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I really sympathize with anyone who has looked into Buddhism and found it puzzling or even annoying. I felt the same way for many years -- if the Buddha had rea

by b6 9y ago

I really sympathize with anyone who has looked into Buddhism and found it puzzling or even annoying. I felt the same way for many years -- if the Buddha had realized something really important, I'm listening, why not tell me what he realized in a straightforward way? Well, he would have, if that would work, but it doesn't. Concepts fly easily between our minds but concepts don't seem to really change how our minds work. What does change how our minds work is direct experience. We lead ourselves to the life-changing realizations by meditation. Slowly, steadily, you train yourself to be calm, to be indistractable, to make your mind very still, much stiller than it ever is even in sleep. Focusing on the nature of experience itself, your mind directly experiences new information about its own workings. And when it does, it has no choice but to change itself, because it does not want to suffer. It causes itself to suffer only because it does not see how its actions lead to suffering. When it does see, it stops. It's freedom and peace by insight. It starts making perfect sense to help others, to plant trees the shade of which you will never enjoy yourself, etc. You see that it doesn't make sense to fear death. It doesn't make sense to be angry at anyone. It's good stuff.

mping 9y ago
Good solid advice right here. For me, personally I feel meditation is about developing wisdom through concentration. The more wise you become, the more sense the Buddha's instructions make. The more insights you get.
- kstrauser 9y ago
  I was raised firmly Protestant. I've since decided that prayer is meditation: - You typically enumerate ways where you've strayed from your ethical goals. "I harmed so-and-so. I regret having done that." - You put yourself into the mindset of change. "I want to be a better person. Help me recognize when I'm about to do something I know I shouldn't so that I can steer away from it." - You open yourself to insight. "OK, I've said what I wanted to say. Now I'm going to sit back and listen for an answer." Although meditation is secular and prayer is explicitly religious, in my experience they seem to follow identical processes. The main difference is whether you intend to send your thoughts outward or to deal with them yourself, but either way you're introspecting your own behavior and desires to seek insights on how to deal with them.
  - Mikeb85 9y ago
    Prayer absolutely is meditation. It's easier to see in say, Orthodox Christian practice, or in some Catholic monastic orders. While some Protestants are rediscovering it, it fell out of favour for awhile as Protestants often eschew monasticism.
  - Buttons840 9y ago
    They don't feel the same to me at all. While meditating I try to keep my mind energized (not sleepy) while attempting to be aware of of the moment, my breath, and the stray thoughts which although I'm aware of I let them go. My mind is energized but quiet and without thoughts (if I'm successful, which I'm often not, that's ok), a state few in this world spend much time in. In contrast when I pray I'm often judging the past and planning the future. The first 2 points you mentioned are specifically reinforcing these habits. Meditation gives me a time to practice not constantly dwelling on the past or the future, which if we're not careful we spend most of our lives doing; meditation is merely a time to practice breaking this thought habit. Not to say one is better than the other though. I just wanted to express my opinion that meditation is much different than prayer according to my own understanding. Granted there are a variety of definitions and understandings of both words.
    - mping 9y ago
      My understanding is that there are different definitions, where generally meditation is some sort of thought cultivation. But the way I learned, you meditate in order to enter samadhi. Samadhi is a Sanskrit word that means right concentration/proper concentration, and it is what allows you to gain insight. It represents a class of meditative states that you enter and can last for short time or long time, typically when you leave samadhi you feel very good, very peaceful and blissful - you reduced your thinking process thus your afflictions too. The higher your samadhi, the better your concentration and wisdom. Without samadhi, meditation is just analytical thought process. So, if any practice (prayer included) is to be meditative it has to enable you to enter samadhi IMHO. I believe that's why it has a different feel for you.
      - 9y ago
- jvagner 9y ago
  "wisdom through concentration" As a buddhist-ish person for a decade now, I follow the path that meditation allows us to see things (and ourselves) as they really are, not as we've constructed or interpreted them. There may be other ways of achieving this, but meditation creates a space between the thoughts we have constantly. We can see our thoughts from the "don't believe your thoughts" perspective. Or, our thoughts -- our consciousness -- is like logs in a stream, and we're not in the stream, but on the banks of the stream, watching the logs go by. We are not our thoughts, we must observe our thoughts, and that requires practice, and meditation is a practice that allows us to develop this.
gglitch 9y ago
I'm probably wrong about this, or, let's say, understand it incompletely (though I think the same point was addressed in the article in the part in which the therapist relates the need to understand the world to the formation of the ego), but a relevant insight might be that you interrupt the process by trying to understand. Like, at all. That part of the problem is your mind compulsively mapping things out, and then obsessing over its own map, rather than the territory.
- aaimnr 9y ago
  There are things that one _should_ understand intellectually. You need some kind of a map, even very general. There are three types of knowledge in Buddhist tradition - information you acquired from others, information you intellectually grasped and finally information from direct experience, insight. Each requires some amount of the previous kind to form. You're right that we are not in direct control of our minds and we don't understand it directly as much as we think we do, but we can understand some important general causal principles which allow to learn how to influence the mind through the right causes. So it's not about not thinking at all, it's about right kind of thinking. We need thoughts, right constructs, to point the mind in the right direction. As in the raft simile - only on the other shore we can let these skillful constructs go.

by b6 9y ago

mping 9y ago

Good solid advice right here. For me, personally I feel meditation is about developing wisdom through concentration. The more wise you become, the more sense the Buddha's instructions make. The more insights you get.

kstrauser 9y ago
I was raised firmly Protestant. I've since decided that prayer is meditation: - You typically enumerate ways where you've strayed from your ethical goals. "I harmed so-and-so. I regret having done that." - You put yourself into the mindset of change. "I want to be a better person. Help me recognize when I'm about to do something I know I shouldn't so that I can steer away from it." - You open yourself to insight. "OK, I've said what I wanted to say. Now I'm going to sit back and listen for an answer." Although meditation is secular and prayer is explicitly religious, in my experience they seem to follow identical processes. The main difference is whether you intend to send your thoughts outward or to deal with them yourself, but either way you're introspecting your own behavior and desires to seek insights on how to deal with them.
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  Prayer absolutely is meditation. It's easier to see in say, Orthodox Christian practice, or in some Catholic monastic orders. While some Protestants are rediscovering it, it fell out of favour for awhile as Protestants often eschew monasticism.
- Buttons840 9y ago
  They don't feel the same to me at all. While meditating I try to keep my mind energized (not sleepy) while attempting to be aware of of the moment, my breath, and the stray thoughts which although I'm aware of I let them go. My mind is energized but quiet and without thoughts (if I'm successful, which I'm often not, that's ok), a state few in this world spend much time in. In contrast when I pray I'm often judging the past and planning the future. The first 2 points you mentioned are specifically reinforcing these habits. Meditation gives me a time to practice not constantly dwelling on the past or the future, which if we're not careful we spend most of our lives doing; meditation is merely a time to practice breaking this thought habit. Not to say one is better than the other though. I just wanted to express my opinion that meditation is much different than prayer according to my own understanding. Granted there are a variety of definitions and understandings of both words.
  - mping 9y ago
    My understanding is that there are different definitions, where generally meditation is some sort of thought cultivation. But the way I learned, you meditate in order to enter samadhi. Samadhi is a Sanskrit word that means right concentration/proper concentration, and it is what allows you to gain insight. It represents a class of meditative states that you enter and can last for short time or long time, typically when you leave samadhi you feel very good, very peaceful and blissful - you reduced your thinking process thus your afflictions too. The higher your samadhi, the better your concentration and wisdom. Without samadhi, meditation is just analytical thought process. So, if any practice (prayer included) is to be meditative it has to enable you to enter samadhi IMHO. I believe that's why it has a different feel for you.
    - 9y ago
jvagner 9y ago
"wisdom through concentration" As a buddhist-ish person for a decade now, I follow the path that meditation allows us to see things (and ourselves) as they really are, not as we've constructed or interpreted them. There may be other ways of achieving this, but meditation creates a space between the thoughts we have constantly. We can see our thoughts from the "don't believe your thoughts" perspective. Or, our thoughts -- our consciousness -- is like logs in a stream, and we're not in the stream, but on the banks of the stream, watching the logs go by. We are not our thoughts, we must observe our thoughts, and that requires practice, and meditation is a practice that allows us to develop this.

gglitch 9y ago

I'm probably wrong about this, or, let's say, understand it incompletely (though I think the same point was addressed in the article in the part in which the therapist relates the need to understand the world to the formation of the ego), but a relevant insight might be that you interrupt the process by trying to understand. Like, at all. That part of the problem is your mind compulsively mapping things out, and then obsessing over its own map, rather than the territory.

aaimnr 9y ago
There are things that one _should_ understand intellectually. You need some kind of a map, even very general. There are three types of knowledge in Buddhist tradition - information you acquired from others, information you intellectually grasped and finally information from direct experience, insight. Each requires some amount of the previous kind to form. You're right that we are not in direct control of our minds and we don't understand it directly as much as we think we do, but we can understand some important general causal principles which allow to learn how to influence the mind through the right causes. So it's not about not thinking at all, it's about right kind of thinking. We need thoughts, right constructs, to point the mind in the right direction. As in the raft simile - only on the other shore we can let these skillful constructs go.