This post is not for intellectual exercise. Kind of a personal note, in the vipassana practice of 'noticing' 'acknowledging'
Mental Contents Within Mental Contents
After a few insights, more or less based on non-self, mind suddenly took a leap into deeper understanding.
This is from the Mahasatipatthana Sutta when Buddha says something like :
"Mental contents in mental contents … "
(When I first read notes from mahasatipatthana sutta I came across phrases like Body in body, … mental contents in mental contents ... I felt helpless, I could not understand these phrases at all)
Now, in case of Anger for example, I see mental contents thus:
1.I saw that the apparent anger may be a projection of some insecurity inside
2. Insecurity/fear that is working this anger, creating a veil and keeping me away from the real cause/s of anger, keeps me a step away from reality
3. If I look closely at this anger->based on fear/insecurity, observing the sensations, I see clear connection of this anger with craving or aversion
Now having understood thus, I stop the cycle of ignorance (avijja) and come out of the anger!
As soon as I face/understand the real cause, anger gets uprooted, and mindfulness is established again in equanimity
Here, I see three layers of feelings - feeling within feelings. By the time I scrap the third layer and reach there, mindfulness is firmly established in equanimity
* Of course these words will make sense only with experience of
concentration practice
familiarity with sensations within sensations
practice in equanimous awareness
awareness of presence of a mental quality (that one can use as a basis of experience in the Now)
Thoughts lose a lot of their power over the 'mind'. One can choose what one wants to think, and does not think what one does not want to think.
With witnessing feelings within feelings, one faces the cause of suffering that so clearly lies within.
Sometimes suffering dissolves immediately transforming the physical cause too (say a pain that has appeared on the body), sometimes things change after sizzling a bit, sometimes it takes years.
If U have gathered courage to face it, with equanimity, suffering and its physical manifestation have to leave, sooner or later.
A second insight happened at meal time this morning, somewhat related. Makes the subject of my second post "Perception without Thoughts"
Also, I see how insights are building up, I remember how I understood much less around April 26, 2010 when I wrote the following post Mark It:
I wrote a post "Mark it" on April 26, 2010
Usually I stick around the nostrils to watch my breath. Traditionally some people watch the belly (in meditation) ha ha. So … I notice my attention shift to the belly, rising and falling with in and out breaths and the idea flashed through … notions of the body. The ref. is mahasatipatthanna sutta, I understood some, some identification trickled down, what could have been meant by ‘body in body’.
So I can say it was at this point, after years of practice, that I had begun to understand these terms - ‘body’, ‘sensations within sensations’ and now ‘mental contents’, kind of appropriately called it Mark It, kind of a new beginning (though I didnt realise then :)
I first read mahasatipatthana sutta at a meditation pagoda in 2003 (towards the end, in this video). I remember how helpless I had felt not understanding Buddha’s words. It has taken years to bring about this post, to answer questions (partly) that crossed my mind in 2003, with mahasatipatthana book in my hand, I never forgot those questions. Each day since then has been a stepping stone…and I know mahasatipatthanna sutta is several hundred phrases long, I have understood only two phrases, and that too only partially. Learning happens all at once, and in stages
Still uncovering…
