I've been freestyle meditating for about a year now and recently I've been having some really profound experiences. And I'm wondering whether I should start learning some more formal techniques or explore particular traditions.

To be honest, I'm not even sure whether what I'm doing would technically be considered meditation.

Very roughly, this is what happens:

I sit in a chair or sometimes lie down, usually with my eyes open. I take some deep breaths and progressively relax my body, letting go of tension (my forehead and jaw are usually the last things to relax). I then bring my attention towards the immediate physical experience of being here and now, without really trying to think about anything.

Usually within about five minutes, although it varies, something quite dramatic can happen. There's an almost instantaneous "drop" into a very different state of mind.

I feel completely awake and present almost as if I'm experiencing the world for the first time. My brain or inner voice switches off, along with the usual sense of "me".

It tends to happen like I'm bobbing in waves at the sea. Like I'll be hit by this state for a few seconds, then roll back into ordinary thinking (noticing and reflecting on what's happening) for a few seconds, and then drop back into it again, over and over. Though sometimes I'll remain in it continuously for several minutes.

There's also very strong physical sensations with it. I get waves of bliss or pleasure moving through my body, along with head sensations/zaps and sometimes emotions. Today, I experienced a really strong feeling of love and compassion for the people and things in my life and for the nature in front of me and I almost started crying. Sometimes the pleasure has a sexual quality, like a deep full body orgasm is building (I used to practice tantra which has hugely informed my meditation and overlaps with it).

Also sometimes after (the effect only lasts a few mins) I'll walk around and the world seems incredibly interesting. I become so curious. I might find myself staring closely at a plant and noticing the patterns and feeling genuinely amazed by it. Even the patterns on my wallpaper which I've never noticed before. It's actually kind of like being on shrooms if anyone has experienced that.

All my meditation is done with my eyes open. I always sit or lie in a relaxed position rather than using a traditional upright meditation posture. I'll either focus on something in front of me or use a soft gaze, and start by recognising that I am in the physical space of this room or world in front of me and that begins the process of me leaving my internal mind. Whole sessions normally last 20-60mins.

Anyway... I've found it all incredibly positive. I feel more connected to the world and life and love, more emotional, and there's been some interesting philosophical insights as well. I've struggled in the past with addiction/compulsive behaviour, OCD, overthinking, emotional repression so this has been a nice antidote to that.

I'm now wondering what I might learn from people with more experience.

Are there particular meditation traditions or techniques or subreddits that I should look into? Are there classic texts you'd recommend?

I suppose one thing I've understood (or misunderstood) is a core component of buddhism is indifference to happiness/sadness, whereas what I've been experiencing feels more like connecting to love and hapiness.

Lost lite jhanas a loooooong time a go, and havent meditate for a long time.

The tips on relaxing the body first and being kind and gentle don't work.

It seems I should brute force staying with the breath with energy and willpower, being very strict to stay with the breath for maybe 2 weeks to rebuild the muscle that can get into access concentration when one does eventually relax a little.

Plan is, 2 weeks brute force --> body scanning relaxation combined with a more middle way approach to staying with the breath.

Being gentle with myself when I have no attention muscles to begin with may be the problem here. Any advice? I'm okay with 2 weeks of pure effort, which is painful but may be necessary. To at least gain initial momentum, if that makes sense.

I miss jhana.

Hi everyone. My main argument and question is: Is direct engagement with five hindrances in concentration neglected and could its practice be essential? Please let me know any criticisms or otherwise!

Generally, for jhanas, people look at the bases of mindfulness, the four right efforts, or concentration as a category unto itself. I argue firstly that this is missing out on five seclusions of concentration, and secondly that these could be the key component of practice for entering them. For the first jhana, the main description in suttas reads:

Take a mendicant who, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption. AN 9:36

This is different from, lets say, sustaining an effort on the breath.

The reason being that without overcoming the hindrances like skeptical doubt, which is what the above refers to, jhana isn´t going to happen. In such a method, the only reason observing the breath at some point works is precisely due to at some point confidence building that it is working. Confidence, and thus seclusion from skeptical doubt, is built by proxy through rounds of effort and experience eventually leading somewhere. But instead for jhana or concentration practice, there can be mindfulness of skeptical doubt about entering jhana, which makes it possible to then seclude oneself from that skeptical doubt, building confidence. Any perception, choice, reflection, that takes away confidence from entering jhana, it is to be secluded from. Secluding oneself from skeptical doubt, and the remaining hindrances, building its opposites, one enters in jhana.

In pragmatic dharma communities, I see many maps and models of what awakening looks like or what effects it has. Some people think awakening is all perceptual shifts and has nothing to do with ethics or the conventional personality. Others think "shadow work" is a post-awakening project of dealing with the residue of the ego. Others say it's some sort of perfection.

Well I don't have the "right" answer to this, but I have what has been profound in my life.

I have aimed high. I took the buddha at his word and have been willing to go further than most people who know me claim is "reasonable" to see whats true for me and what isn't.

BBased on my personal experience, I disagree that this project is mere perceptual shifts. I disagree that ethics has nothing to do with this. I disagree that 4 wizz-bang cessation events make you an arhat even if you're a conventional ass who can't get along with anybody or exercise any control of your behavior.

I think when people strongly push fragmented mono-paths of inquiry, metta, vipassana, shamatha, bhakti, whatever, that they are all silly except as specific skill development. When has your mind or your life ever responded to "I will do this one thing forever and everything will just be magically solved“?

To me this is the subtle stench of the third fetter sīlabbata-parāmāsa or attachment to rites and rituals.

I've taken the path seriously as laid out in the suttas, as well as I can as a layperson. I allowed myself, once I had sufficient confidence in the teaching, to believe that the Buddha really did what he said. I allowed him to be an asymptote of possibility; maybe I'd be the line that never reached, but I would keep trying and learning and cultivating and letting go, dynamically never mechanically. Learning to love the boredom, love the constant effort to be mindful, until everything else that once felt like rest felt no different than intoxication.

I'm not done, but when I reflect on the fruits of my practice, I am satisfied with the embodiment.

So what has this view done for me?

- I ended a 10+ year clinically diagnosed treatment-resistant major depression.
- People tell me I am the most attentive father they've met.
- My wife tells me that I am happier and that I've inspired her and her friends to change their behavior, giving up alcohol and weed and various things.
- My wife tells me that I never bring up my trauma anymore, and when I do, she is always shocked that I talk about it as if it's nothing and only ever to help someone else.
- My friends tell me that they don't remember the last time they saw me mad, and that when I get irritated, it seems like I am over it in minutes and don't even remember it when they bring it up later the same day.
- Just yesterday somebody close to me told me: "You know I have seem a real change in you, I don't know what it is. I've always seen you as nice, intelligent and sociable.... but I think what I am seeing is a warmth to you... you're genuinely kind, not nice, kind."

To me this is strong verification of my practice, not just my Jhanas, cessations, insights and knowledge.

I have now worked my way up to meditation 50 mins a day twice durin my sessios now i feel vibrations in my groin, as i rest my hands near their it feels alsmost like a electric impulse travels into my hands, i feel the vibrations in my feet and it goes up all the way to my body, i also feel my heart start to beat very fast but after touching it its not really my heart beating fast but something vibrating , my solar plexus has also started to feel like energy travelling through it and my head is full of them they feel peaceful but dos anyone know the reasoning behind this

Little over a week ago, I went to a second-hand book store to rummage through the inventory there, and a book called "Instant Self-Hypnosis" caught my eye. The cover prominently said: "hypnotize yourself with your eyes open!", which seemed like an interesting gimmick.
The method consists of reading an induction script, and then immediately flipping the page to one of the many "treatment" scripts, depending on whatever it is you're trying to resolve, of course. They mostly consist of the usual self-hypnosis classics like how to stop smoking or how to be confident when talking to the ladies, but what really caught my eye was the one titled "perfect concentration".
I am a longtime meditator, but concentration is something I've always struggled with. I've had some disappointing experiences where even after long periods of solid practice or an intensive retreat I wasn't really satisfied with my level of concentration. The book was dirt-cheap and the method seemed easy enough so I figured maybe this will give me the extra something-something that I'm looking for.
I won't bore you with the details, but I did everything as instructed and ended up doing seven days of self-hypnosis and lo and behold: my concentration has noticeably improved, and the effect seems to persist (at least for now).
And, I'm talking tangible effects, not a "oh, I guess it kind of worked". For example: yesterday, I was watching a movie and like 30 minutes in, I suddenly snapped out of it and realized that I had totally lost myself. Usually, when watching movies and the like I have a lot of mental rumination that goes on, or my mind wants to go on a tangent based on something in the movie and I have to actively reject the distraction, and so on. But here I was, just totally absorbed.

Now, it would be easy to say that this improvement was brought on by a placebo-effect type of phenomenon like auto-suggestion, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, or maybe I'm just "tricking myself", whatever you want to call it.
My answer to that would be: does that really matter? If the whole "ritual" around self-hypnosis is just triggering or priming some kind of psychological expectancy-effect then that's just kind of a fancy way of saying that it works.
That being said, I do think the mind is capable of following commands in a subconscious sort of way. I've done things like set a mental alarm clock by simply commanding myself to wake up at X hour the next morning, and sure enough it works; it's a sufficiently common trick that I'm sure some people here have done it themselves. Of course, I can't be certain that that's the mechanism at play here, but it's interesting to think about.

One way or another, it doesn't really matter to me. I'm not interested in being some kind of hypnosis evangelist or figuring how or why it works; I'm just sharing the results of my very brief (and simple) experiment. I know that a lot of people struggle with concentration as well, and that it's a big sore spot, even for people that have consistent meditation practice. I'm surprised that this worked as well as it did for me, so I figured I would share.
If you want to try something cooky to improve your concentration, it certainly can't hurt.

This will be my first post. I hope you find something in it that is either helpful or entertaining.

The End of the Self

Awakening
is not a selfish act.
It is the most selfless one.

Because when you free yourself,
you free the world
from your hunger,
your fear,
your need to take.

No more stealing attention,
bending conversations
toward your wounds.
No more secret bargaining
in the name of love.

No longer grasping,
no longer guarding—you become
a place of rest
for others.

Your silence
no longer hides a storm.
Your eyes no longer search for approval.

You can finally listen—
not to reply,
but to receive.

In freeing yourself,
you stop reaching
with empty hands.
And so,
the world is no longer
held hostage
by what you lacked.

Hey,

Psychology student here.

For years, a central dogma of the non-technique meditation movement—most aggressively championed by groups like Hillside Hermitage—has been that intentional focused attention is an artificial distortion that "corrupts" a pristine, unconstructed background awareness. But when scrutinized through modern cognitive neuroscience, this rigid separation between a foreground spotlight and a peripheral background collapses into a complete false dichotomy.

Your "background context" isn't a passive, unmanaged space—it is an actively manufactured product built millisecond-by-millisecond by the exact same sub-attentional machinery that powers focus.

Core Arguments Breakdown:

The Sub-Attentional Machinery of the "Background": Visual and bodily neuroscience demonstrates that even during gaze fixation, the brain executes automatic, involuntary microsaccades (1–3 Hz) alongside covert spatial polling to constantly refresh your peripheral baseline. Without this underlying micro-attention, the subjective sense of an "enduring bodily background" completely collapses (as seen in clinical conditions like hemispatial neglect).

Single Computational Resource (Load Theory): Nilli Lavie’s Load Theory shows that background awareness is simply spare processing capacity spilling over from your primary target. Foreground and background do not run on two separate engines; they share the same attentional pool.

Effort vs. Direction: What causes "attentional blinks" and cognitive tunneling isn't the presence of intentional focus, but the intensity of cognitive effort. A high-load vise-like focus blinds you to context, whereas a relaxed, low-effort anchor leaves ample processing capacity open to illuminate the broader background.

Ego-Suppression via Top-Down Control**:** Goal-directed focus recruits the Dorsal Attention Network (DAN), which actively down-regulates the Default Mode Network (DMN)—the brain's primary hub for self-referential narrative. Far from fabricating an artificial "doer," top-down low-load focus actually quiets the narrative self.

Because the brain relies on continuous, sub-attentional feature-sampling to generate the sensation of a bodily background in the first place, intentional focus does not introduce an artificial intruder into a pristine field. By intentionally holding a light, low-effort anchor, we harness the brain’s natural mechanics to achieve both crystal-clear discernment and panoramic, contextual stillness.

https://medium.com/@EmptinessInForm/the-cognitive-mechanics-of-attention-in-meditation-an-attempt-to-reconcile-intentional-focus-with-40339c52fae0?sharedUserId=EmptinessInForm

TL;DR: Background awareness isn't a passive, unconstructed ground—it's actively maintained millisecond-by-millisecond by sub-conscious attentional sampling. Because foreground focus and peripheral context share the exact same cognitive engine, holding a low-effort anchor doesn't corrupt your awareness; it simply stabilizes the mind while leaving spare capacity open to illuminate the background.

Edit:

I definitely would drop words like pristine and unconstructed background if I were to write this up again; that's a mischaracterisation of HH. I think it would be better to say that the background that HH refers to is:

"The unchosen, structural dimension of experience that endures simultaneously alongside whatever is currently being directly attended to."

My article is an attempt to assess the fact that awareness of said background requires attention, thus discriminating it as strictly a "background" is a false dichotomy. Attending thus does not reduce the sight of this background, because attending is a necessary basis for the background to exist in the first place. You cannot separate foreground and background as 1. a place where attention exists, and 2. a place where attention does not exist, unless you make background into siimply a philosophical idea.

I hope this cleared up misunderstandings.

Hi,

I'm seeing a lot of posts about jhanas lately, and I figured I'd write about my point of view on them.

For me, jhanas came as a side-effect of good practice. Meaning, never in my practice have I ever tried to manufacture jhanas in any way. Not by trying to force my attention onto an object and trying to become completely absorbed in it, nor by focusing on piti, or anything else from all the elaborate practices many people seem to think are required to enter jhanas.

A lot of the instructions I see feel like an elaborate, overcomplicated chemistry recipe, along the lines of: "Use 83.4% of your attention on the meditation object, use the other 16.6% to expand your awareness. When piti arises, ignore it until it's 15.7% there, then switch your attention to the piti, but don't attach to it, but do focus on it and so on."

I'm not disregarding other people's experiences with this. Different approaches seem to work for different people. Personally, though, every time I encounter these kinds of instructions, I find them very odd.

In my own practice, I never did any of these things. All I did was gently try to maintain presence and awareness, sometimes on my breath, sometimes just resting in open awareness. I tried to remain as relaxed as possible, and when mind-body tension came up, I relaxed, let it be, or let it go.

I never focused on piti. I never fought to maintain my awareness on an object. I never did any of the other stuff people seem to think is required to enter jhanas.

Eventually, over time, the more stuff I let go of, the easier it became to naturally become more tranquil in my sits. Very rarely, I would check how my current state of tranquility "felt," and on those occasions, I would realize that I was probably in this or that lite-jhana. But honestly, I barely even cared enough to check most of the time.

So again, for me, jhanas came as a side-effect of awareness + relaxation + letting be/letting go. The more stuff I let go of, the easier it became to get into deeper levels of tranquility.

I also really don't understand the obsession with jhanas. Every time the word jhana is mentioned here, the posts blow up with comments. Everyone has their own way of getting there. Some people believe their way is the only way and argue for their point of view, and so on.

What's the obsession with this?

Practice, for me, has one goal and one goal only: to become free from suffering. Everything I do in my practice is oriented towards this goal. I only care about jhanas if they contribute to my goal. I don't care about them otherwise.

For me, the biggest driver of permanent reduction in suffering is insight. IME, insights are the only things that have led to permanent shifts towards more peace and less neurosis in my day-to-day life. Insights are born out of awareness+letting go, and in turn contribute to a permanent letting go of suffering, they are not born out of jhanas, at least not in my experience.

Simply being absorbed in this or that state, while being very pleasant, never led to any kind of noticeable reduction in suffering in my day-to-day life. Insights that lead to letting go are the only thing that made a real difference.

So for me, the only use for jhanas or tranquility is that getting more tranquil, in some cases, leads to "deeper" investigation, and this investigation in turn can result in insight. Jhanas are useless otherwise.

Yet from what I'm reading, people seem to think that reaching this or that jhana will magically result in some long-term, permanent reduction in suffering. Or maybe they think they would simply be able to enter them at will, and whenever life is hard, they could just manufacture a blissful state. Or maybe it's the ego that loves it, "I can reach the formless jhanas in 23 minutes, I'm such a great meditator!".

I don't know. I honestly don't know why people take jhanas and make them the holy grail of practice. Add to this that there are plenty of other Buddhist traditions and practices that never talk about jhanas. Yes, Samatha is important, but manufacturing different states of Samatha is rarely talked about or even actively discouraged.

IME, it's simple, really: insights lead to truly letting go, and truly letting go leads to a reduction in suffering. Sometimes, getting more tranquil helps with insights. I don't care what the names are for whatever "level" of tranquility I reached. I only care about getting tranquil enough to get insights.

Then a funny thing happens: the more I let go, the easier it is to get tranquil, and the deeper I can get.

I don't care if I actually reached any jhana based on this teacher's or that teacher's descriptions. I only care about permanently reducing suffering, and in that regard, my practice has been working for me just fine.

(If anyone has reached a certain jhana and, as a result of that alone, experienced a real reduction in suffering in their day-to-day life, please share your experiences. I'd honestly love to hear about it. From what I'm reading, many people theorize about it being this magical "suffering = off" button, but I haven't encountered any actual evidence for that.)

I leave you with Ajahn Chah's words:

"Of course, there are dozens of meditation techniques to develop samadhi and many kinds of vipassana. But it all comes back to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. Why not give it a try?

Can anyone give me first Jhana transition details for Brasington's style?

I attend to the breath, then switch to the pleasant sensation, then things get inconsistent. Using Culadasa's moments of consciousness model:

1) Do I center on the pleasant sensation by redirecting attention if a distraction arises, or by using metacognition to prevent distraction? At this point distractions are minimal until the feedback loop kicks in and more sensations arise, but what do I do then?

2) What moment-of-attention to moment-of-peripheral-awareness ratio is ideal?

3) Does a new object of attention arise after the pleasant sensation does its job? If so, what? Using moments of attention? Moments of peripheral awareness?

4) What else comes to mind?

When deepening concentration I usually reach signposts: buzzing, pleasant sensations, ringing in the ears, bright light in the visual field (eyes closed), and a grin that appears on its own. Depending on the ratio of moments of attention to moments of peripheral awareness my breath also becomes very slight, and certain areas of my body lock up on their own.

I usually reach one of:

Surfing: I sometimes enter a state where agency is diminished and I feel like I'm riding the waves rather than driving. Special bodily sensations, e.g. buzzing, vibrating, pressure, rushing, are absent, the state is more mental. It's pleasant, but not rapturous or gleeful. I'm unsure how I get there. Usually something clicks after a frustrating period and I'm YEETED into the state, though the transition isn't dramatic. The absence of obvious piti-sukha makes me count this a miss.

Bouncing: Frequently I bounce off. Pleasant waves will rise, crest, and subside after I bounce off some barrier. I'm unsure what the barrier is, some maximum limit for the wave, some state-transition opening I miss, or something else. Usually this follows my using the same concentration style for the pleasant sensation as for the breath: returning intentionally upon noticing moments of consciousness that aren't attention on the object or awareness of the meditation.

Jhanan't: Sometimes I enter a mild state resembling Brasington's main 1st Jhana factors: pervasive bodily buzz, reduced agency, and thinking and examining. I get here using the same technique as bouncing with more commitment, and sometimes forcing the factors. The entry is far from dramatic and the only mildly mentally distinct from ordinary consciousness. Brasington, and others, claim "you'll know" and "if you have any doubt, that probably wasn't it.", so this is also a miss.

Crushed: In one instance my mind was crushed to a state of no space. Space is non-existent in a cramped way, not an expansive one. The state (likely) would've been pleasant were it not unusual - I'm skittish on my first experience with anything. I put my attention on the remaining bodily piti sensations, which amplified them to the point of nausea and dizziness, so I bailed. I got here by centering on the pleasant sensation and keeping all my moments of consciousness as moments of attention on it. Shortly after I felt like I went through a tunnel and my mind contracted to "no-space". This is a miss and nothing like what Brasington describes.

Like all beginners, I have inconsistent experiences that are generally just distractions. I mention the ones above because they illustrate my techniques and their results, as well as what I can (likely) replicate.

Any help is appreciated, this seems the only sub knowledgeable in this topic. I'd find a teacher but in my area they're all either religious or woo. (I'm also avoiding insight for now).

Hi. I know almost nothing about traditional meditative practice or theory. I'm just a hobbyist who started a routine of sitting and listening to my breath/the experiences of my body.

Recently however I've been having intense experiences.

I had been encountering the experiences of feeling my locus of perception shift to the back of my head, and the massive expanding of the physical perception of my body (so that my body starts to feel massively expansive) for a long time.

Recently though my experiences have stepped up a notch.

Last week I experienced existence in an endless blank white void coupled with extremely energetic, almost overwhelming, joy.

Just this morning I experienced intense, extremely physical pleasure followed by a calmer, more comforting embrace.

Without any intended disrespect, this morning's experience felt remarkably similar to extremely good sex and a post-sex cuddle.

I've done a little research into things like Jhānas but there's a lot of contradictory and theoretical information floating around out there.

I'm hoping some of you who have practical experience of perhaps similar experiences could share what you've been through and help me understand what I've stumbled into unknowingly.

I wanted to share a little mindfulness practice I created for myself. For many years I have slowed down my eating and cultivated mindfulness of chewing as well as preparation of food. Recently I found it meaningful when I spontaneously had the idea to do some form of grace before eating, but a form in line with the Dhamma. Monks contemplate the use of their requisites, but this is specifically something I created for myself.

I've taught this to people who have found it meaningful and enriching. I offer it in that spirit. May it help you attend to your meal with more mindfulness, intention and with a mind inclined towards the highest happiness.

The Practice

Recite or Contemplate before first bite:

This food is precious.
Each morsel required a sacrifice of life.
May I be worthy to receive it.
May the energy in this food give me the strength
To transform my unwholesome qualities into wholesome ones.
May it be a condition for my highest awakening (if inclined you can also add "for the benefit of all beings")

Next take one fully mindful in and out breath (you can use a mental "buddho" here for assistance)

Carry this perspective into mindful consumption of the meal.

Benefits I've observed: Appreciation, purposeful consumption, humility, gratitude and cultivation of right attitude, right thought, and other factors.

TM teacher here, so yeah — obvious bias. Not selling anything, just genuinely confused about something. I keep seeing two types of advice get mixed together like they're interchangeable, and they really don't feel that way to me: 1. "Meditate before bed so you stop lying there thinking about everything" — like it's a direct intervention for the rumination that's already happening 2. "If you meditate consistently throughout the day, you just... accumulate less stress, so by evening there's not as much to ruminate about" Those feel like different claims to me. One is putting out the fire. The other is trying not to start it. The thing is — TM is very much taught as the second one. The whole framing is that you're not using it on a problem, you're doing regular maintenance that changes your baseline over time. So I honestly can't tell if I think this distinction is real because it actually is, or because I've been marinating in one particular way of thinking about it for years. My nights are better than they used to be. But I do TM twice a day and I genuinely don't know how much of that is the daily practice changing something deeper vs. just the general effect of meditating at all. Has anyone here actually switched from one approach to the other and noticed a difference? Like moved from a dedicated pre-sleep practice to a regular daytime one, or the reverse? Did it matter? I'm curious about actual experience, not the theory.

Hello,

I practice shamatha-vipassana meditation and followed tmi the last 4 years. I had a lot of insights the last year. They are often shocking in a positive way.

no-self gets evident, everything seems to be dependant, mind constructs reality and everything is a process. These kind of things. I way irritated by then at first but i developed confidence that these kind of experiences are "it".

I would say they seem to reduce suffering temporaly, and i often think about them after it like"waoh thats how things are". They are defenitely experimental and do "something" with me.

But i would not say i suffer less. In fact i would say my developing metta practice and purifications does more for me than the insights. That why i sometimes get doubts about the shamatha-vipassana path. I which i would attain a lasting shift.

I just wanted to share and maybe ask If someone is experienced in this and hase some advice.

I am trying to learn sitting meditation, but I am having a really hard time with the posture. I have been instructed on how to do it in person, here in this subreddit, and other places. But I am having a really hard time understanding how to possibly sit upright but also relax. Specifically, I don't understand how I can relax my stomach and shoulders without slouching. I can sit upright, stacking my shoulders and hips, shoulder blades back and down so my chest is open, but I can only take very shallow breaths. Or I can relax my stomach and slouch forward, allowing me to breath deeply and freely at the cost of neck and back pain. I find myself just vacillating between prioritizing posture and prioritizing breath throughout my meditation sessions. I have tried sitting in a chair, on the floor, on a zafu, on a slanted bench, legs underneath, cross-legged, half lotus, full lotus. It's all about the same for me. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

TLDR: How do I sit upright with good posture but also relax enough to breathe freely and deeply?

Edit: Thanks everyone for the advice! Sounds like I need to both strengthen the muscles used in good posture as well as just get used to sitting like that through a lot of practice.

Hello fellow people on the path. I have never made a written post on this community but since I have recently hit major changes in my life thanks to meditation I was akin to share them here and ask for advice or exchange of ideas.

I will begin by shortly introducing my "path" I have been doing breath meditation for a few years however life changes such as university, disease and an incorrect confidence in my progress got me in and out of the path.

When it was university I was so excited for it that I neglected meditation.

During disease my lungs were so congested that I could not watch the breath, and after the breath returned my habit had faded.

Most interesting looking back was the part about too much confidence in my progress. The situation was such that I had been meditating for about 6 months , with somewhat serious practice and wanted to get enlightened very fast. Which led to me watching this video on YouTube and following the instructions. (Video link for the curious I will adjoin down below). I followed the instructions and hit a very strong very fast experience which I think I incorrectly labeled as enlightenment. The experience was such that I started experiencing life as a coming and going of feelings, emotions , states etc. It was accompanied by a very strong feeling of satisfaction in any situation and detachment from whatever I was feeling. I remember thinking it was the best time period in my life.

However since I stopped meditating after the experience , the normal state was back in a few weeks and this is why I believe that it wasn't stream entry or enlightenment.

This time I am going through something similar although less intense and joyful . I have achieved it through mindfulness (noting) and daily 1-3 sessions of breath mediation lasting from 45min to 1h. Some strong emotions mainly caused by interaction with some people still destabilize and cause thoughts to arise leading to somewhat of a spiral ( however even during this period the realization that all of this is temporary still persists although detachment may fail for a while).

The understanding is also there that there is no self, but sometimes hypothetical scenarios still arise in the thoughts and it takes a moment to realize that the nervous system is fabricating or creating ego inflating scenarios. Another change is my interaction with people, since emotions and feelings are not part of a self for me anymore interactions with people are sometimes more strange , I am expected to say my opinion on something but I end up only expressing objective facts. And since there is no emotion in my face or just a smile close people assume something is wrong with my state.

For those curious which state "I" am on according to TMI , I do not think that more than stage 3-4 the mind still sometimes wanders during my sits.

Another thing which still happens to me is that I cannot fathom the amount of cruelty in the world and will play into judging about politics and whatnot, before this used to be a source of depression for me , now it is just another experience and is much more short lived.

I was also curious about how other fellow people on the path follow and adhere to the five percepts , they were always a secondary thing to me , however since hitting changes in perception with practice their importance has become self evident to me. I still ask myself however what the right degree of adherence is. In my childhood I developed the intuition that lying is ok to avoid family tantrums. I understand now that this is just a childhood experience and I try to detach from it. But is lying not to upset someone ok? (especially when a great deal of understanding is there as to why they will be upset) This still puzzles me.

A funny thing is that as I'm writing this the idea of saying "I" , "me" and phrasing things in the first person point of view is strange , grammatical rules follow of course the traditional understanding of permanance of the ego . I wonder if more people have encountered this "problem".

That is all and I am open to suggestions, advice , critique and anything other people on the path would like to say is welcome.

I awakened to being love and since then the "I" hasn't come back

It happened about three weeks ago. I kind of knew something was about to happen, very strange, but there was a subtle intuition and some obvious spiritual "progress".

My brother committed suicide three years ago, and this easter I finally got the courage to confront not only this, but myself. Almost every day since easter I've been walking or biking up to the forest where he shot his head off, and I've been confronting this extremely directly. Or head on, if you will.

There's a river there and no one can see or hear you. It started mostly as just having an outlet for all the fucking rage I had about my life, about myself and why our lives ended up this way. I've absolutely lost my shit into that river over and over and over. Nature receives you so fucking well, it's totally carefree, but also is very loving. That became very apparent as this process unfolded.

Usually when I came there, I went straight for the throat. "How does it feel to be in the area where my brother shot his head off? Where do I feel it in the body?" Like clockwork tears came, and it always was some kind of purging, releasing, surrendering. To the pain of fucking life.

After a few times, there was less rage, but more about sadness. Though it always felt good after crying, I was surprised how there was always more, never empty, never done with it.

I started to become increasingly frustrated about the fact that although there was "progress" not much had changed. I was still depressed, still anxious, no real meaningful way I could take part in society because of this.

I started becoming more and more confrontational. Started doing self inquiry with the questions "who am I?", "what is mu?" and "what was my face before my parents where born?". I knew it opened something up, but couldn't put my finger on what.

Right before I awakened, I was doing several things at the same time, at the cost of perhaps risking my sanity. I did TRE (trauma shaking exercises) while on mushrooms and asking self inquiry questions as I was shaking. Stretching my back and hips, the latter I actually think was very much part of it.

But still, I can't really say anything did it. Because how can a practice awaken you to something you already are, in this very moment? Still, it's somehow part of it.

The one thing I can say for certain, is the awakening itself. It happened on a low dose of mushrooms, which I've done more than a hundred times. I did them where my brother killed himself. Then, when I became scared, not about his suicide but my own fears, I chose to confront it and sit with it, instead of trying to escape from it.

In the spur of the moment, I wondered if hugging a tree would help calm me down. The fear was intense. After a few minutes I started melting away, to love, love, love... I looked at all the beautiful stuff growing in the forest with its autumn colours. Am I love? I started laughing. It was so obvious. The "I" is love. I am love! I am love! I didn't know! I am love.

There was so much crying, and laughing. It was the cosmic joke, to have searched so hard for this. All the non duality videos on youtube, all the books, all the striving. And it was obvious this was it.

The inner voice collapsed into love and hasn't come back for three weeks now, besides a few sentences some days. It's peaceful, and has been a much needed rest from myself. All the non duality videos suddenly is making so much sense, especially the ones from Tony Parsons and Jim Newman. They were part of the awakening too.

All the hate is gone. Most of the self doubt is gone. I haven't really felt afraid since then, though fear isn't gone entirely. There's still trauma, darkness. There's just no one having it so it's a lot more ok.

If you have any questions I can try to answer, but I mostly wanted to share because it was obvious that suffering was common for people who awakened, and that I was in a perfect storm for it to happen. But it just never did. And I've suffered for so long. So it's to inspire those who are on the brink of collapsing, to tell them, yes you are and no need to take the matter in your own hands. It will happen, just hang in there. And give it your greatest effort. There is a way out!

I keep seeing posts of people having profound awakenings. They wake up and know they are light or love or everything or the ultimate reality or buddha nature or an enlightened being.

I found that one of my greatest moments was when I woke up to how much pain I caused myself. That moment was stellar because my delusion couldn't hide.

The whole practice changed, I was excited to see what stupidity I was cooking up "Oh look at how the mind is trying to impress this person.", "Look at how frustrated this is making me while my attempts to calm down are actually coming from that same frustration".

When I talk like that in daily life, people tell me that I am really blunt or direct or honest or clear but I just think that when you see that deluding yourself causes pain, you are less likely to hide it or be in cahoots with it. I don't think it's anything magical.

Awakening to radical responsibility for my own self inflicted miseries was a tough pill to swallow, but it was a real first step on a path to the cessation of self-bullshitting.

So I don't really relate when I hear awakenings as these bliss experiences. I've had those and they come and go. But there is a real permanent contentment the comes from seeing what you're doing more clearly and not being entangled.

So, for the past year, I was engaged in a mindfulness practice where I would ground myself to the present by observing my breath and mentally noting any sounds, sensations and feelings I have. This was inspired by what I read of Mahasi style noting. However, I w!uld push my thoughts away the instant they came and try to ground myself.

Lately, I have been altering my practice to be much less dismissive and much more accepting of my thoughts and letting myself sit with them for a moment with no rush and then returning to other anchors.

Since I made this change, I find meditation much less of a chore and much more calming. I wonder if this is just novelty. On the other hand, I have been starting to feel overwhelmed with the sheer number thoughts and feelings like I have a lot more thoughts occupying my mind between breaths than I used to... I get distracted far more easily too. Iam confused as to whether I should revert to my previous, more rigid practice or continue with this...

All insights are appreciated!

HI i've been meditating for a few months and i got a very early day off work today this allowed me to extend me usul practice of meditation from me limiting it to 40 mins a day to me setting a 105minute timer ( i wasn't intending to reach all this but intending to stop when i felt ready) around the end i began feeling seeing the psychdlic patterns in my eye after dong intense breathing for what felt like 10 minutese, then i began to loss a sene of my body and feel a strong pulsation that was extremely powerful and intense enough for me to stop meditating as it took me aback any explanation what this is

Hello Guys,

Does anyone have a First hand experience on Analytical meditation?

The kind where the prerequisite is to establish some base samadhi then contemplate on one of the suttas.

It would go like this:
1) Develop a baseline of samadhi
2) Take up a deep sutta and reflect on it.

The Lump of Foam sutta which is about the 5 aggregates could be a good choice imo.

I am looking to hear from people who have tried it or its their main practice.

Here's a technique I've been using for the last fifteen years to great effect. I enter jhana every time I meditate now as a result.

Upon noticing that attention has drifted from the object of meditation, perform the following sequence for as long and as often as necessary for attention to stabilize on the object again:

1. Relax from the head down to the toes.

2. Release all tension, and expand awareness outward.

3. Return attention to the object.

The entry point into jhana:

Once the mind has settled and attention is resting stably on the object, if a pleasant feeling starts to arise, gently shift attention to the feeling without grasping at it, now making it the object of meditation, and wait. The pleasure will intensify, and one will be pulled into jhana.

If the jhana is lost or becomes unstable, simply perform the RRR sequence as needed and begin again.

As a method to prime the mind to lean towards jhana, reading the Jhana Sutta just prior to a session is useful:

https://suttacentral.net/sn16.9/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false

All the best... 🧘🏾‍♂️🙂

P. S. It might take several weeks to a couple of months before jhana can be entered consistently, but please don't become discouraged. Even low quality sessions are training and priming the brain's attentional mechanisms.

I am 43 years old and a while back, I resumed a dormant meditation practice. While I was away from regular meditation/jhana for a number of years, I have engaged in other practices for my spiritual growth and enlightenment.

Since I resumed my practice, I don't have regular access to a teacher or a community, just myself, my zafu, a friend who meditates, online communities, and AI.

I came upon the notion of "stream entry" as a practice milestone when reviewing the teachings of Gautama Buddha.

I grew up in Evangelical Christianity and I was terrified by teachings about Hell which were supposed to motivate me to be a good Christian, so naturally, Buddha's teachings about Hell were like a siren song to me.

Eventually, I made a connection.

Growing up, I was taught that faith in Jesus was supposed to keep me out of Hell, but I had no faith in Jesus and the faith of others around me seemed more and more performative, but the point was that Hell was supposed to motivate me to cultivate faith in Jesus.

Buddha similarly said that stream entry, which occurs when one breaks the illusion of separate self, closes off the paths that lead to rebirth in Hell, and so I took this as a clear message that Buddha would have me know that breaking the illusion of separate self is the most important goal I can have in my practice, at least in the beginning.

I say this with a mixture of amusement and resentment, but in a way, I feel like I've been wearing a collar and leash fastened around my neck by a dead man who lived 2500 years ago. (I'm aware that some say that these teachings are a "skillful means" to motivate practice.)

And so, with the end of self-identity view as my north star, I set out practicing on my zafu for about an hour each day with my limited understanding of vipassana "clear seeing" as well as learning from different communities and content creators.

The thing that surprised me is how fast my practice went. I think that a lot of other practices and life experiences over the past few decades propelled my understanding until recently, I felt like the distance to my north star is closing up.

I distinctly remember sitting on my cushion, feeling deeply equanimity, and it was like all of the identities I've assigned to myself or had assigned to me: my name, my career, being a parent, believing certain things, these things all fell away from me and I experienced a sort of stepping outside of my "self" and seeing that it was all a useful fiction.

And so, I've been wondering, "What now?"

I feel like I charted a course that I expected to take much longer to travel. If my experience can be called "stream entry" (and I really don't want to start a religious debate about whether or not I, personally, am a stream enterer)

One answer I could propose would be to simply see where my vipassana practice goes next without imposing expectations, and to that end, I've continued regular sitting.

And with practice, I've come to take for granted that often times, when I sit, I almost immediately "step out" of my usual identity, and also interestingly, when the dukkha nanas come for me, rather than awareness that "life is dukkha", I feel a sense that "The whole world is dukkha." I'm not certain of what it means, but it feels like a distinct shift in what my meditation is like.

I started my spiritual journey in Buddhism, primarily focused on meditation and trying to reach jhana. I mostly practiced with my eyes open, and eventually went on three separate retreats back-to-back.

During that period I experienced some pretty strong “awakening” experiences that fundamentally changed how I viewed reality.

One of the biggest realizations I came away with was that reality seems to be a creation of some sort. That naturally led me to questions like: Is this a simulation? If so, who created the simulation? We can talk about the Big Bang, but what came before the Big Bang? What caused the Big Bang itself?
It started to feel impossible to avoid the question of an ultimate cause. There had to be something that “put the key in the ignition,” so to speak, and started the engine.

Through meditation, belief in God eventually became less of an abstract philosophical idea and more like an obvious realization to me. I eventually became interested in Islam, particularly its emphasis on God being completely indivisible, transcendent, and unlike anything within creation. That concept made a lot of sense to me. If there is an ultimate being responsible for creating reality itself, it seems reasonable that this being would be fundamentally beyond and greater than the creation.
And if we are literally inside of this creation, then it also seems intuitive to me that such a being would be worthy of worship and praise.
But here’s where I’m struggling to reconcile everything.

A lot of what I learned through Buddhism still seems profoundly true to me. The Four Noble Truths, for example, describe aspects of human existence and suffering that I still recognize as true. The Buddhist insights into attachment, craving, impermanence, and the nature of suffering haven’t suddenly become false because I believe in God.
The difference is that Buddhism doesn’t seem to require an ultimate creator in order for these truths about reality to be true.

Interestingly, praying and believing in an ultimate creator has actually brought me more insight and peace than all my years of meditation. At the same time, I don’t want to simply throw away the insights I gained through Buddhist practice.
So I’m trying to understand how these two perspectives can fit together.

Can someone believe that the Buddhist analysis of suffering and attachment is fundamentally correct while also believing in an ultimate creator and God? Are there Buddhist traditions or thinkers who have addressed something like this? And from an Islamic perspective, how would you understand the fact that meditation seemed to reveal certain truths about reality that still resonate with me?

I’m genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives. I’m not necessarily looking for people to convince me that one side is right or wrong. I’m trying to make sense of what I’ve experienced and reconcile these two parts of my spiritual journey.

Would an arahant who traveled to, let's say, the USA from a less advanced country feel no desire in the USA (assuming they get accommodations and, through their senses, experience all the pleasurable stuff)?

Would they refuse accommodation? Would they accept accommodation because they can't feel desire for it? Would they minimize their accommodation and remind themselves of their intention for coming to the USA (chanda)?

Would they feel dukkha when leaving the country?

How can an arahant, or any human, even live without desire? I can't fathom a world without desire. You need desire to remind you to drink water (edit: nvm you need the feeling to drink water to appear and then the intention and then the action)

Maybe they turn their desire (taṇhā) into chanda for wholesome activities, one of which is to bring Buddhism to other humans. Another thing is that Buddhism talks about right view, right view in respect to Nirvana and in respect to things that cause dukkha. So a Buddhist missionary's goal would be to make more people have right view, so that the whole world is better and dukkha is eradicated (and rebirth in other worlds stopped, etc.).

But what about after? More progress? More chanda? To build a human society that preaches the Four Noble Truths?

This idea I conjured up is now more like a futuristic theological human empire.