15 ms·

Vipassana for Hackers [pdf]

461 points by hargup 8y ago

ndr 8y ago
Talk from the same author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWYqHbF00c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWYqHbF00c
- malikNF 8y ago
  The slides for this talk. https://github.com/nilenso/media/blob/master/presentations/vipassana/vipassana.key https://github.com/nilenso/media/blob/master/presentations/v...
0xFFC 8y ago
I am always curious about how much meditation can affect our brains. In pop science and pop culture, we see a lot of overestimation about meditation affects on our brains. But what is the scientific perspective on meditation?
- tome 8y ago
  How do you know it's overestimation if you haven't seen the scientific perspective?
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    By doing it and experiencing it yourself.
- nabla9 8y ago
  As someone who has practiced over 19 years very intensively, my opinion is that pop science and culture overplays the effects of moderate meditation (say 30 min per day) in a short term and mostly misunderstand the effects of long term meditation. The starting assumption of a secular meditator (like me) usually is that we want to develop some abilities. You are you, just better. If you meditate a lot, or very long time, there comes a point where you realize that it's not just developing cognitive abilities. Your motivations and perspective change as well. It's not just you doing meditation practice. The practice is also working on you. Eventually you are going towards direction where you don't want to go and it can create lots of negative feelings, including fear and hopelessness (sometimes called the Dark Night of the Soul). This is the end of the road for many people. They lose the interest and do something else. I think it's easier for people of religion because they have innate trust that everything is going towards something better and others have done the same.
  - skosch 8y ago
    > Eventually you are going towards direction where you don't want to go ... this is the end of the road for many people. It sounds like you're saying that moderate meditation is overrated, and more intense meditation is outright detrimental in the long term. That is surprising to me. Is this an inevitability? Did you experience this, and how did you push through it?
    - lemonberry 8y ago
      A quick Google search turned this up. May be helpful: https://www.thoughtco.com/buddhist-meditation-and-the-dark-night-449760 https://www.thoughtco.com/buddhist-meditation-and-the-dark-n...
    - eludwig 8y ago
      >>Did you experience this, and how did you push through it? Apologies for chiming in, but the simple answer is that "you" can't. That is, if you believe that there is a "you" that can push past this barrier, then you will fail. It's an impossible task. Where you go after that realization is up to "you." ;)
    - akvadrako 8y ago
      What he's describing doesn't sound detrimental to me; it sounds like facing the truth, which might be a very dark place, but it's what we'll all end up facing eventually. And of course, there is probably something behind that too, of which I have no idea.
    - nabla9 8y ago
      Not detrimental. Good medicine can taste bad when it works. Especially if that was not your expectation. Short therm meditation experiences are mostly overrated. I think even little a day regularly 20-30 minutes has good effects if you make it a habit that you don't give up.
    - nugga 8y ago
      You may uncover so much mud that you stumble and fall but if you're so inclined you just need to remember to get up and keep going every time.
- lemonberry 8y ago
  This episode of Sam Harris' podcast may be a good starting point. https://samharris.org/podcasts/111-science-meditation/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/111-science-meditation/
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  As far as I know there isn't even a scientific consensus on a definition of meditation, let alone what its exact effects are. There are thousands of studies, but high-quality ones seem to be rare. I also get the impression that the literature is heavily biased toward a handful of relatively recent traditions or techniques (e.g. many, many studies are specifically on Transcendental Meditation or Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction).
- collyw 8y ago
  Try pubmed if you want peer reviewed science. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=meditation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=meditation
serpix 8y ago
for a LISP using meditation practicing hacker reading this is incredible, the same insights written down by someone else. > You do not feel physical sensation, consciously or subconsciously, without an accompanying thought or emotion. this is true. When really connected with your body, mind and emotion you see these are interlinked. The body follows thought and emotion, suppressed emotions are kept in the body. Your body feels emotion before you consciously recognize it.
- jwdunne 8y ago
  I noticed this experience a few weeks ago. I was having big trouble getting to sleep and my partner's snoring was agitating me. I decided to relax and meditate. I noticed myself trying to "cure" my agitation. I decided to accept it. But then I realised that I was forcing myself to accept it. Instead of some 'conscious decision', I eased into just being conscious of it. I just felt it and it washed away, replaced with a feeling of pure contentment I've never experienced before. That applied to "trying to sleep" too. I slept well not long after that. It was a profound feeling.
  - epistasis 8y ago
    Vipassana has helped me with so much physical and emotional discomfort and pain, precisely in this way.
tomcooks 8y ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1BWYqHbF00c https://youtube.com/watch?v=1BWYqHbF00c Glad the pdf doesn't include the annoying baby nor the occasional father head covering the presenter. Parents that bring babies to public events bring out the aggro-nihilist in me.
sampl 8y ago
I highly recommend the book Mindfulness in Plain English if you're interested in meditation. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XF1LKW/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XF1LKW/ It strips away a lot of the "woo woo" kooky stuff and clearly explains what meditation really "is". I just finished re-reading it, and must have highlighted every other sentence.
- wodenokoto 8y ago
  What I expect to be in a similar vain is "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion". While I enjoyed reading it and it helped me make sense of a lot of things related to meditation, mindfulness and spirituality in general, I can't say I felt every other sentence was highlight worthy. The chapter on spiritual frauds was however very enloghtening.
  - sorokod 8y ago
    Could you briefly explain what spirituality without religion is? How is it different from psychology?
    - wodenokoto 8y ago
      Its basically about why spiritual things are good for you, and how the feelings you experience during such spiritual things do not need religious / supernatural explanations. It's different from psychology as it doesn't try to explain / cure things like child development, depression, bipolar disorders or most of the other multitude of subjects that psychology works with.
    - fsloth 8y ago
      Not OP but as an atheist for me spiritualism was made concrete when after a meditation session I intuitively knew and felt that myself and the world were the same. I watched at some familiar trees through my windows and felt I and them were the same and actually existed. This sensation brought me great joy and calmness. And then it passed, I was myself again, and the world was again separate from me. This was some two decades ago. I've never felt anything like that after that, but the memory of the sensation is still very strong. No drugs. Just the most basic 'lie-down-relaxed-and-watch-at-a-dot' exercise. And wham. It was pretty cool. I was an adolescent back then and I had decided several years before that logically religion was total BS. Had I been religious I'm sure I would have interpreted my experience as being in direct communion with God. But, I interpreted it as a neurological response to my meditation - which did not make the experience any less spiritual. The experience did not reveal anything new to me, but it made me feel the truth that we all are one and connected, philosophically speaking. Feeling is something purely logical discourse seldom provides. This experience was pure feeling. Like, I intuitively feel my legs are part of me. I felt the whole world was part of me. Now, this is at the same time true - or - false. We are made of the same atoms and are interconnected through our actions and the laws of physics. At the same time, it's a bit silly to describe oneself extending beyond ones body. So, one can choose was I enlightened by a fundamental truth or was I just a bit silly after a brief session of neurohacking.
tomcooks 8y ago
https://github.com/deobald/vipassana-for-hackers/raw/master/vipassana-for-hackers.pdf https://github.com/deobald/vipassana-for-hackers/raw/master/... Mobile friendly pdf link, because for some reason mobile github just shows a "This file is too big to show. Sorry!" with no raw file link.
- miopa 8y ago
  Is there any reason why is this shared as link to github page? While opening on desktop Firefox (Linux) first the tab froze, then whole browser, and now the PC is completely unresponsive, with the disk in full write, i guess the swap is getting filled.
  - AlexCoventry 8y ago
    > why is this shared as link to github page? Because it's for Hackers.
  - deobald 8y ago
    First off: Thank you for the mobile-friendly link! I didn't realize this would work... I'd always just interpreted the broken PDFs on phones as "GitHub has a bug". ;) This wasn't really "shared" on GitHub... this is a work in progress. A colleague of mine (the OP) posted a link to my paper without asking me about it. I've shared it on Twitter before, which may have given him the impression that the paper was complete. I do plan to put the paper up on a website with some additional material (anecdotes, other meditation resources, etc.) this summer. Apologies for the current format.
internetman55 8y ago
Catholicism for Hackers
sgentle 8y ago
This paper is a pretty comprehensive take on Vipassana, so in case anyone's looking for something a bit more general, I'd like to offer a complementary summary based on my own experiences. Vipassana is a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Silent in this case really means distraction-free, entertainment-free, or stimulation-free. Think of it as the diametric opposite of social news. No noise, no conversation, no instant gratification, no easy pleasures (not even reading, writing or music). You just eat, sleep and meditate, with occasional breaks in between. During the course you see other students and listen to recorded meditation lessons, but you are, effectively, alone. It's a cultural trope that having nothing but your own mind for company sends you a bit mad, and in my experience that was basically true. Normally you can count on the distraction stream to save you from your own thoughts, and without it you can spend days stuck in ever-intensifying thought loops with nothing to break you out of them. Which, to me, gets to the heart of Vipassana. It's not really about silence; it's a specific kind of meditation designed to change your relationship to sensation. I think of it like audio engineering: we have a gain control on what we feel, and when the sensations get too much we turn them down until we're comfortable again. The problem is that you turn down everything at once; distracting yourself from painful experiences also distracts you from pleasurable ones. Keep turning the gain down and you eventually end up with a featureless experience: no peaks or troughs, just a flat line. The reason you start with silence is because you're going to turn the gain back up, and you don't want to blow out your speakers at the first loud noise. The technique focuses on bodily sensations, but since sensations are mental and physical everything kinda comes along for the ride. You spend hours focusing on the most minute feelings until they fill your entire mind and your whole world is an area of skin the size of a postage stamp. It can get pretty intense. But what makes it too intense? You do. It's not like bad news is painful because it melts your auditory nerves. Rather, you react to the sound, then you react to your reaction, then you react to that reaction and so on until you've built this unbearable feedback loop. Then you turn down the gain because, damn, that was LOUD. But that's bad engineering; you gotta go fix the feedback at the source. And that means unlearning your reactions. That was my core experience of Vipassana. Turn up the sensation, learn to accept the sensation. Feel more, react less, repeat. Everything I tried to avoid thinking about, I thought about. Everything I didn't want to feel, I felt. I was defenceless as my self-sabotaging thought patterns sabotaged me over and over until I realised I was the one doing it and I could just... stop. It's easy to dwell on the hard parts, but it was often quite peaceful. I spent an hour watching a family of lizards (they hid until I'd been still for fifteen minutes), another watching the finches chase each other and listening to their tiny wings, and another just looking at trees. Have you ever noticed how green trees are? I don't think I'd seen anything that green since I was a child.
eof 8y ago
seems getting that pdf on mobile is impossible?
- corysama 8y ago
  Mobile friendly link https://github.com/deobald/vipassana-for-hackers/raw/master/vipassana-for-hackers.pdf https://github.com/deobald/vipassana-for-hackers/raw/master/...
- aw3c2 8y ago
  Zero problems here with Opera on Android. Are you sure you are using a real browser?
motorokr 8y ago
For those who are interested in roots and origin of mindfulness, should take a look at original Anapanasati Sutta (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.118.than.html https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.118.than.html). Anapanasati Sutta is the main source from which all the modern literature related to mindfulness has been derived. For more detailed explanation of sutta, listen to talk on mindfulness of breathing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4NR3nn4nfM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4NR3nn4nfM).
TravelAndFood 8y ago
Cool quote from the beginning section "Computing Sidebar: LISP": "The machine at the bottom of your consciousness is a strange loop. Having a look at this strange loop is a lot more fun than reading about it." Awesome. Great style and expectation-setting in the intro portion. From my perspective as a programmer, occasional Vipassana-practicer, and not-speed-reader, and having read only the intro portions, this has piqued my interest enough to sink time into reading.
- theptip 8y ago
  The phrase "Strange loop" was coined by Hofstadter, who has written a lot of enjoyable explorations of the philosophy of mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop "Godel, Escher, Bach" being his most well-known, but he has a number of other very interesting works as well.
  - TravelAndFood 8y ago
    Thanks. Just added "Godel, Escher, Bach" to my reading list.
thsowers 8y ago
> The only way one can learn the technique of Vipassana is to take a 10-day course Is this really true? I agree that a large amount of people may not be able to learn the techniques outside of a retreat setting, but I think it comes down to the individual and is different for each person
- MichaelGG 8y ago
  I cannot say it is true because I would not consider myself learned. I will say that the 10-day retreat thing comes off very culty, and it is in their interest to encourage the course. They've built a massive monument apparently funded by donations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Vipassana_Pagoda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Vipassana_Pagoda See my other comment for my more in-depth review. There is certainly a better way to learn than the Dhamma.org 10-day courses, but it might not be readily available in any form today.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- arglebarnacle 8y ago
  This is completely untrue. Vipassana, which means "insight meditation," is a core Buddhist practice which is far broader than this one teacher and his course. If you read the wikipedia article [0] on the branches of Buddhism that emphasize Vipassana, you'll see that S.N. Goenka gets a mention ("...as well as nonsectarian derivatives from those traditions such as the movement led by the late S. N. Goenka"), but it is in no way limited to Goenka's school or his course. As a Buddhist who is very passionate about Vipassana from the completely different angle of Mahasi Sayadaw and American teachers like Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Culadasa, this thread is more than a bit frustrating! For Boston area folks, the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center is one example of a great place to learn this type of meditation practice, as well as about Buddhism more generally if you are interested. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassana_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassana_movement
- collyw 8y ago
  I have been meditating for maybe 6 months now but just for between 10 and 45 minutes a day (and not consistently). I I haven't come close to the level of depth described in the article. I guess its possible but the intensity of such a course must help.
SteveJS 8y ago
Somewhat related is Thomas Metzinger’s The ego tunnel. Metzinger is an applied philosopher, directly examining what is consciousness as can be determined and backed up with neuroscience. I loved Antonio Damasio’s the feeling of what happens, and the ego tunnel is like that on steroids, with years extra work from scientists making progress on teasing out distinctions you didn’t realize were there. There is zero ‘woo woo’, and instead a fascinating set of theories on what exactly consciousness is, why it feels the way it does, what science can tell us now, and what remains unknown. For me it is super fascinating from the point of view of why Vipassana works.
- collyw 8y ago
  I watched a youtube talk with Thomas Metzinger recently. The interviewer asked if he meditated. His response was "yes" (for a significant number of years that I can't remember), "that's how you can tell if someone is serious about the study, and not just interested in an academic career". I found that comment really interesting.
- kashyapc 8y ago
  Interesting that you mention Thomas Metzinger. I learned about him via a podcast he did with Sam Harris (who's mentioned on this thread a few times), titled "The Nature of Consciousness"[1]. From my faint recollection, Metzinger was refreshing to hear and had tighter explanations. And he called The Hard Problem of Consciousness[2] (as popularly defined by the Australian philosopher / congnitive scientist, David Chalmers) as "boring". I'm forgetting the details as to why, but it's all in the podcast. Thanks for the mention, I made a mental note to revisit Metzinger's work, but haven't gotten around. [1] https://samharris.org/podcasts/the-nature-of-consciousness/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/the-nature-of-consciousness/ [2] http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/ http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/
deepaks4077 8y ago
I would highly recommend The Mind Illuminated as a solid instruction manual for beginners who want to start meditating at home. http://a.co/61TjGpW http://a.co/61TjGpW
- arglebarnacle 8y ago
  I'd second this. It really is a phenomenal book. For me, the most interesting thing about it is it would probably be a terrible meditation guide for a lot of people I know. But if you have the approach/learning style that's typical of folks on hacker news, it's the best book there is--because of its emphasis on clearly elucidated concepts, consistent use of language and terms, ample neuroscience-oriented background, and an "actionable" progressive approach.
  - deepaks4077 8y ago
    For me, its key feature was that I found it more actionable than other sources that I'd found online. I prefer it to 'Mindfulness in Plain English'. However, to be fair, I haven't read the entire text, so I don't think that I can make a fair comparison. Edit: The author of the book is Culadasa (Dr. John Yates, PhD), whose profile mentions that he was a neuroscience professor at one point in his life. I haven't verified this. His profile: http://culadasa.com/about/ http://culadasa.com/about/
    - plinkplonk 8y ago
      There is some skepticism about the 'professor' part. No one can locate the colleges at which he supposedly taught neuroscience. A reddit discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/comments/6sx7n7/culadasas_response_to_doubts_about_his_academic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/comments/6sx7n7/...
- dubin 8y ago
  I second this and will add a recommendation for Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, which is legally and freely available here http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ It really has the flavor of "meditation for hackers," whereas The Mind Illuminated's flavor seems more "meditation for engineers."
orasis 8y ago
An excellent Podcast on awakening is Deconstructing Yourself - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/deconstructing-yourself/id1240056193?mt=2 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/deconstructing-yourself/...
- collyw 8y ago
  Is it available outside of iTunes?
Legogris 8y ago
This is by far the best I have read on Vipassana so far. Great approach and scope and good breakdown. I went to four-five retreats but have kind of fallen out of practice in recent years. I will begin to send this when I know people who are going.
atulatul 8y ago
Interesting article. Not written in the same way but an interesting earlier HN post on similar topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8877737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8877737 -- I think Indians(maybe Asians) get this detachment philosophy as a cultural gift. Practicing it is of course a different matter. But it is easier for me to understand (or at least not have too many doubts about) the Samkara/Sanskara/Karma thing. For example, when the linked article (100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days — My Stay in Buddhist Prison) talks about the saliva-swallowing or a lady sobbing, it does not raise too many questions in my mind. Although Naipaul has written about its ill-effects (India A Wounded Civilization)) The term(detachment philosophy) is used loosely.
- vram22 8y ago
  IIRC, it (detachment) is called vairaagya in Sanskrit. I remember from reading the Bhavagad Gita, that Krishna says to Arjuna, that abhyaasa (practice) and vairaagya are key. (I've used my own version of the spelling of those words to emphasize the pronunciation, since I don't know how to put those accent marks on top.)
  - vram22 8y ago
    >IIRC, it (detachment) is called vairaagya in Sanskrit. Just remembered, I think the word used was dispassion (in the English translation of the Gita that I read), not detachment, although the meanings are about the same.
slipperyp 8y ago
There is more information on the method from this documentary Doing Time, Doing Vipassana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkxSyv5R1sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkxSyv5R1sg It documents the use of Vipassana as a reform measure at a harsh prison in India and traces the impacts it had on some of the inmates there.
samsord 8y ago
I had a limited experience with this type of meditation/abstinence. I called it something like "pleasure/ sensory reduction" and sought to re-sensitize myself to stimuli. I didn't talk, accept by accident or for my part time job for 2 weeks. It was an excellent experience. My main take away was that we often are compelled to speak but it adds nothing and is somehow typically better remaining silent where you instead become a better listening. So my experience may have been more to do with the social dynamics of speaking. I also abstained from other forms of pleasure, all drugs and mindless recreation things (TV, music etc) which continued for 3 months afterward but I worked on writing and music projects or anything I deemed productive rather than mindless. The whole experience was interesting but I returned to my normal state soon after as though it had all been a dream. I think a true silent retreat would give you a more internally focussed experience which would be wholey different. Either way you may benefit. Try to experience lower-level stimuli for extended periods as there is a tendency to filter out (or turn the gain down on) experiences when we bombard our senses constantly.
sridca 8y ago
Vipassana is the ultimate form of Stoicism. A great way to dissociate from problematic feelings, instead of addressing them head on. :-P
- duncan_bayne 8y ago
  I can't speak for Vipassana, never having tried it, but I think that's an unfair characterization of stoicism (but perhaps not of some who claim to practice it?). http://modernstoicism.com/ http://modernstoicism.com/
littlethrowaway 8y ago
TLDR: I had a manic psychotic (bipolar) episode triggered on a vipassana course. This was with zero history of mental illness (before or after) Be quite careful with Vipassana, especially if you're not used to regular meditation. It's not just a "silent" retreat in the sense of not talking. Also, no eye contact, no reading/writing and meditating 10 hours a day. It's a seriously stressful time for your brain. I did the course, and I had a manic psychotic episode as a direct result. I made some audio and put it on a blog I started while manic [1]. It details what the course was like, what it was like to be manic (totally awesome! ;), what it was like to be depressed (absolutely awful) and getting better. I'm not saying don't do the course, I'm not saying I didn't do something wrong with the technique, I am saying be very very careful and don't think there can't be downsides. I was off work for a year and it took about 3 years before I felt "normal" again. [1] http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com/ http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com/
- pretendscholar 8y ago
  Wow, thanks for sharing. Very interesting. Were you new to practicing meditation? I could definitely see why ten days would be harmful, its almost like solitary confinement.
  - littlethrowaway 8y ago
    Yip, basically totally new to practicing meditation. Utterly naive ;) I actually think it should be a requirement that you undergo a 1 3 or 5 day course first, before they allow you onto a 10 day. Unfortunately, you have to do the 10 day first, before they'll let you do a shorter course. I did give the organisation this feedback, but, I don't imagine any changes were made. I also think they should have a trained psychologist to assess people when they're leaving (I would have been picked up as unwell I think as I was definitely manic when I left). Hey ho.
rglover 8y ago
Nearly two years later, I can say that taking part in a Vipassana retreat has had a tremendously positive effect on my psychological state. I went from being in a state of what I later realized (after the retreat) was borderline depression and rife with anxiety to being extremely calm, collected, and happy. The meditation was nice, but it's the overall message that underlies the meditation that I found essential: Anicca—everything is temporary. It gives you a mental toolset for dealing with the world that cuts away the weight of the day-to-day in a difficult to articulate way. Here's my personal take written soon after my return: http://www.ryanglover.net/articles/vipassana http://www.ryanglover.net/articles/vipassana
plinkplonk 8y ago
you could just use the meditation algorithm, and meditate by yourself for 10 (or however many) days for multiple multi-hour sessions a day, and avoid having to sit through Goenka's religious meanderings, weird sound tracks and cultiness. Check into a cheap hotel during non-tourist season, sometime in the mountains or near a lake or sea. Switch off the phone. Eat + meditate + sleep * 10 days (or however many you want). Et voila. You get all the benefits without all the cultiness. Vipassana is a technique. You master the technique by doing it. Attending a cult's course is one way of doing it. Whether it is the optimal method is open to debate. The key seems to be to spend long hours practicing the technique for many days (vs 30 minutes a day). I'm not convinced proficiency in the technique can only by attained by a retreat with a specific organization. One can learn to program in Clojure (say) by attending a 10 day course by $ClojureGuru. One can also learn to program with a book and a laptop, and occasional questions on irc. Both methods work, and have different trade offs. Personally, I learned Vipassana (and Jhana) meditation by myself, by reading and experimenting. I've since encountered advanced Buddhist mediators (abbots of Buddhist monasteries etc) who 'confirmed' I'm "doing it right" (fwiw, I wasn't really looking for validation or advice, it just came up in conversation). They didn't seem surprised I taught myself. So I doubt it is that uncommon. If the only way to learn to 'hack' is to attend a 10 day course, that isn't much of a 'hack' in the first place. I strongly push back against the "only way to learn is be attending a 10 day course" idea. Other than this, I enjoyed reading the paper, Steven is an excellent writer. My 2 cents. YMMV, as it should. PS: I do admire the grit of anyone who actually completes the 10 day retreat, not so much the meditation as enduring all the culty BS. As grit training, it probably works ;-) PPS: I have no belief in the religious dogma of any Buddhist school. I just think the techniques are useful
- alisson 8y ago
  I completely agree with you, but as someone as have gone multiple times for 10-day courses what I like best about that is the organization/community as a whole, I learned a lot from serving maybe even more then just sitting actually my first glimpse of Jhana was while serving, you also have access to a very experienced teacher to talk and ask questions, and that its all free and the food is excellent, so really helps a lot. If you are able to do a course by yourself I have no doubt it can be a much deeper dive into reality. Something that is in the core teachings of Vipassana for me is that everything is just a matter of perspective, there is that no-judging perspective where you find equanimity everywhere.
happyruss 8y ago
nice overview; albeit quite technical. I actually wrote a vipassana how-to app that teaches the process: http://www.guidedmeditationtreks.com/vipassana.html http://www.guidedmeditationtreks.com/vipassana.html

461 points by hargup 8y ago

ndr 8y ago

Talk from the same author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWYqHbF00c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWYqHbF00c

malikNF 8y ago
The slides for this talk. https://github.com/nilenso/media/blob/master/presentations/vipassana/vipassana.key https://github.com/nilenso/media/blob/master/presentations/v...

0xFFC 8y ago

I am always curious about how much meditation can affect our brains. In pop science and pop culture, we see a lot of overestimation about meditation affects on our brains. But what is the scientific perspective on meditation?

tome 8y ago
How do you know it's overestimation if you haven't seen the scientific perspective?
- akvadrako 8y ago
  By doing it and experiencing it yourself.
nabla9 8y ago
As someone who has practiced over 19 years very intensively, my opinion is that pop science and culture overplays the effects of moderate meditation (say 30 min per day) in a short term and mostly misunderstand the effects of long term meditation. The starting assumption of a secular meditator (like me) usually is that we want to develop some abilities. You are you, just better. If you meditate a lot, or very long time, there comes a point where you realize that it's not just developing cognitive abilities. Your motivations and perspective change as well. It's not just you doing meditation practice. The practice is also working on you. Eventually you are going towards direction where you don't want to go and it can create lots of negative feelings, including fear and hopelessness (sometimes called the Dark Night of the Soul). This is the end of the road for many people. They lose the interest and do something else. I think it's easier for people of religion because they have innate trust that everything is going towards something better and others have done the same.
- skosch 8y ago
  > Eventually you are going towards direction where you don't want to go ... this is the end of the road for many people. It sounds like you're saying that moderate meditation is overrated, and more intense meditation is outright detrimental in the long term. That is surprising to me. Is this an inevitability? Did you experience this, and how did you push through it?
  - lemonberry 8y ago
    A quick Google search turned this up. May be helpful: https://www.thoughtco.com/buddhist-meditation-and-the-dark-night-449760 https://www.thoughtco.com/buddhist-meditation-and-the-dark-n...
  - eludwig 8y ago
    >>Did you experience this, and how did you push through it? Apologies for chiming in, but the simple answer is that "you" can't. That is, if you believe that there is a "you" that can push past this barrier, then you will fail. It's an impossible task. Where you go after that realization is up to "you." ;)
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    What he's describing doesn't sound detrimental to me; it sounds like facing the truth, which might be a very dark place, but it's what we'll all end up facing eventually. And of course, there is probably something behind that too, of which I have no idea.
  - nabla9 8y ago
    Not detrimental. Good medicine can taste bad when it works. Especially if that was not your expectation. Short therm meditation experiences are mostly overrated. I think even little a day regularly 20-30 minutes has good effects if you make it a habit that you don't give up.
  - nugga 8y ago
    You may uncover so much mud that you stumble and fall but if you're so inclined you just need to remember to get up and keep going every time.
lemonberry 8y ago
This episode of Sam Harris' podcast may be a good starting point. https://samharris.org/podcasts/111-science-meditation/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/111-science-meditation/
0xcde4c3db 8y ago
As far as I know there isn't even a scientific consensus on a definition of meditation, let alone what its exact effects are. There are thousands of studies, but high-quality ones seem to be rare. I also get the impression that the literature is heavily biased toward a handful of relatively recent traditions or techniques (e.g. many, many studies are specifically on Transcendental Meditation or Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction).
collyw 8y ago
Try pubmed if you want peer reviewed science. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=meditation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=meditation

serpix 8y ago

for a LISP using meditation practicing hacker reading this is incredible, the same insights written down by someone else. > You do not feel physical sensation, consciously or subconsciously, without an accompanying thought or emotion. this is true. When really connected with your body, mind and emotion you see these are interlinked. The body follows thought and emotion, suppressed emotions are kept in the body. Your body feels emotion before you consciously recognize it.

jwdunne 8y ago
I noticed this experience a few weeks ago. I was having big trouble getting to sleep and my partner's snoring was agitating me. I decided to relax and meditate. I noticed myself trying to "cure" my agitation. I decided to accept it. But then I realised that I was forcing myself to accept it. Instead of some 'conscious decision', I eased into just being conscious of it. I just felt it and it washed away, replaced with a feeling of pure contentment I've never experienced before. That applied to "trying to sleep" too. I slept well not long after that. It was a profound feeling.
- epistasis 8y ago
  Vipassana has helped me with so much physical and emotional discomfort and pain, precisely in this way.

tomcooks 8y ago

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1BWYqHbF00c https://youtube.com/watch?v=1BWYqHbF00c Glad the pdf doesn't include the annoying baby nor the occasional father head covering the presenter. Parents that bring babies to public events bring out the aggro-nihilist in me.

sampl 8y ago

I highly recommend the book Mindfulness in Plain English if you're interested in meditation. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XF1LKW/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XF1LKW/ It strips away a lot of the "woo woo" kooky stuff and clearly explains what meditation really "is". I just finished re-reading it, and must have highlighted every other sentence.

wodenokoto 8y ago
What I expect to be in a similar vain is "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion". While I enjoyed reading it and it helped me make sense of a lot of things related to meditation, mindfulness and spirituality in general, I can't say I felt every other sentence was highlight worthy. The chapter on spiritual frauds was however very enloghtening.
- sorokod 8y ago
  Could you briefly explain what spirituality without religion is? How is it different from psychology?
  - wodenokoto 8y ago
    Its basically about why spiritual things are good for you, and how the feelings you experience during such spiritual things do not need religious / supernatural explanations. It's different from psychology as it doesn't try to explain / cure things like child development, depression, bipolar disorders or most of the other multitude of subjects that psychology works with.
  - fsloth 8y ago
    Not OP but as an atheist for me spiritualism was made concrete when after a meditation session I intuitively knew and felt that myself and the world were the same. I watched at some familiar trees through my windows and felt I and them were the same and actually existed. This sensation brought me great joy and calmness. And then it passed, I was myself again, and the world was again separate from me. This was some two decades ago. I've never felt anything like that after that, but the memory of the sensation is still very strong. No drugs. Just the most basic 'lie-down-relaxed-and-watch-at-a-dot' exercise. And wham. It was pretty cool. I was an adolescent back then and I had decided several years before that logically religion was total BS. Had I been religious I'm sure I would have interpreted my experience as being in direct communion with God. But, I interpreted it as a neurological response to my meditation - which did not make the experience any less spiritual. The experience did not reveal anything new to me, but it made me feel the truth that we all are one and connected, philosophically speaking. Feeling is something purely logical discourse seldom provides. This experience was pure feeling. Like, I intuitively feel my legs are part of me. I felt the whole world was part of me. Now, this is at the same time true - or - false. We are made of the same atoms and are interconnected through our actions and the laws of physics. At the same time, it's a bit silly to describe oneself extending beyond ones body. So, one can choose was I enlightened by a fundamental truth or was I just a bit silly after a brief session of neurohacking.

tomcooks 8y ago

https://github.com/deobald/vipassana-for-hackers/raw/master/vipassana-for-hackers.pdf https://github.com/deobald/vipassana-for-hackers/raw/master/... Mobile friendly pdf link, because for some reason mobile github just shows a "This file is too big to show. Sorry!" with no raw file link.

miopa 8y ago
Is there any reason why is this shared as link to github page? While opening on desktop Firefox (Linux) first the tab froze, then whole browser, and now the PC is completely unresponsive, with the disk in full write, i guess the swap is getting filled.
- AlexCoventry 8y ago
  > why is this shared as link to github page? Because it's for Hackers.
- deobald 8y ago
  First off: Thank you for the mobile-friendly link! I didn't realize this would work... I'd always just interpreted the broken PDFs on phones as "GitHub has a bug". ;) This wasn't really "shared" on GitHub... this is a work in progress. A colleague of mine (the OP) posted a link to my paper without asking me about it. I've shared it on Twitter before, which may have given him the impression that the paper was complete. I do plan to put the paper up on a website with some additional material (anecdotes, other meditation resources, etc.) this summer. Apologies for the current format.

internetman55 8y ago

Catholicism for Hackers

sgentle 8y ago

This paper is a pretty comprehensive take on Vipassana, so in case anyone's looking for something a bit more general, I'd like to offer a complementary summary based on my own experiences. Vipassana is a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Silent in this case really means distraction-free, entertainment-free, or stimulation-free. Think of it as the diametric opposite of social news. No noise, no conversation, no instant gratification, no easy pleasures (not even reading, writing or music). You just eat, sleep and meditate, with occasional breaks in between. During the course you see other students and listen to recorded meditation lessons, but you are, effectively, alone. It's a cultural trope that having nothing but your own mind for company sends you a bit mad, and in my experience that was basically true. Normally you can count on the distraction stream to save you from your own thoughts, and without it you can spend days stuck in ever-intensifying thought loops with nothing to break you out of them. Which, to me, gets to the heart of Vipassana. It's not really about silence; it's a specific kind of meditation designed to change your relationship to sensation. I think of it like audio engineering: we have a gain control on what we feel, and when the sensations get too much we turn them down until we're comfortable again. The problem is that you turn down everything at once; distracting yourself from painful experiences also distracts you from pleasurable ones. Keep turning the gain down and you eventually end up with a featureless experience: no peaks or troughs, just a flat line. The reason you start with silence is because you're going to turn the gain back up, and you don't want to blow out your speakers at the first loud noise. The technique focuses on bodily sensations, but since sensations are mental and physical everything kinda comes along for the ride. You spend hours focusing on the most minute feelings until they fill your entire mind and your whole world is an area of skin the size of a postage stamp. It can get pretty intense. But what makes it too intense? You do. It's not like bad news is painful because it melts your auditory nerves. Rather, you react to the sound, then you react to your reaction, then you react to that reaction and so on until you've built this unbearable feedback loop. Then you turn down the gain because, damn, that was LOUD. But that's bad engineering; you gotta go fix the feedback at the source. And that means unlearning your reactions. That was my core experience of Vipassana. Turn up the sensation, learn to accept the sensation. Feel more, react less, repeat. Everything I tried to avoid thinking about, I thought about. Everything I didn't want to feel, I felt. I was defenceless as my self-sabotaging thought patterns sabotaged me over and over until I realised I was the one doing it and I could just... stop. It's easy to dwell on the hard parts, but it was often quite peaceful. I spent an hour watching a family of lizards (they hid until I'd been still for fifteen minutes), another watching the finches chase each other and listening to their tiny wings, and another just looking at trees. Have you ever noticed how green trees are? I don't think I'd seen anything that green since I was a child.

eof 8y ago

seems getting that pdf on mobile is impossible?

corysama 8y ago
Mobile friendly link https://github.com/deobald/vipassana-for-hackers/raw/master/vipassana-for-hackers.pdf https://github.com/deobald/vipassana-for-hackers/raw/master/...
aw3c2 8y ago
Zero problems here with Opera on Android. Are you sure you are using a real browser?

motorokr 8y ago

For those who are interested in roots and origin of mindfulness, should take a look at original Anapanasati Sutta (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.118.than.html https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.118.than.html). Anapanasati Sutta is the main source from which all the modern literature related to mindfulness has been derived. For more detailed explanation of sutta, listen to talk on mindfulness of breathing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4NR3nn4nfM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4NR3nn4nfM).

TravelAndFood 8y ago

Cool quote from the beginning section "Computing Sidebar: LISP": "The machine at the bottom of your consciousness is a strange loop. Having a look at this strange loop is a lot more fun than reading about it." Awesome. Great style and expectation-setting in the intro portion. From my perspective as a programmer, occasional Vipassana-practicer, and not-speed-reader, and having read only the intro portions, this has piqued my interest enough to sink time into reading.

theptip 8y ago
The phrase "Strange loop" was coined by Hofstadter, who has written a lot of enjoyable explorations of the philosophy of mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop "Godel, Escher, Bach" being his most well-known, but he has a number of other very interesting works as well.
- TravelAndFood 8y ago
  Thanks. Just added "Godel, Escher, Bach" to my reading list.

thsowers 8y ago

> The only way one can learn the technique of Vipassana is to take a 10-day course Is this really true? I agree that a large amount of people may not be able to learn the techniques outside of a retreat setting, but I think it comes down to the individual and is different for each person

MichaelGG 8y ago
I cannot say it is true because I would not consider myself learned. I will say that the 10-day retreat thing comes off very culty, and it is in their interest to encourage the course. They've built a massive monument apparently funded by donations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Vipassana_Pagoda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Vipassana_Pagoda See my other comment for my more in-depth review. There is certainly a better way to learn than the Dhamma.org 10-day courses, but it might not be readily available in any form today.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
arglebarnacle 8y ago
This is completely untrue. Vipassana, which means "insight meditation," is a core Buddhist practice which is far broader than this one teacher and his course. If you read the wikipedia article [0] on the branches of Buddhism that emphasize Vipassana, you'll see that S.N. Goenka gets a mention ("...as well as nonsectarian derivatives from those traditions such as the movement led by the late S. N. Goenka"), but it is in no way limited to Goenka's school or his course. As a Buddhist who is very passionate about Vipassana from the completely different angle of Mahasi Sayadaw and American teachers like Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Culadasa, this thread is more than a bit frustrating! For Boston area folks, the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center is one example of a great place to learn this type of meditation practice, as well as about Buddhism more generally if you are interested. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassana_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassana_movement
collyw 8y ago
I have been meditating for maybe 6 months now but just for between 10 and 45 minutes a day (and not consistently). I I haven't come close to the level of depth described in the article. I guess its possible but the intensity of such a course must help.

SteveJS 8y ago

Somewhat related is Thomas Metzinger’s The ego tunnel. Metzinger is an applied philosopher, directly examining what is consciousness as can be determined and backed up with neuroscience. I loved Antonio Damasio’s the feeling of what happens, and the ego tunnel is like that on steroids, with years extra work from scientists making progress on teasing out distinctions you didn’t realize were there. There is zero ‘woo woo’, and instead a fascinating set of theories on what exactly consciousness is, why it feels the way it does, what science can tell us now, and what remains unknown. For me it is super fascinating from the point of view of why Vipassana works.

collyw 8y ago
I watched a youtube talk with Thomas Metzinger recently. The interviewer asked if he meditated. His response was "yes" (for a significant number of years that I can't remember), "that's how you can tell if someone is serious about the study, and not just interested in an academic career". I found that comment really interesting.
kashyapc 8y ago
Interesting that you mention Thomas Metzinger. I learned about him via a podcast he did with Sam Harris (who's mentioned on this thread a few times), titled "The Nature of Consciousness"[1]. From my faint recollection, Metzinger was refreshing to hear and had tighter explanations. And he called The Hard Problem of Consciousness[2] (as popularly defined by the Australian philosopher / congnitive scientist, David Chalmers) as "boring". I'm forgetting the details as to why, but it's all in the podcast. Thanks for the mention, I made a mental note to revisit Metzinger's work, but haven't gotten around. [1] https://samharris.org/podcasts/the-nature-of-consciousness/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/the-nature-of-consciousness/ [2] http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/ http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/

deepaks4077 8y ago

I would highly recommend The Mind Illuminated as a solid instruction manual for beginners who want to start meditating at home. http://a.co/61TjGpW http://a.co/61TjGpW

arglebarnacle 8y ago
I'd second this. It really is a phenomenal book. For me, the most interesting thing about it is it would probably be a terrible meditation guide for a lot of people I know. But if you have the approach/learning style that's typical of folks on hacker news, it's the best book there is--because of its emphasis on clearly elucidated concepts, consistent use of language and terms, ample neuroscience-oriented background, and an "actionable" progressive approach.
- deepaks4077 8y ago
  For me, its key feature was that I found it more actionable than other sources that I'd found online. I prefer it to 'Mindfulness in Plain English'. However, to be fair, I haven't read the entire text, so I don't think that I can make a fair comparison. Edit: The author of the book is Culadasa (Dr. John Yates, PhD), whose profile mentions that he was a neuroscience professor at one point in his life. I haven't verified this. His profile: http://culadasa.com/about/ http://culadasa.com/about/
  - plinkplonk 8y ago
    There is some skepticism about the 'professor' part. No one can locate the colleges at which he supposedly taught neuroscience. A reddit discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/comments/6sx7n7/culadasas_response_to_doubts_about_his_academic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/comments/6sx7n7/...
dubin 8y ago
I second this and will add a recommendation for Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, which is legally and freely available here http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ It really has the flavor of "meditation for hackers," whereas The Mind Illuminated's flavor seems more "meditation for engineers."

orasis 8y ago

An excellent Podcast on awakening is Deconstructing Yourself - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/deconstructing-yourself/id1240056193?mt=2 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/deconstructing-yourself/...

collyw 8y ago
Is it available outside of iTunes?

Legogris 8y ago

This is by far the best I have read on Vipassana so far. Great approach and scope and good breakdown. I went to four-five retreats but have kind of fallen out of practice in recent years. I will begin to send this when I know people who are going.

atulatul 8y ago

Interesting article. Not written in the same way but an interesting earlier HN post on similar topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8877737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8877737 -- I think Indians(maybe Asians) get this detachment philosophy as a cultural gift. Practicing it is of course a different matter. But it is easier for me to understand (or at least not have too many doubts about) the Samkara/Sanskara/Karma thing. For example, when the linked article (100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days — My Stay in Buddhist Prison) talks about the saliva-swallowing or a lady sobbing, it does not raise too many questions in my mind. Although Naipaul has written about its ill-effects (India A Wounded Civilization)) The term(detachment philosophy) is used loosely.

vram22 8y ago
IIRC, it (detachment) is called vairaagya in Sanskrit. I remember from reading the Bhavagad Gita, that Krishna says to Arjuna, that abhyaasa (practice) and vairaagya are key. (I've used my own version of the spelling of those words to emphasize the pronunciation, since I don't know how to put those accent marks on top.)
- vram22 8y ago
  >IIRC, it (detachment) is called vairaagya in Sanskrit. Just remembered, I think the word used was dispassion (in the English translation of the Gita that I read), not detachment, although the meanings are about the same.

slipperyp 8y ago

There is more information on the method from this documentary Doing Time, Doing Vipassana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkxSyv5R1sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkxSyv5R1sg It documents the use of Vipassana as a reform measure at a harsh prison in India and traces the impacts it had on some of the inmates there.

samsord 8y ago

I had a limited experience with this type of meditation/abstinence. I called it something like "pleasure/ sensory reduction" and sought to re-sensitize myself to stimuli. I didn't talk, accept by accident or for my part time job for 2 weeks. It was an excellent experience. My main take away was that we often are compelled to speak but it adds nothing and is somehow typically better remaining silent where you instead become a better listening. So my experience may have been more to do with the social dynamics of speaking. I also abstained from other forms of pleasure, all drugs and mindless recreation things (TV, music etc) which continued for 3 months afterward but I worked on writing and music projects or anything I deemed productive rather than mindless. The whole experience was interesting but I returned to my normal state soon after as though it had all been a dream. I think a true silent retreat would give you a more internally focussed experience which would be wholey different. Either way you may benefit. Try to experience lower-level stimuli for extended periods as there is a tendency to filter out (or turn the gain down on) experiences when we bombard our senses constantly.

sridca 8y ago

Vipassana is the ultimate form of Stoicism. A great way to dissociate from problematic feelings, instead of addressing them head on. :-P

duncan_bayne 8y ago
I can't speak for Vipassana, never having tried it, but I think that's an unfair characterization of stoicism (but perhaps not of some who claim to practice it?). http://modernstoicism.com/ http://modernstoicism.com/

littlethrowaway 8y ago

TLDR: I had a manic psychotic (bipolar) episode triggered on a vipassana course. This was with zero history of mental illness (before or after) Be quite careful with Vipassana, especially if you're not used to regular meditation. It's not just a "silent" retreat in the sense of not talking. Also, no eye contact, no reading/writing and meditating 10 hours a day. It's a seriously stressful time for your brain. I did the course, and I had a manic psychotic episode as a direct result. I made some audio and put it on a blog I started while manic [1]. It details what the course was like, what it was like to be manic (totally awesome! ;), what it was like to be depressed (absolutely awful) and getting better. I'm not saying don't do the course, I'm not saying I didn't do something wrong with the technique, I am saying be very very careful and don't think there can't be downsides. I was off work for a year and it took about 3 years before I felt "normal" again. [1] http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com/ http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com/

pretendscholar 8y ago
Wow, thanks for sharing. Very interesting. Were you new to practicing meditation? I could definitely see why ten days would be harmful, its almost like solitary confinement.
- littlethrowaway 8y ago
  Yip, basically totally new to practicing meditation. Utterly naive ;) I actually think it should be a requirement that you undergo a 1 3 or 5 day course first, before they allow you onto a 10 day. Unfortunately, you have to do the 10 day first, before they'll let you do a shorter course. I did give the organisation this feedback, but, I don't imagine any changes were made. I also think they should have a trained psychologist to assess people when they're leaving (I would have been picked up as unwell I think as I was definitely manic when I left). Hey ho.

rglover 8y ago

Nearly two years later, I can say that taking part in a Vipassana retreat has had a tremendously positive effect on my psychological state. I went from being in a state of what I later realized (after the retreat) was borderline depression and rife with anxiety to being extremely calm, collected, and happy. The meditation was nice, but it's the overall message that underlies the meditation that I found essential: Anicca—everything is temporary. It gives you a mental toolset for dealing with the world that cuts away the weight of the day-to-day in a difficult to articulate way. Here's my personal take written soon after my return: http://www.ryanglover.net/articles/vipassana http://www.ryanglover.net/articles/vipassana

plinkplonk 8y ago

you could just use the meditation algorithm, and meditate by yourself for 10 (or however many) days for multiple multi-hour sessions a day, and avoid having to sit through Goenka's religious meanderings, weird sound tracks and cultiness. Check into a cheap hotel during non-tourist season, sometime in the mountains or near a lake or sea. Switch off the phone. Eat + meditate + sleep * 10 days (or however many you want). Et voila. You get all the benefits without all the cultiness. Vipassana is a technique. You master the technique by doing it. Attending a cult's course is one way of doing it. Whether it is the optimal method is open to debate. The key seems to be to spend long hours practicing the technique for many days (vs 30 minutes a day). I'm not convinced proficiency in the technique can only by attained by a retreat with a specific organization. One can learn to program in Clojure (say) by attending a 10 day course by $ClojureGuru. One can also learn to program with a book and a laptop, and occasional questions on irc. Both methods work, and have different trade offs. Personally, I learned Vipassana (and Jhana) meditation by myself, by reading and experimenting. I've since encountered advanced Buddhist mediators (abbots of Buddhist monasteries etc) who 'confirmed' I'm "doing it right" (fwiw, I wasn't really looking for validation or advice, it just came up in conversation). They didn't seem surprised I taught myself. So I doubt it is that uncommon. If the only way to learn to 'hack' is to attend a 10 day course, that isn't much of a 'hack' in the first place. I strongly push back against the "only way to learn is be attending a 10 day course" idea. Other than this, I enjoyed reading the paper, Steven is an excellent writer. My 2 cents. YMMV, as it should. PS: I do admire the grit of anyone who actually completes the 10 day retreat, not so much the meditation as enduring all the culty BS. As grit training, it probably works ;-) PPS: I have no belief in the religious dogma of any Buddhist school. I just think the techniques are useful

alisson 8y ago
I completely agree with you, but as someone as have gone multiple times for 10-day courses what I like best about that is the organization/community as a whole, I learned a lot from serving maybe even more then just sitting actually my first glimpse of Jhana was while serving, you also have access to a very experienced teacher to talk and ask questions, and that its all free and the food is excellent, so really helps a lot. If you are able to do a course by yourself I have no doubt it can be a much deeper dive into reality. Something that is in the core teachings of Vipassana for me is that everything is just a matter of perspective, there is that no-judging perspective where you find equanimity everywhere.

happyruss 8y ago

nice overview; albeit quite technical. I actually wrote a vipassana how-to app that teaches the process: http://www.guidedmeditationtreks.com/vipassana.html http://www.guidedmeditationtreks.com/vipassana.html