how impossible it was for any of them to satisfy, since they existed for only the briefest of moments. I experienced some sadness reflecting on this, and observed even the sadness vibrate in and out of existence, and thought how pointless it was to be sad when this is just "how it is". So I let myself off the hook and just kept on keeping on.