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To be fair - there's a massive different between focusing on something you're passinate about (like coding) and focusing on not thinking. Not thinking and letti

To be fair - there's a massive different between focusing on something you're passinate about (like coding) and focusing on not thinking. Not thinking and letting your mind relax is completely different from, and often way harder than, thinking about a passion. Jusy "getting in the flow" is not the point of most meditation.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ciex 14y ago
Please keep in mind that the flavour of meditation you are describing is not the only one. "[M]editation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration" Walsh & Shapiro (2006) "[M]editation is used to describe practices that self-regulate the body and mind, thereby affecting mental events by engaging a specific attentional set.... regulation of attention is the central commonality across the many divergent methods" Cahn & Polich (2006) The practice of 'coding in the zone' might as well achieve the same effect as traditional meditational practices and be called meditation on that ground. In fact, you are training the control of your attention with that practice.
- xorgar831 14y ago
  I'd agree for the most part. If it helps the person relax and promotes concentration, then that's good. And the more naturally it comes the better. A lot of meditation in western countries consists of people forcing themselves to sit and focus, then measuring the amount of time they sat as an accomplishment. It doesn't lead to any long term benefit though, and if really forced, it will actually have the opposite affect. EDIT: Actually beneficial mediation is something else, and the Tibetan traditions flat out understand it better than anyone, period, they're the Caltech or MIT. Other traditions are ok, but they're not the same caliber.
- wslh 14y ago
  I have similar deep experiences doing meditation related practices (Pranayama) and programming. This happened when I was focused on solving a single algorithm for long time. If I have to describe details about this time I can say that I was 18 years old, was doing my own parsing algorithms for a small language, and I debugged the algorithm in my head all the time.
freshhawk 14y ago
I think it's more convincing if you point out that the reason meditation is harder is the effort involved in pointing your thoughts back towards your breath or something else very simple. Flow is the state where it is no longer a struggle to control your attention. What you are paying attention to can require a very active mind. Mindfulness meditation involves practice at directing your attention, your focus is on meta-cognition. Your breath is often chosen because it requires no attention. It's boring. That makes it good practice at discarding all the other thoughts that come up and focusing your attention back where you want it to be. Sure, meditation is a broad term but this is at the core of the vast majority of what's called meditation. Some ideas involve meditation with a goal (considered attainable or just an asymptotic ideal at the end of the direction of improvement) of achieving a state like flow in this practice, so you no longer struggle to maintain your attention on nothing. Apparently extremely serene and calm and peaceful. Sounds wonderful. Flow is different from meditation, to paraphrase what ramblerman said in another comment: meditation is an exercise of directing attention. Being good at that can help you attain "flow" more easily in other activities. I know I've found meditation to seem to be good practice for when I want to focus my attention deeply.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ciex 14y ago

Please keep in mind that the flavour of meditation you are describing is not the only one. "[M]editation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration" Walsh & Shapiro (2006) "[M]editation is used to describe practices that self-regulate the body and mind, thereby affecting mental events by engaging a specific attentional set.... regulation of attention is the central commonality across the many divergent methods" Cahn & Polich (2006) The practice of 'coding in the zone' might as well achieve the same effect as traditional meditational practices and be called meditation on that ground. In fact, you are training the control of your attention with that practice.

xorgar831 14y ago
I'd agree for the most part. If it helps the person relax and promotes concentration, then that's good. And the more naturally it comes the better. A lot of meditation in western countries consists of people forcing themselves to sit and focus, then measuring the amount of time they sat as an accomplishment. It doesn't lead to any long term benefit though, and if really forced, it will actually have the opposite affect. EDIT: Actually beneficial mediation is something else, and the Tibetan traditions flat out understand it better than anyone, period, they're the Caltech or MIT. Other traditions are ok, but they're not the same caliber.
wslh 14y ago
I have similar deep experiences doing meditation related practices (Pranayama) and programming. This happened when I was focused on solving a single algorithm for long time. If I have to describe details about this time I can say that I was 18 years old, was doing my own parsing algorithms for a small language, and I debugged the algorithm in my head all the time.

freshhawk 14y ago

I think it's more convincing if you point out that the reason meditation is harder is the effort involved in pointing your thoughts back towards your breath or something else very simple. Flow is the state where it is no longer a struggle to control your attention. What you are paying attention to can require a very active mind. Mindfulness meditation involves practice at directing your attention, your focus is on meta-cognition. Your breath is often chosen because it requires no attention. It's boring. That makes it good practice at discarding all the other thoughts that come up and focusing your attention back where you want it to be. Sure, meditation is a broad term but this is at the core of the vast majority of what's called meditation. Some ideas involve meditation with a goal (considered attainable or just an asymptotic ideal at the end of the direction of improvement) of achieving a state like flow in this practice, so you no longer struggle to maintain your attention on nothing. Apparently extremely serene and calm and peaceful. Sounds wonderful. Flow is different from meditation, to paraphrase what ramblerman said in another comment: meditation is an exercise of directing attention. Being good at that can help you attain "flow" more easily in other activities. I know I've found meditation to seem to be good practice for when I want to focus my attention deeply.