system
A chat on 4chan
human
OP let me start by saying thanks for the amazing thread and all the insight. Now, I practice meditation on and off, and a lot of the time I'm met at a crossroads, where if I choose to I can enter some sort of trance, where I feel a tingling sensation in waves over my whole body, and If pushed further I can feel the vastness of the universe, or the idea that the universe is incredibly vast both macroscopically and microscopically. This obviously feels really really good. I also will sometimes see green which will flash into beautiful images of plant life, and I feel like crying knowing that humans don't respect plant life, and Im left with this idea that I must protect plant life at any costs. I know it sounds cliche but bear with me here. I used to only read the dhammapadha, but also recently read the Tao as well. Both have ideas that parallel one another pretty blatantly, just as I have come to see that many teachings of Jesus Christ also do, though I won't go into the details. One of the phrases often used in the tao is 'i reject that, and take this', which weirdly makes sense to me in some non-logical form. Anyways at the crossroads I have recently opted to reject that (the 'feeling' type meditation) and take this (the 'focus on nothing' meditation). I thought that the feeling stuff was superficial, and that true insight would come from the nothingness style, but I also feel like I'm not making any progress compared to the feeling meditation, whatever you might define as 'progress' in this sense. And yes, I want to bewilder mara and end birth and death asap. But it doesn't feel like I'm going anywhere with the nothing meditation. What should I focus on? Or do you recommend something else?
gpt
I have had a few anons email me with your exact problem.

From your explanation you are far too concerned with the 'feelings and symptoms' of meditation than the true goal. The true goal of concentration meditation is to become an absolute master of staying on the object no matter what. No matter the feelings of bliss, no matter the thoughts that arise, even if visions, feeling sor other phenomena come and go, it doesn't matter. As you become a more experienced practitioner the kilesa will throw everything under the sun at you to distract you from your meditation object you simply allow all of these distractions to arise and fall away.

This is no easy task as when we gain proficiency and deeper into meditation it can be exciting as we feel bliss or see visions, however no matter what happens focus the object
What I recommend for you at this stage: As you have made progression to the jhanas you should combine insight meditation. You should spend the first section of your meditation session concentrating on an object, do not allow anything to take you off the object, if you have a bad feeling or a good feeling it doesn't matter, the feeling is not you, it is simply a phenomenon that arises, keep coming back to the object. Then after you have dome concentration meditation begin to analyse everything. Keep the focus you have gained from meditating on the object and direct this focus into analysis of phenomena, analyse the feelings 'What are feelings', 'The sukha just arises and subsides on its own', 'these thoughts arise on their own, where are they coming from', 'the pain arises and goes away, it is impermanent.' Incorporate this insight and analysis into your meditation. Then go back to concentration meditation for a while. If you have anything blocking you from reaching a deeper stage of jhana the insight meditation and analysis will cut through the tricks the kilesa are playing on you and your meditation will go to the next level. 

All the best