Hi tilt,
Sorry for the delay, addressing the rest of your post here:
tiltbillings wrote:
A feeling - a vedanā - is experienced during a meditation session. If I label it it during that session, that is using a concept, and that labelling happens after the time of experiencing it. While the time between the initial experience of the vedanā and the labelling might be some very small fraction of a second, it still happens after the fact of the intial experience and the labelling still involves using a concept. The labelling is not the direct experience. Direct experience is not conceptual, does not involve to use of language.
Okay, so my interest is only in the first (bolded) sentence above, because I agree with the rest (that conceptual process that follows a direct experience is not really insight). With that in mind, I wonder how is there understanding that it's feeling that is experienced - so not perception, not hardness, not nostalgia, not..., but feeling? My understanding is that this is only because dhammas actually arise and fall, and that arising and falling of a dhamma is in fact equivalent to, or is manifested as, the individual charcteristics, general characteristics and conditioned nature. E.g. in terms of feeling - it is understood that feeling arose and fell precisely because individual characteristics of feeling are different than individual characteristics of perception for example, i.e. feeling feels, perception perceives.
If on the other hand it is said that dhammas don't really arise and fall, nor become objects of awareness, then I wonder how can feeling be any different from concepts, i.e. what is it that arises and falls and has the general characteristics and conditioned nature? E.g. how does one know for example that s/he's actually experiencing a feeling and its general characteristic of anatta and not just thinking about it all (what would make such insight not really insight as defined in the beginning)?
tiltbillings wrote:
During the duration of the vedanā, if we are attending without comment, with a clear, concentrated mindful mindful mind (itself a process), is any instance of that vedanā exactly the same as any other? Not likely, for the obvious reasons it cannot be. While the general characteristics of the conditions that gives what can be called a vedanā can be seen to persist for a period, but there is nothing about any of this, as experienced, that is staic or individual.
Well, okay to the first part, but the last sentence then exhibits the same problem I'm wondering about - what is that has general characteristics? My contention is that what is experienced is actually a dhamma in the sense that individual characteristic for what we call vedana is actually understood at the same time as its general characteristic (like anicca for example). So we can call vedana any way we want later on, but it's experienced (so not imagined, labelled or thought about) and that's thanks to experiencing the individual characteristics of feeling.
tiltbillings wrote:
The use of concepts/laguage, which is static and individual, can help us look at what we experience, but the mistake is the assumption of the nature of the concepts - static and individual - into the actual experience, especially when it is done not as a meditative, concntrated mindfulness practice, but as an intellectual, conceptual process.
I agree, but I have a feeling here (apologies if I misunderstood) that you are equating dhammas to concepts. So while I agree that mistaking conceptual process for insight is essentially fatal, I think insight has to do with actually experiencing dhammas - in the sense of their individual and general characteristics and conditioned nature, e.g. experiencing feeling and understanding at the same time that it is feeling (so not perception, not concept, not mindfulness, but feeling) and that it is anatta and conditioned.
Best wishes