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I've been noticing an increasing trend of people saying things like this, and I don't get it. Meditation has many forms and traditions, within and without Buddh

by Hasu 4y ago

I've been noticing an increasing trend of people saying things like this, and I don't get it. Meditation has many forms and traditions, within and without Buddhism. Which ones are "safe" and which ones aren't? Is using Headspace twice a week enough to be dangerous, or is there some lower bound where meditation practice without Buddhist beliefs switches from harmless to dangerous? And are Hindu or Christian meditation practices dangerous, or just the secular stuff? What precisely is the nature of this danger? > I personally know two people who went into severe psychosis and depression by trying to practise meditation in a secular context. Sorry, but I simply can't believe this. I mean I believe you have two friends with mental health issues, but I don't believe that psychosis can be triggered in a normal person by practicing "secular meditation". That's an extreme claim that requires a lot of evidence.

bowsamic 4y ago
I would say that meditating for more than 15 minutes a day is very dangerous I’m sorry that you don’t believe (edit typo) me, nothing I can do about that
Enginerrrd 4y ago
>That's an extreme claim that requires a lot of evidence. For what it's worth, I Don't think it's an extreme claim at all. The potential for ill-effects from more extreme efforts in Meditation is starting to be documented by western scientists. A lot of adverse outcomes aren't only possible, but actually quite common. I personally had ZERO prior mental health issues, but after 3-4 months of meditating 30-90 minutes everyday in addition to fairly intense mindfulness practice throughout the day, I started to experience a lot of issues: strange emotional outbursts disconnected from any memory or thought, anger management issues, tension headaches, depression, etc. These ultimately only resolved by stopping meditation entirely for a long time and only carefully reintroducing it in smaller less frequent doses. It's really not all sunshine and rainbows.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  I also had some of those side effects. I also had a trippy period, where I struggled to see anything as real. It was about a 2 week long solipsistic nightmare. I do think this is all “part of the path”, but without the traditional context, you will be quite lost on what to do next. Even with it, it’s very difficult
- titanomachy 4y ago
  I think this stuff is actually pretty typical for folks who progress to a certain stage. I experienced it as well, if that makes you feel any better. The Buddhists definitely know about this, but a lot of their writing is pretty impenetrable and interlaced with weird metaphysics. Here's some modern, secular words on the subject (from the admittedly controversial author Daniel Ingram): https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/5-dissolution-entrance-to-the-dark-night/ https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight... Here's a more traditional buddhist description of the same thing: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress.html#ch6.8 https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress.... I think a very small fraction of people actually meditate enough to get to that point. Meditating 90 minutes a day (plus the constant mindfulness practice) is pretty extreme by most people's standards (at least in US secular culture).
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    > The Buddhists definitely know about this, but a lot of their writing is pretty impenetrable and interlaced with weird metaphysics. Here's some modern, secular words on the subject: This and linking MCTB (of all things) are the exact dangerous taking out of context I’m warning against. Daniel Ingram is a terrible resource, he should not be recommended
    - bstrom 4y ago
      I would be interested in hearing more about why Ingram is considered a terrible resource, if you care to share.
      - bowsamic 4y ago
        One reason is that he broke a major taboo in publicly declaring himself an Arhat Then he has this book that is supposed to distil all of the powerful insight practises into a secular path, but everyone I’ve spoken to in his pragmatic dharma community is extremely toxic. It’s literally like the 4chan of Buddhism, huge amounts of racism, lots of depressed teens, very online, lots of people who think they are enlightened (one of which suddenly “rated my capacity for awakening” as zero, and when I said I didn’t care flew into a rage) It’s exactly what you expect to happen when you take Buddhism, try and condense it down into a path for having the strongest and most intense experience, and market it to terminally online young adult men Ingram was also heavily involved in this “fire kasina” stuff where you just stare at a flame for days until you start seeing things and go kind of crazy, which is a controversial practise in Buddhism Finally he’s just not a qualified Buddhist teacher
bowsamic 4y ago
I would say it’s an increasing trend because people who are more invested in the traditions have “had enough” of so called “mcmindfulness” or dangerous approaches
- Hasu 4y ago
  If what you say is true, then it should be trivially easy to find an app that promotes these dangerous practices, find their daily active users, then check the reviews and find a high percentage (>10%) of negative reviews saying something like, "1/5, cannot recommend, after using this app every day for three months, I'm now experiencing horrible mental health issues". There are plenty of apps out there with millions of daily active users. What percentage of those users do you expect to suffer negative mental health side effects? Where is the evidence that they exist at all?
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    I don’t have access to that data. Do you? I would guess that about 5 to 10% of people who seriously try the practise for an extended period experience very scary and potentially trauma inducing effects
    - Hasu 4y ago
      I can use Google, and found this [1] article claiming over 4 million DAUs for Calm in June of 2020, with trendlines going up and to the right. So the lower bound of your estimate gives us ~200,000 people who would be adversely affected. Looking through negative reviews, it's all complaints about pricing and paywalls. The same is true for Headspace, the second biggest app in this space (I don't have DAUs for them, but it's got about half as many downloads and reviews, so let's assume less than half as big). I can't find a single complaint about adverse mental health effects, which doesn't mean it never happens, but it's not anywhere close to 5%. [1] https://blog.apptopia.com/calm-app-outperforms-headspace-during-quarantine https://blog.apptopia.com/calm-app-outperforms-headspace-dur...
      - 4y ago
stryan 4y ago
> And are Hindu or Christian meditation practices dangerous, or just the secular stuff? What precisely is the nature of this danger? I don't think the argument is usually "meditation without Buddhism is dangerous" but rather "meditation techniques taken from their context can be dangerous". Regular mindfulness or insight meditation can cause shifts in mental state that a person isn't used to and they may not have the tools required to deal with it in a healthy manner. It's like the mental equivalent of a normal person suddenly starting the same workout routine as an professional athlete, or even just an experienced weightlifter. They might be able to do the exercises, but they don't have the context provided by having a coach/being in the sport/etc to provide them with tools like "how to fall properly" or "knowing a torn muscle versus a normal sprain". That doesn't mean that doing the exercises in general are bad or that you need to do sport foo in order to exercise.

by Hasu 4y ago

bowsamic 4y ago

I would say that meditating for more than 15 minutes a day is very dangerous I’m sorry that you don’t believe (edit typo) me, nothing I can do about that

Enginerrrd 4y ago

>That's an extreme claim that requires a lot of evidence. For what it's worth, I Don't think it's an extreme claim at all. The potential for ill-effects from more extreme efforts in Meditation is starting to be documented by western scientists. A lot of adverse outcomes aren't only possible, but actually quite common. I personally had ZERO prior mental health issues, but after 3-4 months of meditating 30-90 minutes everyday in addition to fairly intense mindfulness practice throughout the day, I started to experience a lot of issues: strange emotional outbursts disconnected from any memory or thought, anger management issues, tension headaches, depression, etc. These ultimately only resolved by stopping meditation entirely for a long time and only carefully reintroducing it in smaller less frequent doses. It's really not all sunshine and rainbows.

bowsamic 4y ago
I also had some of those side effects. I also had a trippy period, where I struggled to see anything as real. It was about a 2 week long solipsistic nightmare. I do think this is all “part of the path”, but without the traditional context, you will be quite lost on what to do next. Even with it, it’s very difficult
titanomachy 4y ago
I think this stuff is actually pretty typical for folks who progress to a certain stage. I experienced it as well, if that makes you feel any better. The Buddhists definitely know about this, but a lot of their writing is pretty impenetrable and interlaced with weird metaphysics. Here's some modern, secular words on the subject (from the admittedly controversial author Daniel Ingram): https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/5-dissolution-entrance-to-the-dark-night/ https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight... Here's a more traditional buddhist description of the same thing: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress.html#ch6.8 https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress.... I think a very small fraction of people actually meditate enough to get to that point. Meditating 90 minutes a day (plus the constant mindfulness practice) is pretty extreme by most people's standards (at least in US secular culture).
- bowsamic 4y ago
  > The Buddhists definitely know about this, but a lot of their writing is pretty impenetrable and interlaced with weird metaphysics. Here's some modern, secular words on the subject: This and linking MCTB (of all things) are the exact dangerous taking out of context I’m warning against. Daniel Ingram is a terrible resource, he should not be recommended
  - bstrom 4y ago
    I would be interested in hearing more about why Ingram is considered a terrible resource, if you care to share.
    - bowsamic 4y ago
      One reason is that he broke a major taboo in publicly declaring himself an Arhat Then he has this book that is supposed to distil all of the powerful insight practises into a secular path, but everyone I’ve spoken to in his pragmatic dharma community is extremely toxic. It’s literally like the 4chan of Buddhism, huge amounts of racism, lots of depressed teens, very online, lots of people who think they are enlightened (one of which suddenly “rated my capacity for awakening” as zero, and when I said I didn’t care flew into a rage) It’s exactly what you expect to happen when you take Buddhism, try and condense it down into a path for having the strongest and most intense experience, and market it to terminally online young adult men Ingram was also heavily involved in this “fire kasina” stuff where you just stare at a flame for days until you start seeing things and go kind of crazy, which is a controversial practise in Buddhism Finally he’s just not a qualified Buddhist teacher

bowsamic 4y ago

I would say it’s an increasing trend because people who are more invested in the traditions have “had enough” of so called “mcmindfulness” or dangerous approaches

Hasu 4y ago
If what you say is true, then it should be trivially easy to find an app that promotes these dangerous practices, find their daily active users, then check the reviews and find a high percentage (>10%) of negative reviews saying something like, "1/5, cannot recommend, after using this app every day for three months, I'm now experiencing horrible mental health issues". There are plenty of apps out there with millions of daily active users. What percentage of those users do you expect to suffer negative mental health side effects? Where is the evidence that they exist at all?
- bowsamic 4y ago
  I don’t have access to that data. Do you? I would guess that about 5 to 10% of people who seriously try the practise for an extended period experience very scary and potentially trauma inducing effects
  - Hasu 4y ago
    I can use Google, and found this [1] article claiming over 4 million DAUs for Calm in June of 2020, with trendlines going up and to the right. So the lower bound of your estimate gives us ~200,000 people who would be adversely affected. Looking through negative reviews, it's all complaints about pricing and paywalls. The same is true for Headspace, the second biggest app in this space (I don't have DAUs for them, but it's got about half as many downloads and reviews, so let's assume less than half as big). I can't find a single complaint about adverse mental health effects, which doesn't mean it never happens, but it's not anywhere close to 5%. [1] https://blog.apptopia.com/calm-app-outperforms-headspace-during-quarantine https://blog.apptopia.com/calm-app-outperforms-headspace-dur...
    - 4y ago

stryan 4y ago

> And are Hindu or Christian meditation practices dangerous, or just the secular stuff? What precisely is the nature of this danger? I don't think the argument is usually "meditation without Buddhism is dangerous" but rather "meditation techniques taken from their context can be dangerous". Regular mindfulness or insight meditation can cause shifts in mental state that a person isn't used to and they may not have the tools required to deal with it in a healthy manner. It's like the mental equivalent of a normal person suddenly starting the same workout routine as an professional athlete, or even just an experienced weightlifter. They might be able to do the exercises, but they don't have the context provided by having a coach/being in the sport/etc to provide them with tools like "how to fall properly" or "knowing a torn muscle versus a normal sprain". That doesn't mean that doing the exercises in general are bad or that you need to do sport foo in order to exercise.