For an "advanced practitioner" (sorry), how to view "addictions" (or bad habits) correctly? How to practice? Sorry but I will talk about attainments and mention some stuff that are sometimes considered hard to get to, you are free to not read. I will probably abandon this account after this post.
Well... I'm post stream-entry, I don't really have doubts about that.
I have 2 &quot;addictions&quot;, that is 2 things that even if I decide not to do them, I end up doing them eventually. For example, sometimes, if I decide to only eat once a day and lower my weight then I can actually do it for weeks or even months, but eventually I end up going back to my old habits and gaining weight. Sometimes I decide to stop them and I can't, that's also true. Both &quot;addictions&quot; are quite mild and don't have any significant consequences.
I know general Buddhist instructions for dealing with them. Specially from Yuttadhammo videos online.
Other than that, my conduct is quite clean. Both my actions and words seem clean to me. My thoughts are almost all about Buddhism or actual meditation. I would say that they are either wholesome or they show a little restlessness, with only occasional thoughts that are worse than that.
But it's also true that I'm mostly okay with all of this. I don't really suffer the desire of the &quot;addictions&quot;. I rarely notice it, and when I do notice, it doesn't feel disgusting. It doesn't feel mine, it doesn't feel like it is a bad thing that needs improvement. Same with thoughts, I don't have any reasons to consider them worse or better than other kinds of thoughts.
This is a conflict I have. Between being confident in considering the &quot;addictions&quot; and thoughts as not-mine, perfect, without any need to judge me for them, and on the other hand considering this not cool and trying to reduce them.
So, how to view &quot;addictions&quot; (or bad habits) correctly?
Also, I don't really know how to practice right now. I'm inclined for practices during the day (instead of sitting on the cushion only meditating).
I don't think jhana will help. I can get to deep jhana in seconds, I don't really see much room for improvement. Sorry if that comment bothers anyone, I wouldn't even mind not being able to practice jhana.
So, how do you recommend me to practice based on my situation?
Thanks for reading, sorry if any of it bothered you or gave you expectations of how things should be.
If you're post stream-entry you should understand that &quot;I&quot; is not a thing, therefore your eating habits or weight problems are not your decision, they are part of your overall life style, your environment, and the patterns of your life. If you really want to change them, change your situation drastically, move to another place etc. Either that or make a firm decision to stop worrying. The worst you can do is to keep perpetuating the inner conflict without fixing either by changing or by letting be.
What you need to meditate on, is why exactly this still bothers you. Why do you even think this is important? I'm guessing you still have some notion of &quot;better&quot; bothering you. If that's the case, that's what you need to focus your meditation on, the concept of &quot;better&quot;. Why do you still crave &quot;better&quot;, you want to be perfect or what?