9 ms·

Meditation: Why Bother?

96 points by ulvund 16y ago

davidw 16y ago
I think that, given a limited amount of time, I'd rather do exercise (cycling) than meditate, as it's a pretty good way of 'getting away from things' and thinking without interruptions, and I also get some physical benefits from it.
- petervandijck 16y ago
  Exercise is awesome. I do think the concept of "limited amount of time" is a little flawed. Perhaps the real reason people shy away from meditation is that it's hard and takes discipline and willpower (in a good way)?
  - davidw 16y ago
    > I do think the concept of "limited amount of time" is a little flawed. And you do have a kid. Huh:-) Well, I do not have enough time for all the activities that I would like to do, so for me it's a very real concept. Proper training is hard and takes discipline in a good way too, so exercise has that one covered.
  - chacha102 16y ago
    I don't think the concept of "limited amount of time" is flawed. Frankly, some people are constantly working and don't have time to meditate. It isn't that they shy away from it because it is hard or takes discipline and willpower, it is because we live in a world that (unfortunately) gives us a limited amount of time during the day that we can spend awake consistently if we don't want to possibly damage our health.
    - petervandijck 16y ago
      Fair enough. Still though, I don't know, I personally spend a lot of time on things that are not obligatory, so that time is mine to choose how I spend it. Family time, kid time, HN time... If you're "constantly" working, then that's a choice you made, right? [edit: just realized I sound kind of like an ass. I shouldn't speak for other people. Just read this as me talking to myself :)]
      - davidw 16y ago
        It's not about 'constantly working' (I don't), it's about having lots of things that I like to do, plus work. I think even if I were wealthy and didn't have to work I'd find more ways to fill my time than time available. In some ways that's good - I don't remember the last time I was bored - but it does mean my time is limited. I guess the point is that for me, exercise is probably more efficient, time wise, in terms of benefits/time, and also includes some of the mental things that I think meditation must give you, but of course it's a fairly personal thing, and to each his own.
  - skybrian 16y ago
    Willpower is a limited resource, at least in the short term: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/12/willpower.php http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/12/willpower.php
- awt 16y ago
  Mediation is sort of the opposite of thinking. You don't actively think, and when thoughts do occur, you dismiss them.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- Estragon 16y ago
  I do about 2 hours of meditation a day. This is useful because it builds a huge capacity for emotional regulation and lets me stand in situations I once would have run from or otherwise sought to avoid, and and I can still clearly see what's going on in these situations. Exercise has its merits (I also walk about 2 hours a day) but they are very different. As Suzuki Roshi said "Sit Zazen. To live life without sitting Zazen is like winding a watch without setting it: It will run, but it won't tell you the correct time."
  - bumbledraven 16y ago
    I also sit for 2 hours a day, and I see the same benefits. I wouldn't normally post a "me too" message, but I don't see too many comments about meditating 2 hours a day.
    - zackattack 16y ago
      How did you guys get to this point? Did you do a Vipassana retreat?
      - Estragon 16y ago
        I started out reading Wake Up To Your Life, built up to doing about an hour a day, went on a retreat[1] run by the author of that book, from which I saw huge benefits, started meditating for really long stretches in order to hammer home the skills I'd learned there, then settled down to an hour after rising and an hour before bed. (Plus any time it's useful during the day.) [1] Recordings of the talks at that retreat are linked from this URL: http://unfetteredmind.org/audio/podretreat.php?code=PAP#here http://unfetteredmind.org/audio/podretreat.php?code=PAP#here They're the PAP01-PAP10 links.
      - carbon8 16y ago
        If you do vipassana via http://www.dhamma.org/ http://www.dhamma.org/ the ideal daily sitting schedule in day to day life is an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. If you make it part of your routine, it can be somewhat easy to do. It's actually trivial to be on the 2 hr/day schedule after finishing a 10 day sitting since 2 hours is nothing at that point and you remember exactly what you're doing, but in my experience it's difficult to start up again with regular 2 hr/day sittings once you stop. My routine for a bunch of years was to do the 2 hour sittings for a while, but eventually fall off until going to another 10 day sitting. Even though 2 hours seems like a lot, because of what it is (focusing the mind, learning to not overreact to external stimuli, stability of the mind), it makes people able to be very highly productive throughout the day.
edo 16y ago
This is almost poetry, expertly written. "The essence of our experience is change. Change is incessant. Moment by moment life flows by and it is never the same. Perpetual alteration is the essence of the perceptual universe. A thought springs up in your head and half a second later, it is gone. In comes another one, and that is gone too. A sound strikes your ears and then silence. Open your eyes and the world pours in, blink and it is gone. People come into your life and they leave again. Friends go, relatives die. Your fortunes go up and they go down. Sometimes you win and just as often you lose. It is incessant: change, change, change. No two moments ever the same."
- lionhearted 16y ago
  Reminds me of: "You can never step in the same river twice." - Heraclitus
  - willfully_lost 16y ago
    It's interesting to me how much Heraclitus resembles an Eastern mystic. Fitting that he was both behind and way ahead of his time. "Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things." "To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just."
switch007 16y ago
This succinctly and so eloquently said everything my father has spent my entire life trying to teach me. It's beautiful. If I have kids, I hope that one day they understand this essay.
drblast 16y ago
That's one of the best essays I've ever read. It says almost nothing about meditation, but it nails every frustration and unhappiness I've ever experienced. It makes me think that if someone can be that insightful, I'm more likely to go along with whatever he suggests because he's got it figured out so well. Maybe it's time to give meditation a shot.
- earcar 16y ago
  He has written many books on the subject. I think I'll read the linked one and get the "sequel" soon. http://www.amazon.com/Bhante-Henepola-Gunaratana/e/B002LADY6O http://www.amazon.com/Bhante-Henepola-Gunaratana/e/B002LADY6...
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  Actually, it says almost everything about meditation. I definitely recommend that you (or anyone else interested) give meditation a shot-- but I'd suggest that you find a teacher. Otherwise, it's a bit like trying to learn to swim from a book. There are a lot of meditation centers around, and most of them don't charge money or require adherence to any doctrine whatsoever. In my experience, they are happy to have you there, and happy to show you how it's done. That being said: as books go, Bhante G.'s is one of the best.
- k0n2ad 16y ago
  If this comment was meant to be sarcastic then it was expertly executed! BTW, you really don't need a teacher to learn meditation... just sit down, shut up and focus on your breathing for a few minutes each day... and watch how wild your mind is.
  - drblast 16y ago
    Not meant to be sarcastic at all. I just appreciate the insight in the essay. I'd rather someone be an example of the results of their ideology, than have them try to sell me on it. I think it speaks volumes.
Avshalom 16y ago
>And just because of the simple fact that you are human, you find yourself heir to an inherent unsatisfactoriness in life which simply will not go away. You can suppress it from your awareness for a time. You can distract yourself for hours on end, but it always comes back--usually when you least expect it. Or you can embrace that inherent unsatisfactoriness and affect real change in the world. >Examine each of these goals and you will find they are superficial. You want food. Why? Because I am hungry. So you are hungry, so what? Well if I eat, I won't be hungry and then I'll feel good. Ah ha! Feel good! Now there is a real item. I'm pretty sure happiness is the superficial goal when it comes to food. Food can be a want yeah sure, but it's also a NEED. In general I just can't abide by this sort of nihilism couched as noble anti-materialism. If the truest expression of your philosophy leads to you sitting in a cave waiting to starve, freeze, dehydrate, or get eaten by wolves, you can just fuck off.
- wangwei 16y ago
  Apparently, you didn't understand the essay or the meditation. Meditation is not nihilism or anti-materialism. I am not sure how i can explain it to you to make it clear to you. I remember from a Buddhist saying that if your glass is full, there is nothing one can do about it. You need to remove something in your glass first before you can pour anything else into it. I feel like you are full of ignorance and false assumptions about meditation. Unless you become openminded and really try to understand what meditation is, nothing is going to change your mind.
  - Avshalom 16y ago
    You're really going to call me close minded in defense of an essay that gets all of five paragraphs in before calling my experiences and emotions fake? An essay that dismisses the idea that there exists people comfortable with feeling the full range of human emotions, that dismisses civilization as a whole as self deception? And you're sure you want to defend a Buddhist by telling me he's not anti-materialistic? Also in response to that Buddhist saying? I choose to get a bigger glass.
    - 16y ago
skbohra 16y ago
The old concept of meditation is not suitable for present condition. I prefer [http://www.osho.com/main.cfm?Area=Meditation&Sub1Menu=ActiveMeditation&Sub2Menu=Dynamic&Language=English http://www.osho.com/main.cfm?Area=Meditation&Sub1Menu=Ac... Osho Dynamic Meditation] , which is designed so well to suit real need of working people. And for people out here I think its the best choice.
tel 16y ago
This essay angers me with its presumption. It reads off like a fortune teller reaching for whatever level of generalized sympathy will get you nodding along. Maybe I'm just not sensitive enough to see the boiling resentment and stress in watching families sing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game, or maybe I'm just far too aware of the postmodern tradition of misery the essayist is targeting to, ah, buy it. We try to stick each perception, every mental change in this endless flow into one of three mental pigeon holes. It is good, or it is bad, or it is neutral. Does anyone actually live just like that or is it a strawman that wrings another drop of ethos from the audience? I don't want to make a statement against meditation, actually. I have some mental antiviral habits that make me think Vipassana as its practiced in the US is half truth and half marketing delusion, but at the end of the day stress is a huge problem and anything that can get people to honestly, psychically relax has its value. My own experience is that meditation can take many forms and truly is a perspective inversion with a great personal ROI. I go backpacking, and I'll recommend it heartily too. I want to go one step further. I've known and spoken to a few people who practice meditation both here and in China and will say the essay isn't wrong in its spiritual recommendation either. I am thoroughly convinced through testimony and personal practice that you can learn a lot from sitting still. There was even a link on HN a few days ago that suggested rational, tested support. But even if meditation were the honest cure for all existential angst in the human condition, even if it cured AIDS and fixed Greece's financial woes, I'd still prefer someone talk to me with respect instead of trying to wheedle their way into my heart with meandering, gypsy-like proselytizing. It only sounds bleak when you view it from the level of ordinary mental perspective You too can be extraordinary! How many payments is Vipassana? (Well $125) There is only one way you will ever know if meditation is worth the effort. Learn to do it right, and do it. See for yourself. The only valuable 3 sentences in this whole business.
- dtf 16y ago
  I found it distasteful. I very much respect the idea of personal meditation, but this essay gave me that belly nausea that I experience reading a religious pamphlet dropped on my doorstep. "Purify the mind"? "Emotional bondage"? Is this any different from "auditing" my "reactive mind" in search of the elusive "state of clear"? I like my emotions goddammit, and this essay left me flustered and angry!
nickpinkston 16y ago
Based on most of the people I know who meditate, they don't seem to be any different from a random sample. Are there studies that show that meditate is good for X? Perhaps the causation is actually that people with X tend to be good at meditating? Just wondering...
- andrew_k 16y ago
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3047291.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3047291.stm
- iskander 16y ago
  I know several people who have taken up meditation and they each have changed significantly through their experiences. Perhaps it's more useful to compare someone who meditates to their former selves rather than some nebulous concept of an "average" person.
  - nickpinkston 16y ago
    Yea, it's quite true about that seeing improvement longitudinally would be better than the "average person". The study cited in the below BBC article studied people (Buddhist monks) that don't pass the self-selection filter though. This study shows brief mediation gives improvement, however I'm not sure how they controlled for those who didn't complete the experiment. Could those people be self-selecting out of it due to difficulties - ADD perhaps? Overall - I'm love to try a simple form of meditation to see if it'd work for my ADD self. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100414184220.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100414184220.ht...
    - jonhendry 16y ago
      I'm ADD, and I found it to be helpful during a period when I was sitting regularly. I prefer just vipassana, watching the breath and watching thoughts as they arise and fade. No chanting or 'OMMM'. An interesting book is "Zen and the Brain" by an emeritus professor of neurology, published by MIT Press. The author started doing zen while in Japan in the late 60s. Over about 1000 pages, he tries to come up with testable hypotheses explaining the phenomena and results of long-term meditation practice. It's very detailed and dense. There are a few chapters that describe his subjective experiences, but the rest is pretty scientific. There are few illustrations, it's a massive block of text.
Groxx 16y ago
What's with the see-saw of meditation articles lately? It's better than expected, science™ proves it! It's a waste of time, news at eleven! We'll show you how for only some monies!
- ulvund 16y ago
  It has been a year since I saw this posted on HN and it got me started with meditation, so I figured I would repost it :)
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  It's one of the common HN tropes. Pretty soon we'll have yet another post about nootropics or polyphasic sleep. "Ask HN: I want to be smarter, but don't want to expend any effort! Help me get something for nothing!" Meditation actually helps (in my experience), but it's about on par with actually getting exercise or getting enough sleep - totally lame. :)
- gnaffle 16y ago
  Actually, the book is available for free and is meant to introduce you to meditation without needing a mentor.
ryan-allen 16y ago
For what it's worth, I've known a couple of people who have gone off and done the meditation course through Vipassana, and all have heartily recommended it. Saying that, apparently the drop out rate of their course is something along the lines of 60-70%, most people do not have the discipline required to complete it. I personally haven't done the course so I can't comment directly. I would say though, that meditation is beneficial, and I'm sure there are proper scientific studies that attest to the benefits. Certainly the 'bio-feedback' movement is merely meditation techniques with some output you can discern, kind of like a server with monitoring.
klodolph 16y ago
A lot of people find this article well written, or alternately, they find the article patronizing and some are angry at it. I just think the article is incorrect, which is a necessary consequence of its sweeping generalizations. A quote from the article: "You are a mess." The author spends much of the article telling the reader how unhappy the reader is, how much the reader is suffering. From a rhetorical perspective, I can understand why the author would do this. Yet I'm not convinced that I'm unhappy, and the rest of the article falls apart without that foundation. "It [life] is an emotional roller coaster, and you spend a lot of your time down at the bottom of the ramp, yearning for the heights." To me, life feels more like emotional airplane, at home above the clouds but makes the occasional layover in Detroit. Your experiences may vary.
- gnaffle 16y ago
  I read the article, and instead of getting angry when he said "You are a mess", I stopped to think: "Who is he talking to? Is he talking to me? Or perhaps to the people who actually feel like they are a mess, and will identify with what he is saying?" I have lots of problems, but I don't feel that I'm a mess. I'm overall quite happy. I still really appreciated the article, and it made me think that meditation might be a good thing for me regardless. There are certainly lots of things in my life that I could be better at dealing with, and probably some things that I'm not aware of. And let's say that something terrible happens in my life. My family dies, I lose my job and get cancer. Would I be sad and unhappy? Probably. Would meditation help me in that situation? It might. Even though it wouldn't revive my family, get back my job or cure my cancer, it would perhaps help me deal with the situation in a better way. If you spend your programming life never looking at your old code to see if you can improve it, always making the same mistakes and always getting a headache by supporting your old code, there's something you could do (code reviews, refactoring) - but you might not realize it or be motivated enough to do it. I think it's the same with the rest of your life. That said, there is no point in spending all your time refactoring your code if you don't learn anything from it and if you're not shipping working code. And there's no point in meditating if you don't feel it has a positive impact on your life. :)
anonman1 16y ago
I had an understanding of what meditation was while on an acid trip. Some people who've done lsd describe a spiritual experience which they experience. I can say I had a good experience. What I felt was an experience of me and everything around me moving as one. That is to say the universe and I are connected to one another. It is an experience which is difficult to articulate, but something which one feels. This experience is largely missing in the sensory experience of everyday life. However, one of the better parts of my experience was watching the plants. Their movement as one is what one is attempting to mimic in meditation. Plants are immensely connected to the world in a way we are not. Mimicking them is how we can connect ourselves to the same feeling. This mimicking of plants is what I feel meditation is. It is why it became easier for me to meditate after doing lsd than before as the reasoning behind it makes much more sense. Some things which helped me understand meditation at a deeper level are: * Bhagavad Gita - The last couple of chapters make more sense. The whole I am everything was a bit annoying before, but it makes more sense when you get the point. If everything is One, then everything is beautiful. * Foucault's The Subject and Power or anything Foucault - Meditation is supposed to break the chains our desire. Foucault's The Subject and Power is immensely powerful in understanding that we are all part of a system and governed by rules. Humans are by no means free but are held together by a discursive power which we are unaware of. One of the things we are supposed to realize is how we are entrapped by these rules and gain the ability to break rules. If you think this is all tripe please feel free to ignore it. This is after all my own experience and it can be completely different to a different individual.
ca98am79 16y ago
I did a 10-day vipassana meditation course and it changed my life. Meditation helps you to understand yourself and your thoughts, and I can't think of anything more important than that. I highly recommend it to everyone.
- ulvund 16y ago
  How did it change your life?
  - ca98am79 16y ago
    It is a 10-day silent meditation, so you can't read or write or speak to anyone for the entire 10 days. This means that you are stuck inside of yourself, with no distractions, for 10 days. What happens is a lot of your problems come to the surface and you are forced to deal with them, and meditation helps you to deal with them. After the course, I have been able to use meditation to better understand myself, and my thoughts, and to deal with anxieties and problems that come up in my life. Email me if you have questions about it.
delackner 16y ago
This is very odd. The Buddha expressly forbade charging money for a Vipassana course (yes, Vipassana is that ancient). A real 10 day course is 100% free, including room and meals. Some have suggested simply reading the sutra or running your own course at home, and I won't say it is impossible to achieve the benefit of meditation this way, but the distractions of the world will make it very difficult to really get started. This is why when you go to a Vipassana course, you are instructed to bring no books, no electronic devices, not even a pen to write, as any and all activities will simply help your mind to become distracted from the monumental task at hand.

96 points by ulvund 16y ago

I think that, given a limited amount of time, I'd rather do exercise (cycling) than meditate, as it's a pretty good way of 'getting away from things' and thinking without interruptions, and I also get some physical benefits from it.

petervandijck 16y ago
Exercise is awesome. I do think the concept of "limited amount of time" is a little flawed. Perhaps the real reason people shy away from meditation is that it's hard and takes discipline and willpower (in a good way)?
- davidw 16y ago
  > I do think the concept of "limited amount of time" is a little flawed. And you do have a kid. Huh:-) Well, I do not have enough time for all the activities that I would like to do, so for me it's a very real concept. Proper training is hard and takes discipline in a good way too, so exercise has that one covered.
- chacha102 16y ago
  I don't think the concept of "limited amount of time" is flawed. Frankly, some people are constantly working and don't have time to meditate. It isn't that they shy away from it because it is hard or takes discipline and willpower, it is because we live in a world that (unfortunately) gives us a limited amount of time during the day that we can spend awake consistently if we don't want to possibly damage our health.
  - petervandijck 16y ago
    Fair enough. Still though, I don't know, I personally spend a lot of time on things that are not obligatory, so that time is mine to choose how I spend it. Family time, kid time, HN time... If you're "constantly" working, then that's a choice you made, right? [edit: just realized I sound kind of like an ass. I shouldn't speak for other people. Just read this as me talking to myself :)]
    - davidw 16y ago
      It's not about 'constantly working' (I don't), it's about having lots of things that I like to do, plus work. I think even if I were wealthy and didn't have to work I'd find more ways to fill my time than time available. In some ways that's good - I don't remember the last time I was bored - but it does mean my time is limited. I guess the point is that for me, exercise is probably more efficient, time wise, in terms of benefits/time, and also includes some of the mental things that I think meditation must give you, but of course it's a fairly personal thing, and to each his own.
- skybrian 16y ago
  Willpower is a limited resource, at least in the short term: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/12/willpower.php http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/12/willpower.php
awt 16y ago
Mediation is sort of the opposite of thinking. You don't actively think, and when thoughts do occur, you dismiss them.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
Estragon 16y ago
I do about 2 hours of meditation a day. This is useful because it builds a huge capacity for emotional regulation and lets me stand in situations I once would have run from or otherwise sought to avoid, and and I can still clearly see what's going on in these situations. Exercise has its merits (I also walk about 2 hours a day) but they are very different. As Suzuki Roshi said "Sit Zazen. To live life without sitting Zazen is like winding a watch without setting it: It will run, but it won't tell you the correct time."
- bumbledraven 16y ago
  I also sit for 2 hours a day, and I see the same benefits. I wouldn't normally post a "me too" message, but I don't see too many comments about meditating 2 hours a day.
  - zackattack 16y ago
    How did you guys get to this point? Did you do a Vipassana retreat?
    - Estragon 16y ago
      I started out reading Wake Up To Your Life, built up to doing about an hour a day, went on a retreat[1] run by the author of that book, from which I saw huge benefits, started meditating for really long stretches in order to hammer home the skills I'd learned there, then settled down to an hour after rising and an hour before bed. (Plus any time it's useful during the day.) [1] Recordings of the talks at that retreat are linked from this URL: http://unfetteredmind.org/audio/podretreat.php?code=PAP#here http://unfetteredmind.org/audio/podretreat.php?code=PAP#here They're the PAP01-PAP10 links.
    - carbon8 16y ago
      If you do vipassana via http://www.dhamma.org/ http://www.dhamma.org/ the ideal daily sitting schedule in day to day life is an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. If you make it part of your routine, it can be somewhat easy to do. It's actually trivial to be on the 2 hr/day schedule after finishing a 10 day sitting since 2 hours is nothing at that point and you remember exactly what you're doing, but in my experience it's difficult to start up again with regular 2 hr/day sittings once you stop. My routine for a bunch of years was to do the 2 hour sittings for a while, but eventually fall off until going to another 10 day sitting. Even though 2 hours seems like a lot, because of what it is (focusing the mind, learning to not overreact to external stimuli, stability of the mind), it makes people able to be very highly productive throughout the day.

edo 16y ago

This is almost poetry, expertly written. "The essence of our experience is change. Change is incessant. Moment by moment life flows by and it is never the same. Perpetual alteration is the essence of the perceptual universe. A thought springs up in your head and half a second later, it is gone. In comes another one, and that is gone too. A sound strikes your ears and then silence. Open your eyes and the world pours in, blink and it is gone. People come into your life and they leave again. Friends go, relatives die. Your fortunes go up and they go down. Sometimes you win and just as often you lose. It is incessant: change, change, change. No two moments ever the same."

lionhearted 16y ago
Reminds me of: "You can never step in the same river twice." - Heraclitus
- willfully_lost 16y ago
  It's interesting to me how much Heraclitus resembles an Eastern mystic. Fitting that he was both behind and way ahead of his time. "Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things." "To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just."

switch007 16y ago

This succinctly and so eloquently said everything my father has spent my entire life trying to teach me. It's beautiful. If I have kids, I hope that one day they understand this essay.

drblast 16y ago

That's one of the best essays I've ever read. It says almost nothing about meditation, but it nails every frustration and unhappiness I've ever experienced. It makes me think that if someone can be that insightful, I'm more likely to go along with whatever he suggests because he's got it figured out so well. Maybe it's time to give meditation a shot.

earcar 16y ago
He has written many books on the subject. I think I'll read the linked one and get the "sequel" soon. http://www.amazon.com/Bhante-Henepola-Gunaratana/e/B002LADY6O http://www.amazon.com/Bhante-Henepola-Gunaratana/e/B002LADY6...
michael_dorfman 16y ago
Actually, it says almost everything about meditation. I definitely recommend that you (or anyone else interested) give meditation a shot-- but I'd suggest that you find a teacher. Otherwise, it's a bit like trying to learn to swim from a book. There are a lot of meditation centers around, and most of them don't charge money or require adherence to any doctrine whatsoever. In my experience, they are happy to have you there, and happy to show you how it's done. That being said: as books go, Bhante G.'s is one of the best.
k0n2ad 16y ago
If this comment was meant to be sarcastic then it was expertly executed! BTW, you really don't need a teacher to learn meditation... just sit down, shut up and focus on your breathing for a few minutes each day... and watch how wild your mind is.
- drblast 16y ago
  Not meant to be sarcastic at all. I just appreciate the insight in the essay. I'd rather someone be an example of the results of their ideology, than have them try to sell me on it. I think it speaks volumes.

Avshalom 16y ago

>And just because of the simple fact that you are human, you find yourself heir to an inherent unsatisfactoriness in life which simply will not go away. You can suppress it from your awareness for a time. You can distract yourself for hours on end, but it always comes back--usually when you least expect it. Or you can embrace that inherent unsatisfactoriness and affect real change in the world. >Examine each of these goals and you will find they are superficial. You want food. Why? Because I am hungry. So you are hungry, so what? Well if I eat, I won't be hungry and then I'll feel good. Ah ha! Feel good! Now there is a real item. I'm pretty sure happiness is the superficial goal when it comes to food. Food can be a want yeah sure, but it's also a NEED. In general I just can't abide by this sort of nihilism couched as noble anti-materialism. If the truest expression of your philosophy leads to you sitting in a cave waiting to starve, freeze, dehydrate, or get eaten by wolves, you can just fuck off.

wangwei 16y ago
Apparently, you didn't understand the essay or the meditation. Meditation is not nihilism or anti-materialism. I am not sure how i can explain it to you to make it clear to you. I remember from a Buddhist saying that if your glass is full, there is nothing one can do about it. You need to remove something in your glass first before you can pour anything else into it. I feel like you are full of ignorance and false assumptions about meditation. Unless you become openminded and really try to understand what meditation is, nothing is going to change your mind.
- Avshalom 16y ago
  You're really going to call me close minded in defense of an essay that gets all of five paragraphs in before calling my experiences and emotions fake? An essay that dismisses the idea that there exists people comfortable with feeling the full range of human emotions, that dismisses civilization as a whole as self deception? And you're sure you want to defend a Buddhist by telling me he's not anti-materialistic? Also in response to that Buddhist saying? I choose to get a bigger glass.
  - 16y ago

skbohra 16y ago

The old concept of meditation is not suitable for present condition. I prefer [http://www.osho.com/main.cfm?Area=Meditation&Sub1Menu=ActiveMeditation&Sub2Menu=Dynamic&Language=English http://www.osho.com/main.cfm?Area=Meditation&Sub1Menu=Ac... Osho Dynamic Meditation] , which is designed so well to suit real need of working people. And for people out here I think its the best choice.

tel 16y ago

This essay angers me with its presumption. It reads off like a fortune teller reaching for whatever level of generalized sympathy will get you nodding along. Maybe I'm just not sensitive enough to see the boiling resentment and stress in watching families sing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game, or maybe I'm just far too aware of the postmodern tradition of misery the essayist is targeting to, ah, buy it. We try to stick each perception, every mental change in this endless flow into one of three mental pigeon holes. It is good, or it is bad, or it is neutral. Does anyone actually live just like that or is it a strawman that wrings another drop of ethos from the audience? I don't want to make a statement against meditation, actually. I have some mental antiviral habits that make me think Vipassana as its practiced in the US is half truth and half marketing delusion, but at the end of the day stress is a huge problem and anything that can get people to honestly, psychically relax has its value. My own experience is that meditation can take many forms and truly is a perspective inversion with a great personal ROI. I go backpacking, and I'll recommend it heartily too. I want to go one step further. I've known and spoken to a few people who practice meditation both here and in China and will say the essay isn't wrong in its spiritual recommendation either. I am thoroughly convinced through testimony and personal practice that you can learn a lot from sitting still. There was even a link on HN a few days ago that suggested rational, tested support. But even if meditation were the honest cure for all existential angst in the human condition, even if it cured AIDS and fixed Greece's financial woes, I'd still prefer someone talk to me with respect instead of trying to wheedle their way into my heart with meandering, gypsy-like proselytizing. It only sounds bleak when you view it from the level of ordinary mental perspective You too can be extraordinary! How many payments is Vipassana? (Well $125) There is only one way you will ever know if meditation is worth the effort. Learn to do it right, and do it. See for yourself. The only valuable 3 sentences in this whole business.

dtf 16y ago
I found it distasteful. I very much respect the idea of personal meditation, but this essay gave me that belly nausea that I experience reading a religious pamphlet dropped on my doorstep. "Purify the mind"? "Emotional bondage"? Is this any different from "auditing" my "reactive mind" in search of the elusive "state of clear"? I like my emotions goddammit, and this essay left me flustered and angry!

nickpinkston 16y ago

Based on most of the people I know who meditate, they don't seem to be any different from a random sample. Are there studies that show that meditate is good for X? Perhaps the causation is actually that people with X tend to be good at meditating? Just wondering...

andrew_k 16y ago
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3047291.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3047291.stm
iskander 16y ago
I know several people who have taken up meditation and they each have changed significantly through their experiences. Perhaps it's more useful to compare someone who meditates to their former selves rather than some nebulous concept of an "average" person.
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  Yea, it's quite true about that seeing improvement longitudinally would be better than the "average person". The study cited in the below BBC article studied people (Buddhist monks) that don't pass the self-selection filter though. This study shows brief mediation gives improvement, however I'm not sure how they controlled for those who didn't complete the experiment. Could those people be self-selecting out of it due to difficulties - ADD perhaps? Overall - I'm love to try a simple form of meditation to see if it'd work for my ADD self. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100414184220.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100414184220.ht...
  - jonhendry 16y ago
    I'm ADD, and I found it to be helpful during a period when I was sitting regularly. I prefer just vipassana, watching the breath and watching thoughts as they arise and fade. No chanting or 'OMMM'. An interesting book is "Zen and the Brain" by an emeritus professor of neurology, published by MIT Press. The author started doing zen while in Japan in the late 60s. Over about 1000 pages, he tries to come up with testable hypotheses explaining the phenomena and results of long-term meditation practice. It's very detailed and dense. There are a few chapters that describe his subjective experiences, but the rest is pretty scientific. There are few illustrations, it's a massive block of text.

Groxx 16y ago

What's with the see-saw of meditation articles lately? It's better than expected, science™ proves it! It's a waste of time, news at eleven! We'll show you how for only some monies!

ulvund 16y ago
It has been a year since I saw this posted on HN and it got me started with meditation, so I figured I would repost it :)
silentbicycle 16y ago
It's one of the common HN tropes. Pretty soon we'll have yet another post about nootropics or polyphasic sleep. "Ask HN: I want to be smarter, but don't want to expend any effort! Help me get something for nothing!" Meditation actually helps (in my experience), but it's about on par with actually getting exercise or getting enough sleep - totally lame. :)
gnaffle 16y ago
Actually, the book is available for free and is meant to introduce you to meditation without needing a mentor.

ryan-allen 16y ago

For what it's worth, I've known a couple of people who have gone off and done the meditation course through Vipassana, and all have heartily recommended it. Saying that, apparently the drop out rate of their course is something along the lines of 60-70%, most people do not have the discipline required to complete it. I personally haven't done the course so I can't comment directly. I would say though, that meditation is beneficial, and I'm sure there are proper scientific studies that attest to the benefits. Certainly the 'bio-feedback' movement is merely meditation techniques with some output you can discern, kind of like a server with monitoring.

klodolph 16y ago

A lot of people find this article well written, or alternately, they find the article patronizing and some are angry at it. I just think the article is incorrect, which is a necessary consequence of its sweeping generalizations. A quote from the article: "You are a mess." The author spends much of the article telling the reader how unhappy the reader is, how much the reader is suffering. From a rhetorical perspective, I can understand why the author would do this. Yet I'm not convinced that I'm unhappy, and the rest of the article falls apart without that foundation. "It [life] is an emotional roller coaster, and you spend a lot of your time down at the bottom of the ramp, yearning for the heights." To me, life feels more like emotional airplane, at home above the clouds but makes the occasional layover in Detroit. Your experiences may vary.

gnaffle 16y ago
I read the article, and instead of getting angry when he said "You are a mess", I stopped to think: "Who is he talking to? Is he talking to me? Or perhaps to the people who actually feel like they are a mess, and will identify with what he is saying?" I have lots of problems, but I don't feel that I'm a mess. I'm overall quite happy. I still really appreciated the article, and it made me think that meditation might be a good thing for me regardless. There are certainly lots of things in my life that I could be better at dealing with, and probably some things that I'm not aware of. And let's say that something terrible happens in my life. My family dies, I lose my job and get cancer. Would I be sad and unhappy? Probably. Would meditation help me in that situation? It might. Even though it wouldn't revive my family, get back my job or cure my cancer, it would perhaps help me deal with the situation in a better way. If you spend your programming life never looking at your old code to see if you can improve it, always making the same mistakes and always getting a headache by supporting your old code, there's something you could do (code reviews, refactoring) - but you might not realize it or be motivated enough to do it. I think it's the same with the rest of your life. That said, there is no point in spending all your time refactoring your code if you don't learn anything from it and if you're not shipping working code. And there's no point in meditating if you don't feel it has a positive impact on your life. :)

anonman1 16y ago

I had an understanding of what meditation was while on an acid trip. Some people who've done lsd describe a spiritual experience which they experience. I can say I had a good experience. What I felt was an experience of me and everything around me moving as one. That is to say the universe and I are connected to one another. It is an experience which is difficult to articulate, but something which one feels. This experience is largely missing in the sensory experience of everyday life. However, one of the better parts of my experience was watching the plants. Their movement as one is what one is attempting to mimic in meditation. Plants are immensely connected to the world in a way we are not. Mimicking them is how we can connect ourselves to the same feeling. This mimicking of plants is what I feel meditation is. It is why it became easier for me to meditate after doing lsd than before as the reasoning behind it makes much more sense. Some things which helped me understand meditation at a deeper level are: * Bhagavad Gita - The last couple of chapters make more sense. The whole I am everything was a bit annoying before, but it makes more sense when you get the point. If everything is One, then everything is beautiful. * Foucault's The Subject and Power or anything Foucault - Meditation is supposed to break the chains our desire. Foucault's The Subject and Power is immensely powerful in understanding that we are all part of a system and governed by rules. Humans are by no means free but are held together by a discursive power which we are unaware of. One of the things we are supposed to realize is how we are entrapped by these rules and gain the ability to break rules. If you think this is all tripe please feel free to ignore it. This is after all my own experience and it can be completely different to a different individual.

ca98am79 16y ago

I did a 10-day vipassana meditation course and it changed my life. Meditation helps you to understand yourself and your thoughts, and I can't think of anything more important than that. I highly recommend it to everyone.

ulvund 16y ago
How did it change your life?
- ca98am79 16y ago
  It is a 10-day silent meditation, so you can't read or write or speak to anyone for the entire 10 days. This means that you are stuck inside of yourself, with no distractions, for 10 days. What happens is a lot of your problems come to the surface and you are forced to deal with them, and meditation helps you to deal with them. After the course, I have been able to use meditation to better understand myself, and my thoughts, and to deal with anxieties and problems that come up in my life. Email me if you have questions about it.

delackner 16y ago

This is very odd. The Buddha expressly forbade charging money for a Vipassana course (yes, Vipassana is that ancient). A real 10 day course is 100% free, including room and meals. Some have suggested simply reading the sutra or running your own course at home, and I won't say it is impossible to achieve the benefit of meditation this way, but the distractions of the world will make it very difficult to really get started. This is why when you go to a Vipassana course, you are instructed to bring no books, no electronic devices, not even a pen to write, as any and all activities will simply help your mind to become distracted from the monumental task at hand.