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Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

132 points by KenjiCrosland 14y ago

waivej 14y ago
Interesting article. I approached it wanting to share the vast insights I've gained after meditating for years. Though I left with a new perspective. Thank you.
- dualogy 14y ago
  Vast insights? Now, do share.
  - waivej 14y ago
    "Vast insights" was a joke because I caught my ego looking for a chance to prove how smart it is. When I started meditating (10 years ago?), I wanted to make a wildly successful business to show how smart and precocious I was. Though things don't quite work that way, and even if I achieved big success, I don't think I would have understood my motivations. Now I want to create a productive creative life. It's the same goal, but focussed the opposite direction.
cellularmitosis 14y ago
Your Zen is showing :) I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective. This pleases the knee-jerk part of my brain which often screams "skip the mumbo-jumbo and show me the data!" (and I'm slowly working to tame that part of my brain, because I recognize that an "empirical or be damned" approach is not a balanced one). In "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior", the author discusses how the idea of enlightenment being fully realized in an instant (like turning on a switch) is a misconception, and that in reality, its more about having enlightened moments, and then increasing the frequency of those moments, like slowly ramping up your enlightenment duty cycle over the course of several years. This bit was one of those enlightened moments: "I realize that I should not ask myself how happy I am but rather how attached am I to happiness".
- saraid216 14y ago
  Yeah, when they say enlightenment is like a lightning strike, they tend to fail to mention that the lightning hits again. And again. And again. And again. :P
- blueprint 14y ago
  No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society. If you accept that meditation is a way to get Enlightenment then it opens the possibility that anyone can be Enlightened. But in human history, only one or two men had the evidence that they could perceive everything in the world and could tell the Truth. Instead, Buddhists will tell you that you have to experience things to understand and prove them. But that is not the case of a scientist, philosopher, and Enlightened Beings - all of which can immediately show evidence when they point out something in truth. The term of Enlightenment means "opening eyes to what is in the reality". It's used similarly in Eastern languages to mean "to realize". So a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works. So when you learn about happiness from an Enlightened Being, he doesn't teach you about sitting in meditation until you can train yourself not to care about happiness anymore. That's a way to lose yourself in the end. Instead he can teach you exactly what the conditions are for happiness which must be fulfilled in order for you to be happy. If someone claims he's Enlightened and teaches about happiness then they must be able to point out that where happiness is, what it is, what is the way to happiness, and what is the cause to lead you to the goal of happiness. The reason why attachment is a problem is that attachment is one of the sources to make karma, and you can't be happy forever without conquering your karma (before it conquers oneself). Things in the world operate by a very simple principle - and this principle lies at the essence of what is taught by all Enlightened Beings when they teach about "what is" in the world. But because the monks and Zen masters didn't learn this principle, I can realize that they don't know anything about true Buddha's teaching. I'm telling you this because I'm worried that people will fall into danger practicing Zen and other forms of Buddhism. The truth in Buddha's teaching has degraded to the point that no one can know Buddha's teaching through the existent Buddhism - which although superior because of Buddha's teachings, nowadays has a similar quality to Christianity and other religions. I've seen people deceived so many times by monks and it's getting worse as time goes on.
tokenadult 14y ago
On 25 June 2012, Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True website recommended a LONG video of a lecture by Sam Harris, a meditation practitioner, from April’s Global Atheist Conference in Melbourne. The video lecture is on the subject of the atheist attitude toward death, and Harris leads his audience through a mindfulness meditation exercise as part of the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums I watched the whole video, and participated in the mindfulness meditation exercise. I have to say that after listening to the whole lecture, I have the same misgivings Sam Harris has about being removed from any thoughts or judgments about the external world. There is genuine suffering in the world that it is important to do something about. There is a tension between getting in touch with the present moment and using a meaningful part of each day to solve problems and help our fellow human beings. Having lived in a predominantly Buddhist society during two different three-year stays as that society transformed from Third World colonialized poverty to First World free and democratic modernity, I'm not at all sure that most people would be more happy if most people were doing more mindfulness meditation.
- loceng 14y ago
  I agree you have to direct this energy somewhere, though once you've done so and know you are actively doing so, these worries can start to settle - as they have a place to settle to, they have molded who you are and your action, your direction, your path in life. I agree you can't just ignore this energy, these thoughts and emotions, that wants to surface. Anything that needs to be dealt with will come to the surface when space exists for it to come up, and meditating in fact creates this mental space to allow such thoughts to surface. I believe individuals who think or say otherwise perhaps haven't realized that this is what they have done to direct their feelings of suffering into tangible action.
- psykotic 14y ago
  > Having lived in a predominantly Buddhist society during two different three-year stays as that society transformed from Third World colonialized poverty to First World free and democratic modernity, I'm not at all sure that most people would be more happy if most people were doing more mindfulness meditation. Could you expand on this baffling non-sequitur? I truly can't make heads or tails of it.
Kilimanjaro 14y ago
Meditation won't make you happy. It will help you deal with stressful situations so you can make better decisions. And that as a result makes you happier.
- VMG 14y ago
  Hate to be that guy - but is there good scientific evidence for your claims?
  - chc 14y ago
    There are studies that show a strong correlation between meditation and higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress. These studies are a big part of why meditation is sort of trendy nowadays AFAIK. Googling [meditation study stress] (or whichever claim you're interested in) will yield a number of relevant results.
  - praptak 14y ago
    There seems to be quite a lot of research on this topic, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation This article: "Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits. A meta-analysis" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15256293 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15256293 seems to be relevant to your question. Of course the mere existence of articles does not prove anything. Caution advised :)
    - zbuc 14y ago
      MBSR is becoming increasingly common in cognitive behavioral therapy as well -- it's interesting (to me) to see how much intersection there is between meditative practice and what cognitive behavioral therapy is discovering. Different paths to the same conclusions.
Henwys 14y ago
To me it all depends on your thought process. Like if i meditate with a certain intent it may help me feel happy during a given day. I dont think one even has to meditate for that kind of effect. If i think to myself about how happy i am and why i deserve fantastic things, i become increasingly optimistic
napillo 14y ago
Seems to have the opposite effect on me. Regardless, this shouldn't be on hacker news.
rdudekul 14y ago
In my experience Meditation directly increases happiness over longer term by decreasing our attachment to body/mind, there by decreasing the unnecessary suffering. There are different forms of meditation, each with different emphasis. The one mentioned here is a Buddhist (Insight/Vipassana) meditation where one experiences sensations on the body without judgment. The Passage Meditation (http://www.easwaran.org/ http://www.easwaran.org/) for example emphasizes systematic training of attention to turn inward and dwell continuously on a single focus within consciousness, in this case memorized inspirational passages from worlds great mystics. In essence "we become what we meditate on". To be happy we need to decrease self-will or ego. In my experience meditation alone is not effective in subsiding the self-will. Meditation along with allied disciplines is necessary to slowly chip away self-will, overcome conditioned habits of mind and find our true nature which is peace, joy and love - the very source of happiness.
njx 14y ago
Whoever said meditation will increase happiness is a false statement. Meditating for 1 year will get you nowhere. Meditation needs to be practiced like clockwork. Prolong meditation practice will instill stillness of mind. This is where the beauty is. Happiness is a state of mind. So "stillness" is the key and then it is upto you how you flow your stillness. Now, would it be stillness if it flows? Stillness in every action and no-action.
winternet 14y ago
I can understand if this post is provocative to some, but I don't think there is any getting around that. To meditate is to reprogram ones mind. There are many ways to do this. This guy reprogrammed himself to feel more suffering and pain. Since he is so invested in the idea that meditation must be good, he instead of realizing that he is causing himself harm, he justifies his practice by saying that happiness isn't the goal. "I realized that meditation was not meant to purge our minds of negative emotions or thought patterns," Meditation is a tool. It doesn't have any purpose. "I realize that I should not ask myself how happy I am but rather how attached am I to happiness. How much do I judge my self-worth based on how happy or sad I feel?" There is no should. I want to give everyone here the opposite of his advice. Focus on the positive things, not everything.
codinghorror 14y ago
I'm not clear how just internalizing stuff via meditation can possibly help. To understand and process experiences, you must be able to tell a coherent story about it to other people, ideally in writing. This is another reason I'm so gung-ho about blogging. And there's science behind it too: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/07/nobodys-going-to-help-you-and-thats-awesome.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/07/nobodys-going-to-he...
- floptikal 14y ago
  Problem is that you might not be aware that your story has spun out of control and is heading down the wrong side of the road. Meditation is designed to help you see if that is the case...and the fact that stories are just stories and not reality.
nu23 14y ago
This shouldn't be surprising given that the traditional maps of the Vipassana explicitly talk about negative stages. The problem is that somehow this information is not commonly known. It would benefit practitioners a great deal. In this vipassana community, for instance, it is considered important enough to be mentioned as a sticky post right at the top, http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/recent_posts http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_b...
moron 14y ago
Every time I have tried to meditate I just feel ridiculous and stop. But reading this description of its effects, I really don't understand the benefit.
- tehayj 14y ago
  The benefit is cognitive defusion. That means you gain the ability to observe your thoughts instead of identifying yourself with them. This gives you more control (because you also learn to accept whatever comes up) and as a result more happiness. Check this video with a step by step guide how to meditate I did. It's pretty easy and everyone with a bit of patience can benefit from doing it. http://jayuhdinger.com/chapters/chapter-2-practical-lesson-mindfulness-meditation-and-the-state-of-being/ http://jayuhdinger.com/chapters/chapter-2-practical-lesson-m...
  - bostonvaulter2 14y ago
    Stated more simply: "you are not your thoughts"
ptc 14y ago
Perhaps not as scientifically minded, I still think Alan Watts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts) and his accompanying lectures (e.g. http://archive.org/details/BuddhismAsDialogue http://archive.org/details/BuddhismAsDialogue) are a great introduction to eastern philosophy from a westerner's perspective.
- gdubs 14y ago
  The iOS app containing a large number of his talks, while pricey, is very good.
- jonhendry 14y ago
  Zen and the Brain by James Austin (MIT Press) is also good. The author is an emeritus professor of neuroscience, who started doing Zen during the 60s while he was working in Japan. It's a huge, dense book, about 900 pages.
AnandTr 14y ago
Meditation is actually total bullshit...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
twok 14y ago
I like the article, but I think the practice here is lacking something. I realize that there are many meditation practices, but the writer here mentions Buddhism, and so I'm assuming insight, or vipassana, meditation. The practice of vipassana is not to focus everything on the sensations that you have, but only to note that they are there, and move on. I sort of say "that's interesting", when I notice a sensation, and then move on in my body scanning or noting--whichever form I happen to be doing. By concentrating on those emotions, pains, and discomfort, you are giving them more attention than they deserve, and doing yourself a disservice. You are doing the same thing that screws us up in our daily life--hanging on to the countless emotional experiences we have all the time. The writer of this article could use the guidance of an experienced practitioner to help avoid and get out of potholes like this. Another thing I'd like to mention is the emotional rollercoaster that this person is experiencing. One should look deeper than just the surface emotions that arise, and look to the cause in your body, mind, or whatever is coming at you from the "outside" experience of life. Just as with the discomforts of sitting in meditation, and emotions, you should consider the events in your life in the same manner, since you'll eventually realize that they have little intrinsic meaning, but have an effect on your thoughts and emotions just the same if you allow it. Accept that the thing happened, and then move on or act as needed, without letting emotion and overthinking clog it up.
- kinleyd 14y ago
  "The practice of vipassana is not to focus everything on the sensations that you have, but only to note that they are there, and move on." Exactly. Continuing to focus on it is a fixation of thought. From what I'm learning, meditation is letting the thoughts flow by without judgment. Focusing on pain, hurt etc for extended periods is no better than psychotherapy: it just reinforces it.
allenwlee 14y ago
i'm amazed he did it 1 hour per day for a YEAR. i've been meditating for 2 years. the first 6 months i did it 1 hour each day. after that it fell off a cliff. i now average around 10 minutes 3x week.
ChrisNorstrom 14y ago
Should be Titled: "Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase MY Happiness". For me it does but I practice a very different and rare form of meditation. I can only call it "Sleeping Awake". Which took a while to achieve. Basically, when you go to sleep at night your body slows its breathing & heart rate and you loose feeling of your limbs, while your mind looses consciousness and you black out. Your body and mind shut down at the same time. With meditation, particularly deep meditation (out of body experience / trance / hypnosis) you "sleep awake". Your body shuts down and goes to sleep but you are completely conscious the entire time. You can't feel your limbs, heart beat, or lungs breathing. You completely loose track of time and gravity and feel like you're floating around in a massive black, empty, nothingness. If feels like you're floating around in the universe before it was made. Completely empty and quiet. No gravity. No direction. No time. No space. No memories. No emotions. No body. No flesh. It's the most peace you'll ever experience in your life apart from sleep and death. There's absolutely nothing on your mind. The only thing you're aware of, is your existence. That's all. And when you wake up, you feel amazingly refreshed. Not just physically but mentally. For me personally, I feel content and happy the rest of the day. It makes me happy because the experience reminds me that, honestly, I don't matter. None of us do. We might matter to each other, but to the universe (which is mostly empty) our existence is worthless, useless, meaningless, purposeless. No matter what happens in your life, good or bad. Existence goes on, even after life is gone. And this concept, that nothing really matters, just takes a huge load off your shoulders. I don't know why "Sleeping Awake" evokes these feelings but it just does. It's a very calming and neutral experience. So meditation for me did the opposite of what it did to the author of the article. It allowed me to control my emotions much more and see things from a neutral point of view. It allowed me to think, and observe an event or thought BEFORE reacting to it with an opinion or emotion.
- joshkaufman 14y ago
  Can you recommend any tutorials or books about this type of meditation? I'm curious.
  - personlurking 14y ago
    Kind of sounds a bit like lucid dreaming, or astral projection.
nsomaru 14y ago
The funny part about all this is the stark misconceptions westerners (and perhaps many easterners too) have about meditation in general. The authority on meditation is long rooted in the subjective scientific (the observation and inference of trends based on data) scriptures of the East, yet most are willing to accept whatever their local practitioner has to say, or whoever is currently recommending meditation to them. Meditation, whilst extremely easy to teach, is extremely difficult to practise. You will be EXTREMELY hard pressed to find any authority on the subject recommending meditation without specifying its prerequisite, self-control. A mind that infested with thoughts and desires, constantly fluttering hither and thither is unfit to meditate. To force such a mind into single pointed concentration is dangerous. Meditation is the final stage of spiritual practice, not the beginning.
KenjiCrosland 14y ago
Love the discussion here and I'd be happy to add a few thoughts when I set aside some time to. Just wanted to point out that there's a much higher quality version of the video than the one I originally linked to in the post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCwC7XBQq9o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCwC7XBQq9o
batista 14y ago
>*"Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness" Because there are no magic pills?

132 points by KenjiCrosland 14y ago

Interesting article. I approached it wanting to share the vast insights I've gained after meditating for years. Though I left with a new perspective. Thank you.

dualogy 14y ago
Vast insights? Now, do share.
- waivej 14y ago
  "Vast insights" was a joke because I caught my ego looking for a chance to prove how smart it is. When I started meditating (10 years ago?), I wanted to make a wildly successful business to show how smart and precocious I was. Though things don't quite work that way, and even if I achieved big success, I don't think I would have understood my motivations. Now I want to create a productive creative life. It's the same goal, but focussed the opposite direction.

cellularmitosis 14y ago

Your Zen is showing :) I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective. This pleases the knee-jerk part of my brain which often screams "skip the mumbo-jumbo and show me the data!" (and I'm slowly working to tame that part of my brain, because I recognize that an "empirical or be damned" approach is not a balanced one). In "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior", the author discusses how the idea of enlightenment being fully realized in an instant (like turning on a switch) is a misconception, and that in reality, its more about having enlightened moments, and then increasing the frequency of those moments, like slowly ramping up your enlightenment duty cycle over the course of several years. This bit was one of those enlightened moments: "I realize that I should not ask myself how happy I am but rather how attached am I to happiness".

saraid216 14y ago
Yeah, when they say enlightenment is like a lightning strike, they tend to fail to mention that the lightning hits again. And again. And again. And again. :P
blueprint 14y ago
No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society. If you accept that meditation is a way to get Enlightenment then it opens the possibility that anyone can be Enlightened. But in human history, only one or two men had the evidence that they could perceive everything in the world and could tell the Truth. Instead, Buddhists will tell you that you have to experience things to understand and prove them. But that is not the case of a scientist, philosopher, and Enlightened Beings - all of which can immediately show evidence when they point out something in truth. The term of Enlightenment means "opening eyes to what is in the reality". It's used similarly in Eastern languages to mean "to realize". So a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works. So when you learn about happiness from an Enlightened Being, he doesn't teach you about sitting in meditation until you can train yourself not to care about happiness anymore. That's a way to lose yourself in the end. Instead he can teach you exactly what the conditions are for happiness which must be fulfilled in order for you to be happy. If someone claims he's Enlightened and teaches about happiness then they must be able to point out that where happiness is, what it is, what is the way to happiness, and what is the cause to lead you to the goal of happiness. The reason why attachment is a problem is that attachment is one of the sources to make karma, and you can't be happy forever without conquering your karma (before it conquers oneself). Things in the world operate by a very simple principle - and this principle lies at the essence of what is taught by all Enlightened Beings when they teach about "what is" in the world. But because the monks and Zen masters didn't learn this principle, I can realize that they don't know anything about true Buddha's teaching. I'm telling you this because I'm worried that people will fall into danger practicing Zen and other forms of Buddhism. The truth in Buddha's teaching has degraded to the point that no one can know Buddha's teaching through the existent Buddhism - which although superior because of Buddha's teachings, nowadays has a similar quality to Christianity and other religions. I've seen people deceived so many times by monks and it's getting worse as time goes on.

tokenadult 14y ago

On 25 June 2012, Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True website recommended a LONG video of a lecture by Sam Harris, a meditation practitioner, from April’s Global Atheist Conference in Melbourne. The video lecture is on the subject of the atheist attitude toward death, and Harris leads his audience through a mindfulness meditation exercise as part of the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums I watched the whole video, and participated in the mindfulness meditation exercise. I have to say that after listening to the whole lecture, I have the same misgivings Sam Harris has about being removed from any thoughts or judgments about the external world. There is genuine suffering in the world that it is important to do something about. There is a tension between getting in touch with the present moment and using a meaningful part of each day to solve problems and help our fellow human beings. Having lived in a predominantly Buddhist society during two different three-year stays as that society transformed from Third World colonialized poverty to First World free and democratic modernity, I'm not at all sure that most people would be more happy if most people were doing more mindfulness meditation.

loceng 14y ago
I agree you have to direct this energy somewhere, though once you've done so and know you are actively doing so, these worries can start to settle - as they have a place to settle to, they have molded who you are and your action, your direction, your path in life. I agree you can't just ignore this energy, these thoughts and emotions, that wants to surface. Anything that needs to be dealt with will come to the surface when space exists for it to come up, and meditating in fact creates this mental space to allow such thoughts to surface. I believe individuals who think or say otherwise perhaps haven't realized that this is what they have done to direct their feelings of suffering into tangible action.
psykotic 14y ago
> Having lived in a predominantly Buddhist society during two different three-year stays as that society transformed from Third World colonialized poverty to First World free and democratic modernity, I'm not at all sure that most people would be more happy if most people were doing more mindfulness meditation. Could you expand on this baffling non-sequitur? I truly can't make heads or tails of it.

Kilimanjaro 14y ago

Meditation won't make you happy. It will help you deal with stressful situations so you can make better decisions. And that as a result makes you happier.

VMG 14y ago
Hate to be that guy - but is there good scientific evidence for your claims?
- chc 14y ago
  There are studies that show a strong correlation between meditation and higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress. These studies are a big part of why meditation is sort of trendy nowadays AFAIK. Googling [meditation study stress] (or whichever claim you're interested in) will yield a number of relevant results.
- praptak 14y ago
  There seems to be quite a lot of research on this topic, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation This article: "Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits. A meta-analysis" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15256293 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15256293 seems to be relevant to your question. Of course the mere existence of articles does not prove anything. Caution advised :)
  - zbuc 14y ago
    MBSR is becoming increasingly common in cognitive behavioral therapy as well -- it's interesting (to me) to see how much intersection there is between meditative practice and what cognitive behavioral therapy is discovering. Different paths to the same conclusions.

Henwys 14y ago

To me it all depends on your thought process. Like if i meditate with a certain intent it may help me feel happy during a given day. I dont think one even has to meditate for that kind of effect. If i think to myself about how happy i am and why i deserve fantastic things, i become increasingly optimistic

napillo 14y ago

Seems to have the opposite effect on me. Regardless, this shouldn't be on hacker news.

rdudekul 14y ago

In my experience Meditation directly increases happiness over longer term by decreasing our attachment to body/mind, there by decreasing the unnecessary suffering. There are different forms of meditation, each with different emphasis. The one mentioned here is a Buddhist (Insight/Vipassana) meditation where one experiences sensations on the body without judgment. The Passage Meditation (http://www.easwaran.org/ http://www.easwaran.org/) for example emphasizes systematic training of attention to turn inward and dwell continuously on a single focus within consciousness, in this case memorized inspirational passages from worlds great mystics. In essence "we become what we meditate on". To be happy we need to decrease self-will or ego. In my experience meditation alone is not effective in subsiding the self-will. Meditation along with allied disciplines is necessary to slowly chip away self-will, overcome conditioned habits of mind and find our true nature which is peace, joy and love - the very source of happiness.

njx 14y ago

Whoever said meditation will increase happiness is a false statement. Meditating for 1 year will get you nowhere. Meditation needs to be practiced like clockwork. Prolong meditation practice will instill stillness of mind. This is where the beauty is. Happiness is a state of mind. So "stillness" is the key and then it is upto you how you flow your stillness. Now, would it be stillness if it flows? Stillness in every action and no-action.

winternet 14y ago

I can understand if this post is provocative to some, but I don't think there is any getting around that. To meditate is to reprogram ones mind. There are many ways to do this. This guy reprogrammed himself to feel more suffering and pain. Since he is so invested in the idea that meditation must be good, he instead of realizing that he is causing himself harm, he justifies his practice by saying that happiness isn't the goal. "I realized that meditation was not meant to purge our minds of negative emotions or thought patterns," Meditation is a tool. It doesn't have any purpose. "I realize that I should not ask myself how happy I am but rather how attached am I to happiness. How much do I judge my self-worth based on how happy or sad I feel?" There is no should. I want to give everyone here the opposite of his advice. Focus on the positive things, not everything.

codinghorror 14y ago

I'm not clear how just internalizing stuff via meditation can possibly help. To understand and process experiences, you must be able to tell a coherent story about it to other people, ideally in writing. This is another reason I'm so gung-ho about blogging. And there's science behind it too: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/07/nobodys-going-to-help-you-and-thats-awesome.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/07/nobodys-going-to-he...

floptikal 14y ago
Problem is that you might not be aware that your story has spun out of control and is heading down the wrong side of the road. Meditation is designed to help you see if that is the case...and the fact that stories are just stories and not reality.

nu23 14y ago

This shouldn't be surprising given that the traditional maps of the Vipassana explicitly talk about negative stages. The problem is that somehow this information is not commonly known. It would benefit practitioners a great deal. In this vipassana community, for instance, it is considered important enough to be mentioned as a sticky post right at the top, http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/recent_posts http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_b...

moron 14y ago

Every time I have tried to meditate I just feel ridiculous and stop. But reading this description of its effects, I really don't understand the benefit.

tehayj 14y ago
The benefit is cognitive defusion. That means you gain the ability to observe your thoughts instead of identifying yourself with them. This gives you more control (because you also learn to accept whatever comes up) and as a result more happiness. Check this video with a step by step guide how to meditate I did. It's pretty easy and everyone with a bit of patience can benefit from doing it. http://jayuhdinger.com/chapters/chapter-2-practical-lesson-mindfulness-meditation-and-the-state-of-being/ http://jayuhdinger.com/chapters/chapter-2-practical-lesson-m...
- bostonvaulter2 14y ago
  Stated more simply: "you are not your thoughts"

ptc 14y ago

Perhaps not as scientifically minded, I still think Alan Watts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts) and his accompanying lectures (e.g. http://archive.org/details/BuddhismAsDialogue http://archive.org/details/BuddhismAsDialogue) are a great introduction to eastern philosophy from a westerner's perspective.

gdubs 14y ago
The iOS app containing a large number of his talks, while pricey, is very good.
jonhendry 14y ago
Zen and the Brain by James Austin (MIT Press) is also good. The author is an emeritus professor of neuroscience, who started doing Zen during the 60s while he was working in Japan. It's a huge, dense book, about 900 pages.

AnandTr 14y ago

Meditation is actually total bullshit...

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

twok 14y ago

I like the article, but I think the practice here is lacking something. I realize that there are many meditation practices, but the writer here mentions Buddhism, and so I'm assuming insight, or vipassana, meditation. The practice of vipassana is not to focus everything on the sensations that you have, but only to note that they are there, and move on. I sort of say "that's interesting", when I notice a sensation, and then move on in my body scanning or noting--whichever form I happen to be doing. By concentrating on those emotions, pains, and discomfort, you are giving them more attention than they deserve, and doing yourself a disservice. You are doing the same thing that screws us up in our daily life--hanging on to the countless emotional experiences we have all the time. The writer of this article could use the guidance of an experienced practitioner to help avoid and get out of potholes like this. Another thing I'd like to mention is the emotional rollercoaster that this person is experiencing. One should look deeper than just the surface emotions that arise, and look to the cause in your body, mind, or whatever is coming at you from the "outside" experience of life. Just as with the discomforts of sitting in meditation, and emotions, you should consider the events in your life in the same manner, since you'll eventually realize that they have little intrinsic meaning, but have an effect on your thoughts and emotions just the same if you allow it. Accept that the thing happened, and then move on or act as needed, without letting emotion and overthinking clog it up.

kinleyd 14y ago
"The practice of vipassana is not to focus everything on the sensations that you have, but only to note that they are there, and move on." Exactly. Continuing to focus on it is a fixation of thought. From what I'm learning, meditation is letting the thoughts flow by without judgment. Focusing on pain, hurt etc for extended periods is no better than psychotherapy: it just reinforces it.

allenwlee 14y ago

i'm amazed he did it 1 hour per day for a YEAR. i've been meditating for 2 years. the first 6 months i did it 1 hour each day. after that it fell off a cliff. i now average around 10 minutes 3x week.

ChrisNorstrom 14y ago

Should be Titled: "Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase MY Happiness". For me it does but I practice a very different and rare form of meditation. I can only call it "Sleeping Awake". Which took a while to achieve. Basically, when you go to sleep at night your body slows its breathing & heart rate and you loose feeling of your limbs, while your mind looses consciousness and you black out. Your body and mind shut down at the same time. With meditation, particularly deep meditation (out of body experience / trance / hypnosis) you "sleep awake". Your body shuts down and goes to sleep but you are completely conscious the entire time. You can't feel your limbs, heart beat, or lungs breathing. You completely loose track of time and gravity and feel like you're floating around in a massive black, empty, nothingness. If feels like you're floating around in the universe before it was made. Completely empty and quiet. No gravity. No direction. No time. No space. No memories. No emotions. No body. No flesh. It's the most peace you'll ever experience in your life apart from sleep and death. There's absolutely nothing on your mind. The only thing you're aware of, is your existence. That's all. And when you wake up, you feel amazingly refreshed. Not just physically but mentally. For me personally, I feel content and happy the rest of the day. It makes me happy because the experience reminds me that, honestly, I don't matter. None of us do. We might matter to each other, but to the universe (which is mostly empty) our existence is worthless, useless, meaningless, purposeless. No matter what happens in your life, good or bad. Existence goes on, even after life is gone. And this concept, that nothing really matters, just takes a huge load off your shoulders. I don't know why "Sleeping Awake" evokes these feelings but it just does. It's a very calming and neutral experience. So meditation for me did the opposite of what it did to the author of the article. It allowed me to control my emotions much more and see things from a neutral point of view. It allowed me to think, and observe an event or thought BEFORE reacting to it with an opinion or emotion.

joshkaufman 14y ago
Can you recommend any tutorials or books about this type of meditation? I'm curious.
- personlurking 14y ago
  Kind of sounds a bit like lucid dreaming, or astral projection.

nsomaru 14y ago

The funny part about all this is the stark misconceptions westerners (and perhaps many easterners too) have about meditation in general. The authority on meditation is long rooted in the subjective scientific (the observation and inference of trends based on data) scriptures of the East, yet most are willing to accept whatever their local practitioner has to say, or whoever is currently recommending meditation to them. Meditation, whilst extremely easy to teach, is extremely difficult to practise. You will be EXTREMELY hard pressed to find any authority on the subject recommending meditation without specifying its prerequisite, self-control. A mind that infested with thoughts and desires, constantly fluttering hither and thither is unfit to meditate. To force such a mind into single pointed concentration is dangerous. Meditation is the final stage of spiritual practice, not the beginning.

KenjiCrosland 14y ago

Love the discussion here and I'd be happy to add a few thoughts when I set aside some time to. Just wanted to point out that there's a much higher quality version of the video than the one I originally linked to in the post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCwC7XBQq9o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCwC7XBQq9o

batista 14y ago

>*"Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness" Because there are no magic pills?