Hi,
thanks for the input!
Just to clarify a few things:
With "home retreat" I meant consistently doing 2-3 hours of noting every day for 2 months with weekly talks to a teacher, after that I have time for a "real" retreat.
Also I'm in Europe, so going to San Jose really isn't possible for me^^.
This is where Buddhist ethics becomes important. You might want to put insight practice aside for a while to study karma, the six realms, and the elements as they arise in day to day life.
This sounds interesting, since I don't yet have any idea how this could help. So far I've always thought that this was merely some useless cultural baggege. I may be wrong.
Do you know any resources which explain those concepts with regard to their practical meaning?
Or is it that you feel that anything less than going at your top speed in the rat race will fuck up your life?
[...]
I was just supremely content. It sounds like that's what you're describing...
Well, no. I guess I should make this more clear.
At the moment I don't have any real motivation to do ANYTHING. I feel rather miserable than content about that.
This means: I'm not motivated to go out, meet friends or anyone else, do sports, play or listen to music or any games, let alone do my studies. I have found basically NOTHING which would actually motivate me to do it.
There used to be lots of things to excite me, but every single one of them seems to have lost its power.
Thus, this 'mode' is bound to destroy human relationships, my health, money, and prevent me of learning anything which might be useful later on.
Whenever I ask myself, why something isn't worth doing it, I'll notice thoughts like "what should this be good for? that just won't solve this life thingy.", "and if this gets you any advantage? how are you supposed to keep this? isn't it going to fade anyway?", "so what happens if you do this? will this make anything fundamentally better?", "well, this activity is fun. but that's just it. as soon as it is over, it will just be some memories, which you can cling to or not. so why bother?", "well, this might be fun. this thing you did last time was fun, too. obviously this doesn't help."
(Funnily enough, I might sometimes, as a result, think about complete renunciation, which is then followed by just the same thoughts...)
So, I'm wondering whether the dark night's side effects are known to be that extreme, or if it's probably something else.
Going by your answers, I guess it's the latter.
Still, I wonder about this: if you are past stream entry (or any later stage), from where comes the motivation to do anything? Is it an essentially different motivation apart from the fact that some aversions and craving may have less influence?
Is an activity being fun reason enough to do it?
Is an activity which helps other people more worthwhile than the former?
Is anything which may improve your "self-image" still worthwhile? (I'd be surprised if the answer is yes)
Is it a usual case that people, after attaining to a high realization, abandon insight practices and do something else with their whole heart and time, like doing competitive sports 10 hours a day, perfecting the skill of playing any instrument with 10 hours a day, etc.? Maybe if they did it just like this before they stumbled into some A&P? I am under the impression that people who once step on this path never actually leave it after completing it. This confuses me because of the buddha's raft parable...
if that's all you want, all you need to do is just stop meditating completely. Contrary to Daniel's implication in MCTB, Dark Night isn't a perpetual, unending stage until you reach stream entry; it can also just fade away with time (sometimes even in just a few minutes).
hm. didn't think about it in this way. probably this is very different for different people. for me: since crossing A&P, i don't think i spent a single day without being sure to have lost something crucially important since then. Most of this time I didn't have any practice, but this wouldn't change.
I second most of what morgan says. I will add. You can contemplate your priorities and you can contemplate your role in society. You can contemplate society as well. You would then need to seriously reflect on the objective criteria you are using. You can also reflect on your aversions and your desires. There is no end to what you can do.
this sounds like real practical advice. Do you have any helpful resources about how to use this contemplate method effectively? I worry that there are lots of ways to waste your time by doing this wrong, just as in meditation..
There's an episode of Seinfeld where George starts doing the opposite of what his gut instincts tell him to do (most of which was negative) and his life becomes great. That's sort of what stream entry did for me, though without the drama.
That sounds good. Nice to hear that for some people this alone makes a great difference. I guess I'll use that as motivation.