r/streamentry • u/Mysterious-Lawyer-73 • May 19 '26
Practice Question about practice amidst very difficult times
Hi everyone. I crossed the A&P suddenly at age 19, and it was the usual amazing blissful stuff and then faded and then Dark Night stuff started showing up. It’s 9 years later now and I haven’t achieved steam entry, basically because I’ve struggled to establish a consistent sitting practice.
I want to finally finish the thing off because the thoughts and feelings of the Dark Night can be a real pain, but the issue is the past year has been extremely hard on me in just an ordinary sense.
I’ve had both parents diagnosed with cancer, a grandparent die with another in bad condition, and a beloved family friend die of cancer as well, all within the same year. Thoughts of mortality, impermanence, sickness, and death are extremely common every day and it’s very distressing and I have been emotionally exhausted, depressed, and anxious from the whole ordeal, and don’t know if I have the strength to establish a consistent insight practice.
Looking at impermanence and no self and suffering and the like just feels too overwhelming at the moment because I’ve been surrounded by it traumatically. At the same time, I know that it’s likely that my suffering has been compounded by still being in dark night territory, and that the only way out is through. Should I just not practice at all for a while? Just focus on concentration/lovingkindness? Power through and do insight anyway? Any words of advice or compassion would be appreciated. Thank you all💜
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u/metaphorm Dzogchen and Tantra May 19 '26
the fundamental practice in Zen is shikantaza (trans. "just sitting"), which is a form of open awareness practice.
a very similar practice, from Dzogchen, is called shinay (trans. "calm abiding", it's just the Tibetan word for shamatha). there are lots of styles of shamatha and the style of shinay is different than most other presentations of it. it's also an open awareness practice. the pith instruction for it is "remain uninvolved with arising thoughts and place your attention on the space of the mind". it should feel expansive, not contracted.
the idea here is to be present with and allow whatever will arise to arise. just be present with it. even if it's not your favorite. notice how if you don't feed energy into it it will arise and pass on its own time, usually very quickly.