[Mary-Jo Duffy]

Thanks Chris.

Quite abit of complexity in this.  My experience in sitting meditation is calming, slowing down, a simplicity in that. This for me results in stability and a sense of opennes to receive. Then the PFC (prefrontal cortex) kicks in and thought takes off, so with a growing discipline there is a return to the immediacy of a somatic felt sense.  This decoupling creates space. CTR, I have associated with becoming familiar with how the mind works, and I consider the mind to be the totality of all emergent experience including cognition.  I notice that I am able to consult the felt sense,  somatic, as a marker, as I go into experience at times, depending on the strength of the experience. Eventually, I get there.  So for me the sitting meditation is the ‘gym’ for transitioning to engagement in life as well as having its own value.

An intervening variable that upsets this is that I try too hard.  Effort becomes effortful.  I attribute this to the conditioning that western culture has visited upon us; individualistc, competetive, acquisitive etc,  operating as a default network with no real thought to intentionality, just hard wired in. I don’t really attribute wanting entertainment or comfort necessarily, or any of the other derogatory impulses CTR appplies to this experience.   Its a default, perhaps an unconsious bias and it takes awhile to discover through the layering of our constructed selves.

Thanks I am enjoying the quality of this course.

[Mary-Jo Duffy]

Thanks Chris.  The Forum is a good place to allow the queries to take shape. After considering that question about ground, I did notice a back ground hum – ‘the ground is what is within ‘  kind of melody.  And that raised another question.  Hinayana is ruthless in the quest to strip back to immediate experience. Along side that there seems also the need to cultivate inner states that become enduring features of the inner landscape, by way of relating to that experience. Seems like first steps are necessary, although the relationship with our experience is always present both on and off the cushion. So the question is about cultivating those states without sabotaging the need to taste the suffering often associated with immediate experience.  When I have raised this question before its typically seen as a bid for avoidance.

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