r/streamentry • u/jabinslc • 2d ago

Practice commons mistakes examples?

I was inspired to ask this question based on a post from yesterday about sexuality. there seemed to be a debate about whether desire falls off completely vs seeing through the empty nature of desire.

what are other common thinking errors people make on the path? like reifying awareness, the addiction to enlightenment, alienation from regular life perceived as good, the inability to reduce suffering anywhere but on the cushion, the pitfall of viewing things as non-existent vs lacking self nature, etc.

in my own practice, whenever I perceive something as having true ultimate nature, I calmly look at it as empty of self. whether its anger or bliss. good or bad. gently return to the emptiness of even nirvana itself.

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u/jabinslc 1d ago

I know "energy" talk is common in meditation circles. but I remain skeptical that ideas about energy/qi/prana are valid. it's been my experience that people use those words when they fail to grok certain processes that happen in the mind.

few people can provide an account of what they even mean by "energy"

but I am open to such ideas, just never heard it explained in a way that makes sense.

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u/Common_Ad_3134 1d ago

few people can provide an account of what they even mean by "energy"

I'll take a shot at that if you'd like.

At least in my understanding/experience, it refers to sensations felt in/on/around the body. The arising/passing of the "energy" is a hallucination in definitional sense: there's no apparent external stimuli causing the sensations.

Various meditative traditions mention the sensations. And they're pretty clearly within the reach of a lot of people, at least if we trust their own, subjective accounts. You have no reason to trust me, but I can say unequivocally, that I feel the sensations – though I don't attach any particular importance to them.

To me, that people would feel these sensations isn't very surprising. The moment-to-moment experience one has of having a concrete, solid body oriented in space is not the actual experience of having a body. Instead, you might say that the mind is making a moment-to-moment best guess, based on available data. E.g.:

  • "I see my hand in front of me, to my left, on the keyboard."
  • And then sensations arise in consciousness to support that best guess, to an extent.

But the mind is pretty easily fooled into guessing wrong and hallucinating. See this sort of experiment, for example, where people are fooled into identifying a rubber hand as their own:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3125296/

In still, seated meditation with eyes closed, you're depriving yourself of many day-to-day external stimuli, making it difficult for the mind to produce a coherent experience of the body. In those circumstances, the mind is pretty open to suggestion to fill in the gaps. The suggestions might take the form of something like "energy work" practices.

Whether or not "energy" is a valid object for meditation is up to you. I don't personally use it.

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u/jabinslc 1d ago

read the other definition given. this is not what people mean when they use the word energy in religious or spiritual contexts. people mean souls or some other real substance that connects us. and it comes with a lot of assumptions about what this energy does. and it's lumped together with Hindi or Chinese words that might or might not mean the same thing.

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u/Common_Ad_3134 1d ago

No problem. Sorry if my answer above wasn't what you were looking for.

people mean souls or some other real substance that connects us

There are lots of different people with different beliefs, and there's lots of delusion out there.

But fwiw, I haven't come across anything like "energy = soul" in 5+ years on this subreddit or in Buddhist teachings – at least not where "soul" is defined as something like a spiritual entity or self.

it's lumped together with Hindi or Chinese words that might or might not mean the same thing.

I'm not a fan of the book, but here's what "The Mind Illuminated" says about that, for example:

Working with inner energy currents and channels is a recurrent theme in many traditions. This energy is variously called chi or qi, prāna, kriyā, kundalinī, or inner wind. There are detailed systems describing the channels, meridians, nādis, and chakras through which it flows, and there are powerful practices for working with this energy. Of all these traditions, the Theravada Buddhists have the least to say about energy movements. Their advice is simply to treat them the same way you treat any other experience that arises in meditation: note it, let it be, and ignore it until it goes away. With a milder manifestation of energy, just letting it be is certainly the best advice, since it’s so easy to get caught up in trying to control and manipulate it.

Yet, as with everything else in this journey, there are tremendous variations in the intensity of the experience. For some, energy movements are subtle and quickly lead to pleasurable sensations pervading the whole body. Others undergo a prolonged process involving violent energy surges and painful blockages. If you experience these more intense manifestations, you may need to work intentionally with the energy in some way. Tai chi, qigong, and yoga can all be helpful additions to formal meditation because they work directly with the energy movements in the body.

There's nothing about a soul-as-entity in that book.

It's fine if you see "energy = soul" as inherent in these practices and it turns you off. But it might be useful just to try out a practice and see if it's for you or not.

Rob Burbea is linked in the sidebar. He's got a lot of "energy body" practices. Here's one talk with some practices if you're interested:

He does talk about a "soul" but it's not what I think most Westerners would understand by the word:

Probably most people when they hear the word 'soul' tend to immediately conceive -- in most instances, depending on how it's used -- but tend to immediately conceive of some kind of entity, 'the soul,' 'a soul,' some thing which may not be material, but some kind of entity.

[...]

But actually, I would like to more often use a word such as 'soulfulness' rather than 'soul,' to take it away from that problematic notion of an entity -- although, as I just said, I don't have a problem with it. But rather to use more a word like 'soulfulness,' and also 'soulmaking,' which is a word that came from the poet John Keats, I think, originally. 'Soulmaking,' you'll notice, is a verb. We make soul. One can make soul, or soul is made, so to speak. Soulmaking. What does that mean? Or soulfulness is made. What we're really talking about, what I want to emphasize here by shifting the inclination a little bit (and at times, the vocabulary), what we're really talking about is ways of looking -- that means ways of relating, ways of conceiving -- and also ways of acting in the world. Let's call all of that ways of looking: relating, conceiving, acting. Ways of looking that nourish, sustain, increase a sense of soulfulness.

https://hermesamara.org/resources/talk/2015-08-10-soulmaking-part-1

None of these are my practices. I'm not trying to convince you to do a certain practice, just hoping to answer your question from above. If I'm failing, then apologies again in advance. Have a good one!

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u/jabinslc 1d ago

thank you for taking the time to reply. I think your answers are great and very well thought out. I have no issue engaging with the ideas as you present them. but check out what someone else said in this thread:

"well i guess basically the idea ties in with us being atman/soul, and of soul currently being in this world. At the same time as soul being in this world, there is also the divine energy that flows in brahman/the unified soul, in this world too. This being something like light shining through water/some other medium - the divine energy can flow in/through soul/other mediums."

people treat the word energy as a substance, like some electricity that runs and powers the whole human. an electricity we can use, mold, manipulate. something that has existence separate from biology or sitting alongside it. something that can be used in a supernatural way. for example: people might say "I focused the divine energy on his knee, so it telepathicly healed it" or "I had an energetic feeling that susan got a C on her test"

now when used to describe the workings of the mind. I can see the use of the word, although imprecise.

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u/Common_Ad_3134 1d ago

Ah, gotcha. I hadn't seen that comment earlier.

well i guess basically the idea ties in with us being atman/soul, and of soul currently being in this world.

Without wanting to challenge anyone's religious beliefs, I think the idea of an atman/soul at least in the usual Western sense is pretty marginal on this sub. In Buddhism and lots of western dharma circles anyway, "anatman" ("no soul/self") is a central doctrine:

https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/An%C4%81tman

That said, I do sort of get into the "unified soul" business in a sense – more "unified" than "soul". But I think it's a result of practice and not a driving belief required for practice. There's a thought anyway that the big, common mystical experiences like "everything is one" are the result of parts of the brain shutting down, as in meditation or when using pyschedelics – notably parts of the default mode network (DMN).

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-meditating-mind/202412/mystical-experiences-turning-off-what-holds-us-back

people treat the word energy as a substance, like some electricity that runs and powers the whole human. an electricity we can use, mold, manipulate

The energy sensations like in the Burbea talks above can feel quite electric – the felt sense is often "buzzy". And they are malleable with intentions. Like you can work them up and then, say, shoot them out the top of your head as if out a blowhole.

But as for the rest ...

people might say "I focused the divine energy on his knee, so it telepathicly healed it" or "I had an energetic feeling that susan got a C on her test"

To me, this is pure delusion. Even if you take the Buddhist suttas literally, the Buddha didn't fix his bad back, with "energy" or otherwise.

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u/jabinslc 1d ago

beautiful reply. I have nothing left to add.