Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a full-blown a cynic, but after OCD and anxiety got the best of me, my therapist recommended I try meditation to both start and end my day, I've started to notice huge improvements.

Can't recommend it enough. It's frustrating at first, the mind will just not stop wandering to worries every 10 seconds, but almost always on cue, the guided meditation would remind me "is you're mind wandering? no big deal, bring your focus back to your breath."

Here's where I recommend starting - http://www.nytimes.com/well/guides/how-to-meditate

There are a few moments now where my mind will go entirely blank, and it's the most relaxing feeling in the world. I still get too excited when that happens to keep it sustained, but I can sense it starting to work.

It's really helpful to check in for a few minutes throughout the day as well. Take something in visually, observe a feeling, listen to what your body is telling you.

Sounds hippy-dippy, sure, and I'm not pretending to be a doctor or make medical recommendations, but for me, It Just Works (TM)

Not hippy dippy at all. Consuming brain CPU, especially types of recursive CPU, is harmful to your mental health. It's also a big waste of time re-worrying about things, but still remains an option for many.

Remember, it's not essential to do no-thinking. Many types of advanced meditation are actually used for focused thinking, such as walking meditation. Just remember that "clinging" is our nature, to the core. Non-clinging is key. Let the thought come, then go as needed. Give it no CPU when it comes and then watch where it goes.

> no big deal, bring your focus back to your breath.

What is the difference between meditation and concentration?

> mind will just not stop wandering to worries every 10 seconds

Can't you just watch a movie( or something similar) to the same effect?

> Can't you just watch a movie( or something similar) to the same effect?

My experience with depression, no. Instead of movies, I played video games. To great effect, my mind was off the things that were bothering me. But it was merely delaying the inevitable, and the wasting of time only added to my stress as I tried to catch up on work (or school work) or lost sleep.

Meditation is (in many of these discussions) about mindfulness, not distracting yourself. You become aware of your feelings, thoughts, situation. Distracting yourself (by sex, alcohol, movies, games, etc.) is the opposite of this mindfulness and often works to set you back far more than the temporary reprieve you achieved from your primary condition.

1. Concentration is one edge of a two edged sword. The other edge is relaxation. You use a balance of concentration and relaxation (not too tense, not too relaxed) and rest your awareness on your object of meditation. The breath, in this case, can be your object. Simply rest your awareness on the breath. Use concentration to keep your mind from drifting, and use relaxation to keep your mind from getting too tense. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjelIPg3ys

2. If you're watching the movie whilst being aware that you're watching it (watching yourself watching the movie), that is meditation. Otherwise, you're simply distracted from your basic awareness.

I don't understand why these questions are being down-voted; I think they are pretty legit:

Is meditation just a shortcut to the flow state?

I'm also suspicious of guided meditations; I listen to audio books, how is a guided meditation different? Is a movie provably different?

I'm not dissing meditation; I do a breathe focused meditation nearly daily and I occasionally do guided meditations (I'll try these tonight), but there's a large number of practices that loosely fall into the category of meditation and also a large number of possibly worthwhile activities that are booted out. Most people (including me) never seem to question the why of this separation.

How long have you been meditating and how long do you meditate for in both of your daily sessions?

Not OP, but my advice would be to start small.

10 minutes is more than enough to start with. After doing it for awhile, you'll find yourself wanting to increase that time, but just do it gradually.. maybe work yourself up to 20 minutes, but if you ever feel like you don't have the time, just make sure you're doing at least 10 minutes.

When you've been doing it for a while your mind will be blank all the time, which sounds kind of bad but it's actually great, but the interesting thing is once you can control your own thoughts you'll start to realise that not all of them are yours.

People are like radios and broadcast their thoughts, and you'll be picking them up without knowing it. You'll also be able to project them i.e influence people. Those powers known as 'siddhis' are just a fraction of what you can attain.

Much like everything western though guided meditation is a horribly bastardised version of the real thing, if you're interested look into Raja Yoga when you're ready.

Edited: http://www.yogebooks.com/english/atkinson/1906-09rajayoga.pd...

This is the definitive course guide, the first lesson can take a year, 10 years, or a lifetime, don't go past the first lesson till you're ready. You'll know when you are.

I have lots of respect for spiritual people and adherents to both religious and non-religious supernatural practices, but I can't pretend that the association with supernatural beliefs didn't put me off getting into meditation and yoga for a long time, despite the very real empirical benefits. I understand that for you these beliefs (which, whether they are true or not, are not scientifically proven, which is important for me) increase the benefit you get from meditation, but for the non-spiritual these associations are a barrier to entry that must be overcome. I now meditate regularly and love it, but I still have some measure of resistance to yoga.

To quote a renown yogi, "mysticism starts where mastery ends."

Apart from calmness and concentration, a significant benefit provided by such practices is emotion control, meaning you can choose the emotion you want to experience. Not only stimulus and reaction decouple, but you conciously produce stimulus, and choose reactions to foreign stimuli. This concept of real choice is hard to imagine for those who haven't experienced it.

so...why do you call it "supernatural" practice? if you admit that there are very real, empirically verifiable benefits and results, then doesn't that make it part of nature? where's the "super" coming from?

you say "these beliefs are not scientifically proven, which is important for me". What constitutes scientific proof? what do you suppose ought to be proved, that isn't proved? You already admit that there are very real benefits.

A followup question for you: if you meditate regularly now, what do you meditate on? Mindfulness based stress reduction? That's like dipping your toes into an ocean.

I assume that by "supernatural" and "these beliefs", the above poster is referring to the stuff about

> People are like radios and broadcast their thoughts, and you'll be picking them up without knowing it.

> People are like radios and broadcast their thoughts, and you'll be picking them up without knowing it.

I interpreted that sentence as stating that people absorb thoughts and ideas via communication with other people expressing their views. The process of adopting an idea can often be a subconscious one. On more than one occasion, I’ve had friends impart to me some useful piece of knowledge, an interesting piece of trivia or some observation about the world, only for me to point out to them that it was me that shared those thoughts with them in the first place.

It’s useful to understand the source of my thoughts but for my own part, if my memory works at all, it’s doing well to retain thoughts, knowledge or ideas. I’m doing very well if I can also remember the source of the thought. My interpretation of the quoted sentence was that meditation would help one achieve that awareness.

I'm sorry, but your interpretation is simply wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhi

> Siddhis are spiritual, paranormal, supernatural, or otherwise magical powers, abilities, and attainments that are the products of spiritual advancement through sādhanās such as meditation and yoga.

Incidentally, these are some siddhis mentioned in that article:

* Reducing one's body to the size of an atom

* Expanding one's body to an infinitely large size

* Becoming infinitely heavy

* Becoming almost weightless

* Hhaving unrestricted access to all places

* Realizing whatever one desires

* Possessing absolute lordship

* The power to subjugate all

* Knowing the past, present and future

* Tolerance of heat, cold and other dualities

* Knowing the minds of others and so on

* Checking the influence of fire, sun, water, poison, and so on

* Remaining unconquered by others

that's a remarkably similar idea to what Jung called the collective unconscious. is that also a "supernatural" theory? or just psychology?

It depends. Does Jung's idea depend on mind reading? If so, then yes, it would be supernatural.

> When you've been doing it for a while your mind will be blank all the time

As others have suggested, this is hyperbole, verging on proselytising. Whilst there is rigorous scientific evidence for the therapeutic benefits of mindfulness, "blank minds" and other exotic states are anecdotes from those heavily invested in particular religious systems. I have no reason to disbelieve the less fantastical claims such as a blank mind, but I see absolutely no evidence to suggest that they are an inevitable and universal climax of those who practice for long periods.

I think it would be better restated as 'when you've been doing it for a while you can make your mind blank all the time.'[0]

But it turns out that even though this can be really peaceful, it is not as useful as keeping your mind just at the threshold of the blankness, with just enough thoughts and sensations left.[1]

Why? Because you can use this state to investigate the workings of the mind, and to start to see how sensations cause thoughts, which can cause further thoughts and on and on etc. [2]

Meditation in many Buddhist traditions is to be used as a tool of investigation. It makes the mind just calm enough to enable you to study it. It is a form of introspective psychology.

An analogy from fluid dynamics: It can be almost impossible to predict the behaviour of a turbulent fluid, in fact this is one of the few remaining unsolved problems of classical mechanics. But we do have laws for laminar flows.

In the same way, calming the mind just enough, can be a great way to learn more about its workings. And having experiential insight into how your mind works, not book knowledge, literally can change your life. I know it has changed mine.

[0] The four 'Jhanas' (http://www.imsb.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FourJhanas.pd...)

[1] Access concentration.

[2] Dependent co-arising. (Great analogy on that here: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/resona...)

I'd be happy enough with increased focus and less anxiety: that's all I'm aiming for as a daily meditator.

Siddhis and the rest of it I believe as much as I believe in God (not at all).

If this were true I'd expect to see yogis running the world.

Instead, running the world are people who I suspect aren't much into meditation.

Running the world is quite troublesome, and usually, motivated by qualities like greediness, jealousy, &c. Those qualities are very first ones to avoid as you start getting into mindfulness state. Hence even with superpowers (especially with those) yogis should more likely stay away from running the world, just by nature of the things.

Perhaps the overlap between people who meditate and sociopaths is low.

Why would yogis want to run the world?

I don't think the parent said he wanted yogis to run the world.

I believe he said that if yogis could really project their thoughts, it would be a super-power which would enable them to run the world.

The conclusion is that since they do not run the world, they likely do not possess such super-powers.

I do not believe that one can achieve supernatural powers with meditation either (for I have not seen someone with those).

Assuming they have such superpowers, they also need the desire to run the world. Hence, this way of concluding that they do not possess such powers does not seem right.

I like this mental exercise.

I agree that it is possible that they have the mental projection superpower and no desire to run the world. That would make sense, at least from my cursory knowledge of yogis :).

However, their philosophy has a central tenet of minimizing suffering. Wouldn't they use their superpower to eliminate suffering to any extent possible?

And a counter-point to that is, what if they do have the superpower, and they do use it, and that is why there is less suffering in the world than there otherwise would be.

It looks like what we need is a double-blind study.

you're not doing meditation any favors by promoting it in this light.

what's the problem? the concepts in that first lesson on the link/pdf Cozumel shared seem pretty relevant to someone learning the basics of meditation.

Saying it gives you the ability to read minds and inject thoughts into other peoples' minds puts it in the same category homeopathy.

ok maybe not the siddhis related stuff ;-)

what favors is it due? how would you promote it?

This is religious proselytizing.

Meditation definitely has its merits, but...

> People are like radios and broadcast their thoughts, and you'll be picking them up without knowing it. You'll also be able to project them i.e influence people. Those powers known as 'siddhis' are just a fraction of what you can attain.

...now you make it sound like NLP.

What is language except a means to project your thoughts into the minds of others?

NLP literature sometimes makes claims that aren't robustly supported, but it's not really that exotic of an idea.

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