Months? Maybe. But I failed the year-and-a-day test today. I have a headache right now because I’m sick. It is causing me pain. Daniel Ingram has reported many of his attainments going out the window too when he was much more seriously sick.
Could you give more details about what this means?
Here’s an analogy: When you meditate in full lotus position, it’s common for your legs to fall asleep, which produces pain. It is not uncommon for meditators who concentrate their attention on the pain in their legs to “dissolve their pain into vibrations”. The criteria I stated has this become one’s default state, instead of a just special altered state of consciousness.
If you touch a hot stove will you reflexively remove your hand?
Yes. I recently accidentally touched the handle of a cast iron pot I had left in the oven. It was this experience that caused me to list that the hot stove example. For the instant before I reflexively removed my hand, I felt the raw sensation of the skin on my finger(s) burning, instead of the abstraction layer of pain blocking it out.
If I inflict on you what to most people would be extreme physical pain (that is not physically damaging) (capsaicin?) would this be at worst a mild annoyance to you?
It was eating a spicy meal that I noticed something weird was going on. My eyes were tearing and I was too incapacitated to do anything productive, but I didn’t notice any suffering attached to my sensory inputs—at least in the course sense that such an experience would neurotypically produce suffering. That abstraction layer of pain wasn’t blocking my direct perception of my sensory inputs. I just sat down on my big beanbag chair until it was over, but the sensations didn’t cause me suffering the way pain might. It was an inconvenience.
Do you ever take painkillers?
Sometimes. I haven’t for a while, but that has nothing to do with meditation. I have just been in good health and the side effects of painkillers scare me, so I don’t take them unless necessary.
Would you [take painkillers] in an extreme situation like a medical operation?
Months? Maybe. But I failed the year-and-a-day test today. I have a headache right now because I’m sick. It is causing me pain. Daniel Ingram has reported many of his attainments going out the window too when he was much more seriously sick.
Here’s an analogy: When you meditate in full lotus position, it’s common for your legs to fall asleep, which produces pain. It is not uncommon for meditators who concentrate their attention on the pain in their legs to “dissolve their pain into vibrations”. The criteria I stated has this become one’s default state, instead of a just special altered state of consciousness.
Yes. I recently accidentally touched the handle of a cast iron pot I had left in the oven. It was this experience that caused me to list that the hot stove example. For the instant before I reflexively removed my hand, I felt the raw sensation of the skin on my finger(s) burning, instead of the abstraction layer of pain blocking it out.
It was eating a spicy meal that I noticed something weird was going on. My eyes were tearing and I was too incapacitated to do anything productive, but I didn’t notice any suffering attached to my sensory inputs—at least in the course sense that such an experience would neurotypically produce suffering. That abstraction layer of pain wasn’t blocking my direct perception of my sensory inputs. I just sat down on my big beanbag chair until it was over, but the sensations didn’t cause me suffering the way pain might. It was an inconvenience.
Sometimes. I haven’t for a while, but that has nothing to do with meditation. I have just been in good health and the side effects of painkillers scare me, so I don’t take them unless necessary.
Probably.