Hi Mike -
I've deleted about 3-4 long-winded posts. You're in dark night and graduate school already, so I'll just cut to the chase (cutting to a rather long chase...).
Knowledge of suffering easily comes with depression and stressful life timing. You sure may not have time or energy to cultivate a huge insight practice. So taking care of your body and mind in tradition western ways (exercise, sleep, stretching, a nice movie, a decent meal...) are superb ways to deal with it.
I'll just run this past you for your consideration:
Imagine you are sitting on a comfortable park bench on a sunny day. The temperature is just right and you have no obligations.
You feel just fine right there with no urge to move. You could just sit there forever...
...except that now you start to feel a little hunger, or
...now the bladder calls, or
...the temperature starts to drop, or
...a loud insulting group is passing by and tossing litter, or
...two lovers sit down nearby, and
...the urge to move away (from hunger, from pain, from a threatening group or feelings of loneliness) arises.
This is one aspect of sitting meditation: it shows the action of suffering
- nearly all movement (mental or physical moves) are movements attempting to avoid arising suffering. Again, the park bench and sunshine were perfect, until some condition naturally arose (full bladder) or is cultivated (loneliness) compelling a movement (seeking release from suffering).
So a sitting practice can show that i/you/people/sentient beings are generally moving themselves, because of actual or perceived pain - exactly as one moves/scratches/daydreams in meditation.
- To see sentient beings simply moving in the world is often to see suffering - the effort to mobilize away from a suffering condition into a content condition.
- You've mentioned seeing ambition around you in academia. What suffering is the movement of ambition demonstrating? (From what is the ambitious person moving away from and towards? Why are they not just doing what they enjoy; why can such a person be characterized as "ambitious"?)
- You've mentioned being exhausted at social functions. What suffering is the movement away from exhaustion? Why can't exhaustion be felt at a departmental picnic?
- You've mentioned social anxiety (a special one for me, personally). Why is there a movement away from people - what is being suffered that solitariness reduces the suffering? (Maybe it's too exhausting to see ambitious people suffer at departmental picnics...)
You have this compassion already for sentient beings; do you see that the majority of movement in sentient beings is fueled by a suffering-to-happiness movements? Probably. Your description of insight as "awe-inspiring and terrifying inescapable" is spot on.
Without suffering, stillness or still qualities results. Again, without suffering, one could just sit on the park bench in the sun for a long long long long time. Maybe a person would move to curiously see another view of the sky and the clouds and sun, but without suffering, there's a lot more stillness simply because the moment is just fine as it is, free of suffering. Nothing is compelling movement.
So, if one aspect of a sitting practice:
- reveals that all movement (mental fantasy and little shifts on the cushion, alike) is simply revealing the move away from suffering (and a movement for contentedness), and
- that movement-knowledge of the sitting practitioner cultivates compassion for all people mobilizing themselves (knowing that they too are moving in an effort to escape some suffering, mental and/or physcial), and
- that the sitting practitioner will see that every new movement into comfort will eventually turn into another discomfort from which to move away, then
- well, the practitioner either wants to bury their head in nihilism and misery or find a way to not suffer in the suffering. As you said:
It really never gets old, how somehow I can almost visually "see" Impermanence at work. It's subtle as christ-all, and it's never ceased to be both awe-inspiring and terrifying how inescapable Insight is. It is an inescapable fact that I have watched both of my grandparents age and sicken and die in pretty unpleasant ways(which is what catapulted me into this whole thing in the first place); it is an inescapable fact that I perceive my parents and even my dog to be aging, to be suffering from various ailments; it is an inescapable fact that I feel fear for the time when I have to watch them die; lastly, it is undeniably my greatest fear of all that, when they are gone, I will be alone forever and lost. Friends, of whom I have many who are long-time, good friends, are similarly not stable objects to find security in: they move and they change and they enter and exit independently just like everyone and everything else, mostly very slowly, occasionally very quickly. This I have also slowly observed happening right before my eyes. There is simply not time in my perception of things, not really. Days and weeks as I perceive them come and go with no real solidity or permanence; it might as well almost be time-lapse photography, just without visually appearing that way. This is the way things really are, the only difference is that in my case I have no blinders but I somehow still think I'm here observing these phenomena as an entity. An insight I've had though, is that not only are all of these people and the phenomena which occur to them real, but many other things which I had walled off as "not real" in some ultimate sense, mostly concepts, are also equally real and very worthwhile, even necessary. There's been a continual urge in the past to both suppress some formations by the supremacy of others, and to make all of it an epically holy undertaking; the first item has been mostly perceived as entirely futile and actually back-fires, the second item is really just boring. Things just are what they are, and there's nothing more to be said about them.
...Then, an insight practice or an actualism practice or a prayer practice or something cultivates in the striving person who still thinks it's worth trying to be in the world, a genuine way to be in the world no matter what occurs. That is here and now. And the reason why samadhi and AF people and otherwise spiritually settled people look so calm and still, is because they are not running from suffering. They study causes and see that some sufferings are self-generated and others are, yes, just pitiful and unfortunate occurrences happening to fine people. Other sufferings have some self-generated causes as well as some misfortune.
So, your practice - if you are going to find peacefulness (and spontaneous joyful action as well as swift-kick-in-the-ass action when it's clearly, cleanly needed), and if you are going to be able to offer a peacefulness or a clean, resourcefulness that comes from being still and completely open to many possibilities in any moment - well, that practice is going to have to cultivate your ability to be here now without a huge bias for the pain of suffering [edit: and insight practice moves this knowledge into equanimity, but frankly, I find regular exercise also creates equanimity, it's just that insight creates a fundamental understanding that accompanies the brain so long as it is intact, whereas exercise creates a condition of equanimity so long as exercise is performed]. Studying the causes of suffering and knowing that there are care-full, intimate responses to suffering (that do not involve useless pity or tormenting oneself) is a usefull place to start. It is a hell of a lot more interesting than forming a commitment to indifference. But that is an option, but personally, it is dull. Truly: dull in color and form, and why do that when there's a lot of color and other experience to be had?
This does not imply at all that you have to be happy in the face of tremendous suffering. To the contrary, if you can be in the face of tremendous suffering (or any suffering, yours or others') and be aware of the instinctual repulsion for suffering, yet be spry and apt to the situation, that is a great useful practice. On some occasion, the apt thing may be to run away. On some other occasion, the apt thing may be just to hold some one's hand while they are dying of emphysema or otherwise suffering.
Anyway, I wish you well.