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 four times per second. My concentration shifted to my sense of touch (skin) and I found "vibrations" had sped-up to four to six times per second. Concentration was diffuse and the
vibrations pretty chunky and intense. I slipped into a stories, snapped back, and slipped into stories again. There was quite a bit of aversion to meditation and physical pain. The vibrations became very fine and difficult to observe in a precise way. The rest of the session was characterized by these fine vibrations . . . when I wasn't stuck in stories.
Observations: I've been very irritable for the last few days. This was a very "Dark Night" session what with all the stories, tape loops, pain, etc. It was definitely the most difficult-to-sit-through meditation I've had in a long time. I don't relish being back in the "Dark Night", but I'll be a monkey's uncle if that isn't where I am.
Hey Mike,
ReplyDeleteYou don't mention them in this post, but can you describe "formations" as you experience them? I've read the MCTB description, but it's helpful to hear it in other people's words.
Thanks,
Teague
Hey, Teague. Thanks for commenting. Although formations are weird and hard to describe, I’ll give it my best shot here, with the understanding that I don’t claim to be any kind of expert, these are just my personal experiences. Anyway, here goes:
ReplyDeleteBasically, when I say “formation” what I’m talking about is when, while observing reality arise and pass, a “shape” or “field” arises WHICH IS data from multiple sense-doors (for example, sight, touch, and sound), time passes briefly, and then the shape or field passes away utterly. I think “formation” is a really nice term for these sorts of experiences because it is descriptive of the sort of amalgam-like quality of the overall moment, which often times presents (for me) as either a sort of gooey blob of data, or (lately) as if the observer is sitting the middle of a three dimensional field which is itself the data. Make sense?
I’d love to hear what your own formation experiences are like.
Best,
-Mike
Thanks Mike,
ReplyDeleteThat's a helpful description. I think I got a little hung up on the term when I read MCTB, because the description there is of feeling the entire sense field (EVERYTHING included) arising and passing as a single aggregate, and that this was the prelude to fruition. So that's what I was looking to––and I can see now, striving to––experience. I don't doubt that it can happen that way, and in fact I've experienced moments like that, but I was overlooking subtler formations that were made up multiple parts and sense-doors, but not necessarily ALL parts and sense-doors.
This line rings a bell: " as if the observer is sitting the middle of a three dimensional field which is itself the data."
However, something that confuses the matter more is that, correct me if I'm wrong, but the term "formation" is a translation of the Pali: "Sankara." The way the Buddha seems to use sankara is that they are the moment to moment arisings of mind and matter, so to say that I feel formations, is kind of a "well, duh" statement, because every experience is nothing BUT formations. It seems though that the term has evolved a little. What do you think?
w/metta,
Teague
Yeah. The thing with MCTB is that its written by Daniel Ingram, who has meditation chops that are WAY beyond my own. I’m sure that his experience of formations is exactly as he says - with the sense-field presenting data from every sense-door at once; that’s just not my experience. This means I’m either (a) wrong, and what I’m calling formations actually aren’t formations, or; (b) what I’m perceiving are indeed formations, I’m just not perceiving them with the kind of clarity and precision that Daniel Ingram can. I think option “b” is more likely, given where on the map I encounter what I call “formations”.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your observation that the term “formations” may have evolved a little since the Buddha, I’m not so sure. If, as you say (and I’m no dharma-scholar, so I’m just thinking out loud and using the facts you’ve given to me) the Buddha used “formations” to refer to the “momentary arisings of mind and matter” and you and I (and Daniel Ingram) are talking about “formations” being an aggregate of a particular moment’s sense-data, I would say we’re all talking about pretty much the same thing, since “mind and matter” sound A LOT like data from the six sense-doors.
Ultimately though, it seems like WHATEVER these things are that we’re talking about - they’re good to investigate because they have wisdom to impart regarding the true nature of experiential reality. So the meditator will keep on meditating, largely as before.