6 ms·

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. Ma

by 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!
- crayz 16y ago
  I like my emotions goddammit, and this essay left me flustered and angry! So this essay enabled you two experience two of your emotions, you must have enjoyed it
programnature 16y ago
Speaking for myself, I found the assessment about labeling all experiences as good, bad, or neutral (and then ignoring the neutral bin 99% of the time) to be right on the money. I also find the rollercoaster metaphor to be pretty on the money as well. Yes, there are nice experiences, but they do not last forever and in the end are empirically unsatisfying; as a result, their shadow side is that we compulsively try to attain them, thus causing suffering. Not sure where you are getting the postmodern vibes from, this is basic buddhism dogma for the last 2500 years. It seems the very thing the author is pointing out is what is ticking you off: this is a shared experience of all humans. But I don't think that just because its a lowest common denominator is a reason to dismiss it out of hand as a manipulation.
- tel 16y ago
  They're all sensible abstractions of the way we think, but to judge the problems developed by this framework as the root of all dissatisfaction is to take it too seriously. To pass off this conviction as truth is then dishonest. By this model, we're clearly dishonest all the time, but the author does a disservice to the reader through the holier than thou rhetoric. Postmodern angst isn't the introduction of new ideas on the global scale, just a particular rehashing of them that has resonated with consumerist America for the last 50 years. Perhaps it's safest to say there are many outlooks on human suffering, but any and all ways of saying them are insufficiently precise to have claims of solutions be anything more than delusion. So now, I'll apologize beforehand should I misspeak, but I believe the heart of the study of meditation is wrapped up in just doing meditation because talking about it only occludes one's understanding of the practice. With that in hand, I find the article even more disingenuous. Whatever happened to good old koans? Just because they're tricky doesn't mean they were an accident. Shut up and meditate. Or exercise. Or backpack. Or go dancing.
  - jonhendry 16y ago
    "Whatever happened to good old koans? Just because they're tricky doesn't mean they were an accident." Koans are hardly omnipresent throughout Buddhism. They're a pretty late addition. The Buddha wouldn't have had a clue what you were talking about.
dieterrams 16y ago
I'm amazed at how angry this article makes you (and other commenters). I'm even more surprised that you're trying to frame this as a cheap sales pitch, because there isn't any mention of money or their services in the entire article, or even the suggestion that you ought to seek out such a service. You actually have to click through two pages just to find a price for their online course. This doesn't even begin to approach the somewhat sketchy nature of blog posts describing a book with an Amazon referral link at the end, which get FPed here with some frequency. And where on earth does he attack families singing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game? Do you actually think he's attacking the whole of baseball fandom? You guys are definitely reacting to something, but I'm not sure it's this article.
- tel 16y ago
  Go to a party. Listen to the laughter, that brittle-tongued voice that says fun on the surface and fear underneath. Feel the tension, feel the pressure. Nobody really relaxes. They are faking it. Go to a ball game. Watch the fan in the stand. Watch the irrational fit of anger. I can understand and sympathize with those sentiments, but I don't feel or encounter them in my life. There are some who are faking enjoyment and their reasoning is complex, fascinating, and deserving of conversation instead of pigeonholing. Many (most) I know are not. Either I live in some kind of spiritual wonderland, am wildly blind to my social surroundings, or this article is setting the world up in two-tone. I don't think he's attacking. I think he's framing. The rule says simple as possible, but no simpler and I feel there are many who live enlightened-enough lives to find their own paths to meditation or what-have-you without proselytizing guidance. I'll call it a personal Guideline Foul. "Anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." There are many, many things on meditation that would gratify my intellect and HN is swinging through them on it's slow topical trajectory. This one just didn't suit me, so I spoke up. For a much more subtle, loving, and informative treatment of similar topics I suggest Consider the Lobster [pdf] (http://www.lobsterlib.com/feat/davidwallace/page/lobsterarticle.pdf http://www.lobsterlib.com/feat/davidwallace/page/lobsterarti...).
  - dieterrams 16y ago
    I get the same feeling reading your response as I do reading comments by libertarians objecting to "paternalism" and the "nanny state", in which the issue in question becomes wholly subordinate to the libertarian's sense that they are being insulted. This is just one guy's take on what meditation has allowed him to perceive about the world, and naturally he has chosen to emphasize those things. You can disagree with him as oversimplifying and misrepresenting the world, and that's fine. I just don't get why you're so worked up about it, and assigning base/crass motivations to him to boot. Assuming your interpretation isn't merely uncharitable, maybe he's just wrong. Hanlon's razor and all that.
ulvund 16y ago
Have a look at the top comment from 1 year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612276 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612276
- tel 16y ago
  Interesting! I don't want to make the same projection that mkn did, though I'm tempted. Just because a theory fits doesn't mean it's right. As I recommended in another comment, I cannot recommend more highly the works and philosophy of David Foster Wallace. Read Consider the Lobster (and then everything else) and tell me what you think. debt suggests in a further comment the angst of college frat parties, news coverage, and pop music. Maybe he's got a point in that the participants there are psychically ill and the essay is targeted properly, but I'm still seeing the mkn's Zarathustra reference. At the beginning of my college career I hated (hated) fraternities. Today I have gone to many of their parties, ones I would have once described exactly as debt did, and found simple, string-free enjoyment in irresponsibility. The angst and fake smiles had their roots, too, but people's problems are not things that are to be simply overcome by meditative escapism. It's a much deeper transformation and should be sold as such, I think.
Goladus 16y ago
That website charges $125 for the 90-day course, however Vipassana meditation can be learned for free at donation-supported meditation centers all over the world: http://www.dhamma.org/en/bycountry/ http://www.dhamma.org/en/bycountry/ All you have to do is register and attend the 10-day course.
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  The whole book is available online for free: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html
byw 16y ago
My experience with meditation is that immediately after a long sitting, my awareness of the various "mental events" bump up an order of magnitude. I was indeed seeing the subtle fluctuation of emotions in myself and my family that I didn't even know existed. It was a pretty eerie experience at first, then I gradually got used to it. It's more like a drug-induced experience than something I naturally run into. It took me several months of experimenting to get to that point when it just "clicked". Before that each sitting did leave me refreshing, like after an exercise, a cold shower, or a long introspection, but there wasn't the same degree of amplified sense of awareness. I believe the latter is what the author is talking about. What you experience with your newly developed awareness probably depends on your environment. For me, as a newbie, I can't sustain this mental state for more than a few hours. Within those hours I generally feel like staying home, so I don't know what it's like in a social event. Supposedly it takes years of practice for this awareness to stabilize and become permanent, so perhaps by then I can gain more perspective on the various walks of life like the author described. So yeah, the skeptic part of me can't let me vouch for the specifics, but there's a good chance the author isn't bullshitting.
silentbicycle 16y ago
Meditation isn't a cure, it's just a good way to actually hear the alarms that may have been going off for years - a diagnostic technique. You hear all of the (demons? background processes?) that you've gotten tuned out, and realize how much mental energy they drain. (Hold on - maybe I have email. And while I'm there - are people on HN voting me up? What was I saying?) Since meditation is basically just sitting still, shutting up, and listening, anybody who wants to sell you an extreme ZenTM experience is suspect. You. Just. Sit. It's boring. So fucking boring. At least the paint is drying. You just have sore knees. But it helps. While you were so worried about random crap, how many little joys did you tune out? Your morning coffee. Playing with your SO's hair. Pay attention! And yeah, I'm just as wary as you of someone trying to sell me sitting and looking at myself in the mirror for hundreds (no, thousands) of dollars. Previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612740 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612740
- tel 16y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you. At the end of the day I'm probably not even disagreeing with the message the author wants to convey. I'm just disagreeing with his rhetoric, and I find that philosophically and psychologically vital. -- I've meditated before. I've done it for many hours a week for several weeks in a row. Then I realized I totally agree with davidw's comment here that exercise often does just as good a job without being fucking boring. Backpacking. You. Just. Walk. (Through beautiful terrible landscapes that you might actively enjoy for a while but will later become a part of literally and spiritually.) Backpacking. It. Fucking. Hurts. A lot. All day long. All night long. You mentally scream at yourself for deciding to pack each and every single piece of extraneoitivity you're carrying on your back. Each ounce. You curse the world for every stair step up the mountain. Then it all fades into the back of your mind like raining white noise. It's cathartic terrible screaming total peace. And next thing you enjoy it. I'm not saying you, generalized, should meditate or backpack. I'm not saying they're the cure for what ails you, let alone what ails the human condition at large. I'm pretty convinced that if you don't feel like you'd enjoy either one of them then practicing one will transform you positively, but I'd never say that exclusively. But yeah, please do keep telling people to try meditation. I will too. My only beef is when you try to help them decide by pumping them full of psychological sympathy triggers.
_debug_ 16y ago
I didn't realize that people are now charging for this. It's free in India, and runs on donations. Actually, someone posted the link to the Anapanasati Sutta in a recent HN thread on meditation (thank to that person!), and you can just read it and figure out what to do yourself. I would like to think that the Buddha would prefer that you behave like a scientist, which is the path he took towards understanding the mind + life/death. "Buddhism" is an ism, and quite different from being a Buddha. http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/ati_website/canon/sutta/majjhima/mn118.html http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/ati_website/canon/sutta/m...

by tel 16y ago

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!

crayz 16y ago
I like my emotions goddammit, and this essay left me flustered and angry! So this essay enabled you two experience two of your emotions, you must have enjoyed it

programnature 16y ago

Speaking for myself, I found the assessment about labeling all experiences as good, bad, or neutral (and then ignoring the neutral bin 99% of the time) to be right on the money. I also find the rollercoaster metaphor to be pretty on the money as well. Yes, there are nice experiences, but they do not last forever and in the end are empirically unsatisfying; as a result, their shadow side is that we compulsively try to attain them, thus causing suffering. Not sure where you are getting the postmodern vibes from, this is basic buddhism dogma for the last 2500 years. It seems the very thing the author is pointing out is what is ticking you off: this is a shared experience of all humans. But I don't think that just because its a lowest common denominator is a reason to dismiss it out of hand as a manipulation.

tel 16y ago
They're all sensible abstractions of the way we think, but to judge the problems developed by this framework as the root of all dissatisfaction is to take it too seriously. To pass off this conviction as truth is then dishonest. By this model, we're clearly dishonest all the time, but the author does a disservice to the reader through the holier than thou rhetoric. Postmodern angst isn't the introduction of new ideas on the global scale, just a particular rehashing of them that has resonated with consumerist America for the last 50 years. Perhaps it's safest to say there are many outlooks on human suffering, but any and all ways of saying them are insufficiently precise to have claims of solutions be anything more than delusion. So now, I'll apologize beforehand should I misspeak, but I believe the heart of the study of meditation is wrapped up in just doing meditation because talking about it only occludes one's understanding of the practice. With that in hand, I find the article even more disingenuous. Whatever happened to good old koans? Just because they're tricky doesn't mean they were an accident. Shut up and meditate. Or exercise. Or backpack. Or go dancing.
- jonhendry 16y ago
  "Whatever happened to good old koans? Just because they're tricky doesn't mean they were an accident." Koans are hardly omnipresent throughout Buddhism. They're a pretty late addition. The Buddha wouldn't have had a clue what you were talking about.

dieterrams 16y ago

I'm amazed at how angry this article makes you (and other commenters). I'm even more surprised that you're trying to frame this as a cheap sales pitch, because there isn't any mention of money or their services in the entire article, or even the suggestion that you ought to seek out such a service. You actually have to click through two pages just to find a price for their online course. This doesn't even begin to approach the somewhat sketchy nature of blog posts describing a book with an Amazon referral link at the end, which get FPed here with some frequency. And where on earth does he attack families singing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game? Do you actually think he's attacking the whole of baseball fandom? You guys are definitely reacting to something, but I'm not sure it's this article.

tel 16y ago
Go to a party. Listen to the laughter, that brittle-tongued voice that says fun on the surface and fear underneath. Feel the tension, feel the pressure. Nobody really relaxes. They are faking it. Go to a ball game. Watch the fan in the stand. Watch the irrational fit of anger. I can understand and sympathize with those sentiments, but I don't feel or encounter them in my life. There are some who are faking enjoyment and their reasoning is complex, fascinating, and deserving of conversation instead of pigeonholing. Many (most) I know are not. Either I live in some kind of spiritual wonderland, am wildly blind to my social surroundings, or this article is setting the world up in two-tone. I don't think he's attacking. I think he's framing. The rule says simple as possible, but no simpler and I feel there are many who live enlightened-enough lives to find their own paths to meditation or what-have-you without proselytizing guidance. I'll call it a personal Guideline Foul. "Anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." There are many, many things on meditation that would gratify my intellect and HN is swinging through them on it's slow topical trajectory. This one just didn't suit me, so I spoke up. For a much more subtle, loving, and informative treatment of similar topics I suggest Consider the Lobster [pdf] (http://www.lobsterlib.com/feat/davidwallace/page/lobsterarticle.pdf http://www.lobsterlib.com/feat/davidwallace/page/lobsterarti...).
- dieterrams 16y ago
  I get the same feeling reading your response as I do reading comments by libertarians objecting to "paternalism" and the "nanny state", in which the issue in question becomes wholly subordinate to the libertarian's sense that they are being insulted. This is just one guy's take on what meditation has allowed him to perceive about the world, and naturally he has chosen to emphasize those things. You can disagree with him as oversimplifying and misrepresenting the world, and that's fine. I just don't get why you're so worked up about it, and assigning base/crass motivations to him to boot. Assuming your interpretation isn't merely uncharitable, maybe he's just wrong. Hanlon's razor and all that.

ulvund 16y ago

Have a look at the top comment from 1 year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612276 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612276

tel 16y ago
Interesting! I don't want to make the same projection that mkn did, though I'm tempted. Just because a theory fits doesn't mean it's right. As I recommended in another comment, I cannot recommend more highly the works and philosophy of David Foster Wallace. Read Consider the Lobster (and then everything else) and tell me what you think. debt suggests in a further comment the angst of college frat parties, news coverage, and pop music. Maybe he's got a point in that the participants there are psychically ill and the essay is targeted properly, but I'm still seeing the mkn's Zarathustra reference. At the beginning of my college career I hated (hated) fraternities. Today I have gone to many of their parties, ones I would have once described exactly as debt did, and found simple, string-free enjoyment in irresponsibility. The angst and fake smiles had their roots, too, but people's problems are not things that are to be simply overcome by meditative escapism. It's a much deeper transformation and should be sold as such, I think.

Goladus 16y ago

That website charges $125 for the 90-day course, however Vipassana meditation can be learned for free at donation-supported meditation centers all over the world: http://www.dhamma.org/en/bycountry/ http://www.dhamma.org/en/bycountry/ All you have to do is register and attend the 10-day course.

chaosmachine 16y ago
The whole book is available online for free: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

byw 16y ago

My experience with meditation is that immediately after a long sitting, my awareness of the various "mental events" bump up an order of magnitude. I was indeed seeing the subtle fluctuation of emotions in myself and my family that I didn't even know existed. It was a pretty eerie experience at first, then I gradually got used to it. It's more like a drug-induced experience than something I naturally run into. It took me several months of experimenting to get to that point when it just "clicked". Before that each sitting did leave me refreshing, like after an exercise, a cold shower, or a long introspection, but there wasn't the same degree of amplified sense of awareness. I believe the latter is what the author is talking about. What you experience with your newly developed awareness probably depends on your environment. For me, as a newbie, I can't sustain this mental state for more than a few hours. Within those hours I generally feel like staying home, so I don't know what it's like in a social event. Supposedly it takes years of practice for this awareness to stabilize and become permanent, so perhaps by then I can gain more perspective on the various walks of life like the author described. So yeah, the skeptic part of me can't let me vouch for the specifics, but there's a good chance the author isn't bullshitting.

silentbicycle 16y ago

Meditation isn't a cure, it's just a good way to actually hear the alarms that may have been going off for years - a diagnostic technique. You hear all of the (demons? background processes?) that you've gotten tuned out, and realize how much mental energy they drain. (Hold on - maybe I have email. And while I'm there - are people on HN voting me up? What was I saying?) Since meditation is basically just sitting still, shutting up, and listening, anybody who wants to sell you an extreme ZenTM experience is suspect. You. Just. Sit. It's boring. So fucking boring. At least the paint is drying. You just have sore knees. But it helps. While you were so worried about random crap, how many little joys did you tune out? Your morning coffee. Playing with your SO's hair. Pay attention! And yeah, I'm just as wary as you of someone trying to sell me sitting and looking at myself in the mirror for hundreds (no, thousands) of dollars. Previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612740 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612740

tel 16y ago
I'm not disagreeing with you. At the end of the day I'm probably not even disagreeing with the message the author wants to convey. I'm just disagreeing with his rhetoric, and I find that philosophically and psychologically vital. -- I've meditated before. I've done it for many hours a week for several weeks in a row. Then I realized I totally agree with davidw's comment here that exercise often does just as good a job without being fucking boring. Backpacking. You. Just. Walk. (Through beautiful terrible landscapes that you might actively enjoy for a while but will later become a part of literally and spiritually.) Backpacking. It. Fucking. Hurts. A lot. All day long. All night long. You mentally scream at yourself for deciding to pack each and every single piece of extraneoitivity you're carrying on your back. Each ounce. You curse the world for every stair step up the mountain. Then it all fades into the back of your mind like raining white noise. It's cathartic terrible screaming total peace. And next thing you enjoy it. I'm not saying you, generalized, should meditate or backpack. I'm not saying they're the cure for what ails you, let alone what ails the human condition at large. I'm pretty convinced that if you don't feel like you'd enjoy either one of them then practicing one will transform you positively, but I'd never say that exclusively. But yeah, please do keep telling people to try meditation. I will too. My only beef is when you try to help them decide by pumping them full of psychological sympathy triggers.

_debug_ 16y ago

I didn't realize that people are now charging for this. It's free in India, and runs on donations. Actually, someone posted the link to the Anapanasati Sutta in a recent HN thread on meditation (thank to that person!), and you can just read it and figure out what to do yourself. I would like to think that the Buddha would prefer that you behave like a scientist, which is the path he took towards understanding the mind + life/death. "Buddhism" is an ism, and quite different from being a Buddha. http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/ati_website/canon/sutta/majjhima/mn118.html http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/ati_website/canon/sutta/m...