writing down meditation experiences ?

[purple planet]

the way i learn now is by doing a few meditations and then calling the teacher and describing feelings i got when meditating (regular feelings nothing special) and how it went

i wonder should i write down the experiences after each meditation so i wont forget how it went when i talk to him on the phone - i call now every 3-5 days

[SarathW]

I think meditation all about letting go.

[Kamran]

Thanissaro Bikhu on trying to memorize insights:

"If you're looking for the little formulas or the little nuggets of wisdom that you can wrap up and take home, in hopes that they'll allow you to drop the effort that goes into being so attentive, it's like the old story of the goose laying the golden egg. You get a golden egg and then you kill the goose. That's the end of the eggs. The goose here is the ability to stay attentive, to be present, to be fully engaged in what's happening with the breath. The insights will come on their own — you keep producing, producing, producing the insights — not for the sake of taking home with you, but for the sake of using them right here, right now. You don't have to be afraid that you're not going to remember them for the next time. If you're really attentive, your sensitivity will produce the fresh insights you need next time. It will keep developing, becoming an ability to read things more and more carefully, more and more precisely, so that you won't have to memorize insights from the past. It will keep serving them up, hot and fresh."

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... tions.html

[Ben]

You might find it of benefit to write down meditation experiences.
My perspective is that by writing them down one may fall into the danger of feeling that they are somehow something special, when in fact, they are just ephemeral transient phenomena manifesting due to conditions.
Whatever you are experiencing, I think it is wise to try to regard with awareness and equanimity - in other words, just observe, just let go.
kind regards,

Ben

[manas]

the way i learn now is by doing a few meditations and then calling the teacher and describing feelings i got when meditating (regular feelings nothing special) and how it went

i wonder should i write down the experiences after each meditation so i wont forget how it went when i talk to him on the phone - i call now every 3-5 days

Sounds reasonable enough to me. It's not that you are trying to record or 'hold on' to these experiences, from what I hear; but rather, the writing down is just to aid the question and answer session with the teacher, yes?

However, even though I see the points above about letting go of each meditation so as not to cling to it as a kind of possession that it can never be - I must say, that when I consider the vast, almost unlimited amounts of mundane rubbish that people in general either write about, or journal about (romance, the lives of movie stars, the workings of a psychopathic mind...etc etc ad nauseam), then someone writing about their meditation experiences suddenly seems really good by comparison, regardless of their reasons for doing it!

[SarathW]

Try to remember or even try to experience what you have experience before is a hindrance for your development. it is not the present moment awareness. It is something like you try to write down how to ride the bicycle!

[James the Giant]

Try to remember or even try to experience what you have experience before is a hindrance for your development. it is not the present moment awareness. It is something like you try to write down how to ride the bicycle!

No, there's a role for remembering past experience and using that to assist with current experience. One translation of Sati is remembrance.
For example, one monk I read ( I can't remember who it was unfortunately ) recommended recalling the remembered experience of being in Access Concentration, and using that to more easily get into Access Concentration.
You remember the mental feeling of being in that state, and the mind calms quickly and one gets into that state much faster. I use this daily, and it works well.

[manas]

Try to remember or even try to experience what you have experience before is a hindrance for your development. it is not the present moment awareness. It is something like you try to write down how to ride the bicycle!

No, there's a role for remembering past experience and using that to assist with current experience. One translation of Sati is remembrance.
For example, one monk I read ( I can't remember who it was unfortunately ) recommended recalling the remembered experience of being in Access Concentration, and using that to more easily get into Access Concentration.
You remember the mental feeling of being in that state, and the mind calms quickly and one gets into that state much faster. I use this daily, and it works well.

Agree with you there, James; working with the mind involves remembering what works, and also what does not. And ime a fair bit of experimentation as well (in the sense of striving for how to best apply what, to the best of one's knowledge, the suttas are actually getting at). Sometimes I have this perception of the mind as a landscape, a terrain, that with experience, one gets better and better at negotiating.

The phenomenon of somehow wanting what one previously had back again, well one realizes over time that it cannot be, and to stop doing this. Yesterday's meditation session is gone forever, so yes we have to let it go. But if we learned something useful during that meditation, a new strategy or skill we can then apply again, then we would want to try to remember that new skill or strategy, I would've thought...

[Cittasanto]

the way i learn now is by doing a few meditations and then calling the teacher and describing feelings i got when meditating (regular feelings nothing special) and how it went

i wonder should i write down the experiences after each meditation so i wont forget how it went when i talk to him on the phone - i call now every 3-5 days

Well it wouldn't hurt, and setting aside some time after a sitting to fully collect your thoughts about it is useful.
I did make some worksheets (and have a new one coming in the next few weeks) which you may find useful found here but the specific one you may find useful here