Christian B:
I've had the same problem: Progress in terms of "technical" meditation with noting, but little results off the cushion.
I think this is due to a problem with pragmatic dharma: There is a strong emphasis on technical goals and skills, which is wonderful, but there is also a severe lack of ideas about how exactly one should/might express the insights one has had in "daily life".
This problem is absent for people who practice meditation in the framework of religious/monastic buddhism, where values and moral ideas are in place to support and express what was understood in meditation, but its very real for people who live outside of such frameworks.
So I think there are three four options:
1. adopting some kind of religious framework and use meditation to experience religious teachings for oneself
2. bulding ones own framework (morality, values, purpose of life, etc.) and using meditation to flesh that out
3. relaxing expectations and practicing meditation as some sort of far-out "hobby"
[edited to add: 4. looking for something more valuable/useful/enjoyable than meditation to spend ones time with]
All of these are hard to do as soon as one has bought into the idea that technical accomplishment in meditation alone will somehow “reduce suffering”. I'm currently experimenting with a combination of 2, 3 and a little 4.
Best wishes
Christian
I don't think this is so much an issue of expressing insight in daily life as having insight in the first place. Your options suggest that there is no real meaning to be found in insight, and satisfaction may only be found by improving material life standings. Material standings in this sense refer to everything from the car we drive to the thoughts we think, 'if only they were better I would be happy'. This is actually the exact attitude we are seeking to correct in meditation. We are seeking to understand that the material substance of our life is not and cannot be the cause of lasting happiness.
Several people here have suggested that gaining insight has not reduced their suffering, and thus they have been disillusioned with the path of insight. IMO getting stream entry or even to 3rd path will not greatly reduce your suffering. The reason is that while these may be insight attainments, they are extremely minor and do not genuinely produce an understanding of emptiness.
In order to truly experience a reduction in suffering, one must truly reduce the cause of suffering! 4th path is the first substantial insight into the true nature of phenomena, and even after this one has so far to go!
To give up on the path of insight before reaching 4th path is analogous to a hiker becoming disillusioned that a certain path really could lead to the mountain top before they had made it out of the foothills, and even glimpsed the mountain!In Buddhism there is a saying: 'First a cup is just a cup. Then the cup is not just a cup. Finally the cup is a cup again'. There is also the saying: 'Better not to begin, but if begun better to finish'. These are to say that at some point in practice one reaches a critical point at which ones understanding of the world is irrevocably altered. Following this the only real solution is to gain full enlightenment. I believe that in terms of insight this critical point is 4th path as we call it here, or the first glimpse of emptiness (form is empty), or as I called it above 'glimpsing the mountain', or as those of Zen might call it, 'seeing the ox for the first time'.