r/streamentry • u/kreayshawn777 • 5d ago
Noting should noting involve quality judgments?
I've recently started noting in day to day life and am wondering if it's okay to note in terms of categorising an experience into either a positive or negatively valanced thing. I typically note without having this problem but sometimes I encounter qualities that feel like they may be positively valanced so I think about using labels like beautiful or sublime. But these feel like qualitative judgments which I think may interfere with equanimity where perhaps we are neither attached nor averse to the thing we're experiencing.
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u/eudoxos_ 5d ago
Well, if you do noting, then note whatever is there: liking, enjoying etc. If there is judgment, not judgment. If you want equanimity, note wanting; if you expect it, note expecting.
Not only it is okay to note, is is actually very important. It is so important that Sid mentions that as one of the four foundations of mindfulness in Mahasatipatthana-sutta: contemplating kaya, vedana (!!), citta, dhamma.
He also sometimes recommended contemplating the 5 aggregates: rupa (sensation), vedana (right here!), sanna (conceptualization, view, framing, meaning ascribed to sensation), sankhara (reacitivity), vinnana (being-conscious-of). Sensation, various aspects of relationship to the sensation, and the consciousness of it.
If you attach to the idea you should be equanimous, you will soon cultivate a huge blind-spot for aversion and attraction (i.e. exclude a chunk of your reality from meditation, and perhaps from consciousness). The practice then easily becomes tense, uptight, and without juice.