Comment by cJ0th | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cJ0th | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

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