24 ms·

The new science of meditation

249 points by ojarow 3y ago

neves 3y ago
Paid maternity leave and 30 vacations, staples of any developed country, would do more for mental health in USA than any research in meditation.
- FollowingTheDao 3y ago
  Exactly. Please see: Buddhism as the Opiate of the (downwardly-mobile) Middle Class: The Case of Thanissaro Bhikkhu https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/2013/07/10/buddhism-as-the-opiate-of-the-downwardly-mobile-middle-class-the-case-of-thanissaro-bhikkhu/ https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/2013/07/10/buddhism-as-th...
- renjimen 3y ago
  Unfortunately, labor laws are harder to change than your perception of pain.
waterheater 3y ago
Edit: wow, apparently some people here really don't like Gateway Hemisync. All I've tried to share source material on its claims and make a plea for keeping an open mind. Perhaps those so virulently opposed can find that open mind with meditation. Recommend checking out the Koru system. It's an evidence-based mindfulness system out of the Research Triangle. Regardless, the Monroe Institute already performed groundbreaking research in this area 50 years ago. I don't have a source at the moment, but I remember reading that the Monroe Institute's binaural beat audio programs creates brainwave patterns similar to that of an advanced Buddhist monk in meditation. Apparently, the Monroe Institute discovered that the elevated mental states achieved by these monks is achieved with brain hemisphere synchronization, which they call "Gateway Hemisync." According to the Monroe Institute, "this process uses pulses of sound to create in both brain hemispheres electrical wave forms simultaneously equal in frequency and amplitude. The Institute was granted a patent in 1975 based upon the use of such sound pulses to induce a frequency following response (FFR) in the human brain. The FFR demonstrates that when you hear a certain type of sound, your brain tends to respond to, or resonate with, that sound...Each ear sends its dominant nerve signal to the opposite brain hemisphere...By sending separate sound pulses to each ear (using stereo headphones to isolate one ear from the other), the halves of the brain act in unison to “hear” a third signal, which is the difference in frequencies between the two signals in each ear" [1]. A group in the US Army performed a serious analysis of the Gateway Hemisync process, concluding that "there is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives", which include "out-of-body movement", "terrestrial information gathering trips", and "possible encounters with intelligent, non-corporal energy forms when time-space boundaries are exceeded" [2]. The article is talking about scientific validation of meditation and its outcomes. That's not to say we should blindly accept the claims of those scientists, the Monroe Institute, or the US Army. The key is to follow the evidence while remembering that greed and prestige is what's causing the "McMindfulness" effect. Smartphone apps will be most useful for personal guided meditations, but they should be freely available. [1] https://vdocuments.net/the-gateway-experience-guidance-manual.html https://vdocuments.net/the-gateway-experience-guidance-manua... [2] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R0017002...
- jules22 3y ago
  > A group in the US Army performed a serious analysis of the Gateway Hemisync process, concluding that "there is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives", which include "out-of-body movement", "terrestrial information gathering trips", and "possible encounters with intelligent, non-corporal energy forms when time-space boundaries are exceeded" They concluded a lot of woo around when they were looking into silly things such as Targ's Remote Viewing. All of that later was revealed to be nonsense. Army and CIA, while are generally rational, are not necessarily great at critical thinking or science.
  - waterheater 3y ago
    Ah, you are referring to the SRI experiments, though I'm not sure who "they" are. You should, however, be aware that the Proceedings of the IEEE (Volume: 64, Issue: 10, October 1976) contain a paper presenting the results of a remote-viewing experiment with n=36 and p=0.0000006 [1]. Many people who purport to "love science" set aside how much of one's understanding of the universe is axiomatic. Now, I've never directly experienced time dilation, and I have heard that GPS satellites have been created to take time dilation effects into account. I have, however, experienced and validated Newtonian dynamics (physics classes). In either case, both Newtonian dynamics and time dilation were presented to me as axiomatic; that is to say, I haven't performed a full, independent derivation of these two ideas of physics. However, I still accept that the general ideas are sound. If a model of physics supports the idea of remote viewing, so be it. >Army and CIA, while are generally rational, are not necessarily great at critical thinking or science. That's funny to say, seeing as it's well-established that military technology across all domains is significantly more advanced than the average person's technology. As a small example, neither one of us could make a stealth bomber capable of dropping nuclear ordinance anywhere in the world nor perform the required R&D to properly design one. [1]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1454638 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1454638
    - fluoridation 3y ago
      A paper from 1976 claims to have detected ESP in its participants. The paper appears to have only been cited twice since, both in 1979, one to explain the 1976 results as experimental bias, and the other to report failure to reproduce. I wouldn't throw out my walkie-talkie just yet. >If a model of physics supports the idea of remote viewing, so be it. Okay. What's that model? Are brains RF transceivers?
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Meditation became popular when neoliberals figured out that it was something they could make the lower classes spend time on, and pay for, in order to optimize their utility as economic cogs. Nothing money touches is left uncorrupted.
epiccoleman 3y ago
> Given that wealthy countries like the US aren’t exactly riding trend lines toward new peaks of mental health (depression rates in American adults are at an all-time high, while young people appear in the grips of a mental health crisis), scalable ways of not just mindfully soothing, but completely re-creating psychological experiences for the better should set off sirens of general, scientific, and funding intrigue. I was all ready to criticize this, but the article pretty much sums up my feelings: > Critics call it “McMindfulness,” a capitalist perversion of meditation that deals with stress by focusing inward on the breath, rather than outward on the social structures that cause so much of that stress. I'm all for finding ways for people to improve their mental health and become more resilient to their suffering. But I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom rather than a cause. There's also a part of me that resists the "capitalization" of these tools for mental introspection. It feels, in some way, to be missing the point. That said, I'm not sure that resistance is correctly targeted. Why shouldn't someone be able to make money by providing people with tools to improve their lives? Is that thought a silly purity spiral, leaving scraps of potential well-being on the table just because the packaging is too slick? But still, there's something about it that feels off to me, as though there's something that's lost when we package all this ancient, hard-won wisdom into a smartphone app whose notifications to you will sit right next to the latest Elon Musk tweet.
- samstave 3y ago
  The morbid, but critically true, reality is that there are different humans. There are Takers, Givers, Neutral. We are ruled by Takers. (service to self, as opposed to service of others) Which is a core tenant of meditation (service to others) We as a Humanity will not heal until we can kill the Takers Archetype in the psyche. Thus why meditation helps. But literally - the Takers who are the "they" or "TPTB" are so fn broken, that changing that psychological worm is extremely difficult - and its a self-defending psychosis that spans generations and is hard to qwell. - EDIT because of the 'posting too fast rule (lame)' ;; -- Mayan word ;; "In Lak'ech" 'I am another Yourself'
  - ericjmorey 3y ago
akasakahakada 3y ago
Little google search I found this guy. https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2018/2/18/observing-mindfulness-and-then-getting-bored-by-it https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2018/2/18/... To conclude that, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the "scientist" quoted in the article is just pure pseudoscience.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
  The science giveth and the science taketh away then I guess. Is it scientific to see if he has helped anyone with chronic pain?
- DueDilligence 3y ago
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- carabiner 3y ago
  He's got a PhD from MIT in molecular biology. So nothing to do with meditation or neuroscience. But he was a scientist for a while. Now he's emeritus.
  - jules22 3y ago
    Brian Josephson won his Nobel and then got into transcendental meditation. He was talking pseudoscience since. It does not take away from him that he is a smart man, but it seems to have effected his rationality quite a bit. I know some meditating academics. They all have this tendency to irrationality.
    - carabiner 3y ago
      I think you can compare meditation to the field of "medicine" or "diet." There are cranks and pseudoscience in there too, but I wouldn't write off the whole field as irrational. It's got a semantic problem too. If more people called it "mindfulness" or "focus practice" that would be more accurate for how most normal, secular people meditate. Maybe even calling it meditation vs. alternative meditation (like alternative medicine). LOTS of different forms of meditation, and not all I think are worthwhile. Some are better than others. TM seems like a total scam/fake though, just like chiropractic, astrology, juice cleanses etc.
mohave529 3y ago
"Along a less-traveled route, meditation remains what it long was: a deeply transformative pursuit, a devoted metamorphosis of the mind toward increasingly enlightened states." This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself. As my practice has gotten deeper, I've started to reframe meditation for myself as the process of unrelenting inquiry in the search for base truth. In that pursuit, the practice becomes a process of subtraction of core beliefs and ideas that simply aren't true - or can't be known to be true. As these beliefs disappeared, much of my own personal suffering did as well as so many of the things that were sources of conflict in my mind were predicated on false beliefs. With this framing meditation can take many forms. Ramana Maharshi famously asked his devotees to start with the question of "Who am I?" and just keep inquiring.
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  > This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself. Interesting, after a certain point you get diminishing returns and once you've eliminated or solved the things conflicting you, then staying in a meditative state becomes an illusory trap to avoid life and living. I knew a guy who did just that. Would spend hours meditating to the point where he avoided living. It seemed to be more like avoidance rather than being able to enjoy the gift of living without the troubles that come with it which meditation solves.
  - beardedmoose 3y ago
    Interesting take. With this line of thinking would Buddhist monks just be practicing excessive escapism much like those who turn to drugs and alcohol? Just some random thoughts but there seems to be a reoccurring theme in life in which too much of a good thing is indeed too much. Life is about balance, all that meditating and no action does what exactly? What good is all that enlightenment if you aren't experiencing life or helping others?
    - freitzkriesler2 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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triyambakam 3y ago
In Hinduism, meditation is not just a calming practice, but an actual movement toward God. And in the tradition I follow, it is also not for beginners. Basic discipline — the following of the Yamas (restraints of non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, etc.) — is recommended first.
- jimmychoozyx 3y ago
  I like to consider Meditation outside of any religion personally. Meditation helps to calm the nervous system. Counting to 10 (1 count per inhale + exhale), or simply focusing on each inhale & exhale, or repeating a word or multi-word mantra, is what I do personally. It's especially nice in a Sauna with some mystical atmospheric music (such as Anugama, one of my favorites for meditation). I have found that it improves my ability to concentrate (especially useful when studying or working) and to calm myself in stressful situations.
- nuclearnice1 3y ago
  Interesting point. There are obvious connections from the Yamas to the eight-fold path of Buddhism: Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. I’m not aware of an explicit ordering. But the other seven steps complement and deepen the meditation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path
  - hackingthelema 3y ago
    Relevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%81ja_yoga#Comparison_with_Buddhism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%81ja_yoga#Comparison_with...
- flatline 3y ago
  You find all kinds of approaches in the Eastern traditions. Buddha rejected the eternalism and theism of the Hindus, but most of his teachings were really quite similar. The yoga sutras emphasized asana prior to the practice of dhyana. Go further east and some of the chan/zen schools rejected all formal teaching methods such as ethical precepts and sutra studies in favor of meditation alone. This latter is where the modern mindfulness movement found its primary inspiration.
aszantu 3y ago
Ppl with mental disorders shouldn't meditate more than 20 min/day
- k__ 3y ago
  How come? I had the impression, people with mental disorders would profit the most from it.
  - nick__m 3y ago
    Mostly because longer meditation practice is more frequently associated with something called the dark night of the soul https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-...
    - notfed 3y ago
      "Mental disorders" is overly broad. It sounds like we're talking schizophrenia here.
- wussboy 3y ago
  Why? How would you know?
- clsec 3y ago
  Citation please!
  - jossclimb 3y ago
    Not OP, but it happened to me. Started meditation to deal with anxiety and the introspection that came with it, ended up with me on the verge of a complete breakdown. I started off doing Sam Harris and then progressed to doing an hour or more each day. I had some moments of insight and then hit some dark night of the soul which wrecked me, I was close to admitting myself to hospital for psychological help. What fixed me was finally reading Breath by James Nestor and how you breath has a direct impact on the parasympathetic / sympathetic nervous system. I learned to take long slow breaths into the diaphragm and too nose breath all of the time. Basically my vagus nerve was fried from burn out and being in the fight flight mode of the parasympathetic system, as opposed to the 'rest and digest' chilled nature of sympathetic nervous system. My own view now, is that mediation should not be attempted (at least by anyone with mental issues) until the parasympathetic / sympathetic system is balanced and stress is significantly reduced. This should start with the breath. https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-powerful-mental-tool-and-for-some-it-goes-terribly-wrong https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-power...
thenerdhead 3y ago
> “My hope is that ultimately, this work will contribute to bringing advanced meditation out of the monastery,” Sacchet said, describing its “incredible promise for moving beyond addressing mental health issues, toward helping people thrive.” What exactly is considered "advanced meditation"? I've been meditating for years, but don't do it for hours each day or go on extended silent retreats. I've read many practices too and I'm not aware of anything "advanced" outside of just spending more time and revolving more of your life around it. 10-15 minutes a day already does wonders for me.
- curo 3y ago
  It seems they're using the term to distinguish "meditation for emotional regulation" (v1 research) from "meditation for itself" (v2 research)
- gdubs 3y ago
  There's a lot of different practices, though in a lot of schools that have practiced meditation for centuries, "Mindfulness" style meditation – what's largely practiced in the west – is just one aspect. The Dalai Lama, for instance, discuss at length in his books deeper phases of meditation that focus on things like "emptiness" [1] or compassion, loving-kindness, etc. Someone who's more knowledgable can correct me if I'm wrong, but the 'mindfulness' type meditation is almost like a warmup for these other forms of meditation. 1: Emptiness meditation, best I can describe it, is sort of like meditating on how something like a "Chair" falls apart under scrutiny. We perceive it as a solid object, yet when you analyze its parts, it tends to 'fall apart', and what makes it a "Chair" becomes hard to pin down. You start to see it more as a coming together of many things, each of which also tends to fall apart under scrutiny. Worth pointing out that this 'emptiness' is not the same as nihilism.
  - thenerdhead 3y ago
    Ah I see. So the subject/practice of your meditation is what is considered advanced. i.e. metta, vipassana, samatha, etc. I read the entire article and it hardly spoke about what is considered "advanced" from the monasteries.
666_666_666 3y ago
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aradox66 3y ago
I was skeptical, but this article does a decent job reiterating the reasons that researching meditative altered states reproduces the same inappropriate KPIs as earlier generations of mindfulness research. Nirodha samipatti may be a fancy attainment, but Im skeptical sticking electrodes on Daniel Ingram's head is going to advance the secular understanding of dharma wisdom.
deepGem 3y ago
Think of cessation, also scripturally described as the “non-occurrence of consciousness,” like voluntarily inducing the effects of general anesthesia. Consciousness switches off without a trace, while the basic homeostatic operations of the body — temperature, heartbeat, breathing — remain online. - Isn't this like the nirvana of nirvanas ? I had heard about some of the monks in the Himalayas able to attain these states but had brushed it off as utter nonsense. Since now we know this is feasible, can we surmise that there is no need for an external chemical to shut off the mind or to even alter the mental state of a person ? Could you for instance get into an alcohol or a drug induced state without drinking or doing drugs - What a world would that be ..
- waterheater 3y ago
  > can we surmise that there is no need for an external chemical to shut off the mind or to even alter the mental state of a person? That is exactly what the Gateway Hemisync process claims to accomplish. See my post below for more information on it.
- permo-w 3y ago
  I mean as I understand it one way of approaching meditation looks like this: at first you just concentrate on your breathing, avoiding extraneous thoughts, then once you can do that without distraction, you move on and try to step back from your thoughts, watching them arrive and letting them go. once you can do that—something I could do after a few days of practice—how far are you realistically from being able to not have those thoughts at all? perhaps that's a huge leap, but I would be surprised
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  At least in Theravada Buddhism this isn’t the right way to conceive of enlightenment with respect to samati, or meditative states. The mind is composed of several faculties, that spring from themselves, and lead to certain states of being that ultimately lead to suffering. The key ones for this discussion are the thinking mind (or in Thailand the monkey mind), which is what we typically dwell in. It’s the mind that tells stories about the past and the future, where we talk with people in conversations we won’t have or wish we had had, where we identify ourselves as being something specific. We also have a feeling mind, or emotive mind. It doesn’t form structured thoughts like the thinking mind, but it creates impetus and acts in a feedback loop with the thinking mind. A lot of our misery comes from this feedback loop. We also have a sensate mind, which is where we feel our body, all sensations but we tend to focus our thinking and emotive mind on pleasurable and unpleasant sensations. In Theravada Buddhism these faculties are emergent but are not true experience of our true selves. They are tools of our true mind, but have become dominant and exclusionary, hiding our true self. Our true self is our awareness, which exists without thought or feelings, but is the source of all thoughts and feelings. It constantly changes, it has no identity per se, but it is not unconscious. It is where we actually are, all thoughts exist in context of it, but it’s thinking isn’t visible or directly experienced in the way thoughts or feelings are. People often find this confusing and find the admonition to not think in vipassana meditation to mean erase all mental existence and be a body without any being. That’s actually not at all the goal. The goal is to silence the mind that chatters for a bit, the emotions that pull us and manipulate our thoughts to sooth, so we can be aware of our awareness. You are still fully awake - intensely so in fact. You still “feel,” but the feelings are compassion and loving kindness, and they’re not feelings that control you or make your sensate body feel some experience (such as a tight chest or thrill) or capture your chattering thoughts. Eventually thoughts and feelings will intrude and the goal then is to see them for what they are, facilities of your mind, and to let them be there but don’t let them capture your awareness By practicing this in meditation you can bridge this state into daily life. As you spend more time aware but not chattering away, you are more in the present and in the immediate now. You find you only feel compassion and loving kindness for all like, and anger, hate, and fear are artifacts of those faculties. They can be helpful in some situations, but they are fairly rare situations. It feels strange at first to not be totally enmeshed in your thoughts. At first I was afraid I would disappear if I did this, sort of like the quote you have. But I didn’t. Who I wasn’t disappeared, and I became myself for the first time since I was a little child.
asimovfan 3y ago
The revolution is coming.. I hope we don't melt to death before I would recommend taking up studying the teachings of the Buddha. There is a lot of valuable material and the hidden priceless gem of awakening
extraduder_ire 3y ago
Reminds me of a blogpost by Scott Alexander that I can't find right now about the last unenlightened person, as far as he can see, in the world.
- titanomachy 3y ago
  https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/
  - extraduder_ire 3y ago
    That's the one. Thank you very much.
2bitencryption 3y ago
A few years ago I tried the very first Headspace meditation courses, back when Headspace was pretty new. It was great! I loved it. I really felt like the narrator was knowledgeable and had something to teach me. His explanations for the process actually made sense, and weren't woo-woo mumbo jumbo. Perhaps it is all placebo effect, but even if so, the effect worked for me perfectly. The problem is, as the industry exploded, it became harder and harder to find meditation guides that have that quality. Even on Headspace, which I used to love, there's only so much they could provide, before the demand necessitated putting out meditation guides that are more and more ridiculous ("meditation for doing the dishes", "meditation for walking the dog", etc). And I haven't found any guides that help me to the degree that the original Headspace ones did. Would love it if anyone has any recommendations. (of course, you might say "you don't need a guide once you know how to do it", but personally I find it really hard without some recorded guide helping me along)
- fredrikholm 3y ago
  Waking Up by Sam Harris. It's more insight than mindfulness, but remains secular. Loads of content from big names. Highly recommended.
  - dlivingston 3y ago
    Seconded. I'm working through the month-long Introductory Course currently. Waking Up strikes me as much more technical than apps like Headspace, which really resonates with me.
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  I use the Headspace guided meditation (30 mins) 2-3 times every day. Did that not work for you? It's amazing how hard they make it just to find the basic guided meditation. Not pushing anything spiritual or ways of thinking the guide prefers. Just experiencing the present.
- dimal 3y ago
  If you find it hard without some recorded guide helping you along, that’s exactly why you should consider meditating without a guide. Guided meditation is like riding a bike with training wheels. You don’t fall, but you’re not really riding a bike. You learn to meditate by trying and failing over and over, and in the process you learn your own mind. You learn all its tricks. And that’s the point. It can suck for a long time. It can be a grind. But eventually, you stabilize.
5cott0 3y ago
Huairang asked [Mazu], "Why are you sitting in meditation?" [Mazu] replied, "Because I want to become a Buddha." Thereupon Hauirang took a brick and started to polish it in front of [Mazu]'s hermitage. [Mazu] asked him, "Why are you polishing that brick?" Huairang replied, "Because I want to make a mirror." [Mazu] asked, "How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?" Huairang said, "If I cannot make a mirror by polishing a brick, how can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation?" [Mazu] asked, "Then what shall I do?" Huairang asked, "When an ox-carriage stops moving, do you hit the carriage or the ox?" [Mazu] had no reply. Huairang continued, "Are you practicing to sit in meditation, or practicing to sit like a Buddha? As to sitting in meditation, meditation is neither sitting nor lying. As to sitting like a Buddha, the Buddha has no fixed form. In the non-abiding Dharma, one should neither grasp nor reject. If you try to sit like a Buddha, you are just killing the Buddha. If you attach to the form of sitting, you will never realize the principle." Upon hearing this [Mazu] felt as if he had tasted ghee.
- 5cott0 3y ago
  Keep whipping that cart!
sghiassy 3y ago
Learning about neural networks has helped me understand meditation better. The ‘bias’ number fed into a neural network neuron is determined by the external training data (or for humans by our experiences) Meditation allows the neural network itself to reprogram its bias itself internally rather than rely on new external data.
jules22 3y ago
Whenever someone talks enthusiastically about meditation, I remind myself that all the popular meditation gurus I see on Youtube talk nonsense, pseudoscience, lack common sense and use manipulative psychological tricks. None of them admit any errors and ironically are quite conceited for those who claim to have conquered ego. I am sure meditative states must feel nice. But all I see beyond that are cults and none of the meditators seem that much at detached peace. They get incensed at criticism.
- bsenftner 3y ago
  I've been meditating since the 70's. Nothing I see today exists in the meditation world without a taint of snake oil and predatory capitalism. We live in a conman's paradise.
- DrThunder 3y ago
  There are multiple scientific studies show the positive affects of meditation and a myriad of health benefits.... I'm not sure what "gurus" you're seeing but it's not really relevant to objective studies that show it works and makes changes in the brain. I'm sure they are making some claims that are pseudoscience, but that doesn't mean meditation in its entirety is just a "feel nice" routine. Here's just one of several I found in a quick search- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895748/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895748/ I think of meditation as exercise for your brain. Just like you need to physically exercise to "prepare" your body you need to be doing stuff to keep your brain from going haywire and jumping from though to though like its hopped up on caffeine all the time. There are various ways to do "train your brain" but meditation/mindfulness is one very good way to do it.
  - tokai 3y ago
    There's also a lot of studies showing that meditation can cause harm. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01503-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01503-2
    - DrThunder 3y ago
choxi 3y ago
I’ve been meditating casually for almost 10 years, I couldn’t sit still for a minute when I started and can sit regularly for an hour now. I still have a lot of skepticism about the sensations that other meditators describe feeling, like jhanas and profound states of tranquility and whatnot. I have experienced deeper calmness and have made some insights about my brain (eg thoughts are like a sensor organ not unlike a constantly generating LLM), but I haven’t experienced anything like the sometimes superhuman claims that come from people in this community. Naval Ravikant has claimed he can experience psychedelic states just through meditation, Nick Cammarata at OpenAI makes claims about achieving perfect equanimity and being able to feel jhanas that are better than sex but also doesn’t feel desire for it because of aforementioned equanimity. There are many others on social media who make similar claims. From the outside, all of these people seem like normal humans, maybe calmer and wiser than usual, but who still seek material comfort and the validation of others just like anyone else does. I wonder, what do others make of these superhuman meditation claims? How does one verify that their sensations during meditation are real reflections of how the brain works and not just increasingly subtle hallucinations? If you convinced everyone that the brain has a secret mechanism to feel perfect happiness, wouldn’t a lot of people hallucinate that they’ve experienced it even if it wasn’t real?
- johndhi 3y ago
  (Been meditating for about 15 years). I don't think the things you're describing are particularly 'superhuman.' I definitely can achieve (if that's the right word -- it's almost certainly not -- how about 'experience') psychedelic states. Everything is kind of a psychedelic state if you look at it the right way. What is your personal experience with psychedelics? I wonder if you maybe haven't done them much you might not know how to spot it. To me, clearly, the big question of superhuman meditation claims is the claim of some people to be enlightened. I personally think there is something to it, though I don't really know exactly what it is and I'd like to learn more about it. BTW, my experience with meditation comes mostly from (controversial Wild Wild Country guru) Osho. Sounds like you're familiar with Buddhist traditions. There are a lot of ways to meditate.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
hackingthelema 3y ago
> We have ideas like biological taxonomies and genetics that provide a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding and exploration of universally relevant fields. “We need that for the deep end of spiritual experience,” he said. “What works as well in Riyadh, as Rome, as Rio, as rural Alabama? What’s the functional, scalable essence?” That was the purpose comparative tools like correspondence charts[1] were intended for; Aleister Crowley and Allan Bennett put a bunch of effort of surveying all spiritual experience they could learn about, followed by tabulating it all and trying to pattern match. The result was a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding, though the actual form of it could be heavily criticised. > Advanced meditation for everyone? > “My hope is that ultimately, this work will contribute to bringing advanced meditation out of the monastery,” Sacchet said, describing its “incredible promise for moving beyond addressing mental health issues, toward helping people thrive.” That was also Crowley's primary goal: to show that anyone at all could attain, and easily, while living a normal life, and thought that it would help them thrive. He stated this over and over again. I love that we're finally making effort towards the thought he had, that > Diverse as these statements [on mystical experiences] are at first sight, all agree in announcing an experience of the class which fifty years ago would have been called supernatural, to-day may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a proper name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred. (Book 4, Part 1; 1911[2]) though it's 70 years later than he thought. I'd love to be involved in work like this, both as an occultist/experienced meditator, and as a computer scientist / software developer, though I don't know how to get involved. Maybe by contacting the EPRC listed? :) May all attain! [1] http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Tree_of_Life:777 http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Tree_of_Life:777 [2] https://sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/aba1.htm https://sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/aba1.htm
johndhi 3y ago
As a meditator, personally I'm a little sickened by the 'science of meditation.' From my view, meditation is ultimately (or at least often) about doing nothing. Limiting, reducing our judgments and reasoning mind. So applying logic and benefits and sticks and carrots to me is actually antithetical to the practice. E.g.: you're anxious and want to get better, so you obsess about self-help and ways to get better. Some pop-sci author describes meditation as one such path. You make it your new obsession and think about how much you ought to be meditating but aren't. When you're meditating, you worry that you aren't doing it right such that you'll get the benefits. There is of course an argument that this popsci helps bring people to something that's good for them, and for this I guess I'm ok with it. But it's annoying to me that meditation has become part of the corporate capitalist moneymaking, anxiety-provoking system that ultimately, it's actually completely unrelated to.
nicechianti 3y ago
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everydayDonut 3y ago
I've practiced mindfulness and meditation for many years until I found "The Tao of Pooh", which, if you're not familiar, outlines the basic tenets of taoism. It has completely changed me and made me feel whole for the first time in my life, and I don't have to practice anything to achieve it. Early on in my life I was drawn in by proverbs and other pieces of wisdom, in an attempt to fill in the gaps of what I thought was missing, to fix myself and make me feel whole. Then mindfulness presented itself to me and it gave me a feeling that everything just worked - it was simple and applied to everything; but I couldn't hold onto it. I wanted to just be, and be ok. Non-dual mindfulness felt like the answer to that problem, but while it sounded right in theory, I still felt that it was something I had to achieve or maintain. When I read The Tao of Pooh, everything clicked for me. I could be myself without trying. My whole life has become open-ended. It also helped me to understand something that always nagged at me - how could some people appear to be mindful from birth, without having read anything about mindfulness? - People who seemed to always grow and learn in a way that upends their nature continually (nature vs. nurture?), while I felt that there was always something I was missing. The answer(for me) was 2 things -an ability to see myself as whole, despite the capacity for personal growth; -and complete/lazy faith in my intuition. (Intuition being this kind of thing that everyone is born with - and so in my view, the only thing that could transcend the differences between every living being. The differences in access to teachings, wisdom, philosophies, religion, culture, etc.) I'm curious if anyone here has felt similar with meditation/mindfulness, or has had experience with both that and taoism and what that journey was like for you.
- rollinDyno 3y ago
  What reasons do you have to trust your intuition? Why do you happen to have a certain intuition and why is it likely to give you the right answers?
- lootsauce 3y ago
  I picked up the Tao Te Ching in middle school and would reread it frequently. The personal insights would evolve as I grew up and faced different issues in my life. I found an abiding peace in those personal insights and they have held with me since. One of those insights is something like having instead of seeking as an identity. I don’t feel that I want to seek to find myself or some great answer, it’s already there, I already have it. YMMV bits a wonderful ancient text. I recommend the S. Mitchel translation. I could never get into the sitting and breathing kind of meditation, but I do find different times I am able to practice very meditative activities such as walking in the woods, aimless wandering, puttering about with no intention just taking in the world. I used to do zen inspired landscape photography and that whole process felt very meditative to me.
dottjt 3y ago
I think a key point that a lot of people miss is that meditation is just a single practice. The goal is mindfulness. This is to say that you can meditate mindlessly, as you can meditate mindfully. You can also be mindful without meditation, although it's a lot more difficult to do so.
- 3abiton 3y ago
  What is your recommendation gateway to meditation?
  - dottjt 3y ago
    The Sam Harris Waking Up meditation course is pretty good from a doing it point of view. But in terms of helping you understand why meditation is actually something you should do, there's a book called The Happiness Trap which outlines Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is basically western mindfulness.
  - FollowingTheDao 3y ago
    Just be aware of everything, without resistance.
    - e12e 3y ago
      I like how you qualified that with "Just" :)
- tasuki 3y ago
  > The goal is mindfulness. That's just, like, your opinion?
  - dottjt 3y ago
    At least explain your perspective. How do you view meditation?
swayvil 3y ago
Meh. We don't need a science. The last thing we need is a bunch of fine models and discussion. What we need is some basic, dead-simple experiments that anybody can do. Experiments that show you that there's something there. And then, after you see a bit, you are inspired to take another step.
amriksohata 3y ago
I find the use of the term "mindfulness" so frustrating. Meditation, or jnana yog is simply one of the types of yoga described in the Gita and Vedas, which was adopted by BUddhism, then by the West to manage their hectic lifestyles. Its purpose is completely different, its purpose is to condition the body to help understand THAT YOU ARE NOT THE BODY and connect yourself with that higher purpose. Thats the whole purpose.
FollowingTheDao 3y ago
They want you to mediate so you can forget about the climate emergency and the fact that capitalism is failing 99% of us in the United States. Mediation is opium, pure opium. And I am saying this as a Doaist. Probably an ex-Daoist. Might have to get a new handle soon.
rc-1140 3y ago
I think that there needs to be a separation of meditation's tangible benefits from both the religious associations, such as seeking nirvana or psychedelic experiences, and the social & financial ones stated in this article that either view meditation as a genuine secret superpower or are see it as a backdrop to take advantage of people simply trying to find mental peace. My belief is that the idea Kabat-Zinn had, which is paraphrased in the article, is good. "Pay attention to the present moment, on purpose, without judgment" - stop, take some time to reflect on your feelings, process them. Maybe just take some time and not "think", where you give yourself some away time from the world. The anecdata from countless people seems to vaguely support the notion that this view on meditation works; I wouldn't call it concrete by any means, but it's as solid of a scientific start as one can get with something like meditation. Software developers and those adjacent love to tout acronyms like "Keep It Simple, Stupid", why does the buck stop at software? The further one gets into the article, the more outlandish things get: electronic stimulation, microdosing various drugs (mentioned a lot on HN, which I've always found disturbing), cranial ultrasounds, even the stock photo of the lady meditating with a VR headset? At the end of the piece, Laukkonen provides the following rhetorical question: "[W]hat is liberating about chasing different states of consciousness, and not enjoying the one that you have?" I think a lot of the comments here and the research presented towards the end of the article are in too deep in either side and are unable to see the forest for the trees.
ergonaught 3y ago
One of the ways I hate wasting my time is wishing we would stop using a word that has been overloaded into uselessness as if it conveyed some kind of actual meaning by itself. The article touches vaguely upon it, but “meditation” covers so many different things, many of which are completely incompatible with each other, it’s a guarantee that discussing “meditation” leads to people thinking they are talking about something which they are not in fact talking about. Anyway.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  Or it leads to a massive outbreak of "actually that's not really meditation, this is" discussions.
  - mancerayder 3y ago
    "On the one hand, I do agree that.. But on the other hand, I've come to realize that..."
- bnralt 3y ago
  Excellent point. I think something like "Doing diaphragmatic breathing for 5 minutes a day where you try to focus your mind on your breath will give you certain benefits" is a lot more useful than nebulous claims about "meditation" that end up getting spun up with people's ideas about spirituality and enlightenment. Further, there's a tendency for some people to get ecstatic about something they do - be it meditation, lifting, yoga, keto, psychedelics, etc. - and act as if everyone should be binging on it in order to live a good life. That sort of closed mindedness makes one question just how beneficial these things actually are.
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago
  i beg to differ. the more i practice and read about meditation the clearer i understand what it is and that it is something very specific definable in a single short sentence: "observing without judging". understand what that actually means takes some practice, though. but each and every school of meditation (every type of yoga, zen, mindfulness, tai chi, ...) boils down to this and only this. one exception is the western definition of "meditation" which is more like "thinking silently". this is almost the opposite and technically more of a homonym (one word with two different meanings) and not a different interpretation. it's just something totally different which happens to be referred to with the same word.
hirvi74 3y ago
Anyone have any recommendations for those of us without attention spans? I've always wanted to mediate, but after a few attempts, I have started to question if it's more possible for some to partake in than others.
- sharms 3y ago
  This might not help and might sound new age / abstract: meditation is not continuous focus, but is about choosing to focus, letting thoughts pass, and when you recognize you are distracted to consciously let the distracting thought go, and return to focusing on what you intended to.
  - hirvi74 3y ago
    I mean, isn't that what I have always done to begin with? For example, when reading a book, I can sometimes read a whole page without actually internalizing anything my eyes pretended to skim across. (My body can mimic the actions of reading, but my mind is somewhere else, if that makes things more clear). I have always done this with things like reading, conversations, work, etc.. When distracted I have to refocus myself on whatever I was supposed to be focusing on. Is that some kind of quasi-mediation still or something else?
    - krzat 3y ago
      It's like with exercise, regular life maintains muscles at some low level, but specific techniques (lifting) make it possible to get much stronger. Same goes with brain, you can train your imagination, focus, mental resilience, happiness via consistent practice.
- whtrbt 3y ago
  You're going to be battling with your attention a lot in the beginning. I think just making a habit of it regardless and putting in the time is necessary. You could always go on a retreat — you'll have very limited options for distractions. It might sound like an extreme thing to do, and maybe it is, but I did it without much prior practice and got a lot out of it.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
When I was a homeless man, I used to go ride the bus to the end of the line, just hanging out in the seat, just waiting for it to stop and turn around, just trying to stay warm/cool. I used to walk around at night, walk and walk, because there were precious few places to sit down and rest, and I didn't want to arouse suspicion for loitering or trespassing, so I'd just walk until I was too tired. I used to hang out in restaurants, either on my own dime or with a charity voucher, and I'd swill coffee, and read/write or something, not with any goal in mind, just passing the time through the night, because I was homeless, unemployed, and constantly at loose ends. And this, in a nutshell, is what you get with meditation when you divorce it from an authentic spiritual tradition.
- istjohn 3y ago
  If you don't mind sharing, how did you get off the streets?
manofmanysmiles 3y ago
This may have already been said, but many of the authors/gurus/teachers from the “Vedic” tradition emphatically state how true spiritual work should and even must be done scientifically. The science as described involves primarily data gathered from direct observation of one’s own experience, rather than studying the external physical world. This goes very contrary to the statistically driven science most people are familiar with, even though certain hypotheses, experiments and results can be observed in larger groups. However, if the scientific method is applied rigorously to matters of the spirit it will yield great dividends. I came to “spirituality” by means of almost rabid skepticism, and extreme distrust towards anything not “based in reality”, or measurable with instruments, slowly exploring and asking questions about the nature of reality. This extreme skepticism is so important, as belief or faith is the enemy of knowing. I believe the western mind (one with developed rational thinking), when applied to areas on the frontiers of consciousness and reality is an extremely potent tool. One can marry the logic and reason with intuition, emotion and introspection and go very far into the unknown, bringing back wisdom to enrich one’s own life, and the lives those one shares this knowledge with. I believe that as a species we’re in the verge of discovering a whole new layer to what it means to be human conscious beings. I’m not really sure if there is a point to this comment. Perhaps I am just excited to see spiritual inquiry happening in the mainstream, with structure and discipline. I am sick of strict materialism, and just as sick of the ungrounded beliefs, taken in faith by people involved in the so-called “new age movement.”
safety1st 3y ago
I thought this was the most significant excerpt in the article. > Now, as the research matures into controlled studies and meta-analyses, meditation is losing a bit of its luster. It’s beginning to look more like just another decently effective medical intervention. A 2021 systematic review of 44 meta-analyses found that mindfulness was mostly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants in terms of treatment effects (mindfulness was superior in a few categories, however, including treating depression and substance abuse).
- brightlancer 3y ago
  "A 2021 systematic review of 44 meta-analyses found that mindfulness was mostly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants in terms of treatment effects" That's not bad company. Compared to the cost and time required for CBT, and the frequent side effects of anti-depressants, teaching folks "mindfulness" to get the same benefit sounds wonderful!
  - safety1st 3y ago
    Yes, I was also surprised at how the article underplayed this. "Tons of evidence that it's ONLY as good as the best therapy and drugs"
celtoid 3y ago
The best teachings on meditation are found in the Pali texts, imo. They purport to be a reasonable recording of the Buddha's teachings. In this text, one of the repeated internal exercises is "subduing greed & distress" while practicing meditation. “Mindfulness of in-&-out breathing, when developed & pursued, is of great fruit, of great benefit. Mindfulness of in-&-out breathing, when developed & pursued, brings the four establishings of mindfulness to their culmination. The four establishings of mindfulness, when developed & pursued, bring the seven factors for awakening to their culmination. The seven factors for awakening, when developed & pursued, bring clear knowing & release to their culmination." -Ānāpānasati Sutta [0] [0] https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN118.html https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN118.html
currymj 3y ago
the trend laid out in this article seems like a good thing. Zen people talk about meditation being "useless" which is kind of true I think. It's not literally a complete waste of time. But if you have any specific problem (in your life, mental health, or otherwise), you have to take specific actions well-suited to solve that problem, meditation actually just cannot accomplish specific goals like that. At most depending on the tradition, you can reliably put yourself into specific altered mental states. But these don't have much practical use either. So I think selling people meditation as a practical, reliable mental health treatment was just never a very good idea and I am glad consensus seems to be moving away from it.
arunc 3y ago
Highly recommend reading Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram, available online for free at https://www.mctb.org/ https://www.mctb.org/
gregfjohnson 3y ago
On a light note: There is a difference between micro-wave meditation and slow-cook meditation! Personally, I'm a slow-cook kind of guy. This article seems to be describing various ways to short-cut or accelerate the process, and I'm not sure of the wisdom of that game plan. One important aspect of meditation practice for me has been the gentle unpacking of suppressed trauma. Thomas Keating refers to this as the evacuation of the unconscious. In my experience this is an evaporative process. With gentleness and patience, this process happens naturally and organically over time. Inner psychological defenses and coping mechanisms tend to fade away as they become less needed, because the inner demons they were containing have evaporated and are no longer lurking in one's subconscious. But trying to accelerate the process and crash the door down before one is ready via some artificial short-cut may not be advisable for some people.
- eep_social 3y ago
  Yes, and crashing the door down may be the only option for others who think the door is a brick wall.

249 points by ojarow 3y ago

Paid maternity leave and 30 vacations, staples of any developed country, would do more for mental health in USA than any research in meditation.

FollowingTheDao 3y ago
Exactly. Please see: Buddhism as the Opiate of the (downwardly-mobile) Middle Class: The Case of Thanissaro Bhikkhu https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/2013/07/10/buddhism-as-the-opiate-of-the-downwardly-mobile-middle-class-the-case-of-thanissaro-bhikkhu/ https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/2013/07/10/buddhism-as-th...
renjimen 3y ago
Unfortunately, labor laws are harder to change than your perception of pain.

waterheater 3y ago

Edit: wow, apparently some people here really don't like Gateway Hemisync. All I've tried to share source material on its claims and make a plea for keeping an open mind. Perhaps those so virulently opposed can find that open mind with meditation. Recommend checking out the Koru system. It's an evidence-based mindfulness system out of the Research Triangle. Regardless, the Monroe Institute already performed groundbreaking research in this area 50 years ago. I don't have a source at the moment, but I remember reading that the Monroe Institute's binaural beat audio programs creates brainwave patterns similar to that of an advanced Buddhist monk in meditation. Apparently, the Monroe Institute discovered that the elevated mental states achieved by these monks is achieved with brain hemisphere synchronization, which they call "Gateway Hemisync." According to the Monroe Institute, "this process uses pulses of sound to create in both brain hemispheres electrical wave forms simultaneously equal in frequency and amplitude. The Institute was granted a patent in 1975 based upon the use of such sound pulses to induce a frequency following response (FFR) in the human brain. The FFR demonstrates that when you hear a certain type of sound, your brain tends to respond to, or resonate with, that sound...Each ear sends its dominant nerve signal to the opposite brain hemisphere...By sending separate sound pulses to each ear (using stereo headphones to isolate one ear from the other), the halves of the brain act in unison to “hear” a third signal, which is the difference in frequencies between the two signals in each ear" [1]. A group in the US Army performed a serious analysis of the Gateway Hemisync process, concluding that "there is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives", which include "out-of-body movement", "terrestrial information gathering trips", and "possible encounters with intelligent, non-corporal energy forms when time-space boundaries are exceeded" [2]. The article is talking about scientific validation of meditation and its outcomes. That's not to say we should blindly accept the claims of those scientists, the Monroe Institute, or the US Army. The key is to follow the evidence while remembering that greed and prestige is what's causing the "McMindfulness" effect. Smartphone apps will be most useful for personal guided meditations, but they should be freely available. [1] https://vdocuments.net/the-gateway-experience-guidance-manual.html https://vdocuments.net/the-gateway-experience-guidance-manua... [2] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R0017002...

jules22 3y ago
> A group in the US Army performed a serious analysis of the Gateway Hemisync process, concluding that "there is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives", which include "out-of-body movement", "terrestrial information gathering trips", and "possible encounters with intelligent, non-corporal energy forms when time-space boundaries are exceeded" They concluded a lot of woo around when they were looking into silly things such as Targ's Remote Viewing. All of that later was revealed to be nonsense. Army and CIA, while are generally rational, are not necessarily great at critical thinking or science.
- waterheater 3y ago
  Ah, you are referring to the SRI experiments, though I'm not sure who "they" are. You should, however, be aware that the Proceedings of the IEEE (Volume: 64, Issue: 10, October 1976) contain a paper presenting the results of a remote-viewing experiment with n=36 and p=0.0000006 [1]. Many people who purport to "love science" set aside how much of one's understanding of the universe is axiomatic. Now, I've never directly experienced time dilation, and I have heard that GPS satellites have been created to take time dilation effects into account. I have, however, experienced and validated Newtonian dynamics (physics classes). In either case, both Newtonian dynamics and time dilation were presented to me as axiomatic; that is to say, I haven't performed a full, independent derivation of these two ideas of physics. However, I still accept that the general ideas are sound. If a model of physics supports the idea of remote viewing, so be it. >Army and CIA, while are generally rational, are not necessarily great at critical thinking or science. That's funny to say, seeing as it's well-established that military technology across all domains is significantly more advanced than the average person's technology. As a small example, neither one of us could make a stealth bomber capable of dropping nuclear ordinance anywhere in the world nor perform the required R&D to properly design one. [1]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1454638 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1454638
  - fluoridation 3y ago
    A paper from 1976 claims to have detected ESP in its participants. The paper appears to have only been cited twice since, both in 1979, one to explain the 1976 results as experimental bias, and the other to report failure to reproduce. I wouldn't throw out my walkie-talkie just yet. >If a model of physics supports the idea of remote viewing, so be it. Okay. What's that model? Are brains RF transceivers?

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

Meditation became popular when neoliberals figured out that it was something they could make the lower classes spend time on, and pay for, in order to optimize their utility as economic cogs. Nothing money touches is left uncorrupted.

epiccoleman 3y ago

> Given that wealthy countries like the US aren’t exactly riding trend lines toward new peaks of mental health (depression rates in American adults are at an all-time high, while young people appear in the grips of a mental health crisis), scalable ways of not just mindfully soothing, but completely re-creating psychological experiences for the better should set off sirens of general, scientific, and funding intrigue. I was all ready to criticize this, but the article pretty much sums up my feelings: > Critics call it “McMindfulness,” a capitalist perversion of meditation that deals with stress by focusing inward on the breath, rather than outward on the social structures that cause so much of that stress. I'm all for finding ways for people to improve their mental health and become more resilient to their suffering. But I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom rather than a cause. There's also a part of me that resists the "capitalization" of these tools for mental introspection. It feels, in some way, to be missing the point. That said, I'm not sure that resistance is correctly targeted. Why shouldn't someone be able to make money by providing people with tools to improve their lives? Is that thought a silly purity spiral, leaving scraps of potential well-being on the table just because the packaging is too slick? But still, there's something about it that feels off to me, as though there's something that's lost when we package all this ancient, hard-won wisdom into a smartphone app whose notifications to you will sit right next to the latest Elon Musk tweet.

samstave 3y ago
The morbid, but critically true, reality is that there are different humans. There are Takers, Givers, Neutral. We are ruled by Takers. (service to self, as opposed to service of others) Which is a core tenant of meditation (service to others) We as a Humanity will not heal until we can kill the Takers Archetype in the psyche. Thus why meditation helps. But literally - the Takers who are the "they" or "TPTB" are so fn broken, that changing that psychological worm is extremely difficult - and its a self-defending psychosis that spans generations and is hard to qwell. - EDIT because of the 'posting too fast rule (lame)' ;; -- Mayan word ;; "In Lak'ech" 'I am another Yourself'
- ericjmorey 3y ago

akasakahakada 3y ago

Little google search I found this guy. https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2018/2/18/observing-mindfulness-and-then-getting-bored-by-it https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2018/2/18/... To conclude that, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the "scientist" quoted in the article is just pure pseudoscience.

0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
The science giveth and the science taketh away then I guess. Is it scientific to see if he has helped anyone with chronic pain?
DueDilligence 3y ago
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carabiner 3y ago
He's got a PhD from MIT in molecular biology. So nothing to do with meditation or neuroscience. But he was a scientist for a while. Now he's emeritus.
- jules22 3y ago
  Brian Josephson won his Nobel and then got into transcendental meditation. He was talking pseudoscience since. It does not take away from him that he is a smart man, but it seems to have effected his rationality quite a bit. I know some meditating academics. They all have this tendency to irrationality.
  - carabiner 3y ago
    I think you can compare meditation to the field of "medicine" or "diet." There are cranks and pseudoscience in there too, but I wouldn't write off the whole field as irrational. It's got a semantic problem too. If more people called it "mindfulness" or "focus practice" that would be more accurate for how most normal, secular people meditate. Maybe even calling it meditation vs. alternative meditation (like alternative medicine). LOTS of different forms of meditation, and not all I think are worthwhile. Some are better than others. TM seems like a total scam/fake though, just like chiropractic, astrology, juice cleanses etc.

mohave529 3y ago

"Along a less-traveled route, meditation remains what it long was: a deeply transformative pursuit, a devoted metamorphosis of the mind toward increasingly enlightened states." This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself. As my practice has gotten deeper, I've started to reframe meditation for myself as the process of unrelenting inquiry in the search for base truth. In that pursuit, the practice becomes a process of subtraction of core beliefs and ideas that simply aren't true - or can't be known to be true. As these beliefs disappeared, much of my own personal suffering did as well as so many of the things that were sources of conflict in my mind were predicated on false beliefs. With this framing meditation can take many forms. Ramana Maharshi famously asked his devotees to start with the question of "Who am I?" and just keep inquiring.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago
> This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself. Interesting, after a certain point you get diminishing returns and once you've eliminated or solved the things conflicting you, then staying in a meditative state becomes an illusory trap to avoid life and living. I knew a guy who did just that. Would spend hours meditating to the point where he avoided living. It seemed to be more like avoidance rather than being able to enjoy the gift of living without the troubles that come with it which meditation solves.
- beardedmoose 3y ago
  Interesting take. With this line of thinking would Buddhist monks just be practicing excessive escapism much like those who turn to drugs and alcohol? Just some random thoughts but there seems to be a reoccurring theme in life in which too much of a good thing is indeed too much. Life is about balance, all that meditating and no action does what exactly? What good is all that enlightenment if you aren't experiencing life or helping others?
  - freitzkriesler2 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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triyambakam 3y ago

In Hinduism, meditation is not just a calming practice, but an actual movement toward God. And in the tradition I follow, it is also not for beginners. Basic discipline — the following of the Yamas (restraints of non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, etc.) — is recommended first.

jimmychoozyx 3y ago
I like to consider Meditation outside of any religion personally. Meditation helps to calm the nervous system. Counting to 10 (1 count per inhale + exhale), or simply focusing on each inhale & exhale, or repeating a word or multi-word mantra, is what I do personally. It's especially nice in a Sauna with some mystical atmospheric music (such as Anugama, one of my favorites for meditation). I have found that it improves my ability to concentrate (especially useful when studying or working) and to calm myself in stressful situations.
nuclearnice1 3y ago
Interesting point. There are obvious connections from the Yamas to the eight-fold path of Buddhism: Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. I’m not aware of an explicit ordering. But the other seven steps complement and deepen the meditation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path
- hackingthelema 3y ago
  Relevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%81ja_yoga#Comparison_with_Buddhism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%81ja_yoga#Comparison_with...
flatline 3y ago
You find all kinds of approaches in the Eastern traditions. Buddha rejected the eternalism and theism of the Hindus, but most of his teachings were really quite similar. The yoga sutras emphasized asana prior to the practice of dhyana. Go further east and some of the chan/zen schools rejected all formal teaching methods such as ethical precepts and sutra studies in favor of meditation alone. This latter is where the modern mindfulness movement found its primary inspiration.

aszantu 3y ago

Ppl with mental disorders shouldn't meditate more than 20 min/day

k__ 3y ago
How come? I had the impression, people with mental disorders would profit the most from it.
- nick__m 3y ago
  Mostly because longer meditation practice is more frequently associated with something called the dark night of the soul https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-...
  - notfed 3y ago
    "Mental disorders" is overly broad. It sounds like we're talking schizophrenia here.
wussboy 3y ago
Why? How would you know?
clsec 3y ago
Citation please!
- jossclimb 3y ago
  Not OP, but it happened to me. Started meditation to deal with anxiety and the introspection that came with it, ended up with me on the verge of a complete breakdown. I started off doing Sam Harris and then progressed to doing an hour or more each day. I had some moments of insight and then hit some dark night of the soul which wrecked me, I was close to admitting myself to hospital for psychological help. What fixed me was finally reading Breath by James Nestor and how you breath has a direct impact on the parasympathetic / sympathetic nervous system. I learned to take long slow breaths into the diaphragm and too nose breath all of the time. Basically my vagus nerve was fried from burn out and being in the fight flight mode of the parasympathetic system, as opposed to the 'rest and digest' chilled nature of sympathetic nervous system. My own view now, is that mediation should not be attempted (at least by anyone with mental issues) until the parasympathetic / sympathetic system is balanced and stress is significantly reduced. This should start with the breath. https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-powerful-mental-tool-and-for-some-it-goes-terribly-wrong https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-power...

thenerdhead 3y ago

> “My hope is that ultimately, this work will contribute to bringing advanced meditation out of the monastery,” Sacchet said, describing its “incredible promise for moving beyond addressing mental health issues, toward helping people thrive.” What exactly is considered "advanced meditation"? I've been meditating for years, but don't do it for hours each day or go on extended silent retreats. I've read many practices too and I'm not aware of anything "advanced" outside of just spending more time and revolving more of your life around it. 10-15 minutes a day already does wonders for me.

curo 3y ago
It seems they're using the term to distinguish "meditation for emotional regulation" (v1 research) from "meditation for itself" (v2 research)
gdubs 3y ago
There's a lot of different practices, though in a lot of schools that have practiced meditation for centuries, "Mindfulness" style meditation – what's largely practiced in the west – is just one aspect. The Dalai Lama, for instance, discuss at length in his books deeper phases of meditation that focus on things like "emptiness" [1] or compassion, loving-kindness, etc. Someone who's more knowledgable can correct me if I'm wrong, but the 'mindfulness' type meditation is almost like a warmup for these other forms of meditation. 1: Emptiness meditation, best I can describe it, is sort of like meditating on how something like a "Chair" falls apart under scrutiny. We perceive it as a solid object, yet when you analyze its parts, it tends to 'fall apart', and what makes it a "Chair" becomes hard to pin down. You start to see it more as a coming together of many things, each of which also tends to fall apart under scrutiny. Worth pointing out that this 'emptiness' is not the same as nihilism.
- thenerdhead 3y ago
  Ah I see. So the subject/practice of your meditation is what is considered advanced. i.e. metta, vipassana, samatha, etc. I read the entire article and it hardly spoke about what is considered "advanced" from the monasteries.

666_666_666 3y ago

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aradox66 3y ago

I was skeptical, but this article does a decent job reiterating the reasons that researching meditative altered states reproduces the same inappropriate KPIs as earlier generations of mindfulness research. Nirodha samipatti may be a fancy attainment, but Im skeptical sticking electrodes on Daniel Ingram's head is going to advance the secular understanding of dharma wisdom.

deepGem 3y ago

Think of cessation, also scripturally described as the “non-occurrence of consciousness,” like voluntarily inducing the effects of general anesthesia. Consciousness switches off without a trace, while the basic homeostatic operations of the body — temperature, heartbeat, breathing — remain online. - Isn't this like the nirvana of nirvanas ? I had heard about some of the monks in the Himalayas able to attain these states but had brushed it off as utter nonsense. Since now we know this is feasible, can we surmise that there is no need for an external chemical to shut off the mind or to even alter the mental state of a person ? Could you for instance get into an alcohol or a drug induced state without drinking or doing drugs - What a world would that be ..

waterheater 3y ago
> can we surmise that there is no need for an external chemical to shut off the mind or to even alter the mental state of a person? That is exactly what the Gateway Hemisync process claims to accomplish. See my post below for more information on it.
permo-w 3y ago
I mean as I understand it one way of approaching meditation looks like this: at first you just concentrate on your breathing, avoiding extraneous thoughts, then once you can do that without distraction, you move on and try to step back from your thoughts, watching them arrive and letting them go. once you can do that—something I could do after a few days of practice—how far are you realistically from being able to not have those thoughts at all? perhaps that's a huge leap, but I would be surprised
fnordpiglet 3y ago
At least in Theravada Buddhism this isn’t the right way to conceive of enlightenment with respect to samati, or meditative states. The mind is composed of several faculties, that spring from themselves, and lead to certain states of being that ultimately lead to suffering. The key ones for this discussion are the thinking mind (or in Thailand the monkey mind), which is what we typically dwell in. It’s the mind that tells stories about the past and the future, where we talk with people in conversations we won’t have or wish we had had, where we identify ourselves as being something specific. We also have a feeling mind, or emotive mind. It doesn’t form structured thoughts like the thinking mind, but it creates impetus and acts in a feedback loop with the thinking mind. A lot of our misery comes from this feedback loop. We also have a sensate mind, which is where we feel our body, all sensations but we tend to focus our thinking and emotive mind on pleasurable and unpleasant sensations. In Theravada Buddhism these faculties are emergent but are not true experience of our true selves. They are tools of our true mind, but have become dominant and exclusionary, hiding our true self. Our true self is our awareness, which exists without thought or feelings, but is the source of all thoughts and feelings. It constantly changes, it has no identity per se, but it is not unconscious. It is where we actually are, all thoughts exist in context of it, but it’s thinking isn’t visible or directly experienced in the way thoughts or feelings are. People often find this confusing and find the admonition to not think in vipassana meditation to mean erase all mental existence and be a body without any being. That’s actually not at all the goal. The goal is to silence the mind that chatters for a bit, the emotions that pull us and manipulate our thoughts to sooth, so we can be aware of our awareness. You are still fully awake - intensely so in fact. You still “feel,” but the feelings are compassion and loving kindness, and they’re not feelings that control you or make your sensate body feel some experience (such as a tight chest or thrill) or capture your chattering thoughts. Eventually thoughts and feelings will intrude and the goal then is to see them for what they are, facilities of your mind, and to let them be there but don’t let them capture your awareness By practicing this in meditation you can bridge this state into daily life. As you spend more time aware but not chattering away, you are more in the present and in the immediate now. You find you only feel compassion and loving kindness for all like, and anger, hate, and fear are artifacts of those faculties. They can be helpful in some situations, but they are fairly rare situations. It feels strange at first to not be totally enmeshed in your thoughts. At first I was afraid I would disappear if I did this, sort of like the quote you have. But I didn’t. Who I wasn’t disappeared, and I became myself for the first time since I was a little child.

asimovfan 3y ago

The revolution is coming.. I hope we don't melt to death before I would recommend taking up studying the teachings of the Buddha. There is a lot of valuable material and the hidden priceless gem of awakening

extraduder_ire 3y ago

Reminds me of a blogpost by Scott Alexander that I can't find right now about the last unenlightened person, as far as he can see, in the world.

titanomachy 3y ago
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  That's the one. Thank you very much.

2bitencryption 3y ago

A few years ago I tried the very first Headspace meditation courses, back when Headspace was pretty new. It was great! I loved it. I really felt like the narrator was knowledgeable and had something to teach me. His explanations for the process actually made sense, and weren't woo-woo mumbo jumbo. Perhaps it is all placebo effect, but even if so, the effect worked for me perfectly. The problem is, as the industry exploded, it became harder and harder to find meditation guides that have that quality. Even on Headspace, which I used to love, there's only so much they could provide, before the demand necessitated putting out meditation guides that are more and more ridiculous ("meditation for doing the dishes", "meditation for walking the dog", etc). And I haven't found any guides that help me to the degree that the original Headspace ones did. Would love it if anyone has any recommendations. (of course, you might say "you don't need a guide once you know how to do it", but personally I find it really hard without some recorded guide helping me along)

fredrikholm 3y ago
Waking Up by Sam Harris. It's more insight than mindfulness, but remains secular. Loads of content from big names. Highly recommended.
- dlivingston 3y ago
  Seconded. I'm working through the month-long Introductory Course currently. Waking Up strikes me as much more technical than apps like Headspace, which really resonates with me.
oatmeal1 3y ago
I use the Headspace guided meditation (30 mins) 2-3 times every day. Did that not work for you? It's amazing how hard they make it just to find the basic guided meditation. Not pushing anything spiritual or ways of thinking the guide prefers. Just experiencing the present.
dimal 3y ago
If you find it hard without some recorded guide helping you along, that’s exactly why you should consider meditating without a guide. Guided meditation is like riding a bike with training wheels. You don’t fall, but you’re not really riding a bike. You learn to meditate by trying and failing over and over, and in the process you learn your own mind. You learn all its tricks. And that’s the point. It can suck for a long time. It can be a grind. But eventually, you stabilize.

5cott0 3y ago

Huairang asked [Mazu], "Why are you sitting in meditation?" [Mazu] replied, "Because I want to become a Buddha." Thereupon Hauirang took a brick and started to polish it in front of [Mazu]'s hermitage. [Mazu] asked him, "Why are you polishing that brick?" Huairang replied, "Because I want to make a mirror." [Mazu] asked, "How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?" Huairang said, "If I cannot make a mirror by polishing a brick, how can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation?" [Mazu] asked, "Then what shall I do?" Huairang asked, "When an ox-carriage stops moving, do you hit the carriage or the ox?" [Mazu] had no reply. Huairang continued, "Are you practicing to sit in meditation, or practicing to sit like a Buddha? As to sitting in meditation, meditation is neither sitting nor lying. As to sitting like a Buddha, the Buddha has no fixed form. In the non-abiding Dharma, one should neither grasp nor reject. If you try to sit like a Buddha, you are just killing the Buddha. If you attach to the form of sitting, you will never realize the principle." Upon hearing this [Mazu] felt as if he had tasted ghee.

5cott0 3y ago
Keep whipping that cart!

sghiassy 3y ago

Learning about neural networks has helped me understand meditation better. The ‘bias’ number fed into a neural network neuron is determined by the external training data (or for humans by our experiences) Meditation allows the neural network itself to reprogram its bias itself internally rather than rely on new external data.

jules22 3y ago

Whenever someone talks enthusiastically about meditation, I remind myself that all the popular meditation gurus I see on Youtube talk nonsense, pseudoscience, lack common sense and use manipulative psychological tricks. None of them admit any errors and ironically are quite conceited for those who claim to have conquered ego. I am sure meditative states must feel nice. But all I see beyond that are cults and none of the meditators seem that much at detached peace. They get incensed at criticism.

bsenftner 3y ago
I've been meditating since the 70's. Nothing I see today exists in the meditation world without a taint of snake oil and predatory capitalism. We live in a conman's paradise.
DrThunder 3y ago
There are multiple scientific studies show the positive affects of meditation and a myriad of health benefits.... I'm not sure what "gurus" you're seeing but it's not really relevant to objective studies that show it works and makes changes in the brain. I'm sure they are making some claims that are pseudoscience, but that doesn't mean meditation in its entirety is just a "feel nice" routine. Here's just one of several I found in a quick search- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895748/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895748/ I think of meditation as exercise for your brain. Just like you need to physically exercise to "prepare" your body you need to be doing stuff to keep your brain from going haywire and jumping from though to though like its hopped up on caffeine all the time. There are various ways to do "train your brain" but meditation/mindfulness is one very good way to do it.
- tokai 3y ago
  There's also a lot of studies showing that meditation can cause harm. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01503-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01503-2
  - DrThunder 3y ago

choxi 3y ago

I’ve been meditating casually for almost 10 years, I couldn’t sit still for a minute when I started and can sit regularly for an hour now. I still have a lot of skepticism about the sensations that other meditators describe feeling, like jhanas and profound states of tranquility and whatnot. I have experienced deeper calmness and have made some insights about my brain (eg thoughts are like a sensor organ not unlike a constantly generating LLM), but I haven’t experienced anything like the sometimes superhuman claims that come from people in this community. Naval Ravikant has claimed he can experience psychedelic states just through meditation, Nick Cammarata at OpenAI makes claims about achieving perfect equanimity and being able to feel jhanas that are better than sex but also doesn’t feel desire for it because of aforementioned equanimity. There are many others on social media who make similar claims. From the outside, all of these people seem like normal humans, maybe calmer and wiser than usual, but who still seek material comfort and the validation of others just like anyone else does. I wonder, what do others make of these superhuman meditation claims? How does one verify that their sensations during meditation are real reflections of how the brain works and not just increasingly subtle hallucinations? If you convinced everyone that the brain has a secret mechanism to feel perfect happiness, wouldn’t a lot of people hallucinate that they’ve experienced it even if it wasn’t real?

johndhi 3y ago
(Been meditating for about 15 years). I don't think the things you're describing are particularly 'superhuman.' I definitely can achieve (if that's the right word -- it's almost certainly not -- how about 'experience') psychedelic states. Everything is kind of a psychedelic state if you look at it the right way. What is your personal experience with psychedelics? I wonder if you maybe haven't done them much you might not know how to spot it. To me, clearly, the big question of superhuman meditation claims is the claim of some people to be enlightened. I personally think there is something to it, though I don't really know exactly what it is and I'd like to learn more about it. BTW, my experience with meditation comes mostly from (controversial Wild Wild Country guru) Osho. Sounds like you're familiar with Buddhist traditions. There are a lot of ways to meditate.
- crazygringo 3y ago

hackingthelema 3y ago

> We have ideas like biological taxonomies and genetics that provide a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding and exploration of universally relevant fields. “We need that for the deep end of spiritual experience,” he said. “What works as well in Riyadh, as Rome, as Rio, as rural Alabama? What’s the functional, scalable essence?” That was the purpose comparative tools like correspondence charts[1] were intended for; Aleister Crowley and Allan Bennett put a bunch of effort of surveying all spiritual experience they could learn about, followed by tabulating it all and trying to pattern match. The result was a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding, though the actual form of it could be heavily criticised. > Advanced meditation for everyone? > “My hope is that ultimately, this work will contribute to bringing advanced meditation out of the monastery,” Sacchet said, describing its “incredible promise for moving beyond addressing mental health issues, toward helping people thrive.” That was also Crowley's primary goal: to show that anyone at all could attain, and easily, while living a normal life, and thought that it would help them thrive. He stated this over and over again. I love that we're finally making effort towards the thought he had, that > Diverse as these statements [on mystical experiences] are at first sight, all agree in announcing an experience of the class which fifty years ago would have been called supernatural, to-day may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a proper name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred. (Book 4, Part 1; 1911[2]) though it's 70 years later than he thought. I'd love to be involved in work like this, both as an occultist/experienced meditator, and as a computer scientist / software developer, though I don't know how to get involved. Maybe by contacting the EPRC listed? :) May all attain! [1] http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Tree_of_Life:777 http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Tree_of_Life:777 [2] https://sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/aba1.htm https://sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/aba1.htm

johndhi 3y ago

As a meditator, personally I'm a little sickened by the 'science of meditation.' From my view, meditation is ultimately (or at least often) about doing nothing. Limiting, reducing our judgments and reasoning mind. So applying logic and benefits and sticks and carrots to me is actually antithetical to the practice. E.g.: you're anxious and want to get better, so you obsess about self-help and ways to get better. Some pop-sci author describes meditation as one such path. You make it your new obsession and think about how much you ought to be meditating but aren't. When you're meditating, you worry that you aren't doing it right such that you'll get the benefits. There is of course an argument that this popsci helps bring people to something that's good for them, and for this I guess I'm ok with it. But it's annoying to me that meditation has become part of the corporate capitalist moneymaking, anxiety-provoking system that ultimately, it's actually completely unrelated to.

nicechianti 3y ago

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everydayDonut 3y ago

I've practiced mindfulness and meditation for many years until I found "The Tao of Pooh", which, if you're not familiar, outlines the basic tenets of taoism. It has completely changed me and made me feel whole for the first time in my life, and I don't have to practice anything to achieve it. Early on in my life I was drawn in by proverbs and other pieces of wisdom, in an attempt to fill in the gaps of what I thought was missing, to fix myself and make me feel whole. Then mindfulness presented itself to me and it gave me a feeling that everything just worked - it was simple and applied to everything; but I couldn't hold onto it. I wanted to just be, and be ok. Non-dual mindfulness felt like the answer to that problem, but while it sounded right in theory, I still felt that it was something I had to achieve or maintain. When I read The Tao of Pooh, everything clicked for me. I could be myself without trying. My whole life has become open-ended. It also helped me to understand something that always nagged at me - how could some people appear to be mindful from birth, without having read anything about mindfulness? - People who seemed to always grow and learn in a way that upends their nature continually (nature vs. nurture?), while I felt that there was always something I was missing. The answer(for me) was 2 things -an ability to see myself as whole, despite the capacity for personal growth; -and complete/lazy faith in my intuition. (Intuition being this kind of thing that everyone is born with - and so in my view, the only thing that could transcend the differences between every living being. The differences in access to teachings, wisdom, philosophies, religion, culture, etc.) I'm curious if anyone here has felt similar with meditation/mindfulness, or has had experience with both that and taoism and what that journey was like for you.

rollinDyno 3y ago
What reasons do you have to trust your intuition? Why do you happen to have a certain intuition and why is it likely to give you the right answers?
lootsauce 3y ago
I picked up the Tao Te Ching in middle school and would reread it frequently. The personal insights would evolve as I grew up and faced different issues in my life. I found an abiding peace in those personal insights and they have held with me since. One of those insights is something like having instead of seeking as an identity. I don’t feel that I want to seek to find myself or some great answer, it’s already there, I already have it. YMMV bits a wonderful ancient text. I recommend the S. Mitchel translation. I could never get into the sitting and breathing kind of meditation, but I do find different times I am able to practice very meditative activities such as walking in the woods, aimless wandering, puttering about with no intention just taking in the world. I used to do zen inspired landscape photography and that whole process felt very meditative to me.

dottjt 3y ago

I think a key point that a lot of people miss is that meditation is just a single practice. The goal is mindfulness. This is to say that you can meditate mindlessly, as you can meditate mindfully. You can also be mindful without meditation, although it's a lot more difficult to do so.

3abiton 3y ago
What is your recommendation gateway to meditation?
- dottjt 3y ago
  The Sam Harris Waking Up meditation course is pretty good from a doing it point of view. But in terms of helping you understand why meditation is actually something you should do, there's a book called The Happiness Trap which outlines Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is basically western mindfulness.
- FollowingTheDao 3y ago
  Just be aware of everything, without resistance.
  - e12e 3y ago
    I like how you qualified that with "Just" :)
tasuki 3y ago
> The goal is mindfulness. That's just, like, your opinion?
- dottjt 3y ago
  At least explain your perspective. How do you view meditation?

swayvil 3y ago

Meh. We don't need a science. The last thing we need is a bunch of fine models and discussion. What we need is some basic, dead-simple experiments that anybody can do. Experiments that show you that there's something there. And then, after you see a bit, you are inspired to take another step.

amriksohata 3y ago

I find the use of the term "mindfulness" so frustrating. Meditation, or jnana yog is simply one of the types of yoga described in the Gita and Vedas, which was adopted by BUddhism, then by the West to manage their hectic lifestyles. Its purpose is completely different, its purpose is to condition the body to help understand THAT YOU ARE NOT THE BODY and connect yourself with that higher purpose. Thats the whole purpose.

FollowingTheDao 3y ago

They want you to mediate so you can forget about the climate emergency and the fact that capitalism is failing 99% of us in the United States. Mediation is opium, pure opium. And I am saying this as a Doaist. Probably an ex-Daoist. Might have to get a new handle soon.

rc-1140 3y ago

I think that there needs to be a separation of meditation's tangible benefits from both the religious associations, such as seeking nirvana or psychedelic experiences, and the social & financial ones stated in this article that either view meditation as a genuine secret superpower or are see it as a backdrop to take advantage of people simply trying to find mental peace. My belief is that the idea Kabat-Zinn had, which is paraphrased in the article, is good. "Pay attention to the present moment, on purpose, without judgment" - stop, take some time to reflect on your feelings, process them. Maybe just take some time and not "think", where you give yourself some away time from the world. The anecdata from countless people seems to vaguely support the notion that this view on meditation works; I wouldn't call it concrete by any means, but it's as solid of a scientific start as one can get with something like meditation. Software developers and those adjacent love to tout acronyms like "Keep It Simple, Stupid", why does the buck stop at software? The further one gets into the article, the more outlandish things get: electronic stimulation, microdosing various drugs (mentioned a lot on HN, which I've always found disturbing), cranial ultrasounds, even the stock photo of the lady meditating with a VR headset? At the end of the piece, Laukkonen provides the following rhetorical question: "[W]hat is liberating about chasing different states of consciousness, and not enjoying the one that you have?" I think a lot of the comments here and the research presented towards the end of the article are in too deep in either side and are unable to see the forest for the trees.

ergonaught 3y ago

One of the ways I hate wasting my time is wishing we would stop using a word that has been overloaded into uselessness as if it conveyed some kind of actual meaning by itself. The article touches vaguely upon it, but “meditation” covers so many different things, many of which are completely incompatible with each other, it’s a guarantee that discussing “meditation” leads to people thinking they are talking about something which they are not in fact talking about. Anyway.

Tao3300 3y ago
Or it leads to a massive outbreak of "actually that's not really meditation, this is" discussions.
- mancerayder 3y ago
  "On the one hand, I do agree that.. But on the other hand, I've come to realize that..."
bnralt 3y ago
Excellent point. I think something like "Doing diaphragmatic breathing for 5 minutes a day where you try to focus your mind on your breath will give you certain benefits" is a lot more useful than nebulous claims about "meditation" that end up getting spun up with people's ideas about spirituality and enlightenment. Further, there's a tendency for some people to get ecstatic about something they do - be it meditation, lifting, yoga, keto, psychedelics, etc. - and act as if everyone should be binging on it in order to live a good life. That sort of closed mindedness makes one question just how beneficial these things actually are.
2-718-281-828 3y ago
i beg to differ. the more i practice and read about meditation the clearer i understand what it is and that it is something very specific definable in a single short sentence: "observing without judging". understand what that actually means takes some practice, though. but each and every school of meditation (every type of yoga, zen, mindfulness, tai chi, ...) boils down to this and only this. one exception is the western definition of "meditation" which is more like "thinking silently". this is almost the opposite and technically more of a homonym (one word with two different meanings) and not a different interpretation. it's just something totally different which happens to be referred to with the same word.

hirvi74 3y ago

Anyone have any recommendations for those of us without attention spans? I've always wanted to mediate, but after a few attempts, I have started to question if it's more possible for some to partake in than others.

sharms 3y ago
This might not help and might sound new age / abstract: meditation is not continuous focus, but is about choosing to focus, letting thoughts pass, and when you recognize you are distracted to consciously let the distracting thought go, and return to focusing on what you intended to.
- hirvi74 3y ago
  I mean, isn't that what I have always done to begin with? For example, when reading a book, I can sometimes read a whole page without actually internalizing anything my eyes pretended to skim across. (My body can mimic the actions of reading, but my mind is somewhere else, if that makes things more clear). I have always done this with things like reading, conversations, work, etc.. When distracted I have to refocus myself on whatever I was supposed to be focusing on. Is that some kind of quasi-mediation still or something else?
  - krzat 3y ago
    It's like with exercise, regular life maintains muscles at some low level, but specific techniques (lifting) make it possible to get much stronger. Same goes with brain, you can train your imagination, focus, mental resilience, happiness via consistent practice.
whtrbt 3y ago
You're going to be battling with your attention a lot in the beginning. I think just making a habit of it regardless and putting in the time is necessary. You could always go on a retreat — you'll have very limited options for distractions. It might sound like an extreme thing to do, and maybe it is, but I did it without much prior practice and got a lot out of it.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

When I was a homeless man, I used to go ride the bus to the end of the line, just hanging out in the seat, just waiting for it to stop and turn around, just trying to stay warm/cool. I used to walk around at night, walk and walk, because there were precious few places to sit down and rest, and I didn't want to arouse suspicion for loitering or trespassing, so I'd just walk until I was too tired. I used to hang out in restaurants, either on my own dime or with a charity voucher, and I'd swill coffee, and read/write or something, not with any goal in mind, just passing the time through the night, because I was homeless, unemployed, and constantly at loose ends. And this, in a nutshell, is what you get with meditation when you divorce it from an authentic spiritual tradition.

istjohn 3y ago
If you don't mind sharing, how did you get off the streets?

manofmanysmiles 3y ago

This may have already been said, but many of the authors/gurus/teachers from the “Vedic” tradition emphatically state how true spiritual work should and even must be done scientifically. The science as described involves primarily data gathered from direct observation of one’s own experience, rather than studying the external physical world. This goes very contrary to the statistically driven science most people are familiar with, even though certain hypotheses, experiments and results can be observed in larger groups. However, if the scientific method is applied rigorously to matters of the spirit it will yield great dividends. I came to “spirituality” by means of almost rabid skepticism, and extreme distrust towards anything not “based in reality”, or measurable with instruments, slowly exploring and asking questions about the nature of reality. This extreme skepticism is so important, as belief or faith is the enemy of knowing. I believe the western mind (one with developed rational thinking), when applied to areas on the frontiers of consciousness and reality is an extremely potent tool. One can marry the logic and reason with intuition, emotion and introspection and go very far into the unknown, bringing back wisdom to enrich one’s own life, and the lives those one shares this knowledge with. I believe that as a species we’re in the verge of discovering a whole new layer to what it means to be human conscious beings. I’m not really sure if there is a point to this comment. Perhaps I am just excited to see spiritual inquiry happening in the mainstream, with structure and discipline. I am sick of strict materialism, and just as sick of the ungrounded beliefs, taken in faith by people involved in the so-called “new age movement.”

safety1st 3y ago

I thought this was the most significant excerpt in the article. > Now, as the research matures into controlled studies and meta-analyses, meditation is losing a bit of its luster. It’s beginning to look more like just another decently effective medical intervention. A 2021 systematic review of 44 meta-analyses found that mindfulness was mostly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants in terms of treatment effects (mindfulness was superior in a few categories, however, including treating depression and substance abuse).

brightlancer 3y ago
"A 2021 systematic review of 44 meta-analyses found that mindfulness was mostly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants in terms of treatment effects" That's not bad company. Compared to the cost and time required for CBT, and the frequent side effects of anti-depressants, teaching folks "mindfulness" to get the same benefit sounds wonderful!
- safety1st 3y ago
  Yes, I was also surprised at how the article underplayed this. "Tons of evidence that it's ONLY as good as the best therapy and drugs"

celtoid 3y ago

The best teachings on meditation are found in the Pali texts, imo. They purport to be a reasonable recording of the Buddha's teachings. In this text, one of the repeated internal exercises is "subduing greed & distress" while practicing meditation. “Mindfulness of in-&-out breathing, when developed & pursued, is of great fruit, of great benefit. Mindfulness of in-&-out breathing, when developed & pursued, brings the four establishings of mindfulness to their culmination. The four establishings of mindfulness, when developed & pursued, bring the seven factors for awakening to their culmination. The seven factors for awakening, when developed & pursued, bring clear knowing & release to their culmination." -Ānāpānasati Sutta [0] [0] https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN118.html https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN118.html

currymj 3y ago

the trend laid out in this article seems like a good thing. Zen people talk about meditation being "useless" which is kind of true I think. It's not literally a complete waste of time. But if you have any specific problem (in your life, mental health, or otherwise), you have to take specific actions well-suited to solve that problem, meditation actually just cannot accomplish specific goals like that. At most depending on the tradition, you can reliably put yourself into specific altered mental states. But these don't have much practical use either. So I think selling people meditation as a practical, reliable mental health treatment was just never a very good idea and I am glad consensus seems to be moving away from it.

arunc 3y ago

Highly recommend reading Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram, available online for free at https://www.mctb.org/ https://www.mctb.org/

gregfjohnson 3y ago

On a light note: There is a difference between micro-wave meditation and slow-cook meditation! Personally, I'm a slow-cook kind of guy. This article seems to be describing various ways to short-cut or accelerate the process, and I'm not sure of the wisdom of that game plan. One important aspect of meditation practice for me has been the gentle unpacking of suppressed trauma. Thomas Keating refers to this as the evacuation of the unconscious. In my experience this is an evaporative process. With gentleness and patience, this process happens naturally and organically over time. Inner psychological defenses and coping mechanisms tend to fade away as they become less needed, because the inner demons they were containing have evaporated and are no longer lurking in one's subconscious. But trying to accelerate the process and crash the door down before one is ready via some artificial short-cut may not be advisable for some people.

eep_social 3y ago
Yes, and crashing the door down may be the only option for others who think the door is a brick wall.