that above is important.
which he didn't achieve on that retreat.
https://www.updevelopment.org/pa-auk-tawya wrote:After 20 days of focusing solely on the breath, I decided it was enough. I was strongly determined to use this retreat to grow as much as possible as a human being, and didn’t feel like pure concentration practices were an efficient use of my time.
I turned my attention to the always-changing and fascinating reality. I switched to insight meditation.
there is prolly a reason, he was learned to ignore sense of self because of misunderstanding anatta, no soul, khandhas are not self..
https://www.updevelopment.org/pa-auk-tawya wrote:Who was I?
As soon as that question arose, I felt very strong vibrations and palpitations throughout my body. Nothing made any sense. Nothing was me. Who the hell was experiencing all of this? Who was looking? Who was “The Observer”?
..
My meditative insights pretty much remained the same, “I” still couldn’t figure out who was “watching” all of this, and it clearly felt like something was wrong.
i think it stemmed from his concentration being weak,
if he would have strong concentration(in context of what he wrote) then he would have come aware of himself.
https://www.updevelopment.org/pa-auk-tawya/ wrote:I began to see how much of a beginner I still was, even after a few years of regular meditation practice. It was getting clearer that the impression of having good concentration abilities was only caused by the grossness of my mind. Isn’t it ironic that the better my concentration got, the weaker I felt it was? Great lesson of humility!
and the concept of breath would have made more sense. I think the teacher talk about different conceptual breath than what he thinks of conceptual breath,
https://www.updevelopment.org/pa-auk-tawya wrote:I began to wonder if I was practicing correctly. I remembered the teacher telling me I had to focus my attention on the “conceptual breath”.
..
I think that the key thing in “nailing” the conceptual breath was to seek and find the only constant and unchanging part of the breath, which is the mental conceptualization of it.
Note that this concept is not “ultimately real”, it’s just an idea, an agglomerate of diverse sensations that we identify as the breath.
if he would have had strong concentration and become aware of himself, he would have reached this point quickly that the breath interrupts concentration,
he has wrong idea of conceptual breath and how to focus on it,
https://www.updevelopment.org/pa-auk-tawya wrote:The following morning, I went to my teacher and asked him about my flickering eyes. He told me it was likely because I was trying to “see” my meditation object with my physical eyes. He said it was a natural tendency, and that I should strive to ignore my physical eyes and to just perceive the breath with my awareness/mind.
at the end he interprets this 'conceptual breath' instruction as simply resting in simple awareness of the breath in the present moment,
https://www.updevelopment.org/pa-auk-tawya wrote:Again, I felt that although my concentration had its ups and downs, overall it was improving. I had (and still have) the common and bad habit of trying to “seek” specific states as opposed to simply resting in simple awareness of the breath in the present moment, and I should definitely make efforts not to indulge in that tendency. When meditating, one must let go of expectations and be fully mindful of what is occurring NOW.