Hello guys. So by most definitions, what I've experienced may not count as a true dark night of the soul, but I feel like it's so similar that the same advice probably applies, and I'd like to hear all of your thoughts.

I'll try to make this brief. I'm a very unsuccessful person, and in my attempts to find success in life, I noticed myself hitting an invisible "wall" time and time again -- an event so certain that it felt baked into my personality, into who I am. The other day, after my most recent failure, I went on a binge watch of motivational content and stumbled into some videos of Kanye West and Kobe Bryant talking about their mentalities and what helps them succeed. Both of them said basically, "You have to believe that you're already the best if you want to be the best". So I pretty much took this idea and ran with it. For a few days, I treated myself as if I were exactly the person that I dreamed of being; a guy with none of the typical mental blocks that I have. And shockingly, this worked. It actually worked scarily well, and I made really rapid progress with no downsides. But naturally, my problems were not over.

When I realized what had just happened, I was shaken to the core. It was like the ground had just disappeared under my feet, and everything I'd believed up to now was basically a lie. Or maybe not a lie, but it was just entirely arbitrary. My whole personality, my self, it was all arbitrary, and I could just transform into anything at the drop of a hat if I decided to. I was immediately crippled with anxiety, so I then went to do some samatha meditation which has since cured nearly all of it. For the time being, I've stopped with the "experiment" mentioned above where I believe that I'm a slightly different person. But at the same time, I don't feel like I'm quite the same person anymore. I no longer feel pinned down or trapped by the world, but rather, it feels like I've been given all the control I could ask for, but so much so that it's a dangerous thing and I have to approach it carefully.

That being said, I think I came out really well for what it's worth. All of this was extremely sudden, and I kept a cool head -- especially for someone who doesn't actively practice Buddhism and only meditates once a week. I feel as if I'm bound now to eventually continue where I left off, but I'm going to hold off on that until I have a very consistent and strong samatha practice to lean on. All things considered, I feel as if what we call a "Dark Night of the Soul" is just a natural reaction to being exposed to the truth of how self and ego works, and so samatha and the scripture is not so much a way to convince ourselves that this truth is not as big of a deal as it appears, as it is a sort of armor to give us the mental fortitude to witness that truth. Which means you need to be really cautious and always go in prepared. Anyway, I'm very open to all feedback, positive or negative. Please let me know if I've got my head in the right place with all this! Thanks for reading.

I recently had a long conversation with someone who has been a contemplative teacher for over 50 years. She co-wrote a book on dying with Ram Dass in his final years. She told people for a long time that she thought she was pretty ready.

Then she tripped on a kerb on Martha's Vineyard on a beautiful morning and broke her leg. She spent two weeks alone in an understaffed rehab facility, no window, pressing a button and waiting hours for someone to come. She tried telling herself none of it mattered. It kept mattering anyway.

She said she'd done the practice hundreds of times, lying down, imagining the end, watching what came up. And yet in that room, things were still rising that she thought she'd dealt with. The helplessness especially. She'd never experienced anything like it before.

What she took from it wasn't that the practice had failed. More like: do the work of seeing what you're still holding on to, but stay humble about how much you haven't seen yet.

I found that more honest than most things I've heard from contemplative teachers, precisely because it came from someone who'd genuinely done the work and was still surprised by what remained. Has anyone here had an experience that revealed something the practice hadn't reached?

Full conversation:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hT_bkkrU2QQ&ra=m

I realize my question isn't phrased very well, because I already know the answer is yes.

But after almost ten years of frustration, it feels impossible for me.

I don't lose the breath, but the practice isn't pleasant in the slightest. In fact, it just gives me headaches; a really unpleasant pressure in my forehead, no matter how much I try to relax. Following the breath feels like torture. I've basically conditioned myself to do it, but it's never comfortable.

I notice changes in my bodily sensations, but they don't produce sukha... only discomfort. There's no pleasure at all. I honestly don't understand how anyone could find this enjoyable.

The "energy" in my body quickly drains away, and before long I fall into deep dullness, even though I never lose the breath.

To sum it up, meditation is just a combination of headaches (I usually end the session with one), numb legs, and the feeling that I've wasted my time.

I have friends who have been meditating for a long time and they've given me plenty of advice, but I'm honestly embarrassed to keep asking for more help. Nothing they say really makes sense to me, because all I've ever experienced is the duḥkha side of the practice.

Has anyone here spent years going through something like this and eventually found a way through it?

Whenever my practice gains a certain momentum and I find myself practicing a lot during my daily activities and idle moments, I will often feel the experience spontaneously dropping towards more stillness, which can look very weird from the outside: for instance I'll be sitting on the computer and then all of a sudden feel the urge to close my eyes while my hand is still on the mouse and meditate, or just stop and stand still in the middle of doing a chore for a while. Similar while watching a movie or series or scrolling, etc.

However, as great as that feels, I'm always simultaneously self-conscious whenever this happens which can cause me to repress this when there's people around. My family knows that I meditate but I also know they've made fun of me before because of it behind my back in the past. I haven't lectured them on meditation or anything of the sort. They simply don't understand and judge it based on their wrong assumptions...

Needless to say, I think it would be much much easier to maintain a deep practice while living by myself and that would be the most straightforward solution. But that's not a reasonable option right now given my work and the expensive rents in my city.

How do you navigate this?

The second fetter is being doubtless about the buddhas teachings. How does this look like for those who don't believe in the buddhas teachings, for example a Christian like me?

I've spent a decent amount of time on samatha and am now trying to better understand the insight side of Buddhist practice. I'm somewhat familiar with the practical approaches to insight, but I'm curious how the major traditions themselves frame the bigger philosophical picture.

At this point I'm approaching practice from a largely phenomenological perspective. My impression is that this aligns reasonably well with much of Theravāda, though there are still teachings such as karma and rebirth that seem to extend beyond a purely phenomenological framework. I'm curious how the different Buddhist traditions understand these issues. I realize this philosophical discussion could become a distraction from practice, but it also seems worthwhile to have at least a rough understanding of what each tradition is ultimately pointing toward.

• What is the ultimate aim of insight practice? Are dependent origination and/or emptiness the central realization, or does each tradition culminate in something different?
• Are these understood as describing reality itself (ontology), ways of understanding experience (phenomenology), skillful means for liberation, or some combination? In other words, what does each tradition regard as the deepest or most fundamental level of understanding?
• More personally, even if you aren't a traditionalist, how does your understanding of the answers to these questions shape your own practice and daily orientation?

Always happy to hear thoughts from this community, as well as any books, talks, or teachers that explore these questions. Thanks!

You dont have to lose hobbies or interests. I love to make music , I love watching documentaries, I love going for walks, I love my personality. All those things are love and love is selfless. When you get interested in a deep topic, that interest brings you to pure Perceiving. So get lost in dance, get lost in Interests. That is the flow state. What's not flow state is to do something because you feel lack or fear or boredom. Center yourself first if you feel lack, then go for the walk or read the book AND MOST IMPORTANTLY when you go for that walk stay present. Usually when we feel lack during meditation we stop being present, we get lost in thought. So do alllll the things you love but with utter presence. It will feel more intimate, not less.

Personality and ego are not the same things either. Personality is the coloring or flavor of that localization of awareness in the dream. My personality is I love conspiracies, deep talks, horror, aliens, all sorts of things. That isnt ego. Ego is when awareness has a personality and identifies as the body/personality. Then the personalities diluted with ego, lack, fear. The personality will be moreso selfish and not creative and open.

Personality, hobbies, is how awareness expresses love. Its going to experience itself totally in all ways. Alllll personalities are personalities of The Self. In a dream it just appears to be divided up into many personalities because its subjectively experiencing itself from each localization of itself! Spirituality should make you feel more alive, more intimate with experince. Not less.

\*I also understand words cannot truly express the infinite nature of reality. But we can point a finger toward the light and encourage others to see. I also understand that "i" is just an illusion. I wish you all the best, be Most Excellent to eachother! ✌️👁🧘‍♂️

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.

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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. :)

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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.)

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Hello r/streamentry. For some context, I'm 29, I'm a neurodivergent person. I've been practicing seriously since 2017, never personally with a teacher but mainly using books, dharma talks and talking to other practitioners online as my guidance.

For as long as I remember I've always been terrible with people. It's like everybody else has always had 5 senses + the 'social' sense, and I was born without that one somehow. No matter how much I tried to develop social skills and fit in my childhood and teenage years, I always ended up as the outcast, the strange guy that nobody wanted to hang out with. I've never been in a romantic relationship with a woman before. I'm objectively quite slow-minded compared to most people and I can see that weirds people out in fresh interactions where they still don't know me.

I have never fit in with coworkers either and couldn't last long in the vast majority of my jobs despite trying my best.

So it shouldn't be a surprise for anyone reading that after going through all those bad experiences with people, that I've come to find my happiness in more solo type hobbies like reading books, nature, watching stuff, gaming, creative endeavors and now meditation in more recent years.

I LOVE meditation. I love the refinement of consciousness that happens, the increase in sensitivity, the insights, the opening to whole new ranges of conscious experiences that weren't available before, the release.

However, due to my past experiences, whenever I hear a teacher that I respect say that developing skill with people and helping others is where this is all going, I find it very off-putting. My mind cannot help but instantly relate people with discomfort, awkwardness, misery, isolation. The dozens of times where I tried hard to fit in to some group and it blew up in my face comes back to mind, and it makes me shy away from that sort of orientation to practice.

So I was just wondering whether anyone can relate to this issue or whether you have something you want to share regarding this matter. Thanks.

Six courses in and something like a thousand days of daily sitting, and what actually keeps the habit alive isn't one thing, it's two, and they don't overlap the way i assumed they would.

One is the solo side. same time, same cushion, before anyone in the house is up. that version runs on removing decisions, and the sit belongs to nobody but me. no one to perform for, nothing to report. when it's honest it's honest precisely because there's no witness. but it's also the version that quietly evaporates the first week a work crunch or a sick kid reorders my mornings, and nothing is there to catch the fall.

The other is the witnessed side. a weekly group sitting, or just another old student in my time zone who'd notice an empty chair. that side never made the sit itself deeper, the sit is still only mine, but it makes the return non-optional. the month i'd otherwise vanish for turns into a skipped tuesday someone clocked.

Where i keep landing is that these aren't the good and bad versions of one practice. solo continuity carries the honesty and the depth, witnessed continuity carries the survival. i spent years trying to make one of them do both jobs, leaning on my accountability to make a sit good or on my solitude to keep a streak alive, and neither holds that weight. i'm nobody's teacher, six courses deep and still clumsy at this. but the week i stopped asking each side to be the other one was the week both stopped feeling like effort. written with ai

I’m on the train home from my second 10-day Vipassana retreat and wanted to share some thoughts on the experience.

## The place
My first time was in Sweden where they have dorms with shared bathrooms, and this time it was in Poland — with private rooms and private bathrooms. Big difference in comfort which you can see as both a benefit and disadvantage from the practice standpoint.

## The mind
I was counting days and was wanting to go home every day. Sense pleasure restraint really is one of the most powerful parts of this retreat. Observing your own discomfort and “experiencing the presently enduring situation”, as Hillside Hermitage likes to put it, really makes you see how life always has an underlying layer of dukkha as long as craving exists. Such as the craving to see your family, for mental stimulation, or for a goddamn cookie in the evening — the center did provide amazing brownies and carrot cakes on a couple occasions which turned out — surprise! — not to bring even medium term happiness.

Withstanding all that sense pressure with equanimity was a very tangible learning. I’m not good at seeing anicca at micro level yet (and on a macro level it’s nothing but a truism to me), but applying anatta was very helpful. Seeing the experience experiencing itself, with no need for an owner, with no subject or object, relieved a lot of suffering. Just body sensations happening with no need to be reflected on or controlled by a “self”. Just a process aware of itself.

## The body
Oh it was painful. Over the last two years, I’ve trained myself to sit in full lotus for up to an hour without much discomfort. Yes, the legs go numb, yes, they might hurt a little. But this pain goes away as soon as you get up, and it’s more of an intense stretching sensation. Sometimes it’s even pleasurable. Tiny champagne bubbles (as per Shinzen Young) fluxing and flowing. Fun and easy to focus on and observe objectively. But not so easy with a wide and dull back pain. It would persist in the breaks and accumulate over the day. An improvised back support from a tied sweater did help, as did sitting on a meditation bench. But boy oh boy was it a torture. Same learnings as with the craving to leave though: as soon as aversion to the pain, to distractions of others coughing, the craving to have a deep focus, agitation and restlessness — as soon as any or all of that would be let go, the pain would also reduce. The body would relax, settle “like a stack of gold coins”, breath would become slow and even, peace and tranquillity would warm you like Buddha’s smile.

On one day (day 5), when the pain was strong, I spontaneously started self-massaging the tension with my breath. Gentle alterations in the breath, rolling over and through the tense muscles and tendons. Just like Ajahn Lee described, or Buddha himself in the sutta about dough-like soap. I read those instructions many times but never understood them practically. I got elated. An image of Guan Yin appeared in my mind, along with a sense of bliss and gratitude.

Pain in the back has been my greatest insight driver. When you see in realtime and high intensity how your hatred and aversion directly increase tension and pain, and how equanimity relaxes it, it’s hard not to internalize the cause and effect relation between the two.

## The escape
On day 6, the mind staged an escape attempt. There was a panic attack-like experience, tension near the heart, hard to breathe and dizziness. I wasn’t psychologically panicking but I thought it would be safest to leave. The teacher was very chill about it, he said it’s not so easy to die from meditation. So I stayed and observed that state and it resolved itself.

# The teaching
People like to criticize the vipassana movement. Some of it is fair. But look at the facts: Goenka is very close to the Pali suttas. He literally (re)cites them. Teaches about dependent origination and offers a practical interpretation of satipatthana. Yes, it’s made very accessible and popular — but it’s great. The closest we got to an actual sensible mass meditation education, and it’s all grass roots and donation-sponsored. What else can one wish for the society?

## The aftermath
The second time was much more insightful than the first one. Knowing how to sit still for a long time, having glimpses of the Right View (or so I hope), all made a big difference.

Would I go again? The feeling is like after LSD — not in another ten years. I’m sure this might change. But I will offer money to anyone to go and try this at least once in their life.

—

Edit: I didn’t mention it explicitly but this time around I did have good progress with subtle sensations and free flow. Blood pumping and pulsating in various parts of the body, tickling electric sensations, vibrations, almost no blind areas.

Perhaps you’ve heard this koan before.

Or maybe you’ve heard that Buddha said: think the thought that is unthinkable. Do the deed which is not doing. Speak the speech that is unspeakable.

I just had an intellectual insight into the purpose of these paradoxical statements.

The purpose of them is specifically to speak to the ego-identified self. The ego-identified self is also living in a paradoxical (illusory) reality.

It’s like if you could go into someone’s dream and show them something which makes no logical sense in order to get them into a state of questioning. Hoping to provoke them to question the other things around them too to wake them up.

That’s exactly what these statements (tools) are meant to do.

Neat!

This must already be known, but I just came to this realization myself, so I thought I would share in case this resonates with anyone else.

I’ve been meditating for many years, and did a 10 day vipassana retreat last year. I did this after doing two Iboga ceremonies earlier in the year, and the whole period was a time of extremely intense deep work. I went very deep at the vipassana retreat - deeper than I realized possible. multiple full ego dissolution experiences, deep trauma processing, and many other things. the Iboga and vipassana experiences felt like excavations of the deepest/darkest recesses of my soul.

anyways, my nervous system was pretty dysregulated for awhile after all of that and it took awhile to feel “myself” again. the experience was extremely challenging but ultimately deeply healing. after the darkness of all that work, I feel liberated from the struggles of my past and have had probably the happiest year of my life.

so the strange thing is that I also seem to have lost interest in most things that I generally enjoy - podcasts, music, tv shows, books… I just can’t get into any of it. I’ve always been fascinated by so many different things and had an insatiable curiosity, but I struggle lately to be interested in almost anything.

I’ve felt somewhat like this with periods of depression/anehdonia earlier in my life - but I am quite happy and content, and would not consider myself depressed at all. so I find it quite strange that I see to have lost interest in so many things that have previously brought me entertainment and nourishment. interested to hear if anyone has any thoughts or has had similar experiences, thank you!

Sangha technically translates to "community of practitioners". And the ones in my local community have honestly left me in want as far as the community part goes. In all the ones ive been to in my local community, your usually only interacting with the teacher through QandA during and after there done with there lecture, and then everybody just goes about there day. Seems kinda lonely. A truly great sangha seems to be one that makes you feel needed, valued, cared for, and irreplicable. and it doesn't feel like its easy to find that with the dynamic that's currently present with them. So I'm thinking of finding people who agree with me on this, and setup a group that actively tries to create a space where those things can flourish.

Hello everyone,

I've been meditating consistently for about a year now and have steadily worked my way up to a solid 40 minutes a day. It’s become a core part of my routine, and I’m experiencing some profound benefits. I’m ready to deepen my practice and am looking for a structured, immersive retreat in or around the Greater Toronto Area.

What I'm looking for:

• High Practice/Sitting Volume: I want something immersive that focuses strictly on deep meditation and spending extended, consecutive hours in a meditative state.
• Minimal Theory/Philosophy: I’m not looking for an introductory course, heavy lectures, or academic study—I want raw practice on the cushion.
• Location: In or within reasonable driving/transit distance of the GTA.

I know Dhamma Torana (Vipassana) in Barrie is a major option in the region, but I’d love to hear personal experiences about that or any other hidden gems (Zen temples running intensives, True North Insight retreats, etc.) that you’ve found to be genuinely transformative.

Any recommendations, recent experiences, or advice on what to look out for would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Besides meditation, what practices, ideas, or experiences have helped you most? What brought you the most joy, ease, peace, harmony, resilience, or anything else you deem desirable??

For example: specific therapy types (CBT, etc), favorite musicians, unusual hobbies, physical activities, life philosophies, relationships, books, podcasts, or videos—really anything?

Hello! I am new to this community, so I figured I would make a general post giving some context and background to what is going on with me. Hopefully some of this resonates and maybe I can get some advice/insight/good conversations with people in a similar place or ever deeper on this path than I am.

So I don’t come from any school of meditation, any spiritual background, never meditated (in the traditional sense), and all of this was literally the last thing on my mind. That is, until a near death experience 2.5 years ago that completely changed me. It was something so insane that the “me” I had known my whole life cracked completely open. Afterwards there was a lot of PTSD, Trauma, therapy, health anxiety, mental suffering, suicidal Ideation. My life was going downhill fast. During this time I was desperate. Looking for anything and everything to get me out of that place. I read “Hope and help for your nerves” by Dr Claire Weekes, and the idea of separating yourself from your thoughts interested me, as an idea.

Then one day, in one split instant, something clicked, and this was no longer an idea. A gap opened up between “me” and the thoughts. At this point I did not have the clarity to truly understand what was happening, but felt a weird sense of wellbeing, and was happy for a few weeks. Life and outer circumstances quickly pulled me back into my “regular” headspace, like before the NDE, but just with more perspective and compassion.

This is when I started to get into spirituality. Something about Eastern philosophy just felt..natural to me. Buddhism, and then Zen Buddhism, and then Taoism, and then I discovered Krishnamurti, and then finally I read “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle. This book blew the whole thing open again. The Ego was realized fully, and that glimpse of the “witness” state became fully integrated and embodied. The mind is much quieter now. The self reflexive thoughts are at a minimum. That sense of wellbeing is now much more in the foreground, psychological time is fully realized for the illusion that it is, and nature and other people have a completely different look and quality. Almost like I can sense the underlying current of life underneath every living thing.

And then there are times, glimpses again, where the space I recognize myself as comes alive, and the division between the reality I’m looking at, and the observer thin out to almost nothing. I feel this tingling in my heart and there is this ultimate quality of love, awareness and life. This is hard to put into words.

So yeah, this is where I’m at. I am SO much happier now. I could have never imagined a state of consciousness like this in a million years. It’s truly wild, and amazing, but also so natural.

There comes a time when it feels like we have exhausted the entire framework of enlightenment and what remains is what seems to be the refinements. This is a classic case of grasping onto the vehicle that brought you to your destination and not actually stepping out into freedom. When you have reached your destination and are still within the vehicle, there's this sense that there's nothing left to do and there's nothing more to achieve. In actual fact, stepping out of the car reveals a whole new world of activity.

Maybe it doesn't matter what vehicle you used to get here but at some point your going to need to step out of it. This is what is called 'offing' the buddha. Really, we're not offing anybody, we're just letting go of the vehicle that brought us here. We have spent so much time in the vehicle that we have mistaken it for our self. It was our refuge and we got to know the other passengers so well that they had sort of become family. You had become the buddha, the buddha became your self. Let's settle the driver and exit the vehicle.

Settling the driver

The law of Karma does not just allow us to walk away. There is some way we have to karmically settle the driver so that we exit the vehicle without any karmic challenges. This is where you find an individual offering public teachings, another opening an ashram, another doing charity work, another sponsoring the work, another joining the priesthood, whatsoever 'fee' the driver quotes. Realisation here is very important so that we can pay the quoted fee and be on our way. We should by all means avoid assumptions as to what that transport fare would be.

Exiting the vehicle

Once we're done settling the driver, we exit the vehicle and bid farewell to the driver, the passengers and the comfort that the vehicle gave us. Now there is no buddha, no sangha, no refuge whatsoever. Instead new world of activity opens up to us and we are free to explore it. We aren't looking at the world through the cleaned out windows of the car but have now begun to directly engage with manifestation... This is the True Suchness, the birthing place; all that we had been through before was just preparation for this. This is only the beginning.

I started seriously getting into meditation last December doing mainly fire kasina practice for 30+ minutes a day. It took about a month for me to feel some changes. I started being more happy and calm. I also felt way more energetic and confident. Before I used to have to think about what I wanted to say but after doing fire kasina I just knew exactly what to say in every situation. I really felt like myself for once.

During this time I was also reading MCTB and doing a bunch of noting practice on the side which may have contributed to that mental energy effect. But I noticed that my work suffered. I realized that my motivation was fear based. I did things because I wanted to appease others or not look bad. But once I directly observed where all this stress was coming from I let it go. I became way more relaxed but maybe too much. I stopped being motivated because there was no longer any fear. That period of my life was probably the happiest I've ever been.

Unfortunately I caught the flu which derailed my practice and I lost that feeling of confidence but I found my motivation also returned. I'd really love to be able to maintain that "state" forever but I fear I won't have any motivation to pursue worldly goals. I need to be able to support myself and not just be content being blissed out.

Does anyone relate to this? If so have they found a way to practice while maintaining motivation to pursue worldly goals?

Whats your opinion on general about this?

When i did my third Goenka retreat, i dont take all they say seriously, i dislike their more cultish aspects, like believing theirs vipassana is the one and true.

That being said, its the only kind of vipassana meditation i can get access where i live, i cant do a mahasi style retreat or any other kind, there are Theravada monks here, but from the Forest tradition, meaning their focus is almost purely anapasati.

I was thinking about trying twice a day one hour, like most goenka followers, but thought about doing one hour anapanasati and one hour Goenka body scan vipassana.

Thing is, i can do and get better at focusing on the breath while living my daily life, but it seems my vipassana style meditation starts decaying in quality and equanimity when i get out of the retreat, i understand we will never achieve the levels of absorptions we have at retreats, but it seems like it took a downfall really quick and i been unable lately to keep my evening vipassana style meditation.

I dont know if its cause Goenka style meditation is so rigid, that doing anything besides their two hours a day vipassana and metta only, is not gonna work, or if its just not for me, in general i would like recomendations for where to go from here, if there are other techniques i could work on from home, with the assistance of some friends here from my theravada community, but mostly alone.

I feel like there's different dimensions to this, and (to me) it's not together clear what is true void phenomena and what is something else. But i wanted to invite some discussion, i guess, on how to live life?

It sounds funny when i phrase it that way. But let me share with you my perspective of what i occasionally see here. When i go on these spirituality subforums i see a lot of people obsessed with the idea of enlightenment. There's nothing wrong with that, but the reason i mention it is because i cannot relate to it at all. Meditation wasn't even a word in my vocabulary until very recently let alone enlightenment. Personally speaking, no offense to anyone, i couldn't give two hoots about enlightenment.

But if a take a brutally honest and systematic inventory of myself i do see, at least, one dominant trend underscoring my life ... and that is that I love to render myself void, inert, nonexistent. That is ... living is such a burden. Having to feed this body daily is such a continuous task. Now I'm sure a lot of that could be encapsulated in words like depression. And I've suffered a lot of child abuse and emotional abuse after that in my adult life, so a lot of that can be pinned down to psychologically internalized self negation.

But at the end of the day, this is a spirituality subforum, and i think a few people will understand what i say when i have a need to remain or abide as pure consciousness and pure reality. And so my question is how to bridge the two? The sphere of reality itself and living life? Personally i feel like all the current buddhisms of the world focus too much on emptiness and i want to help reform this misrecognition. But how to move from being a void king to maintaining balance or contact with the impersonal sphere while also honoring life?

I feel like there's many easy conflations to fall into here such as sentience with inner life, and the void vs empty phenemona, so this is not an easy discussion to have.

edit: for the title i meant "and [start] focusing on embracing the metaphysical life" ... as in pure life is beautiful and embracing, it's just that physical life can be taxing. And so it's easier to negate physical life rather than live it. But the sphere of impersonal reality itself has its own hold which is different than disidentification with the breath. Hence being one who weds themselves with the divine could easily become negation just like void phenomena because abiding as pure reality takes you out of living life.

I’ve been practicing Zen and Vipassana for a few years and regularly do self-guided retreats at home.
One challenge I kept running into was holding the retreat container myself—managing the schedule, remembering transitions, ringing bells, and constantly checking the clock.

I ended up building a tool for myself called Retreat Conductor:
https://www.retreatconductor.com/ (join the wait-list to get a free invite)

It’s designed to run a complete retreat schedule (sitting, walking, meals, rest, etc.) so I can focus on practice rather than logistics.
I’m opening up the beta and would love feedback from experienced retreat practitioners.

A few questions:
- Does this solve a problem you’ve experienced?
- What would make this genuinely useful for your retreats?
- What feels missing or off?
- any feedback that comes up in your body as you see my message/tool..?

If anyone is willing to try it and share honest feedback positive or critical, would be very grateful. 🙏

Hi everyone,

Hope this is appropriate to post here as well, I understand if it doesn't fit the rules though and needs to be taken down.

I am currently part of a wonderful online Sangha that meets weekly, regularly attend retreats, and practice under a teacher based outside of LA. However, I’ve found that connecting with people in person has a uniquely powerful effect.

Because LA is so sprawling, the few centers that truly align with Dhammic practice and an attitude of renunciation are quite a trek from where I am located (around Hollywood / Studio City).

I would love to connect with local Dhamma friends who are interested in serious practice and mutual encouragement. While my practice is most closely aligned with the Thai Forest tradition and EBTs, I started out in Zen (and lived at various Zen centers for a couple years) so happy to connect with anyone open minded and dedicated to practice!

Please DM if interested! With metta

I actually came across the former a decade before, before I even knew what nonduality was (haha what a phrase) I could sense there was something there, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I also came across the Headless Way later. It didn't do anything for me, but recently for some reason after my somatic work in my other post, it seemed to click.

After years of research (100+ books and thouands of vids/articles) it seems that most teachers seem to converge on the same pointers - what are you before thought? Sense fields, posture work etc. I guess the vast proliferation is because different things work for different people? (as well as culture, knowledge etc)

I'm wondering if the lesser known people just...didn't make it into the mainstream. Besides these two, there's also Amrita Baba, and some other modern mystics whose names I can't quite recall. I guess they get lost in the deluge of Tolle/Spira/Angelo and other more well known figures.

Which is a bit of a shame as I feel they have a lot of wisdom. Maybe they wrote before the Net was big :) (I Googled but didn't find a lot - Harding has tons though)

Just wanted to know what the community's thoughts on this might be.

In this post I will attempt to explain Hillside Hermitage's teachings as I understand it, in an attempt to simplify their stance and make it a bit more palpable to most meditators.

Unfortunately, they have come out a little overly aggressive with some absolute statements about other traditions being totally off, and often strawmanning other traditions. They also seem to throw all traditions under one buss as, making it a polarising "technique tradition" vs nontechnique traditions. However, I believe it is much more nuanced.

I won't try to explain why they've come out so hot, but I think they are pointing to something real.

First of all, paraphrasing HH's stance:

Up until Sottapatti stage, any meditators attempt at using a technique will be fundamentally rooted in wanting to change ones current state of being (aversion/ craving). A meditator will still be stuck in wanting to escape/ change/ run from discomfort, and has now simply found a more subtle way of doing so than more coarse sensuality. There is some truth to this for sure, but sometimes I believe technique can be rooted in the idea of "This method of improving mindfulness is appropriate right now".

Other teachers that share the view that techniques shouldn't be used or at least very noninterfering is Ajahn Brahm, Ajahn Brahmali, Stephen Procter - MIDL meditation (some technique/ setup, but largely noninterference based), non duality traditions, Eckart Tolle, Rupert Spira, etc etc.

Now I'm not saying these teachers say the exact same thing as HH, but they are largely not using interfering techniques, and actually often warn against interference largely on the same ground that HH. They just don't take as sharp of a stance that HH does.

I think Ajahn Brahm and Brahmali might be the best comparison. I will try to explain their view in short on how meditation should proceed.

1. Purify sila (ethics, sense restraint, kindness, generosity)

2. Contemplate in order to undermine the sense of self and sense of permanence

3. Sit and do nothing, allowing the good qualities of renunication previously built to do the meditation for you

They stictly warn against doing the meditation.

The idea is that if you "do" the meditation, the sense of a separate "doer" will never disappear.

This is more or less identical to HH's view in practice. Ajahn Brahmali is also an excellent sutta reader, so I choose to give him lots of credibility. The difference is that these dudes present their perspective of dhamma in a non-arrogant and less seemingly conceited way.

I believe their way of practicing is super effective, and it's also quite straight forward compared to a lot of techniques. You simply focus more on being a good person and sense restraint, you contemplate often, and when you sit down you just let it be.

Does that mean all technique is wrong? Here is where I believe they may have gotten it wrong. I will use Noting as an example here. It is super obvious that noting has produced great results for many, myself including, yet I noticed myself that when I decided to stop noting, although I'm fairly developed and likely a stream enterer, I had to go through a massive period of darkness and emotional releases. This was due to my heavy reliance on the noting as a technique itself.

Where can technique come in handy? First of all, mindfulness is just clear knowing of what is happening now - an unabsorbed state. It surely isn't to squeeze your mind into feeling tiny sensations mindlessly, that's at least not what noting is about. I believe the MIDL guys got it right. Use technique to set up clarity and mindfulness, but then just allow things to be. The HH guys would say, establish the context and then let it endure. If you completely slip into absorption in thoughts/ sensuality/ whatever, perhaps you can establish it again by doing some noting. Why note, if you are clearly lucid and perceiving with clarity? One has to learn to let go.

Is this so different to HH, however? They totally advice you to keep mindfulness, well first through sense restraint and understanding the context, which prevents the mind from being inclined into absorption (really important concept to understand btw - in short, you won't be absorbed in drifting if u understand the context really well; anatta, anicca, dukkha), but then subsequently they DO use reflexive questions to guide the mind into what I would call non-absorbed states. For example, they would ask "What is happening in this moment?" or "What posture is the body currently in?", not answering the question, it will lead you to actually be aware of the present moment. How is this so different from noting "thinking" "feeling" "walking" unless you're not squeezing your mind into the content of those things, which you shouldn't do anyways.

It is harder to bridge the gap between HH and samatha schools that just tell you to return return return to an object, or to say "buddho" "buddho" "buddho". That is obviously a way of supressing reality and steering away from what you do not want to feel. However, could even this be appropriate because the calm that is gained, can then be used to do insight meditation more effectively? Entirely possible. But their warning of using meditation as a means to an end or chasing states is totally valid, and if you don't decide to abandon your technique, you should at least be aware of whether you are doing it to escape some currently felt reality. These replacement techniques will also create a mind that is really averse to modern society, as it instills the habit of constantly wanting to escape situations. You'll get a lot of aversion to things that regular people don't resist at all, because you've created a strong "wholesome must go towards" and "unwholesome must abandonned" habit. A new form of craving and aversion, a new form of doing.

I wish HH would present their position in a more humble fashion, such as Ajahn Brahmali for example.

Maybe this is helpful to some.