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I find it interesting how meditation eventually becomes an anxiety reduction method, or general emotion management. What should it be if there is no burden of

I find it interesting how meditation eventually becomes an anxiety reduction method, or general emotion management. What should it be if there is no burden of stress or negative impression of any emotion? Why rid of stress? It comes and goes, it is as fleeting as relaxation. I guess meditation is a insight into there being no problem to solve, once that insight is clear, there is no need for meditation.

HPsquared 9mo ago
For me a big factor is the way you become aware of the stress when it is absent for a short while. I felt a similar thing returning to work after the Christmas break. It's good to know about how you are feeling.
rdcooper 9mo ago
I notice I often have very strong knee-jerk reactions to these kind of comments. It's usually from some person that has not spent very much time meditating at all or invested much time around the various cultures which treasure and pride themselves in their meditative practices. It usually goes something like: "[Some kind of reasoning], therefore, there is no need to meditate." I'd like to provide an analogy which I think fits: We use our muscles every day. If you just use your muscles well, there's no need for strength training! And sure, I mean, that KIND of works. But like... There's a LOT of research around the benefits of strength training. And there's a multitude of reasons why someone might want to get involved in strength training. Very few people aspire to become powerlifters, etc. IMHO, it's a dangerous view to take, as it can lead to dismissal of a lot of fantastic use cases, and it leads to people dismissing meditation outright ("No doctor, my friend said that if I just move correctly, I don't need strength training!"). And yes, similar to strength, there's no upper limit on training for things like focus, concentration, mindfulness. There's no 'need' for meditation sure, but by that logic there's no 'need' for most things. What seems to be true to me is that it's absolutely fantastic in terms of technologies available to us for self (and also society)-improvement.
- vjerancrnjak 9mo ago
  I am doubtful of the scientific validity and am definitively not dismissive of cultures that use meditations for inquiry into Self. Strength training is a good example because it is an immensley stressful activity with adaptations that sometimes go into tics. I believe I’ve read accounts of experienced meditators also stressing themselves to the verge of lunacy. Some even deal with panic attacks , unannounced, despite lecturing on inner peace.
  - PaulHoule 9mo ago
    Dedicated mediators sometimes experience signs and symptoms of psychosis https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8380174/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8380174/ In general psychosis-proneness is a quantity that people have more or less, some people have harmless hallucinations or "unusual experiences" but psychosis-prone people have more trouble when they are under more stress. Some researchers think that meditation practice could be protective https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-01856-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-01856-y Personally mindless use of the word "mindful" is a pet peeve of mine because I knew somebody who would talk about mindfulness just before he walked into an open pit. Also back when I was more anxious I always thought my mind was "full" by default and wanted to empty it, I found that many practices would just fill my mind up with more noise.
    - mxmilkiib 9mo ago
      someone who needs mindfulness might know they need it and thus talk about it
    - IAmBroom 9mo ago
      > I knew somebody who would talk about mindfulness just before he walked into an open pit. Ironically (or not), there is a Buddhist story about this... A monk comes to see his master, and announces that he had achieved perfect mindfulness. The master said, "That is wonderful! And, when you came in, how many umbrellas were by the door?" The monk realized he had not achieved perfect mindfulness.
  - 9mo ago
CPLX 9mo ago
Meditation isn't an insight. It's a practice. Your comment makes as much sense as saying that once you've moved the heavy weight to a new position there's no more need for weightlifting.
- vjerancrnjak 9mo ago
  I dont understand that. I always assumed meditation is not a practice or an antipractice. There is no goal to reach. Nothing to gain.
  - nprateem 9mo ago
    Correct. Meditation is really a state. Formal practices just aim to help you get there.
  - girzel 9mo ago
    It is a practice that leads, as a consequence, to insight. Insight is not information that might be read from a book, it is experience that uses observation to arrive at understanding and transformation. You can't just "decide to have" the experience without doing the work of transforming yourself through observation. People who have gone far in the practice do tend to say that there was never any goal to begin with, that they ended up where they started, but that's more of a metaphor than anything else. Someone who travels around the world and ends up where they started is in a very different place than someone who never left home.
  - metabagel 9mo ago
    It's a practice. There are benefits. It's not a cure-all. The goal is to be more in control and aware of your own thoughts and feelings. You achieve that by learning to turn off the "monkey mind" - the continuous stream of distracting thoughts and feelings which can lead us down paths which are not of our deliberate choosing and not necessarily beneficial to our wellbeing. It is often said that if you go into meditation with a goal to improve yourself that you will probably be disappointed. I guess I would say that meditation is as much about unlocking your intuition as it is about anything else, so consciously trying to improve yourself through meditation does seem to miss the point of the practice.
andrei_says_ 9mo ago
Thinking about what meditation is, and practicing meditation are not the same. The thinking mind cannot simulate its effects. The thinking mind assumes it is the whole mind. Meditation reveals it to be a tiny subset. Which cannot experience or simulate its superset. A discussion at the level of this subset is by definition limited. Among other things, the practice changes the meaning of “I”.
- etyhhgfff 9mo ago
  Well there is metacognitive awareness allowing us to think and therefore speak about thinking on a meta level. However the absence of thinking is hard to describe.
ericmcer 9mo ago
I thought the entire point of meditating was to realize you don't need to constantly solve problems, not to solve all of them. Very western version of meditation to view it as a tool to achieve something with.
- etyhhgfff 9mo ago
  "Very western version of meditation to view it as a tool to achieve something with." Thats exactly what makes meditating so hard for westerners, just sitting, not actively doing anything, no external constant stimulation.
nextaccountic 9mo ago
I want to comment that in Buddhism, the role of meditation isn't (just) to reduce anxiety or manage emotion. Indeed if this was the role, then other techniques of anxiety reduction or emotion management could replace meditation. Instead, the ultimate role of meditation is to experience your inner reality. And it's really the experience that is important, just thinking about it doesn't have the same effect
- krzat 9mo ago
  So experiencing your inner reality is the final goal in itself? I thought that the point was to reduce suffering.
  - nextaccountic 9mo ago
    You experience reality to understand the true nature of reality, to see things as they are. This is what leads to reduced suffering You also need to calm your mind, reduce your anxiety etc but as a prerequisite https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samatha-vipassan%C4%81 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samatha-vipassan%... Meditation as a form of relaxing is practicing Samatha, and meditation to see things as they are is Vipassana. in reality both work in tandem, but Vipassana is the goal. (Vipassana is Buddha's innovation here - meditation in other religions is more like Samatha) The main thing is that learning about the true nature of things at an intellectual level isn't enough in Buddhism. It's, like.. there are parts of your mind that are unaffected by what you learn intellectually, you need to actually experience things yourself to influence your unconscious mind
eskaytwo 9mo ago
Meditation has many techniques. Similar to how people have many different motivations and programs when they have a regular gym practice. Strength is different to agility is different to flexibility.
krzat 9mo ago
"there is no problem to solve" is a thought. It becomes insight if it actually feels true. "It feels like there is no problem to solve" is a synonym of being relaxed.
- vjerancrnjak 9mo ago
  Feeling is also a thought. All perceived sensory information is thought.

HPsquared 9mo ago

For me a big factor is the way you become aware of the stress when it is absent for a short while. I felt a similar thing returning to work after the Christmas break. It's good to know about how you are feeling.

rdcooper 9mo ago

I notice I often have very strong knee-jerk reactions to these kind of comments. It's usually from some person that has not spent very much time meditating at all or invested much time around the various cultures which treasure and pride themselves in their meditative practices. It usually goes something like: "[Some kind of reasoning], therefore, there is no need to meditate." I'd like to provide an analogy which I think fits: We use our muscles every day. If you just use your muscles well, there's no need for strength training! And sure, I mean, that KIND of works. But like... There's a LOT of research around the benefits of strength training. And there's a multitude of reasons why someone might want to get involved in strength training. Very few people aspire to become powerlifters, etc. IMHO, it's a dangerous view to take, as it can lead to dismissal of a lot of fantastic use cases, and it leads to people dismissing meditation outright ("No doctor, my friend said that if I just move correctly, I don't need strength training!"). And yes, similar to strength, there's no upper limit on training for things like focus, concentration, mindfulness. There's no 'need' for meditation sure, but by that logic there's no 'need' for most things. What seems to be true to me is that it's absolutely fantastic in terms of technologies available to us for self (and also society)-improvement.

vjerancrnjak 9mo ago
I am doubtful of the scientific validity and am definitively not dismissive of cultures that use meditations for inquiry into Self. Strength training is a good example because it is an immensley stressful activity with adaptations that sometimes go into tics. I believe I’ve read accounts of experienced meditators also stressing themselves to the verge of lunacy. Some even deal with panic attacks , unannounced, despite lecturing on inner peace.
- PaulHoule 9mo ago
  Dedicated mediators sometimes experience signs and symptoms of psychosis https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8380174/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8380174/ In general psychosis-proneness is a quantity that people have more or less, some people have harmless hallucinations or "unusual experiences" but psychosis-prone people have more trouble when they are under more stress. Some researchers think that meditation practice could be protective https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-01856-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-01856-y Personally mindless use of the word "mindful" is a pet peeve of mine because I knew somebody who would talk about mindfulness just before he walked into an open pit. Also back when I was more anxious I always thought my mind was "full" by default and wanted to empty it, I found that many practices would just fill my mind up with more noise.
  - mxmilkiib 9mo ago
    someone who needs mindfulness might know they need it and thus talk about it
  - IAmBroom 9mo ago
    > I knew somebody who would talk about mindfulness just before he walked into an open pit. Ironically (or not), there is a Buddhist story about this... A monk comes to see his master, and announces that he had achieved perfect mindfulness. The master said, "That is wonderful! And, when you came in, how many umbrellas were by the door?" The monk realized he had not achieved perfect mindfulness.
- 9mo ago

CPLX 9mo ago

Meditation isn't an insight. It's a practice. Your comment makes as much sense as saying that once you've moved the heavy weight to a new position there's no more need for weightlifting.

vjerancrnjak 9mo ago
I dont understand that. I always assumed meditation is not a practice or an antipractice. There is no goal to reach. Nothing to gain.
- nprateem 9mo ago
  Correct. Meditation is really a state. Formal practices just aim to help you get there.
- girzel 9mo ago
  It is a practice that leads, as a consequence, to insight. Insight is not information that might be read from a book, it is experience that uses observation to arrive at understanding and transformation. You can't just "decide to have" the experience without doing the work of transforming yourself through observation. People who have gone far in the practice do tend to say that there was never any goal to begin with, that they ended up where they started, but that's more of a metaphor than anything else. Someone who travels around the world and ends up where they started is in a very different place than someone who never left home.
- metabagel 9mo ago
  It's a practice. There are benefits. It's not a cure-all. The goal is to be more in control and aware of your own thoughts and feelings. You achieve that by learning to turn off the "monkey mind" - the continuous stream of distracting thoughts and feelings which can lead us down paths which are not of our deliberate choosing and not necessarily beneficial to our wellbeing. It is often said that if you go into meditation with a goal to improve yourself that you will probably be disappointed. I guess I would say that meditation is as much about unlocking your intuition as it is about anything else, so consciously trying to improve yourself through meditation does seem to miss the point of the practice.

andrei_says_ 9mo ago

Thinking about what meditation is, and practicing meditation are not the same. The thinking mind cannot simulate its effects. The thinking mind assumes it is the whole mind. Meditation reveals it to be a tiny subset. Which cannot experience or simulate its superset. A discussion at the level of this subset is by definition limited. Among other things, the practice changes the meaning of “I”.

etyhhgfff 9mo ago
Well there is metacognitive awareness allowing us to think and therefore speak about thinking on a meta level. However the absence of thinking is hard to describe.

ericmcer 9mo ago

I thought the entire point of meditating was to realize you don't need to constantly solve problems, not to solve all of them. Very western version of meditation to view it as a tool to achieve something with.

etyhhgfff 9mo ago
"Very western version of meditation to view it as a tool to achieve something with." Thats exactly what makes meditating so hard for westerners, just sitting, not actively doing anything, no external constant stimulation.

nextaccountic 9mo ago

I want to comment that in Buddhism, the role of meditation isn't (just) to reduce anxiety or manage emotion. Indeed if this was the role, then other techniques of anxiety reduction or emotion management could replace meditation. Instead, the ultimate role of meditation is to experience your inner reality. And it's really the experience that is important, just thinking about it doesn't have the same effect

krzat 9mo ago
So experiencing your inner reality is the final goal in itself? I thought that the point was to reduce suffering.
- nextaccountic 9mo ago
  You experience reality to understand the true nature of reality, to see things as they are. This is what leads to reduced suffering You also need to calm your mind, reduce your anxiety etc but as a prerequisite https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samatha-vipassan%C4%81 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samatha-vipassan%... Meditation as a form of relaxing is practicing Samatha, and meditation to see things as they are is Vipassana. in reality both work in tandem, but Vipassana is the goal. (Vipassana is Buddha's innovation here - meditation in other religions is more like Samatha) The main thing is that learning about the true nature of things at an intellectual level isn't enough in Buddhism. It's, like.. there are parts of your mind that are unaffected by what you learn intellectually, you need to actually experience things yourself to influence your unconscious mind

eskaytwo 9mo ago

Meditation has many techniques. Similar to how people have many different motivations and programs when they have a regular gym practice. Strength is different to agility is different to flexibility.

krzat 9mo ago

"there is no problem to solve" is a thought. It becomes insight if it actually feels true. "It feels like there is no problem to solve" is a synonym of being relaxed.

vjerancrnjak 9mo ago
Feeling is also a thought. All perceived sensory information is thought.