Confession: I think I am relaxing or meditating when I am really flowing with my escapist fantasies. With an attitude of seriousness or self-medication, I sink into pleasant imaginary creation.
For 8 years now since graduation! 8 years and not a THING has been done! Why? Because I enter into...
Read MoreThe idea is that awareness is more penetrating when the (voluntary) body is still, when its emotions are flat, and when its thinking is minimal. This is only partly true.
The (folk) m...
Read MoreVipassana. We begin with breath. Because everyone says it? Because we are an idiot yoga studio “yoga” instructor? Because racecar?
No—because it is self-action that happens by physical necessity after all contingent (fiat) action has been switched off.
We begin with breath. Gay?
No—profound. And here is why.
The method and pri...
Read MoreBeing embodied is literally the stuff of nightmares.
Being embodied is the premiere condition for the possibility of nightmare. Fear, pushing action, in its own direction, regardless of your plans. Fear sees danger whether that danger is real or imagined. We are keyed-up and looking for danger. We are, by...
Read MoreBe a physiologist in your self-relation. Since feelings are felt, feel them in their sense aspect, which is all real sensations really are.
What can be more present than the totality of your sensations now? Inner sense is total sympathetic nervous stimulation. Each bit of presence is felt.
Vedana is...
Read MoreI have become an embarrassment to humanity lately. Here is the complete spectrum of emotions currently active in my body:
Maybe it would be helpful to see vedana and clinging as the same thing except that the latter is future-oriented. Vedana is feeling now. Clinging is feeling forward.
We are in a constant forwards fear—it is, in fact, an intentional putting our feeling forward. Clinging is an identifying with the f...
Read MoreMost general advice people give is either wrong or useless. But not this:
Do at least one Vipassana session daily.
Right now I’m sad because it looks like writing well requires feeling good. So, I cannot write well when in pain. But what is pain? The pain-part of pain is an illusion. It’s the typical illusion we’re all familiar with—referring to many as one, and so thinking many as one, and so ...
Read MoreThe climax from the Day One Discourse you will hear at the 10 Day Vipassana Retreat:
The model is physical solidity—the real counter-force from our acts of pushing our own body (parts) against “things”—where the thingyness is just the experience of resistance.
Imagine trying to learn “thing” qua “mass” by watching videos of billiards games. Movement, yes. Mass, no. Force, yes. But not the force that we pressure-kno...
Read MoreAnyone can be great. All it requires is vipassana—to eliminate the threat of other people’s judgment, and your own.
At any given moment, there is the pressure of feeling and the intention to escape.
Resist your proclivity to run from the pressure and towards the escape—there is a course of actio...
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