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Comment by _nodg | Hacker News Reader

I'd say meditation is the inverse of anxious mind wandering. I've tried a few techniques, and Vipassana is to me the most interesting. There's a _little_ bit of buddhist dogma which comes with most books / lessons, but that's easily ignored - otherwise it's zero woo: the 99% core of what is taught is psychology and practical techniques. The practice itself involves balancing concentration with active awareness / "mindfulness" - once you've got a handle on it, it's a robust technique for staying on top of stress, among other benefits.

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It is the content of the dreams which is the inverse of the anxious mind-wandering.

During anxious mind-wandering situations which demand avoidant behaviour enter the mind. For example, an individual with obsessive compulsive disorder may visualise that they are contaminated (imagined experience) and therefore must wash their hands (the avoidant action; Mcguire et al., 1994). Alternatively, an individual with social anxiety disorder might im-agine being in a conversation and having nothing to talk about (imagined future scenario) and therefore will avoid entering a conversation (avoidant action; Richards, 2013).

However in dreams I am suggesting that the situations imagined call for un-avoidant behaviour. For example Tim's dream in the paper:

> Tim’s father gives him a large volume of prescription drugs which he knows could kill him if he takes them all. Tim’s father wants him to swallow all the pills at once. Tim does not want to! However, he swallows the pills without protest.

In this situation it is clear that avoiding the confrontation and swallowing the pills is not a sensible decision. The situation calls for un-avoidant behaviour (saying no to his father). It is in this way that I am arguing that dreaming is the inverse of anxious mind-wandering.

It is interesting that those who do a lot of mediation have been seen to be less reactive to norepinephrine (a neurotransmitter associated to stress).

> It is in this way that I am arguing that dreaming is the inverse of anxious mind-wandering.

I am still a bit uncertain what you mean with "this way". Are you saying that anxious mind-wandering typically results in a pro-active reaction, whereas in the dream one is passive? That is: an appropriate response and an inappropriate response to the imagined scenarios? (note: this is not the same as whether the imagined scenarios themselves are appropriate)

> It is interesting that those who do a lot of mediation have been seen to be less reactive to norepinephrine (a neurotransmitter associated to stress).

Mediation or meditation?

I hope this response is not too confusing, but for the moment let's remove behaviour and focus on the situation.

Some imagined situations create an urge to take avoidant action. For example, let's say you are in a queue of a rollercoaster, but you have a fear of them - you might imagine it getting stuck with you upside down, or you might imagine yourself falling out of the rollercoaster. These are bad futures, and they make you want to take behaviour to AVOID the rollercoaster (like don't get on it in the first place!). If you get out of the queue these scenarios will leave your mind.

In dreaming, the situations are ones where instead of making it obvious that you should avoid something, they make it obvious that you should confront something. Confront is a very delicate word to use, as obvious confrontation (e.g., arguing instead of being passive) is one form of it, but so is being boring if you fear that others will ignore you (by being boring you are confronting the fear that you will be ignored unless you perform).

For example, Curtly's dream from the paper:

> Curtly is in a shopping mall. A young child comes up to Curtly and demands his wallet and phone. Curtly does not want to hand over his possessions, but he does. The young child stands near Curtly with Curtly’s belongings in front of him (accessible to Curtly should he decide to try and take them back).

Having your possessions stolen warrants a confrontational response. This is especially so as the person doing the stealing is a child, as it will be safe to respond with confrontation (the child cannot beat you up!). You can see that, in the opposite way of anxious mind-wandering, this dream situation does not demand avoidant behaviour.

Does that make more sense?

I think I get it, but I'd suggest sticking with the same example when explaining the confrontational aspect of it. When you switch contexts it makes it hard to imagine the inverse. If you don't mind, can you explain the confrontation aspect in the context of getting onto the rollercoaster?

Yes, that helps.

What I'm missing is the discussion of a perhaps too-obvious explanation: coping with feelings of helplessness. While often happening simultaneously with anxiety (being in a helpless situation would make most of us anxious, right?) it is not quite the same, I would say.

I personally rarely remember my dreams, but when I do they tend to be very intense, and during periods of my life that are emotionally turbulent and, indeed, involve feeling helpless about something.

(also, you forgot to answer if you actually meant "mediation" or "meditation", because I'm curious what you mean in case of the former)

This makes a whole lot of sense. Thanks for writing this.

>There's a _little_ bit of buddhist dogma which comes with most books / lessons, but that's easily ignored - otherwise it's zero woo: the 99% core of what is taught is psychology and practical techniques.

For hackerish types exploring Buddhism, I think it's useful to be aware of the concept of upaya, which loosely translates as "skilful" or "expedient". Buddhist teachers consciously make use of metaphors, abstractions and practices that aren't necessarily true, but might aid a particular audience in understanding a difficult concept.

As a result, Buddhist teaching is incredibly diverse, because it's being continually adapted to suit a particular audience in a particular cultural context. One might make an analogy with different programming languages - they all represent the same CPU operations and they're all essentially equivalent via the Church-Turing thesis and the Curry-Howard correspondence, but they often use radically different abstractions.

Personally, I was repelled by what I perceived to be Buddhism on my first exposure to it; I only realised much later that what I understood to be Buddhism was simply an explanation of Buddhist thought tailored for a particular demographic of English-speakers, specifically Californian hippies and new-agers. There was simply a severe impedance mismatch between my mindset and the particular teaching approaches I had been exposed to.

If you think that the Dalai Lama dwells on vapid platitudes or that he's a bit of a smug prick, that's fine - so do a lot of practising Buddhists. He represents a small and rather eccentric school of Buddhism, not Buddhism as a whole. You might gel with the teaching of Ajahn Amaro or Thich Nhat Hanh or Sheng Yen or a multitude of others. You might find it useful to take an ecumenical approach, dipping in and out of various schools to see different perspectives on the same topic.

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

> Buddhist teachers consciously make use of metaphors, abstractions and practices that aren't necessarily true, but might aid a particular audience in understanding a difficult concept.

You're describing conceptual metaphors, which are actually extremely interesting when it comes to making sense of cognition.

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

http://nautil.us/issue/6/secret-codes/teaching-me-softly

From my experience vipassana meditation is outside, above, below, or maybe right in between (depending on your conceptual map) both anxious mind-wandering and dreaming.

The goal being to learn to observe all sensations and thoughts without reacting to them (which seems to require or result in a certain amount of detachment)

I remember more of my dreams when I'm meditating regularly, and I also notice more of my waking thought loops.

Were you able to stick with the daily meditation schedule?

Yeah, though I've tried and failed to keep a consistent practice multiple times over the years. My wife independently decided to try it also, so we've been able to motivate each other on off days. If you're just trying to practice daily by yourself it can be easy to make excuses on a day when you're tired or busy, and if you have too many of those then eventually it falls off.

Is the "zero woo" disclaimer really necessary?

Yes. There's a ton of new age / superstitious practices that use meditation of one sort or another. Vipassana is reasonably secular and to the point.

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