Andrew B.:
I don't know how you guys manage to keep up this practice all the way to stream entry, much less arahatship.
I'm at a point in my own practice that feels like I'm standing at the apex of a very complex intersection and I can't decide which road to take. I'm losing a lot of confidence in my ability to get enlightened at all and wondering if I shouldn't just chuck the whole endeavor out the window.
I hit A&P once a couple years ago, but I haven't been able to get anything close to that since. It came on kind of suddenly. I wouldn't even say I gained any kind of insight from it. Just a lot of (frankly terrifying) kundalini activity, and something of a glow that lasted about a week. Since then I suspect I've been caught up in the dark night, but I'm at a complete loss as to how to get out.
I've tried noting, but I find it exhausting. Even very light noting gets very aggravating for me after a while. Mantra becomes similarly exhausting because of the repetetiveness. Koan training (which triggered my initial A&P but hasn't done much good for me since) is irritating for a combination of the above two reasons. I've thought a lot about it and I think the problem I have with these techniques is that I'm already a very cognitive person, though not terribly sensory- or detail-oriented. So noting becomes overwhelming, and mantra and koans just make me too antsy.
On the other hand, I seem to have better luck with styles like shikantaza, self-inquiry, and contemplative prayer. Some of my most interesting meditation experiences recently came from following Aleister Crowley's instructions on asana, which are basically just to train oneself to sit perfectly still, not moving a muscle, for up to one hour (so far I've made it as far as thirty minutes). The problem here is that my meditation will be great for about a day or two, then feel like chewing on tin foil the next day.
Now that I'm writing all of this down and starting to put some things in perspective, it's starting to sound like whining to me. Of course, the practice is difficult. It's not supposed to be a cakewalk. But I've hardly got any positive feedback to keep me going at all anymore. I feel like I'm getting more antsy and neurotic as a result of my meditation than otherwise, but at the same time just patient and endurant enough to deal with that without breaking down.
Meditation feels like a chore that doesn't offer any kind of reward anymore. I've tried focussing on improving my concentration so as to better approach insight, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere with that, either. Jhana remains perpetually out of reach. I don't think I've ever gotten it. Or, if I have, and it's possible, it was so light and vague and difficult to hold onto that it wasn't even worth the effort trying to get.
In my life outside of formal meditation, I feel like I'm constanty running on fumes. Just low energy. Lost interest in things I used to be passionate about. Little motivation to pursue those passions that do remain. My mind is either in total chaos, or totally dull. I feel like I've lost most of my creativity, which, as a writer, is pretty devastating.
I don't understand this. I don't know how much of this is the dark night, how much is run-of-the-mill depression, and how much of it is just me doing it wrong. It's enough to make me desperately want to get to stream entry and lessen this load of suffering at least a little bit, but at the same time the wish to do that isn't motivation enough to actually get it done, because practice itself is just utterly demotivating now, and all I have to go on is word-of-mouth.
Thoughts? I have no one else to turn to on this matter.
I'm more of a direct path person so stream-entry isn't as big a deal for me but to constantly add refinement of understanding and mindfulness no matter which method you use is essential.
It sounds like you're caught in expectations and now have to refine your meditation practice further and rediscover the joy that is in it. People usually get to stream-entry and beyond because they are consistent in practice and develop strong momentum without a constant measuring of progress and REFINE the practice to workout the kinks.
To me the practice is all about adding more nuance and consistency and daily life practice being the key. Sitting and meditation, when I was letting go of jhanas and starting to do vipassana, showed clearly that I needed to note during the day and even at work. A lot of shifts occurred at work with my eyes open.
To get out of the dark night you have to get refined and look at the 4 foundations of mindfulness and start noting more detail. The foundations create a nice list of things that are there for many people and so very likely you will have those experiences and should note them. There's usually something that is missing that you aren't noting like "analyzing" "strategizing" "rehearsing" "catastrophizing" "doubt" "confusion" etc. Make sure to note mind-states like "sadness" "boredom" "dullness" "dissatisfaction" "wanting" "laziness" "restlessness" "equanimity" "desire" "aversion" "measuring" "evaluating" "critiquing". What you note is registered in your brain with a label of understanding and you're not likely to cling to it. To note delusion it's good to understand the interdepedence of objects and how our consciousness needs objects to be conscious. The middle path between 100% permanent and 100% nihilism is treating reality as real but under the 3 characteristics. Objects are made up of sub-atomic particles but appear to us as simplified objects to like or dislike.
I found that a lot of the emptiness talks from Rob Burbea have helped me enormously:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5031205
For a direct path person doing a Shikantaza practice and treating all experiences as rebounding off a mirror of awareness/consciousness/knowing is the first big step towards developing strong equanimity. The "mirror" doesn't react and all emotions and experiences can arise and pass away off of it like a non-stick pan. The mirror is completely non-judgmental. Any projections of judgement on it are thinking pretending to be consciousness. This created a lot of reduction of stress but as usual there's much more refinement necessary.
As the mirror benefits get habituated some of the downsides are noticeable. There's a tendency to cling to the mirror by batting away distraction (cleaning the mirror of thoughts) and by thinking there's a location of this mirror at the back of the head. To see that consciousness is interdependent is to see that ALL experiences are consciousness-experience. Or to put it another way, everything is consciousness, so that all sensations that create a sense of location is just more sensations. Even depth perceptions and 3D qualities of vision are just qualities inseparable from consciousness. You can note "space", "object", "remembering", "impressions" without having to push or bat anything away.
Another downside to Shikantaza is laziness. It's so easy to get caught in stories and not notice detail without the noting feedback loop that keeps you honest. I still use noting instead of 100% bare awareness. Find a balance that moves you forward to more understanding of your experience.
There's also the sense of time. Another good practice is to notice how objects happen in time and that measuring how good or bad these objects will be for us in the future or ruminating how they were in the past are still in the subjective conceptual world. If you look for a duration for the present moment, any duration can be subdivided into smaller and smaller fractions for eternity so the reality of our remembering and projections in the future are really called into question.
Meditation can be a chore if you note to bat thoughts away. Another trick is to pay attention to thoughts and watch how they feel before, during, and after they subside. When paying attention the thoughts should be painless but when in aversion towards thoughts, a sense of separation appears (which happens with all aversion). The intention to pay attention can have lots of hidden stress/aversion. This leads to the understanding that if you noticed your mind wandered then you're already back. There's no need to add stress with beliefs like "there shouldn't be a wandering mind."
Some of the lack of interest you talk about does sound like depression and the dark night should feel crappy but also have a flavour of freedom from habits. That's how I delineate the two. Depression always felt different and more dull and a scary feeling that nothing is interesting in this world. I'm so far away from that now so if I can get through then so can you. I suspect that if you let your mind wander wherever it wants to go (Daniel's advice really helped me in this area) your brain will start finding interest, desire, and wonder again. This is why it's good to make an assessment about what your deep goals are and look at the short-term habits that are getting in the way. This is the liberation we need to seek out and the main goal is to find out what contribution we want to make in this life. This requires lots of thinking but if you're paying attention with bare awareness you can add more and faster thinking and still be okay.
Right Effort: Let go of unskillfullness, prevent unskillfullness from arising, cultivate skillfullness, and sustain. I used the Right Effort instructions to push my intentions in better areas. It's been a help but there's still more. LOL!
Looking at intentions (the feeling of "going to do" "about to do") before actions zeros in on the most deep conditioning because it's what happens before you do your actions and actions are remembered for future impulses of consciousness to repeat. Learning to let go of intentions can start to bring some control back into your life. I still have more practice to do because any habitual intentions are so quick that they appear at the same time as the action. I have to increase mindfulness to control actions to prevent unskillfulness. Yet pushing against habits/preferences makes the brain uncomfortable/cortisol/stress. How can I break through this barrier
Finally I found the 4 yogas in the Moonlight Mahamudra book. I read this years ago but fucking didn't understand it and got lost. These are the instructions that I paraphrased that have refined the practice further for me and reduced stress further and has given me an inkling of more deeper freedom than I thought was possible.
- Welcome experiences - This prevents noting and equanimity inclinations from being half-hearted and full of aversion.
- Maintain awareness without examining it - ALL measurements can have a danger of being self-measurements.
- Do not view appearances as deficient - Let go of preferences and even purposefully put yourself into growth activities that are different than short-term preferences. Welcoming alleviates much of the stress of doing non-habitual actions.
- This is no meditation or meditator - This is better understood when the top three are followed because self-referencing and measuring progress is not happening.
And now as of today I found a nice Gil Fronsdal talk that's already creating some help by pointing out a constant gratitude and treating things with
importance:
http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/5119.html
It's very easy for equanimity to include a whole bunch of neglect and in the extreme a sort of nihilism. By putting love and care into what's going on in the present moment creates a palpable feeling of grace that I like.
So I just dropped a bunch of jewels and pearls of dharma that has nothing to do with "getting stream-entry" that you can use and should bring back some of what you lost in rewarding meditation experiences (and I mean this as a daily life practice more than a sitting practice).
Good luck!