[HN Gopher] The new science of meditation
___________________________________________________________________
The new science of meditation
Author : ojarow
Score : 151 points
Date : 2023-08-22 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| mohave529 wrote:
| "Along a less-traveled route, meditation remains what it long
| was: a deeply transformative pursuit, a devoted metamorphosis of
| the mind toward increasingly enlightened states."
|
| This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me.
| However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself.
|
| As my practice has gotten deeper, I've started to reframe
| meditation for myself as the process of unrelenting inquiry in
| the search for base truth. In that pursuit, the practice becomes
| a process of subtraction of core beliefs and ideas that simply
| aren't true - or can't be known to be true. As these beliefs
| disappeared, much of my own personal suffering did as well as so
| many of the things that were sources of conflict in my mind were
| predicated on false beliefs.
|
| With this framing meditation can take many forms. Ramana Maharshi
| famously asked his devotees to start with the question of "Who am
| I?" and just keep inquiring.
| curo wrote:
| > the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself
|
| Fully agree although a lot of devotees of Ramana Maharshi said
| they fell into silence just sitting in his presence. Improbable
| but it would be hilarious if scientists could make little
| "mouna wifi hubs" where practitioners got a silence handicap by
| sitting around it.
|
| In the end though, I'm also skeptical that anything about self-
| inquiry can be replicated by an additive approach.
| jules22 wrote:
| There are a bunch of psychology phenomena that explain such
| things. No Wifi involved.
|
| I generally find the followers to be quite suggestable by
| people they designated as a guru.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| > This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for
| me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of
| itself.
|
| Interesting, after a certain point you get diminishing returns
| and once you've eliminated or solved the things conflicting
| you, then staying in a meditative state becomes an illusory
| trap to avoid life and living.
|
| I knew a guy who did just that. Would spend hours meditating to
| the point where he avoided living. It seemed to be more like
| avoidance rather than being able to enjoy the gift of living
| without the troubles that come with it which meditation solves.
| beardedmoose wrote:
| Interesting take. With this line of thinking would Buddhist
| monks just be practicing excessive escapism much like those
| who turn to drugs and alcohol?
|
| Just some random thoughts but there seems to be a reoccurring
| theme in life in which too much of a good thing is indeed too
| much. Life is about balance, all that meditating and no
| action does what exactly? What good is all that enlightenment
| if you aren't experiencing life or helping others?
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Maybe but not always. Some of those Buddhist monks still
| enjoy a few earthly pleasures albeit at levels that appear
| quite modest to us.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Could you give an example of beliefs/ideas you've let go of, or
| discovered can't be known to be true?
|
| I've been trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy
| vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of
| false beliefs. But while there are a lot of examples of this in
| psychotherapy and the mechanisms are well-documented, it's hard
| to find first-person accounts regarding meditation that aren't
| just generalities. So I'd find it really valuable to hear some
| examples of anything concrete/practical -- of course if it's
| nothing too personal or private.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| > trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs
| meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of
| false beliefs.
|
| I think mediation is more about getting rid of all beliefs
| temporarily.
|
| Beliefs are just language playing around in the echo-chamber
| of your mind. Having too much noise in an echo-chamber can be
| distracting and stressful and can make you not hear what you
| should be hearing.
|
| Meditation stops (or slows down) your thoughts. Then you
| realize you are just fine even if you don't repeat certain
| thoughts or variations of them in your brain.
|
| Imagine you are a soldier. Enemy-attack is eminent. It can
| make you fearful. But that is only because you are imagining
| the different possible terrible effects of the enemy attack
| on you.
|
| It is unlikely that all the bad things you imagine about will
| happen. But imagining them has a detrimental effect of your
| mind. Mediation helps counter that.
|
| But you shouldn't stay in meditation forever you're supposed
| to come out of it so you can tackle the real life problems
| with a well rested mind which is better equipped to perceive
| the world as is, than a person in an echo-chamber would.
| malux85 wrote:
| For me, it was about confronting deliberate self deception.
| In my mind I always told myself that "I dont have time to
| exercise", when the truth was, I was too lazy to exercise.
|
| While I was meditating, this profound clarity came to me, it
| wasn't a case of a tyranny-like self-harming disclipinary
| action about my deliberate self deception, it was more like a
| great washing of positive emotion that framed exercise as
| "this is healthy for you, and it's only a few minutes a day
| and you can totally do it"
|
| The textual description I gave does disservice to the actual
| feeling because my vocabulary is too poor to express it - but
| this wash-over of carity and positive emotion shifted my
| perspective and turned my relationship with exercise from
| this adversarial enemy to something more like our need for
| air or food - it's a healthy part of being an organic
| lifeform, and just like (good) food, it is pleasurable act of
| regeneration.
|
| I think part of what holds people back is that meditation is
| like any other skill and practice is required, in this
| dopamine-hacked instant gratification society if there isn't
| instant results or even quick results people give up (I
| certainly did) -- I didn't start seeing the benefits of
| meditation until well after a month of practicing an hour
| every day, and up until then, it felt like a waste of time,
| which caused me to abort a few times before I forced the self
| discipline to stick with it.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| An hour day seems like a high threshold (I'm not saying it
| is, just my perception).
|
| Are there diminishing returns pas 15 minutes or 30 minutes
| etc?
| digging wrote:
| I don't meditate, but I do introspect a lot. I often do
| so on walks. And I find I _must_ give myself at least
| 10-15 minutes to even get into that mode, to stop
| worrying about what 's actually happening or about to
| happen or did happen and to be able to let my mind wander
| and explore things deeply. So I force myself to continue
| until I reach the point where I'm no longer trying to
| convince myself to give it up and go home because there's
| something else I want to do so badly.
|
| After that point, it's up to my subconscious. I'll stop
| when I feel like it, when I feel satisfied. That could be
| anywhere from 10 more minutes to another hour. But the
| longest part is always the beginning. The second part
| never feels like time is passing - it's exactly what I
| want to be doing.
|
| Of course, if I only have 15 minutes, there's no
| guarantee I'm going to reach a place of satisfaction. I
| would aim to set aside 30-45 minutes whenever possible. I
| often see "do X for 1 hour a day" and that's just not
| realistic for everyone. You can definitely get good
| results with less time investment. But in general, yes
| you'll get out of it what you put in. I don't walk every
| single day and I noticeably suffer for it.
| malux85 wrote:
| It takes me 15-20 minutes just to switch my mind from
| "alert problem solving" mode to meditative state in sync
| with body - and get my breathing right.
|
| I guess everyone is different, for me the practice was
| looking for guidance and then finding what works for me -
| one of the first things I had to let go was rigid time
| schedules, "THIS IS MY 15 MINUTE WINDOW FOR MEDIATETION
| LET ME SET AN ALARM SO I CAN GET BACK TO WORK" is not a
| very constructive attitute to regeneration and healing.
|
| I suspect me saying above "Get results after more than a
| month" instead of hearing "I need to stick to this for a
| while" people hear "I will definitly get results in 1
| month, here let me mark it on my calander [GET RESULTS
| HERE]" where it doesn't work like that. Maybe you need
| more healing than I did, maybe you need less. Maybe
| breathing is important because of how it intertwines with
| your exercise schedule (or lack thereof), or maybe you
| need silence or darkness. Maybe you need music. Maybe you
| need white noise.
|
| The only common thread is that meditation is a personal
| journey, so listen to your body, try to avoid any
| preconcieved notions and expectations of results,
| timeframes and experiement with a few different things
| until you find what works for you...
| cracoucax wrote:
| Psychotherapy works on the "self": your problems, your
| history.
|
| One of the aims of mediation is to gradually understand that
| this self is really an illusion, hence there are in fact no
| problems and no history. Past does not really define who you
| are, and problems are only problems if you think reality
| should be different that what it currently is the moment you
| experience it (which is of course totally impossible. What
| you can do is alter the future though.)
|
| Now don't get me wrong this self is in fact a very useful
| interface for interacting with others, etc. The problem is
| believing this interface, or layer we add on top on
| experiences really is us, while it's really just a useful
| concept to navigate the world.
|
| We are all mostly a bunch of habits: this stimuli gives this
| response because we trained our mind to function this way,
| were raised that way, live within country X, etc. It's all
| just mind formatting. Meditation aims to discover this for
| yourself, which should leads you to train in developing new,
| more wholesome habits, which will make you and others suffer
| less. Then since you are mostly habits, you gradually change,
| and become much saner as times goes by. Saner because you're
| living more in adequation with reality.
|
| So in a way, psychotherapy can be seen as a dead end for
| someone who practices meditation. Although it certainly has
| its uses, even for very advanced meditators who can also
| develop blind spots without seeing them (more work needed,
| but psychotherapy can be a useful mirror there).
| gwd wrote:
| Similarities and differences in perspective:
|
| "...you were taught in [Jesus]... to put off your old self,
| which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt
| through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit
| of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after
| the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." --
| Ephesians 4:20-24
|
| "[O]ur mind is trained to function this way in response to
| some stimuli" vs "our old self is corrupted through
| deceitful desires". The former sounds non-judgemental, but
| by saying that this realization should "lead you to develop
| new, more wholesome habits, in adequation with reality,
| which make you and others suffer less", it's implying that
| the previous habits were unwholesome (cf "corrupt"), not in
| adequation with reality (cf "deceitful") and made you and
| others suffer more.
|
| I think insofar as psychotherapy is reluctant to discard
| bits of the "[old] self", the two perspectives would agree
| that it's a dead end.
|
| I do have to say, personally I like the sound of having a
| "new self, created after the likeness of God" better than
| "realizing I'm just a bundle of habits, then replacing some
| habits with better ones." :-)
| digging wrote:
| > I do have to say, personally I like the sound of having
| a "new self, created after the likeness of God" better
| than "realizing I'm just a bundle of habits, then
| replacing some habits with better ones." :-)
|
| To me, the "new self vs old self" framing is just more
| abstract. You should do what works for you, but I think
| breaking down one's identity into a set of habits or
| responses is simply a higher resolution of the same.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| To be clear, there are many types of meditation, each with
| its own goal (or none at all). Some of them are "merely"
| relaxation exercises, but that is also something that is
| very much needed in today's world.
| Jimpulse wrote:
| Meditation and therapy aren't mutually exclusive. In fact,
| for people who have traumas, I would say both are
| necessary. Very few meditation teachers are trained in
| handling a psychological crisis and mental break downs
| happen often in retreats and self-led practice.
| haswell wrote:
| This very much aligns with my experience.
|
| Meditation helps me be with what is and remember that I'm
| ok.
|
| Therapy helps me permanently untangle the thoughts and
| feelings that lead to distress in the first place.
|
| They both complement each other and provide benefits that
| can't be found in either alone. Meditation seems
| universally useful. Therapy somewhat less so, but still a
| powerful tool. If you're not dealing with trauma, a good
| friend/mentor can provide the same feedback.
| curo wrote:
| Ramana Maharshi says anything transient is false
|
| CBT and other psychotherapies challenge X or Y as false
| jules22 wrote:
| There is no reason why he should be taken as an authority.
| "anything transient is false" is wrong at so many levels.
| chrispine wrote:
| Not disagreeing, but it's also correct on some levels.
| cracoucax wrote:
| I believe since Maharshi was a practitioner of hinduism
| for him "the self" (what they call Atman) was to be seen
| in all things, and the same everywhere.
|
| So anything transient cannot be the self, hence is an
| illusion, or false.
|
| But yes i also believe it's quite wrong ^^
| kagakuninja wrote:
| He practiced Advaita vedanta. When exploring the non-
| duality of self vs world, there are fundamentally 2
| approaches. Advaita Vedanta denies the existence of the
| world, only the (true) self is real. Buddhism denies the
| existence of the self.
| jules22 wrote:
| I thought Advaita denies only the duality between the
| soul and the world soul, while denial of the world is
| more of solipcism.
|
| Buddhism can deny self, but Buddha can also say, his self
| alone exists.
|
| In any case, these are just beliefs. We know the world
| exists and there are no souls around. So much for
| "enlightenment".
| vram22 wrote:
| "solipcism"
|
| solipsism
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
| vram22 wrote:
| "He practiced Advaita vedanta."
|
| A bit pedantic, and I could be wrong, but based on what
| I've read, my understanding is that Advaita (non-dualism)
| is not something you can practice, although there are
| practices in that school that can advance you on the
| path, like shravana, manana, nidhidyaasana.
|
| It's more of a reasoning-, knowledge- and understanding-
| based system than anything else.
|
| Jnana Yoga is the path.
|
| Check out Swami Sarvapriyananda's talks on YouTube about
| Advaita.
| anolog0 wrote:
| I think of course that there's room for all sorts of
| practices, and what everybody needs in order to improve their
| life is different depending on their specific problems and
| personality.
|
| For me, I tried meditation at one point for at least 30
| minutes a day for two months, and I can honestly say that it
| didn't seem to do anything for me. Focusing on my breath did
| not give me self-insights, it did not relax my anxiety, and
| it did not help me solve my problems.
|
| Talk therapy has been useful although it still never solved
| my problems.
|
| I'm hesitant to say any one thing is responsible for causing
| change in me, but one thing that has unquestionably helped is
| a type of self-therapy called Focusing. It's similar to
| meditation, but instead of focusing on your breath, it's an
| ordered process of focusing on your feelings. It has been the
| source of actual insights into why I feel and behave in
| certain ways. I think it's a lot closer to what people are
| looking for from meditation--meditation might give you
| insights into how your brain works, but it's not designed to
| give you insights into your real and troubling thoughts and
| emotions.
|
| Here's the website if you want to look into it
| https://focusing.org/sixsteps
| rwhyan wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Ultimately, unrelenting inquiry came to: "I am."
| oldstrangers wrote:
| I've always sort of intuitively done this since I was a kid
| (https://zchry.org/words/questioning-my-quantum-leap-an-
| ongoi...). I have zero experience with meditation in the
| traditional sense but I'm really interested in going down that
| path next as I try to broaden my scope.
| johndhi wrote:
| I used to play a game as a kid where I'd close my eyes and
| try not to see or imagine anything. To keep a black empty
| universe as the only thing I see, for as long as possible. It
| isn't easy!
| oldstrangers wrote:
| I have a similar thought experiment where I try to imagine
| the true essence of 'nothingness', down to even the removal
| of the 'idea' of nothingness and even the thought that I'm
| trying to imagine something. It's a weird feeling.
| johndhi wrote:
| I do that too!
| mirekrusin wrote:
| I did something similar but always tried to imagine things
| - shapes like cube, rotate it, move it around, slice it
| etc. - not easy.
|
| I always found it odd you'd want to deprive yourself from
| excercising mind this way by medidating = practicing not
| thinking.
|
| I believe it helped me a lot when programming and thinking
| about problems in general.
| codr7 wrote:
| If that's what 10% of your brain is capable of, imagine
| what kinds of miracles are possible once you tap into the
| rest of it.
| iamatworknow wrote:
| I did the same as a kid. Like if I was in a classroom with
| noisy classmates ("study hall") I'd shut my eyes and
| actively try to not hear them and embrace the nothingness
| "around" the voices. Kinda interesting that I have distinct
| memories of doing this _years_ before I was ever exposed to
| "meditation".
| johndhi wrote:
| IMO a lot of stuff humans have 'invented' (like
| meditation) are really just sort of tied to our nature as
| animals. I think meditation is something we're all
| (most?) inclined to try in some way, but then some
| specific geeks studied it really hard for thousands of
| years and turned it into what it is.
| iamatworknow wrote:
| Yeah, that totally makes sense to me.
| dlivingston wrote:
| A bit tangential, but I absolutely love your blog design.
| Minimalistic, yet very aesthetic and unique.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Thank you!
| hinkley wrote:
| Turns out a lot of humans bond over mutually shared grasping,
| so it can make you 'not fun at parties' when they're
| harrumphing about things that Do. Not. Matter. and are put off
| by you not dog-piling.
|
| Most people wonder how the Dalai Lama can be so serene. I
| wonder how he can be so approachable.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| It sounds like you may be dealing with growing pains: moving
| on from old relationships and social scenes you've matured
| past.
| krzat wrote:
| Can you give some examples of your false beliefs?
| borg16 wrote:
| can you provide some resources to understand this "advanced"
| meditation? my attempts with calm/headspace etc always stop at
| the same theme of 'concentrate on breathing, distractions are
| fine'.
|
| I wanted to understand what is out there, especially outside of
| these apps and folks who pursue meditation seriously.
| calmoo wrote:
| Sam Harris' 'Waking up' app is good. Starts from fundamentals
| and teaches you about the practice.
| haswell wrote:
| I've tried Calm and Headspace, and they never really worked
| for me.
|
| The "Waking Up" app has been a complete game changer. The
| core introductory course helped me _get it_ for the first
| time, and the library of content and meditation approaches
| from various teachers in the app gives you a rabbit hole to
| explore as deeply as you want.
|
| It's been truly transformative, starting with the gradual
| realization that my thoughts are not me. If they were, who is
| aware of them? This isn't just an idea, it's something that I
| began to feel/understand directly, which then led to a lot
| less entanglement and rumination. This was just the
| beginning.
|
| I definitely credit the approach in this app with making this
| make sense. Not affiliated, just a happy user.
| chrispine wrote:
| Strong +1 for the Waking Up app. (I also ready the Waking
| Up book, and found it to be quite hit-or-miss for me. But
| the app is just wonderful.)
| kagakuninja wrote:
| I would suggest reading the book The Mind Illuminated.
| patrickscoleman wrote:
| http://leighb.com/jhanas.htm
| nprateem wrote:
| My favourite is Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond by Ajahn Brahm.
| vram22 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi
|
| Related:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Brunton
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Reminds me of a blogpost by Scott Alexander that I can't find
| right now about the last unenlightened person, as far as he can
| see, in the world.
| titanomachy wrote:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/
| choxi wrote:
| I've been meditating casually for almost 10 years, I couldn't sit
| still for a minute when I started and can sit regularly for an
| hour now.
|
| I still have a lot of skepticism about the sensations that other
| meditators describe feeling, like jhanas and profound states of
| tranquility and whatnot. I have experienced deeper calmness and
| have made some insights about my brain (eg thoughts are like a
| sensor organ not unlike a constantly generating LLM), but I
| haven't experienced anything like the sometimes superhuman claims
| that come from people in this community. Naval Ravikant has
| claimed he can experience psychedelic states just through
| meditation, Nick Cammarata at OpenAI makes claims about achieving
| perfect equanimity and being able to feel jhanas that are better
| than sex but also doesn't feel desire for it because of
| aforementioned equanimity. There are many others on social media
| who make similar claims. From the outside, all of these people
| seem like normal humans, maybe calmer and wiser than usual, but
| who still seek material comfort and the validation of others just
| like anyone else does.
|
| I wonder, what do others make of these superhuman meditation
| claims? How does one verify that their sensations during
| meditation are real reflections of how the brain works and not
| just increasingly subtle hallucinations? If you convinced
| everyone that the brain has a secret mechanism to feel perfect
| happiness, wouldn't a lot of people hallucinate that they've
| experienced it even if it wasn't real?
| nprateem wrote:
| It seems like you're heading down a rabbit hole. All you can do
| is have experiences (instead of just believing on faith). If
| you do, it's up to you to make sense of them. Trying to decide
| what is "real" sounds like an egoic distraction to divert you
| from continuing to make progress. The usual advice I hear is
| just to keep going.
| krzat wrote:
| What's the difference between pleasure and hallucination o
| pleasure?
|
| The thing with meditative pleasure is that it requires
| equanimity to appear, being content with almost nothing, which
| is perhaps why people do not become jhana junkies.
| gbasin wrote:
| Jhanas are achieved a particular way and should be readily
| accessible once your concentration is strong enough (yours
| likely is). You may have not experienced them if you haven't
| accidentally pulled the right levers, so to speak. There are a
| few guides online of what to do, I suspect you'd succeed
| quickly
| sonofhans wrote:
| I'm not enlightened and I don't think you're doing anything
| wrong :) But you're asking questions I've spent years thinking
| on myself, and I'm interested to talk about it.
|
| > If you convinced someone that the brain has a secret
| mechanism to feel perfect happiness, wouldn't a lot of people
| hallucinate that they've experienced it even if it wasn't real?
|
| Your own experience is some proof against this -- even after 10
| years, you're not claiming experiences you haven't had, and
| aren't hallucinating or imagining deeper states you've not
| reached. So even if some people are exaggerating, it's not
| reasonable to think that everyone is.
|
| And it would be _a lot_ of people. For thousands of years
| across many religious traditions humans have talked about
| reaching elevated states. Their experiences share common
| features. They teach others common techniques.
|
| > From the outside, both of these people seem like normal
| humans, maybe calmer and wiser than usual, but who still seek
| material comfort and the validation of others just like anyone
| else does.
|
| I think that's an inevitable part of our condition -- wanting
| to be warm and fed and in the company of those who love us.
| Even Buddha had disciples and friends. People like people.
| Sure, some folks live in a monastery or cave or ashram and use
| that social isolation as part of their practice and discipline.
| It doesn't seem necessary for everyone.
|
| > I haven't experienced anything like the sometimes superhuman
| claims that come from people in this community.
|
| Consider that meditation is only one part of the religious
| practice of (e.g.) Buddhism. There are millennia of teachings
| and traditions designed to prepare for meditation, to
| physically and mentally endure it, and to understand and
| process your experiences. Meditation without this set of
| traditions is a bit of an orphaned practice, a little like
| Catholics taking communion without going to church or praying
| or listening to sermons.
|
| Meditation is a powerful practice and it can hurt. People with
| trauma, for instance, can have flashbacks or panic attacks
| brought on by it. Trauma is often deeply suppressed in the
| body, and meditation helps one connect better with the body, so
| of course it comes out unbidden.
|
| Buddhist tradition distinguishes between the monk and the
| householder, between the person devoting their life to
| practice, and the person devoting their life to their family
| and job and community. It's like living in the Shaolin temple
| and practicing kung fu 12 hours a day vs. going to the local
| dojo three hours a week. No harm in either one, and no
| judgement, but no surprise that people reach different places
| by being on different paths.
| mbivert wrote:
| > How does one verify that their sensations during meditation
| are real reflections of how the brain works and not just subtle
| hallucinations?
|
| I guess the scientific method[0] should be the de-facto
| approach.
|
| But one shouldn't necessarily expect to reach certainty:
| science is intrinsically humble, as it merely limits itself to
| the creation of models of reality, and to their refinement, by
| way of minimizing the error between theory & experimentation.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
| speak_plainly wrote:
| I learned how to meditate at a Soto Zen monastery, so just
| facing the wall. And I experienced the typical sort of makyo
| (hallucinations) you might expect such as faces, a sort of
| tunnel effect, colours, etc.
|
| I recently switched to a Chan method of facing outward and the
| hallucinations I experienced were extreme. At first, time felt
| as if it had completely stopped and what felt like days were
| going by as I sat there, the floor itself became liquid and
| water droplets were hitting it and I had a number of other
| pretty intense optical illusions. I was sitting perfectly still
| and my gaze was also almost still. I meditated for an hour and
| once it was over it suddenly felt like the entire experience
| didn't even happen and only a few minutes went by. But I felt
| amazing after I was finished.
|
| Makyo is a common experience, but it was one monks had said to
| not be concerned with as it's just a hallucination. My
| experience going through that was ultimately unpleasant and not
| like the states you mentioned but it was immaterial to
| meditation itself.
|
| I think that part of the purpose of meditation is to recognize
| a few things, such as your thoughts about the past and thoughts
| about the future are just like imagination (and a source of
| strife for people who are caught up in that imaginary world)
| and your thoughts are things you've consumed, much like your
| body was once food. So when one meditates you watch these
| thoughts arise and go by, you feel all sorts of sensations in
| the body come and go. I don't think the purpose, at least as I
| understand it, is to experience pleasure or find happiness. I
| guess if that happens it happens but it doesn't mean anything
| and is not something you should identify with.
|
| I'm no monk so I'm not qualified to teach anything but I think
| ultimately part of the goal of meditation is to recognize some
| basic truths about who you are and about the nature of your
| existence through a careful and very simple method (just
| sitting), and that's all there is to it.
| johndhi wrote:
| (Been meditating for about 15 years).
|
| I don't think the things you're describing are particularly
| 'superhuman.' I definitely can achieve (if that's the right
| word -- it's almost certainly not -- how about 'experience')
| psychedelic states. Everything is kind of a psychedelic state
| if you look at it the right way. What is your personal
| experience with psychedelics? I wonder if you maybe haven't
| done them much you might not know how to spot it.
|
| To me, clearly, the big question of superhuman meditation
| claims is the claim of some people to be enlightened. I
| personally think there is something to it, though I don't
| really know exactly what it is and I'd like to learn more about
| it.
|
| BTW, my experience with meditation comes mostly from
| (controversial Wild Wild Country guru) Osho. Sounds like you're
| familiar with Buddhist traditions. There are a lot of ways to
| meditate.
| sctb wrote:
| I went through a period of several years where I was meditating
| 2-3 hours a day, and during that time I had all kinds of
| experiences... which isn't so surprising since that's a pretty
| abnormal thing to do.
|
| > I wonder, what do others make of these superhuman meditation
| claims?
|
| Not much. I have no reason to be skeptical of their accounts,
| but they strike me as too personal to be relevant to others.
| Maybe it's similar to when people report the contents of their
| dreams, or describe something like synaesthesia. I notice that
| many mature practitioners do not make any such claims at all.
|
| > How does one verify that their sensations during meditation
| are real reflections of how the brain works and not just
| increasingly subtle hallucinations?
|
| What's the difference between "real reflections of how the
| brain works" and hallucinations? I'm not sure that it's
| actually necessary to reflect upon one's experience during
| meditation.
| jules22 wrote:
| Supernatural claims made by meditators that are obviously not
| true are what keep me from experimenting with meditation. I
| don't want to mess up my brain. I value it.
|
| All the senior meditators I know have some element of
| irrationality. The openness that meditation seems to promote
| seems to also promote a certain level of gullibility that I did
| not expect from them.
|
| Obviously, an out of body experience is not really true and is
| just a hallucination. People have looked at these.
| kagakuninja wrote:
| The human brain is far less rational than we tend to believe.
| Recent research indicates that we hallucinate our world: we
| guess what we are likely to see, based on prior experience.
| If wrong, our brain adjusts and reevaluates the sensory data.
| In some cases, we even ignore unusual experiences that do not
| fit into our internal model.
|
| Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their
| personal reality, and learn that it isn't as neat and clean
| as we thought. That said, some do believe in outlandish
| things.
|
| Jhana and nirodha sammapati are not irrational, they have
| been studied by scientists during the last several years.
| What is irrational are the belief systems built on top of
| those experiences by some buddhist traditions.
|
| Out of body experiences can be had by any person who spends
| enough time meditating. The teachers I work with understand
| that it is not a supernatural experience.
| coyotespike wrote:
| I can recommend Shinzen Young as a senior meditation teacher
| with a high degree of rigor. He self-consciously will use
| mystical language, but is also upfront about the fact that he
| remains agnostic. The Science of Enlightenment is the best
| place to start with his work.
| haswell wrote:
| > _Supernatural claims made by meditators that are obviously
| not true are what keep me from experimenting with meditation.
| I don 't want to mess up my brain. I value it._
|
| A religious friend went on a road trip and hiked deep into
| the Rocky Mountains. They experienced the awe and wonder of
| the landscape, and to them, this was God revealing himself to
| them.
|
| Supernatural claims by meditators are interpretations of the
| experience, much like God-in-the-mountains is an
| interpretation of experience.
|
| I held the view you're describing for many years until I
| spontaneously experienced what some meditators describe while
| I was practicing photography out in nature.
|
| Learning to be a better photographer by immersing myself in
| the environment I was in had inadvertently led me to states
| of presence that meditators train to achieve. This is what
| ultimately made me explore meditation further.
|
| I'd be cautious about linking that openness with what you're
| framing as gullability. In my own exploration, I've applied
| rigorous rational examination as I go, and while I
| _understand_ why people who are predisposed to religiosity
| reach supernatural conclusions, that is more about each
| individual's existing beliefs and the resulting framing of
| the experience.
| jules22 wrote:
| Your account of an awe experience is quite common. Francis
| Collins had a similar experience. I am not unaware of these
| accounts.
|
| I agree with much of what you said. But I also think it
| makes people a tad more open to irrationality after such
| experiences, even the knowledgeable ones.
|
| > that is more about each individual's existing beliefs and
| the resulting framing of the experience
|
| Not disagreeing.
| haswell wrote:
| My point about awe and wonder is that I don't avoid the
| Rocky Mountains because they reinforce my friend's
| beliefs about God. I should mention that it was a similar
| experience that he says convinced him of the existence of
| a god to begin with.
|
| Do you have some specific examples of irrationality? I'm
| curious to know what you're encountering, and I haven't
| yet found this among the non-religious meditators that I
| know.
| uoaei wrote:
| This revulsion only makes sense if you firmly believe
| that rationalism is the highest good, and that the only
| right way to engage with the world is through
| rationality, ie, dividing the world into "false" and
| "true" ideas.
|
| There are good reasons that so many people realize for
| themselves that non-dual perspectives hold more value
| than dualistic ones.
| munificent wrote:
| Irrationality and gullibility are underrated.
| uoaei wrote:
| I've heard such explorations referred to as 'reality
| safari' which I love. Immersing yourself in an entirely
| different philosophy to really feel it from the inside, to
| understand it completely and intuitively.
|
| The fear many have about attempting such things mirrors the
| fear of e.g. psychedelic experiences -- the fear of "never
| coming back". Ironically, only living through this fear is
| what causes the bad trip in the first place. Egos, man,
| egos suck.
| nprateem wrote:
| I see, so you can confidently discount someone else's
| experience as obviously not true, especially without any real
| attainment yourself? That just doesn't work on so many
| levels.
| maleldil wrote:
| If you're a materialist, which sounds likely to be true
| given the available evidence, any claims to the
| supernatural are disqualified by, for example, the Sagan
| standard.
| nprateem wrote:
| You're supposed to find the evidence for yourself. But if
| you never start, you never will. A closed mind is certain
| to lead to failure in meditation if it means you never
| try without expectation.
| jules22 wrote:
| > You're supposed to find the evidence for yourself
|
| This is the argument of quacks and charlatans (including
| the meditation charlatans aka "gurus").
|
| A quack will always argue to ignore criticisms of his
| snake oil and just try it for yourself and find out.
|
| Evidence is not personal, it's universal.
|
| Denying universal facts and saying this is true for me is
| a position of a closed mind. You are being invited to
| prove facts, not just assert personal truths. It can't be
| more open minded than that.
| adolph wrote:
| A "didactic little story" about perception and the
| supernatural: [0]
|
| _There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the
| remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the
| other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the
| existence of God with that special intensity that comes after
| about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not
| like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God.
| It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God
| and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the
| camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I
| couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried
| it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if
| there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die
| if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious
| guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must
| believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The
| atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a
| couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me
| the way back to camp."_
|
| 0.
| https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf
| gwern wrote:
| Bacon did it better centuries before with his idols: "And
| where are the testimonies from the sailors who prayed to
| the gods but did not return safely?"
| adolph wrote:
| Is your reference to New Atlantis? In reading the below
| article [0] I'm not certain if Wallace was going for a
| similar point as Bacon. But maybe you have a different
| interpretation.
|
| Wallace develops his point after the story ". . . we also
| never end up talking about just where these individual
| templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come
| from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic
| orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his
| experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or
| shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture,
| like language. As if how we construct meaning were not
| actually a matter of personal, intentional choice."
|
| 0. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/francis-
| bacons-g...
| sambapa wrote:
| Real life is a hallucination
| jules22 wrote:
| Life being a hallucination is in fact one of the
| hallucinations that can be caused by meditation.
|
| These are called derealization hallucinations and are
| reported in meditators.
| kallistisoft wrote:
| Your're being to literal without being literal enough!
|
| The "reality" that we experience is a predictive _model_
| of what we believe is about to happen. This is required
| because it takes a quite some time[1] for stimulus to be
| received and processed by our bodies! If we didn 't have
| this predictive mechanism the universe would seem very
| strange indeed.
|
| But but _because_ we hallucinate our reality we get the
| illusion that what we experience is instantaneous in
| respect to the cause!
|
| [1] depending on the circuit it can take >100 msec for a
| nerve signal to reach the brain, and that's not
| accounting for the subsequent processing
| darthrupert wrote:
| One probably needs a bit of religiousity to be able to
| meditate as much as senior meditators do.
| johndhi wrote:
| Yeah, that makes sense to me (as a somewhat religious
| meditator).
|
| I disagree that a focus on something other than logic is
| problematic, though. I'd actually argue that all-logic-all-
| the-time is a sickness.
| nprateem wrote:
| I think you just need to find something in it that makes it
| worthwhile. Being a productive member of society is a
| choice, but not the only way someone could choose to spend
| their time. I think in Mastering the Core Teachings of the
| Buddha the author says once someone makes real progress
| (reaching what he calls arising and passing away) people
| often feel drawn to meditate full time and may join a
| monastery. I probably would if I had sufficiently
| transformative insights that made society's goals seem
| pointless. I mean, you don't still play the same games or
| have the same goals as when you were 5. This is a process
| of realisation and maturity.
| kagakuninja wrote:
| No, many of the meditation practices, such as Jhana and
| nirodha sammapati do not require any religious beliefs at
| all. Of course, the skeptic is unlikely to spend the vast
| amount of time needed to master such skills.
| haswell wrote:
| I think this is a misconception. I do think there's a
| greater likelihood that someone with religious tendencies
| will pursue a path like this, but the religiosity is not
| the key.
|
| Sam Harris is the polar opposite of religious, but is
| arguably one of the leading meditators/teachers in western
| culture right now. I'm as allergic to religion as someone
| can probably be, but I've gotten serious about meditation
| and have made it a central habit in my life, because I've
| found that it works.
|
| The ultimate goal is to bring the "here-ness" of the
| present moment first experienced in meditation into
| ordinary waking moments as much as possible. Sitting is
| just a focused form of training that helps condition the
| mind and improve focus. When I discovered how impactful
| sitting was for me, it formed the motivation for deepening
| the practice. No religiosity here.
|
| The non-religious/non-sectarian meditators are a rapidly
| growing group, and this is encouraging because the
| religious part was never necessary, and the perception that
| it is kept people like me from exploring this sooner.
| waterheater wrote:
| It seems you have a fairly narrow view of what
| constitutes a religion. Christian fundamentalism is
| particularly dogmatic and is one negative manifestation
| of religion which happens to be present in the West.
|
| From the book "God is Not One" by Stephen Prothero:
|
| "Philosopher of religion Ninian Smart has referred to
| these [shared religious] tendencies as the seven
| "dimensions" of religion: the ritual, narrative,
| experiential, institutional, ethical, doctrinal, and
| material dimensions.
|
| These family resemblances are just tendencies, however.
| Just as there are tall people in short families (none of
| the men in Michael Jordan's family was over six feet
| tall), there are religions that deny the existence of God
| and religions that get along just fine without creeds.
| Something is a religion when it shares enough of this DNA
| to belong to the family of religions. What makes the
| members of this family different (and themselves) is how
| they mix and match these dimensions. Experience is
| central in Daoism and Buddhism. Hinduism and Judaism
| emphasize the narrative dimension. The ethical dimension
| is crucial in Confucianism. The Islamic and Yoruba
| traditions are to a great extent about ritual. And
| doctrine is particularly important to Christians.
|
| The world's religious rivals are clearly related, but
| they are more like second cousins than identical twins.
| They do not teach the same doctrines. They do not perform
| the same rituals. And they do not share the same goals."
| haswell wrote:
| > _It seems you have a fairly narrow view of what
| constitutes a religion. Christian fundamentalism is
| particularly dogmatic and is one negative manifestation
| of religion which happens to be present in the West._
|
| The Christian dogmatic variety and its offshoots also
| happens to be quite popular. I understand the broader
| religious context after investing significant time and
| effort into trying to understand the phenomena of
| religion more generally. "The Evolution of God" is
| another interesting text in this category.
|
| The narrow view I'm representing here is the view that I
| spent most of my life holding, and the view that most
| people I know still hold. It's also the view that kept me
| from exploring Buddhism and meditation for many years.
| Religion had been a very destructive force in my life,
| and I'm not alone in this experience.
|
| My point in this thread is that associating meditation
| with religion is unnecessary, and can be a problem for
| people who hold this narrow view. My attempts to expand
| my own understanding seems pretty rare in my social
| circles, and when I added a meditation practice as
| something very central to my life, it was clear that
| people around me hold all sorts of assumptions and
| misconceptions about it (as I did), and those
| associations don't need to exist.
|
| "Real Christianity" - following the things that Jesus
| actually taught - is actually a pretty decent way to go
| about life. But this isn't what most people experience,
| and it colors their views of the whole endeavor
| accordingly.
| johndhi wrote:
| I suspect you just have a different definition of
| 'religious' than I do. Why are you so anti-religion?
| haswell wrote:
| That's possible! But that's also why I'm calling
| attention to it here. Religiosity is a negative signal
| for many folks, and I think it's important to debunk the
| need for religious thinking to gain the benefits of
| meditation.
|
| My stance comes from growing up in an extreme
| fundamentalist religious bubble. It set me up for a
| lifetime of unwinding unhealthy beliefs and patterns of
| thought, not the least of which was deep confusion about
| my self worth when hearing leaders of the church openly
| discuss stoning gay people as the truly appropriate
| consequence biblically. That kinda fucks with your head
| when you're coming to terms with your own sexuality (I'm
| bisexual). I've seen first hand what these systems of
| belief do to families and communities, and while I'm not
| one to claim that all religion is awful, I do think it's
| a bigger problem than help in the current social climate.
|
| The ideas of most religions also set up a fundamental
| misconception about our relationship with the
| world/environment (that we're separate from it) that is
| an existential threat to reaching some kind of
| environmental balance.
|
| I'm curious what religious means to you.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. It reminds me about a
| documentary I saw about Sinead o'Connor's life.
| johndhi wrote:
| Makes sense. Thanks for sharing!
|
| I personally think human beings need some kind of central
| spiritual belief or identity to feel
| satisfied/happy/whole. I'm not sure, but in your case, it
| almost sounds like you might be getting that identity
| from REJECTING the shitty religious bubble you grew up
| in. Sounds like you feel like you're on a good track and
| moving somewhere with your life -- even if it's away from
| religion. So I guess in my book, you're religious.
|
| >>I've seen first hand what these systems of belief do to
| families and communities, and while I'm not one to claim
| that all religion is awful, I do think it's a bigger
| problem than help in the current social climate.
|
| For me, this is really case-by-case, but my suspicion is
| that most religion is generally better for people than no
| religion -- so I suspect I disagree with you, but on
| limited data.
|
| >>The ideas of most religions also set up a fundamental
| misconception about our relationship with the
| world/environment (that we're separate from it) that is
| an existential threat to reaching some kind of
| environmental balance.
|
| Hadn't heard this one before - huh. I think there are a
| lot of reasons we burn coal but IMO the fact that we're
| religious isn't one of the main ones. To me, religion is
| a great path toward loving others and the world such that
| we'd want to conserve them and it.
| haswell wrote:
| Thanks for the perspective here as well. I do agree that
| people behave "religiously" more broadly, but I tend to
| think of this more as an overarching phenomena of
| meaning-making, with capital r "Religion" making up one
| major category of thought, and non-religious paths are
| distinct in that they don't bring the baggage of beliefs
| in deities/spirits/etc.
|
| So while I understand the philosophical framing of
| religion in broader terms, In the context of meditation,
| I tend to avoid the religious connotation entirely
| because it's overloaded and a lot of people immediately
| conflate the two.
|
| To draw a crude comparison, people go to the gym
| religiously. But people aren't likely to misinterpret
| that comment as meaning going to the gym is "Religious"
| in the sense that people understand religion in the
| cultural zeitgeist.
|
| > _Hadn 't heard this one before - huh. I think there are
| a lot of reasons we burn coal but IMO the fact that we're
| religious isn't one of the main ones. To me, religion is
| a great path toward loving others and the world such that
| we'd want to conserve them and it._
|
| Alan Watts explores this idea and I think it's worth
| considering. Most people in the west - especially anyone
| raised around Judeo-Christian beliefs - are taught that
| they are born _into_ this world, that they're separate
| from it, that they're here to have dominion over it, and
| that the real game is what comes after we die.
|
| Even though I left the Christian belief system behind, I
| had deep unexamined beliefs that everything would be
| fine, because how could it not be? If all of this was
| created, and I was made, it implies that something bigger
| is in control. This is at the heart of climate denialism
| in all of the circles I grew up in.
|
| The eastern framing is that we _grow out of_ this world.
| We're intrinsically part of it, an expression of it, and
| not separate. This brings a much different set of
| implications, and at least for me personally and based on
| what others have shared about their own experience,
| cultivating this view drastically altered my engagement
| with environmental issues, how I think about food,
| decisions I make about how I spend my time, etc.
|
| The point isn't that we burn coal because of religion,
| but that many popular religions instill a mindset that
| makes burning coal not a problem.
|
| > _To me, religion is a great path toward loving others
| and the world such that we 'd want to conserve them and
| it._
|
| I love that this is your view, and I wish that more
| people held it. Unfortunately I've been exposed to the
| toxic alternative almost exclusively, spread across about
| a dozen churches throughout my youth.
|
| Moving beyond the message of love for a moment, I think
| religious organizations need to carefully examine the
| 2nd/3rd order effects of certain core beliefs.
|
| "Don't look up" seems like an example of the ultimate
| failure mode of instilling a sense of "God will take care
| of things" into the generation that has to contend with
| the fact that this is not true.
|
| I should add that I say all of this while somewhat
| lamenting what has been lost in the breakdown of the
| church. A sense of community and belonging connected to a
| notion of something greater than oneself is sorely
| missing in modern society. I hope that better options
| emerge, or that major religious organizations can
| rehabilitate their image and mission effectively.
| swayvil wrote:
| Meditating for 30 years.
|
| "Psychedelic experiences", superhuman, supernatural, crazy
| magic out-of-matrix stuff. Ya. It's real.
| mjthrowaway1 wrote:
| Question: have you sat for a retreat? The reason I'm asking is
| I'm curious if it's a "dosage" issue.
|
| I sat for a 10 day goenka retreat and was shocked at how
| psychedelic the experience was for how little warning I was
| given.
| kagakuninja wrote:
| Many schools, including Goenka downplay or ignore the risks
| from meditation.
|
| Goenka is infamous in the serious meditation community, as
| they do not use qualified teachers in their retreats. The
| teaching is in the videos, the guides may not be able to help
| you if you start to freak out.
| russelldjimmy wrote:
| I've been for a 10 day Goenka retreat and did not experience
| anything psychedelic. However I did experience much calmness
| and continue to practice the techniques to this day. They
| have changed my life and made me a much more patient, kind,
| and reflective person.
| Jimpulse wrote:
| The jhanas were describes in the suttas. You can verify it
| yourself. Leigh Brasington has a lot of resources making them
| more accessible, https://www.lionsroar.com/entering-the-
| jhanas/.
|
| I would agree that the jhanas are hallucinations and initially
| not subtle whatsoever. By repeated exploration of the jhanas
| you learn that the states are wholly dependent on many things
| not under your control. Application of these states in real
| life is a whole different animal compared to simply being able
| to access them as well.
|
| * Edit: If you do decide to dive in, the first jhana can be
| very disorienting. It's definitely a good idea seek help in
| integrating the experience. Feel free to message me, and I can
| help or at least point you in the right direction!
| pegasus wrote:
| There are scientists who are weighing these questions. For
| example, see Thomas Metzinger's latest research on these kind
| of states presented here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f4ykI9har8 (and in the
| followup video)
|
| Another good resource is the book "Zen and the Brain".
|
| And this interview with Daniel Ingram mentions some fascinating
| research on his own capacities developed in meditation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APOKB59pVpE
| rc-1140 wrote:
| I think that there needs to be a separation of meditation's
| tangible benefits from both the religious associations, such as
| seeking nirvana or psychedelic experiences, and the social &
| financial ones stated in this article that either view meditation
| as a genuine secret superpower or are see it as a backdrop to
| take advantage of people simply trying to find mental peace.
|
| My belief is that the idea Kabat-Zinn had, which is paraphrased
| in the article, is good. "Pay attention to the present moment, on
| purpose, without judgment" - stop, take some time to reflect on
| your feelings, process them. Maybe just take some time and not
| "think", where you give yourself some away time from the world.
| The anecdata from countless people seems to vaguely support the
| notion that this view on meditation works; I wouldn't call it
| concrete by any means, but it's as solid of a scientific start as
| one can get with something like meditation.
|
| Software developers and those adjacent love to tout acronyms like
| "Keep It Simple, Stupid", why does the buck stop at software? The
| further one gets into the article, the more outlandish things
| get: electronic stimulation, microdosing various drugs (mentioned
| a lot on HN, which I've always found disturbing), cranial
| ultrasounds, even the stock photo of the lady meditating with a
| VR headset?
|
| At the end of the piece, Laukkonen provides the following
| rhetorical question: "[W]hat is liberating about chasing
| different states of consciousness, and not enjoying the one that
| you have?" I think a lot of the comments here and the research
| presented towards the end of the article are in too deep in
| either side and are unable to see the forest for the trees.
| hackingthelema wrote:
| > We have ideas like biological taxonomies and genetics that
| provide a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding and
| exploration of universally relevant fields. "We need that for the
| deep end of spiritual experience," he said. "What works as well
| in Riyadh, as Rome, as Rio, as rural Alabama? What's the
| functional, scalable essence?"
|
| That was the purpose comparative tools like correspondence
| charts[1] were intended for; Aleister Crowley and Allan Bennett
| put a bunch of effort of surveying all spiritual experience they
| could learn about, followed by tabulating it all and trying to
| pattern match. The result was a shared basis for cross-cultural
| understanding, though the actual form of it could be heavily
| criticised.
|
| > Advanced meditation for everyone?
|
| > "My hope is that ultimately, this work will contribute to
| bringing advanced meditation out of the monastery," Sacchet said,
| describing its "incredible promise for moving beyond addressing
| mental health issues, toward helping people thrive."
|
| That was also Crowley's primary goal: to show that anyone at all
| could attain, and easily, while living a normal life, and thought
| that it would help them thrive. He stated this over and over
| again.
|
| I love that we're finally making effort towards the thought he
| had, that
|
| > Diverse as these statements [on mystical experiences] are at
| first sight, all agree in announcing an experience of the class
| which fifty years ago would have been called supernatural, to-day
| may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a proper
| name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred.
| (Book 4, Part 1; 1911[2])
|
| though it's 70 years later than he thought. I'd love to be
| involved in work like this, both as an occultist/experienced
| meditator, and as a computer scientist / software developer,
| though I don't know how to get involved. Maybe by contacting the
| EPRC listed? :)
|
| May all attain!
|
| [1] http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Tree_of_Life:777
|
| [2] https://sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/aba1.htm
| [deleted]
| epiccoleman wrote:
| > Given that wealthy countries like the US aren't exactly riding
| trend lines toward new peaks of mental health (depression rates
| in American adults are at an all-time high, while young people
| appear in the grips of a mental health crisis), scalable ways of
| not just mindfully soothing, but completely re-creating
| psychological experiences for the better should set off sirens of
| general, scientific, and funding intrigue.
|
| I was all ready to criticize this, but the article pretty much
| sums up my feelings:
|
| > Critics call it "McMindfulness," a capitalist perversion of
| meditation that deals with stress by focusing inward on the
| breath, rather than outward on the social structures that cause
| so much of that stress.
|
| I'm all for finding ways for people to improve their mental
| health and become more resilient to their suffering. But I can't
| help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and
| psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom
| rather than a cause.
|
| There's also a part of me that resists the "capitalization" of
| these tools for mental introspection. It feels, in some way, to
| be missing the point. That said, I'm not sure that resistance is
| correctly targeted. Why shouldn't someone be able to make money
| by providing people with tools to improve their lives? Is that
| thought a silly purity spiral, leaving scraps of potential well-
| being on the table just because the packaging is too slick?
|
| But still, there's something about it that feels off to me, as
| though there's something that's lost when we package all this
| ancient, hard-won wisdom into a smartphone app whose
| notifications to you will sit right next to the latest Elon Musk
| tweet.
| lcuff wrote:
| > I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in
| meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's
| treating a symptom rather than a cause.
|
| I agree, but the question emerges "what is treatable?" Many of
| the thousands of causes of stress in modern life can't be
| changed by an individual: I can't unelect politicians I
| disagree with, clean up the air where I live, or make the roads
| I travel significantly less clogged with traffic. But I can
| change my reactions to these. Thich Nhat Hanh taught people 'to
| consider every red traffic light a Bodhisattva, teaching us to
| "stop and be here now"'. An individual can treat SOME causes:
| Disconnect from Twitter and nightly TV news, and if that's what
| you mean, I agree with you even more strongly. But for larger
| realities, "the social structures that cause so much of the
| stress", no immediate solutions are available to the
| individual. Stress reduction is a good way to go.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Many of the thousands of causes of stress in modern life
| can 't be changed by an individual_
|
| The counterpoint is essentially that if people engaged in
| social outward-looking _collective action_ , as opposed to
| solitary inward-looking meditation, then you _can_ change the
| world -- as has been demonstrated countless times.
|
| You certainly can unelect politicians in the next election.
| Environmental movements have made gigantic progress towards
| cleaning up the air. And congestion pricing is starting to
| spread as the solution for cities to reduce traffic, and it
| works.
|
| As an individual you probably won't be the single tipping
| point. But collective action happens because lots of
| individuals work together, and it _requires_ all of those
| individuals. But it requires more than changing your
| reactions, it requires collective action.
| babymetal wrote:
| Interesting that this replies to a comment quoting Thich
| Nhat Hanh, who practiced "engaged Buddhism" and whose name
| means "one action" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADc
| h_Nh%E1%BA%A5t_H%E1%B...).
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Where do people get the energy to take outward collective
| action if they are bogged down by stress and frivolous
| thoughts? I see meditation and/or psychedelics as the only
| way to get people to do pro-societal things, above
| individualistic things that are not thoughtful uses of
| time.
| adolph wrote:
| > You certainly can unelect politicians in the next
| election.
|
| Unfortunately this is not literally true in that an
| election puts a different politician in the place of the
| former one. This is how most democracies are inconsistent
| and don't allow people to choose anarchy.
| lcuff wrote:
| > The counterpoint is essentially that if people engaged in
| social outward-looking collective action, as opposed to
| solitary inward-looking meditation, then you can change the
| world -- as has been demonstrated countless times.
|
| Yes, it has been demonstrated, and yes it requires
| collective action, but no that doesn't mean I (necessarily)
| have the time, energy or skill to act effectively to change
| any one, let alone dozens or thousands of these stressors,
| even if they're enormously stressful to me currently. The
| 'bang for the buck' in my world is to address the stressors
| at the personal level, and hope/intend to contribute to
| some worthy cause as well.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > The counterpoint is essentially that if people engaged in
| social outward-looking collective action, as opposed to
| solitary inward-looking meditation, then you can change the
| world -- as has been demonstrated countless times.
|
| Why do these two actions contradict each other? People can
| do both. Gandhi was not only a community organizer who
| affected broad, collective action but also practiced
| meditation.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| > Stress reduction is a good way to go
|
| I totally agree, I think the thing I find discomforting is
| the apparent conflict between the systems that exacerbate the
| "problem" and the fact that a meditation app, medicalized
| psychedelic trip, or scientific research into either seems
| somehow _part_ of that system. It feels like instead of
| becoming tools for liberation from daily suffering or for
| deepening the understanding of one 's consciousness, these
| tools are being subsumed and defanged by the same system that
| makes us need them.
|
| It's some of the same feeling as seeing businesses embrace
| social justice culture - without even getting into the whole
| "woke" debate, I'll just say it often feels weird to see
| these big machines of capitalism embrace these causes. It
| feels cynical - rather than "this is a good cause, we will
| support it" it feels like "people are into social justice,
| this is good marketing".
|
| But again, maybe that's OK. If Disney embraces LGBT causes
| for cynical reasons to sell movies, but instrumentally
| advances rights or attitudes in doing so - or if Headspace
| makes a ton of money, but genuinely improves someone's
| internal experience - or if Joe Rogan convinces someone to
| try psychedelic therapy, and that person is able to work
| through some issues and be better for their family - it's
| hard to find an argument that these are bad things.
|
| But they still make me feel _weird_.
| beardedmoose wrote:
| > Critics call it "McMindfulness"
|
| I am both amused and disgusted by this term. Why does
| everything nowadays have to generate profit or else it's
| worthless? I'd like to get off this capitalist roller coaster
| please.
|
| As an adult with ADHD meditation is helping me greatly with
| some of my executive functions. That being said I don't use any
| apps as I despise my cell phone in general; It's just a
| constant stream of micro-aggressions and distractions.
| csallen wrote:
| The world isn't so bad. You might just need a perspective
| shift. A huge number of regular human activities and
| interactions don't generate profit, and yet aren't considered
| worthless. Go play an intramural sport, or take a walk with a
| friend, or read a book to a niece or nephew, or spark up a
| chat at a coffee shop, or hell, comment on Hacker News.
|
| The vast number of capitalist activities and goings on aren't
| so bad either. I look out my window and walk through the
| world, and I see a society chock full of people working to
| provide useful things and services to others in society who
| find it valuable. Which is amazing. And it's profit that
| enables people to do this much of the time.
| d3ckard wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I personally think it's about the world becoming more and more
| uncertain. Everybody is supposed to switch careers a bunch of
| times during lifetime, everybody is expected to push their
| limits, everybody is expected to stay on top ever changing
| social norms.
|
| It's just too much pressure. There is very little average Joe
| can do to have a fairly sure good living. While the system
| _has_ a lot of opportunities for talented people, just getting
| by on working hard, being punctual, trustworthy and such, is
| increasingly hard.
|
| As lord Vetinari says, people mostly don't want tomorrow to be
| better - they want it to be the same. It's more and more
| unlikely nowadays.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Yup, I've pretty much become a hermit because I can't be
| bothered to keep up with the ever-changing social norms
| (which if you breach, you get the harshest consequences
| including social exclusion, public shaming and
| "consequences"), ever-changing popular culture and ever-
| changing everything.
| samstave wrote:
| The morbid, but critically true, reality is that there are
| different humans. There are Takers, Givers, Neutral.
|
| We are ruled by Takers.
|
| (service to self, as opposed to service of others)
|
| Which is a core tenant of meditation (service to others)
|
| We as a Humanity will not heal until we can kill the Takers
| Archetype in the psyche.
|
| Thus why meditation helps.
|
| But literally - the Takers who are the "they" or "TPTB" are so
| fn broken, that changing that psychological worm is extremely
| difficult - and its a self-defending psychosis that spans
| generations and is hard to qwell.
|
| -
|
| EDIT because of the 'posting too fast rule (lame)' ;;
|
| --
|
| Mayan word ;; "In Lak'ech"
|
| ' _I am another Yourself_ '
| deprecative wrote:
| We like takers. We hate givers.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| > Which is a core tenant of meditation (service to others)
|
| It always seemed the opposite to me. One meditates for ones
| self.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| >> Which is a core tenant of meditation (service to others)
|
| > It always seemed the opposite to me. One meditates for
| ones self.
|
| And in the process, like in Kant's practical reason, we
| recognize not only our selves, but see other selves like us
| in the world. There's no contradiction
| malauxyeux wrote:
| With the caveat that any discussion of meditation is
| fraught with "no true Scotsmans" and hypotheticals ...
|
| Something that the American Theravadin Thanissaro Bhikkhu
| says is that meditation is "for my own benefit and the
| benefit of those around me."
|
| E.g., during a disagreement with someone, you remain calm
| and avoid giving the other person a "piece of your mind".
|
| The other person doesn't have to deal with the "piece of
| your mind", which is to their benefit.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| The MAPS conference (Multidisciplinary Association for
| Psychedelic Studies) was protested by indigenous people for
| colonizing their medicine practices. Their point was about what
| you're touching on here:
|
| These tools were developed to address the problems of the
| world, not to play into the individualization of collective
| harm. They were for helping the world, not simply self.
|
| A great test of whether or not these methods are colonized:
| does one come away with the ability to envision decolonial
| anticapitalist ways forward and then choose to enact them?
|
| If not, probably colonized medicine.
|
| Decontextualized wisdom is a form of ignorance and typically
| leads to harm.
| aszantu wrote:
| Ppl with mental disorders shouldn't meditate more than 20 min/day
| Jimpulse wrote:
| To maybe add a helpful analogy. Some meditative states aren't
| very different that an intense dose of psychedelics. Not to
| mention the person is "dosed" without expecting it.
|
| If it's done unsupervised or without a support system such as a
| guide or teacher, the experience can be traumatic.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| k__ wrote:
| How come?
|
| I had the impression, people with mental disorders would profit
| the most from it.
| nick__m wrote:
| Mostly because longer meditation practice is more frequently
| associated with something called the dark night of the soul
| https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-
| dark-...
| notfed wrote:
| "Mental disorders" is overly broad. It sounds like we're
| talking schizophrenia here.
| wussboy wrote:
| Why? How would you know?
| clsec wrote:
| Citation please!
| jossclimb wrote:
| Not OP, but it happened to me. Started meditation to deal
| with anxiety and the introspection that came with it, ended
| up with me on the verge of a complete breakdown. I started
| off doing Sam Harris and then progressed to doing an hour or
| more each day. I had some moments of insight and then hit
| some dark night of the soul which wrecked me, I was close to
| admitting myself to hospital for psychological help.
|
| What fixed me was finally reading Breath by James Nestor and
| how you breath has a direct impact on the parasympathetic /
| sympathetic nervous system. I learned to take long slow
| breaths into the diaphragm and too nose breath all of the
| time. Basically my vagus nerve was fried from burn out and
| being in the fight flight mode of the parasympathetic system,
| as opposed to the 'rest and digest' chilled nature of
| sympathetic nervous system.
|
| My own view now, is that mediation should not be attempted
| (at least by anyone with mental issues) until the
| parasympathetic / sympathetic system is balanced and stress
| is significantly reduced. This should start with the breath.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-
| power...
| DrThunder wrote:
| I feel like you did the wrong sort of meditation for
| anxiety. Mindfulness and breathing where you see the
| thought come and let it go is preferred for anxiety
| sufferers. You should not be following your anxious
| thoughts.
|
| I could see how it would affect you negatively if you tried
| to follow all your anxious thoughts and delve into their
| "meaning". The goal for some with high anxiety ought to be
| lessening its meaning. You should just see it as another
| emotion with a neutral (or even helpful at times) stance.
| You don't lessen anxiety by giving it MORE attention. That
| seems like it would train your brain to think it's way too
| important and you'd get stuck in an anxiety loop.
| jules22 wrote:
| The thing is, these "No true Scotsman" justifications
| only come out later.
|
| Despite significant literature on meditation psychosis,
| meditation is promoted as a completely safe practice and
| risks are almost never mentioned to new practitioners.
| uoaei wrote:
| TBH all I'm seeing are straw man arguments from you. It
| sounds like you have not given any time to a truly good-
| faith exploration of these methods, instead leaning on
| vague impressions based on only the most incidental and
| bottom-of-the-barrel evidence.
| neves wrote:
| Paid maternity leave and 30 vacations, staples of any developed
| country, would do more for mental health in USA than any research
| in meditation.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Exactly. Please see:
|
| Buddhism as the Opiate of the (downwardly-mobile) Middle Class:
| The Case of Thanissaro Bhikkhu
|
| https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/2013/07/10/buddhism-as-th...
| amriksohata wrote:
| I find the use of the term "mindfulness" so frustrating.
| Meditation, or jnana yog is simply one of the types of yoga
| described in the Gita and Vedas, which was adopted by BUddhism,
| then by the West to manage their hectic lifestyles.
|
| Its purpose is completely different, its purpose is to condition
| the body to help understand THAT YOU ARE NOT THE BODY and connect
| yourself with that higher purpose. Thats the whole purpose.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| > "My hope is that ultimately, this work will contribute to
| bringing advanced meditation out of the monastery," Sacchet said,
| describing its "incredible promise for moving beyond addressing
| mental health issues, toward helping people thrive."
|
| What exactly is considered "advanced meditation"? I've been
| meditating for years, but don't do it for hours each day or go on
| extended silent retreats. I've read many practices too and I'm
| not aware of anything "advanced" outside of just spending more
| time and revolving more of your life around it. 10-15 minutes a
| day already does wonders for me.
| curo wrote:
| It seems they're using the term to distinguish "meditation for
| emotional regulation" (v1 research) from "meditation for
| itself" (v2 research)
| gdubs wrote:
| There's a lot of different practices, though in a lot of
| schools that have practiced meditation for centuries,
| "Mindfulness" style meditation - what's largely practiced in
| the west - is just one aspect. The Dalai Lama, for instance,
| discuss at length in his books deeper phases of meditation that
| focus on things like "emptiness" [1] or compassion, loving-
| kindness, etc. Someone who's more knowledgable can correct me
| if I'm wrong, but the 'mindfulness' type meditation is almost
| like a warmup for these other forms of meditation.
|
| 1: Emptiness meditation, best I can describe it, is sort of
| like meditating on how something like a "Chair" falls apart
| under scrutiny. We perceive it as a solid object, yet when you
| analyze its parts, it tends to 'fall apart', and what makes it
| a "Chair" becomes hard to pin down. You start to see it more as
| a coming together of many things, each of which also tends to
| fall apart under scrutiny. Worth pointing out that this
| 'emptiness' is not the same as nihilism.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Ah I see. So the subject/practice of your meditation is what
| is considered advanced. i.e. metta, vipassana, samatha, etc.
| I read the entire article and it hardly spoke about what is
| considered "advanced" from the monasteries.
| Jimpulse wrote:
| There are "attainments" or maps. A lot of teachers don't
| communicate them since it can be a bit of a trap, since
| striving to reach an attainments can prevent you from
| reaching it.
|
| More contemporary dharma teachers have been willing to go
| into it. The jhanas is one such map.
|
| As an intermediary step simply being able to stay with your
| breath for an hour while still being aware/not falling
| asleep is a good goal.
| asimovfan wrote:
| http://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-studies
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| A few years ago I tried the very first Headspace meditation
| courses, back when Headspace was pretty new.
|
| It was great! I loved it. I really felt like the narrator was
| knowledgeable and had something to teach me. His explanations for
| the process actually made sense, and weren't woo-woo mumbo jumbo.
| Perhaps it is all placebo effect, but even if so, the effect
| worked for me perfectly.
|
| The problem is, as the industry exploded, it became harder and
| harder to find meditation guides that have that quality.
|
| Even on Headspace, which I used to love, there's only so much
| they could provide, before the demand necessitated putting out
| meditation guides that are more and more ridiculous ("meditation
| for doing the dishes", "meditation for walking the dog", etc).
|
| And I haven't found any guides that help me to the degree that
| the original Headspace ones did. Would love it if anyone has any
| recommendations.
|
| (of course, you might say "you don't need a guide once you know
| how to do it", but personally I find it really hard without some
| recorded guide helping me along)
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| I use the Headspace guided meditation (30 mins) 2-3 times every
| day. Did that not work for you? It's amazing how hard they make
| it just to find the basic guided meditation. Not pushing
| anything spiritual or ways of thinking the guide prefers. Just
| experiencing the present.
| dimal wrote:
| If you find it hard without some recorded guide helping you
| along, that's exactly why you should consider meditating
| without a guide. Guided meditation is like riding a bike with
| training wheels. You don't fall, but you're not really riding a
| bike.
|
| You learn to meditate by trying and failing over and over, and
| in the process you learn your own mind. You learn all its
| tricks. And that's the point. It can suck for a long time. It
| can be a grind. But eventually, you stabilize.
| yldedly wrote:
| The Brightmind app is excellent, and you can adjust the
| duration of the guided meditations.
| fredrikholm wrote:
| Waking Up by Sam Harris.
|
| It's more insight than mindfulness, but remains secular. Loads
| of content from big names.
|
| Highly recommended.
| 5cott0 wrote:
| Huairang asked [Mazu], "Why are you sitting in meditation?"
| [Mazu] replied, "Because I want to become a Buddha." Thereupon
| Hauirang took a brick and started to polish it in front of
| [Mazu]'s hermitage. [Mazu] asked him, "Why are you polishing that
| brick?" Huairang replied, "Because I want to make a mirror."
| [Mazu] asked, "How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?"
| Huairang said, "If I cannot make a mirror by polishing a brick,
| how can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation?" [Mazu]
| asked, "Then what shall I do?" Huairang asked, "When an ox-
| carriage stops moving, do you hit the carriage or the ox?" [Mazu]
| had no reply. Huairang continued, "Are you practicing to sit in
| meditation, or practicing to sit like a Buddha? As to sitting in
| meditation, meditation is neither sitting nor lying. As to
| sitting like a Buddha, the Buddha has no fixed form. In the non-
| abiding Dharma, one should neither grasp nor reject. If you try
| to sit like a Buddha, you are just killing the Buddha. If you
| attach to the form of sitting, you will never realize the
| principle." Upon hearing this [Mazu] felt as if he had tasted
| ghee.
| 5cott0 wrote:
| Keep whipping that cart!
| triyambakam wrote:
| In Hinduism, meditation is not just a calming practice, but an
| actual movement toward God. And in the tradition I follow, it is
| also not for beginners. Basic discipline -- the following of the
| Yamas (restraints of non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing,
| etc.) -- is recommended first.
| jimmychoozyx wrote:
| I like to consider Meditation outside of any religion
| personally.
|
| Meditation helps to calm the nervous system. Counting to 10 (1
| count per inhale + exhale), or simply focusing on each inhale &
| exhale, or repeating a word or multi-word mantra, is what I do
| personally.
|
| It's especially nice in a Sauna with some mystical atmospheric
| music (such as Anugama, one of my favorites for meditation).
|
| I have found that it improves my ability to concentrate
| (especially useful when studying or working) and to calm myself
| in stressful situations.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Interesting point. There are obvious connections from the Yamas
| to the eight-fold path of Buddhism: Right View, Right Resolve,
| Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort,
| Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.
|
| I'm not aware of an explicit ordering. But the other seven
| steps complement and deepen the meditation.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path
| hackingthelema wrote:
| Relevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%81ja_yoga#Compari
| son_with...
| flatline wrote:
| You find all kinds of approaches in the Eastern traditions.
| Buddha rejected the eternalism and theism of the Hindus, but
| most of his teachings were really quite similar. The yoga
| sutras emphasized asana prior to the practice of dhyana. Go
| further east and some of the chan/zen schools rejected all
| formal teaching methods such as ethical precepts and sutra
| studies in favor of meditation alone. This latter is where the
| modern mindfulness movement found its primary inspiration.
| waterheater wrote:
| Exactly. How many Westerners are trying to meditate without a
| conscious belief in a Higher Power, an Infinite Creator, God,
| or such? I wonder if there may be negative spiritual effects by
| employing meditation without seeking closeness with divinity.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| We've stripped off the religious part and rebranded it as
| mindfulness. There have been reports of having positive
| impact on mental health.
| sn9 wrote:
| Atheism isn't a solely Western thing.
|
| Not all meditative traditions require belief in a God.
|
| See Hindu atheism for example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_atheism
| DrThunder wrote:
| Eh, my guess is it just isn't quite as effective. Belief in a
| higher power makes things a lot easier to accept and
| meditation in many aspects is the practice of accepting
| emotions and thoughts.
|
| I would also say prayer like you see in Abrahamic religions
| is its own type of meditation. You also enter a sort of
| meditative state in sports where you kind of feel in the
| moment and "in the flow" where there's not God involved... at
| least not consciously.
| waterheater wrote:
| >Eh, my guess is it just isn't quite as effective.
|
| I suppose that would be less guess and more...belief. :)
|
| Meditation is not just about accepting emotions and
| thoughts; you can get such by talking with a close friend
| or visiting a mental health counselor. Many people claim to
| receive new insight or guidance amidst the mental
| stillness. Two common explanations is that it's either God
| or your Higher Self sending a message.
|
| Prayer is absolutely a form of meditation, arguably a more
| advanced form. If meditation fosters observation of self
| and others, prayer takes that observation and combines it
| with will to cause action.
|
| What you're ultimately getting at is the difference between
| "going through the motions" and proper meditation and
| prayer. Most spiritual systems discuss a "right" way to
| meditate or pray which focuses less on the external actions
| and more on your internal desire.
| akasakahakada wrote:
| Little google search I found this guy.
|
| https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2018/2/18/...
|
| To conclude that, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the "scientist" quoted in the
| article is just pure pseudoscience.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| What? A random blog post that is nothing more than a word salad
| of the blogger's _filenames_ for their notes on Kabat-Zinn 's
| book was enough to make you conclude that he's not a real
| scientist and just peddling pseudoscience?
|
| Sounds like your own standard of evidence isn't much higher
| than pseudoscience.
| akasakahakada wrote:
| You should click into the category and see there is literally
| ~100 blog posts about the issue.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| Oh, I did, because I assumed there surely had to be more to
| your critique than just this list of filenames.
|
| I only scanned a few posts, but it appears to be an old
| anonymous blog with disjointed musings about why the author
| finds mindfulness "annoying". I didn't see anything to
| convince me that this is worth digging into further, like
| for example: a really cogent argument, or some research, or
| any kind of background in anything remotely related, etc.
| So I'm still unclear on what made you conclude from this
| random blog that Kabat-Zinn is just peddling pseudoscience.
|
| It honestly sounds like you're just anti-mindfulness, which
| isn't inherently a bad thing. I don't think we should have
| sacred cows, and there may be valid anti-mindfulness
| arguments from serious people out there. But drawing
| conclusions based on this particular blog makes it seem
| like you're not interested in figuring out what's true (ie,
| science) as much as finding justification to support your
| pre-existing position, regardless of the evidence (ie,
| pseudoscience).
| carabiner wrote:
| He's got a PhD from MIT in molecular biology. So nothing to do
| with meditation or neuroscience. But he was a scientist for a
| while. Now he's emeritus.
| jules22 wrote:
| Brian Josephson won his Nobel and then got into
| transcendental meditation. He was talking pseudoscience
| since. It does not take away from him that he is a smart man,
| but it seems to have effected his rationality quite a bit.
|
| I know some meditating academics. They all have this tendency
| to irrationality.
| carabiner wrote:
| I think you can compare meditation to the field of
| "medicine" or "diet." There are cranks and pseudoscience in
| there too, but I wouldn't write off the whole field as
| irrational. It's got a semantic problem too. If more people
| called it "mindfulness" or "focus practice" that would be
| more accurate for how most normal, secular people meditate.
| Maybe even calling it meditation vs. alternative meditation
| (like alternative medicine). LOTS of different forms of
| meditation, and not all I think are worthwhile. Some are
| better than others.
|
| TM seems like a total scam/fake though, just like
| chiropractic, astrology, juice cleanses etc.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Thank you. Jon Kabat-Zinn is a con artist and wanna be guru. It
| is easy to be calm when you are not homeless and disabled
| living with a chronic illness.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| The science giveth and the science taketh away then I guess. Is
| it scientific to see if he has helped anyone with chronic pain?
| dottjt wrote:
| I think a key point that a lot of people miss is that meditation
| is just a single practice. The goal is mindfulness.
|
| This is to say that you can meditate mindlessly, as you can
| meditate mindfully. You can also be mindful without meditation,
| although it's a lot more difficult to do so.
| 3abiton wrote:
| What is your recommendation gateway to meditation?
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Just be aware of everything, without resistance.
| everydayDonut wrote:
| I've practiced mindfulness and meditation for many years until I
| found "The Tao of Pooh", which, if you're not familiar, outlines
| the basic tenets of taoism. It has completely changed me and made
| me feel whole for the first time in my life, and I don't have to
| practice anything to achieve it.
|
| Early on in my life I was drawn in by proverbs and other pieces
| of wisdom, in an attempt to fill in the gaps of what I thought
| was missing, to fix myself and make me feel whole. Then
| mindfulness presented itself to me and it gave me a feeling that
| everything just worked - it was simple and applied to everything;
| but I couldn't hold onto it. I wanted to just be, and be ok. Non-
| dual mindfulness felt like the answer to that problem, but while
| it sounded right in theory, I still felt that it was something I
| had to achieve or maintain.
|
| When I read The Tao of Pooh, everything clicked for me. I could
| be myself without trying. My whole life has become open-ended. It
| also helped me to understand something that always nagged at me -
| how could some people appear to be mindful from birth, without
| having read anything about mindfulness? - People who seemed to
| always grow and learn in a way that upends their nature
| continually (nature vs. nurture?), while I felt that there was
| always something I was missing.
|
| The answer(for me) was 2 things -an ability to see myself as
| whole, despite the capacity for personal growth; -and
| complete/lazy faith in my intuition.
|
| (Intuition being this kind of thing that everyone is born with -
| and so in my view, the only thing that could transcend the
| differences between every living being. The differences in access
| to teachings, wisdom, philosophies, religion, culture, etc.)
|
| I'm curious if anyone here has felt similar with
| meditation/mindfulness, or has had experience with both that and
| taoism and what that journey was like for you.
| joe__f wrote:
| Zen is also partly based on Taoism. I recommend Zen Mind,
| Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki.
| dorchadas wrote:
| Sadly the Tao of Pooh does _not_ outline the basic tenets of
| Daoism. As van Norden says in the chapter on the Daodejing in
| his _Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy_ :
|
| > The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff ... is a charming work that
| has attained a wide readership. There is nothing wrong with
| enjoying it for itself. But it reveals much more about how the
| Daodejing as been appropriated to illustrate Western
| Romanticism than it does about the Daodejing itself. (See later
| in this section for more on Romanticism).
|
| and, later on, here's what he has to say about the
| appropriation of the Daodejing and Daoism for Romanticism:
|
| > We see a similar trend in the West. In particular,
| contemporary Westerners often project onto the Daodejing the
| assumptions of Romanticism. In reaction against the emphasis on
| reason that was characteristic of the Enlightenment,
| Romanticism championed the importance and wisdom of one's
| passions. But the dichotomy of reason and passion is Western,
| not Chinese, and the individualism characteristic in some forms
| of Romanticism is quite alien to the Daodejing. Consequently,
| we should be on the lookout for how Romantic preconceptions can
| distort our appreciation of the text.
|
| Sadly, there's not many _good_ non-academic introductions to
| Daoism out there, and the most popular translation - Stephen
| Mitchell 's - was done by someone who can't even _read
| Classical Chinese_ , but thought his _Zen_ teaching was a
| 'good enough' guide to allow him to translate it.
|
| -----------
|
| All this is to say I'm glad the book worked for you, and helped
| you find peace. It's just not Daoism (nor is Alan Watts!)
| opportune wrote:
| What would you recommend as an introduction to Daoism, even
| if academic?
|
| I am not an expert on the subject but IMO Taoism has a very
| similar phenomenon to Buddhism (and indeed all religions or
| popular philosophies really) in that the "classical",
| original, core teachings are pretty different from the
| organized later movements under the same name. So the context
| - philosophical, historical, sociological, spiritual - in
| which you approach the subject and whether you're doing so on
| the basis of the original thing or its more organized
| movements might make it so people interested in it under
| different contexts both think the other is ignorant or
| incorrect.
|
| I haven't read the Tao of Pooh myself but I want to point
| this out because I think it's possible to understand Taoism
| (the classical philosophy) and concepts like Wu-wei without
| necessarily knowing anything about Neidan and or "Taoist
| Magic"
| everydayDonut wrote:
| Wow thank you for this! I suppose that's what the answer
| could have been for me, a kind of bridging between my
| lifelong reverence and pursuit of reason, and the passion or
| intuition that I didn't understand in others or myself.
|
| I'm still early into reading the James Legge translation, but
| I've heard that there are many interpretations of the
| original. Is the tao of pooh not even close to daoism then?
| stryan wrote:
| Not OP and it's been a long time since I've read the Tao of
| Pooh, but from what I recall it's alright, but it really
| doesn't cover much of the real meat of Taoism. Much like
| Alan Watts, it provides an interesting philosophy, possibly
| even a helpful one, but it's not Daoism. Like watching an
| American re-make of a foreign movie :)
|
| I'd be a bit wary of older translations[0] and try to get a
| reputable new one if you can. I recommend either Thomas
| Cleary's[1] or Victor Mairs; the latter was made based off
| the oldest copy of the Tao Te Ching we've found so far and
| includes a lot of interesting historical background.
|
| If you want a more historical look I recommend Early Daoist
| Scriptures by Stephen Bokenkamp, which is fascinating if a
| little dry. There's also The Taoist Body by Kristofer
| Schipper which goes into how Taoism is practiced in modern
| Taiwan: Kristofer was actually ordained as a Taoism priest
| and learned many rituals supposedly wiped out in China
| during the Cultural Revolution.
|
| [0] I think Legge's translation is actually alright, but it
| was really a crap-shoot back then. Infamously, Richard
| Wilhelms translation of "The Secret of the Golden Flower"
| is said by some to be so badly done as to in some parts
| convey the exact opposite of what the text says.
|
| [1] Thomas Clearly (who was also the biggest critic of
| Wilhelms translation, for context) published a collection
| of his TTC and Chuang Tzu translations as one book, The
| Essential Tao, if you're looking to read the latter too. I
| highly recommend it
| everydayDonut wrote:
| I like the movie metaphor, some turn out to be very
| different from the original and I don't always like that.
|
| This seems like a great list you've compiled, thank you.
| The deeper dives you've recommended sound very
| interesting too. I think I'll bookmark this
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| I quite liked Thomas Merton's translations.
| stryan wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Thomas Merton! He
| was a truly wise man and I have several of his books
| (highly recommend Zen and the Birds of Appetite and The
| Wisdom of the Desert!) and enjoy his "The Way of Chuang
| Tzu ". But Merton wasn't a translator and was instead
| arranging others translations, as well as interpreting
| passages in his own way. So while I'd certainly recommend
| his books I wanted to stay within the bounds of direct
| translations.
| carabiner wrote:
| Reminds me of how "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"
| has nothing to do with zen.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I think meditation is similar to physical exercise which you
| need to do a little bit frequently, to stay healthy.
|
| You don't need to do sports but if you stop walking altogether
| your physical health deteriorates. Your joints get arthritic.
|
| So the goal of meditation should not be some Cosmic Epiphany
| Truth or Satori or Nirvana or Samadhi. Those come and go. The
| goal is to keep your mind healthy, to get the toxins out of it
| by doing meditation not too much not too little.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| You do not need to sit down to mediate. That is the biggest
| myth. I mediate while going about my day.
| vram22 wrote:
| Right, it is a myth.
|
| There's a lot of misinformation floating around about the
| subject.
|
| Basically, any activity can be a meditation. So can no
| activity, e.g. zazen.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Hmm, I guess I am one of those folks who are complete without
| knowing why or how, or maybe I do but cant be sure. At least
| for past decade and a half, before that I was just a big
| useless lost child (I see big children around a lot, some are
| nearing retirement).
|
| Definitely no nurture, an average guy with slightly above
| average mind raised in former communist bloc, if that means
| anything to you (kids raised as obedient workers, no critical
| thinking, no strive for greatness, little self sufficiency and
| other real life skills, thank you soviet fucking russia union
| for destroying not only my parents lives and dreams). What I
| achieved in my life is beyond wildest dreams of my humble
| parents, but they had a nano fraction of my options.
|
| One thing I have is self-discipline but that may not be
| related. Or maybe non trivial consumption of weed over past 2
| decades in right moments.
|
| I can empty my mind completely with a snap of a finger, and
| keep it so if I wish. Mindfulness is utterly boring to me as it
| does nothing since I am there on my own without even trying,
| just gets me very sleepy and decreases my heart rate to the
| point of being cold.
|
| Mild extreme sports make the 'feeling whole' part work.
| Currently probably rock climbing is #1 with a great buddy
| (american teacher), followed by my eternal struggle to get
| finally proficient at paragliding. Small kids give a lot of
| other fulfilment and take away easy sleep and some mental
| stability, thats a mixed blessing to be polite.
| opportune wrote:
| I've had a similar experience with Taoism. It is a kind of
| tough nut to crack coming from Western cultures what with our
| extensive theologies, holy books, and prescriptivist religions.
| I highly recommend "The Way of Chuang Tzu" by Thomas Merton.
|
| Perhaps this betrays some fundamental ignorance on my part, but
| I think understanding and internalizing the Taoist mindset
| makes meditation a little less relevant or necessary. Taoism
| IMO is the sublime wisdom of not attempting to be wise (usually
| manifesting as inane and unnuanced rules, or clever-sounding
| quotes) and not neuorotically attempting to conform to
| practices or ways of thinking forced on us by culture,
| tradition, ideology, etc. Meditation and mindfulness help
| incrementally in that pursuit but they are like climbing rungs
| of a ladder next to an elevator that Zhuangzi built for us.
| haswell wrote:
| > _Meditation and mindfulness help incrementally in that
| pursuit but they are like climbing rungs of a ladder next to
| an elevator that Zhuangzi built for us._
|
| It's critical to note that not all paths/forms of meditation
| involve climbing rungs of a ladder or really any notion of a
| path whatsoever.
|
| The practice of sitting is only for the purpose of training
| the mind to focus, which helps some people reach the "non-
| dual" state more effectively.
|
| For example, the Dzogchen approach relies more on directly
| pointing out aspects of experience in a way that brings the
| listener more directly into contact with the current
| moment/unfolding experience and towards the same state that
| "ladder" meditation approaches aim to reach.
|
| Many of the modern western teachers have gravitated to a more
| direct approach as well because it's more palatable to the
| audience here (and frankly, far more practical and
| immediately useful).
|
| Mentioning this because the perception that there's a steep
| and long journey ahead is not necessary, and has turned
| plenty of interested people away from the idea of trying.
|
| With all of that said, I haven't explored Taoism, and it
| sounds interesting.
| everydayDonut wrote:
| That's exactly how I feel about it, you just put it in better
| words.
|
| Thank you for the recommendation
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| +1 on the Merton translation recommendation.
| lootsauce wrote:
| I picked up the Tao Te Ching in middle school and would reread
| it frequently. The personal insights would evolve as I grew up
| and faced different issues in my life. I found an abiding peace
| in those personal insights and they have held with me since.
| One of those insights is something like having instead of
| seeking as an identity. I don't feel that I want to seek to
| find myself or some great answer, it's already there, I already
| have it. YMMV bits a wonderful ancient text. I recommend the S.
| Mitchel translation.
|
| I could never get into the sitting and breathing kind of
| meditation, but I do find different times I am able to practice
| very meditative activities such as walking in the woods,
| aimless wandering, puttering about with no intention just
| taking in the world. I used to do zen inspired landscape
| photography and that whole process felt very meditative to me.
| mbivert wrote:
| > or has had experience with both that and taoism and what that
| journey was like for you.
|
| When I was in early high school/late middle school, I stumbled
| upon the Tao Te Ching at the local library. I remembered not
| understanding much, and the only memory I have left is the
| peculiar, tai-ji like visual symmetry of the first two
| (Chinese) sentences (it was one of those books with the source
| one one side, and a translation on the next). Which definitely
| sparked a fierce interest in Chinese language/culture.
|
| Other books like the Art of War were a breeze of fresh air: so
| much common sense.
| varjag wrote:
| It sounds like a book title that would be super banned in the
| homeland of Taoism...
| 666_666_666 wrote:
| [dead]
| aradox66 wrote:
| I was skeptical, but this article does a decent job reiterating
| the reasons that researching meditative altered states reproduces
| the same inappropriate KPIs as earlier generations of mindfulness
| research.
|
| Nirodha samipatti may be a fancy attainment, but Im skeptical
| sticking electrodes on Daniel Ingram's head is going to advance
| the secular understanding of dharma wisdom.
| swayvil wrote:
| Meh. We don't need a science. The last thing we need is a bunch
| of fine models and discussion.
|
| What we need is some basic, dead-simple experiments that anybody
| can do. Experiments that show you that there's something there.
|
| And then, after you see a bit, you are inspired to take another
| step.
| deepGem wrote:
| Think of cessation, also scripturally described as the "non-
| occurrence of consciousness," like voluntarily inducing the
| effects of general anesthesia. Consciousness switches off without
| a trace, while the basic homeostatic operations of the body --
| temperature, heartbeat, breathing -- remain online.
|
| - Isn't this like the nirvana of nirvanas ? I had heard about
| some of the monks in the Himalayas able to attain these states
| but had brushed it off as utter nonsense.
|
| Since now we know this is feasible, can we surmise that there is
| no need for an external chemical to shut off the mind or to even
| alter the mental state of a person ? Could you for instance get
| into an alcohol or a drug induced state without drinking or doing
| drugs - What a world would that be ..
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| At least in Theravada Buddhism this isn't the right way to
| conceive of enlightenment with respect to samati, or meditative
| states.
|
| The mind is composed of several faculties, that spring from
| themselves, and lead to certain states of being that ultimately
| lead to suffering. The key ones for this discussion are the
| thinking mind (or in Thailand the monkey mind), which is what
| we typically dwell in. It's the mind that tells stories about
| the past and the future, where we talk with people in
| conversations we won't have or wish we had had, where we
| identify ourselves as being something specific. We also have a
| feeling mind, or emotive mind. It doesn't form structured
| thoughts like the thinking mind, but it creates impetus and
| acts in a feedback loop with the thinking mind. A lot of our
| misery comes from this feedback loop. We also have a sensate
| mind, which is where we feel our body, all sensations but we
| tend to focus our thinking and emotive mind on pleasurable and
| unpleasant sensations.
|
| In Theravada Buddhism these faculties are emergent but are not
| true experience of our true selves. They are tools of our true
| mind, but have become dominant and exclusionary, hiding our
| true self. Our true self is our awareness, which exists without
| thought or feelings, but is the source of all thoughts and
| feelings. It constantly changes, it has no identity per se, but
| it is not unconscious. It is where we actually are, all
| thoughts exist in context of it, but it's thinking isn't
| visible or directly experienced in the way thoughts or feelings
| are.
|
| People often find this confusing and find the admonition to not
| think in vipassana meditation to mean erase all mental
| existence and be a body without any being. That's actually not
| at all the goal. The goal is to silence the mind that chatters
| for a bit, the emotions that pull us and manipulate our
| thoughts to sooth, so we can be aware of our awareness. You are
| still fully awake - intensely so in fact. You still "feel," but
| the feelings are compassion and loving kindness, and they're
| not feelings that control you or make your sensate body feel
| some experience (such as a tight chest or thrill) or capture
| your chattering thoughts.
|
| Eventually thoughts and feelings will intrude and the goal then
| is to see them for what they are, facilities of your mind, and
| to let them be there but don't let them capture your awareness
|
| By practicing this in meditation you can bridge this state into
| daily life. As you spend more time aware but not chattering
| away, you are more in the present and in the immediate now. You
| find you only feel compassion and loving kindness for all like,
| and anger, hate, and fear are artifacts of those faculties.
| They can be helpful in some situations, but they are fairly
| rare situations. It feels strange at first to not be totally
| enmeshed in your thoughts. At first I was afraid I would
| disappear if I did this, sort of like the quote you have. But I
| didn't. Who I wasn't disappeared, and I became myself for the
| first time since I was a little child.
| waterheater wrote:
| > can we surmise that there is no need for an external chemical
| to shut off the mind or to even alter the mental state of a
| person?
|
| That is exactly what the Gateway Hemisync process claims to
| accomplish. See my post below for more information on it.
| permo-w wrote:
| I mean as I understand it one way of approaching meditation
| looks like this: at first you just concentrate on your
| breathing, avoiding extraneous thoughts, then once you can do
| that without distraction, you move on and try to step back from
| your thoughts, watching them arrive and letting them go.
|
| once you can do that--something I could do after a few days of
| practice--how far are you realistically from being able to not
| have those thoughts at all? perhaps that's a huge leap, but I
| would be surprised
| sghiassy wrote:
| Learning about neural networks has helped me understand
| meditation better.
|
| The 'bias' number fed into a neural network neuron is determined
| by the external training data (or for humans by our experiences)
|
| Meditation allows the neural network itself to reprogram its bias
| itself internally rather than rely on new external data.
| asimovfan wrote:
| The revolution is coming.. I hope we don't melt to death before
|
| I would recommend taking up studying the teachings of the Buddha.
| There is a lot of valuable material and the hidden priceless gem
| of awakening
| nicechianti wrote:
| [dead]
| johndhi wrote:
| As a meditator, personally I'm a little sickened by the 'science
| of meditation.' From my view, meditation is ultimately (or at
| least often) about doing nothing. Limiting, reducing our
| judgments and reasoning mind. So applying logic and benefits and
| sticks and carrots to me is actually antithetical to the
| practice.
|
| E.g.: you're anxious and want to get better, so you obsess about
| self-help and ways to get better. Some pop-sci author describes
| meditation as one such path. You make it your new obsession and
| think about how much you ought to be meditating but aren't. When
| you're meditating, you worry that you aren't doing it right such
| that you'll get the benefits.
|
| There is of course an argument that this popsci helps bring
| people to something that's good for them, and for this I guess
| I'm ok with it. But it's annoying to me that meditation has
| become part of the corporate capitalist moneymaking, anxiety-
| provoking system that ultimately, it's actually completely
| unrelated to.
| waterheater wrote:
| Edit: wow, apparently some people here really don't like Gateway
| Hemisync. All I've tried to share source material on its claims
| and make a plea for keeping an open mind. Perhaps those so
| virulently opposed can find that open mind with meditation.
|
| Recommend checking out the Koru system. It's an evidence-based
| mindfulness system out of the Research Triangle.
|
| Regardless, the Monroe Institute already performed groundbreaking
| research in this area 50 years ago. I don't have a source at the
| moment, but I remember reading that the Monroe Institute's
| binaural beat audio programs creates brainwave patterns similar
| to that of an advanced Buddhist monk in meditation.
|
| Apparently, the Monroe Institute discovered that the elevated
| mental states achieved by these monks is achieved with brain
| hemisphere synchronization, which they call "Gateway Hemisync."
| According to the Monroe Institute, "this process uses pulses of
| sound to create in both brain hemispheres electrical wave forms
| simultaneously equal in frequency and amplitude. The Institute
| was granted a patent in 1975 based upon the use of such sound
| pulses to induce a frequency following response (FFR) in the
| human brain. The FFR demonstrates that when you hear a certain
| type of sound, your brain tends to respond to, or resonate with,
| that sound...Each ear sends its dominant nerve signal to the
| opposite brain hemisphere...By sending separate sound pulses to
| each ear (using stereo headphones to isolate one ear from the
| other), the halves of the brain act in unison to "hear" a third
| signal, which is the difference in frequencies between the two
| signals in each ear" [1].
|
| A group in the US Army performed a serious analysis of the
| Gateway Hemisync process, concluding that "there is a sound,
| rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for
| considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential
| objectives", which include "out-of-body movement", "terrestrial
| information gathering trips", and "possible encounters with
| intelligent, non-corporal energy forms when time-space boundaries
| are exceeded" [2].
|
| The article is talking about scientific validation of meditation
| and its outcomes. That's not to say we should blindly accept the
| claims of those scientists, the Monroe Institute, or the US Army.
| The key is to follow the evidence while remembering that greed
| and prestige is what's causing the "McMindfulness" effect.
|
| Smartphone apps will be most useful for personal guided
| meditations, but they should be freely available.
|
| [1] https://vdocuments.net/the-gateway-experience-guidance-
| manua...
|
| [2] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-
| RDP96-00788R0017002...
| jules22 wrote:
| > A group in the US Army performed a serious analysis of the
| Gateway Hemisync process, concluding that "there is a sound,
| rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for
| considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential
| objectives", which include "out-of-body movement", "terrestrial
| information gathering trips", and "possible encounters with
| intelligent, non-corporal energy forms when time-space
| boundaries are exceeded"
|
| They concluded a lot of woo around when they were looking into
| silly things such as Targ's Remote Viewing. All of that later
| was revealed to be nonsense. Army and CIA, while are generally
| rational, are not necessarily great at critical thinking or
| science.
| waterheater wrote:
| Ah, you are referring to the SRI experiments, though I'm not
| sure who "they" are. You should, however, be aware that the
| Proceedings of the IEEE (Volume: 64, Issue: 10, October 1976)
| contain a paper presenting the results of a remote-viewing
| experiment with n=36 and p=0.0000006 [1].
|
| Many people who purport to "love science" set aside how much
| of one's understanding of the universe is axiomatic. Now,
| I've never directly experienced time dilation, and I have
| heard that GPS satellites have been created to take time
| dilation effects into account. I have, however, experienced
| and validated Newtonian dynamics (physics classes). In either
| case, both Newtonian dynamics and time dilation were
| presented to me as axiomatic; that is to say, I haven't
| performed a full, independent derivation of these two ideas
| of physics. However, I still accept that the general ideas
| are sound. If a model of physics supports the idea of remote
| viewing, so be it.
|
| >Army and CIA, while are generally rational, are not
| necessarily great at critical thinking or science.
|
| That's funny to say, seeing as it's well-established that
| military technology across all domains is significantly more
| advanced than the average person's technology. As a small
| example, neither one of us could make a stealth bomber
| capable of dropping nuclear ordinance anywhere in the world
| nor perform the required R&D to properly design one.
|
| [1]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1454638
| jules22 wrote:
| > As a small example, neither one of us could make a
| stealth bomber capable of dropping nuclear ordinance
| anywhere in the world nor perform the required R&D to
| properly design one.
|
| I never said they weren't good at tech and engineering.
| Anyway, the army and CIA make none of those. They just
| contract it out to Northrop or such, no? I haven't accused
| defense contractors of paranormal pseudoscience.
| fluoridation wrote:
| _A_ paper from 1976 claims to have detected ESP in its
| participants. The paper appears to have only been cited
| twice since, both in 1979, one to explain the 1976 results
| as experimental bias, and the other to report failure to
| reproduce. I wouldn 't throw out my walkie-talkie just yet.
|
| >If a model of physics supports the idea of remote viewing,
| so be it.
|
| Okay. What's that model? Are brains RF transceivers?
| jules22 wrote:
| Whenever someone talks enthusiastically about meditation, I
| remind myself that all the popular meditation gurus I see on
| Youtube talk nonsense, pseudoscience, lack common sense and use
| manipulative psychological tricks. None of them admit any errors
| and ironically are quite conceited for those who claim to have
| conquered ego.
|
| I am sure meditative states must feel nice. But all I see beyond
| that are cults and none of the meditators seem that much at
| detached peace. They get incensed at criticism.
| swayvil wrote:
| Ya, the meditation scene is 99.99% pure bullshit. And that's a
| crime.
|
| First job for anybody trying to figure out this stuff is to
| scrape away the gunk and find a pearl of truth.
|
| You have to do your own research. There is no substitute.
| jules22 wrote:
| > You have to do your own research.
|
| Generally a bad idea. Usually leads to quackery,
| pseudoscience beliefs etc. Individuals are much worse than
| institutions on matters of research.
| colechristensen wrote:
| What's popular on YouTube and what's good are very often not
| the same. You're seeing what YouTube is trying to optimize
| for... it's not surprising that it's manipulative,
| exaggerating, populist nonsense. YouTube could do this for
| literally any topic. The YT algorithm's take on the best
| meditation advice doesn't need to define what meditation is to
| you. Topics which should be "boring" get this treatment on
| social media. Find your information elsewhere or figure out how
| to filter and ignore the nonsense.
| jules22 wrote:
| I don't disagree. This is hacker news. We all know how skewed
| social media is. We all understand the biases of
| recommendation algorithms.
|
| However, my point is not one of presenting a representative
| sample, but rather easily accessible and video instances of
| highly visible subjects to illustrate.
|
| There is plenty of scientific literature on meditation
| induced mental disorders for what you prefer. I have looked
| at that too.
| [deleted]
| DrThunder wrote:
| There are multiple scientific studies show the positive affects
| of meditation and a myriad of health benefits....
|
| I'm not sure what "gurus" you're seeing but it's not really
| relevant to objective studies that show it works and makes
| changes in the brain. I'm sure they are making some claims that
| are pseudoscience, but that doesn't mean meditation in its
| entirety is just a "feel nice" routine.
|
| Here's just one of several I found in a quick search-
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895748/
|
| I think of meditation as exercise for your brain. Just like you
| need to physically exercise to "prepare" your body you need to
| be doing stuff to keep your brain from going haywire and
| jumping from though to though like its hopped up on caffeine
| all the time. There are various ways to do "train your brain"
| but meditation/mindfulness is one very good way to do it.
| tokai wrote:
| There's also a lot of studies showing that meditation can
| cause harm.
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01503-2
| DrThunder wrote:
| True... but this lends credence to the fact that it's not
| just a cult pseudoscience. It's actually having an effect
| positive or negative on people.
| jules22 wrote:
| I did not argue that it was inert. I actually argued that
|
| 1.) not really doing what enthusiasts claimed it was
| specifically doing. 2.) making people become develop
| bizarre beliefs and generally become irrational.
|
| It can be a cult pseudoscience while not being inert.
| jules22 wrote:
| fixing terrible writing
|
| 1.) meditation was not really always doing what
| enthusiasts claimed it was doing.
|
| 2.) it was making people develop bizarre beliefs and
| generally become irrational.
| jules22 wrote:
| PMC has a lot of junk journals. Don't fall for them,
| especially if you want to use "Dr" in your nick. Most
| meditation research is rather low quality. Don't go around
| just googling your confirmation bias. One would not regard
| any journal on Ayurveda to have much scientific merit. It's
| essentially quackery. Their standards for peer review are
| low. This "paper" uses oxymorons such as "Vedic science".
|
| Take this text for instance: "A feedback loop to the DNA
| starts a new cycle to provide whatever is needed for the
| activities of the cell. In meditation, the feedback loop to
| the deep inner Self (the seat of knowledge, like DNA)
| provides inner peace and bliss, which removes the accumulated
| stresses of life and improves overall health."
|
| That gibberish would be an instant reject from any serious
| reviewer. This is not how science papers are written. This is
| the snake oil of the meditation world I was talking about.
| Minus the citations, this qualifies at best as a Facebook
| post. This might be an example of how meditation makes an
| educated man talk silly.
|
| I also know several meditators. Anecdotally, not one improved
| his powers of concentration with meditation. They
| procrastinate and get distracted like everyone else, all
| while claiming they feel so much focused after meditation.
| Maybe, meditation makes them feel focused, while not actually
| being so.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I've been meditating since the 70's. Nothing I see today exists
| in the meditation world without a taint of snake oil and
| predatory capitalism. We live in a conman's paradise.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| They want you to mediate so you can forget about the climate
| emergency and the fact that capitalism is failing 99% of us in
| the United States.
|
| Mediation is opium, pure opium.
|
| And I am saying this as a Doaist. Probably an ex-Daoist. Might
| have to get a new handle soon.
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