Insight Meditation 11

CAUTION: These investigations involve intentionally triggering unpleasant feeling tone, in this way meditation can become very real. Be cautious and only do this with guidance from a skilled teacher and/or with appropriate training in softening, samadhi and insight.

To continue to observe the intimate relationship between bodily sensations (kaya), feeling tone (vedana), mind (citta) and their conditioned/constructed nature (sankhara) to develop deep understanding of Specific Conditionality (Idappaccayatā). It is the understanding of the experienced world regarding Specific Conditionality that reveals the path for targeted deconditioning of vedana. 

Unpleasant feeling tone can be observed by bringing to mind an unhappy memory or thought. As you do this notice that a feeling of unpleasantness appears in your body as a reflection of the contact between attention and the thought or memory.

Separating out a feeling tone from what is being experienced is like separating the texture of a banana as you eat it, from its overall flavour/taste. Bodily sensations are the texture, feeling tone (vedana) is the flavour of that experience.

CAUTION: These investigations involve intentionally triggering unpleasant feeling tone.

Step 1: Prepare your attention for insight.

• Prepare your attention for insight as per the instructions in Preparing Your Attention for Insight and ground awareness within your body and the experience of your hands touching.

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Step 2: Methodically observe elemental qualities.

• Methodically break your bodily experience into elemental qualities following four ranges of experience: softness-hardness, coolness-warmth, dryness-wetness, expanding-contracting. Expand your awareness and observe these qualities within the six sense fields.

Investigation: 

Develop intimacy with the interconnectedness of elemental qualities.

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Step 3: Observe any perceptional borders that arise.

• Observe the mirage like and unreliable nature of perception in regard to all of these until the borders of your body and mind lose their solidity or cease.

Investigation: 

Observe how perception rests on elemental qualities to a 'thing'.

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Step 4: Relax your mental grip and allow wandering.

• Next, relax your mental grip on the touch of your hands and allow your attention to habitually wander. All your attention should be towards observing the arising of energy within the mind as it flickers out to engage sensory input.

Investigation: 

Observe how attention flickers between elemental qualities within the sense fields giving rise to 'things'.

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Step 5: Bring a pleasant thought or memory to mind.

• Bring to mind a pleasant thought or memory from the past, holding it gently within your mind.

Investigation: 

• Observe any changes in sensations within your body as a reflection of that memory. 
• Observe any changes within the borders of perception in relationship to this memory.
• Observe and separate the feeling of pleasantness from bodily sensations.
• Observe your relationship of liking and wanting that feeling.

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Step 6: Soften any underlying effort to like.

• Soften into the underlying effort to like pleasantness and observe whether it grows or fades.

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Step 7: Bring an unpleasant memory to mind.

• Bring to mind an unpleasant thought or memory from the past, holding it gently within your mind.

Investigation: 

• Observe any changes in sensations within your body as a reflection of that memory. 
• Observe any changes within the borders of perception in relationship to this memory.
• Observe and separate the feeling of pleasantness from bodily sensations.
• Observe your relationship of liking and wanting that feeling.

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Step 8: Soften any underlying effort to dislike.

• Soften into the underlying effort to dislike unpleasantness and observe whether it grows or fades.

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Step 9: Allow your mind to habitually function.

• Allow your mind to habitually function.

Investigation: 

Observe the building of experiencing from the ground up starting by observing:

1. Sensory contact.
2. Arising of perception.
3. Feeling tone.
4. Like, dislike, indifference.
5. Mind based bodily sensations.
6. Desire.
7. Thinking, fantasising, etc.
8. Habitual construction.

Soften into the underlying effort beneath each of these and learn to break the causal chain.

You are ready to progress to Cultivation 08: Decondition Habitual Patterns when:

• You develop and experience Sotapanna Insight.

What to do is if you have not yet experienced Sotapanna Insight.

Keep refining the three groups in the Noble Eightfold Path until all three Path groups can be experienced as cycling within your mind.

Sila: Morality that leads to harmony. 

• Develop more sensitivity and refinement of your morality in daily life until your heart rejoicing in your sila.

Samadhi: Unification that leads to clarity. 

• Develop higher skill in accessing fourth samatha jhana through letting go (not doing) and dwelling in fourth jhana for longer periods of time until you maintain the Seven Enlightenment Factors in daily life.

Panna: Insight that leads to wisdom.

• Develop a more refined perception of anatta, the autonomous nature of all experience and experiencing until anatta becomes your main perception in daily life - nothing is perceived as personal.

Saddha: Verified Faith.

• Increase your devotion to the Dhamma by meeting regularly with members of a like-minded community as it is the maturity of this faith, based on your own experience, and confidence in your teacher/community, that will give your mind the confidence needed to completely let go.