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The Problem of Mindfulness

226 points by gerbilly 7y ago

stevebmark 7y ago
Mindfulness was a major step forward in the exploration of the self, at least for western culture. I see this criticism as the next step forward. I too have felt some ambiguous disconnect between mindfulness and experience that this essay does a good job capturing. The goal of mindfulness is to make you realize you don't exist, and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't your own and you have no free will. That was a step forward in breaking down the self, and this next step is to unify these ideas with the self and existence.
- virtualwhys 7y ago
  > and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't your own and you have no free will. There's a lot going on here. So, I don't exist, and yet an effort to reach the state of non-existence needs to be made (sounds like some faith/belief is required here to even begin). And, thoughts are without a self, which follows from the non-self notion. That all makes sense within this philosophy, but what about free will? It sounds like the state of non-self would be the essence of freedom, and therefore, choice, and not a fixed universe in which everything is preordained.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > The goal of mindfulness is to make you realize you don't exist, and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't your own and you have no free will. You have spent billions of years not existing, you will spend billions of years not existing, yet you also want to achieve this state of not existing within your comparatively short actual lifetime? What a waste.
  - hooch 7y ago
    This brings to mind an illustrative example made by the Buddhist teacher Alexander Berzin: “You’re driving down the road, and another driver is doing something crazy, swerving about and you almost have an accident, and you think what an asshole! Having the thought that the other driver is an asshole is the first obscuration that prevents omniscience. Believing this thought to be true is the second obscuration (paraphrased) that cements the prevention of omniscience.” It’s not that “you” don’t exist. It’s that the conditioned and conventionally accepted ways that we think we exist (and by extension the ways that we project that others exist) are ultimately false and don’t correspond to reality.
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      > Having the thought that the other driver is an asshole is the first obscuration that prevents omniscience You know what else prevents omniscience? The second law of thermodynamics. So what? > It’s not that “you” don’t exist. It’s that the conditioned and conventionally accepted ways that we think we exist (and by extension the ways that we project that others exist) are ultimately false and don’t correspond to reality. Again, so what? Even the simplest biochemical processes inside my body are so complex and astounding, I have no hope of ever truly understanding even a tiny part of them. I have no issue with this. I have no issue with not truly knowing "reality", or with the prospect that understanding it is literally impossible.
      - zzzeek 7y ago
        So...it might help you to realize that other people who you would normally think are "assholes", people who you don't know yet hate nonetheless, are nothing like that, and maybe you've been making all kinds of judgments about people that aren't really true, and that in fact, reality calls for a vastly larger degree of love and compassion for others, even people who cut you off on the road. You treat people completely differently, you become kinder, more courteous, less hateful, and more patient, at larger scale animosity and hostility between peoples decreases to zero and world / universal peace is achieved. No biggie, so what!
        7y ago
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar.
- deleted 7y ago
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- calais 7y ago
  Metzinger, Being No One (2004) may be just the step forward to which you refer. The prereflexive sense of self (as, say, a point-source of will and identity) is empirically inaccurate and faulty, and Metzinger attacks philosophy grounded in this untranscendable experience. But, unlike many philosophers, European or Buddhist, who satisfy to negate the ontological status of the self, Metzinger develops a theory of the self which is conceptually constrained by clinical medicine's empirical totality. Two warnings about Metzinger, though: (1) a mood leaks through his writing, a sort of nihilistic determinism that his rigorous philosophy relentlessly evokes, but which his assertions do not imply; and (2) it is quite difficult reading, like a new Kant, lucid yet dense, requiring of a layman to assiduously infer and integrate the language of cognitive science.
badpun 7y ago
I've had very similar thoughts about mindfullness. Mindfullness tells you to observe your fears and other feelings and see that they come and go, while it does not focus at all on whether and to what degree they are actual valid and important. Feelings are often signals from your subconsciousness, which is trying to tell that something. Of course, a lot of the time these signals can be BS or blown out of proportions - but effectively ignoring them via mindfullness is not a good approach in my opinion.
- strictfp 7y ago
  The same coping mechanism is being used in NLP. I have a feeling it's just a way of dealing with an environment which isn't healthy for the human being. It would be better to adjust the environment.
  - kranner 7y ago
    > It would be better to adjust the environment. Adjusting the environment is much more difficult and, in many cases, simply impossible. To paraphrase an old folk tale, what is easier: making the entire land-surface of the Earth easier to walk on, or just putting shoes on one's feet?
    - strictfp 7y ago
      Sure, but fixing the bigger problems, such as stress in the workplace, would have many more benefits. Ans as far as the analogy goes, it might be hard to fix the entire surface of the earth, but that's a strawman, because we have plenty of urbanised and indoor areas where you don't need shoes. What's the easiest? To cover the entire earth in asphalt, or make all cars be 4wd?
      - discreteevent 7y ago
        I think it's more like the stress in the workplace (for example) is caused by two things. Greedy or power hungry people deliberately harming others (for example) and then other people over reacting to this but also to just the normal shit you have to deal with anyway. So the mindfulness is to deal with the over reaction but ethics and morality are needed to deal with the action. You need both, seems to be the criticism that some people are making about having mindfulness without some ethical framework like Buddhism.
mromanuk 7y ago
> Of course, it’s often pragmatically useful to step away from your own fraught ruminations and emotions. Seeing them as drifting leaves can help us gain a certain distance from the heat of our feelings, so as to discern patterns and identify triggers. I try to do 10-15min daily meditation exactly for this and it work. Counterpoint for “researching” where your thoughts come and searching for the problem: As an anxious individual, my whole life was/is imprinted with anxiety, there is no root cause of it in what I’m thinking. That’s the brilliance of mindfulness, I can cope with the anxiety accepting my thoughts, without trying to change them.
gridlockd 7y ago
"Western metaphysics typically holds that – in addition to the existence of any thoughts, emotions and physical sensations – there is some entity to whom all these experiences are happening, and that it makes sense to refer to this entity as ‘I’ or ‘me’. However, according to Buddhist philosophy, there is no ‘self’ or ‘me’ to which such phenomena belong." This reminds me of this quip by Richard Feynman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo
jonbronson 7y ago
While there are a lot of truths in this article, there's also a thread of misconception running through it, embodied most prominently in the line "Without some ownership of one’s feelings and thoughts, it is difficult to take responsibility for them." Mindfulness is about creating space between you and your thoughts, not ignoring or discounting them. It allows you to look at them subjectively, rather than being carried away by them. This in no way prohibits you from being introspective, and analyzing the origin of these feelings/thoughts. If anything, it empowers the individual to more rationally grapple with them, without falling into the various psychological traps that often come with certain feelings, such as rumination or avoidance. And whether or not we believe that there is a self, this is no way invalidates the reality that your thoughts ultimately reside inside the mind of a human being, with a real world story. It's unclear to me why the author does not recognize this duality. Most of the literature on mindfulness I've read, including Jon Kabat Zinn's, explicitly mention this duality and its power.
- rufugee 7y ago
  Spot on. In my case, mindfulness practice (at the moment with the Waking Up app from Sam Harris) has transformed my life in three short months. I thought I was insightful and deep before, yet was a victim of ephemeral thoughts and emotions far more than I realized. At no time have I given myself a pass or shirked responsibility in the way the article implies...rather, mindfulness practice has given me the time and quiet to turn these thoughts around, examining them and their source. I can't express in words how much I feel I've gained from practicing, and I encourage each of you to do so. While I still can't say I always look forward to it, I'm always glad after the fact to feel it's affects. If everyone practiced mindfulness, the world would be a FAR better place...
  - edejong 7y ago
    The problem with the mindfulness approach is that it only leads you knee-deep. Enough to enjoy the waves and the joy of water, but too little to start swimming. For example, I can still see you are not accepting your past self for what it is ("I thought I was insightful and deep before") or how the world is ("would be a FAR better place"). You are on a path towards awakening. Some of us have come to understand that there are seven factors [1] to master, not one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Factors_of_Awakening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Factors_of_Awakening
eternauta3k 7y ago
I'm surprised that the article doesn't reference this book: David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism https://www.amazon.com/Making-Buddhist-Modernism-David-McMahan/dp/0195183274 https://www.amazon.com/Making-Buddhist-Modernism-David-McMah...
lottin 7y ago
What about... reflection? To me it seems a far more effective approach to self-knowledge. Reflect on your life and experiences in a detached manner. Have a conversation with someone you trust or with yourself. Ask yourself unsettling questions. Answer them honestly. It's amazing the things you can learn this way.
- ElFitz 7y ago
  It can be hard when one is too... "entangled" with one's own issues, feelings and deeply carved thought patterns. Being able to distance oneself from them can definitely help. Just like it's often easier to figure out someone else's issues and their solutions (unless one is projecting or missing an important part of the picture)
sshekhar 7y ago
The word mindfulness itself is a poor translation of the Pali word 'Sati'. The Pali word actually means 'remembering to be aware of the objects that your mind is attending to'. There is no word in western languages to capture that phrase and hence word 'mindfulness' was used to convey in a confusing manner what 'Sati' means. I have been meditating for 1 hour to 1.5 hour every day for several years and I finally got into a stage called 1st Jhana, where your mind becomes temporarily free of all 'wants' and is completely at peace. In that state the awareness becomes super sharp, breathing becomes very shallow (less than 5 breaths per minute) and experience of time distorts. Your awareness can clearly watch thoughts coming up like 'lava bubbles' from your subconsciousness into your consciousness. It is at that point you get a glimpse into 'anatta' (non-self). The idea that there is no controller (or soul or self) that is creating ideas. It is an automatic process that is happening due to your past Karma (conditioning due to repeated practice). It takes a lifetime to develop the wisdom and compassion that Buddha talked about. It cannot be understood purely using logic. You have to get the experience of a calm unbiased mind. Even though people like her are well-intentioned but they should stop to think of the possibility that they may not understand what they are talking about as well as they think they do.
- edejong 7y ago
  Accepting her change is accepting ourselves.
- caser 7y ago
  I think it’s also possible that some people aren’t looking for altered states from their mindfulness practices.
  - mping 7y ago
    It's not altered, it's clearer. If you practice mindfulness and don't expect to have a clearer mind it's a waste of time in my opinion.
- spraak 7y ago
  Thank you for sharing your experience.
deleted 7y ago
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SirLJ 7y ago
Mind tricks don't work on me, only money...
- grayed-down 7y ago
  Yes. Money can buy a lot of things that are more enjoyable to be mindful of, but not everything.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  Money is a mind trick. It's literally an abstract concept that we trade for physical goods and services. A very successful and useful one.
negamax 7y ago
> they’re explicitly instructed to disregard the content of their own thoughts Seems like author is biased on purpose. Entire central idea behind mindfulness is to be aware of your thoughts. i.e. not being lead into same issues by subconscious conclusions (hence breaking the cycle/loop). Well at least that's my interpretation anyways Mindfulness works because it helps someone reach to conclusions on their own. Who knows you better than yourself
grayed-down 7y ago
For me mindfulness has been like a flaming tire around my neck. Too much thinking. And WTH does one do with a Masters in Philosophy? Nice article BTW...
- dsego 7y ago
  Seek the truth?
  - grayed-down 7y ago
    It was a rhetorical question based on a well established meme, but HN is generally a humor-free zone. And does one really need a philosophy degree to seek the truth? It's not that hard to find.
gridlockd 7y ago
That's not awakening, that's going to sleep. Dare to be human, to have desires, to have a will. Don't just "accept" the world, shape it. You have an eternity to be nothing, be something now.
- edejong 7y ago
  The ego: indestructible, why fight?
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    Death: inevitable, why live?
    - edejong 7y ago
      Enlightenment.
      - keymone 7y ago
        How do you tell true enlightenment from an opinion that one has achieved enlightenment?
        kr4 7y ago
        http://omswami.com/2018/04/enlightenment.html http://omswami.com/2018/04/enlightenment.html In my personal experience, enlightenment is realizing, at the depth of my being, this prospective that nothing, absolutely nothing in this world, including my body, relationships, wealth and my possessions are going to last for ever; everything is impermanent and my problems are extremely tiny compare to the immensity of the universe, so I should take it easy and live life compassionately and kindfully. These positive emotions help me to experience and retain the bliss, peace and happiness How to know someone is enlightened? Since I know what being enlightened is, the job becomes simple. Just observe that the person carries out himself in enlightened manner at all times; if he loses it in adverse/unacceptable situation, it means that he might be on the path but haven't reached to the other side yet.
scooble 7y ago
The main premise of the article seems to be that 'you are not your feelings' in mindfulness covertly introduces the idea of 'no self'. I don't find this compelling. If anything 'you are not your feelings' reinforces the 'western' picture of a self that has (but is not identical to) feelings.
- Spearchucker 7y ago
  So if we're not our body, and we're not our feelings (both are as transitory and regenerative as each other), then what are we? How do you define the self that is accountable for this body and these feelings?
  - scooble 7y ago
    I don't have a definition to offer. But that doesn't seem relevant to the truth value of the author's claim. I can be ignorant of the nature of the self but still see that 'we are not our feelings' and 'there is no self' are not the same claim, or that the former implies the latter.
altonzheng 7y ago
I've fallen into the trap of similar thinking as the author, and I agree, the main issue is believing that mindfulness is a panacea. The more we suffer the more we hope for simple solutions. I really wanted to believe that meditate more == be happier. For my neurotic and driven personality, this meant obsessively meditating, and I began deconstructing and disidentifying from every negative emotion using mindfulness. I got to some interested states from that and felt like I could "overcome" any negative emotion, but my general sense is my practice was imbalanced and I don't feel like I'm much better off... maybe a little disassociated from reality. Most serious meditation practitioners are aware of pitfalls like this though, it's known as "spiritual bypassing". Meditation is just another tool, although a very powerful one. Use it wisely.
- fhennig 7y ago
  I'll add to the "meditation is a tool". In psychotherapy I have always encountered mindfulness as only a small part of a full treatment, not as a solution to everything. To me it is a specific tool as well, I use meditation to focus and gain awareness of ruminating thoughts that have been bugging me throughout the day. Sitting down, focusing on the breath and then having the thoughts come back to me, I can see more clearly what is actually going on inside of me. It is important to be non-judgemental at this point, to allow yourself to become fully aware of the thought. Afterwards I sometimes sit down and think about my feelings more. What personal character traits lead to this, and what was the context in which the feeling arose. This I connect to mentalization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalization).
- emmanuel_1234 7y ago
  A bit after the battle, but I suggest you should take a look a Daniel Ingram's _Mastering the Core Teaching of the Buddha_ (available more or less freely online, or through normal distributors). He filled up pages after pages on how to balance one's practice and avoid pitfall like that. The guy is a bit controversial (which I personally embrace), but he sure wrote more than anyone else about all those issues and a lot more. As the subtitle indicates, it is quite the hardcore reference.
mtalantikite 7y ago
It seems like the author may have fallen into the common trap of the nonexistence of self, which can lead to feelings of nihilism. When I first encountered meditation as a teenager I also wandered into this trap and subsequently stopped a daily meditation practice for maybe 10 years. Buddhist teaching is very explicitly not nihilistic though. In the Prajnaparamita literature of Mahayana Buddhism the teaching is the emptiness of self and all phenomena, not the nonexistence of self and phenomena. There is a difference. Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of the Heart Sutra explains it very clearly, and he argues that a lot of the confusion comes from an unskillful translation of the sutra. I’d recommend it to anyone that might be struggling with feelings of nihilism in their practice and is working from the wrong understanding of there being no self. Edit: I realized there are a couple publications of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Heart Sutra, but the one I’m specifically referencing is published under the title The Other Shore. I’d suggest getting a copy of the book in order to get the full commentary, but the sutra and some motivation for it looks to be on his website: https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/ https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra...
laser 7y ago
“This error of understanding has dominated Indian culture for centuries and has turned the principle of life upside down. Life on the basis of detachment! This is a complete distortion of Indian philosophy. It has not only destroyed the path of realization but has led the seekers of Truth continuously astray ... Indian scriptures are now so full of the idea of renunciation that they are regarded with distrust by practical men in every part of the world. Many Western universities hesitate to teach Indian philosophy for this reason.” - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 12 January 1965, Preface to Bhagavad-Gita
Barrin92 7y ago
the thing that rubs me the wrong way about mindfulness is how it sits neatly between secularism, spirituality and obsessive self-improvement, it's exactly the sort of thing "high performers" who are full of themselves are drawn to. No value commitments, little meaningful connection to the real world, it's the sort of replacement for religiousness you expect to find in a tech mecca, which is of course where it has been gaining popularity. When I hear minfulness I think of Jack Dorsey meditating in a private retreat in myanmar while the rohingya are being chased down the next street by a mob organised on twitter. A few years ago it was reading Marc Aurel and the stoics and now it's apparently meditation. The irony of course being that the entire practise seems to have been commodified already, now we can all medidate with the premium subscription meditation app that wants us to get away from our subscription services.
- mtalantikite 7y ago
  Yes, all of this. The idea that meditation can and should be a productivity hack to serve capitalism is perverse. Also, ignoring the genocide of the Rohingya while going on a Vipassana retreat speaks loudly about one’s personal ethics.
- Theodores 7y ago
  Your anecdote is hilarious. But so true! We aren't at peak mindfulness yet: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=mindfulness,christianity https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=mindfuln... However I suspect that the early adopters have moved on and the people preaching mindfulness are not the same sort of people as those that have moved on from it. We are in 'Eternal September' and 'Who ruined Burning Man' territory. Those that are actually 'mindful' and can 'do it' would probably never think they were being 'mindful', would not be going to the classes or even doing the formal meditation. Instead of plucking a raisin and focusing on how it fits in their navel they are more likely to be walking the dog with smile for friends they see en-route. It is the same with Buddhism. Those that are first to claim to be in to it are highly unlikely to be in an way Buddhist. Their neighbour who happens to do a few things for a few people and help others out financially is far more likely to make the grade. You don't brag about being Buddhist, it is not how it works. But 'Buddhists' do. It is like those people that insist on being called a grand title that they haven't necessarily earned. If 'a lady' insists on being referred to as 'a lady' then she probably isn't. Mindfulness is one of those things where 'mindful' people probably almost certainly aren't. The universe works this way. A thing to watch for is that the topic of 'mindfulness' can be discussed ad-nauseum as per creationism. Anyone who hates it is going to be somewhat less than mindful about those deep in the cult. Equally those caught up by the fad are going to be going deeply un-mindful when it comes to chastising those that call the whole thing bogus. The catch to this is that there is a bigger picture. Right now we don't have a lot of useful political involvement in the West, for instance the new UK leader was selected by 0.1% of the population, with them being very much drawn from the 1%. So we have these fairly insane politicians running the show whilst the mindful crew are telling people to do things with raisins. Exactly as per your anecdote. The creationism idea was a deliberate 'wedge strategy' to get people talking about something silly whilst funding for serious science is whittled away. Who knows, but maybe some Heritage Foundation is behind 'mindfulness' with it being Wedge Strategy for containing dissent. I think the analogy of the camera phone is useful for understanding these things. Cameras can default to point to the outside world or to point the other way, at the self. If you have the camera pointing at the self rather than the world then you aren't going to see the world but the world might see (and like) you. We are culturally okay with people who only post pictures of themselves, we idolise them as rock stars. There is also a low barrier to entry when it comes to 'mindfulness'. Compared to learing something real - e.g. playing a musical instrument, speaking a foreign language, writing code in object oriented modules, being good at a sport, 'mindfulness' is pretty easy. You can't pretend to be fastest doing the local sport run, you have got to actually do it. Mindfulness is not something objective like that.
bamboozled 7y ago
So I didn’t realise that the commonly held believe in 2019 is Buddhism (and or Mindfulness practice) = Nihilism until I read the comments section of this thread.
- deleted 7y ago
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narnianal 7y ago
Not really, nope. You should not focus on anything. You should experience the experience openly. If you eat a fruit and it reminds you of home, you should experience the food and the memory and yourself, without blocking any of that by focussing on something specifically. Of course to get to that state of mind you first need to learn by naively focussing on it, that there is more to the experience than what you can see at first. But that is like the additional wheels you put on a child's bike. It's supposed to be on there forever. It's just to get you started. The goal is to oepn yourself to parts of the experience you didn't have before. For instance have you realized how much your body is automatically communicating your inner feelings through body language? Just keep thinking about your shoulders over the day and see how often they are actually raised as an unconcious way of protecting yourself. It can even happen when you brush your teeth because of what you are thinking about in that moment. So when you are able to combine all these observations, and are able to not overwrite your observations by thinking too much, and be able to do it all the time without needing to expend any kind of energy on it, then you have achieved Mindfulness. Even the guys in the text books that are praised so much probably haven't achieved it btw. They themselves would not even claim so. But the people who wrote the books were on a lower level where they thought they needed to expend energy to achieve something, e.g. by telling a more enhanced version of the story they might advertise the book or its philosophy to you.
quakingaspen 7y ago
While this article has a number of problems that have already people have astutely already brought up, no one has yet mentioned his misrepresentation of the content and location of anatta in Buddhist philosophy. Anatta is just one the three characteristics of existence that mindfulness allows one to see directly in one's own experience. The other two are anicca (impermanence) and dukkha (sufferering). Defining any one of these on its own very difficult because they are so interrelated, despite being distinct concepts. In fact, it is traditional to define each of these in terms of each of the other two (and especially anatta, which is usually regarded as the most difficult to gain direct understanding of). If you don't take care with your definitions in this way, it's easy to argue with Buddhist philososphy on Western metaphysical terms instead of on it's own terms. In this case, the author represents anatta as being roughly equivalent with the metaphysical claim that there is no soul or "an underlying subject of our own experience". But that is not at all the claim made by annata: rather than simply being a doctrine of no-self, anatta holds that there is no permanent (anicca) and coherent/satisfactory (dukkha) self. From this definition it does not follow that "one is not one's feelings" or that one's feelings are not oneself. Though these are both true in a certain sense, the real insight of anatta (along with anicca and dukkha) is that it allows one to see right here and right now that neither of these statements make sense at all, because the dualism they assume is experientially and metaphysically false. That said, this kind of careful study is lacking from the vast majority of so-called mindfulness meditation - which I think the author is totally right to call out. Teaching mindfulness outside of the full context of the Buddha's actual teachings (the Pali Suttas directly, or through teachers with years of practice and study) is - as he argues - never going to get you farther than a bit of destressing after work. Here's Mahasi Sayadaw's discussion of selflessness for an example of defining anatta in terms of anicca and dukkha: https://www.budsas.org/ebud/mahasi-anat/anat05.htm https://www.budsas.org/ebud/mahasi-anat/anat05.htm
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Bizarro 7y ago
I've been skirting around the idea of practicing mindfulness, but there's something that bothers me about aeon and "magazines" like it. The articles always seem to try to be "contrarian" or "unique" for the sake of being different - "I've got something to tell you that you don't know and you haven't thought about". I get that it's pretty much the point of aeon, but at some point it just gets annoying. It's almost like any kind of insight into something is way down the totem pole, below some kind of "shock, contrarian, unique" factor.
- Spearchucker 7y ago
  Exactly. Make the reader spend effort on attaining insight into the point and the reader becomes more invested in the product. Classic Cialdini.
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SolarNet 7y ago
I think mindfulness is a useful tool. From there one needs a framework from which to operate on what it provides. Psychology for example. Though personally I like rationality as a pop-culture-esque pairing better. https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality
andreilys 7y ago
"With its promises of assisting everyone with anything and everything, the mistake of the mindfulness movement is to present its impersonal mode of awareness as a superior or universally useful one" It's difficult for me to imagine a person that would not benefit from taking a break from the non-stop stream of thoughts and the overidentification that comes with it.
nkozyra 7y ago
This seems extremely anecdotal and biased against newcomers to mindfulness. Basically it doesn't sit right with the author and doesn't sit right with some Buddhists. That's not a great argument against it.
argd678 7y ago
It’s mystifying how something so simple can be turned into something so complicated. Just pay attention, that’s confusing now?
- andreilys 7y ago
  Lol I couldn’t agree more. How can anyone be against paying attention? Keep in mind this publications whole brand is posting “contrarian” articles, so it’s not surprising to see this article which seems to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.
gdubs 7y ago
A long time ago, my advisor in college asked me to help him set up some climbing ropes. They were all knotted up. He said, “instead of trying to pick the knots apart, just pick up the ropes and let them fall to the ground, and keep doing that over and over again — the knots will come undone.” Thoughts can be like knots: if you try too hard, the knots just get tighter. If you find a way to let go and be loose, the knots can come undone on their own. (Funnily enough, my advisor had spent years in a Zen monestary when he was younger.) I’ve had the opposite experience as the author and have actually worked through a lot of my own thoughts through meditation. Or, rather, many of those thoughts have worked themselves out. The thing to remember is that mediation itself is the goal. It’s great that meditating can have a lot of positive side effects; but chasing those side effects kind of misses the whole point.
- wavefunction 7y ago
  Climbing ropes shouldn't be stored like that for safety's sake. Knots should always be unknotted by hand when putting away ropes and dropping the ropes on the ground repeatedly is not a good idea.
lukaa 7y ago
I don't understand fuss about meditation. There are a lot of alternative states of consciousness and many ways to achieve them with different benefits in them. Why put one state on throne? For example drinking green tea, exercise, sleeping, anestesia, different drugs. If there is one alternative state in which quality you should invest your time than that is good night sleep because it is most natural and necessary for both mental and physical health.
- prebrov 7y ago
  Mediation is exercise for the mind. One exercises the body to better control their bodily functions, like movements, breathing, heartbeat, etc. One meditates to develop better control of their thinking processes. Mindfulness, concentration - these are just techniques to help you focus for extended periods of time, and make better decisions. You can meditate to understand your way to escape samsara, to build a better software architecture, or to kill all humans. Given enough practice, your mind functions in a permanently altered state, becoming more alert, focused, open, and elastic whenever you’re awake (though lucid dreaming is another potential kick some people chase). Now you can set goals, prioritise better, procrastinate less, rather than just cruising along. This gives you significant competitive edge over the rest of the population. That’s what all the fuss is about. Meditation can be exhausting, especially at the beginning - steering your thoughts is hard. So, importance of sleep is often one of the first things people very clearly realise when they try to consciously control their thought process.
proverbialbunny 7y ago
The author has fallen into nihilism and has mistaken it for Buddhism and mindfulness meditation. Buddhism warns against falling into nihilism like this, but I suspect mindfulness meditation practices do not. Anatta doesn't mean no-self. It's a complex concept and is often mistaken. Anatta has two parts to it: 1) Reality is broken up and labeled as two kinds. There is the present moment reality, before it has been labeled by the mind called paramārtha, and a reality of abstractions and labels over the first reality called saṁvṛti. (For further reading checkout the Two Truths Doctrine.) Self is an idea, so it exists within saṁvṛti. Self is an abstraction, as is everything in this reality. 2) The abstraction of self is a combination of a bunch of elements, eg body, mind, and so on, to make the concept of self. Anatta, then, is a set (Set Theory). In the ultimate reality of paramārtha there is no self. In the thought form reality, self is an aggregate/abstraction. "Why teach this?" you might be thinking. Because it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. It's even obvious on a second examination. The reason this is taught is if one thinks a thing is them (like their work) and that thing gets insulted, they instinctively feel like they need to defend it, which causes a lot of dukkha (psychological stress). If one realizes that thing is not them, then there will be no dukkha when it is criticized. People mix up anatta (non-self / no-singular-self / no-soul) with no-self. No-self is a meditation practice, similar to noting, which one realizes bit by bit, every single thing that comes into their mind is not self itself, even if it is a piece that makes up the abstraction. All abstractions are made up from a series of parts. imho, anatta doesn't need to be taught to do mindfulness meditation, but understanding impermanence is important, because without it most people try to fight stressful thoughts and change them, instead of thinking of them like rain clouds, to be observed, not modified. Once the meditator sees the causal chain from observation to thought, action, or feeling, that is all they need to change their habits and live a happier and healthier life.
- fsloth 7y ago
  Thanks, explaining anatta as set theory is a great analogue.
  - proverbialbunny 7y ago
    You're very welcome. For further reading of the abstractions that make up self, checkout The Five Skandhas (https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Five_skandhas https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Five_skandhas) As Hofstadter once wrote, "It's turtles all the way down." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down) <3
semerda 7y ago
I wonder if ppl overthink this and make it more complex then it should with apps and references to ppl who really didn’t know much more than we do today about the brain. Anyone tried sensory deprivation tank (or floating as it’s now known)? Floating to me is the easiest method to let go of the monkey mind without trying. Dr John Lilly (the inventor) took it few notches further taking various substances to heighten his experience. I’m sure some ppl need that sort of journey to let go of memory loops/ptsd, but not required to float.
Mirioron 7y ago
Does mindfulness work for everybody? I've read plenty about its effects on some people and read about how it seems to work on average, but is it something that helps everyone that tries it or are some people less benefited by it?
- username90 7y ago
  I think it works mostly for those who try to fill up every waking minute with "meaningful" activities. HN seems to be full of people like that, and to them taking a break from the chase might be the most important thing and mindfulness helps them do that without feeling like they wasted time.
- chewz 7y ago
  > Does mindfulness work for everybody? Deepends on your karma. People who start meditating often get on a pink cloud and they mistake that for a proof that meditation is working for them. As this feeling washes away with time some people get disapointed and give up while some try chasing it. Sort of like chasing runners high. [meditation as any other sport attracts certain number of narcistic over-achievers with compulsion for controling reality] But some people - no matter what attracted them to meditation - make suprising progress. Also some people had been meditators in past lifes so they are naturals :-) PS. Bear in mind that insight meditation / mindfulness is styling itself as millenia old practice but in fact had been created in 2nd part of XIX century as reaction to British colonialism. First teaching of fan-down meditation for laypeople took place in Rangoon in 1911. Silicon Valey took it recently to next level with 10 minutes a day mindfulness apps. Does it work? Well there are also 7-pushups-a-day apps. Do they work? Do they provide same benefits as professional years long athlete training? https://tricycle.org/magazine/meditation-en-masse/ https://tricycle.org/magazine/meditation-en-masse/
chewz 7y ago
My mindfullness app makes me feel so much better then you https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/my-new-meditation-app-makes-me-feel-so-much-better-than-you https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/my-new-meditation-app-ma...
username90 7y ago
Some studies have shown that mindfulness helps, but is it the actual "mindfulness" or is it the pause from life that helps? The alternative should not be to do nothing, but to for example take a slow walk or a nice shower. I'd bet that taking a walk would actually provide more benefits than meditation and mindfulness since it is coupled with exercise. Personally I have gotten nothing from mindfulness and meditation, however I do walk for about an hour a day and in general spend a lot of time without a goal.
- kranner 7y ago
  As someone who has done a lot of both walking and meditation, I'd say they have orthogonal benefits.
- chewz 7y ago
  Gardening is the new mindfulness. :-) Also sailing non-stop for nine weeks in the ocean had been for me much better experience (in terms of emptying mind and getting in touch with myself) then any retreat (and I did some).
  - chewz 7y ago
    And if you are in for a quick fix freediving puts you into the zone in seconds. https://youtu.be/Od45T65pTaU https://youtu.be/Od45T65pTaU
osullip 7y ago
Mindfull meditation may have its background in Buddhist beliefs, but that doesn't mean that you have to apply them to your meditation. The Australian author Eric Harrison does a good job at seperating the two. https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-foundations-of-mindfulness-eric-harrison/prod9781615192564.html https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-foundations-of-mindfulness-...
cggart 7y ago
I’m a bit taken aback by the answers here. Everyone is throwing around terms like knowing, evaluating, observing with the assumption that they are in a position to be doing these thing effectively? What is the epistemological foundation your espousing? I think one post asked the rhetorical question “who is in a position to know yourself better than yourself?” To which I might reply: “Anyone but your yourself — especially your present self?” There seams to be a ton of hubris and confusion of goals and objectives here. Most of these posts don’t talk about growing but conquering. They use mindfulness as a tool to “learn about themselves” so that they might avoid themselves. This might feel great, but it’s delusion. The best way humans have figured out how to know anything is reciprocal accountability coupled with objectivity. That either means opening up about your emotions honestly and presently with another person you love/trust, or writing down (or otherwise recording) your observations so you might evaluate them later over time. We are more than ourselves, part of a collective, both presently amongst ourselves, and in time. The measure of knowledge is how well our evaluations resonate with others and ourselves in time. Mindfulness just allows us to make observations, not communicate them, or judge them accurately. Frankly, the best way to communicate an emotion is often to embody it. It can also be the best way to observe it. That’s how artists make art. What matters isn’t what we feel but how we respond. Mindfulness is a defense mechanism we use for short term relief from our emotions. It gives a vantage point, not the vantage point. It is a tool, and one that comes at the cost of using other just as valid tools. Ultimately the measure of our well being doesn’t reside with our present selves alone. We err in so far as we forget this in my opinion.
amriksohata 7y ago
Ask a Hindu sage, the word mindfulness is literally as the article describes, a watered down version. The same has happened to yoga, it's all commercialised but in Hinduism yoga has a different purpose and use but it's been stripped of its best values just as a physical thing. Mindfulness is bhakti in Hinduism, a type of mediation but it's been taken by the west and made into something different
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peterwwillis 7y ago
After listening to Thich Nhat Hanh answer questions in a 3 hour long Google Talk, I realized mindfulness's goal of removing pain also aimed to remove all the little dramas of the human experience. Some people think of mindfulness as a kind of cure to unhappiness, when it's really just a drug, or tool, wrapped up in "Wisdom of the East" woo packaging. Don't just "do mindfulness", because it's not a cure-all.
want2know 7y ago
I guess I will be downvoted for this but it always amazed me that so many people in HN are religious when it comes to mindfulness, Buddhism and meditation. There is no scientific proof that there is any difference between relaxing in an chair and meditating following a strict form. The core is: it is very good to give the brain a brake in our busy times. But it is also proven that it can be dangerous to give the brain a break when you have a troubles mind. Things can emerge from the depths which you should find help for. A nice writeup about this is an article from 2016: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mindfulness-wellbeing/201603/dangers-meditation https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mindfulness-wellbein... But there is also more recent recearch that backs this up. So: meditation/relaxing can be very good to reduce stress and to think more clearly. But take care: "Meditation is not a therapy"
- kieranmaine 7y ago
  If you're interested in what studies into meditation show I would highly recommend The Science of Meditation (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0241975697/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0241975697/). It provides a great summary of where the science is at and what benefits can, and cannot, be attributed to meditation.
- lm28469 7y ago
  I see it as a framework. It's easier to get into a relaxing state by following known principles than just sitting in a chair and waiting for it to happen. As long as you don't add a value judgment on top (my way is THE Way) I don't see the issue. A bit like how religions are frameworks for faith. You could make up your own gods and rituals but there is something reassuring in following existing norms with set principles and communities. You can see the same pattern emerging everywhere. Gym workouts are the same, you can do random things until it feels right or you can follow one of the main school of thoughts and get it 90% right on the first try. For example I always thought hypnosis and affirmations were 100% useless and borderline hippie bullshit. One day I tried a random hypnosis video on YouTube and it got me in a state of relaxation I never reached before. Might be placebo, but in the end it does the job.
p0d 7y ago
As a Christian I find other christian friends split on the topic of mindfulness. Some embrace mindfulness and some think it should be avoided. I am in the latter camp. I imagine the reason why is the spiritual nature of mindfulness which is highlighted by all the comments here. Most days I use the Lord Jesus’s prayer to reflect and pray about the day before/ahead. It’s an important part of my life and well-being. I’m curious to hear from other christians who embrace mindfulness. It is an alien concept for me to reflect inwards without looking outside myself to God. How does mindfulness rest with your christian faith in this regard?
- Infinitesimus 7y ago
  (Former Christian my some standard here) Some would argue that meditation, mindfulness and prayer are not necessarily different. Prayer - from the angle of communion with God - can be a two way street. You speak, you listen. With mindfulness and many other meditations, you listen a lot. You can call what you're listening to yourself. Or God. Or Oneness. Or The Universe. Whatever it is, it helps you turn the lens of your introspection away from the noise and towards something quieter, deeper, and perhaps enlightening. Don't forget that several monks from the 5th century to the present day promoted meditation ( eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_meditation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_meditat... ) Even in the bible, all the times people went off to the desert to commune with God, I bet they were meditating and practicing mindfulness.
  - p0d 7y ago
    Thanks. I was just chatting to my wife about your response and she was recollecting what some call centering prayer. There seems to be some comparison. I guess I do meditate and am mindful. There may just may be some cultural baggage with those words in Christendom.
njsubedi 7y ago
Could be off topic but the site is asking for a donation, but using photos from Getty Images, which I think is pretty expensive. Did anyone else have this thought, or was it only me?
abiro 7y ago
This article highlights the problem with the mindfulness movement very well: they teach technique instead of understanding. But it should be the other way around: it is only after Understanding that one should seek out specific techniques.
raincom 7y ago
Instead of looking at metaphysically, look at the way natural sciences do: does the self exist? Just because we experience our 'selves' every day, it doesn't mean that such an experience is veridical. What if mindfulness refutes our daily experience?

226 points by gerbilly 7y ago

Mindfulness was a major step forward in the exploration of the self, at least for western culture. I see this criticism as the next step forward. I too have felt some ambiguous disconnect between mindfulness and experience that this essay does a good job capturing. The goal of mindfulness is to make you realize you don't exist, and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't your own and you have no free will. That was a step forward in breaking down the self, and this next step is to unify these ideas with the self and existence.

virtualwhys 7y ago
> and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't your own and you have no free will. There's a lot going on here. So, I don't exist, and yet an effort to reach the state of non-existence needs to be made (sounds like some faith/belief is required here to even begin). And, thoughts are without a self, which follows from the non-self notion. That all makes sense within this philosophy, but what about free will? It sounds like the state of non-self would be the essence of freedom, and therefore, choice, and not a fixed universe in which everything is preordained.
gridlockd 7y ago
> The goal of mindfulness is to make you realize you don't exist, and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't your own and you have no free will. You have spent billions of years not existing, you will spend billions of years not existing, yet you also want to achieve this state of not existing within your comparatively short actual lifetime? What a waste.
- hooch 7y ago
  This brings to mind an illustrative example made by the Buddhist teacher Alexander Berzin: “You’re driving down the road, and another driver is doing something crazy, swerving about and you almost have an accident, and you think what an asshole! Having the thought that the other driver is an asshole is the first obscuration that prevents omniscience. Believing this thought to be true is the second obscuration (paraphrased) that cements the prevention of omniscience.” It’s not that “you” don’t exist. It’s that the conditioned and conventionally accepted ways that we think we exist (and by extension the ways that we project that others exist) are ultimately false and don’t correspond to reality.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    > Having the thought that the other driver is an asshole is the first obscuration that prevents omniscience You know what else prevents omniscience? The second law of thermodynamics. So what? > It’s not that “you” don’t exist. It’s that the conditioned and conventionally accepted ways that we think we exist (and by extension the ways that we project that others exist) are ultimately false and don’t correspond to reality. Again, so what? Even the simplest biochemical processes inside my body are so complex and astounding, I have no hope of ever truly understanding even a tiny part of them. I have no issue with this. I have no issue with not truly knowing "reality", or with the prospect that understanding it is literally impossible.
    - zzzeek 7y ago
      So...it might help you to realize that other people who you would normally think are "assholes", people who you don't know yet hate nonetheless, are nothing like that, and maybe you've been making all kinds of judgments about people that aren't really true, and that in fact, reality calls for a vastly larger degree of love and compassion for others, even people who cut you off on the road. You treat people completely differently, you become kinder, more courteous, less hateful, and more patient, at larger scale animosity and hostility between peoples decreases to zero and world / universal peace is achieved. No biggie, so what!
      - 7y ago
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar.
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calais 7y ago
Metzinger, Being No One (2004) may be just the step forward to which you refer. The prereflexive sense of self (as, say, a point-source of will and identity) is empirically inaccurate and faulty, and Metzinger attacks philosophy grounded in this untranscendable experience. But, unlike many philosophers, European or Buddhist, who satisfy to negate the ontological status of the self, Metzinger develops a theory of the self which is conceptually constrained by clinical medicine's empirical totality. Two warnings about Metzinger, though: (1) a mood leaks through his writing, a sort of nihilistic determinism that his rigorous philosophy relentlessly evokes, but which his assertions do not imply; and (2) it is quite difficult reading, like a new Kant, lucid yet dense, requiring of a layman to assiduously infer and integrate the language of cognitive science.

badpun 7y ago

I've had very similar thoughts about mindfullness. Mindfullness tells you to observe your fears and other feelings and see that they come and go, while it does not focus at all on whether and to what degree they are actual valid and important. Feelings are often signals from your subconsciousness, which is trying to tell that something. Of course, a lot of the time these signals can be BS or blown out of proportions - but effectively ignoring them via mindfullness is not a good approach in my opinion.

strictfp 7y ago
The same coping mechanism is being used in NLP. I have a feeling it's just a way of dealing with an environment which isn't healthy for the human being. It would be better to adjust the environment.
- kranner 7y ago
  > It would be better to adjust the environment. Adjusting the environment is much more difficult and, in many cases, simply impossible. To paraphrase an old folk tale, what is easier: making the entire land-surface of the Earth easier to walk on, or just putting shoes on one's feet?
  - strictfp 7y ago
    Sure, but fixing the bigger problems, such as stress in the workplace, would have many more benefits. Ans as far as the analogy goes, it might be hard to fix the entire surface of the earth, but that's a strawman, because we have plenty of urbanised and indoor areas where you don't need shoes. What's the easiest? To cover the entire earth in asphalt, or make all cars be 4wd?
    - discreteevent 7y ago
      I think it's more like the stress in the workplace (for example) is caused by two things. Greedy or power hungry people deliberately harming others (for example) and then other people over reacting to this but also to just the normal shit you have to deal with anyway. So the mindfulness is to deal with the over reaction but ethics and morality are needed to deal with the action. You need both, seems to be the criticism that some people are making about having mindfulness without some ethical framework like Buddhism.

mromanuk 7y ago

> Of course, it’s often pragmatically useful to step away from your own fraught ruminations and emotions. Seeing them as drifting leaves can help us gain a certain distance from the heat of our feelings, so as to discern patterns and identify triggers. I try to do 10-15min daily meditation exactly for this and it work. Counterpoint for “researching” where your thoughts come and searching for the problem: As an anxious individual, my whole life was/is imprinted with anxiety, there is no root cause of it in what I’m thinking. That’s the brilliance of mindfulness, I can cope with the anxiety accepting my thoughts, without trying to change them.

gridlockd 7y ago

"Western metaphysics typically holds that – in addition to the existence of any thoughts, emotions and physical sensations – there is some entity to whom all these experiences are happening, and that it makes sense to refer to this entity as ‘I’ or ‘me’. However, according to Buddhist philosophy, there is no ‘self’ or ‘me’ to which such phenomena belong." This reminds me of this quip by Richard Feynman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo

jonbronson 7y ago

While there are a lot of truths in this article, there's also a thread of misconception running through it, embodied most prominently in the line "Without some ownership of one’s feelings and thoughts, it is difficult to take responsibility for them." Mindfulness is about creating space between you and your thoughts, not ignoring or discounting them. It allows you to look at them subjectively, rather than being carried away by them. This in no way prohibits you from being introspective, and analyzing the origin of these feelings/thoughts. If anything, it empowers the individual to more rationally grapple with them, without falling into the various psychological traps that often come with certain feelings, such as rumination or avoidance. And whether or not we believe that there is a self, this is no way invalidates the reality that your thoughts ultimately reside inside the mind of a human being, with a real world story. It's unclear to me why the author does not recognize this duality. Most of the literature on mindfulness I've read, including Jon Kabat Zinn's, explicitly mention this duality and its power.

rufugee 7y ago
Spot on. In my case, mindfulness practice (at the moment with the Waking Up app from Sam Harris) has transformed my life in three short months. I thought I was insightful and deep before, yet was a victim of ephemeral thoughts and emotions far more than I realized. At no time have I given myself a pass or shirked responsibility in the way the article implies...rather, mindfulness practice has given me the time and quiet to turn these thoughts around, examining them and their source. I can't express in words how much I feel I've gained from practicing, and I encourage each of you to do so. While I still can't say I always look forward to it, I'm always glad after the fact to feel it's affects. If everyone practiced mindfulness, the world would be a FAR better place...
- edejong 7y ago
  The problem with the mindfulness approach is that it only leads you knee-deep. Enough to enjoy the waves and the joy of water, but too little to start swimming. For example, I can still see you are not accepting your past self for what it is ("I thought I was insightful and deep before") or how the world is ("would be a FAR better place"). You are on a path towards awakening. Some of us have come to understand that there are seven factors [1] to master, not one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Factors_of_Awakening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Factors_of_Awakening

eternauta3k 7y ago

I'm surprised that the article doesn't reference this book: David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism https://www.amazon.com/Making-Buddhist-Modernism-David-McMahan/dp/0195183274 https://www.amazon.com/Making-Buddhist-Modernism-David-McMah...

lottin 7y ago

What about... reflection? To me it seems a far more effective approach to self-knowledge. Reflect on your life and experiences in a detached manner. Have a conversation with someone you trust or with yourself. Ask yourself unsettling questions. Answer them honestly. It's amazing the things you can learn this way.

ElFitz 7y ago
It can be hard when one is too... "entangled" with one's own issues, feelings and deeply carved thought patterns. Being able to distance oneself from them can definitely help. Just like it's often easier to figure out someone else's issues and their solutions (unless one is projecting or missing an important part of the picture)

sshekhar 7y ago

The word mindfulness itself is a poor translation of the Pali word 'Sati'. The Pali word actually means 'remembering to be aware of the objects that your mind is attending to'. There is no word in western languages to capture that phrase and hence word 'mindfulness' was used to convey in a confusing manner what 'Sati' means. I have been meditating for 1 hour to 1.5 hour every day for several years and I finally got into a stage called 1st Jhana, where your mind becomes temporarily free of all 'wants' and is completely at peace. In that state the awareness becomes super sharp, breathing becomes very shallow (less than 5 breaths per minute) and experience of time distorts. Your awareness can clearly watch thoughts coming up like 'lava bubbles' from your subconsciousness into your consciousness. It is at that point you get a glimpse into 'anatta' (non-self). The idea that there is no controller (or soul or self) that is creating ideas. It is an automatic process that is happening due to your past Karma (conditioning due to repeated practice). It takes a lifetime to develop the wisdom and compassion that Buddha talked about. It cannot be understood purely using logic. You have to get the experience of a calm unbiased mind. Even though people like her are well-intentioned but they should stop to think of the possibility that they may not understand what they are talking about as well as they think they do.

edejong 7y ago
Accepting her change is accepting ourselves.
caser 7y ago
I think it’s also possible that some people aren’t looking for altered states from their mindfulness practices.
- mping 7y ago
  It's not altered, it's clearer. If you practice mindfulness and don't expect to have a clearer mind it's a waste of time in my opinion.
spraak 7y ago
Thank you for sharing your experience.

deleted 7y ago

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SirLJ 7y ago

Mind tricks don't work on me, only money...

grayed-down 7y ago
Yes. Money can buy a lot of things that are more enjoyable to be mindful of, but not everything.
H8crilA 7y ago
Money is a mind trick. It's literally an abstract concept that we trade for physical goods and services. A very successful and useful one.

negamax 7y ago

> they’re explicitly instructed to disregard the content of their own thoughts Seems like author is biased on purpose. Entire central idea behind mindfulness is to be aware of your thoughts. i.e. not being lead into same issues by subconscious conclusions (hence breaking the cycle/loop). Well at least that's my interpretation anyways Mindfulness works because it helps someone reach to conclusions on their own. Who knows you better than yourself

grayed-down 7y ago

For me mindfulness has been like a flaming tire around my neck. Too much thinking. And WTH does one do with a Masters in Philosophy? Nice article BTW...

dsego 7y ago
Seek the truth?
- grayed-down 7y ago
  It was a rhetorical question based on a well established meme, but HN is generally a humor-free zone. And does one really need a philosophy degree to seek the truth? It's not that hard to find.

gridlockd 7y ago

That's not awakening, that's going to sleep. Dare to be human, to have desires, to have a will. Don't just "accept" the world, shape it. You have an eternity to be nothing, be something now.

edejong 7y ago
The ego: indestructible, why fight?
- gridlockd 7y ago
  Death: inevitable, why live?
  - edejong 7y ago
    Enlightenment.
    - keymone 7y ago
      How do you tell true enlightenment from an opinion that one has achieved enlightenment?
      - kr4 7y ago
        http://omswami.com/2018/04/enlightenment.html http://omswami.com/2018/04/enlightenment.html In my personal experience, enlightenment is realizing, at the depth of my being, this prospective that nothing, absolutely nothing in this world, including my body, relationships, wealth and my possessions are going to last for ever; everything is impermanent and my problems are extremely tiny compare to the immensity of the universe, so I should take it easy and live life compassionately and kindfully. These positive emotions help me to experience and retain the bliss, peace and happiness How to know someone is enlightened? Since I know what being enlightened is, the job becomes simple. Just observe that the person carries out himself in enlightened manner at all times; if he loses it in adverse/unacceptable situation, it means that he might be on the path but haven't reached to the other side yet.

scooble 7y ago

The main premise of the article seems to be that 'you are not your feelings' in mindfulness covertly introduces the idea of 'no self'. I don't find this compelling. If anything 'you are not your feelings' reinforces the 'western' picture of a self that has (but is not identical to) feelings.

Spearchucker 7y ago
So if we're not our body, and we're not our feelings (both are as transitory and regenerative as each other), then what are we? How do you define the self that is accountable for this body and these feelings?
- scooble 7y ago
  I don't have a definition to offer. But that doesn't seem relevant to the truth value of the author's claim. I can be ignorant of the nature of the self but still see that 'we are not our feelings' and 'there is no self' are not the same claim, or that the former implies the latter.

altonzheng 7y ago

I've fallen into the trap of similar thinking as the author, and I agree, the main issue is believing that mindfulness is a panacea. The more we suffer the more we hope for simple solutions. I really wanted to believe that meditate more == be happier. For my neurotic and driven personality, this meant obsessively meditating, and I began deconstructing and disidentifying from every negative emotion using mindfulness. I got to some interested states from that and felt like I could "overcome" any negative emotion, but my general sense is my practice was imbalanced and I don't feel like I'm much better off... maybe a little disassociated from reality. Most serious meditation practitioners are aware of pitfalls like this though, it's known as "spiritual bypassing". Meditation is just another tool, although a very powerful one. Use it wisely.

fhennig 7y ago
I'll add to the "meditation is a tool". In psychotherapy I have always encountered mindfulness as only a small part of a full treatment, not as a solution to everything. To me it is a specific tool as well, I use meditation to focus and gain awareness of ruminating thoughts that have been bugging me throughout the day. Sitting down, focusing on the breath and then having the thoughts come back to me, I can see more clearly what is actually going on inside of me. It is important to be non-judgemental at this point, to allow yourself to become fully aware of the thought. Afterwards I sometimes sit down and think about my feelings more. What personal character traits lead to this, and what was the context in which the feeling arose. This I connect to mentalization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalization).
emmanuel_1234 7y ago
A bit after the battle, but I suggest you should take a look a Daniel Ingram's _Mastering the Core Teaching of the Buddha_ (available more or less freely online, or through normal distributors). He filled up pages after pages on how to balance one's practice and avoid pitfall like that. The guy is a bit controversial (which I personally embrace), but he sure wrote more than anyone else about all those issues and a lot more. As the subtitle indicates, it is quite the hardcore reference.

mtalantikite 7y ago

It seems like the author may have fallen into the common trap of the nonexistence of self, which can lead to feelings of nihilism. When I first encountered meditation as a teenager I also wandered into this trap and subsequently stopped a daily meditation practice for maybe 10 years. Buddhist teaching is very explicitly not nihilistic though. In the Prajnaparamita literature of Mahayana Buddhism the teaching is the emptiness of self and all phenomena, not the nonexistence of self and phenomena. There is a difference. Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of the Heart Sutra explains it very clearly, and he argues that a lot of the confusion comes from an unskillful translation of the sutra. I’d recommend it to anyone that might be struggling with feelings of nihilism in their practice and is working from the wrong understanding of there being no self. Edit: I realized there are a couple publications of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Heart Sutra, but the one I’m specifically referencing is published under the title The Other Shore. I’d suggest getting a copy of the book in order to get the full commentary, but the sutra and some motivation for it looks to be on his website: https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/ https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra...

laser 7y ago

“This error of understanding has dominated Indian culture for centuries and has turned the principle of life upside down. Life on the basis of detachment! This is a complete distortion of Indian philosophy. It has not only destroyed the path of realization but has led the seekers of Truth continuously astray ... Indian scriptures are now so full of the idea of renunciation that they are regarded with distrust by practical men in every part of the world. Many Western universities hesitate to teach Indian philosophy for this reason.” - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 12 January 1965, Preface to Bhagavad-Gita

Barrin92 7y ago

the thing that rubs me the wrong way about mindfulness is how it sits neatly between secularism, spirituality and obsessive self-improvement, it's exactly the sort of thing "high performers" who are full of themselves are drawn to. No value commitments, little meaningful connection to the real world, it's the sort of replacement for religiousness you expect to find in a tech mecca, which is of course where it has been gaining popularity. When I hear minfulness I think of Jack Dorsey meditating in a private retreat in myanmar while the rohingya are being chased down the next street by a mob organised on twitter. A few years ago it was reading Marc Aurel and the stoics and now it's apparently meditation. The irony of course being that the entire practise seems to have been commodified already, now we can all medidate with the premium subscription meditation app that wants us to get away from our subscription services.

mtalantikite 7y ago
Yes, all of this. The idea that meditation can and should be a productivity hack to serve capitalism is perverse. Also, ignoring the genocide of the Rohingya while going on a Vipassana retreat speaks loudly about one’s personal ethics.
Theodores 7y ago
Your anecdote is hilarious. But so true! We aren't at peak mindfulness yet: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=mindfulness,christianity https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=mindfuln... However I suspect that the early adopters have moved on and the people preaching mindfulness are not the same sort of people as those that have moved on from it. We are in 'Eternal September' and 'Who ruined Burning Man' territory. Those that are actually 'mindful' and can 'do it' would probably never think they were being 'mindful', would not be going to the classes or even doing the formal meditation. Instead of plucking a raisin and focusing on how it fits in their navel they are more likely to be walking the dog with smile for friends they see en-route. It is the same with Buddhism. Those that are first to claim to be in to it are highly unlikely to be in an way Buddhist. Their neighbour who happens to do a few things for a few people and help others out financially is far more likely to make the grade. You don't brag about being Buddhist, it is not how it works. But 'Buddhists' do. It is like those people that insist on being called a grand title that they haven't necessarily earned. If 'a lady' insists on being referred to as 'a lady' then she probably isn't. Mindfulness is one of those things where 'mindful' people probably almost certainly aren't. The universe works this way. A thing to watch for is that the topic of 'mindfulness' can be discussed ad-nauseum as per creationism. Anyone who hates it is going to be somewhat less than mindful about those deep in the cult. Equally those caught up by the fad are going to be going deeply un-mindful when it comes to chastising those that call the whole thing bogus. The catch to this is that there is a bigger picture. Right now we don't have a lot of useful political involvement in the West, for instance the new UK leader was selected by 0.1% of the population, with them being very much drawn from the 1%. So we have these fairly insane politicians running the show whilst the mindful crew are telling people to do things with raisins. Exactly as per your anecdote. The creationism idea was a deliberate 'wedge strategy' to get people talking about something silly whilst funding for serious science is whittled away. Who knows, but maybe some Heritage Foundation is behind 'mindfulness' with it being Wedge Strategy for containing dissent. I think the analogy of the camera phone is useful for understanding these things. Cameras can default to point to the outside world or to point the other way, at the self. If you have the camera pointing at the self rather than the world then you aren't going to see the world but the world might see (and like) you. We are culturally okay with people who only post pictures of themselves, we idolise them as rock stars. There is also a low barrier to entry when it comes to 'mindfulness'. Compared to learing something real - e.g. playing a musical instrument, speaking a foreign language, writing code in object oriented modules, being good at a sport, 'mindfulness' is pretty easy. You can't pretend to be fastest doing the local sport run, you have got to actually do it. Mindfulness is not something objective like that.

bamboozled 7y ago

So I didn’t realise that the commonly held believe in 2019 is Buddhism (and or Mindfulness practice) = Nihilism until I read the comments section of this thread.

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narnianal 7y ago

Not really, nope. You should not focus on anything. You should experience the experience openly. If you eat a fruit and it reminds you of home, you should experience the food and the memory and yourself, without blocking any of that by focussing on something specifically. Of course to get to that state of mind you first need to learn by naively focussing on it, that there is more to the experience than what you can see at first. But that is like the additional wheels you put on a child's bike. It's supposed to be on there forever. It's just to get you started. The goal is to oepn yourself to parts of the experience you didn't have before. For instance have you realized how much your body is automatically communicating your inner feelings through body language? Just keep thinking about your shoulders over the day and see how often they are actually raised as an unconcious way of protecting yourself. It can even happen when you brush your teeth because of what you are thinking about in that moment. So when you are able to combine all these observations, and are able to not overwrite your observations by thinking too much, and be able to do it all the time without needing to expend any kind of energy on it, then you have achieved Mindfulness. Even the guys in the text books that are praised so much probably haven't achieved it btw. They themselves would not even claim so. But the people who wrote the books were on a lower level where they thought they needed to expend energy to achieve something, e.g. by telling a more enhanced version of the story they might advertise the book or its philosophy to you.

quakingaspen 7y ago

While this article has a number of problems that have already people have astutely already brought up, no one has yet mentioned his misrepresentation of the content and location of anatta in Buddhist philosophy. Anatta is just one the three characteristics of existence that mindfulness allows one to see directly in one's own experience. The other two are anicca (impermanence) and dukkha (sufferering). Defining any one of these on its own very difficult because they are so interrelated, despite being distinct concepts. In fact, it is traditional to define each of these in terms of each of the other two (and especially anatta, which is usually regarded as the most difficult to gain direct understanding of). If you don't take care with your definitions in this way, it's easy to argue with Buddhist philososphy on Western metaphysical terms instead of on it's own terms. In this case, the author represents anatta as being roughly equivalent with the metaphysical claim that there is no soul or "an underlying subject of our own experience". But that is not at all the claim made by annata: rather than simply being a doctrine of no-self, anatta holds that there is no permanent (anicca) and coherent/satisfactory (dukkha) self. From this definition it does not follow that "one is not one's feelings" or that one's feelings are not oneself. Though these are both true in a certain sense, the real insight of anatta (along with anicca and dukkha) is that it allows one to see right here and right now that neither of these statements make sense at all, because the dualism they assume is experientially and metaphysically false. That said, this kind of careful study is lacking from the vast majority of so-called mindfulness meditation - which I think the author is totally right to call out. Teaching mindfulness outside of the full context of the Buddha's actual teachings (the Pali Suttas directly, or through teachers with years of practice and study) is - as he argues - never going to get you farther than a bit of destressing after work. Here's Mahasi Sayadaw's discussion of selflessness for an example of defining anatta in terms of anicca and dukkha: https://www.budsas.org/ebud/mahasi-anat/anat05.htm https://www.budsas.org/ebud/mahasi-anat/anat05.htm

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Bizarro 7y ago

I've been skirting around the idea of practicing mindfulness, but there's something that bothers me about aeon and "magazines" like it. The articles always seem to try to be "contrarian" or "unique" for the sake of being different - "I've got something to tell you that you don't know and you haven't thought about". I get that it's pretty much the point of aeon, but at some point it just gets annoying. It's almost like any kind of insight into something is way down the totem pole, below some kind of "shock, contrarian, unique" factor.

Spearchucker 7y ago
Exactly. Make the reader spend effort on attaining insight into the point and the reader becomes more invested in the product. Classic Cialdini.

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SolarNet 7y ago

I think mindfulness is a useful tool. From there one needs a framework from which to operate on what it provides. Psychology for example. Though personally I like rationality as a pop-culture-esque pairing better. https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality

andreilys 7y ago

"With its promises of assisting everyone with anything and everything, the mistake of the mindfulness movement is to present its impersonal mode of awareness as a superior or universally useful one" It's difficult for me to imagine a person that would not benefit from taking a break from the non-stop stream of thoughts and the overidentification that comes with it.

nkozyra 7y ago

This seems extremely anecdotal and biased against newcomers to mindfulness. Basically it doesn't sit right with the author and doesn't sit right with some Buddhists. That's not a great argument against it.

argd678 7y ago

It’s mystifying how something so simple can be turned into something so complicated. Just pay attention, that’s confusing now?

andreilys 7y ago
Lol I couldn’t agree more. How can anyone be against paying attention? Keep in mind this publications whole brand is posting “contrarian” articles, so it’s not surprising to see this article which seems to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

gdubs 7y ago

A long time ago, my advisor in college asked me to help him set up some climbing ropes. They were all knotted up. He said, “instead of trying to pick the knots apart, just pick up the ropes and let them fall to the ground, and keep doing that over and over again — the knots will come undone.” Thoughts can be like knots: if you try too hard, the knots just get tighter. If you find a way to let go and be loose, the knots can come undone on their own. (Funnily enough, my advisor had spent years in a Zen monestary when he was younger.) I’ve had the opposite experience as the author and have actually worked through a lot of my own thoughts through meditation. Or, rather, many of those thoughts have worked themselves out. The thing to remember is that mediation itself is the goal. It’s great that meditating can have a lot of positive side effects; but chasing those side effects kind of misses the whole point.

wavefunction 7y ago
Climbing ropes shouldn't be stored like that for safety's sake. Knots should always be unknotted by hand when putting away ropes and dropping the ropes on the ground repeatedly is not a good idea.

lukaa 7y ago

I don't understand fuss about meditation. There are a lot of alternative states of consciousness and many ways to achieve them with different benefits in them. Why put one state on throne? For example drinking green tea, exercise, sleeping, anestesia, different drugs. If there is one alternative state in which quality you should invest your time than that is good night sleep because it is most natural and necessary for both mental and physical health.

prebrov 7y ago
Mediation is exercise for the mind. One exercises the body to better control their bodily functions, like movements, breathing, heartbeat, etc. One meditates to develop better control of their thinking processes. Mindfulness, concentration - these are just techniques to help you focus for extended periods of time, and make better decisions. You can meditate to understand your way to escape samsara, to build a better software architecture, or to kill all humans. Given enough practice, your mind functions in a permanently altered state, becoming more alert, focused, open, and elastic whenever you’re awake (though lucid dreaming is another potential kick some people chase). Now you can set goals, prioritise better, procrastinate less, rather than just cruising along. This gives you significant competitive edge over the rest of the population. That’s what all the fuss is about. Meditation can be exhausting, especially at the beginning - steering your thoughts is hard. So, importance of sleep is often one of the first things people very clearly realise when they try to consciously control their thought process.

proverbialbunny 7y ago

The author has fallen into nihilism and has mistaken it for Buddhism and mindfulness meditation. Buddhism warns against falling into nihilism like this, but I suspect mindfulness meditation practices do not. Anatta doesn't mean no-self. It's a complex concept and is often mistaken. Anatta has two parts to it: 1) Reality is broken up and labeled as two kinds. There is the present moment reality, before it has been labeled by the mind called paramārtha, and a reality of abstractions and labels over the first reality called saṁvṛti. (For further reading checkout the Two Truths Doctrine.) Self is an idea, so it exists within saṁvṛti. Self is an abstraction, as is everything in this reality. 2) The abstraction of self is a combination of a bunch of elements, eg body, mind, and so on, to make the concept of self. Anatta, then, is a set (Set Theory). In the ultimate reality of paramārtha there is no self. In the thought form reality, self is an aggregate/abstraction. "Why teach this?" you might be thinking. Because it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. It's even obvious on a second examination. The reason this is taught is if one thinks a thing is them (like their work) and that thing gets insulted, they instinctively feel like they need to defend it, which causes a lot of dukkha (psychological stress). If one realizes that thing is not them, then there will be no dukkha when it is criticized. People mix up anatta (non-self / no-singular-self / no-soul) with no-self. No-self is a meditation practice, similar to noting, which one realizes bit by bit, every single thing that comes into their mind is not self itself, even if it is a piece that makes up the abstraction. All abstractions are made up from a series of parts. imho, anatta doesn't need to be taught to do mindfulness meditation, but understanding impermanence is important, because without it most people try to fight stressful thoughts and change them, instead of thinking of them like rain clouds, to be observed, not modified. Once the meditator sees the causal chain from observation to thought, action, or feeling, that is all they need to change their habits and live a happier and healthier life.

fsloth 7y ago
Thanks, explaining anatta as set theory is a great analogue.
- proverbialbunny 7y ago
  You're very welcome. For further reading of the abstractions that make up self, checkout The Five Skandhas (https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Five_skandhas https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Five_skandhas) As Hofstadter once wrote, "It's turtles all the way down." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down) <3

semerda 7y ago

I wonder if ppl overthink this and make it more complex then it should with apps and references to ppl who really didn’t know much more than we do today about the brain. Anyone tried sensory deprivation tank (or floating as it’s now known)? Floating to me is the easiest method to let go of the monkey mind without trying. Dr John Lilly (the inventor) took it few notches further taking various substances to heighten his experience. I’m sure some ppl need that sort of journey to let go of memory loops/ptsd, but not required to float.

Mirioron 7y ago

Does mindfulness work for everybody? I've read plenty about its effects on some people and read about how it seems to work on average, but is it something that helps everyone that tries it or are some people less benefited by it?

username90 7y ago
I think it works mostly for those who try to fill up every waking minute with "meaningful" activities. HN seems to be full of people like that, and to them taking a break from the chase might be the most important thing and mindfulness helps them do that without feeling like they wasted time.
chewz 7y ago
> Does mindfulness work for everybody? Deepends on your karma. People who start meditating often get on a pink cloud and they mistake that for a proof that meditation is working for them. As this feeling washes away with time some people get disapointed and give up while some try chasing it. Sort of like chasing runners high. [meditation as any other sport attracts certain number of narcistic over-achievers with compulsion for controling reality] But some people - no matter what attracted them to meditation - make suprising progress. Also some people had been meditators in past lifes so they are naturals :-) PS. Bear in mind that insight meditation / mindfulness is styling itself as millenia old practice but in fact had been created in 2nd part of XIX century as reaction to British colonialism. First teaching of fan-down meditation for laypeople took place in Rangoon in 1911. Silicon Valey took it recently to next level with 10 minutes a day mindfulness apps. Does it work? Well there are also 7-pushups-a-day apps. Do they work? Do they provide same benefits as professional years long athlete training? https://tricycle.org/magazine/meditation-en-masse/ https://tricycle.org/magazine/meditation-en-masse/

chewz 7y ago

My mindfullness app makes me feel so much better then you https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/my-new-meditation-app-makes-me-feel-so-much-better-than-you https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/my-new-meditation-app-ma...

username90 7y ago

Some studies have shown that mindfulness helps, but is it the actual "mindfulness" or is it the pause from life that helps? The alternative should not be to do nothing, but to for example take a slow walk or a nice shower. I'd bet that taking a walk would actually provide more benefits than meditation and mindfulness since it is coupled with exercise. Personally I have gotten nothing from mindfulness and meditation, however I do walk for about an hour a day and in general spend a lot of time without a goal.

kranner 7y ago
As someone who has done a lot of both walking and meditation, I'd say they have orthogonal benefits.
chewz 7y ago
Gardening is the new mindfulness. :-) Also sailing non-stop for nine weeks in the ocean had been for me much better experience (in terms of emptying mind and getting in touch with myself) then any retreat (and I did some).
- chewz 7y ago
  And if you are in for a quick fix freediving puts you into the zone in seconds. https://youtu.be/Od45T65pTaU https://youtu.be/Od45T65pTaU

osullip 7y ago

Mindfull meditation may have its background in Buddhist beliefs, but that doesn't mean that you have to apply them to your meditation. The Australian author Eric Harrison does a good job at seperating the two. https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-foundations-of-mindfulness-eric-harrison/prod9781615192564.html https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-foundations-of-mindfulness-...

cggart 7y ago

I’m a bit taken aback by the answers here. Everyone is throwing around terms like knowing, evaluating, observing with the assumption that they are in a position to be doing these thing effectively? What is the epistemological foundation your espousing? I think one post asked the rhetorical question “who is in a position to know yourself better than yourself?” To which I might reply: “Anyone but your yourself — especially your present self?” There seams to be a ton of hubris and confusion of goals and objectives here. Most of these posts don’t talk about growing but conquering. They use mindfulness as a tool to “learn about themselves” so that they might avoid themselves. This might feel great, but it’s delusion. The best way humans have figured out how to know anything is reciprocal accountability coupled with objectivity. That either means opening up about your emotions honestly and presently with another person you love/trust, or writing down (or otherwise recording) your observations so you might evaluate them later over time. We are more than ourselves, part of a collective, both presently amongst ourselves, and in time. The measure of knowledge is how well our evaluations resonate with others and ourselves in time. Mindfulness just allows us to make observations, not communicate them, or judge them accurately. Frankly, the best way to communicate an emotion is often to embody it. It can also be the best way to observe it. That’s how artists make art. What matters isn’t what we feel but how we respond. Mindfulness is a defense mechanism we use for short term relief from our emotions. It gives a vantage point, not the vantage point. It is a tool, and one that comes at the cost of using other just as valid tools. Ultimately the measure of our well being doesn’t reside with our present selves alone. We err in so far as we forget this in my opinion.

amriksohata 7y ago

Ask a Hindu sage, the word mindfulness is literally as the article describes, a watered down version. The same has happened to yoga, it's all commercialised but in Hinduism yoga has a different purpose and use but it's been stripped of its best values just as a physical thing. Mindfulness is bhakti in Hinduism, a type of mediation but it's been taken by the west and made into something different

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peterwwillis 7y ago

After listening to Thich Nhat Hanh answer questions in a 3 hour long Google Talk, I realized mindfulness's goal of removing pain also aimed to remove all the little dramas of the human experience. Some people think of mindfulness as a kind of cure to unhappiness, when it's really just a drug, or tool, wrapped up in "Wisdom of the East" woo packaging. Don't just "do mindfulness", because it's not a cure-all.

want2know 7y ago

I guess I will be downvoted for this but it always amazed me that so many people in HN are religious when it comes to mindfulness, Buddhism and meditation. There is no scientific proof that there is any difference between relaxing in an chair and meditating following a strict form. The core is: it is very good to give the brain a brake in our busy times. But it is also proven that it can be dangerous to give the brain a break when you have a troubles mind. Things can emerge from the depths which you should find help for. A nice writeup about this is an article from 2016: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mindfulness-wellbeing/201603/dangers-meditation https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mindfulness-wellbein... But there is also more recent recearch that backs this up. So: meditation/relaxing can be very good to reduce stress and to think more clearly. But take care: "Meditation is not a therapy"

kieranmaine 7y ago
If you're interested in what studies into meditation show I would highly recommend The Science of Meditation (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0241975697/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0241975697/). It provides a great summary of where the science is at and what benefits can, and cannot, be attributed to meditation.
lm28469 7y ago
I see it as a framework. It's easier to get into a relaxing state by following known principles than just sitting in a chair and waiting for it to happen. As long as you don't add a value judgment on top (my way is THE Way) I don't see the issue. A bit like how religions are frameworks for faith. You could make up your own gods and rituals but there is something reassuring in following existing norms with set principles and communities. You can see the same pattern emerging everywhere. Gym workouts are the same, you can do random things until it feels right or you can follow one of the main school of thoughts and get it 90% right on the first try. For example I always thought hypnosis and affirmations were 100% useless and borderline hippie bullshit. One day I tried a random hypnosis video on YouTube and it got me in a state of relaxation I never reached before. Might be placebo, but in the end it does the job.

p0d 7y ago

As a Christian I find other christian friends split on the topic of mindfulness. Some embrace mindfulness and some think it should be avoided. I am in the latter camp. I imagine the reason why is the spiritual nature of mindfulness which is highlighted by all the comments here. Most days I use the Lord Jesus’s prayer to reflect and pray about the day before/ahead. It’s an important part of my life and well-being. I’m curious to hear from other christians who embrace mindfulness. It is an alien concept for me to reflect inwards without looking outside myself to God. How does mindfulness rest with your christian faith in this regard?

Infinitesimus 7y ago
(Former Christian my some standard here) Some would argue that meditation, mindfulness and prayer are not necessarily different. Prayer - from the angle of communion with God - can be a two way street. You speak, you listen. With mindfulness and many other meditations, you listen a lot. You can call what you're listening to yourself. Or God. Or Oneness. Or The Universe. Whatever it is, it helps you turn the lens of your introspection away from the noise and towards something quieter, deeper, and perhaps enlightening. Don't forget that several monks from the 5th century to the present day promoted meditation ( eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_meditation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_meditat... ) Even in the bible, all the times people went off to the desert to commune with God, I bet they were meditating and practicing mindfulness.
- p0d 7y ago
  Thanks. I was just chatting to my wife about your response and she was recollecting what some call centering prayer. There seems to be some comparison. I guess I do meditate and am mindful. There may just may be some cultural baggage with those words in Christendom.

njsubedi 7y ago

Could be off topic but the site is asking for a donation, but using photos from Getty Images, which I think is pretty expensive. Did anyone else have this thought, or was it only me?

abiro 7y ago

This article highlights the problem with the mindfulness movement very well: they teach technique instead of understanding. But it should be the other way around: it is only after Understanding that one should seek out specific techniques.

raincom 7y ago

Instead of looking at metaphysically, look at the way natural sciences do: does the self exist? Just because we experience our 'selves' every day, it doesn't mean that such an experience is veridical. What if mindfulness refutes our daily experience?