knowledge of suffering

[Windaway]

Hello Euan,

Are you still interested in exploring this topic?
It is good to keep the discussion active so we keep the momentum of exploration and curiosity going.

I hope you are good.

Let me know.

Take care ^^

[Euan]

Hi David,

Sorry, I may have misunderstood. I had the impression the idea of the instructions were to try it out for a day or number of days, and report back. I tried the exercise today but wanted to try it for a bit longer to get the chance to properly investigate your questions.

Would you recommend generally keeping these exercises to a single day?

[Windaway]

Hello Euan,

There is no right or wrong way to do this process. It is your process, you know what pace you need. Take all the time you need there is nowhere to get to, and no goal. The fact that you take time for exploration is a reflection of your commitment and interest to find out by yourself the answers. I support that!

I am here for you in case of questions, clarification or simply sharing your insight.

I simply wanted to be sure that you were still on track and exploring. Now that I know that you like to have a few days for exploration I will not send you a message like that again.

Enjoy the exploration ^^

Let me know what you find.

David

[Euan]

Thanks so much David! Will get back to you soon when I have something to report :)

[Euan]

Hey David,

I tried exploring your last exercise every day for a while. My mind is quite unsettled at the moment so I found it quite hard to investigate for a while.

Can it be known how tall the body is?
Does the body have a weight or volume?
In the actual experience does the body have a shape or a form?

I tried out a number of ways of "measuring distance" between different points on my body using just sensations - for example trying to work out how long my spine was using the sensations from the top to the bottom of the spine. There is indeed some sense of distance between sensations within experience, but that sense is constantly fluctuating. Perhaps if my attention was more stable I could have got a better sense of it, but with my mind the way it was, it was too hard to get a consistent sense of the distance between two sensations.

There's also the obvious problem that the sense of distance is only relative to the distance between other sensations: I can only tell that the distance between two sensations in my hand is smaller than the distance between a sensation in my hand and a sensation in my elbow. I can't get any absolute distance from studying the sensations.

I tried "measuring" the volume of my torso by putting attention on both my chest and my back. That seemed to give no help at all actually, since the sense of distance between these two sensations was totally undefined. Apparently the sense of distance between sensations only works between particular pairs of sensations, or maybe if they're too far away from one another the sense of distance goes away.

Is there a boundary between the body and the clothing?
Is there a boundary between the body and the chair?

I was confused by this one, since the sensation of the clothing was being felt on the body. There are no sensations on the clothing, only sensations of the body _due to_ the weight of the clothing putting pressure on the body. Similarly for the chair. So from that point of view, there is no boundary between the body and clothing sensation-wise.

Is there an inside or an outside?
If there is an inside - the inside of what exactly?
If there is an outside - the outside of what exactly?

I tried to compare the quality of a sensations I think to be on the surface of the body (e.g. the skin of my leg) to the quality of a sensation I think to be inside the body (e.g. the muscle in my leg). When I hold them both in my attention, I can't disentangle the quality of the sensations from their proprioceptive nature - I can't switch off the feeling that "this sensation is inside and this sensation is on the surface". I can't study the quality of a sensation in isolation without my experience also containing a sense of location of that sensation in the body - a sense of how that sensation fits into the bigger picture of my body.

In terms of sensations that my proprioception labels as "outside" or "on the boundary of my body", there is no sense of inside or outside. I can't move my attention to sensations out of my body, because there are none.

What does the word/label ‘body’ ACTUALLY refer to?
What is the ACTUAL experience of the body?

Considering the experience of the body _as a whole_ is hard because I can only ever have attention some specific parts of the body. Even if I try to hold all of the chest, for example, in my attention, the sensation is always "patchy" - I can tell that there are some random parts of the chest that are missing from my experience.

My main takeaway from this exercise was that I couldn't separate the sensations in my body from the sense of where they were in the body. When I tried to zoom in a specific sensation, I couldn't tune out the sensations of the area around it and the sense of those sensations being "close" to the sensation I was trying to zoom in on. So my experience of the body is quite holistic - it can't be broken down into individual sensations, adjacent sensations seem to be intrinsically connected to each other.

[Windaway]

Hello Euan,

I can see that you put a lot of energy and quality time into this exploration. Very interesting feedback. thank for sharing!

My main takeaway from this exercise was that I couldn't separate the sensations in my body from the sense of where they were in the body. When I tried to zoom in a specific sensation, I couldn't tune out the sensations of the area around it and the sense of those sensations being "close" to the sensation I was trying to zoom in on. So my experience of the body is quite holistic - it can't be broken down into individual sensations, adjacent sensations seem to be intrinsically connected to each other.

My attention went on this particular phrase:
So my experience of the body is quite holistic - it can't be broken down into individual sensations, adjacent sensations seem to be intrinsically connected to each other.

If the body is quite holistic and can't be broken down into individual sensations, what makes this separation into parts and pieces?

Would it be more accurate to say that there are no actual sensations but there is an activity of sensing?

[Euan]

Hi David,

I've decided to stop pursuing this line of inquiry on this forum. It's been very useful for me and have learned a lot, but I realized that this format does not suit me so well and isn't sustainable for me at the moment.

I am very grateful for all your help, and keep up the good work! :)

All the best!
Euan

[Windaway]

Hello Euan,

Thank you to have informed me that you want to stop.

You know what is good for you.

Have good travel ^^

Take care

David Bonny