Comment by aaimnr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aaimnr | Hacker News Reader

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The fact that meditative absorptions are a type of Flow experience (very unique one, see below), doesn't mean that any Flow state is meditation. These games may very well induce a flow state (as Flappy Birds can, if you're good at it), but it doesn't make it meditation.

Here's a quote from Culadasa, a neurophysiologist and an adept meditator:

"What sets both Meditative Joy and flow apart from ordinary Joy is that it is an internally generated state of mind, providing its own satisfaction independently of external rewards.

What sets Meditative Joy apart from other forms of flow is that the flow-inducing activity takes place entirely within the mind itself, and the skill being applied is concentration, rather than concentration arising secondary to the focused application of other skills."

The following handout he wrote about flow, meditation and meditative joy may help appreciate the difference (see page 6 for dicussion on Flow): http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/Meditation%20an...

PS. I don't mean to say that these games are not useful, in fact knowing the feeling of 'external flow' probably helps in learning meditation. Meditation as a skill, however, has a better 'knowledge transfer' factor, meaning that with time you can learn to sustain concentration while immersed in daily life activities.

> What sets Meditative Joy apart from other forms of flow is that the flow-inducing activity takes place entirely within the mind itself, and the skill being applied is concentration, rather than concentration arising secondary to the focused application of other skills."

I am really not sure this is true. Here is a quote from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind:

> If you are concentrated on your breathing you will forget your- self, and if you forget yourself you will be concentrated on your breathing. I do not know which is first. So actually there is no need to try too hard to be concentrated on your breath- ing. Just do as much as you can. If you continue this practice, eventually you will experience the true existence which comes from emptiness.

So yes, you induce meditation by choosing (in your mind) to watch your breath but that's no different from choosing to play a game. Furthermore you're merely watching your breath, not controlling it. So it could be argued that the concentration arises secondary like it does when you focus on a game.

But then again arguing takes places on a dualistic level, so what's the point (in this specific case)?

I don't see how the quote from Suzuki contradicts Culadasa. When concentrating on the breath, the skill is the concentration itself (in fact Culadasa teaches breath meditation). You're not trying to do something specific with the breath, you're "doing" something only with attention and awareness. You're learning to control the "muscle" of attention and awareness. And samadhi or meditative state, is nothing more than stable attention and powerful awareness. So there's no intermediate action involved.

You confirm it yourself by pointing out that one merely 'watches' the breath. Indeed proper watching _is_ the skill of concentration. On the other hand you can't play Flappy Birds by merely watching it, you have to actually play it. In this case concentration arises as a consequence of repetitively and successfully achieving the game goal (not hitting the pipes). In case of meditation the reward and meditative joy are the results of the concentration (successfully sustaining attention) itself.

The handout linked above and Culadasa's book explain it in great detail.

BTW I agree that the distinction is far from trivial.

There is an important difference between meditating on a game and meditating on your breath: meditating on your breath is boring --- and that boredom is good for you. According to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche "Boredom is part of the discipline of meditation practice" [1].

As for the relevance of arguing / debating: not everything is non dual (in a manner of speaking). In Tibetan Buddhism this is reflected in the Two Truth doctrine, where there are two levels of truth: relative and absolute. Absolute is non-dual, whereas the relative is where we live our dualistic lives. Tibet has a long history of debate.

[1] http://www.lionsroar.com/chogyam-trungpa-on-cool-boredom/ [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-nichtern/boredom-as-medi...

Thanks for your quote from Chogyam Trungpa, I am going through his lectures with a former student of his. Great stuff.

>So yes, you induce meditation by choosing (in your mind) to watch your breath but that's no different from choosing to play a game.

It's not a coincidence that so many schools decided to teach focusing on the breath.

Your breath is correlated strongly with both your metal state and physical state.

Also your breath is always with you, and can be put under the control of your will, or become completely automatic. (New meditators often struggle with this.)

Because of this it makes a uniquely useful focus for meditation.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapanasati

"Also your breath is always with you, and can be put under the control of your will, or become completely automatic. (New meditators often struggle with this"

This is the single, best reason to use it after how tied it is with unconscious mind. You can't loose your breath except for brief moments. ;)

>But then again arguing takes places on a dualistic level, so what's the point (in this specific case)?

Meditation is a skill. To practice any skill, you first have to understand it conceptually. So clear understanding is important.

On the other hand speaking of duality vs non-duality doesn't seem to be useful, as it's something one has to realise non-conceptually. The only way to do it is through practice. Which, again, to be done correctly requires some proper conceptual understanding (of the practice method, not of the end goal).

That's why sometimes it's useful to argue about such distinctions.

>that's no different from choosing to play a game

There's a dramatic difference - when playing a game you're reacting to the game. When meditating your entire goal is to not react.

The similarities are only in that in both cases you cease to react to your own internal state - the most harmful of all reactions because it forms self-reinforcing feedback loops.

> There's a dramatic difference - when playing a game you're reacting to the game. When meditating your entire goal is to not react.

My take is that "no reaction" is just another way of reacting.

Only in the same way that rest is another way of motion. You could say that, but ignores important distinction.

Interesting to see a reference to Culadasa on HN. I discovered his site in 2013 and listened to almost his entire podcast archive. For more than a year I meditated 1+ hours every day, but ultimately I didn't make much progress according to the 10 stages model he has laid out. I ended up getting skeptical/discouraged and stopped meditating regularly. How about you?

It helped me to clarify some stuff in my practice, but I also understand how his goal oriented approach may be detrimental for personalities that put too much effort in concentration (applies to most 'discursive' types here on HN, including me).

Will be happy to answer any questions you have if you describe me your practice and problems you're having via email (@ at my profile) - I've been practicing with several teachers / approaches and having this wider perspective is quite helpful when you reach any significant block.

I agree with the other poster that going to retreat is a great way to jumpstart the practice - often our daily life is causing of so much constant stress that we have to step out of it to even notice it. When we see it coming back in low doses, we're more likely to understand the patterns and what our personal mental antidote should look like.

BTW, there's a reddit group dedicated to his book, quite helpful.

I've had severe attention issues, that I always thought it was caused by ADHD, but after many years of trying everything I could possibly think of. I realized it was caused by anxiety deeply rooted in painful emotional experiences which influenced how I reacted to stimuli. I realized this after a reading a book on trauma. After suffering from terrible panic attacks for many months. and tirelessly trying to meditate for many hours a day for months I wasn't seeing any progress. I still couldn't sleep, and felt like I would never be able to relax or focus on anything. My life completely changed after doing Neurofeedback training.

By far the most amazing technology available for improving the mental condition of human beings. There is a reason people can super focus on things they enjoy, your emotions are the guide to what you choose to put attention on. When you have nervous, anxious or negative reactions to anything because of past experiences and preconceived notions you cannot fully concentrate or go in and out of flow states.

You can use EEG sensors to see the reactions your brain has to any task, concentrating, reading comprehension or math problems. With the technology you can see how your brain is reacting, how it "focuses", how "calm/alert" it is and if its "daydreaming" and my major problem which was "busy-brain". When you can see and hear feedback, you can "feel" how flow/concentration are constantly being interrupted. Eventually you can train your brain get into these flow states, get into them faster and under stress. I am only 25% through all my sessions and I have just begun to feel and see the magic that is flow. You conscious mind just shuts off and you just "do it".

This is makes a huge impact of meditation as well, you can sit still and focus on your breath, but I find it far more effective to focus on your feelings. I try to guide them and bring them towards courage, passion, love and appreciation. Which brings them closer towards inspiration and happiness and a better functioning mind.

This is all just from physically/emotional painful experiences. So I guess just take with a grain of salt. But it's made huge differences in my physical/mental well-being.

> This is all just from physically/emotional painful experiences. So I guess just take with a grain of salt. But it's made huge differences in my physical/mental well-being.

Even perfectly 'healthy' human being will still have the layer of basic fear, whenever what he considers to be his core identity is under threat. In meditation everyone at some point needs to face it. So I wouldn't take what you're saying with a grain of salt - on the contrary, you may now have much greater clarity, as you had to be much more systematic and determined in your training.

I'd also love to hear more details about the tools you used. Are these consumer grade or hospital type of equipment?

How would one go about starting neurofeedback training? Can this be done at home by ourselves, if so what equipment do we need and what are its cost? Can you give any further pointers/links?

Hey, I've done some (supervised) teaching in Culadasa's method and I've done three retreats with him. We've got a Google Hangout every Tuesday where we discuss our practice and help people out who are stuck, and I think we have a great track record of getting people quickly un-stuck. Hit me up (email in my profile) if you're interested! @aaimnr you too, I'd love to hear your perspective.

Try Vipassana. Spending 10 days in retreat essentially takes you to the low-Earth orbit. From there you can decay back to Earth by doing nothing, or make better use of your new position through sustained meditation that you already know how to do.

Having the patience to mediate for the entire year without results pretty much dooms you to success.

I find they are nearly the opposite types of flow, at least if you are talking about mindfulness meditation.

Even with more zen type mediation where you try to empty your mind, it's still very different from a game flow state. The entire point of concentrating on your breathing is that your breathing is always there and is boring!

> The entire point of concentrating on your breathing is that your breathing is always there

Once you reach some level of mindfulness, you start to notice that your breath is very seldom there. There are all kinds of distractions that your attention is moving to. You may not notice it and 'think' that you are watching the breath, while in the center of your attention is eg. an internal monologue or concept of the breath or mental image of the breath (how you imagine it).

> The entire point of concentrating on your breathing is that your breathing is always there and is boring!

Here you go. If there's boredom, there's no breath. If your attention is on the breath there's no boredom. Boredom is a specific mental object (state and story) and it's a distraction from the breath. 'Breath' is a concept and looking at a concept is boring indeed. If you look at the actual breath, however, you see something that's never the same, constantly changing stream of sensations, reality behind the concepts. It's always amazing, it's more interesting than anything you can ever see in ordinary closed, story-driven state of mind.

I think we're trying to say the same thing, although you expressed it more expensively.

Concentrating on the breath is an excellent entry point to a set of much deeper and more interesting experiences.

A video game is not going to lead you to these, because it is too distracting/complex/engaging. The breath can. Boring was perhaps not a good way to express this, but it was simple, without the pull of these subtler sensations being noticeable there is no path forward.

This stream is exponentially less noticeable while doing something less boring, like gaming, to a beginner.

Perhaps "stimulating" is a better concept than "boring" to explain it?

I see what you mean and agree. Actually Culadasa has a very precise way of describing what happens in this case - sustaining attention on a single object allows peripheral awareness to be more clear (in a way that looking at the flagpole allows to see the wide patterns of clouds moving in the background). When attention moves, on the other hand, its changing content is too prominent and it foreshadows the awareness. And it's the awareness, not the attention, that allows us to see the entirety of the mind.

Also I meant that your breath is always there literally. No matter where your attention is, if you are alive you are breathing.

It is something available to all beginners at all times and works well as a place to refocus. And at that stage the main challenge is stopping constant mind wandering and narrativising.

dammit, "expansively"

great comment, thanks for sharing. this might be the first insight into meditation that gave me an actual idea of what it attempts to accomplish.

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