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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 f

by 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.

by ciex 14y ago

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.