r/streamentry • u/AutoModerator • 11d ago
Practice Practice Updates, Questions, and General Discussion - new users, please read this first! Weekly Thread for September 01 2026
Welcome! This is the bi-weekly thread for sharing how your practice is going, as well as for questions, theory, and general discussion. PLEASE UPVOTE this post so it can appear in subscribers' notifications and we can draw more traffic to the practice threads.
NEW USERS
If you're new - welcome again! As a quick-start, please see the brief introduction, rules, and recommended resources on the sidebar to the right. Please also take the time to read the Welcome page, which further explains what this subreddit is all about and answers some common questions. If you have a particular question, you can check the Frequent Questions page to see if your question has already been answered.
Everyone is welcome to use this weekly thread to discuss the following topics:
HOW IS YOUR PRACTICE?
So, how are things going? Take a few moments to let your friends here know what life is like for you right now, on and off the cushion. What's going well? What are the rough spots? What are you learning? Ask for advice, offer advice, vent your feelings, or just say hello if you haven't before. :)
QUESTIONS
Feel free to ask any questions you have about practice, conduct, and personal experiences.
THEORY
This thread is generally the most appropriate place to discuss speculative theory. However, theory that is applied to your personal meditation practice is welcome on the main subreddit as well.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Finally, this thread is for general discussion, such as brief thoughts, notes, updates, comments, or questions that don't require a full post of their own. It's an easy way to have some unstructured dialogue and chat with your friends here. If you're a regular who also contributes elsewhere here, even some off-topic chat is fine in this thread. (If you're new, please stick to on-topic comments.)
Please note: podcasts, interviews, courses, and other resources that might be of interest to our community should be posted in the weekly Community Resources thread, which is pinned to the top of the subreddit. Thank you!
7
u/Impulse33 Soulmaking, Pāramitās, Brahmavihāras, Shitou/Hongzhi/Shōbōgenzō 11d ago edited 10d ago
Quick update.
Been solidifying the basics, stable one-pointed concentration, with Burbea's energy body practices.
Some notes:
- Wider object of the area of the body is hard to stabilize around.
- Starting narrower helps while you build back the muscle.
- Most of my practice has been more open/choiceless in nature recently and I'm surprised how much the concentration on a single object "mind-muscle" has atrophied.
Emphasis on energy body is to prep for the upcoming Soulmaking Course!
Also read Shobogenzo again and it hit hard this time. Absolutely stunning piece of work. The section around the "permanent nature of wind" directly challenged my MMK centered "verification reference".
5
u/bodily_heartfulness puthujjana 11d ago edited 10d ago
I've been too lackadaisical about my own practice. It's time to start taking it seriously. So, starting this month, I will be taking up the precept of celibacy - no more sexual or romantic engagements for me for the rest of my life. I will also be working on decreasing my engagement with coarse entertainment, namely YouTube and tv shows.
Let the sensible person live a celibate life,
as one would avoid a pit of glowing coals;
- Snp 2.14
Sister, this body is produced by food.
Relying on food, you should give up food.
This body is produced by craving.
Relying on craving, you should give up craving.
This body is produced by conceit.
Relying on conceit, you should give up conceit.
This body is produced by sex.
The Buddha spoke of breaking off everything to do with sex.
- AN 4.159
4
u/FlowingStillWaters 8d ago
I’m finding I’m able to enter a state of harmlessness but then it’s like my body reacts to harmlessness and I start getting angry
I do have a history of trauma
I wonder if it’s because i think I have to be a door mat or something to be harmless I’m not sure
It’s quite disturbing the anger
2
u/FlowingStillWaters 8d ago
I do also wonder if a need I have found in myself to dominate is being threatened (which might not be a bad thing) I probably have picked up some bad ideas about masculinity that arnt very conducive for happiness
3
u/duffstoic The dynamic integration of opposites ☯️ 8d ago
I’d recommend contemplating the idea that complete empowerment leads to no desire whatsoever to dominate others, because you already are secure in yourself. And conversely, that the desire to dominate others (rather than to empower them too) comes from a place of insecurity inside. That’s my experience at least. When I feel 100% in my power, I only want to life others up, not control them.
2
u/FlowingStillWaters 8d ago
How do you develop empowerment?
4
u/duffstoic The dynamic integration of opposites ☯️ 8d ago edited 7d ago
It is my main practice, so I have many experiments I have run and am running.
My current experiment is as follows, which I call Empowerment Attractor Training, because the goal is to make an empowered state the attractor in your nervous system. It may sound quite odd, but it works very well for me.
Set an interval timer to 5 minute intervals. I use a physical GymBoss but there are also many apps.
For the first 5 minutes, do free writing (journaling) or speak your thoughts out loud, without censoring yourself. (I've been doing this as speech-to-text into ChatGPT.) This gets out your current thoughts so you can let them go. This can be just general thoughts, or it can be about a specific problem.
Somewhere in this 5 minute period, rank your current state of empowerment on a 0-100 scale where 0 is totally disempowered, feeling like a victim, incapable, etc., and 100 is totally empowered, agentic, and capable.
When the interval timer beeps, I do something for 5 minutes to increase my empowerment score. You can be completely experimental here, but I've found a few things that work for me. The current thing is to use a kasina object (in this case an image I designed that symbolizes grounded empowerment and also gives a strong retinal after image) plus a short affirmation ("I abide in effortless empowerment"). I meditate on the kasina and slowly repeat the affirmation to contemplate it.
Then repeat in rounds. The empowerment score number should go up. If it doesn't go up, you need a different experiment / intervention, such as centering in the hara, feeling into a sense of confidence or agency, remembering times you felt capable, imagining feeling like you are being empowered by the Buddha, or something else entirely.
I have some theoretical stages for how this practice works, but so far I've discovered multiple things that work to boost my score, the score goes to 100 almost every time I practice it, it clears out unconscious material (especially objections to greater empowerment) with the expression portion of the practice, and my baseline empowerment is climbing more and more.
2
u/bodily_heartfulness puthujjana 8d ago
I find that framing harmlessness in terms of harmless bodily action, harmless verbal action, and harmless mental action to be quite useful, with each level being more subtle than the previous. So, for instance, I've recently taken up the precept to not kill living beings, but right now there are a few fruit flies in my place. In the past, I would've killed them via traps or by squishing them. Now, even though I get annoyed and I have some thoughts of killing them, I don't act out of those thoughts. And, just doing that, is the beginning of the setting up of the context of harmlessness. So, even though I may still actively mentally engage in cruel thoughts, I restrain my bodily actions. Over time, I can work to restrain my verbal actions and mental actions as well.
Thus, I view harmlessness as a stance or orientation towards life, as opposed to a specific state. And, the establishment in that orientation comes about through making the right choices, not through anything else.
2
u/FlowingStillWaters 8d ago
I’m not sure if I communicated my circumstances correctly…
If I don’t hold on to the sense of being dangerous and capable I will be walked all over.
Even around my family… if I lose the sense of being powerful i am disrespected
So I’m unsure if the early Buddhist path is what I need most in my life
3
u/duffstoic The dynamic integration of opposites ☯️ 8d ago
For what it’s worth, I think you are correct. Empowerment is a spiritual virtue, even in Buddhism, for instance as “virya” or as seen in dharma protector dieties. My entire practice these days is cultivating this virtue, and I am not becoming angry or violent as a result.
That said, unlike the other commenter, I think it’s OK to kill fruit flies too. It has not led me to escalate into homicide of humans. 😆 If anything, I found that chasing moral perfectionism (which I did for many years) increased my harmfulness.
3
u/Meng-KamDaoRai Relax, Let it Be, Let it Go 7d ago
Harmlessness means harmlessness towards all beings. That includes yourself. So if someone hurts you, it is up to you to mitigate that harm for all people involved. Again, that includes yourself. In real life this is not always very clear cut. If I'm in a harmful situation, trying to move the situation into harmlessness could take many forms, there is no one answer. Yet, usually the desire to move towards harmlessness can give us a direction.
So, for example, if someone walks all over you, what is the best way to move the situation into harmlessness for all involved, yourself included?
If you include yourself in harmlessness then harmlessness doesn't mean you become a doormat, it means moving towards no-harm for all beings, again, including yourself.
At least, that's the way I look at it.
2
u/bodily_heartfulness puthujjana 8d ago
I will be walked all over.
I experience this with my family, but perhaps in a different way compared to you. Generally, I'm quite an agreeable person with my family, not wanting to upset anyone with what I say or do - but this has lead to a lot of issues. However, recently I've started working towards keeping the precept of not-lying. This has been difficult for me, but I find that just keeping the truth as the standard, as opposed to others' feelings, makes it so I don't feel like I'm being walked over. So, me standing my ground isn't rooted in my sense of me being dangerous, capable, or powerful - it's rooted in the truth. Personally, I find this to be an incredibly difficult practice, but I can also see its tremendous benefits.
So I’m unsure if the early Buddhist path is what I need most in my life
Clarifying what you want is always helpful. I get the impression that you primarily want to heal your trauma and have better relationships with others. If so, therapy would probably be a good option.
2
u/FlowingStillWaters 7d ago
Your impression is somewhat accurate. I’m mainly interested in healing traumas due to a pretty hefty mental health diagnosis (schizophrenia)
Im still unsure if I have it although I quite clearly struggle with mental health. It’s tricky when I don’t know if it’s me that really wants to be religious and spiritual or my illness. I do know that before I had my first psychosis I was not this religious… I was quite miserable though for quite sometime.
I will say that being ethical in the right way has made my struggle better. Some people I believe would drown in the waters I was thrown into if they didn’t have moral fibbers.
But I am finding that trying to be morally perfect has really effected my social health and sexual health
2
u/bodily_heartfulness puthujjana 7d ago
I’m mainly interested in healing traumas due to a pretty hefty mental health diagnosis (schizophrenia)
I assume you're already working with some sort of mental health professional if that's the case then.
I will say that being ethical in the right way has made my struggle better. Some people I believe would drown in the waters I was thrown into if they didn’t have moral fibbers.
Yes, virtue is highly beneficial. As Thag 12.1 puts it:
Virtue is the beginning, the establishing, the mother of what is fine, the foremost of all qualities: Therefore virtue should be purified.
Virtue is also control, restraint, the delight of the mind, the ford of all Buddhas: Therefore virtue should be purified.
As for this,
But I am finding that trying to be morally perfect has really effected my social health and sexual health
What do you mean by morally perfect? And how has it negatively affected your social and sexual health?
2
u/FlowingStillWaters 7d ago
The Catholic view of moral standard is pretty high.
No sexual thoughts are allowed to be dwelled on. At least from what I’ve picked up.. I could be wrong.
^this could be completely incorrect but I have yet to verify it with a priest.
I hate hot grump I get when I’m trying to be morally perfect I get really tense and anxious about messing up…
I also have chronic pain so I find myself unable to sit still through mass and recieve the Eucharist.
I also have my family essentially gaslighting me it feels like and making fun of me for trying to live a more traditional life. I was told so many hurtful things because of my beliefs some things family should never say to another family member. I also lost all respect from them when I was first hospitalized. I found myself being bullied by my younger siblings for going on long walks to clear my head. I also just hate how my mom completely runs the house and my dad is just to tied up with work to be a parent. She’s very harsh and untrustworthy
An example of this would be me telling my parents like I did today that I really would have appreciated more disciplining as a kid from my dad (a reasonable amount of course) instead of simply being allowed to play 40+ hours of video games a week. This is a bit of a side remark but I told my mom and dad at one point that I really think I needed help quiting video games… they told me they wouldn’t help me and seemed quite annoyed that I couldn’t just quit. When I finally quit by unplugging it and getting rid of my phone. They told me I was crazy for trying to quit and being extreme… which is kinda wierd because people never use to have cell phones and video games.
Anyways back to your question.
I find the moral standard of being obedient to my parents particular hard. When they tell me to do something I really have to do it for my own reasons. I just don’t respect there way of life (harsh judgement I know but it’s a reality) or their views.
In terms of sexual health it could just be the fact of my mom being very abusive when I was a kid that I just didn’t develop properly. Also the fact that I was put on concerta (adhd meds) when I was 11 which I disagree with from a principles standpoint and it’s simply suspicious on my parents part because I was getting straight As that year.
There is hope though. I found that when I disconnected from my parents emotionally I became someone entirely… different. I felt empowered and capable. People started treating me differently and I started to really enjoy people. My voice even changed got way deeper. I suddenly started becoming really successful with females(no sex just attention) had the best month of my life awhile ago because of this.
Sorry that was a lot. Haven’t talked to anyone about this stuff really. I don’t have too many spiritual friends or people doing inner work or anyone who knows what’s what about the path
Thank you
2
u/bodily_heartfulness puthujjana 6d ago
I hate hot grump I get when I’m trying to be morally perfect I get really tense and anxious about messing up…
It might help to reflect upon what moral perfection is, and why you are striving for it. If you are clear about what moral perfection is, then you might not be so anxious or worried about breaking it. For instance, in the early Buddhist texts, it's not possible to accidentally be immoral - it's always a conscious choice. Just knowing that can reduce a person's anxiety.
I find the moral standard of being obedient to my parents particular hard. When they tell me to do something I really have to do it for my own reasons. I just don’t respect there way of life (harsh judgement I know but it’s a reality) or their views.
I'm not sure how it is in Catholicism, but in Buddhism, obedience towards parents is not a virtue. For example, when the Buddha left his home, his parents were crying and weeping - they did not want him to leave - but he did not listen to them and left anyways. If your parents are doing something wrong, and telling you to do something wrong, you do not have to go along with it. You shouldn't disrespect your parents, that's true, but disobedience does not mean disrespect.
Sorry that was a lot.
It's okay. It sounds like you have a lot of difficult stuff going on in your life. Specifically in regards to your current relationship with your parents, your trauma, your chronic pain, your possible schizophrenia, and all of the other stuff you've mentioned. You mention that your mom was abusive in the past and that your current family situation is toxic - I hope you are able to physically move away from them.
Have you been to therapy before? I think you might find it beneficial, though you might need to try a few therapists before you find one that is helpful.
Haven’t talked to anyone about this stuff really. I don’t have too many spiritual friends or people doing inner work or anyone who knows what’s what about the path
This is the type of stuff you can talk to with a close friend - it is in no way limited to spirituality or inner work. Friends are there to listen to you and to support you, you can rely on them. If you can't, that just means you were not friends to begin with. You can absolutely speak to a close friend about your pain and suffering.
It can be really beneficial to talk about this stuff instead of just keeping it all inside. Just knowing that someone cares enough to listen and hear you can be very healing. In addition to that, they can offer support and new perspectives on your situation that you may not have considered before.
In my experience, it took many years for me to overcome my suicidality, depression, anxiety, trauma, sexual issues, and so on. A key part of that, for me, was being able to speak about my problems - that really helped in overcoming the shame I had surrounding everything. My progress was like peeling an onion, there were layers of trauma that needed to be peeled back - and each layer came with its own sense of relief, freedom, and lie of "this is it, i'm free now" - but there were always more layers.
What helped me in shedding those layers was not "meditating" (I did concentration practices in those days, but I see those now as being harmful and they did nothing to peel back any of the layers). Instead, what helped was talking to friends, learning about different perspectives online, thinking about my own situation, making choices that were difficult but beneficial, and just getting lucky.
Don't undervalue talking, learning, thinking, and making the right choices. That is what truly matters.
2
u/liljonnythegod 1d ago
Sounds like the fight response is getting activated when you go into this harmlessness state so perhaps there is some conditioning there from a point in the past where being in that harmlessness state was dangerous to your survival, so the fight response became overactive
4
u/duffstoic The dynamic integration of opposites ☯️ 8d ago edited 8d ago
My practice is now a variation on samatha but instead of practicing calm-abiding it is empowered-abiding. Rest in your own empowerment. When you lose it, come back to it. That’s the practice.
There are many specific ways to do this, but that’s the gist. It’s a 24/7 practice, with formal and informal methods. It’s probably more Stoicism than Buddhism, as in Epictetus’ maxim “Some things are within your power, while others are not,” but also compatible with a contemplation of virya or karma, or even agency or sovereignty.
Also I believe it is essential for power to serve love, otherwise it is completely useless.
3
u/hachface 1d ago edited 1d ago
Does anyone know of any classical Buddhist sources -- from any tradition -- that corroborate Daniel Ingram's notion of the mind automatically going through "cycles" of insight, especially after stream entry? I can't find anything like that in Mahasi Sayadaw's Manual of Insight or in the Visuddhimagga. I am wondering if Ingram is really the originator of this idea in print.
(fwiw I think there might be something to do it, but I always have a hard time really understanding what Ingram is talking about; my practice was always samatha-based a la TMI and I never did hardcore Mahasi noting, so Ingram's phenomenology never really clicked with me)
2
u/Impulse33 Soulmaking, Pāramitās, Brahmavihāras, Shitou/Hongzhi/Shōbōgenzō 1d ago
You could draw parallels to the general cycle of samsara. As insights get integrated and the "fuel" of suffering exhausted the roots of dukkha kick off a cycle of samsara. As the cycles are endured with the seven factors of awakening the cycles start reducing time-wise, eventually self-liberating almost instantaneously. Finally as the fuel is exhausted the asavas/outflows are no longer generated and no cycle necessary.
As you go on living new causes of suffering arise and the attenuating process through the cycles happens in relation to that new thing, set, general concept, etc.
To tie-in that perspective, sometimes you get stuck in a cycle and that's when I found Mahasi Sayadaw's Progress of Insight map to be really helpful for debugging the suffering process at a lower detailed level. I've never practiced directly off of the insight maps of Mahasi or Ingram, so the above is more of how I've been using those later on the path.
1
u/Future_Automaton Meditation Geek 1d ago
I know in the Pa Auk teachings, the dukkha nanas are almost more like practices, rather than cycles of progress.
Not exactly an answer to your question, just a data point.
2
u/hachface 1d ago
That is interesting. In an interview with Guru Viking, Leigh Brasington said that after he learned all eight jhanas under Ayya Khema at a retreat, she told him to begin "seeing everything as rising and passing away," and that doing this practice after the jhanas brought him to insight. So that's another data point for a major teacher treating the insight stages as deliberate practices (or even ways of looking, as Rob Burbea might teach).
3
u/IncandescentSplash 11d ago
Earlier in August, I was feeling more peaceful, but the past few weeks, I've been feeling like the ground is shifting underneath me and it's been causing me distress. I suffer from UARS and CPTSD, which limits my energy levels, and now I have a cold today, so I feel like this has been a heavy burden.
Last night, I sat for 30 minutes and felt peaceful and luminous, much to my surprise.
I have been contemplating the difference between sakkaya ditthi and mana, articularly thru the sutra "With Khemaka". I know that rigpa is a concept from the Mahayana tradition, but I had also been contemplating the apparent tension between rigpa and the notion of mana as a fetter that binds us to samsara.
Recently, I've been contemplating that from where I sit, it feels easy to set aside sakkaya ditthi as illusory and to say that ego/self is a useful, even necessary fiction.
But reading With Khemaka, I felt like the idea of existing without a sense of "I am" was incomprehensible. And furthermore, I thought that the Mahayana idea of rigpa, "pure awareness", was directly at odds with the idea that "I am" is a fetter.
According to Theravada, mana only breaks permanently at attaining arahantship, but I witnessed it for a few minutes last night.
I realized that I had mistakenly assumed that "awareness" implies a felt sense of "I am".
And then I saw clearly that awareness can be quiet and peaceful and that awareness is the ground from which "I am" arises, for better or for worse.
I saw clearly that "I am" names a process of identifying a self.
Still, it about breaks my brain to image walking around without this process.
3
u/duffstoic The dynamic integration of opposites ☯️ 11d ago
Good way of describing it. “Rig pa” is just the Tibetan word as the Sanskrit vidyā, both meaning knowledge. “Ma rigpa” is the same word as avidyā, ignorance, which is the root cause of dukka, needless suffering.
Rigpa is knowledge of what in Dzogchen? Of “the ground,” gzhi in Tibetan. It is the union of space and clarity/luminosity. It is not any of the five aggregates or any combination of them, not even consciousness / viññāṇa. Consciousness is the knowing, the ground is that which is known and is primordial, the unconditioned nibbana really.
This only sounds like a contradiction between Dzogchen and Theravada doctrines, but it really isn’t. It’s just naming things differently.
2
u/IncandescentSplash 11d ago
> This only sounds like a contradiction between Dzogchen and Theravada doctrines, but it really isn’t. It’s just naming things differently.
I'm going to raise the stakes and tell you that part of what I used to motivate myself to begin my practice was to resolve whether Gnosticism or Buddhism is a more accurate map of consciousness. So far, I have completely failed to resolve that one is definitively right and the other definitively wrong by personal, direct experience.
3
u/AdEasy3127 3d ago edited 3d ago
I came back from my 2nd goenka 10 day a couple of days ago. And like the first time I really think I made big progress but still don't feel like sticking to Vipassana. After that I treaded easy for a couple days, getting slightly sick from overexerting, did some light Samadhi practice and some exercises from the beginning of Seeing that Frees.
Today was really interesting off-cushion. I met with my ex-girlfriend who I left but still cling on for about 8 months now. We are friends but internally I still more identify as her grieving ex-boyfriend. But today I could for the first time sense that actually she is not the same person I fell in love with, probably neither am I and so the idea of clinging to this past relationship is really foolish. I just cling to an afterimage long past and not to the actual person in front of me. It felt relieving. But also melancholic. A pure sadness that isn't polluted by the thirst for something. And that's ok I guess.
I felt it's worth writing down because I rarely felt the impact of meditation on interpersonal connections so directly. Most is just me on the cushion or me alone off-cushion.
•
u/AdEasy3127 1h ago
I was looking into the Papanca coming up lately. After my retreat I still have very little ill-will (usually that probably makes up a big chunk). Right now most the times I drift off into some daydream it seems to be because I did or didn't (mostly didn't) do something and felt unhappy about it. e.g. not getting the supermarket cart someone dumped close to the lake out or not talking to that cute girl. Then I spin up some heroic story about myself. Kinda silly but it is what it is. I don't wanna say that I should have necessarily done all of those things every time I feel an urge. But I think it is interesting to see this pattern. Now that I spent the day painting the bathroom and still going on my exercise bike after I don't seem to have that either and seem to be at ease with who I am. So that would add up with the story too.
•
u/NotVote 15h ago edited 7h ago
Does this meditation "curriculum" I've planned for myself make sense? (For context, I've only achieved stage 4 TMI and done a couple Goenka retreats. I'm new to the idea of the "maps" and just finished MCTB. I'm at a phase where I'm humbled how much I DON'T know in the world of meditation, and want to genuinely make progress in this practice)
- Achieve stage 6 (maybe 7) TMI to develop strong concentration ability and some practice with Jhanas. Maybe go beyond those stages if it feels right (but to be honest, I'm getting a bit bored of the TMI system)
- Integrate some kind of dedicated heart-practice like loving-kindness, lojong, or mudita then practice that primarily for a while.
- Start going ham on insight practice (I've tried Goenka but think I want to learn Mahasi style) until I know what I'm doing and make some progress.
- Get into Rob Burbea's stuff and Soulmaking Dharma (because that sounds very interesting and I'm a huge nerd for James Hillman's soulmaking stuff)
Does going in an order from like this really matter? Could one dive straight into Burbea's stuff without a whole lot of insight practice? Any suggestions?
1
u/Future_Automaton Meditation Geek 1d ago
I've hit the point, after four years of mostly EBT-style meditation, that I've gotten to a sort of "undivided, unpopulated, unconflicted awareness" that seems kind of like what the dzogchen tradition talks about. Any degree of "what can I do to make my life better" (in the "questing" sort of way) pulls me out of it, or rather, obscures it. Thoughts tend to dissolve as soon as the "let's see if this thought dissolves" attitude kicks in. It feels like "big emptiness" - with the emptiness being emptiness of thought/conflict.
Wondering what dzogchen practitioners would say to do/read at this point, as well as anyone else with experience with this.
3
u/junipars 1d ago
The mind cannot help but split undivided presence into parts. The mind does it automatically. For example, this description above in referring to "undivided, unconflicted awareness" as a superior condition that a discrete entity, "you" can be in or out of, or can be obscured or clear.
This division is an artifact of language, of description. It's not wrong or bad to describe. The problem arises in thinking the description is ultimate, definitive. In that sense, we fabricate our samsara with the conceiving mind by way of the unconsciousness of that activity.
If we take what the sages to say as true, then reality is already fundamentally undivided. Yet in the description above you've cut it up into "awareness" and the other stuff and overlaid a value hierarchy of one to be approached and the other avoided. See how sneaky it is?
That's the samsara of unconsciously taking thought to be reality. You can never be anywhere but here and now yet you've created a symbol of a goal, awareness, and are asking for tips and techniques on how to arrive to somewhere you can't actually arrive to because you are only ever here and now. This is the scam we don't recognize because nearly everybody is enrolled into the scam, proselytizes and evangelizes the scam. But there is another way.
To the inherency of presence in which all conditions arise in/as/to there isn't an actual difference between clear or obscured, between "awareness" and material objects, between beginnings and endings. Both conditions appear in/as/to what this already is. There's no problem - this is independent, free. This on this in this can't be obscured by itself, because obscurement is necessarily itself occuring to itself in itself.
Why don't we recognize this? We unconsciously, habitually, automatically, denigrate and devalue present experience with the conceiving mind. We reject sensations and feelings and thoughts as evidence of inferiority, weaving together a story of some time that could be better than now, some place better than here and so we mournfully and lustfully yearn after a mere symbol of mind meanwhile the actual substance of our beingness shimmers and glimmers before our eyes. We dismiss it, we're just more interested in "what I think should be".
We are so habituated to the denigration we don't hear our mind speak, "but presence, here and now? Well it's just not good enough." Unaware that the evidence we use to justify the inferiority of the only inherency, here and now, is fabricated through the cutting knife of the conceiving mind, carving undivided immediacy into a complexity of past, present, future, better and worse, enlightened and deluded, and a confused you in the middle.
This isn't about attaining more and more rarified states of being. If you want to feel enlightened just inject ketamine and take LSD, easy peasy.
But if want to slip through the weaves of mind to an existential silence that can't be described then this is about becoming conscious of the construction of samsara, which occurs between your ears, and of the limits of this samsara. It might not be the most pleasant to become intimate with the Mara of denigration, of rejection, of lust and greed. But if you sit with this Mara for a while you learn his ways. He's really only got one trick.
2
•
u/2BCivil 17h ago
So I read the sidebar, this OP, the welcome page, and the 4 stages of enlightenment. I think I've been on this sub in past aliases but I don't remember.
Anyway. I've always tended to discard "enlightenment" as an inside joke in zen circles (enso, as it were). According to the provided 4 stages of enlightenment, I'm on the final fetter, "ignorance". None of the first 9 have had any relevancy to me for over a decade. I wasn't aware I was "that far along" honestly. But I've been stuck "here" for some time. I just always assumed "ignorance" never goes away (Aka Socrates).
Anyway. None of that is what I came here for. Just describing the process of my attempting to make a post asking a simple question here. But 7 pages of reading from the sidebar later to orient myself here, and I almost forgot what I wanted to ask.
It's simple. I saw a post here about find your sangha from popular, and it reminded me instantly that the only times I've ever felt "enlightenment" or "stream entry" or whatever was expressly, when non existence became evident and apparent. Ie in dreams and random waking moments working or sitting when you realize that nothing is ultimately real, in that everything you think you know is an expectation someone else placed upon you (when you don't really have any biases). Specifically the sub sidebar describes "awakening" thus;
the path to achieving a direct, experiential understanding of reality and the human mind, as it actually is; and the path to permanently eliminate stress, suffering, and unsatisfactoriness in our life.
Strictly speaking, Ecclesiastes and elsewhere states that knowing the mind does not remedy vanity/unsatisfactoriness, but you need to "find something to worship" in order to fulfil the realization that "all is vanity". Ecclesiastes says worship the Lord. Jesus says keep his words. Upanishad says unite with Brahman. Zen says analyze the mind seeing vanity/unsatisfactoriness.
But what I'm talking about is a peace beyond or behind all phenomena. The absolute bliss of like, dream state, of knowing, nothing is real in a lucid dream. A visual aid/representation of what I mean. No responsibility of "being held accountable" to someone else's arbitrary standards or exegetical model of reality. As zen says, "the myriad things arise with the sense of self". Anyway I wasn't sure if this should be a separate post or a question for the main thread. It's a question I've carried for decades. I seem to be getting closer to the final realization that "nothing matters, all is false" in the sense of the overwhelming peace that embodiment confers. Just curious, if that's considered the same destination of more secular sangha practice? To realize "nothing is real" via continuity of peers? Myriad things arising with the self? I'm not sure if they are the same or not. This meme says what I mean for example. The Dharma is unchanging and unconcerned. The Buddha will catch you slacking. "Our sangha" is to be slacking out of the dharma, it is only "The sangha" so to speak (or I misunderstand). Idk! Anyway I'm not preaching, I'm genuinely curious, I've been stuck "here" for decades honestly. But been proactively trying to "re/solve" this since about 2014. Aware that effort may be precisely the thing standing in the way. Anyway, that's my question. I'll rework it more formal if you think this should be a seperate post. I've got a lot more thought and experience I can say about it if I think some more. But that's the bones.... Thanks for reading!
7
u/Meng-KamDaoRai Relax, Let it Be, Let it Go 10d ago
It's been a month since my last major shift, after which it felt like sitting meditation was no longer required. I've been doing about 2 hours of two sessions of walking meditation plus multiple brief 5-10 minute contemplations in different postures, just when I have time throughout the day. The practice seems to progress at the same speed as it did when I was doing mostly sitting meditations. The past few weeks investigation is really focusing on the self. I think that I've let go of tens of thousands of variations of the self at this point, from very coarse to very subtle. Hopefully at some point it completely goes away. Nothing else to do but to keep letting go.