The Yogi Toolbox: An Effective Combination

• An Eternal Now

  11 Sep 12, 13:17

  The Yogi Toolbox: An Effective Combination

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  Experiencing an outflow of unpleasantness? Compounding negativity? Or perhaps you have had perceptual baseline shift/s and are experiencing 'emotions' a little differently? Starting to see how 'emotions' are compounded phenomena, made up of a combo of sensations and mental activity? Maybe the mental activity has changed, diminished somewhat but those affectively charged sensations are still arising? Affective trigger sensations, like ones that may arise in the chest and throat etc. depending on your practice and current perceptual baseline, may trigger emotions, moods and the selfing process to varying degrees of manifestation and fabrication. 
  
  
  But even if the experience of 'emotions' has changed due to perceptual baseline shifts, why do such trigger sensations still arise? What is their cause? Even without such a baseline shift, this sort of inquiry is a very good place to start becoming aware of how such things arise.
  
  You find yourself driving your car and a situation (an object of sight, sound, thought, sensation) dominates the mind and triggers a sequence that runs the 'object' through the memory banks and evaluates it as good, bad, meh! for who else but 'me'. Sensations arise in the chest; sensations that would normally trigger a reaction of irritation in the mind. A compounding of mental and physical factors that give rise to 'irritation'. 
  
  One has a baseline shift and is able to see that such arisings are compounded, and is able to observe the physical factor seeing that a mental reaction may be more diminished or maybe even absent. But, the trigger sensations are still arising in such situations. There may be a subtler mental reaction still; an unsatisfactory movement in the mind. One can then start to develop a feeling of equanimity towards such trigger sensations. The mental irritation is then replaced by the feeling of equanimity towards them and this feeling of being equanimous will grow stronger and stronger as the same situations still occur and give rise to the trigger sensations that need to be seen equanimously. This may continue indefinitely. 
  
  But what of the trigger for the very trigger sensations themselves? Why do they keep arising in such situations? 
  
  Depending on your intent, one can begin to pull apart why they do still arise. How does the mind focus in such situations where 'irritation' arises as either sensations only or the whole compounding emotion? How does the mind read the 'object'? Is the mental focus narrow, wide, inclusive, pervasive or segregating? Is it not recognising and overlooking parts of the field of experience? Why is such a habitual tendency still arising?  What of the sense contact that is ignored in favour of a singular object that is reacted towards habitually with 'irritation' (whether seen as simply trigger sensations or the full compounded emotion)?
  
  When causes are seen clearly, this is usually enough to bring about the cessation of the effects. Something one, if so inclined, should investigate themselves. What are the causes? How does the cessation come about?
  
  QUESTION: Is paying bare attention to the senses the recommended route to realize what you mention above?
  
  It depends on how 'bare attention' is approached. If one singles out specific sense contact to mentally focus on, what does it lead to? What if one drops all mentally 'forced' focus and simply allows the brain to show (no-one) what it is cognising right now at whatever sense door, maybe two or three or all sense doors/sense object contact simultaneously?
  
  As far as I have seen in my own experience, the way the mind 'focuses', the way it lunges onto specific 'objects' in the field of experience, sectioning off and ignoring other parts of it, is how it sets up the base for the whole naming, conceptualising, evaluating and reacting sequence that leads to 'trigger sensations' and whatever leaps off of those sensations. This sequence usually if not always leads to something not quite satisfactory. It leads to the arising of fabrications of mind that push and pull our mental landscapes here and there. Very dizzying.
  
  You find yourself driving a car and you notice how the mind narrows onto the car in front of you. They are driving slow. The mind narrows the mental focus and lunges onto an object (the slow driver) and passes it through the sequence, evaluating it as 'irritating'. Aaaah, so it seems the way the mind lunges and grasps at 'objects' is triggering it all. What if I train the mind to relinquish such a habit?
  
  'Bare attention' can still be practiced via the 'narrow mental focus' route and it may lead to a fabricated concentration but it is still a fabrication and as we know, they are generally if not always subject to end, impersonal and unsatisfactory. A fabricated 'bare attention' is not what I would utilize unless one is experimenting to see how an unfabricated 'no focus bare attention' compares to it. One can then learn how to relinquish that habitual tendency to 'objectify' parts of the field of experience ignoring the rest of what the brain is automatically cognising.
  
  I have found all of the following combination of approaches, when applied together, lead to the 'bare attention', which will show how the mind without 'narrow focus' is not subject to 'irritation' nor the trigger sensations for such an unsatisfactory compounding.
  
  * The following practice shows oneself how the mind 'lunges' and 'grasps' at objects and  how to relinquish that tendency via a very effective feedback mechanism: Floaters
  
  * The following pointer shows how the mind may be habitually narrowing its focus and not recognsing what is cognised by the brain in other parts of the field of experience: Periphery/Centre
  
  * If one is also inclined to continue momentum in one's practice then asking How Am I Experiencing This Moment Of Being Alive (HAIETMOBA)? now and then will bring the mind back to what the brain is cognising from moment to moment, without the need to 'narrow focus' and lunge onto 'objects' within the field of experience. One trains the mind to simply recognise the whole entire field of experience (all sense contact) as it arises, clean and pure, unwarped by the sequence that blindly follows and acts as a filter, a filter of unsatisfactory mental proliferation. A similar pointer question could also be How Is The Brain Cognising In This Very Moment (HITBCITVM)? Ask it as much as possible to bring the mind back again and again to what Namkhai Norbu seems to be pointing to:

  The awareness arising at the first sudden instant (of sense contact) is indeed that pure presence which arises without correction (or modification) and which is uncreated (by causes). This very condition of existence which transcends the limitations of both subject and object is the authentic self-originated primal awareness of pure presence.

  * All these approaches should be practiced with the following notion informing everything one does: Unfabricated Awareness
  
  Combining all of these approaches as a practice, one will then be able to train the mind to relinquish the deeply engrained habitual lunging and grasping at objects, in turn allowing what is continuously and simultaneously cognised and experienced by the brain to be simply cognised without any interference from 'you', i.e. the desire to grasp at an object and establish a relationship with it thus giving rise to a sense of 'me-ness'/subject and 'not me-ness'/other/object. Then there will simply be the ongoing experience of truly just seen in the seen, heard in the heard, sensed in the sensed, cognised in the cognised, at whatever sense door continuously. Nothing is singled out, sectioned off from the field of experience to be 'subjectified', 'objectified' and reacted to graspingly. Everything is recognised as it arises and passes without becoming fuel for any 'triggers' or compounding fabrications. A wondrously freeing and liberating simultaneous recognition of continuous moment to moment to moment to moment etc. pure unfabricated stress-free sense contact.
  
  Our 'slow driver' will then just be part of the ongoing experience of just the seen in the seen, cognised in the cognised, bahiya style, as opposed to the mind habitually making an 'object' out of the them and evaluating them as 'slow' and 'irritating' for 'me'. This whole combination of approaches  can then be applied to all perceived 'objects' (thoughts/images, sight, sound, touch/sensations-surface and within. taste and smells), in any situation, with any arising phenomena, at any time of the day, in any position, in any life situation and any condition of mind and body.

  "Then, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus: In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you there will be only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard, only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, Bahiya, there is no you in terms of that. When there is no you in terms of that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of stress." Bahiya Sutta