In my opinion, Meditation and Mindfullness are not the same thing.
Meditation is a state, where the mind is completely silent, the breath slows waaaay down, the heartbeat slows waaaay down. Slowly ever so slowly, some bliss starts to bubble up from within. It is the climax of one pointed attention. Few people who say they "meditate" are reaching that point since it requires years of sincere effort. In Yoga, meditation is known as Dhyana, or the state resulting from the mind becoming one pointed for 100 seconds. Samadhi, which is considered a state of deep bliss is considered reached when the mind becomes completely still for 1000 seconds.
Mindfullness, is the act of being more aware during daily activities. Like watching actions and interactions. There is a gradual tendency to modify behavior to being more calm, collected and centered which helps to go deeper when attempting to meditate. The mind is still active during mindfullness, but it is being directed or corrected as needed throughout the day.
Meditation helps to develop deeper Mindfullness and vice versa. Meditation is like taking a shower, whereas Mindfullness is avoiding rolling in the mud and getting dirty. It is important to keep in mind that Meditation is literally a state where the mind is free from thought and that all the "meditation practices and techniques" are just different paths of reaching that same place.
The misconception about meditation is that it requires one to give up everything and sit silently. This is not true in its entirety as it depends on how one interprets the word "meditation".
The meditation does not necessarily require you to give up one thing for the sake of another. The goal of the meditation is to "be in awareness" and you can achieve this same goal by being alert and aware with any activity your find yourself doing at any given moment. For example...
You are washing dishes but you are not really washing dishes because your mind is wandering with thoughts on what you need to do tonight at the place you need to visit. By the time your dishes are done, you have already planned for your future as your mind kept you busy with the thoughts of the future while you forgot what you were doing in the present (which is, washing dishes, which you really didn't).
The meditation is to be-in-present with whatever activity you do and love to do. If you had washed your dishes with full alertness and awareness, you would have achieved the same goal of meditation.
Let's go even further with another example.
You love to play music as your passion (or dance, or paint, or fill in the blank activity here) but you don't get enough opportunity in the day to do what you love to do more with passion. When you dance or sing or play music or run or exercise, you get the opportunity during that activity to forget yourself in the act (the subject merges into the object) and you become one with the reality, or you transcend that favorite activity by merging your self into it. That moment of transcendence is meditation, and you should find more opportunities to be in that meditation, in those moments.
Now, I am not suggesting that the type of meditation mentioned at the source is wrong or ineffective. What I am suggesting however is that people don't need to get stuck with one type of explanation of meditation because ultimately you can achieve the same goal by shifting the focus a bit.
I play a game that I call MIKADO where I do everything in the smoothest way trying to generate the smallest amount of sound (or any kind of wave). It comes from a blend of the child game, taichi, and drumming (drumming ask for fine perception of balance shifts and acceleration) and forces me to focus on everything at everytime. From the object of action, its surroundings, myself and my surrounding. Sound seems quite exponential in nature, to avoid noises you really need to be continuously slow, at any sudden movement you'll have a hint, unless you know a path were you can accelerate freely. I find it very relaxing, body and mind. The unawareness of accumulation of changes/accelerations are often the cause of anger, tireness, physical effort. By going smooth and slow, not slow actually, just at your own pace, things appear to cost far less and to give far more.
> "you become one with the reality, or you transcend that favorite activity by merging your self into it. That moment of transcendence is meditation"
I think this is a really interesting takeaway. I'd like to propose another type of activity which I think most people probably wouldn't group together with meditation: video games.
If you're an avid gamer, you'll know where I'm coming from. Whether you're playing an MMO or an immersive story-based game, or even a competitive real-time strategy game, you're well-versed in the feeling of being hyper-focused and "becoming one" with the reality in front of you. I rarely find my thoughts wandering while playing a game because there simply isn't an opportunity to let my brain drift this way, especially if it's a multiplayer game (think StarCraft II, for example).
Video games are, at least for me, an activity that allows me to be in complete awareness and be in the moment, at that helps me relax. Any time I get ridiculed for playing video games as an adult, this is my default explanation.
Parent has read "Miracle of Mindfulness," by Thich Nhat Hanh. He explains,
> If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future - and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.
I think you're making a good point. A lot of people reserve the word "mindfulness" for the sort of meditations you're describing here and use "meditation" for something more specific. But they're just names and I don't worry about them too much.
This all also reminds me that there are people who view "true yoga" as a sort of 24/7 meditation of movement, where the person strives to be aware of and deliberate about their movements all the time.
It's that feeling of being in the zone, completely forgetting about tomorrow's worries. But how does one raise awareness of being in the zone? It is that consciousness that I believe is paramount.
Training your consciousness by playing sports vs sitting in lotus is analogous to training your biceps by rowing vs biceps curls. The latter is more targeted, hence more effective.
When you do what you love and you completely emerge in it, yes, you do get in a state of bliss. But are you conscious of it? If not, which is mostly the case when you see a group of people play soccer in the park, then I don't think that is beneficial in the meditative sense. Your mind is still very much active.
The reason why the traditional way of meditation is so effective (and has therefore been used for millennia), is because it is quite hard to just sit still and do nothing. And really clear your mind of any thought whatsoever.
It is this mental challenge that will really train your consciousness and raise your awareness.
An easier way to get started is to combine the two methods, in the form of tai-chi. Get your exercise, while clearing your mind (and raise your awareness). It has helped me a great deal -- my life has been so much smoother after I trained Tai Chi for 4 intensive months in China.
Sorry, this is hard for me to understand. You seem to be saying--and I apologize if I misinterpret you--that it is better to focus on dishwashing than to use otherwise idle mental time to plan one's future.
Is that really the case? What gains could one expect from focusing on dishwashing, only to take time away from some other activity to plan one's future?
The idea behind meditation is not that difficult to understand. However, it is watered down quite a bit, especially if you learn it in a New Age environment. If you go back to the old schools of meditation, the techniques are very clear and straight forward and can be applied in daily life. It is really helpful though to know some meditation principles:
This is exactly how I lift weights / exercise, with complete focus and mindfulness.
While working out it is all I think about. I put on headphones with fast, heavy music and focus on the exercise I'm doing at that moment. I don't think about email in my inbox, I don't think about the errands I need to run, I don't talk to the other people around me. I think about my muscles contracting. I think about the extra 5 lbs I just added to the bar. I think about my form. I think about my breathing.
It is meditation as much as sitting on a pillow with legs crossed and eyes closed.
> The misconception about meditation is that it requires one to give up everything and sit silently. This is not true in its entirety as it depends on how one interprets the word "meditation".
That's right. There are prayer or mantra techniques that could be practiced anywhere, any time. In the Indian culture, there are people who say their mantra (sometimes silently, with no external sound or movement of the tongue) when they go about their daily business. In Orthodox cultures in Eastern Europe, there are people saying the Prayer of the Heart, again, during their daily routine (often silently, without any external sign of the practice).
There are also techniques of focusing your mind on various psycho-physiological aspects (breathing, various "energy centers", etc), but those may be a little harder to do while engaged in your normal routine.
There are also ways of maintaining a meditation-like, or "prayerful", state of mind and feeling during normal activities. This may require some prior experience.
In any case, yes, meditation does not mandate sitting down either on a chair or cross-legged, with eyes closed. Some techniques may actually require that posture, but others don't. It depends.
Excellent point! Be-in-present is the essence of some sects of Zen, especially in Japanese Zen. Sweeping the yard is not only to clean the yard. It is a practice, a meditation, to sweep the distracted thought of one's brain. Same as arranging flowers, etc. In this sense, it is the same as any other everyday manual work, like washing dishes, walking, etc.
"The misconception about meditation is that it requires one to give up everything and sit silently."
How I think it, giving up everything and sitting silently is a form of practice. You cannot be in-present with whatever activity you do if your mental muscle isn't toned for it.
"Meditation in action" is usually supported by "sitting meditation" like the author in the link above suggests.
In my own practice, I've noticed that when I skip sitting meditations, my attempts at staying aware through out the daily activities is harder than usual.
What the author calls "impulses" the Buddha called sankhara, or reactivity. The ones the OP is talking about are minor reactions.
These reactions do indeed impede our progress, as when our actions are driven by reaction we are not fully aware of what's going on around us. I first recognized the practical implications of this playing billiards - when I would strike a ball and miss, I would feel slightly dejected, and neglect to analyze what I just did to learn from it. When I would strike a ball and make it, I would feel slightly elated, and neglect to understand what I just did to learn from it.
My game got a lot better when I started playing the game, fascinated but detached from outcomes. There are a remarkable number of ways to strike a ball wrong - and it is interesting to consider why, having learned the game sufficiently, one would ever strike the ball wrong. Where does the variation creep in? Why, if I examine a table and decide to put the cue ball "just so", can I not do that? The answer, of course, is that there is countless non-verbal data that your body is sending you on each stroke - feedback from your bridge hand, the hand on the cue, even your stance and the feel of the felt all factor into this.
If you are attached to the outcome, all of this goes out the window. There is nervousness, fear, and excitement instead of systematic understanding.
I highly recommend to take a 10 days retreat in a Vipassana[1] meditation center. I know that 10 days is a lot to ask but in my opinion is well worth the effort.
I've been there twice in the past three years. I thought that I understood everything the first time. Boy, was I wrong.
I think the author has an excellent point about training one's ability to resist urges. Urges are spontaneous. They don't necessarily fit with our work flow. In fact, they interrupt it. Maybe a good analogy is the Time Management Matrix by Eisenhower (and popularized in Steven Covey's '7 Habits' book). Urges almost always present themselves as urgent tasks, but they aren't always important.
I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion that meditation will make you more productive. The evidence presented reminds me of a scenario from The Office, where Michael defends Monday morning movies by claiming they are more productive the rest of the day. Of course the reason they are more productive is because they have to be in order to recover the time spent watching a movie!
Rather, I think people don't realize how much spare time there is that gets wasted. Tasks expand to fill the time allotted. It's possible that meditation can help you identify those wasteful activities (urges) and address them appropriately.
Happens to me all the time. I am working on a piece of code in the afternoon, and can't move forward or looking to identify a bug or optimizing some algorithm - wasting hours. After a meditation session I walk back to the computer screen, take a seat, and my hand clicks around the tabs, my fingers scroll around, my eye catches one obscure line of code which is EXACTLY where the problem sits. I had this happen so many times, it's a given by now. The article (and I am sure all who do meditate) shares the same kind of experience.
I can second this. I can't begin to count the number of times that spending five minutes walking and with my mind on anything but a given problem has lead to the recognition of a major time-saving change in plans.
Think of it as pulling off of the highway for a minute to check your map instead of trying to unfold it in front of your steering wheel.
"And you will have experience that proves to you that the urge is only a suggestion. You are in control."
This is the most interesting part to me. Don't we always act on the urge that is strongest at the moment? If I decide to continue to meditate even though I have an urge to stop, doesn't that just mean that the urge to continue happened to be stronger than the urge to stop? Did I really get to choose which of those urges was strongest at that moment? Of course, this gets into questions of free will, which has been discussed on HN before. But when I meditate, it becomes very clear that I am definitely not in control of my thoughts, feelings, and urges. I see that I have multiple, competing urges at any given moment and that I don't control which urge emerges as the victor and compels me to act.
There's nothing in this article that isn't said better elsewhere. I'd recommend the (free, online) Mindfulness in Plain English: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html (also available as a "real" book).
I've been meditating pretty much every day for a few months now, and the thing that got me into it was getsomeheadspace.com
I've found it incredibly helpful - having a different guided meditation to do on the train every day makes the London commute, whilst not blissful, certainly better.
Yes, the emptying of the mind is the style of oriental meditation. In contrast, there is an old tradition of Christian meditation which attempts to fill the mind completely with one concept.
For example, in the medieval Lectio Divina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectio_Divina), one takes a few words of scripture and repeats them and considers them and ponders them for many minutes. The Cloud of Unknowing recommends doing something similar with the concept of God, or with a simple word such as "love".
This is actually a pretty tough mental exercise to do for even just 20 minutes.
There are two main forms of meditations, with a pretty much infinite number of variations: Concentration based meditation, and contemplative meditation. But it all bleeds together - contemplative practices require a certain level of concentration in order to be able to practice them.
Contemplative practices can range from meditation on a specific subject to general observation of your mind, thoughs, body, environment - this latter form is exemplified very well by mindfulness meditation (vipassana, from Theravada Buddhism, though when mindfulness meditation is taught in the West it is often pretty much cleansed of Buddhist material).
What the article describes sounds close to mindfulness meditation. In this case the goal is to quiet the mind, but not silence it or shut out external impression. The breath is used as an "anchor" that you return to in order to not let thoughts or feelings or observations drag you along, so that you can observe your thoughts in a detached manner, notice them, and move back to the breath.
Compare with some of the concentration practices which include focus on completely emptying your mind for extended periods of time.
I realize that I already replied to this once, but I wanted to make another response not directly related to my other one, and it seemed too lengthly to add as an edit. I apologize if this is frowned upon at HN.
In Soto Zen Buddhism, the point isn't necessarily to "quiet the mind," because that implies that the running rivers of thoughts somehow dry up and give rise to a silent stillness. This may be the goal of some forms of meditation, but it is not the interpretation of Zen.
Dogen Zenji preferred to use the term shikantaza, which means something like "nothing but to hit sit," or less literally, "just sitting." The understanding is that rejecting thoughts is the other side of the coin of embracing thoughts: both are rooted in attachment to the thought, identification of the thought with the illusion of self or ego.
The "purpose" of shikantaza, also known as zazen (sitting meditation), is to neither accept nor reject thoughts. Thus the mind isn't necessarily becoming "quiet," but rather the process of self-aggrandizement is discontinued.
It might seem like I'm nitpicking over your word choice, but Zen in particular is a school that is very focused on how language itself is rooted in the concept of "I" and our ego. You can contrast shikantaza to other forms of meditation that utilize a particular focus, such as an image, which is something that Zen would not generally endorse (for you would simply be displacing grasping at one thing with another thing).
Shikantaza is tied to "thusness," or being fully in the moment, which webwanderings above explains quite well.
When I was in college at the University of Pittsburgh, I took a fascinating class called "Mysticism: East and East" that compared the contemplative traditions of Yoga and Orthodox Christian hesychast prayer. As a practicing Buddhist at the time, it was an eye-opening class.
Now of course Orthodox hesychasm is about communion with a person, whereas eastern meditation is typically not (Pure Land schools of Buddhism are more in line with Judeo-Christian concepts of prayer, though). But I think that there is some common ground for dialogue, and perhaps this paper may be of interest to you or others who enjoyed the original article and are interested in other practices.
There are many techniques that use pure visualization - all in your mind. There are mantra (or prayer) techniques, that require repeating a certain formula, either out loud or silently (in your mind). There are devotional techniques where the practitioner is worshiping an image or a symbol of a deity (the deity itself being a metaphor of some aspect of consciousness states). There are the dancing dervishes. Goes on and on.
When I meditate concentrating on my breath,my mind interferes with my breathing and it becomes uncomfortable if I dont relax
I believe this acts as some negative feedback for the control freak self inside me. Every time I exert unnecessary control it becomes uncomfortable.
Meditating long enough may show me that the mind will wander in its own ways regardless of what I maybe doing at the moment, and its best for me to let it wander on its own ways and focus on what I am doing. Thus helping me understand that all the thoughts about ego, and judgements is just come process on the sidelines, and different from the core of me, the core that is focused on what I am doing.
This is the impression I have of where meditation is taking me.
What about comparative effectiveness? For example, if we did an experiment where we started subjects on the following regimes, which would have the greatest effects on impulse control:
1) Learning to program (assuming the subject is not already a coder
2) meditation
3) aerobic exercise
Then we would have to figure out ways to measure "impulse control."
Such a study would have a lot more credibility than the author's contention that "I control impulses while meditating; therefore, meditation makes me more productive."
One controls impulses during a wide variety of activities; the burden is on the pro-meditation crowd to provide evidence that meditation is an especially valuable form of practicing impulse control.
Some of you pointed out it's not easy to control/stop the mind, yes, that's very true, especially for some people. To solve that, I suggest to read Ekhart Tolle's The Power Of Now, I think it's the modern book that explains the orignal Zen in a easy-to-understand way.
I used to think/worry/imagine too much about the future, and thus missed every actual moment I was living in, and it made me unhappy. I was living like that since I was very young and until I read the book The Power Of Now. So I highly recommend it.
There was a study done by Sarah Lazar at Harvard Med a while back. They concluded that meditation can not only prevent age related cognitive decline, but it can actually physically reshape our brains, thickening our cortical structures. There's a TED video online, and the actual study is available online if anyone is interested (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16272874)
Jonathan Haidt, the author of one of my favorite books, "The Happiness Hypothesis," points out–based on extensive research–that there are only three ways to change "automatic reactions" to circumstances like a flooded kitchen...meditation, cognitive therapy, and Prozac. Meditation is an inexpensive and natural alternative to the other two, it's been around for thousands of years and there are no negative side effects.
I'm into the basic practice of mindfulness since years. I read research papers about it every month and also train people in mindfulness skills. Here is the essence of what I learned. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sspY43lxqhE&list=UUh-TdJw...
For casual meditation, all that has been pointed out here is fair and good.
But if you want to delve deep into meditation, then I seriously suggest that you look up MCTB - it talks about several of the dangers that lie in that path.
I'm seeing quite an interest here for the principles and techniques of meditation. Here's a link for some talks given by a wonderful teacher, on mindfulness/meditation and other topics.
[+] [-] up_and_up|13 years ago|reply
Meditation is a state, where the mind is completely silent, the breath slows waaaay down, the heartbeat slows waaaay down. Slowly ever so slowly, some bliss starts to bubble up from within. It is the climax of one pointed attention. Few people who say they "meditate" are reaching that point since it requires years of sincere effort. In Yoga, meditation is known as Dhyana, or the state resulting from the mind becoming one pointed for 100 seconds. Samadhi, which is considered a state of deep bliss is considered reached when the mind becomes completely still for 1000 seconds.
Mindfullness, is the act of being more aware during daily activities. Like watching actions and interactions. There is a gradual tendency to modify behavior to being more calm, collected and centered which helps to go deeper when attempting to meditate. The mind is still active during mindfullness, but it is being directed or corrected as needed throughout the day.
Meditation helps to develop deeper Mindfullness and vice versa. Meditation is like taking a shower, whereas Mindfullness is avoiding rolling in the mud and getting dirty. It is important to keep in mind that Meditation is literally a state where the mind is free from thought and that all the "meditation practices and techniques" are just different paths of reaching that same place.
[+] [-] webwanderings|13 years ago|reply
The meditation does not necessarily require you to give up one thing for the sake of another. The goal of the meditation is to "be in awareness" and you can achieve this same goal by being alert and aware with any activity your find yourself doing at any given moment. For example...
You are washing dishes but you are not really washing dishes because your mind is wandering with thoughts on what you need to do tonight at the place you need to visit. By the time your dishes are done, you have already planned for your future as your mind kept you busy with the thoughts of the future while you forgot what you were doing in the present (which is, washing dishes, which you really didn't).
The meditation is to be-in-present with whatever activity you do and love to do. If you had washed your dishes with full alertness and awareness, you would have achieved the same goal of meditation.
Let's go even further with another example.
You love to play music as your passion (or dance, or paint, or fill in the blank activity here) but you don't get enough opportunity in the day to do what you love to do more with passion. When you dance or sing or play music or run or exercise, you get the opportunity during that activity to forget yourself in the act (the subject merges into the object) and you become one with the reality, or you transcend that favorite activity by merging your self into it. That moment of transcendence is meditation, and you should find more opportunities to be in that meditation, in those moments.
Now, I am not suggesting that the type of meditation mentioned at the source is wrong or ineffective. What I am suggesting however is that people don't need to get stuck with one type of explanation of meditation because ultimately you can achieve the same goal by shifting the focus a bit.
[+] [-] agumonkey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aashay|13 years ago|reply
I think this is a really interesting takeaway. I'd like to propose another type of activity which I think most people probably wouldn't group together with meditation: video games.
If you're an avid gamer, you'll know where I'm coming from. Whether you're playing an MMO or an immersive story-based game, or even a competitive real-time strategy game, you're well-versed in the feeling of being hyper-focused and "becoming one" with the reality in front of you. I rarely find my thoughts wandering while playing a game because there simply isn't an opportunity to let my brain drift this way, especially if it's a multiplayer game (think StarCraft II, for example).
Video games are, at least for me, an activity that allows me to be in complete awareness and be in the moment, at that helps me relax. Any time I get ridiculed for playing video games as an adult, this is my default explanation.
[+] [-] starpilot|13 years ago|reply
> If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future - and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.
[+] [-] ambler0|13 years ago|reply
This all also reminds me that there are people who view "true yoga" as a sort of 24/7 meditation of movement, where the person strives to be aware of and deliberate about their movements all the time.
[+] [-] mck-|13 years ago|reply
Training your consciousness by playing sports vs sitting in lotus is analogous to training your biceps by rowing vs biceps curls. The latter is more targeted, hence more effective.
When you do what you love and you completely emerge in it, yes, you do get in a state of bliss. But are you conscious of it? If not, which is mostly the case when you see a group of people play soccer in the park, then I don't think that is beneficial in the meditative sense. Your mind is still very much active.
The reason why the traditional way of meditation is so effective (and has therefore been used for millennia), is because it is quite hard to just sit still and do nothing. And really clear your mind of any thought whatsoever.
It is this mental challenge that will really train your consciousness and raise your awareness.
An easier way to get started is to combine the two methods, in the form of tai-chi. Get your exercise, while clearing your mind (and raise your awareness). It has helped me a great deal -- my life has been so much smoother after I trained Tai Chi for 4 intensive months in China.
If you're interested, I blogged about that experience a while back: http://kuomarc.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/tai-chi-in-pursuit-o...
[+] [-] jemfinch|13 years ago|reply
Is that really the case? What gains could one expect from focusing on dishwashing, only to take time away from some other activity to plan one's future?
[+] [-] tylee78|13 years ago|reply
http://theravadin.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/surfing-on-the-wa...
http://theravadin.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/anussati-sinking-...
[+] [-] driverdan|13 years ago|reply
While working out it is all I think about. I put on headphones with fast, heavy music and focus on the exercise I'm doing at that moment. I don't think about email in my inbox, I don't think about the errands I need to run, I don't talk to the other people around me. I think about my muscles contracting. I think about the extra 5 lbs I just added to the bar. I think about my form. I think about my breathing.
It is meditation as much as sitting on a pillow with legs crossed and eyes closed.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|13 years ago|reply
That's right. There are prayer or mantra techniques that could be practiced anywhere, any time. In the Indian culture, there are people who say their mantra (sometimes silently, with no external sound or movement of the tongue) when they go about their daily business. In Orthodox cultures in Eastern Europe, there are people saying the Prayer of the Heart, again, during their daily routine (often silently, without any external sign of the practice).
There are also techniques of focusing your mind on various psycho-physiological aspects (breathing, various "energy centers", etc), but those may be a little harder to do while engaged in your normal routine.
There are also ways of maintaining a meditation-like, or "prayerful", state of mind and feeling during normal activities. This may require some prior experience.
In any case, yes, meditation does not mandate sitting down either on a chair or cross-legged, with eyes closed. Some techniques may actually require that posture, but others don't. It depends.
[+] [-] jamesli|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zabar|13 years ago|reply
I've been playing guitar (blues improv) long before I started meditating, and I really noticed the similarities in the state of mind it put you in.
I've been an insomniac for a long time and meditating did help me a lot. Be it playing guitar, sitting or doing yoga.
[+] [-] dscrd|13 years ago|reply
How I think it, giving up everything and sitting silently is a form of practice. You cannot be in-present with whatever activity you do if your mental muscle isn't toned for it.
[+] [-] vikas5678|13 years ago|reply
In my own practice, I've noticed that when I skip sitting meditations, my attempts at staying aware through out the daily activities is harder than usual.
[+] [-] KirinDave|13 years ago|reply
> Research shows that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance...
Great. Yes. Impulse control is key. Delayed gratification is part of how we define higher intelligence.
Meditation has what do with this, exactly?
> How [does meditation help]? By increasing your capacity to resist distracting urges.
This entire article is predicated by this leap of faith, which as far as I can see has little to no justification besides, "Of course it does!"
> Meditation teaches us to resist the urge of that counterproductive follow through.
One cannot just say things over and over to make them true.
[+] [-] javajosh|13 years ago|reply
These reactions do indeed impede our progress, as when our actions are driven by reaction we are not fully aware of what's going on around us. I first recognized the practical implications of this playing billiards - when I would strike a ball and miss, I would feel slightly dejected, and neglect to analyze what I just did to learn from it. When I would strike a ball and make it, I would feel slightly elated, and neglect to understand what I just did to learn from it.
My game got a lot better when I started playing the game, fascinated but detached from outcomes. There are a remarkable number of ways to strike a ball wrong - and it is interesting to consider why, having learned the game sufficiently, one would ever strike the ball wrong. Where does the variation creep in? Why, if I examine a table and decide to put the cue ball "just so", can I not do that? The answer, of course, is that there is countless non-verbal data that your body is sending you on each stroke - feedback from your bridge hand, the hand on the cue, even your stance and the feel of the felt all factor into this.
If you are attached to the outcome, all of this goes out the window. There is nervousness, fear, and excitement instead of systematic understanding.
[+] [-] ricvg|13 years ago|reply
I've been there twice in the past three years. I thought that I understood everything the first time. Boy, was I wrong.
[1] http://www.dhamma.org/
[+] [-] dkokelley|13 years ago|reply
I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion that meditation will make you more productive. The evidence presented reminds me of a scenario from The Office, where Michael defends Monday morning movies by claiming they are more productive the rest of the day. Of course the reason they are more productive is because they have to be in order to recover the time spent watching a movie!
Rather, I think people don't realize how much spare time there is that gets wasted. Tasks expand to fill the time allotted. It's possible that meditation can help you identify those wasteful activities (urges) and address them appropriately.
[+] [-] tylee78|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thirdtruck|13 years ago|reply
Think of it as pulling off of the highway for a minute to check your map instead of trying to unfold it in front of your steering wheel.
[+] [-] ambler0|13 years ago|reply
For anyone interested in the science, I have found lots of good articles by subscribing to this mailing list: http://www.mindfulexperience.org/newsletter.php
The ideas have been around forever, but scientists have really taken to testing them in recent decades.
[+] [-] qbit|13 years ago|reply
This is the most interesting part to me. Don't we always act on the urge that is strongest at the moment? If I decide to continue to meditate even though I have an urge to stop, doesn't that just mean that the urge to continue happened to be stronger than the urge to stop? Did I really get to choose which of those urges was strongest at that moment? Of course, this gets into questions of free will, which has been discussed on HN before. But when I meditate, it becomes very clear that I am definitely not in control of my thoughts, feelings, and urges. I see that I have multiple, competing urges at any given moment and that I don't control which urge emerges as the victor and compels me to act.
[+] [-] ta12121|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevTheDev|13 years ago|reply
I've found it incredibly helpful - having a different guided meditation to do on the train every day makes the London commute, whilst not blissful, certainly better.
[+] [-] stephth|13 years ago|reply
From what I've heard so far, meditation is based on focusing on your body in order to quiet your mind. Are there other schools/techniques?
[+] [-] Dove|13 years ago|reply
For example, in the medieval Lectio Divina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectio_Divina), one takes a few words of scripture and repeats them and considers them and ponders them for many minutes. The Cloud of Unknowing recommends doing something similar with the concept of God, or with a simple word such as "love".
This is actually a pretty tough mental exercise to do for even just 20 minutes.
[+] [-] vidarh|13 years ago|reply
Contemplative practices can range from meditation on a specific subject to general observation of your mind, thoughs, body, environment - this latter form is exemplified very well by mindfulness meditation (vipassana, from Theravada Buddhism, though when mindfulness meditation is taught in the West it is often pretty much cleansed of Buddhist material).
What the article describes sounds close to mindfulness meditation. In this case the goal is to quiet the mind, but not silence it or shut out external impression. The breath is used as an "anchor" that you return to in order to not let thoughts or feelings or observations drag you along, so that you can observe your thoughts in a detached manner, notice them, and move back to the breath.
Compare with some of the concentration practices which include focus on completely emptying your mind for extended periods of time.
[+] [-] muraiki|13 years ago|reply
In Soto Zen Buddhism, the point isn't necessarily to "quiet the mind," because that implies that the running rivers of thoughts somehow dry up and give rise to a silent stillness. This may be the goal of some forms of meditation, but it is not the interpretation of Zen.
Dogen Zenji preferred to use the term shikantaza, which means something like "nothing but to hit sit," or less literally, "just sitting." The understanding is that rejecting thoughts is the other side of the coin of embracing thoughts: both are rooted in attachment to the thought, identification of the thought with the illusion of self or ego.
The "purpose" of shikantaza, also known as zazen (sitting meditation), is to neither accept nor reject thoughts. Thus the mind isn't necessarily becoming "quiet," but rather the process of self-aggrandizement is discontinued.
It might seem like I'm nitpicking over your word choice, but Zen in particular is a school that is very focused on how language itself is rooted in the concept of "I" and our ego. You can contrast shikantaza to other forms of meditation that utilize a particular focus, such as an image, which is something that Zen would not generally endorse (for you would simply be displacing grasping at one thing with another thing).
Shikantaza is tied to "thusness," or being fully in the moment, which webwanderings above explains quite well.
[+] [-] muraiki|13 years ago|reply
I don't really know how to present a concise summary of the class, but I did find this paper by my teacher which sets forth an overview: http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/ft.aspx?id=0350-08610802171B
Now of course Orthodox hesychasm is about communion with a person, whereas eastern meditation is typically not (Pure Land schools of Buddhism are more in line with Judeo-Christian concepts of prayer, though). But I think that there is some common ground for dialogue, and perhaps this paper may be of interest to you or others who enjoyed the original article and are interested in other practices.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|13 years ago|reply
There are many techniques that use pure visualization - all in your mind. There are mantra (or prayer) techniques, that require repeating a certain formula, either out loud or silently (in your mind). There are devotional techniques where the practitioner is worshiping an image or a symbol of a deity (the deity itself being a metaphor of some aspect of consciousness states). There are the dancing dervishes. Goes on and on.
[+] [-] hntester123|13 years ago|reply
Some interesting links there.
Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation
[+] [-] demigod|13 years ago|reply
I believe this acts as some negative feedback for the control freak self inside me. Every time I exert unnecessary control it becomes uncomfortable.
Meditating long enough may show me that the mind will wander in its own ways regardless of what I maybe doing at the moment, and its best for me to let it wander on its own ways and focus on what I am doing. Thus helping me understand that all the thoughts about ego, and judgements is just come process on the sidelines, and different from the core of me, the core that is focused on what I am doing.
This is the impression I have of where meditation is taking me.
[+] [-] tryitnow|13 years ago|reply
Then we would have to figure out ways to measure "impulse control."
Such a study would have a lot more credibility than the author's contention that "I control impulses while meditating; therefore, meditation makes me more productive."
One controls impulses during a wide variety of activities; the burden is on the pro-meditation crowd to provide evidence that meditation is an especially valuable form of practicing impulse control.
[+] [-] edwinyzh|13 years ago|reply
I used to think/worry/imagine too much about the future, and thus missed every actual moment I was living in, and it made me unhappy. I was living like that since I was very young and until I read the book The Power Of Now. So I highly recommend it.
[+] [-] rohun_ati|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianmcdonough|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tehayj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandGorgon|13 years ago|reply
But if you want to delve deep into meditation, then I seriously suggest that you look up MCTB - it talks about several of the dangers that lie in that path.
www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB
[+] [-] natex|13 years ago|reply
http://www.audiodharma.org/