Dhamma Nature of Bodily Sensations

Context: Meditators have access to feeling more than what the normal comprehension allows. They use perhaps a greater capacity of the brain. This article is perhaps relevant to someone who has spent more than a thousand hours in meditation, or someone who is exceptionally good at concentration and has travelled great distances in some lucid moments.

*Here is a conservative estimate of the time I have been able to meditate over the last eight years: 7,071 hours of meditation till end of this month. See details in the footnote below.

Compared to the real time estimates one has, to experience tangible results into the nature of reality in the laboratory of the world, my close to seven thousand hours of meditation is a tiny speck. Human life is comparatively very small, even if one is not given to the race of consumption that is so prevalent in today’s times.

Also, meditation as understood by me, is not a course in magic. Nor in healing - mental or physical. It is about gaining insight. Insight in to the ‘ordinary’ nature of reality.

So, the infant I am in the world of meditation, whatever I say would still be incomplete. I record the incomplete perception for the benefit of those who are on the path like me. It is like I have set off on foot-journey to New york from New Delhi and describing what the path seems to me like in my small segment of the world.

As you might have understood by now, one sitting in an attempt to understand the true nature of reality wont get you there! One hour, one week, one month or probably even one year wont be enough. Though when it will happen eventually, that would of course be one sitting, Buddha sat for seven days seven nights as his last 'sitting' and had spent not just years but countless aeons as a meditator in innumearble lifetimes, before he could 'teach'

You will uncover the vastness and the expanse of this knowledge as you develop the patience to start deciphering, its good to know these estimates anyway. It is more difficult than getting admission in to the top university and gaining a doctorate, much more intensive; require more sustained effort and discipline. And difficulty is the same whatever age you are. Results come at each step, as you progress
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Dhamma Nature of Bodily Sensations

Knowing and Feeling:
To understand this concept I will have to give a non-direct example, to assist you. You may start reading the example, or just directly read the ‘concept’.

Example:One-Step Removed
Imagine yourself witnessing a forest fire from within a fire-proof temp. controlled ball. From your past experiences (say conditioning) you know fire is ‘hot’ and it ‘burns’ etc. Lets imagine for a moment you have no past experiences and no conditioning. So here just the visual cortex experience is knowing of the ‘eye’, images
Now suppose that the ball that was all transparent is now black with smoke. You have no access to light and it is all dark. Imagine a small window in this great big ball, open it. You smell the burning leaves, wood, etc. Sense of smell. You may/may not relate this smell to earlier visual experience-knowing. Or even establish a connection between the two if you are smart. A relation may be established by the mind here - between the visual and olfactory.
Now label all this experience as Knowing.

Knowing is one step removed from feeling.
Feeling is actually standing in the fire without the ball, in the burning ever-changing forest. Actually getting the burns and Feeling

So Knowing is one step removed from Feeling


Another, more sober but less accurate example could be witnessing the ocean from a big ball inside the ocean. You know but are witnessing from inside the ball. Now to ‘feel’ actually plunge into the ocean with your mask as a deep sea diver.

Explore the layers of perception, the boundaries of ‘feeling’ and knowing…think of subtelities and more layers between feeling and knowing in these examples

Core Concept: Dhamma Nature of Bodily Sensations
Dhamma nature of any experience is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, there is only knowing without a sense of self.
One starts with becoming mindful, of each moment, each moment the body (as it is connected to the mind seamlessly) sends hundreds and thousands of tiny transmissions as 'sensations' to the mind. With concentration mind becomes sharp enough and develops this capacity to be mindful of sensations throughout the body* (see note 2 below)
One 'feels' each of these thousands of sensation-separately. Body seems to lose solidity at this stage.
Body seems only a constituent of sensations, sensations arising and passing with great rapitidity. Then one starts penetrating even this ... witnessing these sensations one reaches bare knowing over long sittings arousing mindfulness and concentration, and awareness towards these bodily sensations that are attuned to the 'states of mind'. In deeper states of concentration and equanimity after due practice there is shift in the experience from 'feeling' to knowing.
Over constant periods of thorough mindfulness the deep-rooted perceptions in the mind start undergoing change, old conditioning die. And each experience becomes ‘bare’ experience. In bare experience one can understand the true nature of reality, that is now not bound by a sense of self, when there is only knowing. Such knowing has a thorough cleansing effect on the mind, mind becomes like a clear mirror, knowing neither pain nor pleasure, nor sickness nor disease, nor hunger nor thirst, for these are functions of the body. Mind is one step removed. It is right there, but does the job of knowing, not feeling.
#Bodily activities of eating working and sleeping remain as normal.

Feeling is a sense of self, the I. Without this I, there is only ‘knowing’.











*Note 1: 88 days of meditation over several retreats in residential monastry retreats. Ten hours daily (880 hours)
40 days volunteer in meditation retreats seva (240 hours)

Daily Practice
2002 Oct.14-dec 3 2 hours: 228
2003Year one: 3 hours each day (365*3=1095)
2004Year 2: 2.5 hour each day (366*2.5= 915
2005Year 3: 20 minutes average, wasn’t regular so m taking 20 mintues, I usually dont sit for less than an hour ( 109.8
2006Years 4: 20 minutes (109.8
2007Year 5: 2 hours ( 730
2008Year 6: 1.5 hours (366*1.5=549
2009Year 7: 3 hours (1095
2010Year 8: 4 hours (11 months) 1336

#Am not counting moments of mindfulness that last throughout the day on 'good' days and throughout the night on 'mindful sleep nights' that is more often the norm now-actually a sign of progress

Note 2: To develop this capacity to concentrate, it is advisable you go for a residential retreat where you can work with the right instructions under an able teacher. I suggest a Vipassana course from any of the centers here: http://www.dhamma.org/ Like many others I developed this capacity on the fourth day of the residential retreat. Had never meditated before. Since then, I have been practicing, further and further.