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This is a forefront issue that Buddhism tries to address, both modern pragmatic Buddhism and fundamentalist Buddhism. It's why right speech, right action, and m

This is a forefront issue that Buddhism tries to address, both modern pragmatic Buddhism and fundamentalist Buddhism. It's why right speech, right action, and morals is one of the first things they drill into you. Most pragmatic practitioners will refuse to teach you if you indicate that you have some mental problems or moral deficiencies that should be addressed by a professional first, as mindfulness may end up doing more harm than good. It's one of the flaws of teaching secular mindfulness, far from its Buddhist roots. I've experienced all these interpersonal deficits after meditating seriously 2 hours every day for 2 years straight. Just need to have the self-awareness to address them, despite the goal of no-self. I saw a Dr. K video in another comment, and one of my favorite quotes he uses to describe meditation is that, "if you run for 5 miles a day, there will be changes to your body that will definitely happen". More here: - https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-i-the-fundamentals/2-morality-the-first-and-last-training/ https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-i-the-fund... - https://eudoxos.github.io/cfitness/html/index.html https://eudoxos.github.io/cfitness/html/index.html - https://themindfulgeek.com/ https://themindfulgeek.com/ plus a talk he gave at Google https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2xxsA9Bn-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2xxsA9Bn-4

jmfldn 4y ago
A related talk by my favorite Buddhist teacher, Ajahn Sona, on 'Right Mindfulness'. https://youtu.be/JOcoynQCmZ0 https://youtu.be/JOcoynQCmZ0 Highly recommend his channel by the way.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Thanks! This guy is great! But I have to admit that he looks like one of the elders from Logan’s Run… or most any other 1970s sci-fi TV show. Of course that does not detract from god message. I just got a laugh from it.
danuker 4y ago
> I've experienced all these interpersonal deficits after meditating seriously 2 hours every day for 2 years straight. Wow! I haven't meditated before. That sounds like a lot of time. Do you still meditate? What does it offer you? Has it offered you what you expected?
- 2-718-281-828 4y ago
  I'm also curious about an answer. If I may take a guess from my own experience. People from Western countries tend to start meditation practice with a specific goal in mind as opposed to just doing it naturally as it is part of the culture. For me a goal is gaining mental strength and balance. After meditating for a while I reach that goal (at least to some extent) and get overwhelmed by the energetic surplus. That leads to either distraction or simply investing this positivity into another goal (work, a project, social activities, ...) leaving me less motivated to further meditate (because it is less "fun" to sit still and work on your mind instead of doing something). After a while the energetic surplus is consumed and I am sooner or later mentally back to square one - because stopping the meditation also stopped the healing and reflection and I'm faced anew with old wounds destabilizing my mind.
  - fjabre 4y ago
    A meditator is a someone. That someone is a product of duality. The wounds are part of the body and personality. They are not you. To come out of the duality we can leave the meditation open. It doesnt have to take any particular form and it should have no goal in mind. Objectless. It is this sense of beingness or presence that is a true meditation. It is the sense of existence which is the background of every other thing itself not perceivable to the senses. It remains constant throughout while everything else fades.
    - jackdawed 4y ago
      https://deconstructingyourself.com/do-nothing-meditation.html https://deconstructingyourself.com/do-nothing-meditation.htm...
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "Do you still meditate? What does it offer you? Has it offered you what you expected?" I'm not the OP, but after I practiced meditation intensely for a few months I found two huge benefits: First: before I meditated I used to get annoyed and bored when I had to do chores like washing the dishes or standing in line. But after meditating for a while, when I had to do such a chore I'd just focus on my breath and I'd no longer feel bored or annoyed. In fact, such chores and waiting in line became almost pleasurable because they gave me an opportunity to meditate. Second: when someone said something mean to me I would just focus on my breath and sort of catch myself about to get angry and saw that I had a choice whether to get angry or not. I didn't have to get drawn in to the hurricane of feelings as an unconscious reaction to the meanness directed at me. Instead I could just continue to focus on my breath and I wouldn't get angry at all. Unfortunately, for some reason that I no longer remember, I fell off the wagon of meditating regularly and went back to my old easily bored, quick to anger self. I still try to meditate occasionally by focusing on my breath, but it doesn't help nearly as much as when I meditated regularly for hours at a time.
2-718-281-828 4y ago
what would you say are examples of harm done by dedicated meditation practiced by people with moral deficiencies?
- colordrops 4y ago
  The term is "spiritual bypass". You disconnect from emotions, pleasure and pain, etc, see the world as illusion, and no longer feel guilt for poor action.
  - 2-718-281-828 4y ago
    I'm wondering though if that is really a necessary consequence of non-spiritual meditation practice. There is fine line between meditation and autogenic training style self-hypnosis internalizing convenient messages. So, if a practitioner starts to go down that route all bets are off. OTOH it is true that social norms become less relevant with meditation. For one because meditation makes you strong and social norms are backed up by guilt dynamics which don't work well on actually self-confident people. Also social norms are constructs and you start to look through those instead of thinking they are actually real. But I have some slight feeling that this might as well open up a path to real and authentic moral attitude and personal ethics. Those simply might not be so convenient and easily manipulated and by that seem somewhat frightening to some people.
    - colordrops 4y ago
      No, it's not a necessary consequence, just a name for what can happen. It happens with spiritual practices too. Your comments on the nature of this phenomenon are insightful.
  - cyberpunk 4y ago
    This seems like quite a fundamental misunderstanding. At least the kind of buddhism I practice, you never disconnect or “no longer feel guilt” or anything like this. Yeah, during Zazen we sit in equanimity with such feelings, but that’s very different to living that way all the time (which is impossible unless you’re some kind of psycho to begin with).
davesque 4y ago
There's a balance to be struck with anything. On the one hand, teaching meditation outside of the context of religion might increase the likelihood of the purpose of the practice being misunderstood. On the other hand, any religious practice runs the risk of breeding a sense of self righteousness in the practitioner. With meditation and mindfulness, I've seen both. Also, I gotta say that language like "moral deficiencies" sounds incredibly broad without some examples. I think that speaks to the drawbacks of a religious context. I don't necessarily mean to direct these comments at you in particular (after all, I don't know what you meant by "moral deficiencies" without more info), but morality is a slippery topic and religion often seems to treat it like it isn't.
- jackdawed 4y ago
  Forgive me, English is not my first language so at times I struggle finding the right word for it. The pali word is "sila", the closest translation is morals. To be deficient in sila is to be deficient in morals, was my thought process. One example is do no harm, or avoid lying. If all your daily life is filled with causing harm, and deceit, then it will be filled with chaos and end up making it harder for you to make progress in awakening or do good stuff. This is one interpretation of karma (cause and effect). There's a whole other philosophical side to it that I think about, outside of the Buddhist context. That certain choices or circumstances in life end up reducing your moral agency in this world. People can be born under unsafe, and unkind environments, so sometimes it becomes harder to be generous and kind, as if there was less wiggle room in your ability to act as a moral agent. One of the things Buddhism tries to address is removing the layers of conditioning in your mind and concept of self, to give you more freedom.
  - davesque 4y ago
    Thanks for your additional thoughts on this. Appreciate the comments.
  - fendy3002 4y ago
    tbf it's not your English that's lacking. It's just that translation from Buddhist term (pali) to English (or other language) is hard or they have no direct translation. Dukkha is one of them.
zozbot234 4y ago
It's interesting that Western Christianity has pretty much the same underlying message - you simply can't reach salvation and union with God without starting from right morals. (This might be why Stoicism with its meditative and contemplative traditions, and a similar focus on divinely-inspired "right/moral action" was a key ally of early Christianity.) Islam of course has its own Sufi traditions, the Biblical prophets are said to wander in the desert etc. etc.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  These are universal values that you find across many religions. Religion is a framework to help us find our moral way. But like anything, institutions are run by humans and sometimes go the wrong way, focused on dogma, enrichment or power.
  - n3storm 4y ago
    Another widespread opinion is that religion is an structure created to manage and channel human espirituallity for the profit of "those who are able to talk/understand/explain/mediate with/to/from god(s)"
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      Both are valid/true positions.
- tisdy-01 4y ago
  > you simply can't reach salvation and union with God without starting from right morals. This is almost the opposite of Christianity, depending on what you mean by "right morals". Christianity says you simply can't reach salvation and be with God unless you are flawless, which is humanly impossible, so unless God does something... hence Christ.
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    >This is almost the opposite of Christianity, I'm pretty sure you can find some sect of Christianity somewhere that will contradict another one completely, just consider the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 interpretation vs. the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879.
SMAAART 4y ago
Forefront? HA! My experience is diametrically opposite: prolong Buddhism practice often leads to ego-centric behaviors that are swept under the rug and not talked about. I was warned about it when I started getting "serious" about my practice, but I didn't believe it until I confronted it, face-to-face, on a daily basis. To this day I am the renegate and persona non grata at my Temple, ex except for the Abbot and my Zen Master who know how to tolerate, navigate, and leverage that BS for the greater good. Samurai training is Buddhism training on steroids. Regardless, my practice continue with a lot less time at the Temple, and I have relinquished my Center (the Center that I founded).
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Buddhist vipassana meditation is based on deconstructing the ego altogether as well as all desires, and recognizing the illusion behind them. So if people are being egocentric, they probably have not progressed very far in their spiritual path.
  - Klinky 4y ago
    That honestly just sounds like mental self-flagellation done to inflate the ego and feel superior.
    - ghotli 4y ago
      Said simply, it's not.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - regpertom 4y ago
    I’ve heard it said to be careful. That one may find upon deconstructing their ego, and finding that it’s all an illusion, that they stare into the face of god, and that god is them staring back at them. That they are it. That they are the divine. How intoxicating. This person and the drug addict who thinks they’re Jesus are on the same wave length. The drug being a dangerous shortcut. So have they not progressed very far? Or have they progressed somewhere else? Like the saying: far out man.
StopDarkPattern 4y ago
And yet no one who read the article, or commented the crap, even thought for a moment that humans have already contemplated these slivers.
pyuser583 4y ago
Funny. My former psychiatrist recommended mindfulness to all his patients. Always thought it was faddish.
TriNetra 4y ago
Mindfulness/meditation are tools to attain a level of awareness so that one can recognize what are the things holding one back from experiencing supreme peace and bliss. Without working on virtues like compassion, kindness, truthfulness, humility etc. these tools will only aggrevate one's selfish nature. There are countless examples from ancient India where advanced meditators obtained divine boons due to their severe penance (by meditation on the divine), but ended up using the boon for expansion of their power/wealth at the cost of others, thereby becoming extremely selfish and a problem for the society to sustain properly.
mapcars 4y ago
Are you sure that right things and morals have anything to do with Buddhism or meditation? For "serious meditators" - seriousness is one of the first things one drops when practices start working.
- jackdawed 4y ago
  Serious in the sense that, "I'm going to put some effort to investigate what is going on, seek out teachers and resources, and apply my knowledge through daily practice". The actual meditation itself is very playful but focused, like getting good at a competitive video game. > The five spiritual faculties are said to be like a cart with four wheels and a driver. If any of the four wheels is too small, wobbly, or not in balance with the others, then the going on the spiritual road will be rough. The four wheels symbolize faith, wisdom, energy, and concentration. If the driver is not paying attention there will also be problems. The driver symbolizes mindfulness. [See SN 48.18, also Visuddhimagga, IV, 45.2.] > The five spiritual faculties have also been presented in another order that can be useful: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. In this order, they apply to each of the three trainings, the first of which, as discussed earlier, is morality. We have faith that training in morality is a good idea and that we can do it, so we exert energy to live up to a standard of clear and skillful living. We realize that we must pay attention to our thoughts, words, and deeds in order to do this, so we try to be mindful of them. We realize that we often fail to pay attention, so we try to increase our ability to concentrate on how we live our life. In this way, through experience, we become wiser in a relative sense, learning how to live a good and useful life. Seeing our skill improve and the benefits it has for our life, we generate more faith, and so on. https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-i-the-fundamentals/6-the-five-spiritual-faculties/ https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-i-the-fund...

jmfldn 4y ago

A related talk by my favorite Buddhist teacher, Ajahn Sona, on 'Right Mindfulness'. https://youtu.be/JOcoynQCmZ0 https://youtu.be/JOcoynQCmZ0 Highly recommend his channel by the way.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Thanks! This guy is great! But I have to admit that he looks like one of the elders from Logan’s Run… or most any other 1970s sci-fi TV show. Of course that does not detract from god message. I just got a laugh from it.

danuker 4y ago

> I've experienced all these interpersonal deficits after meditating seriously 2 hours every day for 2 years straight. Wow! I haven't meditated before. That sounds like a lot of time. Do you still meditate? What does it offer you? Has it offered you what you expected?

2-718-281-828 4y ago
I'm also curious about an answer. If I may take a guess from my own experience. People from Western countries tend to start meditation practice with a specific goal in mind as opposed to just doing it naturally as it is part of the culture. For me a goal is gaining mental strength and balance. After meditating for a while I reach that goal (at least to some extent) and get overwhelmed by the energetic surplus. That leads to either distraction or simply investing this positivity into another goal (work, a project, social activities, ...) leaving me less motivated to further meditate (because it is less "fun" to sit still and work on your mind instead of doing something). After a while the energetic surplus is consumed and I am sooner or later mentally back to square one - because stopping the meditation also stopped the healing and reflection and I'm faced anew with old wounds destabilizing my mind.
- fjabre 4y ago
  A meditator is a someone. That someone is a product of duality. The wounds are part of the body and personality. They are not you. To come out of the duality we can leave the meditation open. It doesnt have to take any particular form and it should have no goal in mind. Objectless. It is this sense of beingness or presence that is a true meditation. It is the sense of existence which is the background of every other thing itself not perceivable to the senses. It remains constant throughout while everything else fades.
  - jackdawed 4y ago
    https://deconstructingyourself.com/do-nothing-meditation.html https://deconstructingyourself.com/do-nothing-meditation.htm...
pmoriarty 4y ago
"Do you still meditate? What does it offer you? Has it offered you what you expected?" I'm not the OP, but after I practiced meditation intensely for a few months I found two huge benefits: First: before I meditated I used to get annoyed and bored when I had to do chores like washing the dishes or standing in line. But after meditating for a while, when I had to do such a chore I'd just focus on my breath and I'd no longer feel bored or annoyed. In fact, such chores and waiting in line became almost pleasurable because they gave me an opportunity to meditate. Second: when someone said something mean to me I would just focus on my breath and sort of catch myself about to get angry and saw that I had a choice whether to get angry or not. I didn't have to get drawn in to the hurricane of feelings as an unconscious reaction to the meanness directed at me. Instead I could just continue to focus on my breath and I wouldn't get angry at all. Unfortunately, for some reason that I no longer remember, I fell off the wagon of meditating regularly and went back to my old easily bored, quick to anger self. I still try to meditate occasionally by focusing on my breath, but it doesn't help nearly as much as when I meditated regularly for hours at a time.

2-718-281-828 4y ago

what would you say are examples of harm done by dedicated meditation practiced by people with moral deficiencies?

colordrops 4y ago
The term is "spiritual bypass". You disconnect from emotions, pleasure and pain, etc, see the world as illusion, and no longer feel guilt for poor action.
- 2-718-281-828 4y ago
  I'm wondering though if that is really a necessary consequence of non-spiritual meditation practice. There is fine line between meditation and autogenic training style self-hypnosis internalizing convenient messages. So, if a practitioner starts to go down that route all bets are off. OTOH it is true that social norms become less relevant with meditation. For one because meditation makes you strong and social norms are backed up by guilt dynamics which don't work well on actually self-confident people. Also social norms are constructs and you start to look through those instead of thinking they are actually real. But I have some slight feeling that this might as well open up a path to real and authentic moral attitude and personal ethics. Those simply might not be so convenient and easily manipulated and by that seem somewhat frightening to some people.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    No, it's not a necessary consequence, just a name for what can happen. It happens with spiritual practices too. Your comments on the nature of this phenomenon are insightful.
- cyberpunk 4y ago
  This seems like quite a fundamental misunderstanding. At least the kind of buddhism I practice, you never disconnect or “no longer feel guilt” or anything like this. Yeah, during Zazen we sit in equanimity with such feelings, but that’s very different to living that way all the time (which is impossible unless you’re some kind of psycho to begin with).

davesque 4y ago

There's a balance to be struck with anything. On the one hand, teaching meditation outside of the context of religion might increase the likelihood of the purpose of the practice being misunderstood. On the other hand, any religious practice runs the risk of breeding a sense of self righteousness in the practitioner. With meditation and mindfulness, I've seen both. Also, I gotta say that language like "moral deficiencies" sounds incredibly broad without some examples. I think that speaks to the drawbacks of a religious context. I don't necessarily mean to direct these comments at you in particular (after all, I don't know what you meant by "moral deficiencies" without more info), but morality is a slippery topic and religion often seems to treat it like it isn't.

jackdawed 4y ago
Forgive me, English is not my first language so at times I struggle finding the right word for it. The pali word is "sila", the closest translation is morals. To be deficient in sila is to be deficient in morals, was my thought process. One example is do no harm, or avoid lying. If all your daily life is filled with causing harm, and deceit, then it will be filled with chaos and end up making it harder for you to make progress in awakening or do good stuff. This is one interpretation of karma (cause and effect). There's a whole other philosophical side to it that I think about, outside of the Buddhist context. That certain choices or circumstances in life end up reducing your moral agency in this world. People can be born under unsafe, and unkind environments, so sometimes it becomes harder to be generous and kind, as if there was less wiggle room in your ability to act as a moral agent. One of the things Buddhism tries to address is removing the layers of conditioning in your mind and concept of self, to give you more freedom.
- davesque 4y ago
  Thanks for your additional thoughts on this. Appreciate the comments.
- fendy3002 4y ago
  tbf it's not your English that's lacking. It's just that translation from Buddhist term (pali) to English (or other language) is hard or they have no direct translation. Dukkha is one of them.

zozbot234 4y ago

It's interesting that Western Christianity has pretty much the same underlying message - you simply can't reach salvation and union with God without starting from right morals. (This might be why Stoicism with its meditative and contemplative traditions, and a similar focus on divinely-inspired "right/moral action" was a key ally of early Christianity.) Islam of course has its own Sufi traditions, the Biblical prophets are said to wander in the desert etc. etc.

Spooky23 4y ago
These are universal values that you find across many religions. Religion is a framework to help us find our moral way. But like anything, institutions are run by humans and sometimes go the wrong way, focused on dogma, enrichment or power.
- n3storm 4y ago
  Another widespread opinion is that religion is an structure created to manage and channel human espirituallity for the profit of "those who are able to talk/understand/explain/mediate with/to/from god(s)"
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Both are valid/true positions.
tisdy-01 4y ago
> you simply can't reach salvation and union with God without starting from right morals. This is almost the opposite of Christianity, depending on what you mean by "right morals". Christianity says you simply can't reach salvation and be with God unless you are flawless, which is humanly impossible, so unless God does something... hence Christ.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >This is almost the opposite of Christianity, I'm pretty sure you can find some sect of Christianity somewhere that will contradict another one completely, just consider the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 interpretation vs. the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879.

SMAAART 4y ago

Forefront? HA! My experience is diametrically opposite: prolong Buddhism practice often leads to ego-centric behaviors that are swept under the rug and not talked about. I was warned about it when I started getting "serious" about my practice, but I didn't believe it until I confronted it, face-to-face, on a daily basis. To this day I am the renegate and persona non grata at my Temple, ex except for the Abbot and my Zen Master who know how to tolerate, navigate, and leverage that BS for the greater good. Samurai training is Buddhism training on steroids. Regardless, my practice continue with a lot less time at the Temple, and I have relinquished my Center (the Center that I founded).

zozbot234 4y ago
Buddhist vipassana meditation is based on deconstructing the ego altogether as well as all desires, and recognizing the illusion behind them. So if people are being egocentric, they probably have not progressed very far in their spiritual path.
- Klinky 4y ago
  That honestly just sounds like mental self-flagellation done to inflate the ego and feel superior.
  - ghotli 4y ago
    Said simply, it's not.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- regpertom 4y ago
  I’ve heard it said to be careful. That one may find upon deconstructing their ego, and finding that it’s all an illusion, that they stare into the face of god, and that god is them staring back at them. That they are it. That they are the divine. How intoxicating. This person and the drug addict who thinks they’re Jesus are on the same wave length. The drug being a dangerous shortcut. So have they not progressed very far? Or have they progressed somewhere else? Like the saying: far out man.

StopDarkPattern 4y ago

And yet no one who read the article, or commented the crap, even thought for a moment that humans have already contemplated these slivers.

pyuser583 4y ago

Funny. My former psychiatrist recommended mindfulness to all his patients. Always thought it was faddish.

TriNetra 4y ago

Mindfulness/meditation are tools to attain a level of awareness so that one can recognize what are the things holding one back from experiencing supreme peace and bliss. Without working on virtues like compassion, kindness, truthfulness, humility etc. these tools will only aggrevate one's selfish nature. There are countless examples from ancient India where advanced meditators obtained divine boons due to their severe penance (by meditation on the divine), but ended up using the boon for expansion of their power/wealth at the cost of others, thereby becoming extremely selfish and a problem for the society to sustain properly.

mapcars 4y ago

Are you sure that right things and morals have anything to do with Buddhism or meditation? For "serious meditators" - seriousness is one of the first things one drops when practices start working.

jackdawed 4y ago
Serious in the sense that, "I'm going to put some effort to investigate what is going on, seek out teachers and resources, and apply my knowledge through daily practice". The actual meditation itself is very playful but focused, like getting good at a competitive video game. > The five spiritual faculties are said to be like a cart with four wheels and a driver. If any of the four wheels is too small, wobbly, or not in balance with the others, then the going on the spiritual road will be rough. The four wheels symbolize faith, wisdom, energy, and concentration. If the driver is not paying attention there will also be problems. The driver symbolizes mindfulness. [See SN 48.18, also Visuddhimagga, IV, 45.2.] > The five spiritual faculties have also been presented in another order that can be useful: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. In this order, they apply to each of the three trainings, the first of which, as discussed earlier, is morality. We have faith that training in morality is a good idea and that we can do it, so we exert energy to live up to a standard of clear and skillful living. We realize that we must pay attention to our thoughts, words, and deeds in order to do this, so we try to be mindful of them. We realize that we often fail to pay attention, so we try to increase our ability to concentrate on how we live our life. In this way, through experience, we become wiser in a relative sense, learning how to live a good and useful life. Seeing our skill improve and the benefits it has for our life, we generate more faith, and so on. https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-i-the-fundamentals/6-the-five-spiritual-faculties/ https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-i-the-fund...