Labeling or Felt Noting?

4 Questions About Mental Noting During Meditation.
With great respect, I continue to read Ayya Khema. This time on how to work with strong emotions and thoughts during meditation:

A very important way to work with these is to label them, drop them, and then go back to the breath . . . 

. . . We give the disturbance a name, identify it, so that we know what it is; then we drop it and get back to the breath. The thought or emotion dissolves by itself after having been labeled, because we have become an objective observer. We are no longer subjective. As an observer we watch the occurrence, but we do not go into it, and therefore there is space for the emotion to fold up and vanish.

If Ayya Khema was still alive, I would engage her in the following questioning:

What happens when one cannot clearly identify the emotion and the bodily sensations associated with it?

Even when one 'knows' the emotion that is experienced, doesn't labeling run the risk of tying one into thinking mind?

Instead of labeling, would it be more beneficial instead to engage in felt noting? - I just made up the expression felt noting, to describe the act of experiential noting, in felt, not verbalized sense. When I sit, I am aware of various states, in deeply felt sense. 

Does putting words on experience run risk of reducing it? Even if I know I am experiencing anger, the word anger itself is loaded with connotations that may not do justice to the more complete, felt experience. Same with the breath. Rather than noting 'rising, falling, rising, falling . . .' as instructed by U Pandita, for instance, woudn't a more skillful way be to just be with the experience of each in and out breath?

What is your take?

Mental Noting During Meditation, a Double Edge Sword?

Just found this gem, from Marie Turco, on Twitter:

@mvturco i set out to see. I realize that i see what can be, not necessarily what is. i see color, angles, lines not walls, ceilings and tiles.

I was reminded of a story from Sylvia Boorstein, I read a while ago, in which her teacher asked her to let go of mental noting, and be instead with direct experience, unmediated by words. While noting can be an extremely useful tool towards moment to moment mindfulness, it is not without dangers. I saw for myself, during this morning's meditation:

Sitting, basking in gentle acceptance of now, I feel at one with each breath. Body, relaxed. Love feeling. Liking, not holding on. Sound erupts. Loud, of leaf blower. Gardener is back. Image of gardener outside. Leaf blower stops. Silence. Liking, again not clinging. Grateful for ease with breath, and body. Gentle, rhythmic sound comes in. Of rake. Gardener raking the leaves. Rake against sidewalk. Insight. Layer of thoughts on top of pure sounds. Gardener, leaf blower, rake, not part of now. Rather, results of thinking mind. Another sound, very close. From cleaning lady taking vacuum cleaner out of closet. Associations ensue, of similar times before. With resulting anticipation of future noise, from vacuuming, and possibility of feelings, from hearing vacuum. Thinking, naming mind at work again, making it harder for self to stay present. Surprise from silence. Breathing, that's all. For a while. Then noting familiar pain. Pain. Word itself causes retraction in body, and aversion in heart. Insight. To stay away from naming experience as pain. How about neutral? A thing in my side. Relaxing, breathing into tingling, sharpness, soon turns into tickling, interesting, pleasure, intense, dancing, alive . . . Thing dissolving. Attention back on the breath.

Realizing the difficulty of bare attention, and the power of words, no matter how well intentioned, to get in the way. At same time, thinking is also very much a part of awareness, and insight. Both points, noted . . .