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.
Sadly the Tao of Pooh does not outline the basic tenets of Daoism. As van Norden says in the chapter on the Daodejing in his Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy:
> The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff ... is a charming work that has attained a wide readership. There is nothing wrong with enjoying it for itself. But it reveals much more about how the Daodejing as been appropriated to illustrate Western Romanticism than it does about the Daodejing itself. (See later in this section for more on Romanticism).
and, later on, here's what he has to say about the appropriation of the Daodejing and Daoism for Romanticism:
> We see a similar trend in the West. In particular, contemporary Westerners often project onto the Daodejing the assumptions of Romanticism. In reaction against the emphasis on reason that was characteristic of the Enlightenment, Romanticism championed the importance and wisdom of one's passions. But the dichotomy of reason and passion is Western, not Chinese, and the individualism characteristic in some forms of Romanticism is quite alien to the Daodejing. Consequently, we should be on the lookout for how Romantic preconceptions can distort our appreciation of the text.
Sadly, there's not many good non-academic introductions to Daoism out there, and the most popular translation - Stephen Mitchell's - was done by someone who can't even read Classical Chinese, but thought his Zen teaching was a 'good enough' guide to allow him to translate it.
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All this is to say I'm glad the book worked for you, and helped you find peace. It's just not Daoism (nor is Alan Watts!)
I’ve had a similar experience with Taoism. It is a kind of tough nut to crack coming from Western cultures what with our extensive theologies, holy books, and prescriptivist religions. I highly recommend “The Way of Chuang Tzu” by Thomas Merton.
Perhaps this betrays some fundamental ignorance on my part, but I think understanding and internalizing the Taoist mindset makes meditation a little less relevant or necessary. Taoism IMO is the sublime wisdom of not attempting to be wise (usually manifesting as inane and unnuanced rules, or clever-sounding quotes) and not neuorotically attempting to conform to practices or ways of thinking forced on us by culture, tradition, ideology, etc. Meditation and mindfulness help incrementally in that pursuit but they are like climbing rungs of a ladder next to an elevator that Zhuangzi built for us.
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.
I think meditation is similar to physical exercise which you need to do a little bit frequently, to stay healthy.
You don't need to do sports but if you stop walking altogether your physical health deteriorates. Your joints get arthritic.
So the goal of meditation should not be some Cosmic Epiphany Truth or Satori or Nirvana or Samadhi. Those come and go. The goal is to keep your mind healthy, to get the toxins out of it by doing meditation not too much not too little.
Hmm, I guess I am one of those folks who are complete without knowing why or how, or maybe I do but cant be sure. At least for past decade and a half, before that I was just a big useless lost child (I see big children around a lot, some are nearing retirement).
Definitely no nurture, an average guy with slightly above average mind raised in former communist bloc, if that means anything to you (kids raised as obedient workers, no critical thinking, no strive for greatness, little self sufficiency and other real life skills, thank you soviet fucking russia union for destroying not only my parents lives and dreams). What I achieved in my life is beyond wildest dreams of my humble parents, but they had a nano fraction of my options.
One thing I have is self-discipline but that may not be related. Or maybe non trivial consumption of weed over past 2 decades in right moments.
I can empty my mind completely with a snap of a finger, and keep it so if I wish. Mindfulness is utterly boring to me as it does nothing since I am there on my own without even trying, just gets me very sleepy and decreases my heart rate to the point of being cold.
Mild extreme sports make the 'feeling whole' part work. Currently probably rock climbing is #1 with a great buddy (american teacher), followed by my eternal struggle to get finally proficient at paragliding. Small kids give a lot of other fulfilment and take away easy sleep and some mental stability, thats a mixed blessing to be polite.
just a few thoughts. it is possible that your discovery of mindfulness and meditation was essential to understand this tao of pooh and make it work for you.
i also notice that there are people who seem to be blessed with a natural ability to be mindful. those people also tend to be charismatic, happy most of the time, full of intrinsic motivation and energy. all those things i'm not ... lol. my understand is that those people experienced no or only mild childhood trauma and grew up with strong and loving bonds to their parents and siblings. this idea is founded on my readings of dr gabor mate. those people do not carry any pain or if they do they have very well developed mental strategies to mange it. if you don't - like me again - then you will always have an inclination to distract yourself from yourself and your emotional experience - the opposite of mindfulness. as a matter of fact this distraction is becoming the default mental strategy to cope with this always present nagging nervousness and irritation. #adhd
> or has had experience with both that and taoism and what that journey was like for you.
When I was in early high school/late middle school, I stumbled upon the Tao Te Ching at the local library. I remembered not understanding much, and the only memory I have left is the peculiar, tai-ji like visual symmetry of the first two (Chinese) sentences (it was one of those books with the source one one side, and a translation on the next). Which definitely sparked a fierce interest in Chinese language/culture.
Other books like the Art of War were a breeze of fresh air: so much common sense.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
"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.
Could you give an example of beliefs/ideas you've let go of, or discovered can't be known to be true?
I've been trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of false beliefs. But while there are a lot of examples of this in psychotherapy and the mechanisms are well-documented, it's hard to find first-person accounts regarding meditation that aren't just generalities. So I'd find it really valuable to hear some examples of anything concrete/practical -- of course if it's nothing too personal or private.
> 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.
Turns out a lot of humans bond over mutually shared grasping, so it can make you 'not fun at parties' when they're harrumphing about things that Do. Not. Matter. and are put off by you not dog-piling.
Most people wonder how the Dalai Lama can be so serene. I wonder how he can be so approachable.
I've always sort of intuitively done this since I was a kid (https://zchry.org/words/questioning-my-quantum-leap-an-ongoi...). I have zero experience with meditation in the traditional sense but I'm really interested in going down that path next as I try to broaden my scope.
> the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself
Fully agree although a lot of devotees of Ramana Maharshi said they fell into silence just sitting in his presence. Improbable but it would be hilarious if scientists could make little "mouna wifi hubs" where practitioners got a silence handicap by sitting around it.
In the end though, I'm also skeptical that anything about self-inquiry can be replicated by an additive approach.
can you provide some resources to understand this "advanced" meditation? my attempts with calm/headspace etc always stop at the same theme of 'concentrate on breathing, distractions are fine'.
I wanted to understand what is out there, especially outside of these apps and folks who pursue meditation seriously.
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?
> 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.
> 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.
I agree, but the question emerges "what is treatable?" Many of the thousands of causes of stress in modern life can't be changed by an individual: I can't unelect politicians I disagree with, clean up the air where I live, or make the roads I travel significantly less clogged with traffic. But I can change my reactions to these. Thich Nhat Hanh taught people 'to consider every red traffic light a Bodhisattva, teaching us to "stop and be here now"'. An individual can treat SOME causes: Disconnect from Twitter and nightly TV news, and if that's what you mean, I agree with you even more strongly. But for larger realities, "the social structures that cause so much of the stress", no immediate solutions are available to the individual. Stress reduction is a good way to go.
I personally think it's about the world becoming more and more uncertain. Everybody is supposed to switch careers a bunch of times during lifetime, everybody is expected to push their limits, everybody is expected to stay on top ever changing social norms.
It's just too much pressure. There is very little average Joe can do to have a fairly sure good living. While the system has a lot of opportunities for talented people, just getting by on working hard, being punctual, trustworthy and such, is increasingly hard.
As lord Vetinari says, people mostly don't want tomorrow to be better - they want it to be the same. It's more and more unlikely nowadays.
I am both amused and disgusted by this term. Why does everything nowadays have to generate profit or else it's worthless? I'd like to get off this capitalist roller coaster please.
As an adult with ADHD meditation is helping me greatly with some of my executive functions. That being said I don't use any apps as I despise my cell phone in general; It's just a constant stream of micro-aggressions and distractions.
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.
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EDIT because of the 'posting too fast rule (lame)' ;;
> 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.
Yet, if you cannot treat the illness treating the symptom is better than nothing.
The MAPS conference (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) was protested by indigenous people for colonizing their medicine practices. Their point was about what you're touching on here:
These tools were developed to address the problems of the world, not to play into the individualization of collective harm. They were for helping the world, not simply self.
A great test of whether or not these methods are colonized: does one come away with the ability to envision decolonial anticapitalist ways forward and then choose to enact them?
If not, probably colonized medicine.
Decontextualized wisdom is a form of ignorance and typically leads to harm.
> “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.
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.
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.
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.
Exactly. How many Westerners are trying to meditate without a conscious belief in a Higher Power, an Infinite Creator, God, or such? I wonder if there may be negative spiritual effects by employing meditation without seeking closeness with divinity.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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 ..
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]
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] everydayDonut|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dorchadas|2 years ago|reply
> The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff ... is a charming work that has attained a wide readership. There is nothing wrong with enjoying it for itself. But it reveals much more about how the Daodejing as been appropriated to illustrate Western Romanticism than it does about the Daodejing itself. (See later in this section for more on Romanticism).
and, later on, here's what he has to say about the appropriation of the Daodejing and Daoism for Romanticism:
> We see a similar trend in the West. In particular, contemporary Westerners often project onto the Daodejing the assumptions of Romanticism. In reaction against the emphasis on reason that was characteristic of the Enlightenment, Romanticism championed the importance and wisdom of one's passions. But the dichotomy of reason and passion is Western, not Chinese, and the individualism characteristic in some forms of Romanticism is quite alien to the Daodejing. Consequently, we should be on the lookout for how Romantic preconceptions can distort our appreciation of the text.
Sadly, there's not many good non-academic introductions to Daoism out there, and the most popular translation - Stephen Mitchell's - was done by someone who can't even read Classical Chinese, but thought his Zen teaching was a 'good enough' guide to allow him to translate it.
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All this is to say I'm glad the book worked for you, and helped you find peace. It's just not Daoism (nor is Alan Watts!)
[+] [-] opportune|2 years ago|reply
Perhaps this betrays some fundamental ignorance on my part, but I think understanding and internalizing the Taoist mindset makes meditation a little less relevant or necessary. Taoism IMO is the sublime wisdom of not attempting to be wise (usually manifesting as inane and unnuanced rules, or clever-sounding quotes) and not neuorotically attempting to conform to practices or ways of thinking forced on us by culture, tradition, ideology, etc. Meditation and mindfulness help incrementally in that pursuit but they are like climbing rungs of a ladder next to an elevator that Zhuangzi built for us.
[+] [-] lootsauce|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] galaxyLogic|2 years ago|reply
You don't need to do sports but if you stop walking altogether your physical health deteriorates. Your joints get arthritic.
So the goal of meditation should not be some Cosmic Epiphany Truth or Satori or Nirvana or Samadhi. Those come and go. The goal is to keep your mind healthy, to get the toxins out of it by doing meditation not too much not too little.
[+] [-] saiya-jin|2 years ago|reply
Definitely no nurture, an average guy with slightly above average mind raised in former communist bloc, if that means anything to you (kids raised as obedient workers, no critical thinking, no strive for greatness, little self sufficiency and other real life skills, thank you soviet fucking russia union for destroying not only my parents lives and dreams). What I achieved in my life is beyond wildest dreams of my humble parents, but they had a nano fraction of my options.
One thing I have is self-discipline but that may not be related. Or maybe non trivial consumption of weed over past 2 decades in right moments.
I can empty my mind completely with a snap of a finger, and keep it so if I wish. Mindfulness is utterly boring to me as it does nothing since I am there on my own without even trying, just gets me very sleepy and decreases my heart rate to the point of being cold.
Mild extreme sports make the 'feeling whole' part work. Currently probably rock climbing is #1 with a great buddy (american teacher), followed by my eternal struggle to get finally proficient at paragliding. Small kids give a lot of other fulfilment and take away easy sleep and some mental stability, thats a mixed blessing to be polite.
[+] [-] 2-718-281-828|2 years ago|reply
i also notice that there are people who seem to be blessed with a natural ability to be mindful. those people also tend to be charismatic, happy most of the time, full of intrinsic motivation and energy. all those things i'm not ... lol. my understand is that those people experienced no or only mild childhood trauma and grew up with strong and loving bonds to their parents and siblings. this idea is founded on my readings of dr gabor mate. those people do not carry any pain or if they do they have very well developed mental strategies to mange it. if you don't - like me again - then you will always have an inclination to distract yourself from yourself and your emotional experience - the opposite of mindfulness. as a matter of fact this distraction is becoming the default mental strategy to cope with this always present nagging nervousness and irritation. #adhd
[+] [-] varjag|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbivert|2 years ago|reply
When I was in early high school/late middle school, I stumbled upon the Tao Te Ching at the local library. I remembered not understanding much, and the only memory I have left is the peculiar, tai-ji like visual symmetry of the first two (Chinese) sentences (it was one of those books with the source one one side, and a translation on the next). Which definitely sparked a fierce interest in Chinese language/culture.
Other books like the Art of War were a breeze of fresh air: so much common sense.
[+] [-] joe__f|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rollinDyno|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rc-1140|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] manofmanysmiles|2 years ago|reply
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.”
[+] [-] NoZebra120vClip|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] neves|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergonaught|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mohave529|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] crazygringo|2 years ago|reply
I've been trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of false beliefs. But while there are a lot of examples of this in psychotherapy and the mechanisms are well-documented, it's hard to find first-person accounts regarding meditation that aren't just generalities. So I'd find it really valuable to hear some examples of anything concrete/practical -- of course if it's nothing too personal or private.
[+] [-] freitzkriesler2|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hinkley|2 years ago|reply
Most people wonder how the Dalai Lama can be so serene. I wonder how he can be so approachable.
[+] [-] oldstrangers|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curo|2 years ago|reply
Fully agree although a lot of devotees of Ramana Maharshi said they fell into silence just sitting in his presence. Improbable but it would be hilarious if scientists could make little "mouna wifi hubs" where practitioners got a silence handicap by sitting around it.
In the end though, I'm also skeptical that anything about self-inquiry can be replicated by an additive approach.
[+] [-] krzat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vram22|2 years ago|reply
Related:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Brunton
[+] [-] borg16|2 years ago|reply
I wanted to understand what is out there, especially outside of these apps and folks who pursue meditation seriously.
[+] [-] rwhyan|2 years ago|reply
Ultimately, unrelenting inquiry came to: "I am."
[+] [-] choxi|2 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] epiccoleman|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] lcuff|2 years ago|reply
I agree, but the question emerges "what is treatable?" Many of the thousands of causes of stress in modern life can't be changed by an individual: I can't unelect politicians I disagree with, clean up the air where I live, or make the roads I travel significantly less clogged with traffic. But I can change my reactions to these. Thich Nhat Hanh taught people 'to consider every red traffic light a Bodhisattva, teaching us to "stop and be here now"'. An individual can treat SOME causes: Disconnect from Twitter and nightly TV news, and if that's what you mean, I agree with you even more strongly. But for larger realities, "the social structures that cause so much of the stress", no immediate solutions are available to the individual. Stress reduction is a good way to go.
[+] [-] d3ckard|2 years ago|reply
I personally think it's about the world becoming more and more uncertain. Everybody is supposed to switch careers a bunch of times during lifetime, everybody is expected to push their limits, everybody is expected to stay on top ever changing social norms.
It's just too much pressure. There is very little average Joe can do to have a fairly sure good living. While the system has a lot of opportunities for talented people, just getting by on working hard, being punctual, trustworthy and such, is increasingly hard.
As lord Vetinari says, people mostly don't want tomorrow to be better - they want it to be the same. It's more and more unlikely nowadays.
[+] [-] beardedmoose|2 years ago|reply
I am both amused and disgusted by this term. Why does everything nowadays have to generate profit or else it's worthless? I'd like to get off this capitalist roller coaster please.
As an adult with ADHD meditation is helping me greatly with some of my executive functions. That being said I don't use any apps as I despise my cell phone in general; It's just a constant stream of micro-aggressions and distractions.
[+] [-] samstave|2 years ago|reply
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'
[+] [-] freilanzer|2 years ago|reply
Yet, if you cannot treat the illness treating the symptom is better than nothing.
[+] [-] crawfordcomeaux|2 years ago|reply
These tools were developed to address the problems of the world, not to play into the individualization of collective harm. They were for helping the world, not simply self.
A great test of whether or not these methods are colonized: does one come away with the ability to envision decolonial anticapitalist ways forward and then choose to enact them?
If not, probably colonized medicine.
Decontextualized wisdom is a form of ignorance and typically leads to harm.
[+] [-] thenerdhead|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] triyambakam|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmychoozyx|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] flatline|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterheater|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nuclearnice1|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] 5cott0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 5cott0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregfjohnson|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] 2bitencryption|2 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] deepGem|2 years ago|reply
- 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 ..
[+] [-] celtoid|2 years ago|reply
“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
[+] [-] aradox66|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sghiassy|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dottjt|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] currymj|2 years ago|reply
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.