3 ms·

>I'm specifically using pain and suffering because I am not talking in metaphors and I am not trying to dress it up or down. I am not trying to comfort myself o

>I'm specifically using pain and suffering because I am not talking in metaphors and I am not trying to dress it up or down. I am not trying to comfort myself or others, and I am not trying to ennoble this. I am not trying to put lipstick on a pig. Pain is literally, physical pain sensations, no more, no less. By suffering, I am speaking about dukkha, or existential anguish. I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig either. I'm trying to explain very real experiences I've had in a way that people who don't understand delayed gratification (yet) won't misinterpret due to false definitions instilled in their past. >When you try to make something into something else in order to make it more pleasant, that is a form of a story in the head. It will work for awhile until it doesn't. The whole point of mindulfness meditation is awakening to what is, not what you wish things are. Okay, why are you responding to my comment with this? Did I somehow contradict this notion? >It doesn't matter whether you are doing something you think is pleasant or not, dukkha is present there. Strain and tension contains pain. Dukkha is only there when someone is not mindful. Ironically, by being present to the actual amount of pain, the dukkha lessens: Strain and tension don't necessarily contain pain. During physical exercise the body releases a flood of endorphins (ie natural painkillers) that numb it. I believe I've heard meditation does something similar. I can think of numerous other examples of strain that doesn't contain pain - working really hard to solve a puzzle, learning a new skill, or completing a really difficult project. Flow state is when we have high strain and tension but a high sense of efficacy and well-being. >Learned helplessness is a story in the head. There are methods to dissolve and deconstruct that which I will not mention here. When you replace that story with a different story, you are creating the conditions for your next disappointment. Real power and freedom comes from releasing the stories that prop up your identity. beliefs are just descriptions about reality that can be either true or false, but we can indeed be fooled by false beliefs or become dependent on true ones which may change in the future. I agree that equanimity is a great virtue which can be cultivated through regular meditation. you don't have to overcomplicate something by alluding to some mysterious methods which you know but won't explain. you can break down false beliefs through mindfulness which is the technique behind cognitive behavioral therapy. there is nothing wrong with forming new positive beliefs as long as they are accurate and you understand that reality is always changing and they may become false in the future. you must maintain a regular practice of mindfulness if you want to minimize false beliefs. >If we don't have to do anything, then what is the point of living and struggling? There's no objective reason to live and struggle floating out in reality. They are impulses generated within human beings through genetic, internal (ie mental/cyclical), and environmental influences. If you don't have them, you can try to cultivate them, if you don't believing that you "have to" do things is a very hollow substitute. >If you lose your motivation for living and struggling, then what happens when you really need to make it through? You find it or you die. This is self-evident, if this wasn't true, then suicides wouldn't happen. You need to find a strong, positive, inner source of this motivation and remain vigilant once you do or you will find half-ways to slowly kill yourself - purposely getting in unhealthy relationships, acquiring addictions or bad health habits, or overworking yourself. >This was the paradox that was resolved for me with non-dual Shaiva Tantra. I have no idea what paradox you're referring to. I'm not seeing one here. If you think that we either objectively have to do things or there's no point in living and struggling, that sounds like a pretty dualist concept to me. I have no idea what the "shaiva tantra" is and honestly I think it's best for those trying to find a way out of a dark place, as well as those trying to understand these life principles, to abandon these cryptic terms and speak simply or using well-established modern language. Isn't the point of communication to transmit knowledge? You're doing a poor job when you use obscure terms without defining them.

hosh 10y ago
> Okay, why are you responding to my comment with this? Did I somehow contradict this notion? Because I am doing something similar to when you say, " I'm trying to explain very real experiences I've had ... " although I am not trying to explain about delayed gratification. I'm trying to state a lot of things that come from mindfulness meditation. Take stories in the head for example: You say, "beliefs are just descriptions about reality that can be either true or false, but we can indeed be fooled by false beliefs or become dependent on true ones which may change in the future." From my experience, any belief is always going to be false. No description of reality can ever substitute for reality. There are no beliefs that inherently exist or are inherently true. When you have a belief, that is something that will always sit between what is present right now. When I say "stories" I do not just mean beliefs. "Story" is a translation for a Sanskrit term with a complicated pronunciation that I have not memorized. They are not just referring to ones you know about. They also refer to these filters that, often, people are not aware of. When it releases, there is a palpable, if subtle, experience as if some guazy layer of perception had been removed. The world gets a little bit clearer, and so does the mind. When you use the word construction, "I prefer to call pain X", and your explanation, "Strain and tension don't necessarily contain pain. During physical exercise the body releases a flood of endorphins (ie natural painkillers) that numb it." That is an example of what I'm talking about. The pain is still present, even when numbed out. There is nothing wrong with pain in and of itself. Pain does not need to be something to avoid, and if anything, should be listened to as a guide for when you are pushing too hard. People usually conflate pain with suffering, and try to avoid the pain because the suffering is associated with that pain. > you don't have to overcomplicate something by alluding to some mysterious methods which you know but won't explain. I'm not overcomplicating this. From my perspective, people who carry a lot of stories in the head look like they are overcomplicating things. I'm not being mysterious. You cannot use another story to dissolve another story unless that story itself self-dissolves. This is why people generally cannot talk their way out of something, and the stories in head goes around in loops. > You find it or you die. This is self-evident, if this wasn't true, then suicides wouldn't happen. This is not true. Suicides do not happen because someone loses motivation to live. It happens because someone wants to stop the suffering. > I have no idea what paradox you're referring to. I'm not seeing one here. If you think that we either objectively have to do things or there's no point in living and struggling, that sounds like a pretty dualist concept to me. I don't think you have come across this paradox in your experience yet. > I have no idea what the "shaiva tantra" is and honestly I think it's best for those trying to find a way out of a dark place, as well as those trying to understand these life principles, to abandon these cryptic terms and speak simply or using well-established modern language. Isn't the point of communication to transmit knowledge? You're doing a poor job when you use obscure terms without defining them. I am not using cryptic terms. I am using very precise terms that points to specific experiences. I can talk about the emotions of "fiero", or "naches", and those have no English equivalent, yet they are very real and precise for Italian or Yiddhish speakers. No well-established modern language has a handle on _dukkha_ or many of the things you might find in Vipassana. Those are better taught with "pointing out exercises", where someone brings your attention to something over and over again, as they arise. Classical, transcendental non-dual Shaiva Tantra is a name for a specific set of teachings coming out of medieval India. It is very specific, it is very dense. If you want to read about it, the best book in English is Christopher Wallis's Tantra Illuminated. If I seem to be obfuscating though, it is because I am, and what I am hiding takes more than one afternoon's conversation to cover. I do not mind talking to someone about it, but it isn't as if I have the skill to condense all of this into a tldr. I'll try to condense some of it here: "Dark places" can be seen as a metaphor for experiencing depression, despair, or learned helplessness. Much of it comes from conditioning from the environment: parents, schools, and the way the reward-punishment system is set up. However, there are other sources in which one can enter into extended states like that. It might be inherited ancestrally, even from someone not directly blood-related. It may be from past lives. (Which, when you consider this frame with suicides, suicide is a terrible mistake because it does not stop the suffering; someone who lost the motivation to live finds that experience continue on eternally and cannot stop it even when they want to). There may be hungry ghosts eating your mind space like a zombie -- often indicated when you get arbitrary thoughts, such as suicide, appear without precedence and it does not feel like your own patterns of thoughts; the more successful hungry ghosts will make it seem like it is your idea. Beliefs in learned helplessness can come from any one of these, or even reinforced by more than one of these. What I included is not an exhaustive list. There are numerous methods developed to work with this. They work at different layers or with different levels of understanding. Some are coupled to "local color", that is, the specific set of cultural beliefs and values. The ones that work all have one essential thing in common: mindfulness. That does not mean that mindfulness alone will take you all the way -- well, it does, just perhaps not as effectively. Some methods specializes in certain aspects of this and can an address those aspects better. So you are right: what you are trying to say when you impart skills and knowledge like this will work for a lot of people. However, there may be other things going on, and require a different way of addressing it.

hosh 10y ago

> Okay, why are you responding to my comment with this? Did I somehow contradict this notion? Because I am doing something similar to when you say, " I'm trying to explain very real experiences I've had ... " although I am not trying to explain about delayed gratification. I'm trying to state a lot of things that come from mindfulness meditation. Take stories in the head for example: You say, "beliefs are just descriptions about reality that can be either true or false, but we can indeed be fooled by false beliefs or become dependent on true ones which may change in the future." From my experience, any belief is always going to be false. No description of reality can ever substitute for reality. There are no beliefs that inherently exist or are inherently true. When you have a belief, that is something that will always sit between what is present right now. When I say "stories" I do not just mean beliefs. "Story" is a translation for a Sanskrit term with a complicated pronunciation that I have not memorized. They are not just referring to ones you know about. They also refer to these filters that, often, people are not aware of. When it releases, there is a palpable, if subtle, experience as if some guazy layer of perception had been removed. The world gets a little bit clearer, and so does the mind. When you use the word construction, "I prefer to call pain X", and your explanation, "Strain and tension don't necessarily contain pain. During physical exercise the body releases a flood of endorphins (ie natural painkillers) that numb it." That is an example of what I'm talking about. The pain is still present, even when numbed out. There is nothing wrong with pain in and of itself. Pain does not need to be something to avoid, and if anything, should be listened to as a guide for when you are pushing too hard. People usually conflate pain with suffering, and try to avoid the pain because the suffering is associated with that pain. > you don't have to overcomplicate something by alluding to some mysterious methods which you know but won't explain. I'm not overcomplicating this. From my perspective, people who carry a lot of stories in the head look like they are overcomplicating things. I'm not being mysterious. You cannot use another story to dissolve another story unless that story itself self-dissolves. This is why people generally cannot talk their way out of something, and the stories in head goes around in loops. > You find it or you die. This is self-evident, if this wasn't true, then suicides wouldn't happen. This is not true. Suicides do not happen because someone loses motivation to live. It happens because someone wants to stop the suffering. > I have no idea what paradox you're referring to. I'm not seeing one here. If you think that we either objectively have to do things or there's no point in living and struggling, that sounds like a pretty dualist concept to me. I don't think you have come across this paradox in your experience yet. > I have no idea what the "shaiva tantra" is and honestly I think it's best for those trying to find a way out of a dark place, as well as those trying to understand these life principles, to abandon these cryptic terms and speak simply or using well-established modern language. Isn't the point of communication to transmit knowledge? You're doing a poor job when you use obscure terms without defining them. I am not using cryptic terms. I am using very precise terms that points to specific experiences. I can talk about the emotions of "fiero", or "naches", and those have no English equivalent, yet they are very real and precise for Italian or Yiddhish speakers. No well-established modern language has a handle on _dukkha_ or many of the things you might find in Vipassana. Those are better taught with "pointing out exercises", where someone brings your attention to something over and over again, as they arise. Classical, transcendental non-dual Shaiva Tantra is a name for a specific set of teachings coming out of medieval India. It is very specific, it is very dense. If you want to read about it, the best book in English is Christopher Wallis's Tantra Illuminated. If I seem to be obfuscating though, it is because I am, and what I am hiding takes more than one afternoon's conversation to cover. I do not mind talking to someone about it, but it isn't as if I have the skill to condense all of this into a tldr. I'll try to condense some of it here: "Dark places" can be seen as a metaphor for experiencing depression, despair, or learned helplessness. Much of it comes from conditioning from the environment: parents, schools, and the way the reward-punishment system is set up. However, there are other sources in which one can enter into extended states like that. It might be inherited ancestrally, even from someone not directly blood-related. It may be from past lives. (Which, when you consider this frame with suicides, suicide is a terrible mistake because it does not stop the suffering; someone who lost the motivation to live finds that experience continue on eternally and cannot stop it even when they want to). There may be hungry ghosts eating your mind space like a zombie -- often indicated when you get arbitrary thoughts, such as suicide, appear without precedence and it does not feel like your own patterns of thoughts; the more successful hungry ghosts will make it seem like it is your idea. Beliefs in learned helplessness can come from any one of these, or even reinforced by more than one of these. What I included is not an exhaustive list. There are numerous methods developed to work with this. They work at different layers or with different levels of understanding. Some are coupled to "local color", that is, the specific set of cultural beliefs and values. The ones that work all have one essential thing in common: mindfulness. That does not mean that mindfulness alone will take you all the way -- well, it does, just perhaps not as effectively. Some methods specializes in certain aspects of this and can an address those aspects better. So you are right: what you are trying to say when you impart skills and knowledge like this will work for a lot of people. However, there may be other things going on, and require a different way of addressing it.