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Few years ago, I read an article about mindfulness on HN, and it finally clicked with me, why some people recommended me to meditate, and I dismissed it because

by js8 9y ago

Few years ago, I read an article about mindfulness on HN, and it finally clicked with me, why some people recommended me to meditate, and I dismissed it because I was too skeptical. I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored, and through that, focus better on a single task that is boring but you have to do it. It probably isn't a cure for everything, but looked at this way, it is still quite useful.

titzer 9y ago
> I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored... There is a vast landscape of meditation practices from numerous traditions that focus on different aspects, but I think your comment is an extremely poor characterization of them. It's bit like describing playing guitar or piano as "moving your fingers in some specific patterns." Uh, no.
- Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
  I think OP is correct, it just wasn't stated as well as it could've been. Meditation (at least some practice forms) is an act of forcing boredom upon yourself AND exploring how your mind's default settings react in that environment. There is a reason why focusing on something like your breath is recommended vs. focusing on the television (breath is boring!). “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
  - leereeves 9y ago
    > “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” A quote from Blaise Pascal, a philosopher who spent a lot of time sitting quietly, alone, thinking. Great quote, but he was probably talking about thinking, rather than meditation.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - titzer 9y ago
    Boredom is an emotional state, it is not the absence of stimulation.
    - Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
      And sitting down in a quiet, non-stimulated environment typically produces all sorts of emotions, does it not?
      - titzer 9y ago
        YMMV but for many practitioners meditation does not imply boredom.
- vidarh 9y ago
  Maybe refine it to training yourself to accept being bored. In the sense of paying pure attention to what your are doing without judging it. This is the core focus of some forms of zen practice for example. There are clearly meditation practices which seeks other goals, but mere judgement free acceptance is an important goal for some. E.g. you're doing dishes. It may be boring, but boring is a judgement. Set aside the judgement and there is just the act of doing the dishes, which is neither good or bad in itself, it just is. The outcome may be good (clean dishes), but the act itself is just sensory input and muscular impulses that you let rise and fall in your mind. As such it is a practice in not letting yourself be affected by things you do not want to be affected by. The feeling of boredom that may arise if you let it, is just another object to meditate on. Learn to set it aside, and a lot of objections to doing "boring" tasks falls away.
  - titzer 9y ago
    > As such it is a practice in not letting yourself be affected by things you do not want to be affected by. Meditation can be a lot more, but yes, I agree that this is an important lesson that can come from it.
HyperMassive 9y ago
The headline is very polarised and sensationalist. Now that you pointed it out, I agree with you it primarily helps me with managing my boredom (and the frustration it causes). Although I have no measurables to quantify its impact, I've felt some benefits to 'mindfulness meditation'. Just because it's not a cure-all doesn't mean it has no merit.
brango 9y ago
Meditation has massive potential for very real, profound experiences. There is much that science doesn't understand about our bodies yet but that has been empirically discovered over the millenia. Meditation can certainly be boring, but it's not necessarily training yourself to be bored. There are many different facets depending on the style of meditation you practice: * Zen might get you enquire into yourself why you're getting bored, why you always need to feel some high, and ultimately, who am I? This may then lead you to realise that you are not your personality. Then you may find your consciousness shifts a little to something more fundamental, where you can see your thoughts just as thoughts and not "you". That fundamental state (called by some 'no mind') is blissful, serene, calm. It's a truly wonderful state of being and I'm fortunate to have had a good glimpse. * Alternatively, Buddhists may teach you to just observe your experiences, not getting caught up in them, leading to the above experiences too. * Taoists and certain yogic schools might suggest you sit there circulating your energy around, so you're certainly not 'doing nothing'. This can lead to some states that are nothing less than ecstatic. The most effective form of meditation I've done (in ~15 years) combines both - energy movement followed by meditation. It seems ultimately that most paths converge on these two aspects, it's just a question of efficiency. The results are incredible. I feel confident they will shift my baseline level of happiness up. As a specific example, this week I experienced that there is a point located above the soft palette in the mouth, that when touched by the tip of the tongue (under certain conditions) results in a feeling close to orgasm. I was literally laughing when I discovered this. It's an incredible, ecstatic feeling. For anyone who wants to know more, check out the free lessons at https://www.aypsite.org https://www.aypsite.org which are the clearest and most complete I've ever found. The specific practice above is called Khechari Mudra. Don't take my word for it, or the word of the guy who wrote those lessons. There's only one way you'll ever convince yourself about this stuff... practice for yourself :-) Good luck!
- icebraining 9y ago
  (1) is often mentioned as a benefit of mindfulness meditation, but it always puzzled me; first, it seems something everyone does to some degree - thinking "I'm being paranoid" is essentially that recognition, no? Second, it's always missing the second part: and then what? One can recognize an optical illusion as one, but that knowledge doesn't make it fade away. I mean, it can help to know, but it seems there's step missing between that and feeling serene.
codeulike 9y ago
> I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored, and through that, focus better on a single task that is boring but you have to do it. I've been meditating for years (on and off, not much at the moment) and what you've come up with there is actually a very useful description of at least some of its aspects.
crusso 9y ago
I like your description. It's similar to how I describe meditation to people who have no experience with it, although I usually say: When you're focused on something interesting, you easily are able to follow the stream of your own consciousness. It feels like one solid river of focus. It's only when your mind is bored that your stream of consciousness unravels. It's that unraveling that we tend to avoid and disregard. We don't wish to carefully examine those moments between focus on interesting things. Meditation forces those unravelings and teaches us how to recognize them, observe them more clinically, and manage a higher (meta) level of control over them.

by js8 9y ago

titzer 9y ago

> I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored... There is a vast landscape of meditation practices from numerous traditions that focus on different aspects, but I think your comment is an extremely poor characterization of them. It's bit like describing playing guitar or piano as "moving your fingers in some specific patterns." Uh, no.

Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
I think OP is correct, it just wasn't stated as well as it could've been. Meditation (at least some practice forms) is an act of forcing boredom upon yourself AND exploring how your mind's default settings react in that environment. There is a reason why focusing on something like your breath is recommended vs. focusing on the television (breath is boring!). “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
- leereeves 9y ago
  > “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” A quote from Blaise Pascal, a philosopher who spent a lot of time sitting quietly, alone, thinking. Great quote, but he was probably talking about thinking, rather than meditation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- titzer 9y ago
  Boredom is an emotional state, it is not the absence of stimulation.
  - Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
    And sitting down in a quiet, non-stimulated environment typically produces all sorts of emotions, does it not?
    - titzer 9y ago
      YMMV but for many practitioners meditation does not imply boredom.
vidarh 9y ago
Maybe refine it to training yourself to accept being bored. In the sense of paying pure attention to what your are doing without judging it. This is the core focus of some forms of zen practice for example. There are clearly meditation practices which seeks other goals, but mere judgement free acceptance is an important goal for some. E.g. you're doing dishes. It may be boring, but boring is a judgement. Set aside the judgement and there is just the act of doing the dishes, which is neither good or bad in itself, it just is. The outcome may be good (clean dishes), but the act itself is just sensory input and muscular impulses that you let rise and fall in your mind. As such it is a practice in not letting yourself be affected by things you do not want to be affected by. The feeling of boredom that may arise if you let it, is just another object to meditate on. Learn to set it aside, and a lot of objections to doing "boring" tasks falls away.
- titzer 9y ago
  > As such it is a practice in not letting yourself be affected by things you do not want to be affected by. Meditation can be a lot more, but yes, I agree that this is an important lesson that can come from it.

HyperMassive 9y ago

The headline is very polarised and sensationalist. Now that you pointed it out, I agree with you it primarily helps me with managing my boredom (and the frustration it causes). Although I have no measurables to quantify its impact, I've felt some benefits to 'mindfulness meditation'. Just because it's not a cure-all doesn't mean it has no merit.

brango 9y ago

Meditation has massive potential for very real, profound experiences. There is much that science doesn't understand about our bodies yet but that has been empirically discovered over the millenia. Meditation can certainly be boring, but it's not necessarily training yourself to be bored. There are many different facets depending on the style of meditation you practice: * Zen might get you enquire into yourself why you're getting bored, why you always need to feel some high, and ultimately, who am I? This may then lead you to realise that you are not your personality. Then you may find your consciousness shifts a little to something more fundamental, where you can see your thoughts just as thoughts and not "you". That fundamental state (called by some 'no mind') is blissful, serene, calm. It's a truly wonderful state of being and I'm fortunate to have had a good glimpse. * Alternatively, Buddhists may teach you to just observe your experiences, not getting caught up in them, leading to the above experiences too. * Taoists and certain yogic schools might suggest you sit there circulating your energy around, so you're certainly not 'doing nothing'. This can lead to some states that are nothing less than ecstatic. The most effective form of meditation I've done (in ~15 years) combines both - energy movement followed by meditation. It seems ultimately that most paths converge on these two aspects, it's just a question of efficiency. The results are incredible. I feel confident they will shift my baseline level of happiness up. As a specific example, this week I experienced that there is a point located above the soft palette in the mouth, that when touched by the tip of the tongue (under certain conditions) results in a feeling close to orgasm. I was literally laughing when I discovered this. It's an incredible, ecstatic feeling. For anyone who wants to know more, check out the free lessons at https://www.aypsite.org https://www.aypsite.org which are the clearest and most complete I've ever found. The specific practice above is called Khechari Mudra. Don't take my word for it, or the word of the guy who wrote those lessons. There's only one way you'll ever convince yourself about this stuff... practice for yourself :-) Good luck!

icebraining 9y ago
(1) is often mentioned as a benefit of mindfulness meditation, but it always puzzled me; first, it seems something everyone does to some degree - thinking "I'm being paranoid" is essentially that recognition, no? Second, it's always missing the second part: and then what? One can recognize an optical illusion as one, but that knowledge doesn't make it fade away. I mean, it can help to know, but it seems there's step missing between that and feeling serene.

codeulike 9y ago

> I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored, and through that, focus better on a single task that is boring but you have to do it. I've been meditating for years (on and off, not much at the moment) and what you've come up with there is actually a very useful description of at least some of its aspects.

crusso 9y ago

I like your description. It's similar to how I describe meditation to people who have no experience with it, although I usually say: When you're focused on something interesting, you easily are able to follow the stream of your own consciousness. It feels like one solid river of focus. It's only when your mind is bored that your stream of consciousness unravels. It's that unraveling that we tend to avoid and disregard. We don't wish to carefully examine those moments between focus on interesting things. Meditation forces those unravelings and teaches us how to recognize them, observe them more clinically, and manage a higher (meta) level of control over them.