r/streamentry

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! ✌️👁🧘‍♂️

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!

Hi,

I need MEDICAL (or not medical) PROOFS that :

1. meditation
2. buddhist wisdom

are the best practices for LONGEVITY. (my former teacher said so ! Really ??)

Thank you !

(I know the main goal isn't longevity, but that's what could motivate me the most)

(I practiced chan and 1h20/day zazen for a few years. But I gave up, I need longevity motivation ! Please help !)

Hi. I’ve been interested in Mahasi Sayadaw’s method of mental noting and have been reading his books carefully. However, I’ve never attended a Mahasi-style retreat or learned the technique directly from a qualified teacher.

I’m wondering whether it’s realistic to practice the method effectively based solely on Mahasi’s written instructions, or whether direct guidance is essential to avoid developing bad habits or misunderstanding the practice.

Have any of you started practicing this way? If so, what was your experience? Were the texts sufficient, or did you eventually realize there were aspects of the technique that only became clear through a teacher or retreat?

I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences and advice. Thanks!

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.

Welcome! This is the bi-weekly thread for sharing how your practice is going, as well as for questions, theory, and general discussion. PLEASE UPVOTE this post so it can appear in subscribers' notifications and we can draw more traffic to the practice threads.

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Everyone is welcome to use this weekly thread to discuss the following topics:

HOW IS YOUR PRACTICE?

So, how are things going? Take a few moments to let your friends here know what life is like for you right now, on and off the cushion. What's going well? What are the rough spots? What are you learning? Ask for advice, offer advice, vent your feelings, or just say hello if you haven't before. :)

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Feel free to ask any questions you have about practice, conduct, and personal experiences.

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Many thanks!

My two main interests for the last decade have been lacanian psychoanalysis and contemplative practices (mostly Theravada, early suttas Buddhism).

i wanted to see if there was anyone here who would be interested in meeting once a week or so to practice meditation together and discuss lacanian psychoanalysis and contemplative practices (not necessarily Buddhism, if you‘re into Christian mysticism, Vedanta, or something else, that’s cool).

perhaps we’d bring in different writings and compare/contrast. discuss places where these different frames overlap and split apart.

if you’re interested, please comment below or DM 

The following as are my other posts are from personal experience and I try by all means to avoid any theoretical back & forths. But I also stand to be corrected as this is a field I believe we are all students of. This is also not my view from the standpoint of my faith.

I believe enlightenment has everything to do with the concept of the 'morning star' which it is recorded that the buddha had seen & experienced awakening. I am of the opinion that the morning star is the actual buddha nature and should not be confused with our original face before birth. Our original face is bright and luminous but it is not self-luminous and radiant like our morning star. Infact, the luminosity of the original face comes from the morning star just as the moon's light is a reflections of the sun. A user named xabir mentioned in one of his articles that IAM is not buddhanature.

The morning star also known as the divine spark, the super consciousness, the genius/daimonium, ones innate buddha nature, the higherself, atman, spirit, solar being, the interior sun to name but a few. Each and everyone has a morning star but it isn't perceived just as we do not perceive our original face and the noself nature of our perceptive life. We also have to discover this morning star to bring the dawn of awakening to our reality. With this in light, pun intended, I do not believe that realization of our presence-nature is an awakening. Rather, I believe that it is just a realisation and when the morning star arises, awakening happens .

I've noticed that a great amount of information out there skews enlightenment towards the great earth; the mirror is pointed to manifestation and it is just manifestation, just this. This is less than partial in my opinion because it only gives a little understanding as to what reality really is; one is able to see part of the manifest reality but the unmanifest aspect of reality is undiscernable and indescribable to them.

When one's original face merges with the morning star, presence-illumination happens, as if one's eye has been awakened and it appears that manifestation including one's own consciousness is illuminated inside-out. It becomes radiant in such a way that that light can shine on/in the consciousness of others. It isn't just luminous presence, it is now illuminated and radiating presence, enlightenment, buddhanature itself. One sees dependent origination with their naked eye, one is able to see the buddhanature in others and in all things. Previously in presence, one just saw themselves in others and also in other things, but now you see their own innate buddhanature.

And this awakening is also a key advantage if one is a teacher or has the aspiration to teach. This is because one is able to transmit this light to others self-nature giving them the much needed information and resources they need to turn it into realisations. Of course conditions, willingness, faith and practice are needed by the receiver of the transmission.

Now when this happens, one has become the buddha because there will be an identification with this illuminated & radiating presence. The selfing mechanism doesn't just go that easily especially when something extraordinary like this happens! We will have to 'off' the buddha we have become and that is to put an end to grasping and idolizing it as some form of loftiness. Actually, buddhahood doesn't make one greater than others, it just makes us become everyone and everything's servant in as far as we are allowed to serve.

And yes, the dog has buddhanature... An enlightened woof!

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!

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.

Age 44 - I've taken the path less travelled since college; not by choice but moreso pushed from the mundane by the gut - though I was a bright and empathetic child, which I feel laid the foundation.

It's been maybe 15 years since entry and I'm now increasingly hopeless. After the high I went on ascetic pilgrimage from the monastery only to lose momentum and wait for a bottom which never came until now.

It's easy to say Dark Night and Integration, but what about those of us so far down that it feels like time to check out and try again?

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.

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.

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?

A few days ago I had a 5g psilocybin experience. At some point my friend mentioned he could "see the rhythm of conversations" and in that exact moment something clicked — I felt it too, instantly and completely. Conversations had rhythm like music. Not metaphorically, literally. The flow, the pauses, the tempo, the emphasis — it all became musical.

During the experience it was extremely clear and vivid. Now, a few days later, the effect has faded but it's still there at a lower intensity. I can still feel it.

**The most interesting part — and I want to be very specific about this:**

People feel like different instruments to me. But NOT based on their personality, their energy, or who they are as a person. It's based purely on *how they talk* — their pace, where they pause, how they stress certain words, the rhythm of their sentences. Each person has a kind of sonic "tone." Some conversations feel good rhythmically even if the content is an argument. Some conversations with people I love feel off just because the rhythm doesn't flow well.

It's like two people can have completely opposite personalities, but if they talk at a similar pace with similar pauses, they "sound" like the same instrument to me. And someone I deeply care about might "sound" off just because of how they structure their sentences rhythmically.

I also noticed I can now tap rhythms to music with my fingers in ways I couldn't before.

**Questions:**

- Has anyone else experienced this — conversations feeling like music, either during or after a trip?

- Did it stay with you? For how long?

- Do you also perceive people as having a different sonic "tone" based purely on how they speak, not who they are?

- If you know of any similar posts, studies, or documented experiences about this specific phenomenon, please share them — I've been searching and can't find anything exactly like this.

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!

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.

I started seriously getting into meditation last December doing mainly fire kasina practice for 30+ minutes a day. It took about a month for me to feel some changes. I started being more happy and calm. I also felt way more energetic and confident. Before I used to have to think about what I wanted to say but after doing fire kasina I just knew exactly what to say in every situation. I really felt like myself for once.

During this time I was also reading MCTB and doing a bunch of noting practice on the side which may have contributed to that mental energy effect. But I noticed that my work suffered. I realized that my motivation was fear based. I did things because I wanted to appease others or not look bad. But once I directly observed where all this stress was coming from I let it go. I became way more relaxed but maybe too much. I stopped being motivated because there was no longer any fear. That period of my life was probably the happiest I've ever been.

Unfortunately I caught the flu which derailed my practice and I lost that feeling of confidence but I found my motivation also returned. I'd really love to be able to maintain that "state" forever but I fear I won't have any motivation to pursue worldly goals. I need to be able to support myself and not just be content being blissed out.

Does anyone relate to this? If so have they found a way to practice while maintaining motivation to pursue worldly goals?

I feel like there's different dimensions to this, and (to me) it's not together clear what is true void phenomena and what is something else. But i wanted to invite some discussion, i guess, on how to live life?

It sounds funny when i phrase it that way. But let me share with you my perspective of what i occasionally see here. When i go on these spirituality subforums i see a lot of people obsessed with the idea of enlightenment. There's nothing wrong with that, but the reason i mention it is because i cannot relate to it at all. Meditation wasn't even a word in my vocabulary until very recently let alone enlightenment. Personally speaking, no offense to anyone, i couldn't give two hoots about enlightenment.

But if a take a brutally honest and systematic inventory of myself i do see, at least, one dominant trend underscoring my life ... and that is that I love to render myself void, inert, nonexistent. That is ... living is such a burden. Having to feed this body daily is such a continuous task. Now I'm sure a lot of that could be encapsulated in words like depression. And I've suffered a lot of child abuse and emotional abuse after that in my adult life, so a lot of that can be pinned down to psychologically internalized self negation.

But at the end of the day, this is a spirituality subforum, and i think a few people will understand what i say when i have a need to remain or abide as pure consciousness and pure reality. And so my question is how to bridge the two? The sphere of reality itself and living life? Personally i feel like all the current buddhisms of the world focus too much on emptiness and i want to help reform this misrecognition. But how to move from being a void king to maintaining balance or contact with the impersonal sphere while also honoring life?

I feel like there's many easy conflations to fall into here such as sentience with inner life, and the void vs empty phenemona, so this is not an easy discussion to have.

edit: for the title i meant "and [start] focusing on embracing the metaphysical life" ... as in pure life is beautiful and embracing, it's just that physical life can be taxing. And so it's easier to negate physical life rather than live it. But the sphere of impersonal reality itself has its own hold which is different than disidentification with the breath. Hence being one who weds themselves with the divine could easily become negation just like void phenomena because abiding as pure reality takes you out of living life.