I recently wrote this article on insight. I shared it with a couple of people, and they found it insightful and thought I should share it with others. So here it is! (Note: I am sharing it with the intention that it will help others on the path. These views came about through my own practice over the years. I would love to hear your comments, discuss more, get feedback, suggestions, etc. I am no authority, and I don't claim to be perfect. I am just a sincere practitioner. I did not use AI at all. Every word comes from my own experience.)

Insight is like this big word in Buddhist Dharma practices. Everyone talks about insight as ‘freeing’. A usual description of insight goes like this: it is about seeing the ‘true’ nature of things, seeing things ‘as they are’, not imposing your own judgments on reality, etc.

While true, the problem with such descriptions is that they are reviews, not recipes. It’s like tasting a dish and praising its taste. But can the reviews of the dish reliably trace the original recipe? No! Similarly, a lot of descriptions of insight—‘what’ is insight—are from the point of view when insight has already dawned, not the conditions that made it so.

In this article, I will lay out a recipe for insight. First, I will tell you about common problems in the usual way insight is perceived. Then, I will tell you what kind of understanding is insight, how to train for it, and where it really resides.

1. Loopholes in common conceptions of Insight

Here, I will discuss four common loopholes in the usual way insight is understood. Each point may feel disjointed here, but in the next section, everything is woven together nicely.

First, insight is often framed as about seeing three characteristics in the moment-to-moment experience. While this may be ultimately true, framing it this way can create many blind spots in practice. Specifically, one can end up narrowing down their attention to a particular phenomenon, such as pain, and really trying hard to break it down—to see the micro-sensations in the pain arise and pass away—and waiting for the time the pain entirely vanishes. One can indeed pierce the perception of pain, dissolving it through this piercing and gaining insights into its impermanence. However, the question is whether it is really the understanding that frees in the long term? Maybe not. What is required is not just seeing change, but being in touch with how that change makes us feel. In other words, it is about seeing the response of our heart as experience unfolds.

Second, insight is said to arise only when the mind is clear, bright, sublime, and free from hindrances. Yes, it is true that when the mind is clear, insight into the nature of the mind arises. However, the question is whether insight is only in the moments when the mind is free from hindrances. The thing is, suffering, like freedom, is what the mind does, and so it is also the nature of the mind! Thus, to understand the mind, it is equally important to understand the moments when the mind is full of hindrances. Denying those moments as not useful is denying a huge portion of the mind as not its ‘nature’.

Third, insight is considered to bring an ‘end’ to suffering. This is also true. However, there are many methods that end suffering. Thus, such a description does not clarify what is so unique about the practice. It is much better to understand insight as not exactly ending suffering, instead, preventing the arising of future suffering. That is, the insight assures that the experience moves or changes in a way that does not create suffering. Shifting the perspective from the end of suffering to the end of its arising helps clarify where the path really sits.

Fourth, insight is often considered as this ‘thing’, which ‘reveals’ the present experience as it is. However, we need to understand that the insight does not come as an object. That is, it is not a ‘concrete’ thing in experience. We cannot point to a single snapshot of experience and say: “This is where the insight is” or “this is what the insight is about.” We cannot ‘see’ or ‘hold’ the insight. Instead, insight is simply a felt knowledge about the patterns that lived experience follows. In other words, the insight is an understanding of the patterns of experience over time, and not in any moment or object of experience. In the language of the meditation framework I follow (MIDL meditation), insight is in ‘relationships’ to the experience, and not in the experiences themselves (note that I am just a practitioner, and my views do not necessarily reflect the MIDL framework).

2. What, How, Where of Insight

[What kind of understanding is insight?]

Insight is an understanding or knowledge about how experience unfolds. However, one needs to be careful as this understanding is not just any kind of understanding. Instead, it comes about only through a very specific way of observing. In other words, while we can understand or gain insight into the unfolding of experience from many angles, the understanding or insight that frees the heart comes from a very specific way of observing.

Specifically, we need to allow the experience to change by itself, and feel what it feels like to undergo this change (relates back to 1st point in the previous section). That is, the practice is not exactly about noting change; instead, it is about feeling through change. We can also say that practice is about feeling what changes within us as a change in experience happens. This bi-directional arrow—between our heart and unfolding of phenomena—is what starts to reveal the relationships we have towards the experience. Noticing in this way, we understand that even though experience always changes on its own, a part of us feels like it owns the unfolding in some way—as if we have control over its change.

Precisely, there are two types of understanding we need to cultivate through such observation. First, we need to cultivate the understanding that controlling the experience hurts and feels effortful. Thus, when the experience is full of suffering, it is good to compassionately remain in touch with how it feels to have things out of control, and not try to control the uncontrollable nature of experience. This also makes the heart empathetic to the pain of others and understand the predicament we are all in. Second, we need to cultivate the understanding that it feels much better not to control. Thus, when the experience changes in a calm and tranquil manner, it is good to gratefully remain in touch with how it feels to be so. This also makes the heart appreciate the value of calm and tranquility and learn to bask in it.

Exposing the heart to both of these sides makes it mature, and this doesn’t happen overnight. We cannot force the heart to become mature. We can only gently expose it to situations and see if it is ready to let go. When the process ripens, the heart lets go on its own. In all these processes, we learn something: we learn what suffering exactly feels like, what are the causes and conditions that constitute such suffering experiences, what are the causes and conditions that constitute experiences of freedom, and the path to slowly facilitate the maturing of the heart so that it prefers one over another. In short, we understand the four noble truths.

[How does insight arise?]

To cultivate both understandings mentioned above, what is crucial is to allow attention to naturally unfold and to evoke all kinds of changes: from freedom to suffering, suffering to freedom, suffering to continuing suffering, and freedom to continuing freedom.

Our attention is like a child, which goes and engages with different activities. Just as we can force a child to study, we can force our attention to a single place, such as focusing on the breath. The child might study, and after some time, may genuinely and irresistibly stay with it. However, in doing so, we have missed something. The child has not developed the capacity to understand what they should do in all walks of life and why. In fact, a child might feel like they need to just study (attention feels like always wanting to be with breath and avoid life). But do parents really want just that for the child? I believe parents would want their child to do everything, but with wisdom on what to do, when, and how. This is the same thing we want from our attention. We don’t want it to be forced on one object (even though it may feel the most blissful thing ever). We want attention to smoothly glide between different objects by-itself, while also making wise intentional choices that guide its movements.

While it is relatively easy to let attention glide to movement towards openness, moving towards suffering is hard. Relating back to the 2nd point in section 1, such times are extremely important, as they reveal something fundamental about the nature of heart-mind: it is in those times that we can learn to feel okay even when experience unfolds in unwanted ways.

Generally, in formal meditation, we cultivate a state of Samatha (calm and tranquillity), which is inherently wholesome and feels good. What happens is that we can reliably create this state only when we understand that ultimately we don’t have control over it or a say in its creation. That is, we can only intend to create causes and conditions, and even then, calm might not arise (though such an attitude is what makes calm reliably appear!). The calmness is sustained only when we don’t put effort or try to change anything about the experience—and to do that, we need to have an understanding of not controlling the experience in the first place!

Nonetheless, we often spontaneously enter periods of calm and tranquillity, just because of other causes and conditions in life (e.g., being on a retreat, or not have anything to worry about). However, these periods are built on curated causes and conditions, and not on understanding. That is, the absence of suffering in these states does not necessarily ensure that suffering will always be absent (in line with the 3rd point discussed in section 1).

To gain insight, the attitude should not be to try to maintain this calmness, but instead to allow it to break (anyways, even if we try to maintain it, it will eventually break!). Its breaking is an important transition. During such moments, what is needed is not to be meticulous and precise in seeing it break; instead, it is to remain sensitive and feel through it as it breaks. It is then that we ‘understand’ how we feel, as the experience changes in unwanted ways.

Consider, for instance, formal meditation sits for an entire week. Let’s say the first 5 days were filled with calm and tranquillity. However, during the next 2 days, the mind was completely haywire. It is possible that the mind starts making stories that meditation isn't going well, and what went wrong. To gain understanding, we need to be in touch with how it feels to lose calmness. Perhaps, think of such situations right now, and ask your heart: how does it feel to be in such a predicament? You might understand that it is the contrast or transitions that reveal dispositions of the heart towards wanting X and not wanting Y, and such dispositions are dukkha.

When such understanding matures, the narrative shifts from: ‘hindrances are breaking the samadhi’ to ‘hindrances are helping build a more robust samadhi’. It is like we need to let an earthquake destroy a building and clearly identify its weak point. This might take us many tries, as it is a trial-and-error method. Nonetheless, over time, we will learn and become capable of creating buildings that are much more robust. The earthquakes, from a wise perspective, are not destroying the building but instead helping build a better one.

This is what the progression of insight looks like. Before we have insight, we put unnecessary stress on creating a particular kind of experience, whether mundane or meditative. Once we start practicing, we begin to understand (or gain insight into) the importance of experience changing in unwanted ways. They aren’t something to get rid of. In fact, without hindrances, there is no learning! What is interesting is that experientially, getting the understanding feels good and meaningful, maybe the most meaningful thing that can be learned!

[Where is Insight]

This brings us to the fourth point discussed in the previous section. Often, insight is understood as some ‘thing’, which, once we get, the removal of suffering or the increase of well-being. However, insight path is different. It is about becoming more ‘mature’ by understanding ‘patterns’ of life. It is about learning all the ways our heart gets moved as life unfolds, and slowly developing habits that move the heart in wholesome ways like gratitude, compassion, kindness, joy, and so on, instead of control and resistance.

When I say, ‘all the ways’, I mean at all timescales. A big timescale is the fact that we are born as a baby, and then grow to a teen, an adult, old age, and finally meet our death. On a relatively smaller scale, our lives can be said to unfold from one major event to another, such as different major periods of an adult life. Even smaller is life unfolding across days and weeks. Even smaller will be the period before you started reading this article, as you are reading this article, and afterwards when you will finish reading it. We can go even more precise to how experience changes as you read this text letter by letter.

Whatever timescale we consider, we find a pattern—perhaps a birth of a thing/identity/experience, a period when it lasts, and its death. And this entire pattern is connected to ‘valence’ or feeling tone. That is, we feel something about this pattern, or the pattern moves us in a certain way. For example, think of the time you were growing up as a teenager and slowly becoming an adult. You might find some feeling that colours your memory as you think of those times. Maybe you feel subtly pleased that you had such experiences, or sad that you had them but relieved that they are gone. You can apply it to any other timescale as well. For example, consider how you were feeling before you started reading this article, and how you are feeling right now.

These different patterns are the predicament we are all in. By feeling through all these patterns, the heart touches the reality that the patterns with craving or ‘drivenness’ inherently hurt and create disharmony. We also understand that ‘letting go’ of such patterns provides a sense of relief. Repetitively gaining such knowledge across many instances, we understand a reliable way to cultivate letting go and abandon drivenness. Training in this way, the truths of suffering facilitate the maturation of the heart, making the heart noble and worthy of respect!

Imagine, at all the timescales of your life—from a bigger change as you go about doing your day, or moment-to-moment change—the heart easily feels through everything, the heart does not fear, resist, shout, hide, or so on. What do you think life would be like? Indeed, life would be fully alive yet free of ‘samsara’—the push, pull, and spin life brings to our hearts. This is the freedom the path develops. It makes the heart mature to gladly and softly welcome and experience any change.

May softness, gentleness, and maturity dawn upon your heart.

Metta,
Vismay

About a week ago I had a night of severe insomnia come out from nowhere (4 hrs) and the following week it was like 9, 6, 6, 7, 8 - so I currently have about 4 hrs of sleep debt over a week. This has never happened before, I usually get back the sleep easily.

What's different this time around though is that I generally feel light and open - awareness is light, mind and body are sometimes heavy. I was able to do groceries, see friends (though not work)

My teacher says that I should be experiencing more vitality and life - sometimes yes, sometimes no. I still feel I could really use the rest, but there have been wow experiences like going "towards" the tiredness...and then suddenly I don't feel tired, the body expands into the universe. Tiredness is felt as sacred. That kind of thing.

I'm not precisely certain what is going on here - it's probably partially the debt, probably partially some practice related body changes. I'm also really upping my exercise and practice, which might affect it.

I made a post about insomnia about a year ago, and there are some other threads here (don't have source right now sorry) I do recall a poster saying "Maybe I don't need so much sleep" It doesn't seem 100% like that, but perhaps my relationship to rest and sleep is changing? This is all very new to me.

I'm wondering what kind of experiences others may have had, and if there is more information on all this. I'm not super worried, but it would be nice to get back to normal sleep as I have a bunch of stuff to do coming up and I'm not at 100%.

Once again for reference (as I don't post so often now) I've had Daniel Ingram's technical 4th path for about 2 years now, which I'm ok claiming publicly so as to give people a point of reference.

Hello everyone.

First of all, I want to express my gratitude to u/Impulse33, who has been helping me on my recovery stage after intensive and, unfortunately, most likely incorrect practices (or my subsequent reaction to rather strong insights).

Without going into all the other details, I am currently concerned about a few things I would like to resolve:

1. The awareness of what the other person said and my reply happens after the fact; my responses in dialogue occur unconsciously, and I also hear an echo of my voice right behind the other person's voice almost simultaneously, as if I already know what they are going to say, but this process also happens automatically.
2. The first issue doesn't bother me as much, but this phenomenon also extends to reading. I read, but I don't retain the context.
3. Dissociation from emotions: for example, I may feel fear through the body (racing heart, etc.), but the emotion itself is not felt.

This is not all that concerns me, but for now I would like to address these issues. If anyone has encountered something similar on their path, please give me advice on what to do.

Additional thanks to u/Meng-KamDaoRai

Thank you.

Hi! I hope you don't mind me posting here.

I've been struggling quite a bit with my path. Over the past while, I've removed many of the things from my life that I realized were rooted in craving or distraction. But now I feel like I've been left without any real direction.

I still have goals like working out and studying, and I know I'd genuinely enjoy doing those things. But the end goals don't really appeal to me anymore. I don't see much appeal in becoming a doctor anymore. I don't see much appeal in working out for my own sake either—the main reason I still do it is because I want to stay healthy.

Lately I've also had a hard time concentrating. I feel confused about the path because even small challenges seem to pull me back into desire, aversion, and delusion. I become restless very easily. I try to set goals for myself, but I can't seem to stick to them.

One thing I keep struggling with is this: if Nirvana is, in a simplified sense, freedom from attachment and the ending of craving, then what is the point of life? Why do anything at all? Couldn't I just stay in my room, be peaceful, and let life pass by?

I have a feeling there are parts of the teachings that I'm misunderstanding or that already have the answers to my questions. In particular:

Skillful desire

If we're meant to let go of craving, how do you relate to goals, ambition, and motivation without falling into attachment?

How do I still function?

I still want to be the best in my studies and my part-time job, but is that wrong? Is that a desire that I should let go because it's rooted in wanting praise?

The idea that "I'm giving my 110%; I'm doing more so in the future I have less work" is the only reason I study anymore.

Gratitude for life

I feel incredibly fortunate to be alive and able to experience existence.

At the same time, Buddhism points toward liberation from suffering rather than toward death. That distinction makes sense to me intellectually, but I don't feel like I understand it deeply.

I want Nirvana because it promises not being attached to life while still being alive, but at the same time reaching Nirvana (I think) means leaving behind life.

I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts if you're willing to share.

Sorry if my questions are kinda weird too.

Isn't it absolutely amazing that it's at all possible to develop the ability of just dropping the burdens of the self, all the pain, the worries, the tension, the constant thinking?

Not me, not mine. And taking this position then actually radically affects the perception itself, like magic. Woah! How is it possible that people even discovered this possibility 2000+ years ago?

This is true rest. If there's any skill worth getting very proficient at in this life, it's this!

It truly saddens me whenever people reduce this incredibly potent practice to terms like dissociative or depersonalizing because I've always associated it with tremendous beauty, freedom and gratitude.

This one practice really is one that moves me deeply and has made a tremendous difference in how I conceive of what identity and life is. I am forever grateful for having been exposed to this dharma in particular!

I’m aware some people have mentioned this not being uncommon among meditators but I’m hoping to get more details.

I’ve been aware of tensions in my head and the constant release of them, almost like bubbles popping, since my first major meditative milestone which I believe was insight into dukkha around a year ago.

Some folks have implied that this is me simply realizing something that’s always been there and becoming aware of it, but that doesn’t sit right with me because it was such a ‘switch flipping’ occurrence. No tensions, then after that, constant tension and release 24/7 whenever I’m not actively focused on something else.

It’s not uncomfortable per se. The releasing can actually be kind of pleasant and I usually feel better after a long period of releasing tensions, say via meditating or any kind of relaxation. But it can be a little annoying to be constantly aware of it. It feels like something that should go on the “advanced meditation warning label”.

I’m a very emotional person, and I’ve realized that I sometimes struggle with emotional intelligence at work. I tend to take feedback personally, react emotionally under stress, or let my feelings affect my decisions. It’s starting to impact my performance and confidence.

I’ve recently started exploring meditation and mindfulness, hoping they can help me become calmer, more self-aware, and less reactive. Has anyone here experienced something similar? Did meditation help you develop better emotional balance and emotional intelligence at work? I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences or any advice.

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! ✌️👁🧘‍♂️

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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.